This week in 1929, the year inextricably linked to the October stock market crash that plunged the country into the Great Depression, On With the Show opened at New York City’s Winter Garden Theater with sound and color.
CD was just beginning to catch on when Dire Straits released its fifth studio album Brothers in Arms in May 1985. Driven by the iconic (and controversial) hit single “Money For Nothing,” the album was the first to sell one million copies in the CD format and the first to outsell its LP counterpart.
Almost a decade after Elvis Presley was dubbed “Elvis the Pelvis” for the “vulgar” act of gyrating his hips on national television, the FBI in reacting to an outcry from parents launched a formal investigation into the supposedly pornographic lyrics of the R&B standard “Louie, Louie,” written and recorded by Richard Berry in 1957 but popularized by The Kingsmen in 1963.
Twelve years ago this month, Jawed Karim uploaded the first video to the new YouTube video-sharing website he and his partners Chad Hurley and Steve Chen had just created.
Twenty years ago this month, the first DVD players were introduced in the U.S. after numerous false starts and delays over copyright concerns raised by Hollywood movie studios. DVD offered better picture quality than VHS tape plus the convenience of a CD-like disc that wasn’t prone to wear.
Thirty-six years ago this month, RCA introduced its long-awaited videodisc player, nine years after it demonstrated that it was possible to store color video on, and play it back from, an LP-like 12-inch disc.
Thirty-one years ago this month, the NFL voted to adopt limited use of instant replay as an officiating aid. That first season saw an average of 1.6 reviews per game for a total of 374 plays, only 10 percent of which ended with a reversal of the ruling on the field.
Radio may be considered passé by some but it has been a staple in the lives of Americans for nearly 100 years and will be around for many years to come. Ninety-three years ago this month, on the night of February 8, 1924, AT&T made history when it conducted the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast from a banquet hall in Chicago’s Congress Hotel.
Sixty-six years ago this week, Los Angeles TV station KTLA made history when it broadcast the live detonation of an atomic bomb dropped in the Nevada desert, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Thirty-three years ago, Apple’s now-famous “1984” TV commercial was broadcast during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII (the then Los Angeles Raiders pummeled the Washington Redskins 38-9), introducing in dramatic fashion a machine that would redefine home computing: The Macintosh.
Forty-nine years ago this month, Ralph Baer applied for a patent on a TV game system he designed that would become the first-ever home video game console.
CES, the mother of all consumer technology shows, ended on Sunday, marking its 50th anniversary with a record breaking turnout of 3,800 exhibitors, spanning 2.6 million square feet of space, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 175,000 attendees. By comparison, the first show, held in New York in 1967, had 200 exhibitors and attracted around 17,000 attendees.
When the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail opened in theaters 18 years ago this week, the Internet was crossing over into the mainstream—as evidenced by the movie’s title, borrowed from AOL’s iconic email notification “voice.”