Tech Flashback – Big Trak

In this new category we’ll take a trip down memory lane and look back at some of the toys, gadgets and technologies that served to lay the foundations of the designs we see today. And, as the inaugural entry in this new category we couldn’t help but feature a toy that was, in its time, completely revolutionary – and I am pleased to say that I still have mine in storage up in our roof.

Big Trak was a six-wheeled tank that featured a keypad with which the vehicle could be programmed to move forwards, backwards, turn, pause and even fire a laser (in other words, flash a blue light) complete with sound effects and it was great as you could place a cup of tea or coffee on top of the keypad once it had been programmed and send the drink off down the room and invariably under the sofa.

And, for many of us who were knee high to a grass hopper when this marvel of the toy world was released, it was the first time we had ever actually programmed anything.

According the press blurb at the time you could “Let Big Trak’s electronic memory treat you to an absolutely spectacular performance. Just punch in your program of commands and watch Big Trak carry them out: moving forward, backward, left and right, up to 99 length units! Order Big Trak to picot into a sharp or wide-angled turn, full circle, or even beyond that. Big Trak can lurk silently before continuing on its course, and can fire either a single shot or a volley from its “photon” cannon. Send Big Trak out of the room, around furniture and other obstacles, and back again! Easy enough for kids to learn, but so much fun, even adults won’t be able to resist. One 9 volt transistor and four 1.5 volt “D” size batteries.”

Big Trak on the move
(i.e., just about to collide with something)

Big Trak was brain child of none other than Clive Sinclair (now rightly a Sir), a British inventor who was way ahead of his time and who later went on to design such icons as the Spectrum commuter and the much maligned C5 electric trike (both of which we are duty bound to feature in subsequent posts). Incidentally, Sir Clive’s latest product, the A-Bike, has already been featured in TFTS and can be seen via this link.

Using the keypad Big Trak could be programmed to navigate its way around the home with relative ease, however, if your calculations were even a little out or if anyone had been spiteful enough as to move something prior to completion of the programming its journey inevitably ended with some kind of collision. The problem was that the path had to be programmed by inputting how many units of distance you wanted the toy to complete (up to a total of 99 units) before turning, firing its photon laser at the cat, etc and, whilst perhaps I am at fault here, one could never quite gauge just how long one of these units actually was.

Big Trak’s Keypad – simple but
(reasonably) effective.

For example, you would programme something like forward 5, turn 90, fire laser, but somehow it never quite ended up where you expected (through no fault of its own).

Interestingly you could also purchase a separate trailer, known as the Big Trak Transport, that you could attach to Big Trak so as to enable you to send a precious load, such as an entire ham sandwich, off into the wilderness of the front room though I never got to own this accessory (thankfully – as otherwise my parents would have spent hours trying to fish curled up ham sandwiches out from behind the sofa every day).

Big Trak with trailer sans ham sandwich

Big Trak was a wonderful toy that is steeped in nostalgia and, quite rightly, takes pride of place amongst the electronic toys that served as prime examples of where the world was headed.

If you would like to get really sentimental, I have managed to gain a copy of the original Big Trak manual which you can either view or download here (PDF format). You can also watch Big Trak in action in this clip from the 80’s, and once again hear those catchy beeps that you have never truly forgotten, via the video below (click the picture to stream or the link provided to download).

[etv]

I would like to thank and acknowledge Scalleja for the above images – you can see more images of Big Trak on Scalleja’s Flickr page via this link.