60 INVENTIONS THAT CHANGED OUR LIVES
. . . according to consumer magazine Which? 60 years after it began. And, as JAN MOIR admits, some (like her dishwasher) she prizes more than the main in her life
1958: STEAM IRON
Hoover Steam or Dry Iron. Few now recall lugging solid irons heated on hobs, or even gas irons with rubber hoses.
1958: TOASTER
Morphy Richards automatic pop-up toaster. Previous toasters did one side of the bread only, and you had to watch them like a hawk to stop it burning.
1959: TUMBLE DRYER
Parnall Auto-dry. Costly — £964 in today’s money — but no more waiting for good weather to hang clothes out on a line.
1959: MINI
BMC Morris Mini-Minor, brilliantly using an engine turned sideways to drive the front wheels, freeing up interior space and nippy, too. Changed cars for ever.
1960: ELECTRIC KETTLE
The Russell Hobbs K2, one of the first kettles to turn off automatically, a boon for a busy but tea-mad nation.
1960: AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINE
English Electric Liberator, costing a month’s pay for the average family. But it ended standing over a machine operating the controls, or using a washboard.
1961: TUPPERWARE
First Tupperware party was held in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1960. Sandwiches — and neighbours’ invitations — were never quite the same again.
1961: THE ‘PILL’
First reserved for married women, but soon had the opposite effect — it ended ‘shotgun marriages’ caused by pregnancy, so made free love possible.
1962: VELCRO
Inspired by burdock seeds, which use tiny hooks to attach to passing animals.
1962: KENWOOD CHEF A701A
A firm started by Kenneth Wood invented the mixer and used the slogan ‘The Chef does everything but cook — that what wives are for!’ This was their best model yet.
1963: PARACETAMOL
New over-the-counter painkiller and first alternative to aspirin.
1963: CINE CAMERA
Kodak Brownie 8mm. You had to wind it up, but it meant home movies for millions, long before video.
1963: FRIDGE FREEZER
Tricity Supercold TR661. For the first time it was possible to keep food for months without canning, drying or pickling it.
1964: FLYMO LAWNMOWER
Inspired by the hovercraft, it floated above the grass and was almost effortless to push. No neat stripes, and you had to rake up the grass clippings.
1965: DISHWASHER
Colston Mk4: First Which? ‘Best Buy’ because it washed all the dishes well. But early models were noisy — you couldn’t stay in the kitchen and chat!
1965: CAMERA
Polaroid Swinger: Much loved because for the first time people could see snaps without sending them off to the chemist.
1967: COLOUR TV
The Decca CTV 25 cost £4,700 in today’s money and was out in time for Wimbledon, where everyone wore white!
1970: SUITCASE
Bernard Sadow wheeled suitcase Such models were at first considered ‘unmasculine’ because a real man should hulk his bags himself.
1971: SOFT CONTACT LENSES
3.5 million people now wear contact lenses. No more ugly specs, and you could soon change your eye colour, too.
1972: POCKET CALCULATOR
Sinclair Executive. Launch price was the equivalent of £969 in today’s money. Today,
mobile phones and computers have made these coveted gizmos pointless.
1972: DATA STORAGE
Floppy disks. A whole one couldn’t store one pop song. They kept evolving, so you’d be hard put to use one today.
1973: DOUBLE GLAZING
Sales took off when tighter building regulations followed the first big oil crisis. Aluminium at first, white plastic later.
1973: CEEFAX
A very slow information system on TV. Many will remember weekends spent in front of page 316 — waiting for the latest football scores to flash up.
1974: MICROWAVE
AEG Micromat ML 7.60. Responsible for Britain’s addiction to ready meals.
1978: VIDEO RECORDERS
The JVC HR-3300 cost £2,785 in today’s money. Tapes were as big as a hardback book and couldn’t store a whole film.
1980: WALKMAN
The Sony Walkman cassette tape player sold 200 million worldwide.
1980: PACKAGED SANDWICHES
M&S sold the first pre-packed sandwich — prawn mayonnaise.
1981: COMPUTER
Acorn BBC Micro. Pushed into schools by government enthusiasm. Great games.
1981: SAFER CARS
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class set a new standard for passenger safety — with airbags and anti-lock brakes.
1982: AUDIO CD PLAYER
First commercial CD player Sony CDP101 launched in Japan. Killed off vinyl LPs, later killed off itself by iPods and downloads.
1984: APPLE MAC
Pioneered the computer mouse.
1985: SMOKE ALARM
Saved more lives than we’ll ever know.
1986: DIGITAL CAMERA
Early models held only six pictures.
1987: MOBILE PHONE
Nokia Mobira Cityman 1320 was more than five times the weight of an iPhone 7.
1988: PRINTER
HP Printjet took a whole minute to print a single page, but so much better than the daisywheel dot matrix ones before.
1988: COMBI BOILER
The Glow-worm Hotwater Express meant no more waiting for water to heat up to have a bath.
1990: GAMES SYSTEM
The Nintendo Game Boy gave rise to the ‘Tetris Effect’ — where users had hallucinations of slotting bricks after playing for hours.
1991: BATTERY
The lithium-ion battery made lighter rechargeable gadgets possible.
1992: LAPTOP
The IBM 300 ThinkPad weighed 6kg.
1993: COMPUTING SYSTEM
Windows 3.1 meant users could click on pictures and icons, rather than typing in complex demands on the keyboard.
1993: BAGLESS VACUUM
The Dyson DCO1 ditched the bag.
1995: GAMES SYSTEM
The PlayStation 1 sold 100 million worldwide, addicting a generation.
1997: TOYOTA PRIUS
The Toyota Prius was the pioneering electric-hybrid car that drivers found ‘eerie’ because of its silence.
1997: CHILD CAR SEAT FIXING
Britax and VW devised the Isofix fixing system so you no longer had to buy a new child seat for different cars.
1998: DVD PLAYER
Buyers of the Panasonic DVD-A350 could watch a few films, such as Four Weddings And A Funeral, and Philadephia.
1999: NOKIA MOBILE PHONE
The Nokia 3210 sold 160 million.
2000: BROADBAND
Put an end to choosing between going online and making a telephone call.
2001: iPOD
The Apple iPod made your whole music collection portable.
2002: CAMERA PHONE
The Nokia 7650 made trillions of selfies and silly videos inevitable.
2002: MOBILE EMAILS
The BlackBerry let us check emails on the go. Cumbersome keyboard.
2004: SATNAV
The TomTom spread U.S. Department of Defense GPS technology to many.
2006: MUSIC STREAMING
Spotify gave music-lovers access to millions of tracks for free.
2006: LCD HIGH-DEFINITION TV:
High-definition TV channels arrived on Sky in 2006. Tellies were going flat.
2007: SMARTPHONE
The Apple iPhone brought a computer to the palm of our hands. One billion have been sold worldwide.
2007: TV ONLINE
Services such as Netflix let you watch what you wanted, when you wanted (if the broadband was up to it).
2009: FITNESS TRACKER FITBIT
More than 100 million wearable fitness devices are sold annually.
2009: eREADERS
Debut of the Amazon Kindle, but nine years before Stephen King’s Riding The Bullet debuted online and sold 400,000 copies in 24 hours.
2010: COMPUTER TABLET
At just 13mm thick, Apple’s iPad weighed less than a loaf of bread.
2015: LIGHT BULB
For the first time LED bulbs could emit as much light as a 100W incandescent bulb.
2016: SMART HUB
The Amazon Echo answers your questions, plays music and reports the news — and is perhaps a forerunner of artificial intelligence in the home.