RetroPauseTechnology
Thematic archive · Technology

Everyday technology that transformed our routines

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1970s

Console History Does Not Fit in a Bit Race

A critical reading of the major console narratives from the 1970s to the 1990s: from early home systems to Famicom, the North American crash, 16-bit competition, and differences between markets.

Contemporary

Preserving Music Is Not Just Storing Sound

Archives, scores, recorded media and documentation of musical activity form a heritage that requires context, cataloguing and routes of access. Drawing on institutional and academic sources, this analysis explains why preserving music is not simply a matter of digitisation.

1980s

IBM PC 5150: the machine that made compatibility a cultural force

Introduced by IBM on 12 August 1981, the 5150 did not inaugurate the personal computer, but it helped establish a path of expansion based on an architecture other manufacturers could adopt. This analysis separates documented facts from interpretations of its influence.

1990s

When the Museum Went Online: Access, Archives, and the Problem of Context

Museum presence on the Internet did not begin as an immersive experience. Starting with documented cases at the Library of Congress in 1992 and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 1994, this article examines what changed when collections and documentation moved online—and why accessibility cannot replace context.

Contemporary

A Film Museum Does Not Preserve Films Alone

The planned new Film Museum in the former NO-DO building offers a way to reconsider what preserving film heritage means: not merely safeguarding copies, but also caring for media, documentation, cultural uses and the conditions of access that make audiovisual history intelligible.

Contemporary

Preserving Video Games Means Preserving More Than the Game

Museums, archives and collections show that video-game history cannot be contained in a ROM or a console alone: it also includes documentation, promotional material, software, hardware and the criteria used to present them to the public.

Before 1950

Before Videotape: How Television Was Recorded in Its Early Years

Early broadcasts and early television archives did not rely on videotape. The available documentation identifies motion-picture filming and film processing as the only way to record programmes until 1956, while Spanish demonstrations in 1948 anticipated the medium’s public arrival.