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When did supercapacitors start being used in consumer products?

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Alex Eisenhut:
I recently bought a 1984 VCR, for fun, and of course I took it apart. It's the type with the channels on the tuner dialed in with cute little trimmers on top. So no digital memory required.
Inside, I was surprised to immediately see what appears to be a supercap.
I figure it's to recall the recording program setting.

I didn't expect a supercap used in consumer stuff from '84.
(If so... why can't 21st century stoves, microwaves, and fridges, etc recall their dumb settings when a single cycle of AC goes missing?)

Kim Christensen:
What's the capacitance value of that one?

Shonky:
Don't need a supercap to store settings. Flash or EEPROM can easily cover basic things that a typical appliance might use with some wear levelling if necessary. It's just they can't be bothered and realistically for many it's a not issue these days as power grids are pretty reliable.

Where you *do* need a backup power source is to run an RTC.

ejeffrey:
A lithium coin cell could power an rtc for over a decade.  But yeah, manifacturers can't be bothered.

helius:
I have seen supercaps inside several 1980s stereo receivers. I think as soon as CMOS SRAM and microcontrollers were available, supercapacitors were designed to complement them. The electric-double-layer technology would already have existed as a research material in the lab and this would be its first major application.

A supercap of the size shown is around 1 farad at 2.5 V.

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