Techmoan

Matthew Julius "Mat" Taylor (born January 1971), better known by his stage name Techmoan, is a YouTuber and blogger who has been active since May 2009, featuring reviews of consumer electronics (or consumer tech) and "RetroTech" documentaries.[2] He lives in Wigan, Greater Manchester.

Techmoan
Personal information
BornMatthew Julius Taylor
January 1971 (age 53)
Websitewww.techmoan.com
YouTube information
Also known asMat
Channel
Years active2009—present
GenreTechnology
Subscribers870K[1]
(31 October 2019)
Total views180,138,834[1]
(31 October 2019)

The Daily Telegraph[3] and Gizmodo[4][5][6] has quoted his statements. MarketWatch listed the YouTube Channel 6th in its "binge-watching" top ten[7] using ratings on Reddit.

Websites such as AVclub,[8] Gizmodo,[9] Hackaday,[10] El Español[11] and Popular Mechanics[12] reference his videos.

Career

In 2006, Taylor started a YouTube channel called "Vectrexuk", with videos of similar items of technology, such as installing a home cinema and controlled toasters,[13][14] to prove people will watch anything on YouTube.[15][16]

The channel "Techmoan" was started on May 31, 2009. The first video uploaded on Techmoan was a tour of a 2009 Piaggio MP3, which was filmed at 480p and had a very basic sound quality.[17] In 2015, he started another channel, called "Youtube Pedant", to host videos not about technology.[18] In 2016, in a video covering the DVHS format, he uncovered 1080p video footage of New York City from 1993.[19][20] This footage was uploaded separately to his "Youtube Pedant" channel where, as of December 2019, it has received 3.8 million views, and it has also been widely shared on websites such as Reddit[21] and The Verge.[22][23] As of June 2019, the main channel has over 870,000 subscribers and over 180 million views. Some videos on the main channel have had over 3 million views.

Later documentary videos

Techmoan has made documentary videos that are about forgotten magnetic tape recording formats, such as the OMNI Entertainment System,[24] which uses 8-track tape storage, and the HiPac, a successor of the PlayTape and related uses of it. Other videos show some of the smallest and largest analog recording tape cartridges ever made, such as the Picocassette[25] for dictation machines or the Cantata 700 background music system.[26] Further videos show other discontinued ¼-inch-tape cartridge formats, such as the Sabamobil,[27] which uses existing 3-inch open reels in a portable format, and the portable Sanyo Micro Pack 35,[28] as well as RCA tape cartridge[29] and the Sony Elcaset[30] with another compromise of playtime and sound quality, oddities and gimmicks on Compact Cassettes as "reinventing the reel",[31][32] several ways of autoreverse,[33] automatic multiple cassette players,[34][35] endless loop cassettes,[36] and cassette mass production technology.[37][38]

Other documentary videos Techmoan has made are about formats of vinyl recording, such as the Tefifon[39][40] endless cartridge, the Seeburg 1000 background music system,[41][42] vertical turntables,[43] and other audio encodings CX and dbx, which are systems that were designed to reduce noise on vinyl records.[44]

Further documentaries show other items, such as the mechanical Curta calculator,[45] devices with Nixie tube displays,[46] wire recording,[47] and the WikiReader.[48]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "About". YouTube.
  2. "Techmoan/about". Retrieved 24 July 2018 – via YouTube.
  3. Why a dashcam could save you money on your car insurance, The Daily Telegraph, 11 April 2016
  4. Bryan Menegus: Yup, This Vertical Record Player Is Rad 6 May 2016
  5. Bryan Menegus: There's a Good Reason This Weird, Old Cassette Format Didn't Work Out, 31 August 2017
  6. Rhett Jones: Music Designed for an Oscilloscope Looks and Sounds Cool as Hell, 24 November 2016
  7. Shawn Langlois: 10 YouTube channels for binge-watching, 19 July 2017
  8. Henne, B.G.. "Behold the Tefifon, the unholy German union of vinyl and 8-track" (in en-US). News. https://news.avclub.com/behold-the-tefifon-the-unholy-german-union-of-vinyl-an-1798278449. Retrieved 2018-11-12. 
  9. Menegus, Bryan. "There's a Good Reason This Weird, Old Cassette Format Didn't Work Out" (in en-US). Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/theres-a-good-reason-this-weird-old-cassette-format-di-1798663868. Retrieved 2018-11-12. 
  10. "Teardown and Repair of a Police Recorder" (in en-US). Hackaday. 2018-11-02. https://hackaday.com/2018/11/02/teardown-and-repair-of-a-police-recorder/. Retrieved 2018-11-12. 
  11. "Llega el vídeo en vinilo, la experiencia más retro posible" (in es-ES). Omicrono. 2018-09-18. https://omicrono.elespanol.com/2018/09/video-en-vinilo/. Retrieved 2018-11-13. 
  12. "The Strange Machine That Played Paper Instead of Records or Tapes" (in en-US). Popular Mechanics. 2018-04-12. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/a19757689/richo-synchofax/. Retrieved 2018-11-12. 
  13. Techmoan (25 July 2017), Techmoan - Not the 10th Anniversary Show, retrieved 12 November 2018
  14. "Vectrexuk", YouTube, retrieved 6 May 2019
  15. "About Techmoan".
  16. Techmoan - Not the 10th Anniversary Show, 25 July 2017
  17. "Youtube -Techmoan's First Video". YouTube.
  18. About the YouTube Channel "Youtube Pedant"
  19. Retro-Tech: When HD Movies came on VHS, retrieved 4 December 2019
  20. "Techmoan - Techmoan - Retro-tech. That time when HD came on VHS". www.techmoan.com. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  21. "r/videos - New York City in 1993 recorded in High Definition". reddit. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  22. Plante, Chris (25 April 2016). "Holy schnikes, this HD footage from 1993 NYC looks like it was filmed today". The Verge. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  23. "This footage of New York in 1993 will make you miss New York in 1993". Boing Boing. 20 August 2019. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  24. MB OMNI Entertainment System - The 1980s 8-Track games machine., 6 August 2017
  25. The Picocassette – Smallest Analogue Cassette Tape ever made, 2 August 2015
  26. Retro Tech: This 1960s BGM Machine played the Biggest Cassettes ever made, 11 May 2016
  27. Forgotten Format: The Sabamobil, 22 June 2017
  28. Forgotten Format: SANYO Micro-Pack 35 Tape Recorder, 31 August 2017
  29. RetroTech: RCA Victor Tape Cartridge - A trailblazing failure, 22 September 2016
  30. Forgotten Audio Formats: DCC & Elcaset 6 May 2014
  31. TEAC O'Casse Open Cassette - Reinventing the Reel, 16 May 2015
  32. Audio Craft Cassette Cartridge: More music per pocket., 12 April 2017
  33. Auto-Reverse: The Hard Way, 26 February 2016
  34. What a 10hr music playlist looked like in 1992, 30 December 2015
  35. Retro-Tech: The 1972 Desktop 'iPod', 14 August 2016
  36. Cassettes: Lenticular Classics & Endless Loops, 13 September 2016
  37. Cassettes - better than you don't remember, 1 February 2016
  38. Pre-recorded Cassettes' Last Stand 24 January 2017
  39. Vintage Electronics - The Tefifon, 6 April 2015
  40. Tefifon Update - more info, more music, bigger.... and smaller. 4 May 2015
  41. RetroTech: Seeburg 1000 BMS1 Background Music System (1959-1986), 28 February 2017
  42. Seeburg 1000 BGM Part 2: The DIY version, 1 March 2017
  43. Rescued 1980s Relic: The Sharp RP-114 Vertical Turntable, 9 June 2014
  44. CX Discs : Better, Worse & the Same as a normal record - A Forgotten Format, 19 October 2017
  45. 1950 Curta Calculator, 24 December 2014
  46. The Nixie Watch, 15 March 2010
  47. Retro Tech: The Wire Recorder, 3 July 2016
  48. WikiReader: the Internet without the Internet, 3 September 2018

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