Technology and progress explode at an exponential rate, especially today. But what about the year you were born? What was a big deal that year? What had just come out that changed the world?
There is, in fact, so much. Here are some of the most amazing inventions from every year between 1950 and 2000.
1950: The Credit Card
They say Frank McNamara forgot his wallet at home one day while trying to pay for a meal, and because of it, created the Diner’s Club card. As a charge card, this had to be paid off at the end of every month, a far cry from the credit cards that most people carry today.
1951: The Video Tape Recorder
Charles Ginsburg figured out how to convert live images from cameras into electrical impulses in 1951 while working as a researcher at Ampex Corporation.
1952: The Bar Code
Can you believe the bar code is this old? Though technically invented in 1948, inventors Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver were given a patent for it in 1952.
1953: The Double-Helix DNA Structure
Technically, nobody “invented” the DNA double-helix structure that we know today, but 1953 marked the discovery and the understanding of how these things work.
1954: Solar Cells
Research professionals at Bell Labs first debuted solar cells in 1954. The power to derive energy from the sun is one of the biggest breakthroughs of our time, though the original ’50s models didn’t really do too much by today’s standards.
Trending on Cheapism
1955: Velcro
This was another invention of the 40s, but it took until 1955 until there was a patent. Now we’re just waiting for somebody to make silent velcro like in “Garden State.”
1956: Ultrasound
The revolutionary development in pregnancy technology and medicine came about in 1956 by Ian Donald and Tom Brown in Glasgow, Scotland.
1957: The Birth Control Pill
Though it wasn’t approved by the FDA until 1960, the first contraceptive pill was invented in 1957. In only two years, more than a million women were using it.
Sign up for our newsletter
1958: The Integrated Circuit
The integrated circuit, which you may know commonly as the “microchip,” debuted as a big deal back in 1958. This was the first time multiple electronic components were connected together in this way; integrated, even.
1959: Barbie
Barbie always looks great, but she especially looks great for being 65 years old.
1960: The Laser
What would Bond villains have done without this important invention? Albert Einstein allegedly had a hand in this, with the theory of simulated emission.
1961: The Cordless Drill
Based on just how freeing it was when I got my first wireless pair of earphones, I have no doubt that the first moment using a cordless drill was a life-changing revelation.
1962: The LED
Nick Holonyak gets the credit for inventing LED, which as we all know, stands for light-emitting diodes. Thanks for all the traffic lights, Nick!
1963: The Lava Lamp
These things are 60s as it gets. I’m a sucker for them to this day.
1964: The Plasma Display
Plasma, which you may know from blood or sci-fi movies, also exists in TVs, thanks to Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, who found a way to emit ultraviolet light from plasma and create images.
1965: Kevlar
Kevlar is the foundation of the bulletproof vest, which I think we can all agree is one of the single best things we’ve come up with.
1966: The High-Speed Maglev Train
Though the concept was invented initially in 1909 earlier, the first paper about a successful test of the maglev (that’s magnetic levitation) train was written in 1966. Because there was no friction due to any pesky wheels, these trains could travel at much higher speeds than others of the time.
1967: The Portable Calculator
Jack Kilby, who you know from the integrated circuit nearly 10 years before, had another hit on his hands with the handheld calculator. Thanks for helping me pass math.
1968: 9-1-1
1968 feels weirdly old for our most centralized safety resource, but this was a huge step in public safety; the first call was made in February of that year.
1969: ARAPNET
Before the internet, there was ARAPNET, a computer network that made it possible to send and receive data between computers in tiny pieces. This is known as a public packet-switching system, and our best example of this is the modern day internet.
1970: The Daisy Wheel Printer
A decade before they became the standard for high-quality text printing, the daisy wheel printer was printing characters on paper by means of a rotating disk, known as a daisy wheel.
1971: Email
Big one alert! ARAPNET gets credit for the assist on this one, naturally, but 1971 marked the first time an email was ever sent.
1972: Magnetic Resonance Imaging
The first patent for the MRI came in 1972, though the concept was invented a year earlier. The rest of the ’70s exploded from then as a period of major MRI development.
1973: The Mobile Phone
Yep, the cell phone is 50 years old. Can you believe that? No app store here, but these things did in fact make phone calls without a wire.
1974: Rubik’s Cube
The favorite toy of geniuses and annoying people alike, the Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974 by somebody named, you guessed it, Erno Rubik.
1975: The Digital Camera
Steve Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, invented the first digital camera in 1975. Though it was a revelation for images to be stored digitally, the camera still took over two seconds to take a picture.
1976: The Apple I
This is where the story of one of the biggest tech companies in the world begins. Steve Wozniak designed this baby in 1976 and marked Apple’s first release.
1977: ‘Star Wars’
What began as a movie that nobody thought would work eventually turned into a multi-billion dollar franchise. ‘Star Wars’ is just as big of an invention as anything else.
1978: In Vitro Fertilization
This one is undoubtedly one of the biggest on the list. In Vitro Fertilization, which we know today as IVF, was a major benchmark in helping couples to conceive children. There have been incredible advancements since then, but it started in ‘78.
1979: The CD
That’s right, compact discs were pre-80s. Though they weren’t released in Japan until 1982, the first prototype was invented in 1979.
1980: The Hepatitis B Vaccine
It wasn’t introduced until two years later, but the first Hepatitis B vaccine was invented in 1980.
1981: The IBM Personal Computer
A full five years behind Apple, IBM released the first PC in 1981: the Model 5150.
1982: Diet Coke
Though the first diet soda was released 30 years earlier, Coca-Cola put its first diet soda into the ring in 1982, and created yet another one of the most successful beverages in history.
1983: Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol
You know this as TCP/IP today, AKA, the rules that devices have to follow when they communicate with each other over a network.
1984: DNA Fingerprinting
British geneticist and professor Alec Jeffreys invented DNA fingerprinting 30 years ago, and the impact it has had can’t be overstated.
1985: Nintendo Entertainment System
Of course, the actual biggest invention of 1985 was Doc Brown’s time machine, but if we’re referring to things that actually exist, the Nintendo is a close second. This changed modern video games as we know them, and it was our first introduction to our favorite mustachioed plumber.
1986: The Mir Space Station
The first modular space station, Mir, was a Soviet space station that orbited Earth until 2001, making it the longest-lasting space station we’ve ever had.
1987: GIFs
While working at CompuServe, Stephen Wilhite was told to compress images while keeping their color and sharpness, and we got GIFs out of the deal.
1988: Photoshop
Two brothers teamed up for this one to create an image-editing software, and after some development, the license was sold to Adobe in 1988.
1989: Gameboy
Interesting that 1989 saw the creation of both the Nintendo Gameboy and myself, two soon-to-be best friends.
1990: Archie
Eight years before Google, there was Archie. This was the first-ever search engine, and allowed users to search through a list of public file-transferring sites.
1991: Webcams
Where would we have been during the pandemic without these? The first-ever webcam was allegedly invented by a couple of Cambridge professors in order to keep track of who kept leaving the coffee pot empty.
1992: SMS Texting
Though the concept was invented in 1984 (and honestly, far before that with the invention of the telegram), the first text message was sent in 1992, and it simply read, “Merry Christmas.”
1993: The Pentium Processor
The first Pentium precessor core was released in 1993. Though pretty unimpressive by today’s standards, it was revolutionary for Intel and computing in the 90s.
1994: Bluetooth
The magic, wireless tech that we all enjoy so effortlessly today is actually 20 years old. Shout out to Dutch electrical engineer Jaap Haartsen for this one.
1995: DVDs
I cringe to think about the amount of money I spent maintaining a DVD collection. Too bad the cloud arrived in such a big way and turned my fun little collection into a lifetime of regret.
1996: USB
That stands for Universal Serial Bus, but I don’t need to tell you that. Ever since 1996, we’ve been able to walk around with digital data stored in a physical form. Wild stuff.
1997: The Prius
A landmark in hybrid car tech, the Prius came into the world in a big way in ‘97, and remains the best-selling hybrid car in the game.
1998: Google
That first ever Google landing page was launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and it’s not hyperbolic to say that the world has never been the same. Piggy-backing off Archie, Google today is worth about $2.5 billion.
1999: The Camera Phone
Today, cameras are an expected feature of a phone, but in 1999, the Japanese Kyocera Visual Phone was the first to do it.
2000: PlayStation 2
Though it pales in comparison to things like the invention of the internet and bulletproof vests, this was a significant moment in modern gaming. Plus, we all lived through Y2K and nobody saw that coming.
