Throwback Thursday

Forty years ago today Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a tale about UFOs and the ultimate alien encounter, opened in a limited number of theaters before hitting “theaters everywhere” in December 1977.

Whether or not you’re old to enough to have lived through the Sixties and Seventies, here’s a momentous occasion in the history of electronic entertainment that takes us back to 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected president: Pac-Man makes its debut in U.S. arcades and goes on to become not only the first mega-hit video game in history but an icon in pop culture.

Thirty-six years ago this month, RCA introduced its long-awaited videodisc player, nine years after it demonstrated that it was possible to store color video on, and play it back from, an LP-like 12-inch disc.

Thirty-four years ago this week, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs asks McIntosh Labs for rights to use “Macintosh” as the brand name of a computer it was developing, a year after settling a trademark infringement suit brought by The Beatles’ holding company Apple Corps.

Thirty-three years ago, Apple’s now-famous “1984” TV commercial was broadcast during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII (the then Los Angeles Raiders pummeled the Washington Redskins 38-9), introducing in dramatic fashion a machine that would redefine home computing: The Macintosh.

The video cassette recorder (VCR) seems quaint today but 35 years ago today the Supreme Court handed down a landmark 5-4 decision that upheld the consumer’s right to record TV shows (and ultimately other video content) for personal use — a “right” we take for granted.

CD was just beginning to catch on when Dire Straits released its fifth studio album Brothers in Arms in May 1985. Driven by the iconic (and controversial) hit single “Money For Nothing,” the album was the first to sell one million copies in the CD format and the first to outsell its LP counterpart.