Episode 47, Introduction: "Tankless in Texas" (Tankless Water Heaters vs Normal Hot Water Heaters!)

SWWE Episode 47: The 1978 Mego 2-XL Talking Robot was a brilliant illusion of interactive computing, based on 8-Track tapes Hi, everyone, welcome back to the show. This week, the focus is on the Mego toy company and a wonderful toy robot they produced in 1978, called the 2-XL. There are lots of funny attempts at providing robotic toys in the 1970s and 1980s as a product, and most of them offered something silly, like a robotic arm that can lift a plastic block, or a remote control option with a drink tray and blinking eyes – but the 2-XL actually talked with you and asked you questions. It would tell you if you were right or wrong, too, almost like it had artificial intelligence! This week's show describes how this worked. So what you're looking at, actually, is not a robot but a VERY clever use of eight track tapes. The 2-XL has four buttons, which are the same buttons you'll find on an 8-track player. The data cartridges inside the 2-XL were merely 8-track tapes, and the 2-XL is really just an 8-track player with blinking eyes – but that shows the brilliant idea on how to use the format for something interactive. The robot would ask you a multiple choice question and you would select any of those four buttons for your selection. 8-Track cartridges play all four sides simultaneously, as it's all one long loop of 1/4" tape. (Trivia: You couldn't rewind them – Only fast-forward!) By carefully syncopating all four audio programs on an 8-track, you could produce an interactive experience of "press now to select option one" on one track followed by, in time, "you are correct!" on the other 8-track program. The separate programs would need to allow timing for each other selection, making this a pretty complicated process. And it required your PARTICIPATION in the illusion of this to complete the trick. But if you played along with the 2-XL, it allowed for a complete emulation of what is now common multimedia experiences. Really really freaking clever. Credit for the invention (and voice acting) on the 2-XL goes