The 1970s

Beatles gave their last group performance on January 3, 1970. After their extremely popular career in the 60's, selling over 1 billion records around the world, the group split up a few months after the performance and went their separate ways. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked the Beatles as #1 in the top 100 greatest artists of all time.

On January 14, 1970, Diana Ross and the Supremes gave their farewell live concert in Las Vegas at the Frontier Hotel. They had been singing as a group since 1959, singing doo wop, soul pop and disco tunes. Diana Ross left to pursue a solo career in 1970.

April 10, 1970, Paul McCartney announces the release of his 1st solo album. The name of the album was "McCartney". All instrumentals and lyrics were performed solely by Paul McCartney with the exception of a few back up lyrics that were sang by his wife, Linda McCartney.

September 9, 1970, Elvis Presley starts out on his first concert tour since 1958 in Las Vegas. He later met President Nixon at the White House on December 21, 1970.

March 12 and 13, 1971 at the Filmore East in the east village of New York City, The Almond Brother's Band plays a legendary performance. The Almond Brothers Band was formed in 1969 in Jacksonville Florida. The band was referred to as the "Principle architects of southern rock". They also incorporated some blues rock and hard rock into their style.

On July 3, 1971, the lead singer of the group The Doors, Jim Morrison, was found dead in his bathtub in Paris France. No autopsy was performed because the medical examiner found no signs of foul play. This left the actual cause of death up to speculation.

January 14, 1973 Elvis Presley performs a charity concert in Hawaii for the Kui Lee cancer foundation. This concert was the first live satellite broadcast concert which reached 1 billion viewers live. The album from this show went #1 and spent a year in the charts. It was also the last #1 album Elvis had.

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was released on March 17, 1973. Dark Side of the Moon was a landmark in rock history.

John Lennon made his last public appearance with Elton John in 1974.

On April 23, 1976 the Ramones, a punk rock group, release their first album in their own name.

Boston releases their debut album which became one of the world's fastest selling debut albums of all time on August 25, 1976.

The Eagles release their big hit album, Hotel California, on December 8, 1976. The album was #1 for eight weeks in 1977 (not consecutively) and has sold over 16 million copies since being released.

On February 4, 1977, Fleetwood Mac releases their Grammy winning album, The Rumors. In 1978, this album won a Grammy for album of the year. This album has sold over 30 million copies as of 2007.

On July 24, 1977, Led Zeppelin played their last concert in the United States. During the concert, a brawl broke out between band members and their promoters staff which ended with criminal charges filed against some of the band members.

August 16, 1977, The "King", Elvis Presley, is found dead in his home in Memphis Tennessee.

From January through May, 1978, the Bee Gees dominate the charts with their hit album from the show Saturday Night Fever. The album was selling 1 million copies a week at one time during this period.

The Blues Brothers make their first appearance on Saturday Night Live on April 22, 1978.

June 2, 1978, Bruce Springsteen releases Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Disco's biggest year was 1979 where The Bee Gees and Donna Summer dominate the charts with several #1 hits. Rod Stewart and ELO go disco with Do You Think I'm Sexy and Discovery.

introduced in the 1950's, telephone booth stuffing became popular again in 1970. College kids would squeeze themselves into a telephone booth one at a time until no one else could fit. Professors all over the world saw the students skipping class to participate, trying to break the record. The record was 25 people in one booth.

Pet Rocks - Everyone wanted one. They would give their rock a name and play with it all day long. They came in a box with a straw bed.

The Rubik's Cube - Invented by Erno Rubik, became one of the most popular toys worldwide. Kids spent hours trying to solve the puzzle. Some even became addicted.

Mood Rings - Changed color depending on your mood. Black meant you were mad. Blue meant you were moody.

Lava Lamps - A fad carried over from the 60's. The Lava Lamp was still a very popular item of the 70's.

Bean Bag Chairs - Another popular item found in many households.

Cassette tapes were introduced in the 70's. Cassette tapes were one of the first media items every day people could record sound on. The cassette tape players could record music, people talking, anything you wanted to record and listen to over and over.

In the 1970's, people felt individualism and self expression were extremely important when it came to attire. The "Hippie" craze rolled into the 70's from the 60's, but with a slight change. There were two different types of hippies in the 70's. The "anything goes" hippie and the "Designer Hippie".

Working women wore lines of suites by Karl Lagerfield who was the designer under the Chloe' label. The tomato red linen suit jacket was also created in this era. It was worn with a white silk crepe blouse and soft leather elastic wasted pants with seams in the knees.

One of the more popular men's attire was the white disco suit. The "anything goes" group wore any clothes they wanted even if it didn't match.

Surfer hair and platform shoes were also big in the 70's. Girls wore long hair parted in the center. Tube tops and crop tops showing girls midsections were very popular for casual dress.

Like today, people went to the movie theaters to watch their favorite movies. But the Drive In's were very popular back then especially for families and teen agers. Drive In's all had at least a big picture screen a projection booth, a concession stand and a parking area. Most had a playground for the kids to play on before the movie started and during the half time show. Speakers were placed on poles next to all parking spaces for customers to put on their car windows so they could hear the movies that were playing. While Drive In's are still around today, they were much more popular in the 70's.

The 70's were noted for films with creative and memorable subject matter. It reflected the creative and memorable subject matter of the times. With the Vietnam war still going on, the Kent State Massacre, the Watergate scandal and President Nixon's fall and many other scandals, people lost their confidence in the government and their faith in institutions. This all brought forth the movies The Strawberry Statement in 1970, The Parallax View in 1974, and All the Presidents Men in 1976.

But, the most popular shows are still heard of today. The Godfather released in 1972, The Exorcist in 1973, Jaws in 1975, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Godfather in 1977 brought in the most excitement.

While cable was around in 1970, those living in the country still had to use an antenna to receive television broadcasts. I remember in my home, since we lived 10 miles from the nearest town and cable was not available, we had 4 channels available to watch. I lot of households still had black and white TV's.

Some of the popular sitcoms available in the 70's included All in the Family, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Different Strokes, The Bob Newhart Show, Mork and Mindy, The Partridge Family, Soap and Taxi.

Long running dramas included Charlie's Angels, Beretta, The Incredible Hulk, Little House on the Prairie, Mad Squad, Rockford Files, Starskey and Hutch, and The Waltons.

Other popular shows were Buck Rogers, Dukes of Hazard, Nancy Drew, Bionic Woman, Six Million Dollar Man, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Sonny and Cher, and Wonder Woman.

1971
Ray Tomlinson invented E-Mail while working for as a Computer Engineer at ARPAnet. He was experimenting with a program used by ARPANET called SNDMSG. The ARPANET programmers would leave messages for other users on a single computer using the SNDMSG program. Tomlinson used this program and developed a way to send electronic messages to any computer on the network using a file transfer protocol called CYPNET. He used the @ symbol to determine which computer the message was sent from. This was not something he was asked to invent from the company he worked for; he developed it because he thought it would be fun.
Other great inventions in 1971
LCD or Liquid Crystal Display, by James Fergason.
Microprocessor
Dot matrix
Food Processor
VCR
Pocket Calculator by the Sharp Corporation
Floppy Disk invented by Alan Shugart while working for IBM. He gives credit to David Noble as the true inventor.

1972 - 1975

Word Processor
Pong (First video Game) by Nolan Bushnell
Hacky Sack by John Stalberger and Mick Marshall
Computed Tomography: Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield
Stunt Kite - Peter Powell
First home video game - Table tennis Invented by Ralph Baer
CAT Scanner (Computerized axial tomography) by Godfrey
Ethernet - Bob Metcalfe and David Boggs
Personal Computer The Xerox Alto- Xerox PARC
Shrinky Dinks
Skylab - The US launched an unmanned space station in orbit
Rubik's Cube - Erno Rubik
The Post-it Note
Digital Camera - Steven Sasson
The Laser printer
Push through tab on drink cans
Hybrid vehicle - Victor Wouk

1976 - 1979
Gore Tex - waterproof breathable fabric by Robert Gore
Ink jet printer
Personal Stereo by Andreas Pavel
Cellular mobile Phone by Bell Labs
Top Trumps Card Game
Spring loaded camming device by Ray Jardine
The Spreadsheet
Simon the electronic Game
Cellular phones
The Walkman
Rollerblades - Scott and Brennan Olson