Media History Project
mediahst@umn.edu

1960-1969 C.E.

  • 1960: Echo I, a U.S. balloon in orbit, reflects radio signals to Earth.
  • 1960:The ATM, invented by Luther Simjian.
  • 1960: On TV: Andy Griffith, Bugs Bunny, Route 66, My Three Sons.
  • 1960: Animated cartoon, The Flinstones, comes to prime time; will stay there until 1987.
  • 1960: Off-Broadway, The Fantasticks begins a 42-year-run.
  • 1960: 90% of American homes have television sets.
  • 1960: John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor parodies historical novels.
  • 1960: Kennedy-Nixon debates draw huge numbers of viewers, voters.
  • 1960: Theodore Maiman uses a synthetic ruby to build first true laser.
  • 1960: Taking a food order by telephone, Domino’s delivers a pizza.
  • 1960: National Book Awards: Philip Roth, Richard Ellmann.
  • 1960: Bye Bye Birdie brings rock ‘n’ roll to Broadway.
  • 1960: Voice communication for people who cannot talk: an electronic larynx.
  • 1960: Little Shop of Horrors film; will grow to a play, another film, animation.
  • 1960: In Rhode Island, an electronic, automated post office.
  • 1960: Gulf Oil sponsors unscheduled news bulletins on NBC-TV.
  • 1960: Harvest of Shame, arguably U.S. television news’ finest documentary.
  • 1960: AT&T installs first electronic switching system.
  • 1960: A movie gets Smell-O-Vision, but the public just sniffs.
  • 1960: Lerner and Loewe’s Broadway musical, Camelot.
  • 1960: William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
  • 1960: In England, the world’s longest running TV soap, Coronation Street.
  • 1960: Oscars (given 1961): The Apartment, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor.
  • 1960: Also at the movies: Exodus, Spartacus, Psycho, Elmer Gantry.
  • 1960: Foreign language film Oscar: Virgin Spring, Sweden.
  • 1960: The first of the John Updike Rabbit novels: Rabbit, Run.
  • 1960: Electronic music is established through Karlheinz Stockhausen, others.
  • 1960: The Post Office experiments with facsimile mail.
  • 1960: PLATO, a computer-based method of education.
  • 1960: A hologram is constructed.
  • 1960: Nobel Prize in Literature: French poet Saint-John Perse.
  • 1960: Henry Miller completes trilogy, Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus.
  • 1960: Tiros I is the first weather satellite.
  • 1960: Chubby Checkers’ twist becomes dance craze.
  • 1960: Parker 45 fountain pen takes refill cartridges.
  • 1960: Americans, Britons simultaneously develop packet switching transmission.
  • 1960: Telephone-averse Parisians use pneumatic tubes for love letters.
  • 1960: IBM Selectric “golf ball” typewriter.
  • 1960: Mattel’s Chatty Cathy doll speaks 11 phrases in random order.
  • 1960: John Coltrane leads jazz new wave.
  • 1961: Franny and Zooey, a collection of Salinger’s short stories.
  • 1961: Robert Heinlein’s sci fi novel, Stranger in a Strange Land.
  • 1961: The French Catholic Bible de Jerusalem is published.
  • 1961: FCC Chairman Newton Minow calls television a “vast wasteland..
  • 1961: Poet Robert Frost recites “The Gift Outright” at JFK’s inauguration.
  • 1961: National Book Awards: Conrad Richter, William L. Shirer.
  • 1961: Nobel Prize in Literature: poet, novelist Ivo Andric, Yugoslavia.
  • 1961: Time-Life Books begin publication.
  • 1961: Tennessee Williams’ play, Night of the Iguana.
  • 1961: John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent, his twelfth novel.
  • 1961: Boxing match test shows potential of pay-TV.
  • 1961: FCC approves FM stereo broadcasting; spurs FM development.
  • 1961: Franz Fanon writes his influential, anti-colonial The Wretched of the Earth.
  • 1961: A wireless microphone is used in a movie, Mutiny on the Bounty.
  • 1961: Bell Labs tests communication by light waves.
  • 1961: Sony markets a helical scan videotape recorder.
  • 1961: Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in U.S. 27 years after banning.
  • 1961: Harper Lee wins Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird.
  • 1961: The Carousel Projector aids lecturers.
  • 1961: Fairchild Semiconductor makes integrated circuits commercially.
  • 1961: Silicon chips.
  • 1961: On TV: The Avengers, Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, Bozo the Clown, Wide World of Sports.
  • 1961: Instant videotape playback in slow motion.
  • 1961: Low tech: Letraset makes headlines at home simple.
  • 1961: British novelist Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
  • 1961: Oscars (given 1962): West Side Story, Maximilian Schell, Sophia Loren.
  • 1961: Also at the movies: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Splendor in the Grass, El Cid.
  • 1961: Foreign language film Oscar: Through a Glass Darkly, Sweden.
  • 1961: The time-sharing computer is developed.
  • 1961: President Kennedy allows TV news to cover his press conferences live.
  • 1961: Julia Child et. al, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Best seller for years.
  • 1961: Novelist Joseph Heller tells us about Catch-22.
  • 1961: Trinidad novelist V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas.
  • 1961: Novelist Walker Percy, The Movie Goer.
  • 1961: TV viewers see Alan Shepard’s sub-orbital flight at start of manned space race.
  • 1962: Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy sees limits for the print media.
  • 1962: Poet Sylvia Plath’s fictional memoir, The Bell Jar, published under pseudonym.
  • 1962: Edward Albee’s lacerating play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
  • 1962: The Telstar satellite sends television across the Atlantic.
  • 1962: Katherine Anne Porter’s novel, Ship of Fools.
  • 1962: On CBS-TV, The Beverly Hillbillies.
  • 1962: Estimated 44% of world’s population are illiterate.
  • 1962: Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem is sung at reconstructed Coventry Cathedral.
  • 1962: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; it will lead to ban on DDT, other pesticides.
  • 1962: Spacewar can be played by competitors on a variety of computers.
  • 1962: Cable companies import distant signals.
  • 1962: Helen Gurley Brown’s best-seller, Sex and the Single Girl.
  • 1962: FCC requires UHF tuners on television sets.
  • 1962: Comsat created to launch, operate global satellite system.
  • 1962: Oscars (given 1963): Lawrence of Arabia, Gregory Peck, Anne Bancroft.
  • 1962: Also at the movies: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Miracle Worker, The Longest Day.
  • 1962: Dr. No begins the James Bond series.
  • 1962: Foreign language film Oscar: Sundays and Cybèle, France.
  • 1962: Anthony Burgess’ novel, A Clockwork Orange; it will become a film classic.

  • 1962: National Book Awards: Walker Percy, Lewis Mumford.

  • 1962: Broadway hit, Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
  • 1962: Eull Gibbons writes a best seller advising people to find food in forests, parks.
  • 1962: Touch-tone phones are a hit at the Seattle World’s Fair.
  • 1962: Soundtrack of West Side Story tops the music charts for 54 weeks.
  • 1962: AT&T introduces T-1 multiplex service in Skokie, Illinois.
  • 1962: Packet-switching networks.
  • 1962: Telstar, first international communication satellite, transmits an image.
  • 1962: Michael Harrington’s The Other America revives interest in school lunches.
  • 1962: Plastic insulation for phone lines.
  • 1962: On TV: The Jetsons, Merv Griffin, Johnny Carson.
  • 1962: Nobel Prize in Literature: American novelist John Steinbeck.
  • 1962: The Reivers is published in the year Faulkner dies.
  • 1962: Mariner II sends radio signals from Venus.
  • 1962: Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest introduces Nurse Ratched.
  • 1962: John Glenn’s earth orbit is televised; 135 million viewers.
  • 1962: FCC sees a demonstration of cellular technology.
  • 1962: Andy Warhol paints many images of Campbell’s Soup cans, Marilyn Monroe.
  • 1962: John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, vignettes of life in the United States.
  • 1962: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, tells of Gulag.
  • 1963: James Baldwin’s essays, The Fire Next Time, stirs concerns about racial tensions.
  • 1963: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, more of J.D. Salinger’s short stories.
  • 1963: Nobel Prize in Literature: Georgos Seferis, Greece.
  • 1963: Maurice Sendak’s prize-winning children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are.
  • 1963: From Phillips of Holland comes the audio cassette.
  • 1963: Presidents of U.S., Nigeria have phone conversation via satellite.
  • 1963: Yukio Mishima’s allegorical tale, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea.
  • 1963: Postal ZIP codes.
  • 1963: Instant replay.
  • 1963: On TV: Doctor Who, The Fugitive, Richard Boone, General Hospital, Let’s Make a Deal.
  • 1963: TV is now principal source of news in U.S., according to Roper Poll.
  • 1963: Instamatic cameras with drop-in cartridges; more than 50 million will be sold.
  • 1963: Douglas Engelbart gets a patent for the computer mouse.
  • 1963: National Book Awards: J.F. Powers, Leon Edel.
  • 1963: In the U.S., the Emergency Broadcast System, with periodic air tests.
  • 1963: CBS and NBC TV newscasts expand from 15 to 30 minutes in color.
  • 1963: Barbara Tuchman wins a Pulitzer for The Guns of August.
  • 1963: Jacques Cousteau, The Living Sea.
  • 1963: The Beatles shake up music.
  • 1963: 81 million telephones in the United States, 159 million worldwide.
  • 1963: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem speaks of “the eerie banality of evil..
  • 1963: Sony offers an open-reel videotape recorder for the home, $995.
  • 1963: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique energizes the feminist movement.
  • 1963: Polaroid instant photography adds color.
  • 1963: Communications satellite, Syncom II, goes into geo-synchronous orbit.
  • 1963: Oscars (given 1964): Tom Jones, Sidney Poitier, Patricia Neal.
  • 1963: Also at the movies: Cleopatra, Hud, Lilies of the Field, How the West Was Won.
  • 1963: Foreign language film Oscar: Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, Ital.
  • 1963: TV news “comes of age” in reporting JFK assassination.
  • 1963: Julia Child cooks on television as The French Chef.
  • 1963: Martin Luther King gives “I have a dream” speech.
  • 1963: First live televised murder: Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald.
  • 1963: On educational TV: The French Chef, with Julia Child.
  • 1964: Peyton Place, televised soap opera, moves to prime-time.
  • 1964: TTY developed out of personal need by deaf physicist Robert Weitbrecht.
  • 1964: Anti-war protest folk music is popular.
  • 1964: On TV, Gilligan’s Island, Jeopardy, Bewitched, Munsters, Man from U.N.C.L.E.
  • 1964: V.S. Naipaul’s critical view of modern India, An Area of Darkness.
  • 1964: Michener, The Source, one of four dozen books, traces a location through history.
  • 1964: Artist Roy Lichtenstein, Good Morning, Darling.
  • 1964: Olympic Games in Tokyo telecast live globally by satellite.
  • 1964: Picturephone tested: Disneyland to N.Y. World’s Fair. Public unimpressed.
  • 1964: IBM’s OS/360 is first mass-produced computer operating system.
  • 1964: The PDP-8, first minicomputer, first to use integrated circuit technology.
  • 1964: Mariner IV sends television images from Mars.
  • 1964: Oscars (given 1965): My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews.
  • 1964: Also at the movies: Mary Poppins, Dr. Strangelove, Zorba the Greek.
  • 1964: Foreign language film Oscar: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Italy.
  • 1964: From Dartmouth: BASIC programming.
  • 1964: Russian scientists bounce a signal off Jupiter.
  • 1964: IBM Selectric typewriter has reusable magnetic tape.
  • 1964: Fiddler on the Roof starts long Broadway run.
  • 1964: National Book Awards: John Updike, Aileen Ward.
  • 1964: Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion; will be award-winning film.
  • 1964: Saul Bellow’s novel Herzog; will win the International Literary Prize.
  • 1964: First version of Moore’s Law: microprocessor speed will double each year.
  • 1964: Intelsat, international satellite organization, is formed.
  • 1964: Nobel Prize in Literature: Jean-Paul Sarte, who declines it.
  • 1964: Japan’s NHK begins HDTV development.
  • 1964: The first televised negative political ad skewers Barry Goldwater.
  • 1964: “Pirate” ships broadcast off English coast, challenge BBC monopoly.
  • 1964: Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media describes the global village.
  • 1964: Transpacific submarine telephone cable service begins.
  • 1964: Arthur Miller, After the Fall, fictional play about ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.
  • 1964: Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness argues for “ethical egoism."
  • 1964: A local area network (LAN) is created for atomic weapons research.
    • 1965: “Bobo doll” study indicates effects on small children of televised violence.
    • 1965: Computer-based telephone digital switching replaces electromagnetic system.
    • 1965: Nobel Prize in Literature: Russian novelist Mikhail Sholokhov.
    • 1965: African-American, Bill Cosby, stars in a TV show, I Spy.
    • 1965: Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird looks at the plight of Gypsies in the Holocaust.
    • 1965: Author Ian Fleming dies, but James Bond carries on in books, films.
    • 1965: Ford offers 8-track tape players on next year’s model cars.
    • 1965: Mobile radio telephone service widely available in the U.S.
    • 1965: Vietnam War becomes first war to be televised.
    • 1965: 9 of 10 U.S. telephones can use direct distance dialing.
    • 1965: Western Electric uses lasers in industry.
    • 1965: British ban televised cigarette advertising.
    • 1965: Videotape recorders sold in huge numbers for home use.
    • 1965: Electronic phone exchange gives customers extra services.
    • 1965: Radio astronomy research supports Big Bang Theory.

    • 1965: National Book Awards: Saul Bellow, Eleanor Clark.

    • 1965: Satellites begin domestic TV distribution in Soviet Union.
    • 1965: Color news film.
    • 1965: On TV: Green Acres, Hogans Heroes, I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart.
    • 1965: Commercial communications satellite Early Bird (Intelsat I) orbits.
    • 1965: Kodak offers Super 8 film for home movies.
    • 1965: Cartridge audio tapes go on sale for a few years.
    • 1965: ABC World News Tonight.
    • 1965: Oscars (given 1966): The Sound of Music, Lee Marvin, Julie Christie.
    • 1965: Also at the movies: Dr. Zhivago, Cat Ballou, A Thousand Clowns.
    • 1965: Foreign language film Oscar: The Shop on Main Street, Czechoslovakia.
    • 1965: Most broadcasts are in color.
    • 1965: Non-sequential hypertext is created. It will one day build the Internet’s links.
    • 1965: FCC rules bring structure to cable television.
    • 1965: Westinghouse Phonovid stores TV sound, pictures on phonograph records.
    • 1965: Solid-state equipment spreads through the cable industry.
    • 1965: The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
    • 1965: Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed attacks Detroit’s auto industry.
    • 1966: Doctoral dissertation is printed by a computer.
    • 1966: Star Trek goes into orbit.
    • 1966: In China, the Cultural Revolution.
    • 1966: Recent movies are played on prime time.
    • 1966: Public records collection, LexisNexis, founded as the Data Corporation.
    • 1966: Quotations from Mao Tes-Tung. Millions read Little Red Book.
    • 1966: Star Trek launches on television.
    • 1966: Old Metropolitan Opera House closes; opera moves to Lincoln Center.
    • 1966: Bernard Malamud’s novel, The Fixer, of a poor man influenced by Spinoza.
    • 1966: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood uses narrative style for non-fiction.
    • 1966: William Buckley hosts The Firing Line, erudite, conservative discussion on TV.
    • 1966: Linotron can produce 1,000 alphanumeric characters per second for printing.
    • 1966: Charles Kao’s waveguide light theory will lead to communication channels.
    • 1966: TV viewers are treated to close-ups of the moon, courtesy of Surveyor 1.
    • 1966: The Amateur Computer Society organizes personal computing.
    • 1966: Neorealistic style gives The Battle of Algiers a documentary look.
    • 1966: Cabaret on Broadway.
    • 1966: National Book Awards: Katherine Ann Porter, Janet Flanner.
    • 1966: Nobel Prize in Literature shared by Jewish writers Nelly Sachs, Shmuel Agnon.
    • 1966: Marc Chagall’s murals are installed at the new New York Met.
    • 1966: Oscars (given 1967): A Man for All Seasons, Paul Scofield, Elizabeth Taylor.
    • 1966: Also at the movies: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Alfie, Hawaii, Blow-Up.
    • 1966: Foreign language film Oscar: A Man and a Woman, France.
    • 1966: Flora Nwapa’s Efuru is the first novel by a black African woman.
    • 1966: Periscope is the first arcade game to cost a quarter, not a dime.
    • 1966: TV version of Amos ‘n’ Andy called racist, removed from airwaves.
    • 1966: Xerox sells the Telecopier, a fax machine.
    • 1966: John Barth’s comic novel, Giles Goat-Boy, the tale of a would-be messiah.
    • 1966: European nations adopt competing TV standards PAL and SECAM.
    • 1966: SABRE airline reservation system is an early data communication network.
    • 1966: FCC blocks cable television wiring in large cities.
    • 1966: Star Trek is beamed to home screens.
    • 1967: Newspapers, magazines start to digitize production.
    • 1967: Nobel Prize in Literature: Miguel Asturias, Guatemalan writer of Indian life.
    • 1967: Dolby eliminates audio hiss.
    • 1967: In New York the World-Telegram goes out of business.
    • 1967: Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Message.
    • 1967: On TV: Washington Week in Review, Carol Burnett Show.
    • 1967: Computers get the light pen.
    • 1967: From IBM, the floppy disk.
    • 1967: Tom Stoppard’s first play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
    • 1967: Jacques Derrida’s philosophy “deconstructs” Western rationalist thinking.
    • 1967: Pre-recorded movies on videotape sold for home TV sets.
    • 1967: On Broadway, Thoroughly Modern Millie.
    • 1967: Fairness Doctrine allows anti-cigarette ads; tobacco industry pulls own ads.
    • 1967: ADVENT, a text-based adventure game.
    • 1967: Dr. George Gerbner reports to nation on TV violence.
    • 1967: National Book Awards: Bernard Malamud, Justin Kaplan.
    • 1967: Adult, underground comics arrive with R. Crumb’s Zap Comix.
    • 1967: Oscars (given 1968): In the Heat of the Night, Rod Steiger, Katherine Hepburn.
    • 1967: Also at the movies: The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, Bonnie and Clyde.
    • 1967: Foreign language film Oscar: Closely Watched Trains, Czechoslovakia.
    • 1967: Gabriel García Márquez’ novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
    • 1967: Cordless telephones enter the phone system.
    • 1967: U.S. mandates Daylight Savings Time.
    • 1967: ABC Radio divides into four networks.
    • 1967: Newspapers introduce computers into their operations.
    • 1967: Congress creates Corporation for Public Broadcasting; adds federal support.
    • 1967: ABC joins CBS and NBC in presenting 30-minute television newscasts.
    • 1967: William Styron’s, The Confessions of Nat Turner, criticized, praised.
    • 1967: Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, A Garden of Earthly Delights.
    • 1967: New magazines include Rolling Stone and New York.
    • 1968: Gore Vidal’s novel of gender switching, Myra Breckenridge.
    • 1968: 60 Minutes starts ticking, proves than news on TV can be profitable.
    • 1968: On Broadway: the rock musical Hair.
    • 1968: FCC is given jurisdiction over cable TV.
    • 1968: It seems we live in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
    • 1968: Norman Mailer, Armies of the Night, wins Pulitzer and National Book Award.
    • 1968: TV photographers lug two-inch-tape portable videotape recorders.
    • 1968: FCC approves attaching non-Bell equipment to phone system.
    • 1968: Magnetic-stripe credit cards.
    • 1968: National Book Awards: Thornton Wilder, William Troy.
    • 1968: On TV, a new kind of variety show: Laugh-In.
    • 1968: Hollywood adopts an age-based rating system: G, M (later GP and PG), R, X.
    • 1968: Hand-held cameras used at national political conventions.
    • 1968: Hawaii Five-O starts 12-year TV run.
    • 1968: Noam Chomsky influences linguistics with Language and Mind.
    • 1968: Tom Stoppard’s play, The Real Inspector Hound.
    • 1968: Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
    • 1968: On TV, Laugh-In is modeled on British That Was the Week That Was.
    • 1968: Andrew Webber’s first hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
    • 1968: Jürgen Habermas’ Knowledge and Human Interests argues critical theory.
    • 1968: Intelsat completes global communications satellite loop.
    • 1968: Kawabata Yasunari becomes first Japanese to win Nobel Prize in Literature.
    • 1968: Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
    • 1968: Approximately 200 million TV sets in the world, 78 million in U.S.
    • 1968: Oscars (given 1969): Oliver!, Cliff Robertson, Katherine Hepburn.
    • 1968: Also at the movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Funny Girl, Rosemary’s Baby.
    • 1968: Foreign language film Oscar: War and Peace, U.S.S.R.
    • 1968: U.S. movie attendance drops to 20 million tickets weekly (10% of population).
    • 1968: Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, on racism, written in prison.
    • 1968: Sony develops the Trinitron color television tube.
    • 1968: Action for Children’s Television (ACT) organization is created.
    • 1968: U.S. adopts “911” as national emergency telephone number.
    • 1968: An Intel 1 KB RAM microchip reaches the market.
    • 1968: Douglas Englelbart links keyboard, keypad, mouse, windows, and more.
    • 1968: First digital wireless network, Linkabit, created in San Diego.
    • 1969: Computer program PASCAL.
    • 1969: On TV: Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Brady Bunch, Marcus Welby, M.D.
    • 1969: Supreme Court’s Red Lion decision supports Fairness Doctrine.
    • 1969: National Book Awards: Jerzy Kosinski, Norman Mailer.
    • 1969: Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is created.
    • 1969: Nobel Prize in Literature: Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.
    • 1969: RCA SelectaVision plays pre-recorded cassettes, but cannot record.
    • 1969: Sony brings out 3/4” U-Matic, first videotape cassette editing system.
    • 1969: Astronauts send live color photos from the moon to worldwide audience.
    • 1969: First words broadcast from the moon: “That’s one small step….
    • 1969: Department of Defense commissions ARPANET for research into networking.
    • 1969: Audio music tapes sold with Dolby Noise Reduction.
    • 1969: Vice President Agnew accuses network television newscasts of bias.
    • 1969: Kenneth Thompson creates the Unix Operating System for computers.
    • 1969: UCLA computer sends data to Stanford computer, foreshadowing Internet.
    • 1969: Oscars (given 1970): Midnight Cowboy (X-rated), John Wayne, Maggie Smith.
    • 1969: Also at the movies: True Grit, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Easy Rider.
    • 1969: Foreign language film Oscar: The Brothers Karamazov, U.S.S.R., and Z, Algeri.
    • 1969: The Saturday Evening Post stops publishing after 148 years. TV blamed.
    • 1969: Children can visit Sesame Street.
    • 1969: Novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.
    • 1969: Novelist Michael Crichton’s first best-seller, The Andromeda Strain.
    • 1969: James Dickey’s novel, Deliverance.
    • 1969: Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather.
    • 1969: CompuServe goes into business.
    • 1969: John Fowles’ novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
    • 1969: Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint shocks with sexual caricatures.
    • 1969: Joyce Carol Oates’ award winner, them.
    • 1969: Pop-art movement’s Claes Oldenburg makes large sculptures, like Lipstick.
    • 1969: The Woodstock music festival.