Ali's Blog

Love this quote heard at the recent Apple Educators Summit in Hong Kong- “Technology is only technology to those born before the technology”.

Then yesterday we had friends for lunch and we started to talk about the tools we used at school- both Howard and I (being older) used slide rules and logarithm tables, whereas Juanita and Philip had the luxury of calculators. Now we are equipping our children with a far more powerful tool by encouraging different learning strategies to look at the best ways of doing mental arithmetic. It was interesting discovering how each person differed in how they would add up a series of numbers.

Anyway after they had gone I started to muse on that technology quote and looked up things invented since the 1960s (my birth decade). When I look at the list I realise I grew up in a very different world!

DECADE: 1960-1970

——————

1960: halogen lamp invented

1961: valium invented

1962: audio cassettes developed

1963: pop-top cans

1964: BASIC computer language; permanent-press materials

1965: Astroturf; Kevlar; soft contact lenses

1966: electronic fuel injection developed for cars

1967: first handheld calculator

1968: Douglas Englebert invents the computer mouse

1969: ATM machine invented; Arpanet also appears and bar code scanners

developed

DECADE: 1970-1980

——————

1970: Alan Shugart (chairman of hard drive supplier Seagate) invents

the floppy disk

1971: Intel’s 4004 is first microprocessor design; dot-matrix printer,

VCR and LCD displays also invented

1972: first video game — Pong — invented

1973:  gene splicing invented; Ethernet networking invented at Xerox;

BIC develops disposable lighter; Black-Scholes pricing model developed

for options

1974: Post-it Notes and liposuction invented

1975: laser printer developed

1976: ink jet printing invented

1977: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) invented

1978: Visicalc spreadsheet introduced for PCs; first PC models appear

from Heathkit, Apple, Radio Shack

1979: Walkman invented by Sony; roller blades developed; Seymour Cray

designs the supercomputer

DECADE: 1980-1990

——————

1980: vaccine for hepatitis-B invented

1981: IBM introduces the PC and MS-DOS appears for the first time

1982: human growth hormones genetically engineered

1983: soft bifocal contact lenses introduced

1984:  Apple Macintosh popularizes the graphical interface; CD-ROMs

invented

1985: Microsoft brings out Windows 1.0

1986: Microsoft’s initial public offering (IPO); first disposable

camera introduced

1987: disposable contact lenses invented

1988: Doppler radar invented; first patent issued for

genetically-engineered animal issued

1989: first HDTV broadcasts in Japan

DECADE: 1990-2000

——————

1990: Tim Berners-Lee develops protocol for both World-wide web (WWW)

and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

1991: first digital answering machine

1992: smart pill invented

1993: Intel introduces Pentium family of 32-bit microprocessors

1994: first Internet audio broadcast from Interop

1995: DVD invented; Java language launched by Sun Microsystems;

RealAudio broadcasting introduced

1996: WebTV introduced

1997: gas-powered fuel cells developed

1998: Viagra developed

1999: Google.com is formed and the search engine goes into beta test

publicly

2000: mapping of human DNA completed

Posted on May 4th, 2009 under Educational bits and bobs, Odds & Ends, The internet and techie toys • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback