Changes since My Birth

Growing up and even recently I have heard from those older than I tell me about how much things have changed over their life time. So I decided to look at  just what has changed since my birth in 1959. I could write reams on the advances in health care, automobiles and technology.  So I have picked out a few items that I feel are important to mention in the space of this blog entry.

What was going on 54 years ago? At the start of  my birth year, Television programs included "Rawhide", "Bonanza" and "The Twilight Zone", movies included "Some Like it Hot", "Ben Hurr" and "North by Northwest". Alaska is admitted to the union and becomes the 49th state and Hawaii is admitted to the Union and became the 50th State. The Boeing 707 Jet Airliner comes into service and little girls love the Barbie Dolls made by Mattel. Fidel Castro comes to power in Cuba.

Since 1959 we have seen a lot of develops and tragedy. The St. Lawrence Seaway was official completed and links the Great Lakes to the rest of the world.  The last musical from Rodgers and Hammerstein “The Sound of Music” opens on Broadway. The charted plan transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper goes down in an Iowa snowstorm, killing all four occupants on board. The tragedy is later termed “The Day the Music Died” popularized in Don McLean’s song “American Pie”.

The Microchip and the computer modem were developed in the USA.

The first kidney transplant was in 1963. The first heart transplant was performed in 1967. The first artificial heart was installed in 1982. The first heart and lung transplant was performed in 1987.

The laser was invented in 1960. In 1964 it was used in eye surgery for the first time.

Meanwhile the invention of fiber optics in the 1950s made possible the development of endoscopes in the 1960s.

The 1960's were years of unrest in America over the Vietnam War.  We saw the start of the hippie movement.  It was a time of awakening, a time of rethinking old methods, and the computer was becoming a part of this new world.  Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL) was developed by a team drawn from several computer manufacturers and the Pentagon. Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny created BASIC, an easy-to-learn programming language, for their students at Dartmouth College. The first industrial robot was built in 1962.

Cuban Missile Crisis On October 22, 1962, President Kennedy instituted”quarantine" on the shipment of offensive missiles to Cuba from the Soviet Union. He also warned Soviet Union that the launching of any missile from Cuba against nations in the Western Hemisphere would bring about U.S. nuclear retaliation on the Soviet Union. A negotiated settlement was achieved in a few days.

Hewlett-Packard entered the general purpose computer business with its HP-2115 for computation, offering a computational power formerly found only in much larger computers. The Apollo Guidance Computer made its debut orbiting the Earth on Apollo 7.   AT&T Bell Laboratories programmers Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed the UNIX operating system on a spare DEC minicomputer. Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the Moon; Internet (ARPA) goes online.

The first pocket calculator was sold in 1971.

Evacuation from Vietnam. On April 3, 1975, President Ford reported U.S. naval vessels, helicopters, and Marines had been sent to assist in evacuation of refugees and US nationals from Vietnam. South Vietnam. On April 30, 1975, President Ford reported that a force of 70 evacuation helicopters and 865 Marines had evacuated about 1,400 U.S. citizens and 5,500 third country nationals and South Vietnamese from landing zones in and around the U.S. Embassy, Saigon and Tan Son Nhut Airport.

Treatment for infertility also improved in the late 20th century. The first test tube baby was born in 1978.

In 1980, the medical field was able to have Smallpox eradicated and in 1981, Scientists identify AIDS

 

In 1989 we experienced the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe

We went from 0 computers in the home to 311 million in less than 30 years.

Now as I stated in the beginning of the blog entry, this is only a fraction of what we have experienced and the advances that have been made in the past 54 years. I can’t wait to see just how far we will progress in the next 54 years.

Keep Dancin’ Larry B.