1950 – 1969
• (^) The American Telephone & Telegraph
Company makes the fi rst transatlantic satellite
transmission on 11 July, from Andover, Maine, to
Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall, via Telstar.
• (^) America launches fi rst communications satel-
lite, Echo 1.
• (^) UK: death of the News Chronicle; fi rst issue of
the Sunday Telegraph.
1962 UK: Pilkington Committee Report on
Broadcasting and the Shawcross Commission
Report on the Press.
• (^) First nights on UK TV for Z Cars, Steptoe and
Son and the satirical series Th at Was Th e Week
Th at Was. In the following year, Dr Who and
World in Action.
1963 Founding of International Publishing
Corporation (IPC); following year, IPC launches
the Sun, replacing the Daily Herald.
• (^) UK: BBC ends its ban on the mention of
religion, politics, royalty or sex in comedy
programmes.
• (^) University of Michigan scientists Emmett Leith
and Juris Upatnicks develop the fi rst hologram.
1964 BBC launches new channel, BBC2, in April.
• (^) UK starters: Match of the Day and Crossroads.
• (^) Radio Caroline, the fi rst British pirate radio
station goes on air.
1965 Via the Early Bird satellite on 2 May 300
million viewers in nine countries sample the
fi rst transatlantic programme relay; 15 days later
America’s NBC was fi rst with a colour transat-
lantic satellite programme transmission.
• (^) Infl uential drama-documentary, Cathy Come
Home, about Britain’s homeless is broadcast by
the BBC.
• (^) Smoking advertisements are banned from UK
television.
1966 Lord Th omson buys Th e Times.
• (^) China: Chairman Mao launches the Cultural
Revolution against ‘reactionary bourgeois ideas
in the sphere of academic work, education, art
and theatre and publishing’.
1967 First colour TV broadcast in the UK, BBC2,
1 July.
• (^) Marine Broadcasting Offences Act UK is
passed and outlaws pirate radio stations.
• (^) BBC Radio 1 is launched, 30 September.
• (^) The Postmaster-General, Edward Short MP,
opens BBC Radio Leicester, the fi rst local radio
station in the UK.
1968 In UK fi rst broadcast of comedy series Dad’s
Army.
1969 First commercially produced micropro-
cessor developed by Edward Hoff of the Intel
Corporation of California.
• (^) Australian Rupert Murdoch buys the Sun and
US, the same year as Peter Goldmark of the US
introduces the fi rst long-playing record.
• (^) CBS launches fi rst TV thriller series, Suspense.
1950 Yoshiro Nakamats of the Imperial Univer-
sity, Tokyo, develops the fl oppy disc.
1952 First video recorder demonstration
conducted in the US by John Mullin and Wayne
Johnson at the Bing Crosby Enterprise labora-
tories in Beverly Hills, California, 11 November.
A colour video was demonstrated by the same
company in September of the following year.
Neither was developed commercially. Ampex
was the first to go into production, its initial
production model being acquired by CBS.
• (^) In the UK the BBC’s VERA came into opera-
tion in April 1958 with a recording of Panorama.
Sony brought out a transistorized video recorder
in 1961, while the fi rst domestic video recorder,
also from Sony, was launched in the US in July
- It was not until 1972 that Sony launched, in
Japan, its fi rst video cassette recorder.
• (^) In Europe Philips introduced the fi rst domestic
video cassette recorder in 1974. Th e VHS format
was introduced in 1976 by JVC of Japan; and in
the same year JVC produced the fi rst camcord-
ers for amateur use.
1953 Inauguration of the British Press Council.
• (^) BBC demonstrates colour TV. An outside
broadcast of the Coronation procession was
relayed by closed circuit at Great Ormond Street
Hospital for Sick Children.
• (^) Th e fi rst movie in Cinemascope, 20th Century
Fox’s The Robe, is premiered at Grauman’s
Chinese Th eater, Hollywood, and in the same
month, September, Th is is Cinerama opened in
New York.
1954 In the UK in July, the Television Bill is given
royal assent, creating the Independent Television
Authority. Commercial TV began broadcasting
in Britain in September 1955.
• (^) Eurovision is inaugurated on 6 June when TV
services in eight European countries linked
together with a 4,000-mile chain of relays. Th e
fi rst programme to be screened was the Festival
of Flowers from Montreux, Switzerland.
1955–6 First daily TV soap broadcast in Britain
- Sixpenny Corner, running for 15 minutes daily.
It failed even though it was transferred by ITV to
an evening slot.
1959 The Manchester Guardian becomes the
Guardian.
1960 Bell Telephone’s Touch-Tone telephone is
successfully tested and becomes commercially
available in 1963.
• (^) ITVs Coronation Street opens its record-
breaking run.