What was the ultimate convenience in telephony back in the early ’80s? Touch-tone dialing, of course. In this period, many of us were still stuck on the rotary-dial telephones rented by the phone company. Sure, we made do, but what a luxury it would’ve been to have touch-tone dialing. Buscom made this ingenious little device called the Soft Touch AutoDialer. It replaced the phone’s plastic microphone screen by screwing into the talking end of the telephone receiver. Once it’s on, touch tone away! This gadget was powered by the current of the phone line and the model pictured above actually had the ability to store phone numbers! Program long numbers for those exotic new phone services like tele-banking and toll-free numbers. We grabbed the one pictured in an urban electronics shop. The original price tag said $179.95, we talked them down to five bucks.