Nowadays, bleeding-edge tech tends to be sleek and small and easy on the eyes. It wasn't always.
See how well you can do in this ultimate vintage tech quiz.
Let's start with this porcupine-y thing. Know what it is?
... by Remington Rand, on display at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.
That's original hero Natalia in the vault suit. She's facing off against a radscorpion.
The computer system debuted more than a half-century ago.
Previous photo by: IBM
Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, England, UK --- Buckinghamshire,Bletchley,Bletchley Park,German Enigma Machine --- Image by © Steven Vidler/Corbis
The German device stumped Allies for years ... until Alan Turing and his Bletchley Park team famously helped to cracked it.
Here's a close-up of a floppy disk jutting out of an Apple II computer, which was available between 1977 and 1981.
Right now the All About Apple Museum has no official relationship with Apple. That was not the case in the past. In 2005 the company sent a letter to the association running the museum and eventually invited a few of its representatives to Cupertino.
The Apple II computer was available between 1977 and 1981.
Before there was PlayStation, before XBOX, there was the NES. Sure, there were video game systems that came before it, such as the Atari 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision, but none of those really could produce arcade quality graphics and gameplay at home. This was the console that launched the Super Mario empire.
This was the console that launched the Super Mario empire ... and super-geeky messenger bags such as this one.
This dungeon-crawling home computer game (circa 1980) used letters and keyboard symbols to depict walls, passages, monsters and treasure.
Hint: It's one of the first Windows-powered smartphones ever released.
Also known as NORC, this one-of-a-kind, first-generation vacuum tube computer went live in December 1954 and was likely the most powerful computer at the time.
Debuted in 1981, this little computer was designed to be inexpensive. It sold for the 2015 equivalent of about $200. Check out Steve Benway's video for more on this small wonder.
Steve Benway demonstrated the gameplay in a 2011 YouTube video. The Sinclair 1000 is a modified version of the ZX81.
If you've never seen this 1996 model, one of the earliest of the smartphones, you're missing out on a wonderfully wacky piece of vintage tech. Check it out in this video.
Apple's answer to an AOL-like Internet portal service was available between June 1994 and March 1996.
It debuted in 1954.
This 80s-era modem, a favorite of early hackers, is now on display in Britain's National Museum of Computing.
The first PDA, the reason why this
An early entry in the PDA category, this cute little personal organizer debuted in 1993, but Steve Jobs killed the platform about five years later.
The 1989 graphic-adventure game starred 1920s-era sleuth Laura Bow.
The eMate 300 running the Newton operating system isn't one of the most successful Apple products: designed for the education market, it didn't last long. The item, the curators said, was donated to the museum by a collector who obtained it after a tough bargaining session with a Texan collector.
Designed for the education market, this PDA didn't last long after its 1997 debut.
Released in 1983, this is one of the world's first truly portable computers. Want to see a teardown? Sure you do.
The 1997 game was the follow-up to the hit title Myst.
While home video was introduced in the form of VHS and Sony BetaMax years earlier, if you really wanted to enjoy the highest fidelity in home entertainment, you had to go LaserDisc, which was introduced by Pioneer Corporation in 1979. LaserDisc never caught on en masse due to the fact the players and the titles were expensive, but if you wanted the best sound and best video quality, nothing would beat it until DVD arrived 10 years later, in 1995.
Introduced by Pioneer Corporation in 1979, this storage media enjoyed a lot of hype before VCRs eventually won.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) was built between 1943 and 1945. It was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, and it stretched 150 feet wide.
Designed in Borland C++, this turn-based artillery-combat game debuted in 1991.