The Lego bricks were invented a lot earlier, but 1979 was the year of Legoland Space, Legoland Town, and Legoland Castle. Those three are the Lego universes that started it all. They were first introduced in 1978—except for the Galaxy Explorer—but it wasn't until 1979 and the few following years when they really took off. More importantly for me: It wasn't until 1979 when I actually build them.

During 1978, 1979, and the beginning of the 80s, Lego had its Golden Age. For sure, now they sell more than ever and they have a huge army of followers. But that was the true Golden Age, with the very best sets ever developed by the Danish company.

Many great ones came later, but I was lucky enough to play with all those original sets back in 1979, when I was a little kid.

Here you have my favorites, straight from the official show room on top of their secret vault, in the original Lego factory.

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Pretty much every gadget then-from typewriters to phones to music playback devices-was an electro-mechanic artifact of the industrial age. But beginning in the 80s all those tools began their ascent to the digital. Basically, we'd wind up doing everything differently.

Within a couple of years, the music cassettes we listened to turned would become CDs.

The typewriters would become word processors.

The cassette-based telephone answering machines would become digital playback devices.

Our television choices-four or five channels VHF and maybe four or five more UHF-would be bolstered by hundreds of cable channels. We'd get VCR's. And tape our own videos. All of that in early 1980's. Then would come the ubiquity of personal computers. And then the Internet. And cell phones. Are you getting the idea?

It was not just a change in our gadgetry, but also a change in our thinking.

That's why Gizmodo's decision to dive to 1979 was so interesting. Except for those hard at work making the stuff that was about to rock everyone else's world, people lived unaware of the revolution to come. It was a technological equivalent of the denial between the Wars. I was among those clueless; my own sudden and total conversion wouldn't come until 1981, when I embarked on a story about the subculture of computer hackers. I did read about those nutty kids who started Apple, and was vaguely aware that all of that stuff was coming. But I never put the pieces together. In my defense, hardly anyone did, and even the ones on top of things grossly underestimated how crazy things would get.

There's no reason to get nostalgic about 1979-in retrospect, it was terrible not having email, Google, iPods, word processing, Twitter, WOW, Amazon, GPS, Google and websites devoted to unnecessary quotation marks. (Also, the Phillies had never won a world series-how awful was that?) Maybe all these new tools have trashed the minds and attention spans of young people growing. But the minds of baby boomers like me were probably ruined much more by unlimited access to the stupid-making television programming of the early sixties.

After 1979, the bit was flipped, big-time. Thank God.

Steven Levy is a senior writer for Wired, most recently writing about Google's ad business and the secret of the CIA sculpture. He's written six books, including Hackers, Artificial Life and The Perfect Thing, about the iPod. In 1979, he had just left his first real job, at a regional magazine called New Jersey Monthly, to become a freelance writer, and had yet to touch a computer.

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

First of all, a laser is going to burn up whatever it touches, so, like, do you listen to it once and then throw it away? That sounds like a great idea if you're one of those guys who made us buy 8 tracks and now want us to repurchase all our favorite songs on cassettes again. I'm not even going to get started on the potential fire hazard here. And last time I checked (the movies) lasers shoot out, they don't shoot back in, so its not like a laser is a good replacement for a record needle. Sure, it wouldn't wear out these magic laser records like vinyl and physical needles do, but that's because said disc would be make believe. And if even real, be on fire.

Sheesh. Nice try, rumor fakers. Never going to fool an expert gadget blogger. [25th anniversary of the CD]

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

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Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

John Shoch and Jon Hupp at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center discovered the computer "worm," a short program that searches a network for idle processors. Initially designed to provide more efficient use of computers and for testing, the worm had the unintended effect of invading networked computers, creating a security threat.

Shoch took the term "worm" from the book "The Shockwave Rider," by John Brunner, in which an omnipotent "tapeworm" program runs loose through a network of computers. Brunner wrote: "No, Mr. Sullivan, we can´t stop it! There´s never been a worm with that tough a head or that long a tail! It´s building itself, don´t you understand? Already it´s passed a billion bits and it´s still growing. It´s the exact inverse of a phage - whatever it takes in, it adds to itself instead of wiping... Yes, sir! I´m quite aware that a worm of that type is theoretically impossible! But the fact stands, he´s done it, and now it´s so goddamn comprehensive that it can´t be killed. Not short of demolishing the net!" (247, Ballantine Books, 1975).

USENET established. USENET was invented as a means for providing mail and file transfers using a communications standard known as UUCP. It was developed as a joint project by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by graduate students Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. USENET enabled its users to post messages and files that could be accessed and archived. It would go on to become one of the main areas for large-scale interaction for interest groups through the 1990s.

The first Multi-User Domain (or Dungeon), MUD1, is goes on-line. Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw, two students at the University of Essex, write a program that allows many people to play against each other on-line. MUDs become popular with college students as a means of adventure gaming and for socializing. By 1984, there are more than 100 active MUDs and variants around the world.

Dag Spicer is CHM's "Chief Content Officer," and is responsible for creating the intellectual frameworks and interpretive schema of the Museum's various programs and exhibitions. He also leads the Museum's strategic direction relating to its collection of computer artifacts, films, documents, software and ephemera—the largest collection of computers and related materials in the world.

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

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Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

A: The Commodore Pet

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

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Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

How did you shift from entertainment products to personal computers? Did you seek them out or were you pulled in? And were there others besides Apple? Was there a chance you might have ended up sharing your Snow White design language with some other company, turning a competitor of Apple into the iconic "cool computer" maker of the day?

My second client in 1970 was the German company CTM, an offspring of Nixdorf, back then a leader in making data processing affordable and usable to mid-size companies. They were quite successful and together we created the first ergonomic desktop terminal with a tilting display and detached keyboard in 1978 which won international acclaim.

Apple's "Snow White" design language was the result of a very close relationship and collaboration with Apple, and ultimately expressed the very specific values and aspirations of Apple. The key was that Steve Jobs wanted "the very best design, not only in the computer industry but the entire World". This allowed us to create a totally new design paradigm for "digital-convergent products" without historic precedence.

How have product considerations evolved in the same time? What was the 1979 equivalent of hardware vs. software? Or physical button vs. touch surface?

Let's take Sony as an example: as of 1976, we were working on remote controls for multiple sources from TV to Audio-Systems and "Home-Control" with software screens, activated both by buttons and direct-touch. Even as the key problem – aside of cost - was slow processing power and LCD screens with little contrast. Our objective was to simplify usage and some products went into the market in Japan. So to your answer: we already had it in 1979.

What design trends were hot in the late 1970s that are coming back around now? Which trends from the 1970s will NEVER come back?

The late 1970s were very much defined by the shock of the oil crisis and the subsequent recession especially here in the United States. In Europe and Japan, there was a wider acceptance of energy-saving and ecologically responsible product strategies. The hot design trends were "personalization and miniaturization" – SONY's Walkman being the best manifestation – and with the Japanese domination of electronic consumer electronics making professional-grade technology – e.g. cameras - accessible and affordable to millions. This also was a time, when the United States lost out big time in this field. The late 1970s also were the "Golden Age" of product design – and this trend will return for product experiences and hyper-convergence – which means to design how people feel.

Isn't part of design envisioning products that use technology that doesn't yet exist? What were the sorts of things you envisioned in the 1970s that are commonplace today but didn't yet exist? What are you envisioning now (or what have you envisioned lately) that will take some time for technology to catch up?

This may sound a bit arrogant, but in 1968 I proposed an "Atomic-Time Radio-Wristwatch" for a watch competition. People laughed at it, but in 1986 frog designed exactly such a product for the German Junghans company.

Sometimes, technology surpasses human speed: today we are using mobile phones with more computing power then could be imagined 20 years ago – and even science fiction authors like William Gibson or Arthur C. Clarke didn't even anticipate them – but the user interfaces are split into "old-phone-physical" and "agnostic-digital" (Apple's iPhone succeeds because it is the first product to bridge this idiotic chasm).

Looking a the future, I think that technology and our body will grow closer together – a couple of years ago, we designed "Dattoos", the vision of a protein-based computer "living" on human skin. Closer to reality are concepts of enhancing brain activities by electro-magnetic impulses. Already, design is expanding from "bits and atoms" to "neurons and genes" – one could call it BANG-Design.

Were there times when companies were afraid to go as far as you wanted them to? Are there any examples of companies that refused to make design improvements—perhaps because of cost—and paid a larger price for that?

Strategic design is not about "going as far as possible" but about "going the best way together". As said above with the Apple Snow White example, the interactive relationship between client and designer is a vital element for success or failure. So, even as I may push for more advanced solutions, the client may have many reasons not to follow. At the end of a day, each jointly achieved result shall be a healthy compromise, motivated by achieving the best for the user and/or consumer. Naturally, there are some negative examples where I couldn't convince clients, which I also describe in my book: Polaroid which stuck too long to chemical image creation, Maytag which refused to innovate in a strategic way and Motorola which missed the opportunity to create the iPhone long before Apple did.

Dr. Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frog Design, just published a great book entitled A Fine Line, on the lessons he's learned in his career and on the future of business informed by design. We encourage you to check it out.

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

The 2-inch screened set took 10 years to develop and was $395. [Modernmechanix via retrothing]

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Basically, you could get word packs to pop in the back, bringing new games and new vocab to your kid so they wouldn't hassle you to teach them words when you're just trying to watch Monday Night Football. It used a speech synthesizer to say the words out loud so the kids knew the correct, if a bit robotic, pronunciation.

Here's an ad, from the early 80s:

And of course you can't forget the ridiculous circuit bending that hackers have done with these things in the years since, making them way more fun and entertaining. Just check this shit out:

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

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Yeah, that's pretty insane all right—and they did this shit twice a year:

Notice that Crazy Eddie spokesman Jerry Carroll was somewhat less insane in the late '70s. He didn't truly fly off the handle until the '80s:

Crazy Eddie started in Brooklyn in 1971, but eventually went down in a way that was as dramatic as their commercials. In 1986, co-founder Eddie Antar abruptly cashed in millions of dollars worth of stock and resigned from the company. In 1987 he was charged with several crimes related to fraudulent business practices, leading him to flee the country for his native Israel in 1990. However, his exile only lasted until '93 when he returned to the US to stand trial. Eventually, he spent several years in prison for his crimes. Looking back on it now, these commercials should have been the first sign that something wasn't right.

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

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Click for full size

[CT-6000 via the Thompson-Brown Family, Technics SL5300 via VintageTechnics]

They were inspired by this Esquire article from 1971 called Secrets of the Little Blue Box, by legendary writer (and typewriter fetishist) Ron Rosenbaum.

Woz's boxes were simple, by standards of circuitry, but the original creator of the Blue Box built his with failsafes in mind in case the law got too suspicious.

He sighs. "We had this order for a thousand beeper boxes from a syndicate front man in Las Vegas. They use them to place bets coast to coast, keep lines open for hours, all of which can get expensive if you have to pay. The deal was a thousand blue boxes for $300 apiece. Before then we retailed them for $1,500 apiece, but $300,000 in one lump was hard to turn down. We had a manufacturing deal worked out in the Philippines. Everything ready to go. Anyway, the model I had ready for limited mass production was small enough to fit inside a flip-top Marlboro box. It had flush touch panels for a keyboard, rather than these unsightly buttons sticking out. Looked just like a tiny portable radio. In fact, I had designed it with a tiny transistor receiver to get one AM channel, so in case the law became suspicious the owner could switch on the radio part, start snapping his fingers, and no one could tell anything illegal was going on. I thought of everything for this model—I had it lined with a band of thermite which could be ignited by radio signal from a tiny button transmitter on your belt, so it could be burned to ashes instantly in case of a bust. It was beautiful. A beautiful little machine. You should have seen the faces on these syndicate guys when they came back after trying it out. They'd hold it in their palm like they never wanted to let it go, and they'd say, 'I can't believe it. I can't believe it.' You probably won't believe it until you try it."

[Esquire; photo of the Blue Box taken at the Computer History Museum]

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

This was pre walkman and at the dawn of the age of the Betamax. Today, this would be impossible, says Sony. There's a lesson here: A gadget company should be able to fit all their SKUs in a stadium, or risk confusing their customers. [Sony.net]

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.