The pickings were slim… for dieters in the 1970s who sought technological assistance. It’s hard to imagine now, when fitness trackers alone represent $80 billion in annual revenue worldwide. But back then, the rising trends of electronics and exercise were only beginning to cross paths.

Naturally, one of the earliest crossroads was in the pages of the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. A pair of 1979 items are both of their time, in their rudimentary digital tech, and ahead of their time, anticipating the boom in wellness gadgetry we’re living through now.

First there was the Comus C-6 ($35 in 1979, about $160 today). It looks like a calculator, and it can work like a calculator - but flip the switch to DIET and it becomes a dedicated electronic diet coach. You tell it your SHAPE (sex, height, age, pounds, exercise routine) and the Comus C-6 tells you how many calories you’re allowed to eat - or tell it what you’ve eaten and “the computer will assign you enough exercise to work it off,” as the New York Times put it. “If your heart is set on a corned-beef sandwich, say, prepare for 30 minutes of cross-country skiing.”

More than half of the accompanying 40-page manual is a list of calorie counts for common foods; a few more pages are taken up by an “Activity Code Directory”, from “Sitting type activities” like office work and driving, up through “Military Marching w/Rifle & Pack”, “Agricultural Work (Manual)”, and “Disco Dancing”. The Times quotes one alleged customer in the Hammacher store complaining that “It says nothing about love-making,” which does seem like a curious oversight for the hedonistic ‘70s.

To port your computerized caloric allotment from plate to mouth, we also offered an innovative utensil called the Slenderfork ($12.95 in our catalogue, about $59 today). A former hairstylist named Joe Caruso invented it based on the principle that people start feeling full after about 20 minutes of eating. If you eat more slowly, you take in less food during that 20 minutes. So Caruso created a fork with a timer. The tech is simple: a green light that stays on for 6 seconds, during which you may eat, and a red light that stays on for 25, when you’re supposed to chew. Repeat until full.

Did it work? Caruso claimed to have gone from 310 pounds to 180 using it. The Slenderfork certainly captured the imagination of magazine editors, getting coverage everywhere from OMNI to Mademoiselle to Farm Show magazine. It helped that Caruso was handy with a quote, too, dropping bons mots like “I looked like a walking blimp… I was digging my grave with my own fork.”

At the time, we claimed to have sold thousands of Slenderforks. And yet, my search for one today, or even a clear photo of one, has thus far proven fruitless. If anybody out there still minds their waistline with the aid of a Slenderfork, please email me. The gnomes toiling in our underground archives pledge to do a festive dance in your honor.

Alas, though both the Comus and the Slenderfork heralded the fitness-tech future, neither would survive to be part of it. Both faded from the historical record by 1982 or so. But judging by the proliferation of ever-more-complex diet apps, the Comus was onto something. And decades later I would encounter a “smart fork” at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. Sigh… sometimes it doesn’t pay to be too far ahead of your time.

It’s not quite as small as the Comus or the Slenderfork, but when it comes to workout gear, The Compact 4-Piece Mini Fitness Stepper Set has a rather dainty footprint.

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