Media History Timeline: 1980s

20th Century: Ninth Decade

Gallery

Minitel, France
1980

Ronald Reagan
Actor becomes
President, 1980

TRS-80
1980

Voyager I
1980

Cats on Broadway
1981

IBM PC
1981

Donkey Kong
1981

E.T.
1982

Macintosh
1984

Roger Rabbit
1988

1980-1989


1980: 1980: Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song examines life of killer Gary Gilmore.; 1980: Home video game popularit grows as action, strategy games get better.; 1980: The Minitel telephone system begins in France; it will run for decades.; 1980: The PC hard drive, holds 10 MB.; 1980: Sears sells closed-caption decoders for television.; 1980: 1% of U.S. homes have VCRs.; 1980: Berzerk introduces arcade video games that speak.x; 1980: A 25 lb. portable computer is favorite of reporters who send news from field.; 1980: Pac-Man.; 1980: James Michener,The Covenant, traces South Africa from bushmen to apartheid.; 1980: In France, a holographic film shows a gull flying.; 1980: A former movie star, Ronald Reagan, is elected president of the United States.; 1980: Intelsat V relays 12,000 phone calls, 2 color TV channels.; 1980: Public international electronic fax service, Intelpost, begins.; 1980: Consultants dominate news policy at many U.S. television stations.; 1980: Atlanta gets first fiber optics system.; 1980: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones put news database online.; 1980: In Germany, the Telekom videotex system begins tests.; 1980: CNN, 24-hour news channel, begins reports.; 1980: The TRS-80 portable computer is favorite of reporters who send news from field.; 1980: Sony introduces the consumer camcorder.; 1980: Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose, infuses fiction with semiotics.; 1980: Voyager 1 sends back images of Saturn and its moons, one billion miles away.; 1980: From 3M, Post-it notes.; 1980: Sears sells decoders for closed captioning for television.; 1980: Black Entertainment Television (BET) is added to cable network programming.; 1980: FCC gives private companies go-ahead to build, launch communication satellites.; 1980: International committee (CCITT) sets compatibility standards for fax machines.; 1980: Oscars: Ordinary People, Robert De Niro, Sissy Spacek.; 1980: Also at the movies: Raging Bull, Coal Miner's Daughter, Private Benjamin.; 1980: Foreign language film Oscar: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, U.S.S.R.; 1980: Addressable cable TV converters pinpoint individual homes.; 1980: Nobel Prize in Literature: Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz.; 1980: The public sees a computer digital imaging system.; 1980: Michael Crichton's Congo: lost city, diamonds, vicious ape men.; 1980: Lasers are used to set type.

1981: 1981: In Sri Lanka, Sinhalese police burn irreplaceable library of Tamil history.; 1981: On Broadway, Cats.; 1981: The laptop computer is introduced by Tandy.; 1981: Wave system eliminates feedback distortion from telephone calls.; 1981: MTV, a music video channel, goes on cable 24/7.; 1981: The IBM PC.; 1981: Nobel Prize in Literature: British immigrant Elias Canetti.; 1981: 450,000 transistors fit on a silicon chip 1/4-inch square.; 1981: Hologram technology improves, now in video games.; 1981: Donkey Kong, from Nintendo.; 1981: Centipede, first arcade video game designed by a woman, Dona Bailey.; 1981: In France the Minitel system, an national online information hookup.; 1981: From Microsoft, the MSDOS 1.0 operating system.; 1981: The laptop computer is introduced.; 1981: Most modems run at 300 bits/sec.; 1981: Oscars: Chariots of Fire, Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn.; 1981: At the movies: On Golden Pond, Reds, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indiana Jones #1).; 1981: Foreign language film Oscar: Mephisto, Hungary; 1981: The mouse pointer is attached to computers.; 1981: In England, Prestel videotex adds email service.; 1981: BITNET connects university mainframe computers worldwide.; 1981: The Donkey Kong computer game flies off the shelves.; 1981: Some malls in Canada provide touchscreens for shoppers.; 1981: ADA, a programming language named in honor of Ada, Lady Lovelace.

1982: 1982: Pac-Man attracts girls as well as boys to home video games.; 1982: From Japan, a camera with electronic picture storage, no film.; 1982: Tron from Disney is both feature film and arcade video game.; 1982: Sony of Japan and Philips of the Netherlands bring out the compact disc.; 1982: Caller ID.; 1982: USA Today typeset in regional plants by satellite command.; 1982: The one-button point-and-click mouse is born.; 1962: USA Today is a newspaper influenced by television news style.; 1982: Oscars: Gandhi, Ben Kingsley, Meryl Streep.; 1982: Also at the movies: E.T., Tootsie, The Verdict, Missing, Das Boot.; 1982: Foreign language film Oscar: Volver a Empezar (To Begin Again), Spain.; 1982: Return of the Jedi opens in theaters equipped for its THX sound system.; 1982: Kodak camera uses film on a disc cassette.; 1982: Commodore 64 introduced; popular with game players.; 1982: Ian Hancock's Land of Pain tells little known, tortured history of the gypsies.; 1982: Vectrex video game computer is introduced.; 1982: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Gabriel Garc’a Márquez, Colombia.; 1982: James Michener, Space, a story of the American space program.; 1982: Michael Jackson's album Thriller sells 25 million copies.; 1982: 5.5 million PCs have been sold.; 1982: Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple.; 1982: Thomas Keneally's novel, Schindler's List starts as "Schindler's Ark."; 1982: England's Prestel videotex system adds Newsweek content for subscribers.; 1982: U.S. Post Office begins installing optical scanners nationwide.

1983: 1983: Nobel Prize in Literature: British novelist William Golding.; 1983: Compaq builds the first fully compatible IBM clone.; 1983: Time names the computer as "Man" of the Year for 1982.; 1983: Joseph Heller, God Knows, comic novel about King David.; 1983: CDs (compact discs, not certificates of deposit) go on sale.; 1983: Michener examines Poland across the centuries, again mixing fact and fiction.; 1983: Apple's Lisa, the first microcomputer with a graphical user interface.; 1983: Intercity fiber optic phone transmission begins: New York to Washington.; 1983: Lasers and plastics improve newspaper production.; 1983: Audio music cassettes outsell LP records.; 1983: Laser disc technology used in Dragon's Lair, an arcade video game.; 1983: Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program.; 1983: Vanessa Williams, who is black, wins long-time segregated Miss America contest.; 1983: Japan's NHK presents its analog HDTV system at Swiss conference.; 1983: Computer chip holds 288,000 bits of memory.; 1983: ZIP + 4, expanded 9-digit ZIP codes, and postal bar codes are introduced.; 1983: Internet domains get names instead of hard-to-remember numbers.; 1983: AT&T forced to break up; 7 Baby Bells are born.; 1983: Cisco Systems starts network router manufacturing business.; 1983: Oscars: Terms of Endearment, Robert Duvall, Shirley MacLaine.; 1983: Also at the movies: The Right Stuff, Silkwood, The Big Chill, Flashdance.; 1983: Foreign language film Oscar: Fanny & Alexander, Sweden.; 1983: TCP/IP becomes standard for Internet communication between computers.; 1983: MILNET, for military sites, splits off ARPANET.; 1983: American videotext service starts; fails in three years.; 1983: In Chicago, Motorola starts testing cellphone service.

1984: 1984: Trucks used for SNG (satellite news gathering).; 1984: Machine translates basic Japanese into basic English, but with mistakes.; 1984: Portable compact disc player arrives.; 1984: National Geographic puts a hologram on its cover.; 1984: From Florida, Radio Marti beams anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba.; 1984: William Gibson coins the term "cyberspace" in his novel Neuromancer.; 1984: A television set can be worn on the wrist.; 1984: Japanese introduce high quality facsmile over phone lines.; 1984: Several large U.S. newspapers offer online text versions.; 1984: Apple Macintosh and IBM PC AT are introduced.; 1984: Canon sells an electronic still camera.; 1984: 3 1/2-inch disk drive.; 1984: AT&T fiber optic cable service extends from Boston to Washington.; 1984: The 32-bit microprocessor.; 1984: CD-ROM disk can hold 270,000 typewritten pages of data.; 1984: Broadway Pulitzer musical, Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.; 1984: Oscars: Amadeus, F. Murray Abraham, Sally Field.; 1984: Also at the movies: Places in the Heart, The Killing Fields, The Natural.; 1984: Foreign language film Oscar: Dangerous Moves, Switzerland.; 1984: The one-megabyte memory chip.; 1984: CONUS relays news feeds for stations on Ku-band satellites.; 1984: Nobel Prize in Literature: Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert.; 1984: Multiple award novelist John Updike, The Witches of Eastwick.; 1984: Playwright Sam Shepard, Fool for Love.; 1984: Novelist Tom Clancy, The Hunt For Red October and Red Storm Rising.

1985: 1985: James Michener, Texas, major historical events once again in fictional settings.; 1985: Worldwide mass communication harnessed for "Aid to Africa" appeal.; 1985: Desktop publishing becomes familiar.; 1985: Nintendo enters home video game market.; 1985: Cray-2 supercomputer does 1.2 billion calculations per second.; 1985: Historian Daniel Boorstin , The Discoverers.; 1985: Western novelist Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove.; 1985: In Soviet Union, mass communication opens up under "glasnost" policy.; 1985: Nobel Prize in Literature: French novelist Claude Simon.; 1985: Hollywood amends ratings; now G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17, X.; 1985: U..S. household ownership of VCRs rises rapidly to 20%.; 1985: Cellphones go into cars.; 1985: Images can be broken into digital bits.; 1985: Microsoft ships the Windows 1.0 operating system.; 1985: Synthetic text-to-speech computer pronounces 20,000 words.; 1985: Television broadcasts can be heard in stereo.; 1985: U.S. TV networks begin satellite distribution to affiliates.; 1985: Typical modem speed now 2400 bits/second.; 1985: At Expo, a Sony TV screen measures 40x25 meters.; 1985: Sony builds a radio the size of a credit card.; 1985: America Online founded as Quantum Computer Services.; 1985: Publication of last of Ana�s Nin's diaries.; 1985: In Japan, 3-D television; no spectacles needed.; 1985: Oscars: Out of Africa, William Hurt, Geraldine Page.; 1985: Also at the movies: Witness, The Color Purple, Prizzi's Honor, Ran, Rambo.; 1985: Foreign language film Oscar: The Official Story, Argentina.; 1985: The 12-hour holocaust documentary, Shoah.; 1985: Pay-per-view channels open for business.; 1985: Kids can't get enough of Super Mario Brothers computer game.; 1985: New videotape formats: 8 mm and VHS-C.; 1985: 50 newspapers now offer online access to news texts.

1986: 1986: Digital Audio Tape (DAT).; 1986: Congress passes Electronic Communications Privacy Act.; 1986: Computer-created Luxo, Jr. is first of Pixar's virtual studio films.; 1986: HBO scrambles its signals.; 1986: U.S., Europe veto Japanese analog HDTV; will develop digital system.; 1986: Nigerian poet-dramatist Wole Soyinka wins Nobel Prize in literature.; 1986: Comic books turn grim and violent with The Dark Knight Returns.; 1986: Oscars: Platoon, Paul Newman, Marlee Matlin.; 1986: Maus comic books, about the Holocaust, published; will win Pulitzer.; 1986: Also at the movies: The Color of Money, Children of a Lesser God, Aliens.; 1986: Foreign language film Oscar: The Assault, Netherlands.; 1986: A fourth U.S. television network, Fox, is added to ABC, CBS, NBC lineup.; 1986: Laser printers start to replace dot matrix and daisy wheel printers.; 1986: The LISTSERV mailing list program.; 1986: International standards set for audio, video, digital recording.; 1986: On Broadway, the musical, Phantom of the Opera.; 1986: Patriot Games, another by Tom Clancy, author of best-selling military novels.; 1986: Television is on for more than seven hours a day in average U.S. home.; 1986: Japanese introduce Game Boy, with 8-bit operating system.; 1986: An encyclopedia, the American, is put on CD-ROM.; 1986: Cable shopping networks meet two public desires: TV and shopping.; 1986: Voyager 2 sends back images of Uranus.

1987: 1987: Tom Wolfe's first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities; will be panned film.; 1987: Nobel Prize in Literature: Russian exile poet Joseph Brodsky.; 1987: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL).; 1987: The Simpsons, animated cartoon, introduced on Fox TV.; 1987: FCC repeals most of the Fairness Doctrine. Personal Attack Rule remains.; 1987: Global teleconference on hunger links 50,000 people in 79 cities.; 1987: Toni Morrison's Pulitzer novel, Beloved.; 1987: From Japan, the" anime" cartoon film.; 1987: Oscars: The Last Emperor, Michael Douglas, Cher.; 1987: Also at the movies: Wall Street, Moonstruck, Fatal Attraction, Lethal Weapon.; 1987: Foreign language film Oscar: Babette's Feast, Denmark.; 1987: Government deregulates cable industry.; 1987: IBM offers a computer with VGA, giving a choice of 262,144 colors.; 1987: Excel, PageMaker are born.; 1987: Bill Atkinson's hypercard brings Vannevar Bush's hyperlink vision to reality.; 1987: Dolby Pro Logic speakers are made for the home market.; 1987: National Science Foundation starts NSFNET; it will replace ARPANET.

1988: 1988: The Digital Disc Playback (DDP) system uses uncompressed digital sound.; 1988: Sony introduces the Pocket Discman.; 1988: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? feature film combines live action, animation.; 1988: Stephen Hawking's explanation of the Universe, A Brief History of Time.; 1988: First transatlantic telephone call over fiber optics line.; 1988: Government brochure mailed to 107 million addresses.; 1988: Prodigy dial-up service.; 1988: The first Nobel Prize in literature written in Arabic won by Naguib Mahfouz.; 1988: Oscars: Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman, Jodie Foster.; 1988: Also at the movies: Die Hard, Big, Do the Right Thing, A Fish Called Wanda.; 1988: Foreign language film Oscar: Pelle the Conqueror, Denmark.; 1988: Tenn. Sen. Albert Gore proposes U.S. research and education network.; 1988: Self-service fax machine can be accessed by credit card.; 1988: "Hacker" and "Worm" enter the Internet lexicon. First data crime reported.; 1988: The TV show Roseanne breaks ground with a plain-talking blue collar family.; 1988: Steve Jobs offers the futuristic NeXT computer.; 1988: Jarkko Oikarinen of Finland writes the Internet Relay Chat software program.; 1988: Internet T1 backbone completed; soon proves inadequate for traffic surge.; 1988: James Michener, Alaska, another blockbuster from ancient times to the present.; 1988: In Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco offers a novel with levels of meaning.; 1988: CDs now outsell vinyl records.; 1988: Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, enrages Muslims.; 1988: 98% of U.S. homes have at least one television set.

1989: 1989: Ayatollah Khomenei orders death for Salman Rushdie, who is not in Iran.; 1989: AT&T claims speech recognition machine understands 300 billion sentences.; 1989: Amy Tan's best-selling novel of Chinese women, The Joy Luck Club.; 1989: Researchers try to index the exploding Internet; can't keep up.; 1989: Another Tom Clancy military best-selling novel, Clear and Present Danger.; 1989: TV Guide cover puts Oprah Winfrey's head on Ann-Margaret's body.; 1989: Caribbean.is examined across time in typical James Michener style.; 1989: With 5 million Minitels, France is the world's most wired nation.; 1989: New Sony videotape format: Hi8.; 1989: Photos can be digitally manipulated on a home computer.; 1989: Nintendo racks up an annual profit of $1 billion.; 1989: Nobel Prize in Literature: novelist Camilo José Cela, Spain.; 1989: E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate, fact and fiction among Thirties gangsters.; 1989: New Revised Standard Version of the Bible replaces Revised Standard Version.; 1989: NHK begins regular broadcasting of analog HDTV programs.; 1989: Tiananmen Square massacre demonstrates power of media to inform the world.; 1989: Oscars: Driving Miss Daisy, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jessica Tandy.; 1989: Also at the movies: When Harry Met Sally, Glory, Field of Dreams.; 1989: Foreign language film Oscar: Cinema Paradiso, Italy.; 1989: Voyager 2 sends back images of Neptune.; 1989: Pacific Link fiber optic cable opens, can carry 40,000 phone calls.; 1989: B.F Skinner, The Origins of Cognitive Thought, delves into behaviourist theory.; 1989: Vacationers can buy single use, throwaway cameras.

Sources for the timeline and accompanying information.