Media History Timeline: 1960s

20th Century: Seventh Decade

Gallery

Ruby optical laser
1960

Domino's takes pizza
orders by telephone
1960

Chatty Cathy
1960

Camelot
opens on Broadway
1960

Letraset
1961

IBM Shoebox, voice
recognition system
1961

Kodak Instamatic
camera, 1963

Picturephone
1964

Saturday Evening Post
goes
1969

Sesame Street
arrives
1969

1960-1969


1960: 1960: Echo I, a U.S. balloon in orbit, reflects radio signals to Earth.; 1960: The ATM, invented by Luther Simjian.; 1960: 90% of American homes have television sets.; 1960: Telephone-averse Parisians reportedly prefer pneumatic tubes for love letters.; 1960: Rabbit, Run, the first of John Updike series; his second novel.; 1960: TV sets in 7 of 8 U.S. homes.; 1960: More than 500 American television stations are broadcasting.; 1960: John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor parodies historical novels.; 1960: Kennedy-Nixon debates draw huge numbers of viewers, voters.; 1960: Theodore Maiman uses a synthetic ruby to build first true laser.; 1960: AT&T installs first electronic switching system.; 1960: Taking a food order by telephone, Domino's delivers a pizza.; 1960: Voice communication for people who cannot talk: an electronic larynx.; 1960: In Rhode Island, an electronic, automated post office.; 1960: Gulf Oil sponsors unscheduled news bulletins on NBC-TV.; 1960: Harvest of Shame, arguably U.S. television news' finest documentary.; 1960: A movie gets Smell-O-Vision, but the public just sniffs.; 1960: Zenith tests subscription TV; unsuccessful.; 1960: Lerner and Loewe's Broadway musical, Camelot.; 1960: Oscars: The Apartment, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor.; 1960: Also at the movies: Exodus, Spartacus, Psycho, Elmer Gantry.; 1960: Foreign language film Oscar: Virgin Spring, Sweden.; 1960: Electronic music is established through Karlheinz Stockhausen, others.; 1960: The Post Office experiments with facsimile mail.; 1960: PLATO, a computer-based method of education.; 1960: A hologram is constructed.; 1960: Nobel Prize in Literature: French poet Saint-John Perse.; 1960: Henry Miller completes trilogy, Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus.; 1960: Tiros I is the first weather satellite.; 1960: Parker 45 fountain pen takes refill cartridges.; 1960: Americans and British simultaneously develop packet switching transmission.; 1960: Mattel's Chatty Cathy doll speaks 11 phrases in random order.

1961: 1961: Franny and Zooey, a collection of Salinger's short stories.; 1961: Robert Heinlein's science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land.; 1961: The French Catholic Bible de Jerusalem is published.; 1961: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet, novelist Ivo Andric, Yugoslavia.; 1961: Time-Life Books begins publication.; 1961: Tennessee Williams' play, Night of the Iguana.; 1961: John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent, his twelfth novel.; 1961: Solzhenitsyn risks publishing his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.; 1961: IBM Selectric "golf ball" typewriter.; 1961: FCC Chairman Newton Minow calls television a "vast wasteland."; 1961: A wireless microphone is used in a movie, Mutiny on the Bounty.; 1961: Boxing match test shows potential of pay-TV.; 1961: FCC approves FM stereo broadcasting; spurs FM development.; 1961: Franz Fanon writes his influential, anti-colonial The Wretched of the Earth.; 1961: IBM's Shoeboxrecognizes 16 voice commands, does simple arithmetic.; 1961: Bell Labs tests communication by light waves.; 1961: Sony markets a helical scan videotape recorder.; 1961: Harper Lee wins Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird.; 1961: The Carousel Projector aids lecturers.; 1961: Fairchild Semiconductor makes integrated circuits commercially.; 1961: Letraset makes headlines at home simple.; 1961: British novelist Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.; 1961: Oscars: West Side Story, Maximilian Schell, Sophia Loren.; 1961: Also at the movies: Breakfast at Tiffany's, Splendor in the Grass, El Cid.; 1961: Foreign language film Oscar: Through a Glass Darkly, Sweden.; 1961: The time-sharing computer is developed.; 1961: Julia Child et. al, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Best seller for years.; 1961: Poet Robert Frost recites "The Gift Outright" at JFK's inauguration.; 1961: Novelist Joseph Heller tells us about Catch-22.; 1961: Silicon chips.; 1961: Trinidad novelist V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas.; 1961: Novelist Walker Percy, The Movie Goer.

1962: 1962: Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy sees limits for the print media.; 1962: Plastic insulation for phone lines.; 1962: Poet Sylvia Plath's fictional memoir, The Bell Jar, published under pseudonym.; 1962: Edward Albee's lacerating play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; 1962: High-speed digital lines installed in telephone networks.; 1962: The Telstar satellite sends television across the Atlantic.; 1962: Helen Gurley Brown's best-seller, Sex and the Single Girl.; 1962: Katherine Anne Porter's novel, Ship of Fools.; 1962: Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is sung at reconstructed Coventry Cathedral.; 1962: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring will lead to ban on DDT, other pesticides.; 1962: Cable companies import distant signals.; 1962: AT&T introduces T-1 multiplex service in Skokie, Illinois.; 1962: Packet-switching networks.; 1962: FCC requires UHF tuners on tv sets.; 1962: Comsat created to launch, operate global satellite system.; 1962: Oscars: Lawrence of Arabia, Gregory Peck, Anne Bancroft.; 1962: Also at the movies: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Miracle Worker, The Longest Day.; 1962: Dr. No begins the James Bond series.; 1962: Foreign language film Oscar: Sundays and Cybèle, France.; 1962: Anthony Burgess' novel, A Clockwork Orange; it will become a film classic.; 1962: Broadway hit, Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.; 1962: Eull Gibbons writes a best seller advising people to find food in forests, parks.; 1962: Touch-tone phones are a hit at the Seattle World's Fair.; 1962: Sooundtrack of West Side Story tops the music charts for 54 weeks.; 1962: Telstar, first international communication satellite, transmits an image.; 1962: Michael Harrington's The Other America revives interest in school lunches.; 1962: Nobel Prize in Literature: American novelist John Steinbeck.; 1962: The Reivers is published in the year Faulkner dies.; 1962: Mariner II sends radio signals from Venus.; 1962: Andy Warhol paints many images of Campbell's Soup cans, Marilyn Monroe.; 1962: John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, vignettes of life in the United States.; 1962: James Baldwin's angry novel about race and homosexuality, Another Country.; 1962: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, tells of Gulag.

1963: 1963: James Baldwin's essays, The Fire Next Time, stirs concerns about racial tensions.; 1963: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, more of J.D. Salinger's short stories.; 1963: Nobel Prize in Literature: Georgos Seferis, Greece.; 1963: Maurice Sendak's prize-winning children's book, Where the Wild Things Are.; 1963: From Phillips of Holland comes the audio cassette.; 1963: Presidents of U.S., Nigeria have phone conversation via satellite.; 1963: Yukio Mishima's allegorical tale, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea.; 1963: Postal ZIP codes.; 1963: Instamatic cameras with drop-in cartridges; more than 50 million will be sold.; 1963: Douglas Engelbart gets a patent for the computer mouse.; 1963: In the U.S., the Emergency Broadcast System, with periodic air tests.; 1963: CBS and NBC TV newscasts expand to 30 minutes in color.; 1963: Barbara Tuchman wins a Pulitzer for The Guns of August.; 1963: Jacques Cousteau, The Living Sea.; 1963: The Beatles shake up music.; 1963: Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem speaks of "the eerie banality of evil."; 1963: Sony offers an open-reel videotape recorder for the home, $995.; 1963: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique energizes the feminist movement.; 1963: Polaroid instant photography adds color.; 1963: Communications satellite, Syncom II, goes into geo-synchronous orbit.; 1963: Oscars: Tom Jones, Sidney Poitier, Patricia Neal.; 1963: Also at the movies: Cleopatria, Hud, Lilies of the Field, How the West Was Won.; 1963: Foreign language film Oscar: Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, Italy; 1963: TV news "comes of age" in reporting JFK assassination.; 1963: Martin Luther King gives "I have a dream" speech.; 1963: First live televised murder: Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald.; 1963: On publicTV: The French Chef, with Julia Child.

1964: 1964: With Peyton Place, televised soap operas move to prime time.; 1964: Artist Roy Lichtenstein, Good Morning, Darling.; 1964: Olympic Games in Tokyo telecast live globally by satellite.; 1964: Picturephone tested: Disneyland to N.Y. World's Fair. Public dislikes it.; 1964: IBM's OS/360 is first mass-produced computer operating system.; 1964: The PDP-8, first minicomputer, first to use integrated circuit technology.; 1964: A local area network (LAN) is created for atomic weapons research.; 1964: Mariner IV sends television images from Mars.; 1964: Oscars: My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews.; 1964: Anti-war protest folk music is popular.; 1964: Also at the movies: Mary Poppins, Dr. Strangelove, Zorba the Greek.; 1964: Foreign language film Oscar: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Italy.; 1964: From Dartmouth: BASIC programming.; 1964: Russian scientists bounce a signal off Jupiter.; 1964: Saul Bellow's novel Herzog; will win the International Literary Prize.; 1964: First version of Moore's Law: Microprocessor speed will double each year.; 1964: Intelsat, international satellite organization, is formed.; 1964: Nobel Prize in Literature: Jean-Paul Sarte, who declines it.; 1964: Japan's NHK begins HDTV development.; 1964: The first televised negative political ad skewers Barry Goldwater.; 1964: "Pirate" ships broadcast off English coast, challenge BBC monopoly.; 1964: McLuhan's Understanding Media describes the global village.; 1964: TTY developed out of personal need by deaf physicist Robert Weitbrecht.; 1964: Fiddler on the Roof opens on Broadway.; 1964: Transpacific submarine telephone cable service begins.; 1964: Arthur Miller, After the Fall, fictional play about wife Marilyn Monroe.; 1964: Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness argues for "ethical egoism."

1965: 1965: Nobel Prize in Literature: Russian novelist Mikhail Sholokhov.; 1965: Michener, The Source, combines history, fiction at archeological dig in Israel.; 1965: Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird looks at the plight of Gypsies in the Holocaust.; 1965: Author Ian Fleming dies, but James Bond carries on in books, films.; 1965: "Bobo doll" study indicates effects on small children of televised violence.; 1965: Computer-based telephone digital switching replaces electromagnetic system.; 1965: Vietnam War becomes first war to be televised.; 1965: Ford offers 8-track tape players on next year's model cars.; 1965:Hypertext is created. It will one day build the Internet's links.; 1965: Mobile radio telephone service widely available in the U.S.; 1965: 9 of 10 U.S. telephones can use direct distance dialing.; 1965: Westinghouse Phonovid stores TV sound, pictures on phonograph records.; 1965: Western Electric uses lasers in industry.; 1965: Electronic phone exchange gives customers extra services.; 1965: Radio astronomy research supports Big Bang theory.; 1965: Satellites begin domestic TV distribution in Soviet Union.; 1965: Post Office tests optical scanners to read ZIP codes.=; 1965: A doctoral dissertation is printed by computer.; 1965: Color news film.; 1965: The word "hypertext" is coined. Non-sequential text can branch.; 1965: Commercial communications satellite Early Bird, (Intelsat I), orbits.; 1965: Kodak offers Super 8 film for home movies.; 1965: Cartridge audio tapes go on sale for a few years.; 1965: Oscars: The Sound of Music, Lee Marvin, Julie Christie.; 1965: Also at the movies: Dr. Zhivago, Cat Ballou, A Thousand Clowns.; 1965: Foreign language film Oscar: The Shop on Main Street, Czechoslovakia.; 1965: Most broadcasts are in color.; 1965: FCC rules bring structure to cable television.; 1965: Solid-state equipment spreads through the cable industry.; 1965: The Autobiography of Malcolm X.; 1965: Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed attacks Detroit's auto industry.

1966: 1966: In China, the Cultural Revolution.; 1966: Star Trek lands on TV.; 1966: LexisNexis founded as the Data Corporation.; 1966: Old Metropolitan Opera House closes; opera moves to Lincoln Center.; 1966: Bernard Malamud's novel, The Fixer, of a poor man influenced by Spinoza.; 1966: Hollywood adopts an age-based rating system: G, PG, R, X.; 1966: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood uses narrative style for non-fiction.; 1966: William Buckley hosts The Firing Line, erudite, conservative discussion on TV.; 1966: Linotron can produce 1,000 alphanumeric characters per second for printing.; 1966: Charles Kao's waveguide light theory will lead to communication channels.; 1966: SABRE airline reservation system is an early data communication network.; 1966: FCC blocks cable television wiring in large cities.; 1966: The Amateur Computer Society organizes personal computing.; 1966: Neorealistic style gives The Battle of Algiers a documentary look.; 1966: Nobel Prize in Literature shared by Jewish writers Nelly Sachs, Shmuel Agnon.; 1966: Marc Chagall's murals are installed at the new New York Met.; 1966: Oscars: A Man for All Seasons, Paul Scofield, Elizabeth Taylor.; 1966: Also at the movies: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Alfie, Hawaii, Blow-Up.; 1966: Foreign language film Oscar: A Man and a Woman, France.; 1966: Flora Nwapa's Efuru is the first novel by a black African woman.; 1966: Postal savings system ends in U.S.; 1966: Xerox sells the Telecopier, a fax machine.; 1966: John Barth's comic novel, Giles Goat-Boy, the tale of a would-be messiah.; 1966: European nations disagree, adopting competing TV standards, PAL and SECAM.

1967: 1967: Nobel Prize in Literature: Miguel Asturias, Guatemalan writer of Indian life.; 1967: Dolby eliminates audio hiss.; 1967: In New York the World-Telegram goes out of business.; 1967: Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Message.; 1967: Computers get the light pen.; 1967: From IBM, the floppy disk.; 1967: Congress creates Corporation for Public Broadcasting.; 1967: Newspapers, magazines start to digitize production.; 1967: Tom Stoppard's first play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.; 1967: On Broadway, Thoroughly Modern Millie.; 1967: Jacques Derrida's philosophy "deconstructs" Western rationalist thinking.; 1967: Pre-recorded movies on videotape sold for home TV sets.; 1967: Oscars: In the Heat of the Night, Rod Steiger, Katherine Hepburn.; 1967: Also at the movies: The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, Bonnie and Clyde.; 1967: Adult, underground comics arrive with R. Crumb's Zap Comix.; 1967: Foreign language film Oscar: Closely Watched Trains, Czechoslovakia.; 1967: Gabriel Garc�a Márquez' novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.; 1967: Cordless telephones enter the phone system.; 1967: U.S. mandates Daylight Savings Time.; 1967: Newspapers introduce computers into their operations.; 1967: ABC joins CBS and NBC in presenting 30-minute television newscasts.; 1967: A computer hypertext system is developed at Brown University.; 1967: William Styron's, The Confessions of Nat Turner, criticized, praised.; 1967: Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, A Garden of Earthly Delights.; 1967: New magazines include Rolling Stone and New York.

1968: 1968: Gore Vidal's novel of gender switching, Myra Breckenridge.; 1968: 60 Minutes starts ticking at CBS.; 1968: On Broadway: the rock musical Hair.; 1968: Norman Mailer, Armies of the Night, wins Pulitzer and National Book Award.; 1968: TV photographers lug two-inch-tape portable videotape recorders.; 1968: FCC approves non-Bell equipment attached to phone system.; 1968: Magnetic-stripe credit cards.; 1968: Noam Chomsky influences linguistics with Language and Mind.; 1968: Sony develops the Trinitron color television tube.; 1968: Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Inspector Hound.; 1968: Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.; 1968: Andrew Webber's first hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.; 1968: J�rgen Habermas' Knowledge and Human Interests argue critical theory.; 1968: Intelsat completes global communications satellite loop.; 1968: Kawabata Yasunari becomes first Japanese to win Nobel Prize in Literature.; 1968: Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.; 1968: Approximately 200 million TV sets in the world, 78 million in U.S.; 1968: Oscars: Oliver!, Cliff Robertson, Katherine Hepburn.; 1968: Also at the movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Funny Girl, Rosemary's Baby.; 1968: Foreign language film Oscar: War and Peace, U.S.S.R.; 1968: U.S. movie attendance drops to 20 million tickets weekly (10% of population).; 1968: First digital wireless network, Linkabit, created in San Diego.; 1968: TV sets in 200 million homes worldwide.; 1968: An Intel 1 KB RAM microchip reaches the market.; 1968: Englebart ties together keyboard, keypad, mouse, windows, and more.

1969: 1969: Nobel Prize in Literature: Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.; 1969: PASCAL.; 1969: The Saturday Evening Post fails. Television is blamed.; 1969: RCA SelectaVision plays pre-recorded cassettes, but cannot record.; 1969: Sony brings out 3/4" U-Matic, first videotape cassette editing system.; 1969: Astronauts send live photographs from the moon to worldwide audience.; 1969: First words broadcast from the moon: "That's one small step�"; 1969: Department of Defense commissions ARPANET for research into networking.; 1969: Audio music tapes sold with Dolby Noise Reduction.; 1969: Supreme Court's Red Lion decision codifies Fairness Doctrine for broadcasting.; 1969: Public Broadcasting Service, PBS, is created.; 1969: Kenneth Thompson creates the Unix Operating System for computers.; 1969: UCLA computer sends data to Stanford computer, foreshadowing Internet.; 1969: Oscars: Midnight Cowboy (X-rated), John Wayne, Maggie Smith.; 1969: Also at the movies: True Grit, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Easy Rider.; 1969: Foreign language film Oscar: The Brothers Karamazov, U.S.S.R., and Z, Algeria; 1969: In U.S., FCC bans broadcast advertising of tobacco.; 1969: Children can visit Sesame Street.; 1969: Novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.; 1969: Novelist Michael Crichton's first best-seller, The Andromeda Strain.; 1969: James Dickey's novel Deliverance.; 1969: Mario Puzo's novel, The Godfather.; 1969: CompuServe goes into business.; 1969: John Fowles' novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman.; 1969: Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint shocks with sexual caricatures.; 1969: Joyce Carol Oates' award winner, them.; 1969: Pop-art movement's Claes Oldenburg makes large sculptures, like Lipstick.; 1969: The Woodstock music festival.