Hi-tech learns from early pioneers

By David Reid Reporter, BBC Click Online

At Berlin's World of Consumer Electronics, IFA, David Reid found homage was being paid to the hi-tech past... and there were some new gadgets thrown in as well.

Konrad Zuse's programmable computer was extremely complex

When Berlin hosted its first IFA consumer electronics fair it was opened by none other than Albert Einstein.

That was 75 years ago, and the anniversary is why this year IFA tipped its hat to its past masters, like the radios, telephones and computers on display down the road at Berlin's Technology Museum.

In 1936 Konrad Zuse, a mechanical stress analyst looking to reduce his own stress and the number of sums he had to do, came up with a machine that the museum's curators says is the world's first programmable computer.

The computers he made were fiendishly difficult to operate. One cumbersome calculator took upward of three months to learn.

Hadwig Dorsch, from the museum, says: "I think that with every technology, in the beginning it is only the idea; there is no design for how to use it.

"A scientist is only thinking if it is popular. It is only afterwards when it has become a popular technology that it becomes easier."

IFA is no IT fair, but consumer electronics have a lot to thank the computer pioneers for.

Here you can find everything from cameras to mp3 players, all of which contain computer components, and the latest in DVD players and satellite receivers come equipped with hard drives boasting hundreds of gigabytes of space.

But the ultimate must be the cross-dressing computers which have plucked their eyebrows and moved into the living room to masquerade as DVD players.

Even in this networked world, your hardware is still important.

Sony, like Nokia, has stolen a march on Apple's Rokr iTunes and released a genetically modified walkman phone into the environment.

Gadget confusion

But throwing up mutations and clustering components can make life complex.

Ruwido's remote control is reminiscent of early tech designs

If you are like me, then using consumer electronics can seem like you are groping in the dark, and you only use half the functions on your devices and ignore the rest.

Help might be at hand, though, because many manufacturers are now searching for simplicity.

One false move on most remote controls and you can end up watching TV from another continent.

Ruwido has taken this snowstorm of buttons and reduced them to one big one in a unit that has been road tested for ease of use on the elderly.

Ruwido's David Fiechtir says it is very simple to use.

"The living room nowadays is changing. It is becoming more and more complex to use, with interactive and DVD TV and all the stuff that is coming up. The user interface has become more and more complex.

"It is a problem for people because they cannot use it easily, and we are going a completely new way, bringing all the devices in your living room together into one device with one user interface, which is clear, simple and easy."

'Back to basics'

Ruwido's monolith has resonances in the boxes and bakelite buttons of early tech.

Perhaps the attempt to defeat complexity is a drive to go back to basics.

Gerhard Kemner, from the Berlin Technology Museum, says: "When I started in photography, when I was 10 years old, I had a small box and all I had to do was press the button and it took a photo.

There were some words from Kodak at the end of the 19th Century that said: 'you press the button and we will do the rest'. I think we have reached this stage now. You just have to press the button."

As with cameras, so with televisions. Television design has moved on from French polished cocktail cabinets through sore earlobes to a welcome guest in the living room.

There would be no point making the Q-BE too small to use

Philips' Ambilight High Definition TV has sides that are equipped with glowing coloured tubes which, says Philips, gives the illusion of a bigger screen.

The experience is much bigger than a normal HDTV - normally just a viewing window - says Toon Bouten, the head of Philips Consumer Electronics, Europe.

"HD is, in principle, the movie theatre for the home. You have surround sound and, with Ambilight, you have surround sound for the eyes."

If the idea is to make technology that integrates smoothly into the rest of your life, then you cannot get much more unobtrusive than the almost invisible Q-BE.

Q-BE's Omer Kutluoglu says the product is the smallest mp3 player in the world.

"At least it was this afternoon, but it is a fast moving market.

"You can't really go smaller, because where would you put your fingers to manoeuvre it? How would you actually see the screen without going cross-eyed? So ours is a naturally optimal size.

"I don't think you really want to go smaller than this. Or do you? Watch this space."

Whether it is the smallest mp3 player or the world's biggest screen, there is a lot hi-tech can learn from the early pioneers.

The most important thing being, perhaps, that there might be sales in keeping it simple.

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