Matthew "Mat" Taylor, better known by his

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

handle Techmoan, is a British

YouTuber A YouTuber is a content creator and social media influencer who uploads or creates videos on the online video-sharing website YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006 ...

and

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

ger, specializing in consumer tech reviews and retrotech documentaries about technology of historical interest. Apart from reviews and tests, Taylor's videos often include disassembling (and repairing when possible) products and, in the case of older technology, reporting on the product's history and reception via references in publications of the time. For audio and entertainment devices this is often ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

'' magazine, which at the time covered both consumer and trade electronics devices through articles and old advertisements. Bonus outro skits often feature a trio of muppet-like puppets, parodying YouTube viewer comments. Taylor's videos have been referenced by sites such as ''

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was created in ...

'', ''

Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' () is a design, technology, science, and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the sub-blogs ''io9'' and ''Earther'', which focus on pop ...

'', ''

Hackaday ''Hackaday'' is a hardware hacking website. It was founded in 2004 as a web magazine. Since 2014, Hackaday also hosts a community database of open-source hardware designs. History Hackaday was founded in 2004 by Phillip Torrone as a web maga ...

'', ''

El Español ''El Español'' is a Spanish online newspaper that started in 2015. It has its headquarters in Avenida de Burgos, 16D, 7º, Madrid, Comunidad de Madrid. As of April 2025, it has the largest digital reach among all newspapers in Spain, averaging ...

'' and print publications such as ''

Popular Mechanics ''Popular Mechanics'' (often abbreviated as ''PM'' or ''PopMech'') is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do it yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation an ...

'' and ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

''. By ratings on

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

, ''

MarketWatch ''MarketWatch'' is a website that provides financial information, business news, analysis, and stock market data. It is a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp, along with ''The Wall Street Journal'' and '' Barron's.'' ...

'' listed the YouTube channel 6th in its "

binge-watching Binge-watching (also called binge-viewing) is the practice of watching entertainment or informational content for a prolonged time span, usually a single television show. Statistics Binge-watching overlaps with marathon (media), marathon viewin ...

" top ten. Current product reviews on miscellaneous tech items, mainly on consumer products like action and dashcams, sometimes sponsored or donated, participating in the

affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which Affiliate (commerce), affiliates receive a wiktionary:commission, commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to Outsourcing, ...

associates program of Amazon Services LLC, and a

Patreon Patreon (, ) is a monetization platform operated by Patreon, Inc., that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service and sell digital products. It helps artists and other creators earn a recurring income by provid ...

membership, are how the channel is funded.

History

In 2006, Taylor started a YouTube channel called "Vectrexuk", with videos of similar tech items like installing a home cinema and controlled toasters "just to prove a point that people will watch anything on YouTube". The channel "Techmoan" started on 31 May 2009, uploading a tour of a 2009 Piaggio MP3, taken at

480p 480p is the shorthand name for a family of video display resolutions. The p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The ''480'' denotes a vertical resolution of 480 pixels, usually with a horizontal resolution of 640 pixels and 4:3 a ...

and very basic sound quality. For additional non-tech videos, in 2015 he started another channel, called the "Youtube Pedant". In a 2016 video covering the

D-VHS D-VHS (short for Digital VHS) is a digital video recording format developed by JVC in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. Introduced in December 1997, it was designed to record digital video, including high-definition content ...

format, he uncovered a

1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...

video of

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

filmed in 1993. This footage was uploaded separately to his "Youtube Pedant" channel where as of September 2024, it has gained 7.3 million views as well as being shared widely on sites such as

and

The Verge ''The Verge'' is an American Technology journalism, technology news website headquarters, headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City and operated by Vox Media. The website publishes news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, cons ...

. As of September 2024, the main channel has over 1.3 million subscribers and over 338 million views. His videos often get millions of views, and his video on the Nixie watch has had more than 5 million views.

Later documentary videos

Documentary videos about forgotten

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...

recording formats show the OMNI Entertainment System which used

8-track tape The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly called eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, and eight-track) is a magnetic-tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, ...

storage, the

HiPac HiPac (stylized as HIPAC) (pronounced as high-pack), is an audio tape cartridge format, introduced in August 1971 on the Japanese consumer market by Pioneer and discontinued in 1973 due to lack of demand. In 1972 it only achieved a market share ...

, a successor of the

PlayTape PlayTape is a audiotape format and mono or stereo playback system introduced in 1966 by Frank Stanton (entrepreneur), Frank Stanton. It is a two-track system, and was launched to compete with existing 4-track cartridge technology. The tape cart ...

and related applications of it. Other videos show some of the smallest and largest analog recording tape cartridges ever made like the

Picocassette Picocassette is an audio storage medium introduced by Dictaphone in collaboration with JVC in 1985. The Picocassette was introduced to compete with the Microcassette, introduced by Olympus, and the Mini-Cassette, by Philips. Size It is app ...

for dictation machines or

Cantata 700 The Cantata 700 is a commercial background music system and corresponding tape cartridge format developed by 3M that was in common use from 1965 until the 1990s. Cartridge The nearly square-shaped cartridges are among the largest built. More th ...

background music system. Further videos show other former quarter-inch-tape cartridge formats like the Sabamobil which used existing 3-inch open reels for mobile use, and the portable Sanyo Micro Pack 35, as well as the

RCA tape cartridge The RCA tape cartridge (labeled the RCA Sound Tape Cartridge) is a magnetic tape audio format that was designed to offer stereo quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape recording quality in a convenient format for the consumer market. It was introduced i ...

and the Sony

Elcaset Elcaset is an audio format jointly developed by Sony, Panasonic, and Teac in 1976, building on an idea introduced 20 years earlier in the RCA tape cartridge. History In 1976, it was widely felt that the compact cassette was never likely to be ca ...

with another compromise of playtime and sound quality, oddities and gimmicks on

Compact Cassette The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company ...

s as "reinventing the reel", several ways of autoreverse, automatic multiple cassette players, endless loop cassettes, and cassette mass production technology. Documentary on formats of vinyl recording show the Tefifon endless cartridge, or the

Seeburg 1000 The Seeburg 1000 Background Music System is a phonograph designed and built by the Seeburg Corporation to play background music from special RPM vinyl records in offices, restaurants, retail businesses, factories and similar locations. Seeburg ...

background music system, vertical turntables, and other audio encodings CX and

dbx dbx or DBX may refer to: * dbx (debugger), a Unix source-level debugger * dbx (company), a professional audio recording equipment company ** dbx (noise reduction), a noise reduction system invented by dbx, Inc. * .dbx, the file extension for Micros ...

for noise reduction on vinyl analog recording. Other documentaries show the mechanical

Curta calculator The Curta is a hand-held mechanical calculator designed by Curt Herzstark. It is known for its extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It was affectionately known as the "pepper grinder" or "peppermill" ...

, devices with

Nixie tube A Nixie tube ( ), or cold cathode display, is an electronics, electronic device used for display device, displaying numerals or other information using glow discharge. The glass tube contains a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes, shaped like ...

displays,

wire recording Wire recording, also known as magnetic wire recording, was the first magnetic recording technology, an analog type of audio storage. It recorded sound signals on a thin steel wire using varying levels of magnetization. The first crude magne ...

, and the

WikiReader WikiReader was a project to deliver an offline, text-only version of Wikipedia on a mobile device. The project was sponsored by Openmoko and made by Pandigital, and its source code has been released. The project debuted an offline portable read ...

In popular culture

Techmoan was referenced in a '' Dennis & Gnasher'' Unleashed strip in Beano, with Dennis referring to Techmoan as "total Dad-Tube".

References

External links

* {{cite web , url=http://www.techmoan.com , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240114175731/http://www.techmoan.com/ , title=Official website , archive-date=14 January 2024 No longer updated as o
28 June 2019
went offline sometime afte
14 January 2024

Techmoan - Not the 10th Anniversary Show
with an about introduction YouTube channels launched in 2009 British comedy YouTubers Technology YouTubers Living people English puppeteers English YouTubers 1971 births

History

Later documentary videos

In popular culture

See also

References

Further reading

External links