Which Came First? The Gadget Gauntlet

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About This Quiz

Remember questioning if Betamax was shortchanged? Still bitter your MiniDisc collection became expensive coasters? Welcome to the family reunion of technology, where format wars never cease and everyone remains bitter. You're gazing at decades of "revolutionary" gizmos that revolutionized mankind or sit in that drawer with the cryptic cables.

Some births are a breeze—grandfather Atari obviously precedes his PlayStation great-grandson. Others? Technology companies weren't exactly marketing their cringe-worthy youth. Practical tip: if it's heavier than a toddler and pricier than a car, it probably arrived before. The real brain teasers come when two rivals were only months away from each other, both trying to be the first to say they invented Tuesday.

Gearing up for a trip down memory lane when "portable" was a twenty-pounder and "wireless" meant a really long cord?

START QUIZ

1/30

Which came first?

[B] Sony Walkman | Launched in 1979, the Walkman normalized private, portable music. Discman (’84) and MiniDisc (’92) followed as optical formats. iPod (2001) reinvented portability again—this time with hard drives and downloads.

2/30

Which came first?

[A] IBM PC (5150) | IBM’s 1981 PC defined the open, cloneable architecture that fueled the desktop boom. Compaq’s portable arrived ’83, the original Mac debuted ’84, and NeXT’s distinctive cube landed in ’88.

3/30

Which came first?

[A] Sega Saturn | Saturn hit Japan in November 1994, narrowly beating Sony’s PlayStation (December ’94). Nintendo 64 waited until ’96, while Microsoft’s first Xbox didn’t appear until 2001’s sixth console generation.

4/30

Which came first?

[C] Kodak DCS 100 | In 1991 Kodak strapped a digital back onto a Nikon F3 and sold the first commercial DSLR system. Nikon’s D1 (’99) mainstreamed pro DSLRs; Canon’s 1D followed in 2001.

5/30

Which came first?

[B] TiVo DVR | TiVo shipped DVRs in 1999, popularizing “pause live TV” and season passes. ReplayTV launched the same year, but TiVo won mindshare. Roku and Apple TV arrived much later as streaming boxes.

6/30

Which came first?

[D] PowerBook 100 | Apple’s PowerBook 100 (1991) helped define the modern laptop layout. IBM’s stylish black ThinkPad 700C followed in ’92. Surface Pro and XPS represent much newer waves of ultraportables and 2-in-1s.

7/30

Which came first?

[B] Amazon Kindle | Kindle arrived in 2007, kick-starting the mainstream e-reader market with E-ink. Nook launched in 2009, tablets like iPad and Galaxy Tab arrived in 2010—separate category, lit screens, app ecosystems.

8/30

Which came first?

[A] Casio G-SHOCK | In 1983, G-SHOCK debuted with “Triple 10” toughness, making rugged digital watches fashionable and nearly indestructible. Swatch’s plastic pop came mid-’80s; smartwatches such as Fitbit and Apple Watch are 21st-century stories.

9/30

Which came first?

[D] Betamax | Sony’s Betamax reached market in 1975; JVC’s VHS followed in 1976 and ultimately dominated. LaserDisc stayed niche, and DVD didn’t explode until the late ’90s with digital optical discs.

10/30

Which came first?

[C] Motorola DynaTAC 8000X | The world’s first commercial handheld cellular phone shipped in the mid-’80s—expensive, huge, iconic. Nokia 1011 brought GSM in ’92, early BlackBerry phones hit 2002, and iPhone arrived in 2007.

11/30

Which came first?

[C] 3.5-inch floppy disk | Sony’s durable 3.5-inch floppy won the ’80s format wars. CD-R arrived around 1990, ZIP drives brought 100MB removable disks mid-’90s, and USB flash drives appeared circa 2000.

12/30

Which came first?

[A] Game & Watch | Nintendo’s palm-sized LCD games from 1980 predated cartridge handhelds. Game Boy (’89) turned portability into a phenomenon; Game Gear (’90) added color; Sony’s PSP (2004 JP) went multimedia.

13/30

Which came first?

[D] iRobot Roomba | The disc-shaped robot vacuum quietly arrived in 2002, long before voice assistants. Smart speakers showed up much later—Amazon Echo (2014), Google Home (2016), and Apple’s HomePod (2018).

14/30

Which came first?

[B] CompactFlash | CompactFlash launched in 1994 for early digital cameras and pro gear. Sony’s Memory Stick followed in 1998; the SD Card standardized 1999; tiny microSD (initially TransFlash) shrank storage in 2004–2005.

15/30

Which came first?

[C] Osborne 1 | Osborne’s 1981 “luggable” portable came before sleek notebooks. PowerBook 100 (’91) refined the clamshell; iPad (2010) reimagined slates; Surface RT (2012) explored Windows on ARM tablets.

16/30

Which came first?

[A] Sony CDP-101 (CD player) | The first consumer CD player arrived in 1982, launching the digital audio era. DAT Walkman appeared late ’80s, MiniDisc in ’92, and the Rio MP3 player in ’98 helped start file-based music.

17/30

Which came first?

[D] Kodak DCS 100 | Kodak’s 1991 DCS 100 turned a film SLR into a working digital system with a tethered storage unit. Nikon’s D1 democratized pro DSLRs in ’99; Canon’s D30 popularized affordable APS-C in 2000.

18/30

Which came first?

[A] Windows 95 | Microsoft’s August 1995 launch mainstreamed the Start menu and 32-bit consumer Windows. Mac OS X re-architected Apple software in 2001, Ubuntu debuted 2004, and Android’s first phone arrived 2008.

19/30

Which came first?

[B] Atari 2600 (VCS) | Released in 1977, Atari’s cartridge console brought arcade-style gaming home. Nintendo’s NES revitalized the market in 1985, Sega’s Genesis hit late ’80s, and Sony’s PlayStation arrived in 1994.

20/30

Which came first?

[C] IBM Simon | Sold in 1994, Simon combined phone, PDA, touch screen, and apps—arguably the first “smartphone.” BlackBerry 5810 (2002) put email on the go; iPhone (2007) redefined UX; the G1 launched Android in 2008.

21/30

Which came first?

[B] Sony Librie | Sony’s Librie (2004, Japan) was an early E-ink reader. Amazon’s Kindle (2007) turned e-books mainstream; Barnes & Noble’s Nook (2009) competed in the U.S.; Kobo (2010) emphasized openness and global reach.

22/30

Which came first?

[D] Magellan NAV 1000 | In 1989, Magellan shipped one of the first handheld consumer GPS receivers. Garmin popularized compact GPS in the ’90s; TomTom’s GO (2004) owned dashboards; phones absorbed it all later.

23/30

Which came first?

[C] DVD | DVD launched in the mid-’90s, replacing VHS with digital discs. The 2006 Blu-ray/HD DVD rivalry followed—Blu-ray prevailed—and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray didn’t land until the streaming era’s middle stretch.

24/30

Which came first?

[D] Kodak Brownie | The Brownie (1900) made photography truly mass-market with cheap box cameras and roll film. Leica’s 35mm innovation arrived in 1925; Polaroid’s instant SX-70 appeared in 1972; Canon’s AE-1 in 1976.

25/30

Which came first?

[B] Xerox Alto mouse | PARC’s 1970s research popularized the mouse-driven GUI, long before Microsoft’s IntelliMouse (’96) wheel, Apple’s touch-surface Magic Mouse (2009), or Logitech’s ergonomic MX Master (2015).

26/30

Which came first?

[A] Sony Trinitron | In 1968, Trinitron’s aperture-grille CRT upped color brightness and sharpness. Flat-panel LCDs and plasmas scaled in the ’90s–2000s; OLED consumer TVs emerged later with self-emissive pixels and deep blacks.

27/30

Which came first?

[A] Compact Disc (CD) | CDs kicked off the optical-disc era in 1982. SD cards standardized flash storage in 1999; USB thumb drives hit around 2000; Blu-ray didn’t arrive until the mid-2000s HD era.

28/30

Which came first?

[D] HP-35 | Hewlett-Packard’s 1972 HP-35 was the first handheld scientific calculator—pocket power for engineers. Texas Instruments’ TI-30 (’76) drove prices down; Casio and Sharp built massive ’70s–’80s lineups.

29/30

Which came first?

[C] Xbox 360 | Microsoft jumped first in 2005’s console cycle. Nintendo’s motion-controlled Wii and Sony’s PS3 both landed in 2006. Switch (2017) later fused handheld and docked play into one wildly successful hybrid.

30/30

Which came first?

[B] SLR mirror lock-up | Mechanical mirror lock-up predates electronic focusing and digital imaging—used to reduce vibration on film SLRs. Autofocus SLRs arrived in the ’80s; digital zoom and live view are much newer features.