- 2 days ago
The episode "The Eighties: Technology Gets Personal" is a captivating exploration of the technological advancements that have shaped modern life. It highlights the personal computer, internet, portable music, VCR, mobile phone, and PC, which have become integral to our daily routines. The episode is praised for its engaging presentation and its ability to bring a historical context to the development of technology that continues to influence our lives today.
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TechTranscript
00:00As soon as we have intelligent machines creeping into our daily lives, it's going to be a new world out there.
00:12The popularity of these video games is nothing short of a social phenomenon.
00:16Personal computers, walk-around stereos, automatic cameras, mobile telephones.
00:20A major moment in the history of flight.
00:23The experts tell us all of this is just the tip of the iceberg of what's to come.
00:27There's literally a hyperculture that is developing. It's almost a cult.
00:32We're no longer on the verge of the personal computer revolution. We're right in the midst of it, thank you.
00:57We're right in the midst of it, thank you.
01:27The average family home.
01:33Corey practices her violin, Christian plays with his cars, and Mike and Carol worry over the bills.
01:39We went into the 1980s in pretty much the same technology that's been in place for a couple of decades.
01:46Typewriter. Calculators, TV, oven, a car.
01:52You listen to music on a big old stereo system with a turntable.
01:56Maybe you had a digital watch and that was the only thing that was going to be digital that you actually owned.
02:01Hello? I'm not here now, but my faithful machine is in it.
02:06There was a handful of technology at that time. One was the telephone answering machine.
02:12You'd be driving home and you'd say, I can't wait to check my messages.
02:17You know, it's become part of the day. Let me, honey, I'm checking my messages.
02:20From the noisy streets of New York to the laid-back tranquility of California, Americans are tuning out and tuning in.
02:32When I think of technology in the 1980s, I think of the Walkman. The Walkman was huge.
02:37It's the latest fad. Tiny stereo cassette players with featherweight headphones.
02:42It's like carrying your stereo with you, you know, on your head.
02:46The Walkman took listening to music from a fixed location in your home to mobile.
02:52You are witnessing the ultimate miniaturization of the cassette player.
02:57It never has so much genius been coaxed into so little space.
03:01In all of the great bursts of innovation, there is always some kind of scientific breakthrough that has to happen first.
03:08And none of this stuff could have happened in the 1980s without the transistor being invented in the late 1940s.
03:14And Japan, and Sony in particular, really understood that this technology could make things smaller, more affordable, more personal.
03:22Sony was the brand name that really mattered in the 1980s in technology.
03:27I'll take the Sony!
03:29The original Sony Walkman was so solid, it was a pleasure to hold.
03:34It had density, it had heft.
03:36The cassette, pop it in, close it.
03:39A very satisfying sound.
03:40Not just a click, click.
03:42It was a k-k-chunk.
03:43It was gorgeous.
03:45Gorgeous machine.
03:46It provided you with a soundtrack to your life.
03:50Transformers and Cabbage Patch dolls may be the two top toy sellers this year, but for adults, there's only one height item.
03:56The VCR.
03:57Christmas shoppers have again made the video cassette recorder one of this year's hottest gifts for grown-ups.
04:02They're selling at a rate of a million units a month.
04:05But the VCR is a lot more than a popular Christmas gift.
04:08It's an invention that some say is changing the whole idea of television.
04:12There are so many inventions where you can trace their success back to the smashing of a limitation.
04:18And the VCR smashed the limitation of time.
04:21Most people use VCRs for what they call time-shifting.
04:24Let's say this Sunday is your parents' 50th wedding anniversary.
04:28But you can't miss the Steelers.
04:29What you do is set the timer on your recorder, pop in a tape, and watch the Steelers when you get home.
04:34It just changed the paradigm of television.
04:38The makers of TV programs and movies shown on television claim their films lose their rerun value when they're recorded on home videotape recorders and then played later.
04:47The movie studios said this violated the copyright laws, and they sued the home recorder manufacturers for allegedly instigating widespread in-the-home lawbreaking.
04:57You cannot have high-class entertainment if 50 million taping machines are out there in an unauthorized fashion with no compensation to owners,
05:08taking from them what rightfully belongs to them.
05:11The Supreme Court today answered a multi-billion-dollar business question affecting the wallets of millions of Americans
05:18and one of the nation's fastest-growing forms of recreation, home videotaping.
05:23The court ruled 5-4 that use of the home machine to tape programs is legal and violates no copyright law.
05:29Not only did the movie industry lose that one, but they were totally wrong.
05:34The VCR turned us into a nation of movie nuts.
05:37It may be the fastest-growing business in America, the sale of videocassette tapes that people buy or more often rent to play at home on their videocassette recorders.
05:48More than 24,000 retail outlets across America now sell or rent tapes of all kinds.
05:54Now, you go to a video store and, like, pick something out that you missed.
05:57In the old days, if you'd missed a movie, you'd miss the movie.
06:00And the market's not restricted to blockbuster films.
06:04Jane Fonda, through her workout tapes, has shown one can make money with a product geared specifically to the home video market.
06:11The success of camcorders marks the second phase of the video revolution.
06:15Not just taking movies home, but making them at home.
06:18And anywhere else you happen to go.
06:20I was the kid who had a camcorder.
06:23It was the size of Kentucky.
06:25And it had to be because it played VHS cassettes.
06:28The setup can be used by just about anybody.
06:30Its advantage over film is about to revolutionize the industry.
06:33There's no developing.
06:34You could rewind and record over it if you didn't like the take.
06:37I mean, that is an enormous shift.
06:39Americans buy billions of dollars of electronic equipment.
06:42But just when you think you've bought the latest in audio and video,
06:45there's a new generation of gear which has clearer pictures and better sound.
06:48This camera, using a simple little tape like that,
06:52just possibly the wave of the future.
06:58Like them or not, video games are the youth phenomenon of our day.
07:02Quarter by quarter, six billion dollars got fed into video game slots last year.
07:07That's double what Americans spent to go to the movies.
07:10People flocked to them because the arcade game could afford expensive hardware at the time.
07:18And the hardware had enough power to do things we had never seen before.
07:22There was essentially an arcade in every mall, in every street corner.
07:27The lunch money was not safe if there was an arcade around.
07:32Arcade games at the time were the first machine that we could really interact with.
07:36If we could cause a world to do something.
07:40So we'd grab a joystick and move a character around or fire something at a spaceship.
07:45And we've never had experience like that before.
07:48The popularity of these video games is nothing short of a social phenomenon.
07:52Pac-Man is seemingly everywhere.
07:56Retailers can't keep the home version stocked.
07:59One dealer describes the demand.
08:01Phenomenal.
08:02Telephones ringing every five minutes.
08:05It's Pac-Man mania.
08:09My big memory of the 80s was my best friend got this $300 console that connected to your TV.
08:16You would just play this thing forever.
08:17It was the first time anyone had ever seen anything but TV on a TV.
08:22And I thought, wow, this is technology.
08:25The imaginary rockets are controlled by the same chips the U.S. Army used in their defense programs.
08:30But the significance of the chip does not only lie in gadgets.
08:35Her whole future will be changed by the silicon chip business.
08:39It was discovered that you could actually etch a whole lot of transistors onto a piece of silicon, which was basically a cheap substance that could be mass manufactured.
08:49These chips can control the flow of electrical current that, in effect, enables them to store and remember zillions of bits of information on a surface just a little bit thicker than an eggshell and smaller than a fingernail.
09:03This silicon chip supplies the brain power for a thousand and one electronic gadgets from wrist watches to microwave ovens.
09:10The mushrooming industry gives birth to a new high-tech cult and a place called Silicon Valley.
09:18The magic part of Silicon Valley is that there was this boiling pot of people who were involved in technology, involved in science.
09:29Silicon Valley was HP, SRI, Xerox PARC, and Stanford University.
09:34That was a hell of a powerful combination.
09:36So there were these two cultures, engineers with PhDs and hobbyists.
09:43It was a time when there was a lot of social ferment in and around the Bay Area.
09:48There was a lot of counterculture people.
09:50So you had cheap semiconductors.
09:52You had people that would look at things differently than what the conventional person was, and that's what the technology needed then.
09:59One of the things that was really hard about making a computer was now on a chip.
10:03And so all of a sudden, people who had a thirst for this stuff could go out and buy a homebrew computer.
10:08You could make them yourself.
10:10There was a lot of this kind of revolutionary theme with a lot of the technical people who were into the changes in technology and how we were a part of it.
10:17Even though at our companies we were generally the fringe element, we had the genes and we're not the managers and the leaders.
10:22But boy, just a clever design on its own had value.
10:25You have these guys like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates and Paul Allen who'd been messing around on the edges of what would become the personal computer industry.
10:33But no one in corporate America and no one in most of the homes of America thought that the personal computer was anything that would ever have, would ever even happen, let alone have any relevance to them.
10:44For all of us, the computer revolution was really exciting.
10:49It was like, wow, this is wide open.
10:51It was a group of people who want to make a change in the world.
10:55And eventually the two forces in Silicon Valley, the hobbyists and the button-down business guys, ended up coming together when the chip makers realized that these things the hobbyists were doing could lead to this whole new kind of product called a personal computer.
11:08It was at a homebrew computer club where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs first splayed the computer they'd been working on, and it caused a sensation.
11:18We had absolutely no idea what people were going to do with these things when we started out.
11:22We couldn't afford to buy a computer kit on the market, and we got it working.
11:30We showed some of our friends, and of course immediately everybody wanted one.
11:33Woz was the technical genius, and Jobs was the marketing genius.
11:38And you needed both of those kinds of mindsets to actually make this new technology work and create this company out of thin air called Apple.
11:46Since the Apple Computer Company was founded five years ago, its sales have skyrocketed from about $100,000 to more than $100 million with the most popular typewriter-sized computer on the market today.
11:57Stephen Jobs is now 26 years old, and he sees his computer's future as the future of mankind.
12:03How many calculators do you own?
12:05Two, maybe.
12:06Right. And you use the automatic bank telling machines?
12:08Sure.
12:09So life is already seducing you into learning this stuff.
12:12It's not going to happen at once, and it's certainly not a 1984-ish vision at all.
12:16It's just going to be very gradual and very human and will seduce you into learning how to use them.
12:22Random access memory is internal memory that's built inside of this computer.
12:27These new computers were rough, big, ugly, difficult-to-use inventions when they first came out.
12:33It would crash, and you had to figure out what to do.
12:35It would not always create the right results.
12:38So it really did take a mindset of someone willing to cut it some slack.
12:42Take all steps. Don't take big steps.
12:44Okay.
12:45Everybody kind of agreed that this could be the next great thing after the printing press if we do it right.
12:52It's not just having a machine.
12:54The world needed to be made better.
12:57Those are the things that actually can lift a society into a new way of thinking.
13:03Industry experts say we're no longer on the verge of the personal computer revolution.
13:08We're right in the midst of it, thank you.
13:10And it's gathering steam with more and more people jumping aboard every day.
13:14In the early part of the 80s, the general image of the computer was always this giant machine with little things all over it.
13:24The mindset was the computer as the brain.
13:27And it was a threatening concept.
13:29The 1980s is a period of time when the big, impersonal, giant machine that lives in a huge air-conditioned room someplace suddenly becomes something that sits on your desk.
13:38Something is happening out there, something that's expanding your world.
13:43As soon as we have intelligent machines creeping into our daily lives, into our factories, into our hospitals, into our businesses, then it's going to be a new world out there.
13:58Computer stores have become the neighborhood soda shops of the binary generation, the disciples, young and old, of smart machines.
14:08Companies that were starting to build personal computers, companies like Atari and Tandy, Commodore and Apple, began to see them as a home market.
14:16And it was starting to seep into the public consciousness.
14:19Personal computers have become the business of at least 25 manufacturers, with three companies, Radio Shack, Apple and Commodore, grabbing three-quarters of the market.
14:29This personal computer costs about $1,400 and fits nicely on a desk corner.
14:35Duplicating its performance just five years ago would have cost $75,000 and involved a unit the size of a large refrigerator.
14:42When the average American thought computer, they thought IBM.
14:47It made these mainframe computers that ran pretty much everything.
14:51IBM was one of the most powerful corporations in America, and in technology, it was the most powerful company that had ever existed in technology.
15:00Because of this activity in personal computers, it started to make IBM look like it was somewhere behind the eight ball.
15:06They look at the Apple II and say, huh, we can make one of those.
15:09We build the computers that put America on the moon.
15:12We'll get in that business, squash these guys, no problem.
15:15IBM, International Business Machines, has entered the small computer market for the first time.
15:21The idea of the small computer has become so big that the giant of computer companies, IBM, is busy marketing its new small computer.
15:30It will, they say, give credibility to home computers.
15:34They'll no longer be just another new gadget.
15:36IBM has set an objective to build the office of the future.
15:40Before IBM came in, companies would not think about buying personal computers.
15:44But suddenly, when IBM is selling one, now it becomes a safer decision.
15:48IBM's personal computer is designed for office, school, or home use.
15:52It's aimed at exactly the same market as its competitors.
15:56When IBM started developing the IBM PC, it needed an operating system.
16:00And this young guy named Bill Gates had started this tiny little company called Microsoft.
16:06Bill Gates was that unusual combination of a tech guy who was as good as the best tech guys.
16:11But he also had a business sense.
16:14And he had a business vision.
16:16At the time, everyone was making it up as they went along.
16:19There was nothing that came before it.
16:21There was no personal computer industry.
16:23So, when Gates said to IBM, how about this, we'll write you an operating system for your PC, and we'll get a cut of every machine you sell.
16:32And in addition, he made sure that it was not an exclusive license, that he was going to be able to sell this software to IBM.
16:38But he was also going to be able to sell the same software to the other people.
16:41Because Gates intuited that there were going to be people who would build knockoffs of IBM, the PC clones.
16:48It was a genius move on the part of Bill Gates, who's still in his, like, early 20s when he makes this decision.
16:53And you've got these guys at IBM in their blue suits and dark ties who are looking at this company, Microsoft, saying, like, who cares?
17:02Like, you know, software?
17:03Who cares about software, man?
17:04We build these big machines.
17:06IBM did not realize that it was essentially handing all this power to this little nerd.
17:11If you had stayed at Harvard a few more years, would this computer revolution have passed you by?
17:16Perhaps.
17:17Things moved very quickly in the industry, and it was really the urgency to get out there and be the first one to put a basic on the microcomputer that caused me to drop out.
17:26If you don't have one, you will be amazed at what these little gadgets can do.
17:31The idea was that ordinary people might have a use for computers.
17:36Now, it took a while to figure out what those uses might be.
17:39The main thing was spreadsheets and word processing.
17:43The computer was the best typewriter you could ever have.
17:48It gave you a new way to write.
17:50You could change things around and check your spelling, and it would always look perfect.
17:55Bottom line numbers.
17:56My dad had the large ledger sheets, done them all by hand, and I remember taking a computer to show him a spreadsheet, and suddenly he understood the value of a personal computer.
18:07There was a drastic mindset change in the whole country about what a computer was, and it happened over a very short period of time.
18:15Gather around, and we'll tell you a little bit more about the system.
18:18Here at the West Coast Computer Fair, the speed of development in this industry is so great that each fair virtually outdates the previous one.
18:27Well, it is lower prices that have helped the tremendous boom in home computer sales.
18:31About one home in ten will have a computer by the end of this year.
18:34By 1990, the number could be two out of three.
18:37We knew that the personal computer was getting serious when the competition started, because when you have competition, innovation gets stimulated.
18:46All of a sudden, you were in an old-fashioned competitive business in which you really had to be better than the other guy.
19:16There are 150 microcomputer companies, and all of them want 10% of the market, and that just isn't going to happen.
19:22This is the newest kind of office in America, and this is the telephone which will ring in it.
19:28Hi, buddy. Turn around.
19:30The big thing was the phone in the car, which was like, we are now officially in the modern era.
19:38Hi, Judy.
19:38And the first thing you always said was, hey, I'm calling from the car.
19:41When these things were first starting to pop up in the mid-1980s, the customers were people that had a business reason for having these things, or some super-rich dude who just, you know, wanted to show up.
19:52The big breakthrough idea was this idea of cellular systems.
19:58It's called cellular because your car phone is tied into different radio transmitters, each one called a cell.
20:03And as you travel, the signal from your phone travels from cell to cell.
20:08This was something that had never been done before.
20:10If you don't have one now, you probably will have one in a decade, say the phone makers, as the price comes down into the range of other high-tech toys.
20:17There were people that understood, even in the early days, that being trapped in a car was not freedom.
20:25People are fundamentally, naturally mobile.
20:28I like to say the technology will go from a phone in the car to a phone in the briefcase to finally a phone in your pocket.
20:35And this is it.
20:36This is a portable cellular phone.
20:38You'll be able to take this to any American city and call virtually any place in the world.
20:43And its maker, Motorola, says a smaller version than this will be on the market next year.
20:49Your first cell phones look like Soviet Army field telephones.
20:52They're just these huge lunch boxes you hold up to your head.
20:56This was just the birth of this industry.
20:58All inventions start out in a very rough state.
21:01Hello.
21:01And whether it's computers or cell phones, it took a while to refine them and make them into something that all of us use.
21:07You look at the bottom of the screen, it says, please press return or attack go menu.
21:13To befriend the computer has become a national meaning.
21:16And we're told, miss the electronic boat and you're sunk.
21:19In the future, everything's probably going to be computerized.
21:23So you're going to have to know how to use computers.
21:25My son just took a computer class in school and he's only eight years old.
21:29So I figure I'd just as soon be as smart as he is.
21:33For all you hear about friendly, they aren't really except for playing Pac-Man.
21:37A small snag in computer marketing has been what is called technophobia, fear of these bloodless little wizards.
21:45The manufacturers are trying to overcome it by making them what they call user-friendly.
21:52Oh, isn't that pretty?
21:53Now what do I do?
21:56Making computers easy enough to use for a beginner, it wasn't always true.
22:01People have never encountered this stuff.
22:03Hold on shift and press.
22:05You messed up.
22:05So there was a great disconnect between the ambitions of the Apples and the Microsofts
22:12and the realities of people trying to use these things for the first time.
22:16Right now, if you buy a computer system and you want to solve one of your problems,
22:24we immediately throw a big problem right in the middle of you and your problem,
22:28which is learning how to use the computer.
22:29Substantial problem to overcome.
22:31Once you overcome that, it's a phenomenal tool.
22:36Steve Jobs thought that a computer should require no technical skill.
22:40He thought that it should be capable of generating artistic endeavors and not just number-crunchy business things.
22:47Is there anything that you'd like to see?
22:48Well, we'd love to have it in a book right now, you know, about this size, but that's technically impossible.
22:54Steve's like, I want to make a friendly computer, a computer that comes from a different kind of place,
23:00that owes its inspiration to people who are thoughtful and creative and human and humane.
23:06Good morning, Fred.
23:07This is an experimental office system at the Xerox Research Center in Palo Alto, California.
23:12Anything else?
23:13Well, what flowers?
23:15My anniversary.
23:16I forgot.
23:19Xerox in the 1980s was one of the most exciting companies in America.
23:23Xerox had this booming copier business.
23:26It wasn't a personal computer company, but they opened up this lab called the Palo Alto Research Center.
23:31Xerox Park was Xerox's think tank.
23:35They were working on all these crazy out-there ideas, which included the mouse and overlapping windows and fonts
23:42and graphics on a computer screen, just to see if they could do it.
23:47Steve Jobs hears about some of the work going on at this lab, and he wants a look.
23:52Xerox Park was an invention place.
23:53Apple was an innovation place.
23:56Steve was very visual, and he could see right away.
23:59The graphical user interface was different and more communicative than anything that he had seen before.
24:05He knew that it was effective because it was affecting him.
24:09Jobs realizes this is the future of computing.
24:11There's a whole different kind of computer to be built, famously a computer for the rest of us.
24:161984, the Ridley Scott commercial for the Macintosh.
24:25We are one people.
24:26It depicted a very thinly disguised representation of IBM's scary 1984-ish leader on a big screen.
24:35One course.
24:36Saying that this tiny little company, Apple, is going to destroy the reigning power.
24:42We shall prevail.
24:46On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh.
24:54The personal computer war heated up today.
24:56Apple Computer officially unveiled its new Macintosh.
24:59I'd like to let Macintosh speak for itself.
25:02Hello, I am Macintosh.
25:05The introduction to Mac was an event.
25:08Steve Jobs really did think of the Mac as a thing that would change the world.
25:13Apple is betting $100 million and, admittedly, its future to make inroads against IBM.
25:21Apple felt like a rock band.
25:24It had the same kind of spirit.
25:25They seem to be going up against the man in IBM.
25:29It is aimed at a largely untapped market of managers, professionals, and students.
25:33While they make up about 75% of the white-collar workforce,
25:36less than 5% now use computers, mostly because of their complexity.
25:40Macintosh is designed for simplicity, using a palm-sized unit called a mouse.
25:45It was the first time that a machine was personal.
25:48It was simple.
25:49It was friendly.
25:50It took the computer out of the exclusive domain of geeks and nerds and people who had
25:57memorized those commands and put it on the desk of everybody, untrained, non-technical people.
26:04Stores around the country put them on sale today, and analysts say it's a good bet that
26:08Macintosh could soon be the biggest apple of the industry's eye.
26:12It's got its best years far ahead of it.
26:14Eventually, I want to be able to carry my Mac around with me, you know, walk away with
26:19it in my pocket.
26:19Pocket computer?
26:20Yeah.
26:21You really do like that Mac.
26:22Would you trade it for an IBM?
26:24Are you kidding?
26:27As material sciences progress, more and more circuitry keeps getting put on smaller and
26:32smaller chips, circuit boards.
26:34And so the closer together elements on a chip are, the faster the motion of signals between
26:41them.
26:41There was something called Moore's Law, named for Gordon Moore, one of the engineers who
26:45worked at Intel.
26:46Basically, it was an observation that the computer engineers are getting to the point where they
26:50can essentially double the computing power of a computer chip every 18 months or so.
26:57And this was what really made the power of computers explode in the 1980s, because every
27:0218 months, these things were getting twice as good.
27:05If you could basically get the whole computer on a chip, it was less expensive to manufacture.
27:09So you had smaller, which led to faster, which led to cheaper.
27:13Under any other field of consumer products, things get more expensive over time.
27:18Milk, gasoline, houses, but not technology.
27:21One of the striking things about the development of, especially hardware, during the 1980s, was
27:29the fact that it was getting so much more powerful, so rapidly, that there developed a strong tendency
27:34on the part of people who are about to buy a computer.
27:36Should I buy the computer today?
27:38No.
27:38In fact, if I wait six months for the same money, I can get twice the computer.
27:41The reason why we're attracted to computers is because it is a power tool that gives me
27:47power that I feel I should have had, but nature left me without, and I can now exploit more
27:54of my potential with a computer.
27:56If all goes according to plan, Columbia, this nation's first space shuttle, will soar like
28:03a skylight next March.
28:04If the shuttle program works the way it's been designed to work, it will be a technological
28:09feat rivaling America's visit to the moon, a major moment in the history of flight.
28:14The space shuttle had new systems, new technology.
28:18The primary thing is the fly-by-wire system, which is you don't have pulleys and cables.
28:22It's all done by electronics.
28:24All it commands go through a computer.
28:27Built as the world's first reusable spaceship, one that would commute to space carrying scientists
28:32and satellites.
28:34The most important thing was the digital revolution of faster, more powerful computers with complex
28:41software.
28:42Computers are absolutely necessary to fly a spacecraft like the shuttle.
28:46It's the most sophisticated, most complex system that has been put into space yet.
28:51The first time I saw Columbia and got close to it, my whole thought was, oh my God, it's
28:57big.
28:58And this is going to go 17,500 miles per hour.
29:03More than half a million people crowded the beaches around Cape Kennedy this morning to
29:07witness firsthand the first space shuttle launch.
29:10T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4.
29:17We've gone for main engine start.
29:20We added a giant fuel tank to it and two solid rocket boosters that are the largest pop-bottle
29:26rockets on the planet.
29:27And when you light that puppy, it's going somewhere.
29:30Columbia, Houston, you're going 40.
29:43I am in the mission control center, but it's only after the fact that you get into orbit that
29:49your mouth drops and you calm down.
29:51You go, wow, that's amazing.
29:54This vehicle is performing like a champ, like all of us that have worked so long on
30:01you knew that you would.
30:03I think we've got something that's really going to mean something to the country and
30:06the world.
30:07The astronauts have about 14 more hours in space before they touch down tomorrow in California's
30:12Mojave Desert.
30:14We were in L.A., and we heard the sonic boom.
30:17That was it, that was it.
30:20It's coming down.
30:21There it is.
30:22You're right on the glide slope, Columbia.
30:24Putting that all together and a technology to make it fly and then landing is remarkable.
30:29Nothing like it had ever been done.
30:31Down.
30:32There they're down.
30:34I said, it worked.
30:35The damn thing worked.
30:38The day will come, according to NASA, that a launch will be so routine that the press and
30:43television won't even bother to cover it.
30:4630 weeks later, after Columbia had been returned to the Kennedy Space Center, astronauts Joe
30:51Engel and Dick Truly flew Columbia into space again.
30:56The space shuttle was like a large truck that could deploy satellites, and it had a robotic
31:02arm so that you can repair and upgrade spacecraft.
31:06And liftoff of the Orbiter Challenger in the sixth flight of the space shuttle.
31:10This was the birth of space travel, not just space missions.
31:15We're talking about setting a laboratory, almost like a university in space.
31:19And it started feeling like anybody could be an astronaut.
31:23The countdown is underway tonight at Cape Canaveral towards Sunday's scheduled launch of the shuttle
31:27Challenger, a liftoff that will carry America's first teacher into space.
31:31Still doesn't seem real that I'm going to be able to go with these guys.
31:35I'm excited.
31:36The ice is cleared away, and Challenger should be going away very soon.
31:42Let's go down to the Kennedy Space Center and take a look at Challenger sitting on the pad as they continue the countdown.
31:47The Challenger flight in January of 86 was the 25th flight of the space shuttle.
31:51But it was an especially notable one because hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of school kids around the country were tuned in to the launch.
31:58It was the first mission I wasn't in the mission control center.
32:02I was outside of standing next to the families.
32:04He managed 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 9, 4, 2, 1.
32:15You liftoff from the 25th space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower.
32:25Roger roll, Challenger.
32:28Good roll, flight.
32:29My responsibilities for that flight was I was a spacecraft communicator at Capcom.
32:33I was the one actually communicating with the crew.
32:36Engine's throttling up. Three engines now at 104%.
32:39Challenger, go with throttle up.
32:42Challenger, go with throttle up.
32:50I was looking at my screen, and I turned and looked,
32:56and I did not understand or recognize what I saw.
33:01It didn't make sense to me because it was this fiery mess.
33:06Flight JC, we've had negative conduct.
33:10There was this angry red glow.
33:14And this wail.
33:21From the hearts of the family, because they knew what I knew.
33:26The Challenger crew was gone.
33:40Today is a day for mourning and remembering.
33:44The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted.
33:47It belongs to the brave.
33:49The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future,
33:52and we'll continue to follow them.
33:54There would be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews,
33:59and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space.
34:04Nothing ends here.
34:05Our hopes and our journeys continue.
34:08To honor our fallen,
34:11we have to find this and fix it and fly it again.
34:14Within a matter of days,
34:16we knew it was a solid rocket booster joint that had failed.
34:19The O-ring was a flawed design that had led to the loss of the Challenger.
34:26During the 30 months since the Challenger accident,
34:29there had been hundreds of hardware changes
34:30to not only the solid rocket booster,
34:33but also to the orbiter and the large liquid rocket fuel tank.
34:37Numerous software changes had been implemented.
34:40All had been tested exhaustively.
34:42I wanted the opportunity to fly on that first return flight,
34:46and I was fortunate being assigned to that crew.
34:49We have the engine to start.
34:51Three, two, one, zero, and liftoff!
34:57Liftoff!
34:57Americans return to space!
34:59I'll tell you, I held my breath for two minutes
35:04until the solid rocket motors come out.
35:07I just went,
35:09thank God.
35:11And we continued on into orbit.
35:14Let us remember the Challenger crew.
35:17We can say at long last
35:18to Dick, Mike, Judy,
35:20to Ron and Elle,
35:21and to Krista and Greg.
35:23Dear friends,
35:24we have resumed the journey
35:26that we promised to continue for you.
35:28We have a...
35:34This is Topo,
35:37created by Androbot in San Jose.
35:40Manufacturers predict that within a few years,
35:43robots like these will liberate us
35:45from mundane and time-consuming household chores.
35:49He'll guard your house.
35:51He will be your companion.
35:53He'll bring you a soft drink out of the refrigerator.
35:55You, under no circumstances,
35:57mean to tell us
35:58that this is a necessary piece of equipment.
36:00This is just a fun item.
36:01Well, things always start out,
36:03you know, whether you're talking about telephones
36:04or whatever,
36:05they always start out as a luxury
36:06and then they turn into a necessity.
36:08I did a robotics company that failed.
36:11Um, damn it.
36:13And I believe,
36:15if you can envision it in science fiction,
36:17and if you can do it,
36:18of course we're going to have robots
36:20running around the house.
36:20Please turn off that light.
36:23Why is somebody going to buy this thing?
36:24So, one of the problems is the engineering mentality.
36:27We're going to build it because we can.
36:29Watch out.
36:30Some items have more functions than you might dream,
36:33like the Samsung microwave oven color TV security system.
36:37Originally, they invented microwaves
36:39to get you out of the kitchen.
36:40Now you never have to leave.
36:42This is the first in-dash portable car video system.
36:46For the car.
36:47For the car.
36:48Right.
36:48In the big picture,
36:50it's really frustrating and exhilarating
36:53to watch the way technologies evolve.
36:56The homebinder has a memo pad
36:58and it would beep to tell us what's going on.
37:00We're just going to spend the rest of our lives
37:01hanging around a television set.
37:04Almost nobody can say,
37:06we're going to take technology to this point.
37:08It's much more chaotic.
37:10Things rise and bubble and fall back
37:13and great ideas pop out,
37:15but nobody can find a use for it,
37:17so it goes away.
37:18It's a confluence of developments.
37:19They're all happening at the right time.
37:21Small and portable are the watchwords for the 90s,
37:24according to manufacturers
37:25showing their wares in Chicago this week.
37:28Sony has a new camcorder that fits in your hand
37:30and a combination TV VCR
37:32that goes into your purse or briefcase.
37:35If you have one of these
37:36and you have one of these,
37:38but you don't have one of these,
37:41you're missing half the fun of owning a computer.
37:43This is a modem,
37:45and with it,
37:45you can turn your computer
37:46into a window on the world.
37:48I remember the first time
37:49I went online on CompuServe
37:50with my TRS-80,
37:51slow as it was,
37:52because there was no internet,
37:53but it was like the first time
37:54I had scuba doctors.
37:55Oh my God,
37:56there's this whole world out there.
37:57You can see there's 23 people now
37:59with us in the lobby.
38:00We can type a message like,
38:01hi,
38:02it comes down at the bottom
38:03and simply press return
38:04and we broadcast everybody in that room.
38:06Does anybody ever say anything meaningful
38:07or useful in these things?
38:08There's a lot of just very social banter.
38:10It really is an area for people
38:12to just meet friends
38:14and talk about
38:14whatever their interests are,
38:15some of which are...
38:16Well, we're talking about people
38:17falling in love and getting married.
38:18Absolutely.
38:20I remember my very first time,
38:21eee,
38:23you know,
38:24the modem dialing,
38:25and then here was a chat room
38:26with 12 other people
38:28typing in real time
38:30from wherever they happened to be,
38:32blew me away.
38:34There's tremendous demand.
38:35If you've looked at all
38:36the online services,
38:37the bulletin board,
38:38user groups,
38:39the various things,
38:40there's literally
38:41a hyperculture
38:42that is developing.
38:43It's almost a cult.
38:44Those early information services
38:47greatly multiplied
38:48the power
38:49of what a personal computer was.
38:51Since they joined Prodigy,
38:53a computer service
38:54accessed by telephone,
38:55the Ironmans do everything
38:56from checking the weather map
38:57to shopping online
38:58for Christmas gifts.
38:59They even buy and sell stocks.
39:01The experts tell us
39:02all of this is just
39:03the tip of the iceberg
39:04of what's to come.
39:05There were all kinds
39:08of crazy ideas
39:09that really foreshadowed
39:11the next explosion
39:12of technology.
39:14A human being
39:15drives through Aspen
39:16by touching the TV screen.
39:17Is it reasonable
39:18to assume that
39:20our children
39:21will have such devices?
39:22Why?
39:23I think it's reasonable
39:23to assume that
39:24you'll have all these things
39:25in your home
39:25within a short amount of time.
39:28The thing about decades
39:29is that they don't often
39:30actually arrive on time,
39:32but when it comes
39:32to the world of technology,
39:34it really did.
39:35The world fundamentally changed
39:36in the 1980s,
39:38and the world we now live in
39:39was really born in some ways.
39:42This was the decade
39:43in which technology in general
39:45made our personal lives
39:46just that much richer
39:48and easier
39:48than they had been before.
39:51At least those of us
39:52who could figure out
39:53which button to push.
39:54We went from invention
39:56to innovation.
39:57Innovation is taking
39:59an idea into a product.
40:02These concepts of digital,
40:05random access,
40:06mobile, portable,
40:08and cheap
40:08have started to catch on.
40:10Different ways to run a business,
40:12different ways to communicate
40:12with your friends,
40:13different ways to experience
40:15virtual worlds.
40:16I don't think we've ever seen
40:17a decade like that, frankly.
40:19There was a realization
40:20that this kind of technology
40:21was going to be part of our lives.
40:23It's where our work
40:24and entertainment
40:24and all of that
40:25is going to reside.
40:27I believe
40:28that what is happening today
40:29is truly a revolution
40:31in the deepest sense
40:32of the word,
40:33that 30 or 40 years from now
40:35it's going to be hard
40:36to recognize the way we live.
40:38Technology can make
40:40our life better
40:40and technology means
40:43that anything's possible.
40:44It is a fascinating future,
40:46but one which computer scientists
40:47themselves are beginning to question.
40:50For example,
40:50with a free flow of information,
40:52can someone tap into my home computer
40:54and invade my privacy?
40:56Will electronic mail
40:57eventually lead to electronic junk mail?
41:00Will the stores,
41:01as we know them today,
41:02eventually disappear?
41:04And don't many shoppers
41:05really like squeezing the tomatoes?
41:07Will we wind up
41:08with a cashless,
41:09paperless society?
41:10And do we really want one?
41:12These are the kinds
41:13of social questions
41:14which the scientists say
41:15society should answer.
41:17We'll see you next time.
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