Overview

The term consumer electronics refers to electronic products or equipment that is primarily purchased by ordinary citizens for their personal or home use. While entertainment products predominate, many items formerly considered to be office equipment have become accepted as consumer products. Computers are the most obvious, but many homes now have color printers, copying machines, scanners, and facsimile (fax) machines.

The earliest consumer electronics entertainment products were battery-powered vacuum-tube radio receivers, and these were followed by record players with electronic amplifiers and motor-driven turntables that replaced the spring-wound mechanical players. A startlingly long list of electronics products has joined the ranks of consumer products over the past half century. These products include TV receivers, hi-fi stereo systems, VCRs, camcorders, tape recorders, audio CD players, microwave ovens, portable battery-powered radio-tape and radio-CD players, digital cameras, cordless and cellular telephones, and telephone answering machines. Add to this list smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, home security systems (including closed-circuit TV), weather-alarm radios, and pagers. The latest additions to this group are the digital video disk (DVD) and DVD players.

Electronic circuitry has displaced the gear-and-spring mechanisms of most watches and clocks, and the mechanical calculator has been banished in favor of electronic models, some of which can solve mathematical problems and plot the solutions on their displays. Many traditional household appliances, not considered to be electronic products, have nevertheless been transformed by electronic controls that have replaced their former clockwork timers and simplified their use. Consider the washing machine, dishwasher, air...