From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil crisis puts the nation of America in gridlock; Both the leaders of Israel and Egypt shake hands after the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978; The 1970 Bhola cyclone kills an estimated 500,000 people in the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan in November 1970; The Iranian Revolution of 1979 transformed Iran from an autocratic pro-western monarchy to a theocratic Islamist government under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; The popularity of the disco music genre peaked during the middle to late 1970s.

The 1970s, pronounced "the Nineteen Seventies", was the decade that started on January 1, 1970, and ended on December 31, 1979. This was the eighth decade of the 20th century.

In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and political and economic liberty of women, continued to grow. The hippie culture, which started in the latter half of the 1960s, waned by the early 1970s and faded towards the middle part of the decade, which involved opposition to the Vietnam War, opposition to nuclear weapons, the advocacy of world peace, and hostility to the authority of government and big business. The environmentalist movement began to increase dramatically in this period.

In the United Kingdom with the 1979 elections resulted in the victory of its Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Industrialized countries, except Japan, experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal governments being created in Chile, where a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet took place in 1973.

Novelist Tom Wolfe coined the term Me decade in his article "The "Me" Decade and the Third Great Awakening", published by New York magazine in August 1976 referring to the 1970s. The term describes a general new attitude of Americans towards atomized individualism and away from communitarianism in clear contrast with the 1960s.

Wolfe attributes disappearance of the "proletariat" with the appearance of the "lower middle class", citing the economic boom of Post-War America as affording the average American a sort of self determination and individuation that ran alongside economic prosperity. Wolfe describes this abandoning of communal, left, and New Deal politics as "taking the money and running." He traces the preoccupation with one's self back to the aristocrat. The nature of the "chivalric tradition" and the philosophy behind "the finishing school" are inherently dedicated to the building and forming of personal character and conduct.

The attitude of the counter-culture of the 1960s and The New Left promoted a recovery of the self in the wave, of what was deemed, a flawed, corrupt, and almost fascistic, America. This philosophy left the 1970s with the promise that the use LSD or acid unveiled the true and the real self. Wolfe describes the revelatory experience of hallucinogens as attenuating the ecstatic religious experience, transforming the religious climate in American. Chronicling the First and Second Great Awakenings, Wolfe comes to describe the "Me decade as the "Third Great Awakening."^[1]

In Asia, affairs regarding the People's Republic of China changed significantly following the recognition of the PRC by the United Nations, the death of Mao Zedong and the beginning of market liberalization by Mao's successors. Despite facing an oil crisis due to the OPEC embargo, the economy of Japan witnessed a large boom in this period. The United States withdrew its military forces from their previous involvement in the Vietnam War which had grown enormously unpopular. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan which led to an ongoing war for ten years.

The 1970s saw an initial increase in violence in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria declared war on Israel, but in the late 1970s, the situation in the Middle East was fundamentally altered when Egypt signed the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty. Anwar El Sadat, President of Egypt, was instrumental in the event and consequently became extremely unpopular in the Arab World and the wider Muslim world.^[2] He was assassinated in 1981. Political tensions in Iran exploded with the Iranian Revolution which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty and established an Islamic republic of Iran.

The economies of much of the developing world continued to make steady progress in the early 1970s, because of the Green Revolution. They might have thrived and become stable in the way that Europe recovered after World War II through the Marshall Plan; however, their economic growth was slowed by the oil crisis but boomed immediately after.

Politics and wars[link]

Wars[link]

The most notable wars and/or other conflicts of the decade include:

• The Cold War (1947–1991)
  • The Vietnam War came to a close in 1975 with the fall of Saigon and the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. The following year, Vietnam was officially declared reunited.
  • Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989) - Although taking place almost entirely throughout the 1980s, the war officially started on December 27, 1979.
  • Angolan Civil War (1975–2002) - resulting in intervention by multiple countries on the Marxist and anti-Marxist sides, with Cuba and Mozambique supporting the Marxist faction while South Africa and Zaire support the anti-Marxists.
  • Ethiopian Civil War (1976–1991)
• Arab–Israeli conflict (Early 20th century–present)
  • Yom Kippur War (1973) - the war was launched by Egypt against Israel in October 1973 to recover the international standing Egypt had lost in the 1967 conflict. The Israelis were taken by surprise and suffered heavy losses before they rallied. In the end, they managed to repel the Egyptians (and a simultaneous attack by Syria) and crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt proper. In 1978, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel at Camp David in the United States, ending outstanding disputes between the two countries. Sadat's actions would lead to his assassination in 1981.
• Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) - A civil war in the Middle East which at times also involved the PLO and Israel during the early 1980s.
• Western Sahara War (1975–1991) - A regional war pinning the rebel Polisario Front against Morocco and Mauritania.
• Multiple conflicts and crises occur in India and Pakistan during the 1970s including the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Bangladesh Liberation War, and the Indian Emergency 1975–1977.
• Ugandan–Tanzanian War (1978–1979) - the war which was fought between Uganda and Tanzania was based on an expansionist agenda to annex territory from Tanzania. The war resulted in the overthrow of Idi Amin's regime.
• The Ogaden War (1977–1978) was another African conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia over control of the Ogaden region.

Internal conflicts[link]

1979 Iranian Revolution

The most notable Internal conflicts of the decade include:

• Major conflict between capitalist and communist forces in multiple countries, while attempts are made by the Soviet Union and the United States to lessen the chance for conflict, such as both countries endorsing nuclear nonproliferation.
• In 1976, peaceful student protests in the Soweto township of South Africa lead to the Soweto Uprising when more than 700 black school children were killed by South Africa's Security Police.
• Rise of separatism in the province of Quebec in Canada. In 1970, radical Quebec nationalist and Marxist militants of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnap the Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte and British Trade Commissioner James Cross during the October Crisis, resulting in Laporte being killed, and the enactment of martial law in Canada under the War Measures Act, resulting in a campaign by the Canadian government which arrests suspected FLQ supporters. The election of the Parti Québécois led by René Lévesque in the province of Quebec in Canada, brings the first political party committed to Quebec independence into power in Quebec. Lévesque's government pursues an agenda to secede Quebec from Canada by democratic means and strengthen Francophone Québécois culture in the late 1970s, such as the controversial Charter of the French Language more commonly known in Quebec and Canada as "Bill 101".
• Martial law was declared in the Philippines on September 21, 1972, by President Ferdinand Marcos.
• In Cambodia the communist leader Pol Pot led a revolution against the American-backed government of Lon Nol. On April 17, 1975, his forces captured Phnom Penh the capitol, two years after America had halted the bombings of their positions. His communist government, the Khmer Rouge, forced people out of the cities to clear jungles and establish a radical, Marxist agrarian society. Buddhist priests and monks, along with anyone who spoke foreign languages, had any sort of education, or even wore eyeglasses were tortured or killed. As many as 3 million people may have died. Vietnam invaded the country at the start of 1979, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge and installing a satellite government. This provoked a brief, but furious border war with China in February of that year.
• The Iranian Revolution of 1979 transformed Iran from an autocratic pro-western monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to a theocratic Islamist government under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Distrust between the revolutionaries and Western powers led to the Iran hostage crisis on November 4, 1979, where 66 diplomats, mainly from the U.S., were held captive for 444 days.
• Growing internal tensions take place in Yugoslavia beginning with the Croatian Spring movement in 1971 which demands greater decentralization of power to the constituent republics of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia's communist ruler Joseph Broz Tito subdues the Croatian Spring movement and arrests its leaders, but does initiate major constitutional reform resulting in the 1974 Constitution which decentralized powers to the republics, gave them the official right to separate from Yugoslavia, and weakened the influence of Serbia (Yugoslavia's largest and most populous constituent republic) in the federation by granting significant powers to the Serbian autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. In addition, the 1974 Constitution consolidated Tito's dictatorship by proclaiming him president-for-life. The 1974 Constitution would become resented by Serbs and began a gradual escalation of ethnic tensions.

Coups[link]

Haile Selassie was overthrown from power in Ethiopia, ending one of the world's longest lasting monarchies in history.

The most prominent coups d'état of the decade include:

• 1970 - Coup in Syria, led by Hafez al-Assad
• 1971 Ugandan coup d'état - Military coup in Uganda led by Idi Amin.
• 1973 - Coup d'état in Chile on September 11th, Salvador Allende overthrown and killed in a military attack on the presidential palace. Augusto Pinochet takes power backed by the military junta.
• 1974 - Military coup in Ethiopia led to the overthrown of Haile Selassie by the communist junta led by General Aman Andom and Mengistu Haile Mariam, ending one of the world's longest lasting monarchies in history.
• 1976 - Jorge Rafael Videla seizes control of Argentina in 1976 through a coup sponsored by the Argentine military, establishing himself as a dictator of a military junta government in the country.
• 1979 - Attempted coup in Iran, backed by the US to overthrow Interim government which came to power after the Iranian Revolution

Terrorist attacks[link]

The most notable terrorist attacks of the decade include:

• The Munich massacre takes place at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where Palestinian Arab terrorists of the Black September terrorist organization kidnap and murder eleven Israeli athletes.
• Rise in the use of terrorism by militant organizations across the world. Groups in Europe like the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang were responsible for a spate of bombings, kidnappings, and murders. Violence continued in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. Radical American groups existed as well, such as the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army, but they never achieved the size or strength of their European counterparts.
• On September 6, 1970, the world witnessed the beginnings of modern rebellious fighting in what is today called as Skyjack Sunday. Palestinian terrorists hijacked four airliners and took over 300 people on board as hostage. The hostages were later released, but the planes were blown up.

Prominent political events[link]

Worldwide

• 1973 oil crisis and 1979 energy crisis
• The presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state and heads of government in a number of countries across the world, many being the first women to hold such positions, such as Soong Ching-ling continuing as the first Chairwoman of the People's Republic of China until 1972, Isabel Martínez de Perón as the first woman President in Argentina in 1974 until being deposed in 1976, Elisabeth Domitien becomes the first woman Prime Minister of Lesotho, Indira Gandhi continuing as Prime Minister of India until 1977, Lidia Gueiler Tejada becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Americas

Nixon displays the V-for-victory sign as he departs the White House after resigning

• United States President Richard Nixon resigns as President in 1974 while facing charges for impeachment for the Watergate scandal.
• Augusto Pinochet rises to power as ruler of Chile after overthrowing the country's Socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973 with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. Pinochet would remain the dictator of Chile until 1990.
• In Guyana, the Rev. Jim Jones led several hundred people from the United States to establish a Utopian Marxist commune in the jungle named Jonestown. Amid allegations of corruption, mental and physical abuse by Jones on his followers, and denying them the right to leave Jonestown, a Congressional committee visited Guyana to investigate in November 1978. They were attacked by Jones' guards and Congressman Leo Ryan was killed. The demented Jones then ordered everyone in the commune to commit suicide. The people drank or were forced to drink cyanide-laced fruit punch. A total of 900 dead were found, including Jones, who shot himself.

Europe

United States President Jimmy Carter and Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna, Austria.

• Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party rise to power in the United Kingdom in 1979, initiating a neoliberal economic policy of reducing government spending, weakening the power of trade unions, and promoting economic and trade liberalization.
• Francisco Franco dies after 39 years in power. Juan Carlos I crowned king of Spain and calls for reintroduction of democracy, dictatorship in Spain ends. First general elections held in 1977 and Adolfo Suarez becomes President of Spain after his Centrist Democratic Union wins. Socialist and Communist parties legalised. Current Spanish Constitution signed in 1977.
• In 1971, Erich Honecker was chosen to lead East Germany, a role he would fill for the whole of the 1970s and 1980s. The mid-1970s were a time of extreme recession for East Germany, and as a result of the country's higher debts, consumer goods became more and more scarce. If East Germans had enough money to procure a television set, a telephone, or a Trabant automobile, they were placed on waiting lists which caused them to wait as much as a decade for the item in question.
• The Soviet Union under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, having the largest armed forces and largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, pursued an agenda to lessen tensions with its rival superpower, the United States for most of the Seventies. That policy known as détente abruptly ended with the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan at the end of 1979. While known as a 'period of stagnation' in Soviet historiography the Seventies are largely considered as a sort of a golden age of the USSR in terms of stability and relative well-being. Nevertheless, hidden inflation continued to increase for the second straight decade, and production consistently fell short of demand in agriculture and consumer goods manufacturing. By the end of the 1970s, signs of social and economic stagnation were becoming very pronounced.
• Enver Hoxha's rule in Albania was characterized in the 1970s by growing isolation, first from a very public schism with the Soviet Union the decade before, and then by a split in friendly relations with China in 1978. Albania normalized relations with Yugoslavia in 1971, and attempted trade agreements with other European nations, but was met with vocal disapproval by the United Kingdom and United States .
• 1978 would become known as the "Year of Three Popes". In August, Paul VI, who had ruled since 1963, died. His successor was Cardinal Albino Luciano, who took the name John Paul. But only 33 days later, he was found dead, and the Catholic Church had to elect another pope. On October 16, Karol Wojtyła, a Polish cardinal, was elected, becoming Pope John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pope since 1523.

Asia

Camp David Accords, 1978

• On 17 September 1978 the Camp David Accords are signed between Israel and Egypt. The Accords led directly to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. They also resulted in Sadat and Begin sharing the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
• Major changes in the People's Republic of China. US president Richard Nixon visited the country in 1972, restoring relations between the two countries, although diplomatic ties were not established until 1979. In 1976, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai both died, beginning a new era. After the brief rule of Mao's chosen successor Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader, and began to shift the country towards market economics and away from ideologically driven policies.
• In Iraq, Saddam Hussein began to rise to power by helping to modernize the country. One major initiative was removing the western monopoly on oil which later during the high prices of 1973 oil crisis would help Hussein's ambitious plans. On July 16, 1979, he assumed the presidency cementing his rise to power. His presidency led to the breaking off of a Syrian-Iraqi unification, which had been sought under his predecessor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and would lead to the Iran–Iraq War starting in the 1980s.
• Japan's economic growth surpassed the rest of the world in the 1970s, unseating the United States as the world's foremost industrial power.
• On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge take over Cambodia's capital Phnom penh

Africa

• Idi Amin, President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, after rising to power in a coup becomes infamous for his brutal dictatorship in Uganda. Amin's regime persecutes opposition to his rule, pursues a racist agenda of removing Asians from Uganda (particularly Indians who arrived in Uganda during British colonial rule). Amin initiates the Ugandan–Tanzanian War in 1978 in alliance with Libya based on an expansionist agenda to annex territory from Tanzania which results in Ugandan defeat and Amin's overthrow in 1979.
• South African activist Steve Biko dies in 1977.
• Francisco Macías Nguema ruled Equatorial Guinea as a brutal dictator from 1969 until his overthrow and execution in 1979.
• Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who had ruled the Central African Republic since 1965, proclaimed himself emperor Bokassa I and renamed his impoverished country the Central African Empire in 1977. He was overthrown two years later and went into exile.

Disasters[link]

Natural disasters[link]

The 1970 Bhola cyclone, considered the 20th century's worst cyclone disaster, kills an estimated 500,000 people in the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan during November 1970.

• The 1970 Bhola cyclone, a 120-mph (193 km/h) tropical cyclone, hit the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during November 1970, killing an estimated 500,000 people (considered the 20th century's worst cyclone disaster).
• On July 28, 1976 the Tangshan earthquake flattened Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people, and injuring 164,851.
• On August 8, 1975 the Banqiao Dam, in China's Henan Province, failed after a freak typhoon; over 200,000 people perished.
• Bangladesh famine of 1974 — Official records claim 26,000. However, various sources claim about 1,000,000.
• On January 5, 1970 an earthquake (Richter Scale 7.7 magnitude) at Yunnan, China killed at least 15,621.
• On May 31, 1970 the 1970 Ancash earthquake caused a landslide that buried the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people were killed.
• On September 29, 1971 a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, in Orissa State in India, killed 10,000.
• On February 4, 1976 a major earthquake in Guatemala and Honduras killed more than 22,000.
• On December 24, 1974 Cyclone Tracy devastated the Australian city of Darwin.
• On April 3, 1974 the Super Outbreak occurred in the U.S. producing 148 tornadoes and killing a total of 330 people.

Non-natural disasters[link]

• On November 14, 1970, a Southern Airways jet carrying the entire Marshall (West Virginia) football team and boosters crashed into a Ceredo (West Virginia) mountainside on approach to the Tri-State airport in heavy rain and fog. They were returning from a road game loss at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. There were no survivors.
• On November 10th, 1975, U.S Great Lakes bulk freighter S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald foundered on Lake Superior with the loss of all 29 crewmen.
• On September 10, 1976, in the Zagreb mid-air collision a British Airways Trident and a Yugoslav DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), killing all 176 aboard.
• On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747s (a KLM and a Pan Am) collided on the runway in heavy fog at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, killing 583 people, the worst single aviation accident on record.
• On May 25, 1979, the American Airlines Flight 191 from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, to Los Angeles International Airport, crashed during take-off, killing all 271 on board and 2 people on the ground.

Worldwide trends[link]

The color orange was popular in the 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

Developing nations that were rich in oil experienced economic growth; others, not so endowed, saw the economic strain of oil price hikes lead to economic decline, particularly in Africa where a number of moderately democratic states became dictatorial regimes. Many Middle Eastern democracies turned into regimes with pseudo-democratic governments. Several Asian countries also saw the rise of dictators, including Indonesia, Philippines, and South Korea.

People were deeply influenced by the rapid pace of societal change and the aspiration for a more egalitarian society in cultures that were long colonized and have an even longer history of hierarchical social structure.

The Green Revolution of the late 1960s brought about self sufficiency in food in many developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek urban prosperity over agrarian life. This consequently saw the duality of transition of diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade across social class.

Other common global ethos of the 1970s world included increasingly flexible and varied gender roles for women in industrialized societies. More women could enter the work force. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a bread-winner. The period also saw the socioeconomic effect of an ever-increasing number of women entering the non-agrarian economic workforce. The Iranian revolution also affected global attitudes to and among those of the Muslim faith toward the end of the 1970s.

The global experience of the cultural transition of the 1970s and an experience of a global zeitgeist revealed the interdependence of economies since World War II, in a world increasingly polarized between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Economy[link]

The 1970s were perhaps the worst decade of most industrialized countries' economic performance since the Great Depression.^[3] Although there was no severe economic depression as witnessed in the 1930s, economic growth rates were considerably lower than previous decades. As a result, the 1970s adversely distinguished itself from the prosperous postwar period between 1945 and 1973. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 added to the existing ailments and conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade. U.S. manufacturing industries began to decline as a result, with the US running it's last trade surplus (as of 2009) in 1975. In contrast, Japan's economy continued to expand and prosper during the decade, boosted by growing exports.

The average annual inflation rate from 1900 to 1970 was approximately 2.5%. From 1970, however, the average rate hit about 6%, topping out at 13.3% by 1979. This period is also known for "stagflation", a phenomenon in which inflation and unemployment steadily increased, therefore leading to double-digit interest rates that rose to unprecedented levels (above 12% per year). The prime rate hit 21.5 in December 1980, the highest in history.^[3] By the time of 1980, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the misery index (the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate) had reached an all-time high of 21.98%. The economic problems of the 1970s would result in a sluggish cynicism replacing the optimistic attitudes of the 1950s and 1960s. Faith in government was at an all-time low in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, as exemplified by the low voter turnout in the 1976 United States presidential election.

In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies began showing signs of stagnation, in which successes were persistently dogged by setbacks. The oil shock increased East European, particularly Soviet, exports, but a growing inability to increase agricultural output caused growing concern to the governments of the COMECON block, and a growing dependence on food imported from democratic nations.

On the other hand, export-driven economic development in Asia, especially by the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan), resulted in rapid economic transformation and industrialization. Their abundance of cheap labor, combined with educational and other policy reforms, set the foundation for development in the region during the 1970s and beyond.

Oil crisis[link]

Line at a gas station in Maryland, USA, June 15, 1979.

Economically, the 1970s were marked by the energy crisis which peaked in 1973 and 1979 (see 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis). After the first oil shock in 1973, gasoline was rationed in many countries. Europe particularly depended on the Middle East for oil; the U.S. was also affected even though it had its own oil reserves. Many European countries introduced car-free days and weekends. In the U.S., customers with a license plate ending in an odd number were only allowed to buy gasoline on odd-numbered days, while even-numbered plate-holders could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered days. The realization that oil reserves were not endless and technological development was not sustainable^{[citation needed]} without potentially harming the environment ended the belief in limitless progress^{[citation needed]} that had existed since the 19th century. As a result, ecological awareness rose substantially. This had a huge effect on the economy at that time.

Science and technology[link]

Science[link]

The 1970s witnessed an explosion in the understanding of solid-state physics, driven by the development of the integrated circuit, and the laser. Stephen Hawking developed his theories of black holes and the boundary-condition of the universe at this period with his theory called Hawking radiation. The biological sciences greatly advanced, with molecular biology, bacteriology, virology, and genetics achieving their modern forms in this decade. Biodiversity became a cause of major concern as habitat destruction, and Stephen Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium revolutionized evolutionary thought.

Space Exploration[link]

Voyager spacecraft and space explorations

Apollo 14 lands on the moon, 5 February 1971

Apollo 17 Astronaut Gene Cernan becomes the last man on the moon, December 13, 1972

An artist impression of an American Apollo spacecraft and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docking, a propaganda portrait for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission

America's first space station Skylab in orbit February 8, 1974

As the 1960s ended, the United States had made two successful manned lunar landings. Many Americans lost interest afterward, feeling that since the country had accomplished President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing on the moon by the end of the 1960s, there was no need for further missions. There was also a growing sentiment that the billions of dollars spent on the space program should be put to other uses. The moon landings continued through 1972, but the near loss of the Apollo 13 astronauts in April 1970 served to further anti-NASA feelings. Plans for missions up to Apollo 20 were canceled, and the remaining Apollo and Saturn hardware was used for the Skylab space station program in 1973–1974, and for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), which was carried out in July 1975. Many of the ambitious projects NASA had planned for the 1970s were canceled amid heavy budget cutbacks, and instead it would devote most of the decade to the development of the space shuttle. ASTP was the last manned American space flight for the next five years. 1979 witnessed the spectacular reentry of Skylab over Australia. NASA had planned for a shuttle mission to the space station, but the shuttles were not ready to fly until 1981, too late to save it.

Meanwhile, the Soviets, having failed completely in their attempt at manned lunar landings, canceled the program in 1972. But by then, they had already started flying space stations. This would have problems of its own, especially the tragic loss of the Soyuz 11 crew in July 1971 and the near-loss of the Soyuz 18a crew during launch in April 1975. It eventually proved a success, with missions as long as six months being conducted by the end of the decade.

In terms of unmanned missions, a variety of lunar and planetary probes were launched by the US and Soviet programs during the decade. The greatest success was that of the Voyagers, which took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets to visit all of them except Pluto by the end of the 1980s.

China entered the space race in 1970 with the launching of its first satellite, but technological backwardness and limited funds would prevent the country from becoming a significant force in space exploration. Japan launched a satellite for the first time in 1972. The European Space Agency was founded during the decade as well.

Biology[link]

This section requires expansion.

• The first face lifts were attempted in the 1970s.
• The first MRI image was published in 1973.
• César Milstein and Georges Köhler report their discovery of how to use hybridoma cells to isolate monoclonal antibodies, effectively beginning the history of monoclonal antibody use in science
• Carl Woese and George E. Fox classify archaea as a new, separate domain of life.
• After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979.
• The first organisms genetically engineered were bacteria in 1973 and then mice in 1974.
• 1977 The first complete DNA genome to be sequenced is that of bacteriophage φX174.

Social science[link]

Social science intersected with hard science in the works in natural language processing by Terry Winograd (1973) and the establishment of the first cognitive sciences department in the world at MIT in 1979. The fields of generative linguistics and cognitive psychology went through a renewed vigor with symbolic modeling of semantic knowledge while the final devastation of the long standing tradition of behaviorism came about through the severe criticism of B.F. Skinner's work in 1971 by the cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky.

Technology[link]

Electronics and communications[link]

The birth of modern computing was in the 1970s, which saw the development of:

• the world's first general microprocessor
• The C programming language
• rudimentary personal computers with the launch of the Datapoint 2200
• pocket calculators
• The Sony walkman was built in 1978 by audio-division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara.
• the first supercomputer
• Consumer video games after the release of Computer Space.
• The earliest floppy disks, invented at IBM, which were 8 inches in diameter became commercially available in 1971
• The first e-mail transmission in 1971.
• Electronic paper by Nick Sheridon at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
• The Xerox Alto of 1973 was the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and mouse-driven graphical user interface (GUI).

The 1970s were also the start of:

• fiber optics, which transformed the communications industry.
• Microwave ovens became commercially available.
• VCRs became commercially available.
• The first voicemail system, known as the Speech Filing System (SFS), was invented by Stephen J. Boies in 1973.
• In 1979 Michael Aldrich invented e-commerce
• Discovision in 1978, was the first commercial optical disc storage medium.
• Positron emission tomography invented in 1972 by Edward J. Hoffman and fellow scientist Michael Phelps.
• On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola was the first to transmit the first Cell Phone call.
• In Finland, car phone service was first available in 1971 on the zero-generation ARP (Autoradiopuhelin, or Car Radiophone) service.

• 

  The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) is introduced.

• 

  8-inch floppy disk

• 

  A Philips N1500 video cassette recorder, with wooden cabinet.

Automobiles[link]

The 1970s was an era of fuel price increases, rising insurance rates, safety concerns, and emissions controls. The 1973 oil crisis caused a move towards smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles. Attempts were made to produce electric cars, but they were largely unsuccessful. In the United States, imported cars became a significant factor for the first time, and several domestic-built subcompact models entered the market. American-made cars such as the "quirky" AMC Gremlin, the jelly bean shaped AMC Pacer, and Pontiac Firebird's powerful Trans Am "sum up" the decade.^[4] Muscle cars and convertible models faded from favor during the early-1970s. It was believed that the 1976 Cadillac Eldorado would be the last American-built convertible, ending the open body style that once dominated the auto industry.^[5]

Styling on American cars became progressively more boxy and rectilinear during the 1970s,^[6] with coupes being the most popular body style. Wood paneling and shag carpets dominated interiors. American cars reached the largest sizes they would ever attain, but by 1977 General Motors managed to downsizing its full-size models to more manageable dimensions. Ford followed suit two years later, with Chrysler offering new small front-wheel-drive models, but was suffering from a worsening financial situation caused by various factors. By 1979, the company was near bankruptcy, and under its new president Lee Iaccoca (who had been fired from Ford the year before), asked for a government bailout. Meanwhile, American Motors beat out the U.S. Big Three to a subcompact car (the Gremlin) in 1970, but its fortunes declined throughout the decade, forcing it into a partnership with the French automaker Renault in 1979.

European car design underwent major changes during the 1970s due to the need for performance with high fuel efficiency – designs such as the Volkswagen Golf and Passat, BMW 3, 5 and 7 series, and Mercedes Benz S-Class appeared at the latter half of the decade. Ford Europe, specifically Ford Germany, also eclipsed the profits of its American parent company. The designs of Giorgetto Giugiaro became dominant, along with those of Marcello Gandini in Italy. The 1970s also saw the decline and practical failure of the British car industry – a combination of militant strikes and poor quality control effectively halted development at British Leyland, owner of all other British car companies during the 1970s.

The Japanese automobile industry flourished during the 1970s compared to other major auto industries. Japanese vehicles became internationally renowned for their affordability, reliability, and fuel-efficiency, which was very important to many customers due to the oil embargo. Japanese car manufacturing was prominent in its computerized robotic manufacturing techniques and lean manufacturing, and this contributed to high-efficiency and low production costs. The Honda Civic was introduced in 1973, and sold at record numbers due to its high fuel-efficiency. Other popular compact cars included the Toyota Corolla and the Datsun Sunny, in addition to other cars from those companies and others such as Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Mazda

Society[link]

Role of women in society[link]

Isabel Martínez de Perón becomes the first woman President of Argentina in 1974 and the first woman non-monarch head of state in the Western hemisphere.

Margaret Thatcher shortly after becoming the United Kingdom's first woman Prime Minister in 1979. Thatcher's political and economic agenda began the first government committed to neoliberalism.

The role of women in society was profoundly altered with growing feminism across the world and with the presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state outside of monarchies and heads of government in a number of countries across the world during the 1970s, many being the first women to hold such positions. Non-monarch women heads of state and heads of government in this period included Isabel Martínez de Perón as the first woman President in Argentina and the first woman non-monarch head of state in the Western hemisphere in 1974 until being deposed in 1976, Elisabeth Domitien becomes the first woman Prime Minister of the Central African Republic, Indira Gandhi continuing as Prime Minister of India until 1977 (and taking office again in 1980), Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel and acting Chairman Soong Ching-ling of the People's Republic of China continuing their leadership from the sixties, Lidia Gueiler Tejada becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979. Both Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher would remain important political figures in the following decade in the 1980s.

Social movements[link]

Anti-war protests[link]

The opposition to the War in Vietnam that began in the 1960s grew exponentially during the early 1970s. One of the best-known anti-war demonstrations was the Kent State shootings. In 1970, university students were protesting the war and the draft. Riots ensued during the weekend and the National Guard was called in to maintain the peace. However, by Monday, 4 May 1970, tensions arose again, and as the crowd grew larger, the National Guard started shooting. Four students were killed and nine injured. This event caused disbelief and shock throughout the country and became a staple of anti-Vietnam demonstrations.

Environmentalism[link]

The 1970s started a mainstream affirmation of the environmental issues early activists from the 1960s, such as Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin had warned of. The moon landing that had occurred at the end of the previous decade transmitted back concrete images of the Earth as an integrated, life-supporting system and shaped a public willingness to preserve nature. On April 22, 1970, the United States celebrated its first Earth Day in which over two thousand colleges and universities and roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools participated.

Feminism[link]

The Feminist Movement in the United States which began in the 1960s carried over to the 1970s, and took a prominent role within society. The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (which legalized female suffrage) in 1970 was commemorated by the Women's Strike for Equality and other protests.

With the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful and other works, such as Sexual Politics, being published at the start of the decade, feminism started to reach a larger audience than ever before. In addition, the Supreme Court's 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade that constitutionalized the right to an abortion brought the women's rights movement into the national political spotlight.

Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Betty Ford, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Robin Morgan, Kate Millet, Elizabeth Holtzman, amongst many others, led the movement for women's equality.

Australian-American singer Helen Reddy, recorded song called I Am Woman, which became an anthem for the women’s liberation movement.

Most efforts of the movement, especially aims at social equality and repeal of the remaining oppressive, sexist laws, were successful. Doors of opportunity were more numerous and much further open than before as women gained unheard of success in business, politics, education, science, the law, and even the home. Though most aims of the movement were successful, however, there were some significant failures, most notably the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution with only three more states needed to ratify it (efforts to ratify ERA in the unratified states continues to this day and twenty-two states have adopted state ERAs). Also, the wage gap failed to close, but it did become smaller.

The original feminist movement largely ended in 1982 with the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, and with new conservative leadership in Washington, D.C.. American women created a brief, but powerful, third-wave in the early 1990s which addressed sexual harassment (inspired by the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of 1991). The results of the movement included a new awareness of such issues amongst women, and unprecedented numbers of women elected to public office, particularly the United States Senate.

Civil rights[link]

While still around in the 1970s, the African American Civil Rights Movement had achieved its main goals, lost much passion with the murders of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Bobby Kennedy, and backed into the shadows, largely to make way for the feminist revolution which it itself had overshadowed for most of the 1960s. The seventies were seen as the "woman's turn", though many feminists incorporated civil rights ideals into their movement. A courageous feminist who had inherited the leadership position of the civil rights movement from her husband, Coretta Scott King, as leader of the black movement, called for an end to all discrimination, helping and encouraging the Woman's Liberation movement, and other movements as well. At the National Women's Conference in 1977 a minority women's resolution, promoted by King and others, passed to ensure racial equality in the movement's goals, after which, in one of the most emotional moments of the Conference, women of all races joined hands and sung "We Shall Overcome". Similarly, the gay movement made a huge step forward in the 1970s with the election of political figures such as Harvey Milk to public office and the advocating of anti-gay discrimination legislation passed and not passed during the decade. Many celebrities, including Freddie Mercury and Andy Warhol, also "came out" during this decade, bringing gay culture further into the limelight.

Youth suffrage[link]

The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on July 1, 1971, lowereing the voting age for all federal and state elections from 21 years to 18 years. The primary impetus for this change was the fact that young men were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War before they were old enough to vote.

Popular culture[link]

Music[link]

Led Zeppelin, 1977

The early 1970s saw the rise of popular soft rock/pop rock music, with recording artists such as The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, The Carpenters, Elton John, Carly Simon, Carole King, James Taylor, John Denver, The Eagles, America, Chicago, The Doobie Brothers, Paul McCartney and Wings, Bread and Steely Dan as well as the further rise of such popular, influential rhythm and blues (R&B) artists as multi-instrumentalist Stevie Wonder and the popular quintet The Jackson 5. A major event in music in the early 70s, were the deaths of popular rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all at the age of 27. Funk, an offshoot of Soul music with a greater emphasis on beats, influences from rhythm and blues, jazz, and psychedelic rock, was also very popular. The mid-1970s also saw the rise of disco music, which dominated during the last half of the decade with bands like the Bee Gees, ABBA, Village People, Boney M, Donna Summer, KC and the Sunshine Band, etc. In response to this, rock music became increasingly hard-edged with artists such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Minimalism also emerged, led by composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Michael Nyman. This was a break from the intellectual serial music of the tradition of Schoenberg which lasted from the early 1900s to 1960s.

Experimental classical music influenced both art rock and progressive rock genres with bands such as Yes, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Rush, Genesis, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues and Soft Machine. Hard rock and Heavy metal also emerged among British bands Led Zeppelin, Free, The Who, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and Judas Priest. Rock opera was launched by Queen. Australian band AC/DC also found its hard rock origins in the early 1970s and its breakthrough in 1979's Highway to Hell, while popular American rock bands included Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Blue Öyster Cult, "shocksters" Alice Cooper and Kiss, and guitar-oriented Ted Nugent and Van Halen. In Europe, there was a surge of popularity in the early decade for glam rock. The mid-'70s saw the rise of punk rock from its protopunk/garage band roots in the 1960s and early 1970s. Major acts include the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash, while seminal band The Runaways would produce 1980s solo recording artists Joan Jett and Lita Ford. The highest-selling album was Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). It remained on the Billboard 200 albums chart for 741 weeks. Electronic instrumental prog rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy "Kraut rock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent synth rock.^[7] The mid-1970s, saw the rise of electronic art music musicians such as Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and Tomita, who with Brian Eno were a significant influence of the development of New Age Music.Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra helped pioneer synthpop,with their self-titled album (in 1978) setting a template with less minimalism and with a strong emphasis on melody, and drawing from a wider range of influences than had been employed by Kraftwerk.YMO also introduced the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 sequencer and TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music.

In the first half of the 1970s many jazz musicians from the Miles Davis school achieve cross-over success through jazz-rock fusion with bands like Weather Report, Return to Forever, The Headhunters and The Mahavishnu Orchestra who also influence this genre and many others. In Germany, Manfred Eicher started the ECM label, which quickly made a name for "chamber jazz". Towards the end of the decade, Jamaican Reggae music, already popular in the Caribbean and Africa since the early 1970s, became very popular in the U.S. and in Europe, mostly because of reggae superstar and legend Bob Marley. The late '70s also saw the beginning of Hip Hop music with disc jockey's like DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa taking loops from funk and soul records and play it repeatedly at block parties and dance clubs. In the end of the 1970s popular songs like "Rapper's Delight" by Sugarhill Gang gave Hip Hop a wider audience. Hip Hop was also influenced by the song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott Heron. Country music remained very popular in the U.S. Between 1977 and 1979, it became more mainstream, as Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Allman Brothers Band all scored hits which reached both country and pop charts.

Two of popular music's most successful artists died within eight weeks of each other in 1977. Elvis Presley, the best-selling singer of all time, died on August 16, 1977.^[8] Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18, 1977.

Bing Crosby, who sold about half a billion records, died October 14, 1977. His single, White Christmas, remains as the best selling single of all time, confirmed by the Guinness Records.^[9]

Statistically, ABBA was the most successful musical act of the 1970s, topping approximately 370 million sales since 1972, followed by Led Zeppelin at approximately 300 million sales since 1968.

Film[link]

The highest-grossing film of the decade was Star Wars (1977).

Oscar winners of the decade were Patton (1970), The French Connection (1971), The Godfather (1972), The Sting (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Rocky (1976), Annie Hall (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).

The 10 highest-grossing films of the decade are (in order from highest to lowest grossing): Star Wars, Jaws, Grease, The Exorcist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, The Godfather, Saturday Night Fever, Rocky, and Jaws 2.^[10] Two of these movies came out on the same day, June 16, 1978.

In 1970s European cinema, the failure of the Prague Spring brought about nostalgic motion pictures such as István Szabó's Szerelmesfilm (1970). German New Wave and Rainer Fassbinder's existential movies characterized film-making in Germany. The movies of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman reached a new level of expression in motion pictures like Cries and Whispers (1973).

Asian cinema of the 1970s catered to the rising middle class fantasies and struggles. In the Bollywood cinema of India, this was epitomized by the movies of Bollywood superhero Amitabh Bachchan. Another Asian touchstone beginning in the early 1970s was Hong Kong martial arts film which sparked a greater interest in Chinese martial arts around the world. Martial arts film reached the peak of its popularity largely in part due to its greatest icon, Bruce Lee.

During the 1970s, Hollywood continued the New Hollywood revolution of the late-1960s with young film-makers. Top-grossing Jaws (1975) ushered in the blockbuster era of filmmaking, though it was eclipsed two years later by the science-fiction film Star Wars (1977). Saturday Night Fever (1977) single-handedly touched off disco mania in the U.S. The Godfather (1972) was also one of the decade's greatest successes and its first follow-up, The Godfather Part II (1974) was also successful for a sequel.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show flopped in its 1975 debut, only to reappear as a more-popular midnight show later in the decade. Still in limited release 36 years after its premiere, it is the longest-running theatrical release in film history.

The Exorcist (1973) was a box office success for the horror genre, inspiring many other so-called "devil (Satan)" films like The Omen and both of their own first sequels.

All That Jazz (1979) closes out the 1970s. It won four Oscars and several other awards. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Television[link]

United Kingdom[link]

In the United Kingdom, color channels were now available; three stations had begun broadcasting in color between 1967 and 1969. UK dramas included Play for Today and Pennies From Heaven.

The science fiction show, Doctor Who, reached its peak.

Many popular British situation comedies (sit-coms) were gentle, innocent, unchallenging comedies of middle-class life; typical examples were Terry and June, Sykes, and The Good Life.

A more diverse view of society was offered by series like Porridge and Rising Damp.

In police dramas, there was a move towards increasing realism; popular shows included Dixon of Dock Green, Softly, Softly, and The Sweeney.

The television information retrieval service Teletext was initially introduced when the BBC Ceefax system went live on 23 September 1974.

BBC2 became the first computer generated ident in the world.

United States[link]

In the United States, long-standing trends were declining. The Red Skelton Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, long-revered American institutions, were canceled. The innocent, 1950s-style family sitcom saw its last breath at the start of the new decade with The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family.

To reflect the new social trends, television changed dramatically with more urban/edgy settings, and replaced the popular rural/country wholesome look of the previous decade. This particular trend was known as the Rural purge. Television was transformed by what became termed as "social consciousness" programming, such as All in the Family and Soap, which broke down television barriers.

The women's movement ushered in a slough of programming featuring strong, independent females as central characters. Most notable was The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which spawned the successful spin-offs Rhoda and Phyllis, and also resulted in Mary Tyler Moore becoming the first female to head a television production company of her own, MTM Enterprises, which churned out groundbreaking programming in the late-1970s throughout the 1990s. Women were also established portraying strong characters in programs like Police Woman, The Bionic Woman, and others.

Minority-centric television programming also featured prominently during the 1970s. Shows featuring minorities as main characters, such as Sanford and Son and Good Times, broke down barriers and became very popular. In addition, Soul Train, the brainchild of Don Cornelius, premiered in 1971 as an alternative to American Bandstand, giving a forum for Soul, Funk, Jazz, R&B, Disco, and future Rap and Hip-Hop artists to gain exposure to American audiences, consumers, music lovers, enthusiasts, and those keen on learning new dance moves.

The television western, which had been very popular in the 1950s and 1960s, all but died out during the 1970s, with Bonanza, The Virginian, and Gunsmoke ending their runs. Replacing westerns were police and detective shows, a trend that would last through the 1980s.

By the mid-to-late 1970s, "jiggle television"—programs centered around sexual gratification and bawdy humor and situations such as Wonder Woman, Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, and Three's Company—became popular.

Soap operas expanded their audiences beyond housewives with the rise of All My Children, As the World Turns, Somerset, and The Young and the Restless.

Game shows such as Match Game, The Hollywood Squares, and Family Feud, were also popular daytime television. The height of Match Game's popularity occurred between 1973 and 1977, before it was overtaken by Family Feud in 1978. Television's current longest-running game show, The Price is Right, began its run hosted by Bob Barker in 1972.

Another influential genre was the television newscast, which built on its initial widespread success in the 1960s.

The science fiction phenomenon of the late-1970s that began with Star Wars went to television with shows such as Battlestar Galactica.

Finally, the variety show received its last hurrah during this decade, with shows such as Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and Donny & Marie. The Carol Burnett Show also ended its historic 11-year run in 1978.

Pay Television[link]

As cable television became more affordable and accessible by U.S. consumers, the race to bring the silver screen to the small screen commenced with the launch of pay television services showing premium content.

HBO launched on November 8, 1972, becoming the nation's first pay-television channel. On September 30, 1975, HBO became the first television network to continuously deliver signals via satellite when it showed the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing-match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

Star Channel launched their service offerings nationally in 1973 through the delivery of movies on video tapes for cable providers to broadcast. This proved problematic since the videotapes were often riddled with technical difficulties. Star Channel eventually was linked up to satellite in January 1978. Shortly after, Warner Communications acquired the channel and relaunched it on December 1, 1979 in its current form as The Movie Channel.

Media giant Viacom launched their premium service, Showtime, nationally on July 1, 1976 after a brief, wildly successful test launch on their cable system in Dublin, California.^[11]

Australia[link]

In 1974, Australian TV tests color transmissions (full-time color comes in 1975).

South Africa[link]

South Africa saw nationwide television service for the first time on January 5, 1976, although limited-view, locally available television began on May 5, 1975.

Computer and video games[link]

Pong (1972)

The first commercially available video game console entitled Magnavox Odyssey was released in May 24, 1972

• Popular and notable video games of the 1970s include: Space Invaders, Asteroids, Snake, Pong, and Breakout.
• Golden age of video arcade games
• Gun Fight was the first video game to contain a microprocessor.
• Don Daglow wrote the first computer baseball game on a DEC PDP-10 mainframe at Pomona College.
• The Oregon Trail was the first publicly available educational video game made available for widespread use in schools on December 3, 1971. The game is a cult classic and is still used today, in a wide variety of formats, through emulators and on smart phones.
• The first commercially available video game console entitled Magnavox Odyssey was released in May 24, 1972 created by Ralph H. Baer.
• 1974: Both Maze War (on the Imlac PDS-1 at the NASA Ames Research Center in California) and Spasim (on PLATO) appeared, pioneering examples of early multi-player 3D first-person shooters.
• In 1976, Mattel introduced the first handheld electronic game with the release of Mattel Auto Race.
• Then, in 1976, William Crowther wrote the first modern text adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure.
• Apple, Inc. ushered in the modern personal computing age with its June 1, 1977 launch of the first mass-produced personal computer, the Apple II. Although many business-focused personal workstations were available to corporations years earlier, the Apple II has the distinction of being the first to produce personal computers specifically targeted to home users, beating the Commodore PET and Atari 400 to the market by five months. Its initial price tag was US$4999.99 for the CPU only.
• The Atari 2600 was released in October 1977 and was a huge commercial success. It is also credited for being the first gaming console to have a plug-in concept. It was challenged by the Magnavox Odyssey² and Intellivision.
• Fairchild Channel F from 1976 becomes the first programmable ROM cartridge-based video game console.
• The Microvision was the very first hand-held game console using interchangeable cartridges. It was released by the Milton Bradley Company in November 1979.

Sports[link]

The 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany saw swimmer Mark Spitz set seven World Records and win a record seven gold medals. The 1976 Summer Olympics were held in Montreal, Canada. Brazil won the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, West Germany won the 1974 FIFA World Cup in West Germany and Argentina won the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina. The 1970 FIFA World Cup was the first world cup to be televised in color.

The Oakland Athletics three-peat in 1972-1974.

The Cincinnati Reds go to the World Series in 1972, 1975, and 1976, led by the Big Red Machine winning three out of four.

The New York Yankees won the World Series in 1977 and 1978.

Both the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers are the dominate teams of the decade. Steelers were led by Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll, and the Cowboys were led by Roger Staubach and Tom Landry.

The Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup in 1974 and 1975.

Literature[link]

Fiction in the early '70s brought a return to old-fashioned storytelling, especially with Erich Segal's Love Story. The seventies also saw the decline of previously well-respected writers, such as Saul Bellow and Peter De Vries, who both released poorly received novels at the start of the decade. Racism remained a key literary subject. John Updike emerged as a major literary figure. Reflections of the 1960s experience also found roots in the literature of the decade through the works of Joyce Carol Oates and Morris Wright. With the rising cost of hard-cover books and the increasing readership of "genre fiction", the paperback became a popular medium. Criminal non-fiction also became a popular topic. Irreverence and satire, typified in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, were common literary elements. The horror genre also emerged, and by the late '70s Stephen King had become one of the most popular genre novelists.

In non-fiction, several books related to Nixon and the Watergate scandal topped the best-selling lists. 1977 brought many high-profile biographical works of literary figures, such as those of Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Architecture[link]

The World Trade Center towers were the world's tallest buildings from 1972 to 1973.

The Sears Tower became the world's tallest building when completed in 1973.

Architecture in the 1970s began as a continuation of styles created by such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Early in the decade, several architects competed to build the tallest building in the world. Of these buildings, the most notable are the John Hancock Center and Sears Tower in Chicago, both designed by Bruce Graham and Fazlur Khan and the World Trade Center towers in New York by American architect Minoru Yamasaki. The decade also brought experimentation in geometric design, pop-art, postmodernism and early deconstructivism.

In 1974, Louis Kahn's last and arguably most famous building, the National Assembly Building of Dhaka, Bangladesh was completed. The building's use of open spaces and groundbreaking geometry brought rare attention to the small south Asian country. Hugh Stubbins' Citicorp Center revolutionized the incorporation of solar panels in office buildings. The seventies brought further experimentation in glass and steel construction and geometric design. Chinese architect I. M. Pei's John Hancock Tower in Boston, Massachusetts is an example, although like many buildings of the time, the experimentation was flawed and glass panes fell from the façade. In 1976, the completed CN Tower in Toronto became the world's tallest free-standing structure on land, an honor it held until 2007. The fact that no taller tower had been built between the construction of the CN Tower and the Burj Khalifa shows how innovative the architecture and engineering of the structure truly was.

But modern architecture was increasingly criticized, both from the point of view of postmodern architects such as Philip Johnson, Charles Moore^{[disambiguation needed ]} and Michael Graves who advocated a return to pre-modern styles of architecture and the incorporation of pop elements as a means of communicating with a broader public. Other architects, such as Peter Eisenman of the New York Five advocated the pursuit of form for the sake of form and drew on semiotics theory for support.

"High Tech" architecture moved forward as Buckminster Fuller continued his experiments in geodesic domes while the George Pompidou Center, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, which opened in 1977, was a prominent example. As the decade drew to a close, Frank Gehry broke out in new direction with his own house in Santa Monica, a highly complex structure, half excavated out of an existing bungalow and half cheaply built construction using materials such as chicken wire fencing.Terracotta Army figures, dating from 210 BC, were discovered in 1974 by some local farmers in Lintong District, Xi'an, Shaanxi province, near the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor (Chinese: 秦始皇陵; pinyin: Qín Shǐhuáng Ling). In 1978 electrical workers in Mexico City find the remains of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in the middle of the city.

Fashion[link]

Bell-bottoms

Clothing styles during the 1970s were influenced by outfits seen in popular music groups and in Hollywood films.^[12] In clothing, prints, especially from India and other parts of the world, were fashionable.^[12]

Much of the 1970s fashion styles were influenced by the hippie movement.

Significant fashion trends of the 1970s include:

• Bell-bottomed pants remained popular throughout the decade. These combined with turtle necked shirts and flower-prints to form the characteristic '70s look. In the latter part of the decade, this gave way to three-piece suits, in large part because of the movie "Saturday Night Fever".

• Sideburns were popular for men, as were beards, which had been out of fashion since the 19th century.

• The large, round Afro was very popular among African-Americans.

• Women's hairstyles went from long and straight in the first half of the decade to the feathery cut of Farrah Fawcett.

• Platform shoes
• Leisure suits
• Mohawk hairstyle was associated with punk subculture

Miscellaneous trends[link]

Lava lamp

• 1970s in furniture
• Lava lamps
• Raleigh Chopper bicycles
• Flokati rugs

See also[link]

• 1970s in music
• 1970s in fashion
• 1970s in television
• 1970s in literature

Timeline[link]

The following articles contain brief timelines which list the most prominent events of the decade:

1970 • 1971 • 1972 • 1973 • 1974 • 1975 • 1976 • 1977 • 1978 • 1979

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Edward D. Berkowitz. Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies (Columbia University Press, 2006). 283 pp.), liberal perspective
• Thomas Borstelmann. The 1970s: A New Global History From Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton University Press; 2012) 401 pages; looks at new right movements, and the global impact of economic deregulation.
• Peter Carroll. It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s (1982)
• David Frum. How We Got Here: The 70’s (2000), conservative perspective
• Bruce Schulman. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (2001)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1970s

• Heroes of the 1970s - slideshow by Life magazine

David Bowie
Bowie during the Heathen Tour in 2002.
Background information
Birth name	David Robert Jones
Born	(1947-01-08) 8 January 1947 (age 65) Brixton, London, England
Genres	Rock, glam rock, art rock, pop
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, keyboards, harmonica, saxophone, viola, cello, koto, percussion
Years active	1964–2008
Labels	Deram, RCA, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Pye
Associated acts	The Riot Squad, Arnold Corns, Tin Machine, The Hype, The Lower Third, The Konrads
Website	davidbowie.com

David Bowie ( /ˈboʊ.i/ BOH-ee;^[1] born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth and eclecticism of his work.

Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture."^[2] The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.

In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album Young Americans, which the singer characterised as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album Low (1977)—the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. The so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums all reached the UK top five and garnered lasting critical praise.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its parent album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and "Under Pressure", a 1981 collaboration with Queen. He then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with Let's Dance, which yielded several hit singles. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. His last recorded album was Reality (2003), which was supported by the 2003–04 Reality Tour.

Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure."^[2] In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the UK, he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the US, five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all-time.

Biography[link]

1947–62: early years[link]

David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), of Irish descent,^[3] worked as a cinema usherette, while his father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones was a promotions officer for Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, located near the border of the south London areas of Brixton and Stockwell. A neighbour recalled that "London in the forties was the worst possible place, and the worst possible time for a child to grow up in." Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.^[4][5]

In 1953 the family moved to the suburb of Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt Ash Junior School. His voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and his recorder playing judged to demonstrate above-average musical ability.^[6] At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child.^[6] The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard.^[7][8] Upon listening to "Tutti Frutti", Bowie would later say, "I had heard God".^[9] Presley's impact on him was likewise emphatic: "I saw a cousin of mine dance to ... 'Hound Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that."^[8] By the end of the following year he had taken up the ukelele and tea-chest bass and begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet."^[8] Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.^[10]

It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford writes:

Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any [English] public school. There were houses, named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Pitt and Wilberforce. There was a uniform, and an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. There was also an accent on languages, science and particularly design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton led through force of personality, not intellect; his colleagues at Bromley Tech were famous for neither, and yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a regime so liberal that Frampton actively encouraged his own son, Peter, to pursue a musical career with David, a partnership briefly intact thirty years later.^[10]

Bowie studied art, music, and design, including layout and typesetting. After Terry Burns, his half-brother, introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic alto saxophone in 1961; he was soon receiving lessons from a local musician.^[11]

In 1962, George Underwood injured Bowie's eye in a fight over a girl. Bowie owes his unusual eyes to the fact that not all the damage could be surgically repaired. Despite their fisticuffs, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.^[12]

Eyes[link]

Bowie received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood, while wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would become blind in that eye. After a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation,^[13] his doctors determined that the damage could not be fully repaired and Bowie was left with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil. The latter condition has misled some to believe that Bowie has different coloured eyes, when in reality both irises are the same blue colour. ^[14]

1962–68: the Konrads to the Riot Squad[link]

Graduating from his plastic saxophone to a real instrument in 1962, Bowie formed his first band at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the Konrads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members, Underwood among them.^[15] When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his band-mates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.^[16]

Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. The singer's debut single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees, had no commercial success. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul — "I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", Bowie was to recall.^[16] "I Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by The Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, soon witnessed Bowie's move to yet another group, the Buzz, yielding the singer's fifth unsuccessful single release, "Do Anything You Say". While with the Buzz, Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included a Bowie number and Velvet Underground material, went unreleased. Ken Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager.^[17]

Dissatisfied with his stage name as Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, Bowie renamed himself after the 19th century American frontiersman Jim Bowie and the knife he had popularised.^[18] His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", utilising sped-up Chipmunk-style vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, David Bowie, an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It would be his last release for two years.^[19]

Bowie's fascination with the bizarre was fuelled when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp: "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus."^[20] Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the inside."^[20] Studying the dramatic arts under Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie composition, "Silly Boy Blue", was released by Billy Fury the following year.^[21] After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London flat together. Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.^[22]

1969–73: psychedelic folk to glam rock[link]

[edit] Space Oddity to Hunky Dory

Because of his lack of commercial success, Bowie was forced to try to earn a living in different ways. He featured in a Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, but was rejected for another by Kit Kat.^[23] Intended as a vehicle to promote the singer, a 30-minute film featuring performances from his repertoire, Love You till Tuesday, was made. Although not released until 1984, the filming sessions in January 1969 led to unexpected success when Bowie told the producers, "That film of yours—I've got a new song for it." He then demoed the song that would provide his commercial breakthrough. "Space Oddity" was released later in the year to coincide with the first moon landing.^[23] Breaking up with Farthingale shortly after completion of the film, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger.^[24] Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street.^[24] This soon morphed into the Beckenham Arts Lab, and became extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, later immortalised by Bowie in his song "Memory of a Free Festival".^[25] "Space Oddity" was released on 11 July, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch, to become a UK top five hit. Bowie's second album, Space Oddity, followed in November; originally issued in the UK as David Bowie, it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the early US release was instead titled Man of Words/Man of Music. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release.^[26]

Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They would marry within a year. Her impact on him was immediate, and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence.^[27] Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie now began to sense a lack: "a full-time band for gigs and recording—people he could relate to personally".^[28] The shortcoming was underlined by his artistic rivalry with Marc Bolan, who was at the time acting as his session guitarist.^[28] A band was duly assembled. John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, was joined by Tony Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. Known as The Hype, the band members created characters for themselves and wore elaborate costumes that prefigured the glam style of The Spiders From Mars. After a disastrous opening gig at the London Roundhouse, they reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist.^[28][29] Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style; matters came to a head when Bowie, enraged, accused, "You're fucking up my album." Cambridge summarily quit and was replaced by Mick Woodmansey.^[30] Not long after, in a move that would result in years of litigation, at the conclusion of which Bowie would be forced to pay Pitt compensation, the singer fired his manager, replacing him with Tony Defries.^[30]

The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970). Characterised by the heavy rock sound of his new backing band, it was a marked departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style established by Space Oddity. To promote it in the United States, Mercury Records financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour in which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later would depict the singer wearing a dress: taking the garment with him, he wore it during interviews—to the approval of critics, including Rolling Stone's John Mendelsohn who described him as "ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall"—and in the street, to mixed reaction including laughter and, in the case of one male pedestrian, producing a gun and telling Bowie to "kiss my ass".^[31][32] During the tour Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that would eventually find form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol".^[31] A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars".^[31]

Hunky Dory (1971) found Visconti, Bowie's producer and bassist, supplanted in both roles, by Ken Scott and Trevor Bolder respectively. The album saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as "Kooks", a song written for his son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May.^[33] (His parents chose "his kooky name"—he would be known as Zowie for the next 12 years—after the Greek word zoe, life.)^[34] Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol", and "Queen Bitch", a Velvet Underground pastiche. It was not a significant commercial success at the time^[35] but was ranked No.16 by voters in the All Time Top 1000 Albums.

[edit] Ziggy Stardust

David Bowie during the Ziggy Stardust Tour

With his next venture, Bowie, in the words of biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture".^[2] Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed red, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth on 10 February 1972.^[36] The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the course of the next six months and creating, as described by Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was "unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom."^[36] The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), combining the hard rock elements of The Man Who Sold the World with the lighter experimental rock and pop of Hunky Dory, was released in June. "Starman", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July Top of the Pops performance of the song. The album, which would remain in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old Hunky Dory. At the same time the non-album single "John, I’m Only Dancing", and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, became UK hits. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.^[37]

Bowie contributed backing vocals to Lou Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough Transformer, co-producing the album with Mick Ronson.^[38] His own Aladdin Sane (1973) topped the UK chart, his first number one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the United States during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album. Aladdin Sane spawned the UK top five singles "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday".^[39][40]

Bowie's love of acting led his total immersion in the characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and, later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity."^[41] His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar.^[42] Bowie toured and gave press conferences as Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final show was released in 1983 for the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.^[43]

	"Ziggy Stardust" noicon Sample of "Ziggy Stardust" (1972). A pioneer of glam rock, Bowie performed as the character Ziggy Stardust, backed by The Spiders from Mars.
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After breaking up the Spiders from Mars, Bowie attempted to move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now highly sought: The Man Who Sold the World had been re-released in 1972 along with Space Oddity. "Life on Mars?", from Hunky Dory, was released in June 1973 and made number three in the UK singles chart. Entering the same chart in September, Bowie's novelty record from 1967, "The Laughing Gnome", would reach number four.^[44] Pin Ups, a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in "Sorrow" and itself peaking at number one, making David Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number of Bowie albums currently in the UK chart to six.^[45]

1974–76: soul, funk and the Thin White Duke[link]

Bowie performing during the 1974 Diamond Dogs Tour

Bowie moved to the United States in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles.^[46] Diamond Dogs (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's 1984 to music.^[47] The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs", and number five in the US. To promote it, Bowie launched the Diamond Dogs Tour, visiting cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary, Cracked Actor, featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with the singer's slide from heavy cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems.^[48] He later commented that the accompanying live album, David Live, ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory". David Live nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in Bowie's cover of "Knock on Wood". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a new emphasis on soul.^[49]

The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was Young Americans (1975). Biographer Christopher Sandford writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now."^[50] The album's sound, which the singer identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees.^[51] Young Americans yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", co-written with John Lennon, who contributed backing vocals, and Carlos Alomar. Lennon would call Bowie's work as "great, but just rock and roll with lipstick on".^[52] Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the US variety show Soul Train, Bowie mimed "Fame", as well as "Golden Years", his November single,^[53] that it was offered to Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it.^[53] Young Americans was a commercial success in both the US and the UK, and a re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number one hit in the UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same in the US.^[54] Despite his by now well established superstardom, Bowie, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "for all his record sales (over a million copies of Ziggy Stardust alone), existed essentially on loose change."^[55] In 1975, in a move echoing Ken Pitt's acrimonious dismissal five years earlier, Bowie fired his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door."^[55] Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman in turn would be awarded substantial compensation when Bowie fired him the following year.^[56]

Bowie as the Thin White Duke at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto on 26 February 1976

Station to Station (1976) introduced a new Bowie persona, the "Thin White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth the same year.^[57] Developing the funk and soul of Young Americans, Station to Station also prefigured the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made public when Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish dictator General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. [...] Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to utter a coherent sentence."^[58] His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was withering physically to an alarming degree.^[48][59]

Station to Station's January 1976 release was followed in February by a three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America. Featuring a starkly lit set, the Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album, including the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing", and the funkier "TVC 15" and "Stay". The core band that coalesced around this album and tour—rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis—would continue as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader", and was detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia.^[60] Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in NME. Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave.^[61] He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke.^[62] "I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...".^[59] According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in The Times, "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs."^[63]

1976–79: the Berlin era[link]

Bowie performing in Oslo on 5 June 1978

Bowie moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in the hills to the north of Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use increased; so too did his interest in pursuits outside his musical career. He took up painting, and produced a number of post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting galleries in Geneva and the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "a prolific producer and collector of contemporary art. [...] Not only did he become a well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in classical music and literature, and started work on an autobiography".^[64]

Before the end of 1976, Bowie's interest in the burgeoning German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to West Berlin to clean up and revitalise his career. Working with Brian Eno while sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with Iggy Pop, he began to focus on minimalist, ambient music for the first of three albums, co-produced with Tony Visconti, that would become known as his Berlin Trilogy.^[65] During the same period, Iggy Pop, with Bowie as a co-writer and musician, completed his solo album debut, The Idiot, and its follow-up, Lust for Life, touring the UK, Europe, and the US in March and April 1977.^[66] Low (1977), partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu!, evidenced a move away from narration in Bowie's songwriting to a more abstract musical form in which lyrics were sporadic and optional. It received considerable negative criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome, and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried to prevent. Despite these forebodings, Low yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of Station to Station in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Leading contemporary composer Philip Glass described Low as "a work of genius" in 1992, when he used it as the basis for his Symphony No. 1 "Low"; subsequently, Glass used Bowie's next album as the basis for his 1996 Symphony No. 4 "Heroes".^[67][68] Glass has praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".^[69]

	"Heroes" noicon Sample of "Heroes" (1977). One of the ambient rock songs to emerge from Bowie's Berlin Trilogy era, "Heroes" gained lasting popularity.
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Echoing Low's minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, "Heroes" (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. Like Low, "Heroes" evinced the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city of Berlin.^[70] Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesizers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track, though only reaching number 24 in the UK singles chart, gained lasting popularity, and within months had been released in both German and French.^[71] Towards the end of the year, Bowie performed the song for Marc Bolan's television show Marc, and again two days later for Bing Crosby's televised Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with a new, contrapuntal verse. Five years later, the duet would prove a worldwide seasonal hit, charting in the UK at number three on Christmas Day, 1982.^[72]

After completing Low and "Heroes", Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. [...] Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends."^[73] Recordings from the tour made up the live album Stage, released the same year.^[74]

The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", Lodger (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of New Wave and World Music, in places incorporating Hejaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from "Sister Midnight", a piece previously composed with Iggy Pop.^[75] The album was recorded in Switzerland. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman stated, "It would be fair to call it Bowie's Sergeant Pepper [...] a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." As described by biographer Christopher Sandford, "The record dashed such high hopes with dubious choices, and production that spelt the end—for fifteen years—of Bowie's partnership with Eno." Lodger reached number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ".^[76][77] Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angela initiated divorce proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was ended in early 1980.^[78]

1980–89: from superstar to megastar[link]

Serious Moonlight Tour 1983

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the number one hit "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural work of guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club "Blitz"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the accompanying video, renowned as one of the most innovative of all time.^[79] While Scary Monsters utilised principles established by the Berlin albums, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge included conspicuous guitar contributions from Robert Fripp, Pete Townshend, Chuck Hammer and Tom Verlaine.^[80] As "Ashes to Ashes" hit number one on the UK charts, Bowie opened a three-month run on Broadway on 24 September, starring in The Elephant Man.^[81] The same year, he made a cameo appearance in the German film Christiane F., a real-life story of teenage drug addiction in 1970s Berlin. The soundtrack, in which Bowie's music featured prominently, was released as Christiane F. a few months later.

Bowie paired with Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under Pressure". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number one single. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's 1981 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track EP of songs from the play, recorded earlier in Berlin, was released as David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal. In March 1982, the month before Paul Schrader's film Cat People came out, Bowie's title song, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", was released as a single, becoming a minor US hit and entering the UK top 30.^[82]

Bowie reached a new peak of popularity and commercial success in 1983 with Let's Dance. Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the US. Its three singles became top twenty hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. "Modern Love" and "China Girl" made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of acclaimed promotional videos that, as described by biographer David Buckley, "were totally absorbing and activated key archetypes in the pop world. 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aborigine couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later partially censored) beach lovemaking scene (a homage to the film From Here to Eternity), was sufficiently sexually provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV. By 1983, Bowie had emerged as one of the most important video artists of the day. Let's Dance was followed by the Serious Moonlight Tour, during which Bowie was accompanied by guitarist Earl Slick and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms. The world tour lasted six months and was extremely popular.^[83] Stevie Ray Vaughan was guest guitarist playing solo on "Let's Dance".

Performing during the critically maligned Glass Spider Tour, 1987

Tonight (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Tina Turner and, once again, Iggy Pop. It included a number of cover songs, among them the 1966 Beach Boys hit "God Only Knows". The album bore the transatlantic top ten hit "Blue Jean", itself the inspiration for a short film that won Bowie a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, "Jazzin' for Blue Jean". Bowie performed at Wembley in 1985 for Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. During the event, the video for a fundraising single was premièred, Bowie's duet with Mick Jagger. "Dancing in the Street" quickly went to number one on release. The same year, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group to record "This Is Not America" for the soundtrack of The Falcon and the Snowman. Released as a single, the song became a top 40 hit in the UK and US.^[84]

Bowie was given a role in the 1986 film Absolute Beginners. It was poorly received by critics, but Bowie's theme song rose to number two in the UK charts. He also appeared as Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth, for which he wrote five songs. His final solo album of the decade was 1987's Never Let Me Down, where he ditched the light sound of his previous two albums, instead offering harder rock with an industrial/techno dance edge. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded the hits "Day-In, Day-Out" (his 60th single), "Time Will Crawl", and "Never Let Me Down". Bowie later described it as his "nadir", calling it "an awful album".^[85] Supporting Never Let Me Down, and preceded by nine promotional press shows, the 86-concert Glass Spider Tour commenced on 30 May. Bowie's backing band included Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Critics maligned the tour as overproduced, saying it pandered to the current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing.^[86]

1989–91: Tin Machine[link]

Bowie shelved his solo career in 1989, retreating to the relative anonymity of band membership for the first time since the early 1970s. A hard-rocking quartet, Tin Machine came into being after Bowie began to work experimentally with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. The line-up was completed by Tony and Hunt Sales, whom Bowie had known since the late 1970s for their contribution, on drums and bass respectively, to Iggy Pop's 1977 album Lust For Life.^[87]

Bowie in Chile during the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour

Though he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making.^[88] The band's album debut, Tin Machine (1989), was initially popular, though its politicised lyrics did not find universal approval: Bowie described one song as "a simplistic, naive, radical, laying-it-down about the emergence of neo-Nazis"; in the view of biographer Christopher Sandford, "It took nerve to denounce drugs, fascism and TV [...] in terms that reached the literary level of a comic book."^[89] EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive tunes" and "minimalist or no production".^[90] The album nevertheless reached number three in the UK.^[89] Tin Machine's first world tour was a commercial success, but there was growing reluctance—among fans and critics alike—to accept Bowie's presentation as merely a band member.^[91] A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label.^[92] Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band.^[93] Tin Machine began work on a second album, but Bowie put the venture on hold and made a return to solo work. Performing his early hits during the seven-month Sound+Vision Tour, he found commercial success and acclaim once again.^[94]