18 Years Ago In TIME

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Sean Gregory, Janice Horowitz, David Robinson and Rebecca Winters

Managers at Circuit City, the nation's second largest electronics retailer, announced last week that it will phase out sales of videotaped movies. That pushed VCRs an inch closer to irrelevancy. But in 1984, they were the coolest Reagan-era gadget around.

Plop...click...whirr. It is not exactly lilting, but that electronic tune is rivaling Silent Night and Jingle Bells for popularity this Christmas season. It is the sound of videocassette recorders gathering tapes into their cradles and, with a twinkling of lights and the push of buttons, bringing forth a host of intriguing new images on millions of TV screens. The machines, universally known as VCRs, are selling at nearly double the rate of a year ago; with the holiday boost, December sales alone are expected to reach 1 million, a single-month record. ...Plop...click...whirr. The sound is more than just music to retailers' ears. In its quiet, hypnotic way, it is changing the habits of a nation. The versatile VCR can rerun yesterday's shows today and preserve today's for tomorrow. It can deliver movies old and new, the sights and sounds of Duran Duran in concert, a course in auto repair or a daily exercise regimen. With the help of a video camera, it can capture special family moments for an instant home movie or create a "video postcard" for far-off relatives. The VCR's contagious tune is, in short, the anthem of an entertainment revolution.

--TIME, Dec. 24, 1984