These young men have been collecting Social Security for over a decade now, but 70 years ago, they were watching television while their mother and a friend chatted in the same room, undisturbed by the noisy program. You could do it yourself by following the instructions in the August 1955 issue of Popular Mechanics. You installed a remote listening device, similar to the one we recently highlighted, which allowed you to switch off the speaker and route the audio to headphones.

But according to the article, you could “make a big hit with the kids” by installing the headphones inside space helmets, available at toy stores.