The AeroPress changed my life with coffee. Such a great product. I cannot recommend it enough.
The Trojan Room coffee pot at Cambridge became the subject of the first webcam in 1991, because the lab's coffee machine was too far away to check in person.
That coffee camera moved from a local lab feed to the Web in 1993, making one exhausted pot an early global internet celebrity.
The original coffee pot was finally switched off in 2001 and sold at auction, because even caffeine hardware gets archived.
░ File 04B — Time Machines ░
The first Back to the Future drafts used a refrigerator as the time machine, with the climax built around a nuclear test site in Nevada.
The DeLorean solved a story problem: a time machine that could move let the filmmakers make the 88 mph rule visible.
Michael J. Fox was the first choice for Marty McFly, but Eric Stoltz was cast first and replaced after weeks of shooting.
Back to the Future Part II sends Marty and Doc to October 21, 2015. The date became its own pop-culture holiday.
░ File 04C — Games ░
Atari's Adventure hid Warren Robinett's signature in a secret room; Atari later leaned into the idea and called hidden secrets "Easter eggs."
The Dreamcast VMU was not just a memory card. It had a screen, buttons, and could run tiny standalone mini-games outside the console.
The original Doom source release in 1997 was the Linux codebase, not a neat museum drop of the commercial DOS game.
R.O.B. only supported two NES games, Gyromite and Stack-Up, but helped Nintendo present the NES as a toy after the 1983 game crash.
░ File 04D — Pocket Gizmos ░
The first Sony Walkman, the TPS-L2, had two headphone jacks so two people could listen to the same cassette together.
That same Walkman had an orange "hotline" button that lowered the tape volume and mixed in a microphone so listeners could talk without removing headphones.
Yes, I had a Tamagotchi. Yes, I cared for it. Yes, this remains an emotionally valid chapter in portable computing.
The Apple Newton MessagePad arrived in 1993 with handwriting recognition years before the smartphone made pocket computers normal.
░ File 04E — Signal & Sound ░
The Yamaha DX7 launched in 1983 and made FM synthesis the default flavor of an entire decade of pop gloss.
The lightsaber sound blended a projector motor hum with electrical interference picked up near a television.
The Wilhelm Scream was recorded in 1951 and became a running sound-department signature across Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and hundreds of other films.
Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon spent 741 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200.
░ File 04F — Personal File ░
I won best script for "The X Files" TV series (FOX Broadcasting Company) 2000. I kid you not.
Tool is not a tool in this file. Tool is the band, and yes, that distinction matters.
Battlestar Galactica is still my number one TV series of all time. So say we all.
Known vulnerability: anything with buttons, ports, dials, cartridges, tiny screens, magnetic media, or a suspiciously specific use case.