At Paul’s parents this evening, just after we had finished dinner, the conversation got on to antique technology by way of me mentioning the lovely wooden radio I inherited from my grandmother.

Mike said he still has a Philips Video 2000, a claim that was swiftly beaten by talk of an ancient (1972) Philips N1500 video recorder that Paul’s parents still have, complete with heavy square 45-minute tapes the size of four CD cases stacked on top of each other. On the front of the body is a clock with hands, just like on a cooker, for setting the timed recording.

Paul disappeared for a while at that point, and reappeared with a Magnavox Odyseey, apparently the first real games console ever produced for the home market. It was still in its original packaging and many of the bits and pieces that went with it were still shrink-wrapped (or should that be shrunk-wrapped). The geeky side of me got very excited at this point, and even Helen and Mike agreed that we should have a games evening with it.

About the size of an Xbox, it’s a year older than me and has absolutely no processor - everything is done on printed circuit boards. The games are stored on thin pieces of plastic, a bit like the combs they used to have to get rid of head lice at school, and the controllers are brick-sized lumps of brown plastic with a rotating nob at each end.

The best bits, though, are a series of transparent sheets that cling to the screen. As every telly screen back in the 70s and 80s produced a field of static on the front of the glass they would happily stay in place on their own. Now, of course, we don’t have static at all, so you’d need to use tape.

Technology was at such a primitive stage that the Odyseey could only produce square boxes on the screen, so each of these sheets was a drawing of the graphics that made up the rest of the game. The Pong-like tennis game used a green sheet with a drawing of the lines of a tennis court on it. The Skiing game had a sheet with the route of a ski run on it, along the lines of which you would guide your blob. The roulette game had a sheet on which was drawn a roulette wheel. To place your bets you’d use paper play money and lay plastic chips on a paper board that was completely separate from the system.

Unfortunately it runs on six C-size batteries which we didn’t have, but it’s been kept out of the cupboard for when we do.

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