Technology of 1960's

By isa2028527

  • Direct Distance Dialing

    Direct Distance Dialing
    The 60s marked the spread of direct dialing technology, allowing folks to reach a friend outside their local area without the help of an operator.
    Direct dialing may seem a trivial advancement when viewed from afar, but it majorly progressed the telephone’s ultimate mission: connecting people instantly, regardless of the space between them.
  • Period: to

    1960's

  • Telstar

    Telstar
    The first commercial satellite, Telstar 1 had its origins in a partnership between Bell Labs (which built it), NASA, AT&T, the UK’s General Post Office (back when it was handling Britain’s telecom services), and France Telecom. The satellite is less than three feet long but weighs about 170 pounds and used solar power when it was in service.
    It was the first device our race used to relay phone calls, fax images, and television pictures, including the first transatlantic TV feed, through space.

  • LED

    LED
    The first LED was developed by Nick Holonyak Jr., often referred to as the “father of the LED”, working as a scientist for General Electric in 1962.
    The LED is still incredibly common today, especially since the discovery of white LEDs in the late 1990s, which made it a technology that could replace the common incandescent forms of light.

  • BASIC

    BASIC
    Short for “Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code,” BASIC was created by two Dartmouth professors, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, in 1964.
    That the language was accessibly teachable, and that the language was designed and fostered in an environment built on teaching, contributed greatly to the expansion of its user base. And this was key: the act and culture of computing were essentially democratized.

  • Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM)

    Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM)
    Invented in 1968 by Robert H. Dennard, who received his doctorate at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, the chip vastly increased the memory capacity of computers at a cheaper price.
    Some form of DRAM happily sits in the intestines of your favorite devices: gaming consoles, phones, computers, digital camera, Roku stick, so on and so forth.