1977 – 1992retired
Atari 7800
“It played your old 2600 games before it was cool. Rest easy, pioneer.”
“A square peg that refused to be a dish.”
The Squarial — a portmanteau of square and aerial — was a flat plate satellite antenna built by British Satellite Broadcasting to be unobtrusive and unique. Where the competition demanded a clunky 90 cm dish, the Squarial offered a small, tidy square that sat discreetly on your wall. It was BSB's unique selling point, advertised heavily to lure customers away from rival satellite services.
When BSB's television service came to an end in 1993, the Squarial went with it, retiring from rooftops it had only briefly graced. It left behind the memory of a company that bet everything on looking different — a flat square in a world of round dishes. Dignified to the last, it never became clutter; it simply stopped receiving.
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“It played your old 2600 games before it was cool. Rest easy, pioneer.”
“It saw right through you, and we loved it for that.”
“That's all, folks — dinner is served, never again.”