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Experts Share Their Favorite First Gadgets

By Linsey Knerl (from Wise Bread) on October 18, 2010

If asked about your first love, you may remember a secret kiss under a tree on the elementary school playground, a crush you had on a movie star as a teenager, or the first time your saw your spouse. There is another kind of love, however, that captivates us with its dreamy memory, promise of possibilities, and suggestion that we can do anything we put our mind to. That first love is found in the very beginning of our fascination with technology.

We all have gadgets, gizmos, and games that we hold near and dear to our heart. They either opened our eyes to the world of tech, or they encouraged us to explore even more - often leading to our current successes in education, career, and entertainment. We spoke with several of today's tech visionaries and popular authors to ask them "What was your first technology love?" Here are their answers:

Gary Vaynerchuk, Author of Crush It! and Host of Wine Library TV, @GaryVee

[Image credit: Christopher W.]

Atari 2600, it changed my life. I felt like we made it when I got it. Since I was an immigrant and born in Russia, things like Atari were meant for the rich kids. I got it late, and it wouldn't be long until Nintendo ruled my basement, but I just remember that hand-me-down Atari and what it meant!

Jason Chen, Editor of Gizmodo, @diskopo

The very, very first gadget I remember is an ohmmeter that my dad got me at an outdoor electronics market. I'm sure I was no more than three, maybe four years old, but I do recall using it to measure EVERYTHING, which included people, objects, pets and food. I'm lucky I didn't shove it into an electrical outlet, because I don't think they bothered telling me not to do that. But hey, I'm still alive.

Penelope Trunk, Blogger and Founder of The Brazen Careerist, @PenelopeTrunk

CD-i from Philips Media. It was just before CD-Roms came out. My boyfriend's job was to figure out how to create nonlinear content. I was unemployed, so I'd sneak into meetings with him, and it turned out that I was a genius at nonlinear content. I gave him my ideas and charged him for them. It was the end of my love for my boyfriend and the beginning of my love for electronic media.

Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of Reddit and founder of Breadpig, @kn0thing

[Image credit: Mark Ramsay]

I coveted my friend Jonathan's NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) for months before I finally got my hands on one. It was glorious. That was my foray into video games, and I've never looked back since. It was over video games that I first bonded with Steve, who'd later become my Reddit cofounder; in a way, the world has the NES to thank for making Reddit possible.

Dave Peck, Social Media Strategist at Meshin, @davepeck

My Coleco Head to Head Football game. It was a game I would take with me wherever I went and challenge my friends or played by myself. Looking back at it, it was just red lines going back and forth on a screen with a beeping noise. Thinking about it makes me smile and brings me back to my childhood days. I tell my kids about it as they play Madden, and they just look at me like I am crazy.

Christina Tynan-Wood, Family Tech Columnist for Family Circle, Blogger for GeekGirlfriends.com, @xtinatynanwood

I don't even know its name, my first gadget love, though I can picture its face as if it were yesterday. My father brought it home one day and set it down in front of me and said, "Figure out how to use this. And then show me." I'm pretty sure he got it at a yard sale. He's was an aeronautic engineer so I guess they had geeky yard sales. It was an "all in one computer" and it ran on CP/M. (Nobody even remembers CP/M anymore.) That's how primitive this machine was. I loved that thing, it changed my life overnight, I was head over heels. I sold my typewriter and never used another. I did everything with that machine. It was portable: It weighed about 30 pounds and had a big handle on top, a screen on the front, and a keyboard built in. It even had a printer that shot pages out the back and it printed about 30 different fonts -- including some fancy scripts I was quite enamored with. I was in college, and before this machine came into my life I did all my homework in the computer lab. This I could carry to my room and not have to deal with all the geeks in the lab who wanted to "help me."

Linus Torvalds, Creator of the Linux kernel and Fellow of the Linux Foundation

[Image credit: Seth Morabito]

For me, that would probably be my grandfather's electronic pocket scientific calculator from the seventies. It might have been an HP-35, but I can't swear to that. It had red digits that flashed while it was calculating, and calculating since it took a long time (well, a few seconds) with lots of flashing. It was endlessly fascinating to a small boy.

Jeffrey Hayzlett, Author of The Mirror Test and Creator of 118 Pitch, @JeffreyHayzlett

I will always remember my Motorola cell phone. It was the size of a brick but an advanced model that came with a car cradle to allow me to have it the car but also take it with me. At that time, the cell phone bill weighed almost as much as the phone, running about $4,000 each month!

Amy Clark, Named Power Mom by Parents Magazine, Founder of MomAdvice.com, @momadvice

The first electronic gadget that our family had that I remember with great fondness was our family's Atari system. I loved playing games against my sister and that was my first taste of how fun gaming could be. The trend continued with a Sega Dreamcast and now with our Nintendo Wii. It is wonderful to see that my kids are embracing gaming as much as my husband and I have and seeing the love for gaming continuing with our kids!

Dr. Randal Pinkett, Winner of Season 4's The Apprentice, Chairman and CEO, BCT Partners and Author of Black Faces in White Places, @randalpinkett

[Image credit: Tobias Carlsson]

The first electronic gadget that I fell in love with was the Commodore VIC-20, one of the early personal computers. My older brother and I wanted the Atari video game for Christmas, but our parents bought us the VIC-20. When we removed the wrapping paper, there was nothing but sheer disappointment on our faces because we wanted a video game, not a computer! That computer gathered dust for a few months. Eventually, after being introduced to computers in school, we opened the box and quickly became intrigued by what the VIC-20 could do. Eventually, rather than playing video games, my brother and I started designing our own video games. In fact, it was in large part to the VIC-20 that I went on to study electrical and computer engineering and now run an IT consulting firm, BCT Partners, and my brother went on to study mathematics and now works full-time at Prudential Insurance. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Adam Ostrow, Editor in Chief of Mashable, @adamostrow

The first gadget I fondly remember is my Game Boy, which I got when I was around 8 or 9. At the time, it was amazing to have on long road trips with my family, playing games like Tetris and a very primitive football game I can't quite remember

Susan Mallery, NYTimes bestselling author, Creator of the Fool's Gold Romances, @SusanMallery

My favorite first gadget was the AlphaSmart, which is sort of a bare bones word processor. It was lightweight and portable and cost far less than a laptop in those days. It was fun on airplanes...all the business men around me looked at me pityingly as I pulled out what looked like a teal blue toy computer. There were a couple of times I swear they wanted to take up a collection! But when I got home, oh, it was magic! I plugged it into my computer, clicked a button, and all those words I'd written while traveling poured onto my Word document, one letter at a time. I felt like a genie.

Jean Aw, Founder/Editor of NOTCOT, @notcot

That would be my ancient grey brick of a Toshiba Satellite Pro in high school. My first brand new laptop, that was all mine, not shared, and I could do anything with it--and if I broke everything, the pain and suffering of reinstalling windows was on me. But the freedom of not having a shared machine was worth it!

Leo Babauta, Creator of Zen Habits, @zen_habits

[Image credit: Wolfgang Wedenig]

I have very fond memories of video games - early Atari systems, Donkey Kong hand-held games that were a precursor to the DS and PSPs they have today, and a small game of Frogger that was shaped like a big arcade machine. But my favorite gadget was the Apple II, which I used in school. I learned how to write BASIC programs on this, and it was truly magic - I could make the computer do amazing things, just by typing code. I would make it draw pictures on the screen by creating algorithms, create a program that could talk back to you, and even create my own video games! It was breathtaking. I'm saddened that I didn't go on to be a programmer, which would increase my (mostly imaginary) geek credentials.

Mike Michalowicz, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, @TPentrepreneur

My favorite tech gadget was the Palm III. When it came out, I was among the first to get it. To have an electronic calendar that I could carry with me and sync to my PC was revolutionary. It was a game changer for mobility.

Ford R. Myers, President of Career Potential, LLC and Author of Get the Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring, @FordMyers

My "First Tech Love" was the car phone purchased back in 1988. Not a cell phone; a CAR phone. This was before cell phones were available, so if you wanted mobile communication, you needed a phone installed permanently in your car. Many people don't remember this period when car phones were so popular, but I do! I loved my Panasonic car phone because I was doing a lot of driving for my business during those days. I would sometimes get lost, so I'd call my office for directions. The car phone also allowed me to conduct business and get a lot done while I was "on the go." Back then, this was a real breakthrough! Naturally, I jumped onto the cell phone bandwagon as soon as they came out, but I'll never forget my trusty car phone.

Gabe Newell, Founder of Valve Software

My life-long love of technology started in 1977 in the Sacramento valley. A new program at our high school allowed my brother and I to get a small amount of computer time per week at the University of California at Davis. We'd bicycle down to the computer center where we were given batch accounts on a Burroughs mainframe (which had less CPU horsepower than my toaster does today). There was an ultra-primitive version of Trek on the Burroughs, which we weren't supposed to play as we didn't have timeshare accounts, but we figured out that by correctly setting the right random number seed, we could play the game across batch sessions. My brother and I would laboriously enter our moves on a punch card using a machine about the size of a Prius, put the cards in the mainframe's reader, go over to the line printer and wait 15 or 20 minutes until it was our jobs turn to run and then frantically page through the output until we could see what the Klingons or Romulans had done to our ship. Back we'd go to the punch card machine to rinse and repeat. I remember feeling at the time that the world had fundamentally changed, and now I was living in a science fiction story.

[Headline photo credit: iStock]

Do you have a "first love" gadget that fundamentally changed the way you viewed tech? Tell us about it in the comments!