| Player 1: Palaeolithic Age |
| Player 2: Arcade Videogames |
| Player 3: Home Videogames |
| Player 4: Computer Games |
The screw-top bottle is patented by Dan Rylands of Hope Glass Works, Yorkshire, England.
A dock strike cripples the city of London.
The punch-card information storage system is developed by H. Hollerith.
Fruit-peddler William Kemmler axes his lover Matilda Ziegler to death in Buffalo, NY., and is the first person sentenced to die in the newly designed electric chair. In the culmination of a viscious PR war between competing electricity delivery systems Direct Current championed by Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse's stronger and more lethal Alternating Current as to who would actually provide the killing voltages, Westinghouse loses and it is his AC that rips through Kemmler's body when he is "Westinghoused" the following year.
Danish inventor Vlademar Poulson invents magnetic wire recording.
George Eastman markets the first flexible picture film roll.
Vincent Van Gogh voluntarily admits himself into an insane asylum at Saint-Remy in France. He paints his "Garden at the Hospital", "Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear", and "Wheat Fields and Cyprus Trees" during this period. The next year he kills himself with a revolver shot to the chest.
The Eiffel tower is officially inaugurated in Paris.
The Moulin Rouge opens.
Mary Sawyer Tyler dies. She was born in Sterling, Massachusetts, and at 10 received a pet lamb called Nethaniel which would follow her to the Red Stone schoolhouse occasionally.
Visitor to the school John Roulstone was endeared by this and composed the famous poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb", which was later expanded on by Sarah J. Hale.
May day, or Worker's Day, is first observed.
Johannes Brahms' performance of "Hungarian Dance" is recorded on an Edison Phonograph cylinder.
Dishwashing machines are first sold in Chicago.
"The Sneeze", a groundbreaking film experiment by Thomas Edison, is screened. It features sound effects from a syncronized phonograph player.
The first Bell Telephone logo is introduced.
50,000 white settlers pour into Oklahoma during the land rush, with all 1.9 million acres available claimed by sundown.
Two white men in Missouri, newspaper editorial writer Chris L. Rutt and miller
Charles G. Uncerwood, invent the first self-rising pancake mix. After
seeing a show at the local vaudeville house with two comedians in blackface,
Rutt take the name of the show stopping song sung by one as a household "mammy" for
the trademark name of his creation, "Aunt Jemima". The Savoy hotel opens in London.
Recording technology reaches marketable acceptance.
The centennial of George Washington's inauguration becomes the first observed U.S. national holiday.
William Gray from Hartford, CT obtains the patent for the first coin-operated telephone.
George Eastman's Kodak box camera, the mechanical adding machine, the death of Coca-Cola inventor Dr. John S. Pemberton, the National Geographic Society, Adolph Hitler, the hamburger, and the Jack the Ripper killings are all one year old.
There are approximately 2550 computer systems in the United States.
Approximately 47.1 million transistors are produced, compared to 397.4 million vacuum tubes.
Under the U.S. Congressional 'Space Act', NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is formed, taking over the role of the National Advisory Comittee on Aeronautics.
Alaska is brought into America as the 49th state of the union.
EMI releases the first sterophonic record album.
Seymour Cray builds the first fully-transistorized super-computer, the CDC (Control Data Corporation) 1604.
The first transatlantic jet flight is flown by PanAm, from New York City to Paris.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company's microwave broadcasting system is the largest television network in the world.
A federal investigation into the Twenty-One game show scandal begins.
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers beat the Edmonton Eskimos in the first CFL game, 29 to 21.
ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency - the agency that spawns the ARPANet, which subsequently becomes the Internet) is one year old.
Elvis Presley's burgeoning music career is interrupted as he joins the U.S. army at a Memphis, Tennessee induction center.
IBM announces computer models 7070 and 7090, among the first to be fully
transistorized.
111 people take part in the first U.S. domestic passenger jet trip, consisting of a National 707 flight from New York City to Miami.
Johhny Hart's prehistoric comic strip "B.C." first sees print.
Jack Tramiel moves his Commodore Portable Typewriter company from the Bronx to Toronto and renames it Commodore Business Machines. It is a typewriter sales and
repair shop.
Vladimir Nabokov's controversial book "Lolita" is published.
The US Army launches the first American earth satellite Explorer I from
Cape Canaveral, Florida. It contains Texas Instruments transistors, along with an experiement by James Van Allen which discovers Earth's radiation belt.
Videotape is invented the previous year by Ampex in Sunnyvale, California.
Arnold Palmer wins his first Masters tournament.
Coach George "Punch" Imlach takes the helm of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The first public demonstration against nuclear weapons takes place in Aldermaston, England.
IBM U.S. reaches over $1 billion in computer sales, beating its other interests for the first time in the company's history.
EDS (Electronic Data Systems) of Dallas Texas is founded by 32 year old
Ross Perot with an initial outlay of $1000.
The first U.S. Army troops move into Vietnam.
The world teeters on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Hewlett-Packard, making electronic testing and measuring equipment, breaks into Fortune Magazine's top 500 US companies listing for the first time. It ranks #460.
First use of Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam.
Barbara Striesand signs her first recording contract, with Columbia Records.
John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the Earth.
Bell Telephone introduces radio paging in the U.S.
First communications satellite Telstar I is launched, allowing transcontinental audio and video transmissions.
Bob Dylan's first album is released.
Mariner 2 becomes the first interplanetary spacecraft launched from Earth, passing within 34,773 kilometers of the planet Venus and providing the first up-close view of this second planet from the Sun.
Ringo Starr replaces Pete Best as Beatles drummer. The group releases its first record, called "Love Me Do".
There are over 70 million TV sets installed in American homes. Over 90 percent of homes have at least one. Johnny Carson replaces Jack Parr as host of the "Tonight" show.
At the age of 36, Marilyn Monroe is found lying on her bed naked, dead from an apparent self-inflicted overdose of barbiturates. Due to missing evidence and conflicting testimony, the exact nature of her death is surrounded in controversy, and leads to many questions including her relationship with the Kennedy family and Bobby Kennedy in particular.
"West Side Story" wins 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Direction, and two
Supporting Actor Oscars.
The Milwaukee Braves' "Hammering" Hank Aaron hits his 500th home run.
Stanley Kubrick's controversial film "Lolita" opens.
The James Bond series starts with "Dr. No".
18 year-old bricklayer's apprentice Peter Fechter is shot while trying to escape East Berlin over the Berlin Wall, erected almost exactly one year before. At the base of the wall in no-man's-land, he lay bleeding to death and crying for help for a full 50 minutes before dying. He becomes the 50th victim of the wall.
Integrated Electronics (Intel) introduces the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004. Selling for around $200USD, the 1/6" x 1/8" chip has the approximate computing power of an entire 1946 era ENIAC computer.
"The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" debuts on CBS as a mid-season replacement.
The first digital watch is designed by Pulsar.
Apollo 17 is the last manned mission to the moon for 30 years.
"Duel" airs as a Saturday Night Movie on CBS. Telling the tale of harried driver Dennis Weaver's battle against an imposing tractor-trailer rig whose driver he never sees, it is director Steven Spielberg's first stint at long-form film-making.
The term 'Silicon Valley' is coined by Don Hoefler in a trade journal.
The Coca-Cola company airs thier "Hilltop" TV ad, featuring a group of young people on a hillside in Italy singing the company's version of "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", which becomes one of the most recognized corporate jingles of all time. 1971 also sees the "Crying Indian" anti-litter ad from environmental organization Keep America Beautiful, new slogans from McDonalds (You deserve a break today) and American Express (Don't leave home without it), and introduces Life cereal with the cry "Hey Mikey! He likes it!".
CBS TV series "Hogan's Heroes" ends its six year run.
Anik I, Canada's first telecommunications satellite, is launched. It can relay 12 channels simultaneously.
IBM reaches over $2 billion in sales.
Warner Bros. releases Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange", which earns an X rating in US theatres. Kenback I, the first personal computer, is built by John Blankenbaker. Input is made by a series of switches, and output comes in the form of blinking lights above them.Priced at $750USD, only 40 are eventually sold.
The Ford Pinto rolls off the assembly line and into automotive infamy when it is discovered later that its faulty design makes the fuel tank a veritable molotov cocktail in low-speed rear-end collisions. A recall is finally ordered in 1978.
The first "memory disk", an 200K 8" flexible storage disk soon to be known as the "floppy", is invented by IBM engineer Alan Shugart. He later founds premiere media storage company Seagate.
"Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138: 4EB", an award-winning student film short made at USC in 1966, is redone to feature length size as simply "THX 1138" by its creator...George Lucas.
While attending high school, Steve Jobs meets and befriends fellow co-worker Steve Wozniak at their part-time job at Hewlett-Packard. The moon rover is deployed on the lunar surface during the Apollo 15 mission.
Mid-season replacement series "All in the Family" premieres on CBS. It runs for nine seasons, hitting #1 in the ratings for five of them.
ARPAnet designers choose "@" to separate user names from domain names as they refine email (electronic mail) delivery. The net now includes 50 universities.
Novel "Cyborg", by former Air Force pilot and NASA PR agent Martin Caidin, is published by Arbor House Publishing. It and three other subsequently published books by Caidin later become the inspiration for ABC's hit TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man".
Programming language C is created by Dennis Ritchie.
Having been sold by Colonel Sanders seven years earlier for US$ 2 million, KFC Corporation is bought by Heublein Inc. for US$ 285 million.
The first hand-held scientific calculator HP-30 is debuted by Hewlett-Packard Company for $350 USD.
Phase One of Walt Disney World, situated inside a total of 43 square miles of swamplands in central Florida, opens to the public. Built by 9000 workers at a cost of 400 million dollars, it is the largest private construction project in the modern world.
The compact disc is invented by Klass Compaan of Philips Research.
Gene Wilder trips out a generation of kids as Willy Wonka in the movie version of Roald Dahl's classic children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".
Steve Jobs begins classes at Reed College in Portland, Oregon as a Physics major. He drops out one semester later.
Richard Adams' seminal fantasy tail "Watership Down" is released by London based book publisher Rex Collings.
The first ever 8-bit processor, the 8008, is introduced by Intel.
The first widely popular personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800, is released. The kit costs $439USD, $540USD pre-assembled.
Stephen King's second novel, "'Salem's Lot", is published by Doubleday.
The Cray-1 supercomputer is manufactured by Cray Research. It sells for $9 million.
Pink Floyd's album "Wish You Were Here", recorded at Abby Road Studios in London, is released.
Translating the Basic programming language to the Altair, Bill Gates and partner Paul Allen create Micro-Soft (they drop the hyphen later).
Paul Terrell's The Byte Shop in Mountain View, CA is the first computer store in the US.
"Opening Soon...at a Theatre Near You" debuts on Chicago's public broadcasting station WTTW Channel 11. It features two rival newspaper movie critics, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.
Epson America, a division of Seiko Epson Corporation of Japan, begins marketing printers in the US.
The metric system of measurement begins its integration into Canadian society.
Facing impeachment over his involvement with the Watergate break-in and cover-up, Richard Milhouse Nixon resigns as US President.
Robert C. O'Brien's SF novel "Z for Zachariah" is published.
Finding current special effects facilities inadequate, George Lucas founds Industrial Light and Magic to produce the effects for his film "Star Wars".
The Vietnam war comes to a close as the last Americans are airlifted out of Siagon while North Vietnamese soldiers swarm into the city.
Uri Geller is a global sensation as a psychic bending spoons with his mind.
IBM sales reach 4.5 billion.
Former Indianapolis, Indiana radio booth announcer, newsreader, kids' show host, late-night movie show M.C. and weatherman David Letterman first takes to the stand-up stage, at the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. He's a smash.
U.S. President Gerald Ford survives two assassination attempts occuring in a span of 17 days.
The first organized computer users group, The Homebrew Computer Club, is formed.
The 6500 series of processors are introduced by MOS Technology. Among them is the 6502 which will soon end up in every popular home computer of the era.
"Jaws", Steven Speilberg's second feature-length film, opens.
Byte, the first computer industry magazine, premieres.
Manic indoor roller-coaster Space Mountain opens at Walt Disney World.
The Z80, an improved version of the 8080, is released. It will be used as the processor of almost every arcade game released in the next ten years.
Second-wave personal computers Apple II, Commodore's PET (Personal Electronic Transactor), and Radio Shack's TRS-80 are all released. "Annie Hall" wins best picture Oscar, Woody Allen gets Best Director.
The first LAN (Local Area Network), ARCNET, is offered by Datapoint corp. Charles Chaplin dies at age 88 in Switzerland. Missile Attack, the first handheld game using LED's (Light Emitting Diode), is released by Mattel.
Two words: "Star Wars"
Charles Hayes starts CH Products, maker of radio control devices for hobby aircraft.
IBM sales reach over $7 billion. Publisher Doubleday releases Stephen King's third book, "The Shining". Microsoft sales reach over $500,000. Bill Gates drops out of Harvard to work at the company full-time, much to the chagrin of his parents. Elvis Presley dies. While designing the solid rocket boosters for NASA's new Space Shuttle project, contractor Thoikol discovers low-temperature sensitivity flaws with the rubber O-Rings used to seal in boiling fumes during ignition. Under budget and time pressures, NASA ignores the warnings and deems the problem as an "acceptable risk". After scoring an 85 in 18 holes of golf on a course near Madrid, Spain, 73 year-old crooner Bing Crosby falls face-first to the pavement approaching the clubhouse, dead from a massive heart attack. First fiber optic technology is tested in Chicago. There are approximately half a million computer systems installed in the US. The new MLB franchise Toronto Blue Jays play their first game, at Exhibition Stadium. Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" hits theatres.
Approximately 730,000 personal computers are sold world-wide. ABC premiers their "Saturday Night Live" wanna-be ensemble comedy show "Fridays". Among the castmates, two future collaborators: Michael Ritchie and Larry David (Sienfeld). Seagate Technologies develop the first hard drive for the microcomputer, featuring five megabytes of storage. Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" is released to theatres. Author Stephen King compares it to "a big, shiny Cadillac with no engine". Apple computer magazine Nibble is started by Mike Harvey. Ted Turner's 24 hour news channel CNN (Cable News Network) begins broadcasting, with 2.4 million subscribers. First issue of Computer Shopper is published. "The Empire Strikes Back" is the top grossing movie of the year, pulling in $290,158,751 domestically in the US. Satellite Software International is founded, and releases Word Perfect 1.0. Asked to add two minutes of direct Canadian content to an episode of SCTV, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas create hoser history with Bob and Doug Mackenzie, two canuck caricatures who drink beer, fry up back-bacon and ramble on about Canadian culture (or lack of it). Commodore president Jack Tramiel announces plans at a strategy meeting in London, England to produce a $300 USD personal computer. Alfred Hitchcock dies. Macaulay Culkin is born. Fed up with Gary Kildall's Digital Research delays with porting a version of its CP/M operating system to their line of computers, Seattle Computer Products decides to create an OS themselves. Employee Tim Patterson begins work on it.
Steve Ballmer goes to work for Microsoft. Colonel Harland Sanders is struck down by leukemia at the age of 90. John Lennon is assassinated while entering his apartment building in New York. Speak and Spell is released by Texas Instruments. New "Tonight Show" guest host and rising star David Letterman's doomed morning program "The David Letterman Show" hits the airwaves weekdays on NBC from 10-11:30am. After introducing such concepts as kamakazi steet interviews, roaming remotes from inside NBC's New York headquarters and "Stupid Pet Tricks", as well as winning two Emmy awards, the show is cancelled in 19 weeks despite viewers' protests to keep it on the air. Microsoft signs a deal with IBM to port BASIC over to the new IBM PC. IBM gets a cold shoulder from Killdall and Digital Research about using the CP/M operating system as the PC's Disk Operating System (DOS). Tim Berners-Lee begins toying with the idea of HTML, the language of the World Wide Web. Commodore releases the VIC-20, selling for $300 USD. One million units are sold. Over 78,000 Apple II's are sold. Paul Allen purchases Seattle Computer's Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) for under 100,000 dollars. After some modifications Microsoft renames it MS-DOS and it is integrated into IBM's PC. Apple Computers goes public, selling 4.6 million shares at $22 a share. The CD-Audio standard is created by Sony and Phillips.
Personal computer sales hit $10 billion dollars world-wide, $6 billion in the US alone. The software industry sells $2.4 billion. Apple introduces the first GUI driven home computer, LISA, with a development cost of about US$150 million for the hardware and software. Priced prohibitively high at around US$10,000, the machine experiences slack sales. "The Last Starfighter", containing the largest amount of computer generated effects ever in a movie, is released to theatres. "Alvin and the Chipmunks" debuts on NBC. Davong Systems introduces its 5 megabyte Winchester Hard Drive for the IBM-PC. It retails for US$2000 . "Terms of Endearment" sweeps the Academy Awards. IBM has 40 billion dollars in revenues. Arpanet decides on TCP/IP as their net control protocol. Syndicated cartoon show "Thundercats" debuts. Stephen King books "Christine", "Pet Semetary" and "Thinner" are published. "The Talisman", written by King and Peter Straub, is also released. One of the early microcomputer pioneers, Osborne Computer Corp, goes under. Terry Pratchett's first Discworld novel, "The Colour of Magic", is published in the U.K.. The personal computer is selected as Time magazine's Man (machine) of the Year. The 12 year run of CBS Saturday morning cartoon show "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" comes to a close. Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut" is released. It will be the last Floyd album with Roger Waters, signifying the creative death of the band. Microsoft demonstrates its new product Interface Manager, later to be renamed Windows. Referred to now as the "Smoke and Mirrors Demo", it is later revealed that the windows appearing to be running different programs were simply a graphical kludge. Diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, Microsoft Executive Vice President Paul Allen leaves this post but remains on the board of directors. Apple releases the Macintosh to dealers, priced at US$2,495. The introduction is heralded by the now-infamous $US1.5 million budgeted "1984" TV ad directed by Ridley Scott, broadcast during the Super Bowl. Amiga Corporation demonstrates their prototype pre-emptive multitasking computer, nicknamed Lorraine. Soon after, Commodore buys the company for $40 million. America launches "Operation Urgent Fury" as 1,200 U.S. combat troops assault the
Carribean island of Grenada, following a bloody coup that had installed a
Marxist, pro-Cuban regime there headed by former Deputy Prime Minister Bernard
Coard. 1000 American medical students residing on the island, taking
advantage of relaxed medical certification standards, provides additional
impetus for the attack. After several days of fighting with the invasion
force increasing to over 7,000, island defenders flee into the mountains as
America takes control and installs a pro-U.S. government. "G.I. Joe is the code-name for America's daring, highly-trained special missions force. It's purpose, to defend human freedom against C.O.B.R.A., a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world!" Commodore sells its 1 millionth VIC-20 computer. "Return of the Jedi" tops the box office, taking in $309,125,409. The $200 USD Microsoft Mouse is introduced, along with their word processing package Microsoft Word. 2000 people die in Union Carbide leak in Bophal India. Founder Steve Jobs is muscled out of Apple as John Scully, previously head of Pepsi, moves in as CEO. After 11 years and 251 episodes, the final episode of "M.A.S.H." airs. This is the second most-watched TV event up to that point, beaten only by the first moon landing. Ham the Chimp, the first U.S. 'AstroChimp' sent into space in 1961, is buried in Alamogordo, New Mexico at the age of 27. He followed two other simians of lesser species launched in 1958. Strangely, Ham's burial occurs the same year and in the same town as Atari's mass burial of surplus equipment. The 3.5 inch floppy disk is introduced by Sony Electronics. The seventh space shuttle mission sends Sally Ride into orbit on the Challenger as the first American woman into space. 241 U.S. Military personnel are killed when a truck containing a 12,000 lb.
bomb smashes its way through security sentries and into the United States Marine
Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. It is part of a simultaneous suicide bombing
attack carried out by Muslim extremist group Islamic Jihad against U.S. and
French compounds in Beirut which also results in the death of 48 French troops. The first cordless phone is introduced by British Telecom, at £175. The movie Flashdance creates a craze in ripped sweatshirts. A judge orders the breakup of American telco monolith AT&T, spawning seven new independent "Baby Bells", along with phone deregulation and about a million phone sex and psychic hotlines.
Spacelab is launched into orbit by space shuttle Columbia. The AIDS virus is officially identified The doomed PCjr is released by IBM. Bernhard Goetz shoots four black youths on a NYC subway car after being accosted for money. A rough, working version of Windows is previewed for IBM, who show absolutely no interest in the product. Paperback version of William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer" is released, heralding the cyberpunk SF genre. The early 80's resurrection of 3-D movies is mercifully brought to an end, reaching its apex with "Amityville 3-D" and "Jaws 3-D". In a strange twist of fate, one of the actors in the former, Meg Ryan, and the star of the latter, Dennis Quaid, eventually marry on Valentine's day 1991. Novell introduces Netware. 100 million people tune in to the ABC TV movie "The Day After", presenting a realistic portrayal of nuclear war.
