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1960s - the Sixties
The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969. The term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends which occurred roughly during the years 1958-1974 in the west, particularly Britain, France, Canada, Australia, Italy and West Germany.
Social and political upheaval was not limited to these countries, but included such nations as Japan, Mexico, the United States, and others. The term is used descriptively by historians, journalists, and others documenting our collective past; nostalgically by those who participated in the counter-culture and social revolution; and pejoratively by those who perceive the era as one of irresponsible excess. The decade was also labelled the Swinging Sixties because of the libertine attitudes that emerged during this decade. Rampant drug use has become inextricably associated with the counter-culture of the era, as Jefferson Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner: "If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there."
The Sixtes has become synonymous with all the new, exciting, radical, subversive and/or dangerous (depending on one's viewpoint) events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the 1970s, 1980s and beyond. In Africa the 1960s was a period of radical political change as countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers, only for this rule to be replaced in many cases by civil war or corrupt dictatorships.
Some commentators have seen in this era a classical Jungian nightmare cycle as a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm. Booker charts the rise, success, fall/nightmare and explosion into of a wide range of ugly people in the London scene of the 1960s. This does not alone however explain the mass nature of the phenomenon.
- 1960 - The first working laser was demonstrated in May by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories.
- 1961 - First human spaceflight to orbit the Earth: Yuri Gagarin, Vostok 1.
- 1962 - First trans-Atlantic satellite broadcast via the Telstar satellite.
- 1962 - The first computer video game, Spacewar!, is invented.
- 1963 - The first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom 2 is launched.
- 1963 - Touch-Tone telephones introduced.
- 1964 - The first successful Minicomputer, Digital Equipment Corporation’s 12-bit PDP-8, is marketed.
- 1965 - Sony markets the CV-2000, the first home video tape recorder.
- 1966 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
- 1967 - First heart transplantation operation.
- 1967 - PAL and SECAM broadcast color TV systems start publicly transmitting in Europe.
- 1967 - The first minibank is opened in Barclays Bank, London.
- 1968 - First humans to leave Earth's gravity influence and orbit another world: Apollo 8.
- 1968 - The first public demonstration of the computer mouse, the paper paradigm Graphical user interface, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, and hypertext.
- 1969 - Arpanet, the research-oriented prototype of the Internet, was introduced.
- 1969 - First humans to walk on the Moon: Apollo 11.
- 1969 - CCD invented at AT&T Bell Labs, used as the electronic imager in still and video cameras.
