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In 1972, the “@” symbol made its debut in the world’s first networked emails. Credit for the adoption of the symbol to separate user names from computer hosts goes to Ray Tomlinson, a long-time computer scientist at the company Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which had won the contract in the late 1960s to create ARPANET, … Continue reading
On July 21, 1972, comedian George Carlin was arrested at Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Summerfest and charged with violating that state’s obscenity laws after performing his controversial routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” originally contained in his album Class Clown, recorded May 27, 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in California. “There are … Continue reading
On May 28, 1972, operatives from the Nixon White House broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate in Washington, DC, and installed bugging equipment, to monitor the party’s activities in the months leading up to the presidential election later that year. The burglars were tied to President Nixon’s re-election campaign. – the … Continue reading
The video game era began in 1972 with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, an at-home game console with primitive games consisting of nothing more than dots and lines – but nonetheless the world’s first home video game. In 1966 Ralph Baer, Chief Engineer for Equipment Design at the defense contractor Sanders Associates, began work … Continue reading
In January of 1972 the first tenants moved into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, an astounding piece of architecture that completed the twin towers of the massive development. At their completion the towers were the tallest buildings in the world (a short-lived distinction, since the taller Sears Tower … Continue reading
Histories have traced the lineage of the PC’s x86, the first PC, back to 1972, with Intel Corp.‘s introduction of the 8008 chip, the 8-bit follow-on to the 4-bit 4004, itself introduced in 1971 and remembered as the world’s first microprocessor. According to “Forgotten PC history: The true origins of the personal computer,” written by Lamont Wood and … Continue reading
Hippies were a dying breed in 1972, those peace-loving, longhaired boys and braless, braided-hair girls so in the know, so hip — “hippies” they became known in the early 1960s, a term popularized by San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon in writing about a local coffeehouse called the Blue Unicorn, where “the new generation of beatniks … Continue reading
Gloria Steinem declared 1971 the “Year of Women’s Liberation.” And even though a year later, in 1972, the Supreme Court would rule unconstitutional separate hiring practices for men and women, there was still no consensus among observers or advocates as to what the women’s movement was all about – were they liberationists or feminists? Yet … Continue reading
In 1972, with Marvin Gaye’s release of the landmark anthem “What’s Going On?”, soul music died. For a decade soul music had shared the top of the American charts with the Beatles and the Stones — The Beach Boys were deluged by the tidal wave of British acts crossing the Atlantic, while Elvis was sinking … Continue reading
Presley Draws 2 Generations of Fans by Grace Lichtenstein New York Times Saturday, June 10, 1972 In mink and in denim, in bleached blond bouffant and in shoulder-length shags, the fans of 37-year-old Elvis Presley flocked to Madison Square Garden last night to see the first live concert ever given in New York by the … Continue reading
Mark Walston 