Gallery: The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 8: 1971-1980
01appleii
 Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest. Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people, places and things of their day. From the first transatlantic radio transmissions to cellphones, from vacuum tubes to microprocessors, we'll run down the most important advancements in technology, science, sports and more. This week's installment takes us back to 1971-1980, when lasers were weaponized, the Pentagon Papers were leaked and videogames were born. We don't expect you to agree with all of our picks, or even some of them. That's fine. Tell us what you think we've missed and we'll publish your list later. __Above:__ 1977: The Apple II (Gadgets) ---------------------------- The Apple II was one of the first personal computers to catch on with the public, which made it a forerunner in the PC revolution that led us to our current tech-gorged way of life. The almond-colored computer was introduced on April 16, 1977, by a then little-known startup called Apple Computer Inc. at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. Sales didn't begin until June 10, 1977, but once they did, they took off. The Apple II was a hit and, as a result, the world was introduced to Apple co-founders Steve Jobs (then Apple CEO) and Steve Wozniak (who was the lead designer of the Apple II). Still, from this 8-bit computer, no one foresaw an age of iPods, and later iPhones and iPads from the two young entrepreneurs. In 1977, the Apple II started at a price of $1,298 and shipped with a 1MHz processor and 4KB of RAM, though there was an upgrade to 48KB of RAM that pushed the price to $2,700. Early on, home TVs were used as computer monitors and the device could only display capital letters. One of the Apple II's killer apps -- back then known more commonly as a program -- was VisiCalc's spreadsheet software, which helped the machine catch on with both schools and small businesses. Production of the Apple II line didn't officially end until 1993, though it was largely overshadowed by the Macintosh line of computers, which was introduced in 1984. *Photo: [Marcin Wichary](http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2151368358/in/photostream/)/Flickr*
02lasers-darpa
1975: Weapons-Grade Lasers (War) -------------------------------- The early 1960s might have seen the advent of the laser but it was in the 1970s that the military took those concentrated light beams and developed them further. They packed them with more punch and developed blaster mechanisms to bring about killer laser weapons. The simplistic lasers of the 1960s used energy from a flash lamp to excite atoms. When these energized atoms came into contact with photons (the elementary particles of light) the result was that more and more photons were produced – and that’s what a laser is, a concentrated beam of photons. In 1973 the Department of Defense had the idea of manufacturing lasers with a more powerful energy source than the humble flash lamp. They wanted to create a weapons-grade laser. That’s why they partnered up with TRW Inc., a former giant in the defense contractor world. They decided to use energy released from a chemical reaction between hydrogen and fluoride to excite atoms and produce the photons. It worked; they created the world’s first high-energy laser. At 100 kilowatts it was 100 times more powerful than the earlier lasers. A couple of years later the U.S. Navy took the understanding gained from TRW’s work and tinkered with it to build a laser weapon. In 1975 they successfully managed to amplify the laser up to 250 kilowatts. Three years later in 1978 they used the laser to shoot down a missile in mid flight for the first time. Chemical lasers have been in constant development over the last 30 years, which makes them the most established laser weapon technology – but they’re not without their caveats. You need a ready supply of chemicals on hand and the machinery also tends to be bulky. Both create practical problems if you’re trying to put a laser weapon onboard a ship. An electrical laser is a much better fit with the Navy’s infrastructure. The “Navy Laser Weapon System” (NLWS) is one of the most recent successes in the laser weapons world, which is powered by electricity, and in 2009 it managed to track, engage and destroy five aerial drones. The next big thing will be a laser cannon, if you can believe the Navy. For years they’ve persistently promised that what sounds like a *Star Wars*-esque weapon is within the near future’s reach. That’s why the military is now pursuing laser weapons like the NLWS because they make the possibility of a laser cannon more likely. They address the issue of practical power and they concentrate light through a solid medium such as crystal – and these solid-state lasers are much easier to scale down to a realistic size. *Image: DARPA*
Julian Wasser03daniel-ellsberg
1971: The Pentagon Papers (Security) ------------------------------------ Perhaps one of the biggest threats to speech in the United States is a concept known as prior restraint – where information or speech is censored prior to publication. On June 30, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court said President Richard M. Nixon did not have executive authority to prevent *The New York Times* from publishing the classified Pentagon Papers. It was the first time the government exercised prior restraint against a major newspaper since the Abraham Lincoln administration. In short, the Supreme Court said the First Amendment superseded the chief executive's desire to keep classified information secret. The Supreme Court lifted a restraining order and the newspaper published the Pentagon Papers. The papers, leaked to the newspaper by a U.S. military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, was a classified review of the United States' involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. *Photo: Anti war activist Daniel Ellsberg (left) speaking with his lawyer Leonard Boudin while on trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press. Credit: Julian Wasser/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images*
KHUE BUI04mia-hamm-title-ix
1972: Title IX (Sports) ----------------------- You cannot overstate the importance of Title IX and the impact it had on sports. Simply put, the 1972 Title IX Education Amendment barred discrimination on the basis of gender by schools that receive federal money. The goal was to provide women with greater opportunities in higher education, but the law’s greatest legacy may be the sweeping impact it had on sports. The words “sports” and “athletics” appear nowhere in the law, which states, “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Yet Title IX leveled the playing field, if you’ll pardon the pun, by requiring colleges to offer athletic scholarships and funding in proportion to their gender balance. This fundamentally changed sports by exponentially expanding athletic opportunities for women. Even now people argue the nuances of Title IX’s impact, and critics say it has, among other things, led to the dismantling of some men’s athletic programs. But the law unquestionably created unprecedented opportunities for girls and women, paving the way for the likes of Lisa Leslie, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Mia Hamm. Before Title IX was signed on June 23, 1972, some 310,000 girls and women were playing high school and college sports. Today there are more than 3.3 million. During the 1972 Olympics, the last before Title IX, American women won 19 medals. This year, on the 40th anniversary of Title IX, women thoroughly dominated the 2012 Summer Games and athletes like Gabby Douglas, Missy Franklin, Serena Williams and Hope Solo are among the finest athletes of their era. *Photo: The United States' Mia Hamm (9) dribbles past Germany's Sandra Minnert during the first half of a Women's World Cup quarterfinal match at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, in this July 1, 1999 file photo. Credit: Khue Bui/AP.*
05ibm-3800
1970s: Rise of the Printers (Design) ------------------------------------ The 1970s saw the rise of the computer printer, the importance of which is only now, after nearly 50 years, beginning to erode. Though laser, dot matrix, and inkjet printers weren’t all invented in the '70s, they all reached viability in that decade, allowing users to easily create a physical representation of something digital. The dot-matrix printer, an impact-driven system that used tiny dots to make up full letters, was introduced by several companies in 1970. Although Xerox PARC had a laser printer in 1969, the first commercially available version arrived from IBM in 1976. Like the laser printer, the inkjet wasn’t exactly new, but in 1976 IBM developed a continuous-jet version with greater control that used less ink. These machines, which continued to grow in resolution and color capability, turned digital creations into physical output that graphic designers could then print out, rearrange, cut, move around, and most importantly, lay out. *Image: IBM*
06altair
1974: The Altair (Computers) ---------------------------- Between 1971 and 1980, [Ray Tomilson sowed the seeds of modern e-mail](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/ray-tomlinson-email/) with the APRAnet's "SNDMSG" command. [Bob Kahn](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/bob-kahn-internet-hall-of-fame/) and [Vint Cerf](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/business/2012/04/epicenter-isoc-famers-qa-cerf/) sowed the seeds of the modern internet with TCP/IP. And Dennis Richtie and Ken Thompson [sowed the seeds for so many other things](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/thedennisritchieeffect/) with UNIX and C programming language. But if you twist our arm and force us to pick one seminal computing moment from the '70s, it has to be the arrival of the Altair, one of the first personal computers. The Altair 8800 kits started shipping in December 1974, and then, a month later, the machine appeared on the cover of *Popular Electronics*. It introduced a new breed of computer to homes across the country, but it also inspired a generation of computer pioneers. In April 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded a new company just build a programming language for the Altair. They called it Microsoft. *Top image: [wtpc6800](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Altair_8800_Computer.jpg)/Wikipedia. Secondary image: Popular Electronics.*
07atari
1970s: Atari (Games) -------------------- Contrary to popular belief, *Pong* was not the first arcade game and the Video Computer System was not the first home gaming machine, but they were the products that took games from an odd curiosity enjoyed by engineers to a pop-culture phenomemon. There was no videogame industry at the dawn of the 1970s, and by the decade’s close the videogame business was generating billions of dollars in revenue. And Atari got the lion’s share. Founder Nolan Bushnell was a carnival barker and computer nerd who believed that the customers on the midway he worked would drop a quarter into a computer game if such a thing were to exist. He eventually brought *Pong* to the home, but the real winner was the VCS, which allowed users to buy new cartridges: Home *Pong* was a throwaway toy, but the Atari VCS was a vital component of the living room. Atari was the first test run for the videogame business, showing later innovators what to do -- and what to avoid; Atari collapsed at the beginning of the 80s. *Photo: [moparx](http://www.flickr.com/photos/moparx/3997531327/sizes/l/in/photostream/)/Flickr*
08close-encounters
1970s: Modern Sci-Fi Extraterrestrials (Entertainment) ------------------------------------------------------ After decades of sci-fi films filled with chintzy flying saucers, clanking space robots and cheesy aliens, the 1970s hit our imaginations hard with extraterrestrials that expanded our notion of what life on other planets might look like, at least from a pop culture perspective. In 1977, *Star Wars*' chaotic cantina scene offered a peek at the multitude of interstellar races in George Lucas' universe, but Han Solo's trusty sidekick [Chewbacca](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chewbacca "Chewbacca") finally gave us an alien we could believe in. Towering above humans, covered in brown hair and speaking only in a growling form of speech halfway between dog and bear, Chewie put a new, noble face on human-alien interaction. Later that year and closer to home, Steven Spielberg blew audiences' minds with *Close Encounters of the Third Kind,* in which the aliens came to Earth in the most exotic spaceship ever seen. These interstellar travelers — exhibiting the bulbous heads and thin limbs of [aliens known as Greys](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_alien "greys") in UFO circles — came in peace (and communicated with a memorable, five-note musical motif). Nothing to fear here, aside from a government cover-up, maybe a little psychic damage and the possibility of being sucked up into the stars. But the decade ended on a far darker note: Ridley Scott's *Alien*, with its horrifying H.R. Giger-inspired killing machines known as [Xenomorphs](http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Xenomorph "alien Xenomorph"), took the malevolent extraterrestrial popularized in '50s B-movies to a terrifying new extreme. *Image: Close Encounters of the Third Kind*
Daimler AG, Stuttgart09daimler-abs
1970s: Anti-Lock Braking System (Vehicles) ------------------------------------------ The invention and widespread implementation of the anti-lock braking system (ABS) certainly isn't the sexiest of automotive innovations, but it was the catalyst for dozens of driver-safety systems that save lives today and will drive our cars tomorrow. The principle behind ABS is pretty simple: The brake at each wheel is individually actuated to prevent the tire from locking up and the driver losing control. In a vehicle without ABS, if you mash the brake pedal into the carpet, all four wheels lock and you're skidding without any directional control. Rather than have four brake pedals (and the need for new appendages), you've got computers doing the work for you, allowing you to slow down and stop more quickly, while maintaining steering control. ABS was originally fitted to aircraft in the late 1920s, but its automotive application didn't come to fruition until the 1970s when General Motors, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and other automakers began adopting the technology on their higher-end models. That tech eventually filtered down to bargain-basement rides and is now mandatory on all new vehicles sold in the U.S. The system was a turning point in automotive safety measures and, joined with traction control, radar-assisted cruise control, stereo cameras and a range of other safety-focused technologies, these disparate bits of advanced controls will form the basis for autonomous cars. *Image: Daimler*
10eggleston-tricycle
1970s: Color Fine-Art Photography (Photography) ----------------------------------------------- Though the first CCD sensors started development in the ‘70s and pornography from the decade blazed a permanent aesthetic brand on society's retina, the main pivotal shift in photography came from photographers like Stephen Shore and William Eggleston (above). They pioneered many of the trends that came to be standard in fine-art color photography. Shore in particular was one of the first photographers to use color images to portray the banal in a way that was considered beautiful. The book *American Surfaces*, which he shot when he was in his mid-20s, strung these trivial and somewhat bland pictures together into an artistic narrative. The book documented '70s America in a way no one else had done. It was a vibe that many seminal photographers were starting to feel. With Nan Goldin’s series on the subcultures of New York City, Eggleston’s stunning photographs of the benign and the galvanizing early self-portraits of Cindy Sherman, color art photography was on its way to becoming a legitimate artistic medium. Photos became collectable art and numerous artists started to use photography as a medium. The MOMA and other major museums started to hold regular photography exhibits. Even Helen Levitt and Garry Winogrand were experimenting with color in the ‘70s, although we would not see this work until years later. *Photo: William Eggleston*
Hank Morgan11benoit-mandelbrot
1975: Fractals (Science) ------------------------ How long is England’s coastline? A seemingly innocuous question with a pretty profound answer: It depends on how big your ruler is. If you measure the length of the coast in 1-mile increments, you get one answer. But a 10-foot ruler would be able to wrap around more curves, and a 1-inch ruler even more. As you go to finer and finer scales, the coastline’s length grows and grows. Such thoughts were on the mind of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot during the 20th century. In 1975, Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to describe systems that appear self-similar at different scales, often containing a complex pattern repeating itself. Such mathematical objects are very common in nature. A single peak often resembles the mountain it is part of, in the same way that each branch of a tree is like a miniature version of the tree entire. A bay or inlet can also contain the entire complexity of a coastline, which has a fractal dimension winding between one-dimensional and two. Fractal comes from the Latin word *fractus*, meaning broken or fractured, but are often considered a fundamental feature of the universe. They can be found in snowflake patterns, Romanesco broccoli, and blood vessel branching. Fractals play an important role in the mathematics of chaos theory and often make beautiful appearances in modern art. The realistic computer graphics underlying most movie and TV special effects would be impossible without our fractal knowledge. *Photo: Hank Morgan/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images*
Paul Vathis12three-mile-island
1974: Nixon's Nuclear-Powered Baby (Business) --------------------------------------------- Nothing says the ‘70s like the Shah of Iran, his Shah uniform dripping in gold brocade and medals, beneath the line, “Guess Who’s Building Nuclear Power Plants.” The image and phrase (not asked as a question apparently since the punch line is staring you in the face) were embedded in an ad bankrolled by five New England power companies hoping to convince Americans to go nuclear. The tagline? “Nuclear Energy. Today’s Answer.” Nuclear energy was the answer for a time in the 1970s. Utilities across the United States were anticipating a third consecutive decade of massive growth in electricity demand, and pointed to power generated from atoms as the solution. That belief was practically enshrined as gospel when in 1973 the Arab oil embargo tripled the price of petroleum. Then-president Richard Nixon, in what would be the last sputtering of his administration, in 1974 offered the nation “Project Independence,” which called for nuclear energy to be the prime source of power in the United States by the end of the century, with hundreds of nuclear reactors built and brought online. “We will break the back of the energy crisis; we will lay the foundation for our future capacity to meet America's energy needs from America's own resources,” Nixon said when introducing his nuclear-powered baby. Like most of Nixon’s plans in those days, it didn’t come to pass, at least not in the United States. France did go nuclear, and still generates the vast majority of its power from nuclear reactors. Japan went on a reactor construction spree too, and only with the recent Fukushima meltdown has it rethought its nuclear ambitions. In the United States, time and construction costs ballooned through the mid- and late 1970s, and by the time the Three Mile Island disaster occurred in 1979 sentiment had turned against nuclear power. From hero to horror in less than a decade. Still there are those who still believe nuclear has a place in the United States energy portfolio. In February of this year, for the first time since 1979, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved licenses to build two new nuclear reactors at the Vogt nuclear power plant about 170 miles east of Atlanta. *Photo: A Pennsylvania state police officer and plant security guards stand outside the closed front gate to the Metropolitan Edison nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979 after the plant was shut down following a partial meltdown. Credit: Paul Vathis/AP.*
