Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Pop culture backdrop


Childhood Toys:

-Mr. Potato Head

The first toy ever advertised on Television, and released in 1952. It made four million dollars in the first year (by today’s standards, that’s over $30 billion).

-The Hula Hoop The Hula Hoop started in Australia as an exercise ring ( made of Bamboo ), a small American toy company Wham-O saw the hoop and made it in plastic and introduced it in 1958 renamed it the Hula-Hoop and it became an instant success with children and parents making it the success of the year .

-While novelty items (which tend to find an audience beyond children, and millions of uses of their own) such as Frisbees and Ant Farms were developed as well in 1957 and 1956 respectively, it was the Barbie Doll, next to Potato Head that has probably maintained the largest following since then. First released in 1959, Barbie Dolls only grew over the years.

Later Toys:

-The Easy Bake Oven was released in 1963 as an extension of the 1950s “homebody” image so often illustrated on TV for young girls.

-In the realm of board games, ingenuity continued to develop and games like Operation arrived, utilizing a simple electric board concept to buzz a losing player for missing their goal. Etch-a-sketch made its first appearance in 1960 and the simple, yet party style addictive Twister was introduced in 1966.

-GI Joe, first released in 1964 is considered one of the biggest toys of the decade.

Technology:

1960 – The female birth control contraceptive, the pill, was released in the United States after Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

1967 – First heart transplantation operation.

Electronics and communications

1960 – The first working laser was demonstrated in May by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories.

1962 – First trans-Atlantic satellite broadcast via the Telstar satellite.

1962 – The first computer video game, Spacewar!, is invented.

1963 – The first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom 2 is launched.

1963 – Touch-Tone telephones introduced.

1963 – Video Recorder The Nottingham Electronic Valve company produces the first home video recorder called the "Telcan".

1964 – The first successful Minicomputer, Digital Equipment Corporation’s 12-bit PDP-8, is marketed.

1964 – The programming language BASIC was created.

1967 – PAL and SECAM broadcast color TV systems start publicly transmitting in Europe.

1967 – The first Automatic Teller Machine is opened in Barclays Bank, London.

1968 – The first public demonstration of the computer mouse, the paper paradigm Graphical user interface, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, and hypertext.

CARS:

The 1960s saw the emergence of pony cars and muscle cars in America, where performance of vehicles mattered the most. The Ford Mustang was another popular car of this period and enjoyed a great deal of fanfare till Chevrolet released its Camaro Z28 in 1967.

(Above) Ford Mustang: 1964

(Below) Camaro: 1967

No comments:

Post a Comment