By:
December 16, 2004
Previous: 1969 / Next: 1971
Intro and links to the other years in the timeline

TECHNOLOGY

  • The name for the ARPANET computer network comes from DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Project Agency, which commissioned the computer network. Bob Taylor was the director of ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) when the project began in the 1960s. J.C.R. Licklider was the first director of IPTO.

  • Alohanet, the first wireless computer networking system, is developed by Norm Abramson at the University of Hawaii. Alohanet is a packet radio network system.
  • IBM announces its new System/370 computer series. These new machines support time-sharing and online computing. IBM controls about three-quarters of the world market for mainframe computers.

THE MEDIA

  • News Example:
    May 5, 1970 —
    “4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops,”
    New York Times.
    (Abstract available from
    the Infobank database service.)
  • Nov. 8, 1970 — News copy is sent from a computer terminal at the Associated Press bureau in Columbia, South Carolina, to a computer in Atlanta. This is reportedly the first use of a computer terminal for writing, editing, and transmitting a story to a news service.

 
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