In 1987, an inconspicuous magic stone laid the foundation for a $40 billion dollar industry. The breakthrough device was the Videonics DirectED Plus. Hey? You’re forgiven for not remembering the gadget; most people don’t.
So what is Videonics DirectED Plus? In the most basic terms, it’s a modest 9 ½” by 8 ½” x 2 ½” box with 256 KB of RAM and an Intel 80166 CPU. It gave normal people the ability to edit their own home videos before video editing software like Adobe Premiere became ubiquitous. And of course, this was all long before we had small, portable video editors in our pockets.
In the May 1988 issue of Popular scienceWilliam J. Hawkins described a use case for the Videonics DirectED Plus:
“Use your camcorder to make home videos and then play a copy of it through DirectED. While watching the tape, use a remote control (included with DirectED) to highlight and label specific scenes, such as “Laura’s Birthday.” Also add special effects wherever you want, such as swipe gestures between scenes or images and text. As you work, menus (lists of options) appear on the screen with your video, and the computer remembers everything you requested by storing your selections in its 256 kilobyte memory.”
Sounds cool, right? Certainly. But why has DirectED been completely lost in technology history? Popular science host Kevin Lieber not only delves into the intriguing history of DirectED, but also tries to use the damn thing.
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