WebTV

 When I worked in the TV Department at Rich's, they wanted us to sell a new item called WebTV.  It was an internet device that would attach to your TV, and you could surf the web.  It used a wireless keyboard, so you could sit in your recliner and check out the internet without any wires.  Today, we have broadband, and we use a wireless mouse from a USB port, but back then it was a dial-up device.  Consequently, it could be a bit slow at times.  And, it had no hard drive, so there was no downloading.  You could attach a printer, if you wanted to save anything.  You couldn't upload anything either.
 They gave us a sample device to show in the store.  It had been modified with parental controls, so we could not show any adult content.  One thing that I liked to do was to find live webcams from around the world.  One site in particular was on the border between Finland and Russia.  We watched trucks cross that border in the snow in real time.  That was cool.  We also found webcams on college campuses and could see students walk around.  There were customers who tried to find adult material, but that was blocked.  However, we found a way around the blocking.  Typing in "Pamela Anderson" into the search line brought up some stuff that the parental controls did not block.  It was not something we shared with the customers.
 WebTV also had email capability, so we could email friends from work.  Not that we did (in case any of my former supervisors are reading this).  I fell in love with WebTV, so I bought one and took it home.  It became my internet surfer of choice.  I already had a Compaq dial-up computer, which I mainly used to play games and use AOL to chat with folks, but WebTV worked for all of tasks I would do on the internet.  I would sell stuff on eBay, but since you couldn't upload pictures, I would have to leave that blank on my listings.  I would try to describe my items in great detail, so the buyer wouldn't be disappointed when they bought something.  That worked well.
 I used WebTV for about 10 years, until I broke down and bought a laptop.  Cable internet and wi-fi became the norm.  Dial-up became out of date.  Now, many TV's have streaming services on them.  WebTV was the father of all the stuff we have now.  20 years ago seems a lifetime ago in the tech world.  It is.