High Tech Timeline
In my life I’ve loved them all
I was born in 1955. Oh my, how technology has changed!
In this post, I am going to lay down a timeline of when various gadgets and technologies were born in my lifetime. (And a few that you might guess were in my lifetime, but they were actually before.)
We’re looking at technology through the lens of consumer products. In addition, I’ve included a few extra super-significant milestones like the first man in space (Russian Yuri Gagarin, 1961). You know all of this technology, but you, like me, may be amused to see the years when they first arrived on the scene. (Well, some of you young’uns may not be aware of some of the older products.)
Microsoft Copilot AI is my source for all of these dates.
I highlighted the Artificial Intelligence (AI) milestones to make it easier to track the progress of this remarkable technology. It happened more slowly than I recalled.
1940s
1941: First licensed TV commercial hits the airwaves; television had been demonstrated as early as 1925.
CoPilot tells me: The first licensed TV commercial aired on July 1, 1941. It was a 10-second advertisement presented by the Bulova Watch Company. The ad featured a simple graphic and live voiceover stating, "America runs on Bulova time". This commercial aired on NBC and cost Bulova only $9 at the time. This marked the beginning of TV advertising, which has since grown into a multi-billion dollar market.
1950s
1953: Color television debuts.
1954: The first commercial transistor radio is introduced.
1955: Your author arrives on earth.
1956: First TV remote control.
1959: First robotic arm is installed in a GM diecasting plant in New Jersey.
1960s
1961: Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space.
Also in 1961, IBM introduces its “Selectric” electric typewriter, the one with the letters on a ball instead of individual arms for each letter, which tended to jam. You can switch balls for different fonts. It is wildly successful in businesses. In addition, that robotic arm installed at that GM plant two years earlier now reaches mass production.
AI — 1964: Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT begins developing ELIZA, one of the first AI chatbots. You can still chat with ELIZA at this website.
1966: First year Americans buy more color TVs than black-and-white.
1969: Astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon! (Of course, it didn’t really happen. Hollywood faked it.) (LOL No it really happened.) (No, it didn’t.) (Yes, it did.)
1970s
1971: IBM begins shipping some products with 8-inch floppy disk drives holding 80 KB of data.
1972: E-mail invented, well ahead of personal computers being in many people’s houses.
1973: Your author graduates from high school.
1975: HBO (Home Box Office), a regional service in the northeast since 1972, expands across the country — cable TV is born!
“It’s not TV, It’s HBO”
1976: Apple I 8-bit computer released. Also, Wang releases the first commercially available word processor, which is a like a dumb computer that only runs a dumb version of MS Word. The Wang is a huge success in businesses, and a wealth of giggles for immature male engineers. Secretarial jobs were decimated, while “executive assistants” proliferated.
1977: Apple II is released, the first successful mass-produced personal computer. It does not ship with a display — you plug it into a TV. It has one 5.25-inch floppy disk (which eventually could hold 1.2 MB of data) but it did not get a hard disk drive until 1986. (Also, your author graduates from U.C. Berkeley.)
1978: The VHS VCR starts showing up in living rooms everywhere.
1979: VisiCalc, the first popular spreadsheet program, is released; and portable personal music arrives with the Sony Walkman cassette player.
1980s
1980: Seagate Technology ships the first 5.25-inch hard disk drive; it has an astonishing 5 MB capacity!
Seagate was headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, in the mountains between San Jose— the famous Silicon Valley — and the Santa Cruz beach community to the south. Get off Highway 17 in Scotts Valley to come visit your author, just a few miles away in Felton.
1981: The IBM PC running MS-DOS arrives on the scene, the first modern, commercially available desktop computer (it has two 5.25-inch floppy disks but will wait until 1986 before it gets a 10MB hard disk drive); in addition, Osborn releases the first “luggable” computer.
1982: The first music CD debuts; it is ABBA’s “The Visitors” album. Two years later, the first music CD is pressed in the USA; it is Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” album.
1983: First mobile phone is released on the U.S. market; also, floppy disks shrink to 3.5-inches and hold 720 KB, later going two-sided to hold 1.44 MB.
1984: Apple’s first Macintosh (a.k.a. Mac) computer is released; it is launched with the famous 1984 commercial that was shown during Super Bowl XVIII.
Also in 1984, the repressive future envisioned in George Orwell’s novel “1984”, which inspired that Apple Mac commercial, did NOT happen; but just be patient, it is coming!
Also in 1984, HP introduces its Laser Jet and ThinkJet printers (a laser printer and an ink jet printer); and Sony brings out the Discman, a Walkman except for playing music CDs.
1985: First Windows operating system (it sucked); also, Apple adds AppleTalk networking to the Mac, making it the first personal computer with built-in networking.
1990s
1990: Windows 3 arrives, the first good, usable version of Windows; also, it brings Microsoft Office along with it (as a separate purchase, of course).
1992: Texting is added to a mobile phone by Nokia.
1993: America OnLine (AOL) begins carpet bombing America with free trial discs (originally 3.5" floppy discs, then CDs). Thanks to all those disks, AOL becomes the first massively popular online service provider with a walled garden providing e-mail and limited Internet access to the public. (Your author first explored the Internet with AOL and a dial-up modem.)
1994: Netscape Navigator browser is released, the first popular, widely used browser for the World Wide Web (following Mosaic the year before).
1996: Blackberry from Research in Motion arrives; it is so addictive, especially among business users, that it is nicknamed Crackberry. Also, GM introduces the EV1 battery-electric vehicle, which never reaches mass production.
AI — 1997: IBM’s Deep Blue AI beats chess master Gary Kasparov.
Also in 1997, the first DVD players and movies become available in the USA; the first movie on DVD was “Twister”.
1998: Google search arrives; we can now google people and things! Yahoo, AskJeeves, and DEC’s AltaVista see visions of the Grim Reaper approaching.
1999: GM ceases production of the EV1 and recalls and destroys all existing vehicles; a total of 1,117 EV1s were ever produced.
2000s
2000: First satellite phone; also, the popular Toyota Prius hybrid gas/electric vehicle comes to the U.S.
2001: Apple introduced the iPod, a flash memory based portable music player with the famous “wheel” user interface.
2005: For the first time, laptop computer sales exceed desktop computers.
2006: Facebook opens to public signups; fanfare:
Social Media is Born!
Also in 2006, Microsoft brings out Zune, its iPod competitor. It flops big-time.
2007: First iPhone; also the Dell XPS M1330 is released— it is the earliest laptop computer I could find that looks more or less like today’s laptops; before this, portable computers were quite clunky.
2008: First Android phone (HTC dream on T-Mobile); also, AirBnB launches, and the Tesla Roadster EV hits the road
2009: Uber launches, though it is a few more years before you can call for an Uber in your city; also, Google (later to become Waymo) begins development of driverless cars, and Microsoft announces it search engine Bing!
2010s
2010: First iPad; also, the first mass-production commercial battery-electric vehicle (BEV or just EV) hits the showrooms in California. It is Nissan’s LEAF. (Your author gets one of the first ones.) GM also introduces its Chevy Volt BEV.
AI — 2011: IBM’s Watson AI beats the reigning human Jeopardy champions.
Also in 2011, Nissan sells about 20,000 LEAFs worldwide in its first full year of production; the Chevy Volt trails with 6,100 units, but it would overtake the LEAF the following year.
Also in 2011, Steve Jobs dies; Bill Gates wins. Only the good die young?
2012: Tesla Model S is released. Bougies rejoice.
2013: Uber explodes: at the beginning of the year, Uber is in only 17 urban areas. By the end of the year, it has spread to 60 cities across 6 continents. Also, CRISPR gene-editing technology debuts.
2015: Apple watch is released. No one rejoices.
Also in 2015, SpaceX makes the first successful landing of a space rocket booster. I’m still slack-jawed every time I watch one of those landings!
AI — 2016: Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo AI beats world Go champion Lee Sae Dol.
2017: Waymo begins “early rider program” for free rides in driverless cars (with safety drivers) in Phoenix, Nevada.
2019: Facebook releases the first Oculus Quest Virtual Reality (VR) headset. Also, RoboBurger, the first fully automated restaurant-quality burger chef is installed in the Newport Centre Mall in New Jersey.
2020s
2020: Waymo’s early rider program for driverless cars in Phoenix becomes a fully autonomous public, for-hire ride-share service; rides still have safety drivers, they will not be removed until 2023. Also, SpaceX ferries astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time.
2021: Facebook becomes Meta, but the eponymous metaverse never arrives (so far!)
AI — 2023: Artificial Intelligence (AI) introduces itself to the world with the Dall-E text-to-image generator and the Chat GPT chatbot. It quickly becomes the fastest growing “new” technology ever.
Also in 2023, SpaceX blew up its first gigantic Starship 1.
2024: It should be the year of humanoid AI robots, and the progress has been spectacular so far, but we’ll have to wait and see if they make it.
Also in 2024, Apple cancels its long-rumored Apple Car project; and they release the Vision Pro headset, which they say is not for VR, it is for “3D spatial computing”, whatever that is; we’ll have to wait and see if the VisionPro and 3D Spacial Computing catch on.
Also in 2024, SpaceX is still trying to fly its Starship 1 without it blowing up; we’ll have to wait and see if it succeeds.
????? What else will 2024 bring us?
