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| 1965 |
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| Early Bird was put into orbit by the three-year-old Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) to relay telephone messages and television programs between Europe and North America. The world's first commercial satellite, it was the first link in a global network of space communications planned by COMSAT. | 1 |
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| 1967 |
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| The electronic quartz wristwatch was announced in December by the Swiss Horological Electronic Center. Thirty-one Swiss firms pooled $7 million in 1962 to develop the watch. | 2 |
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| 1968, Dec. 31 |
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| Aeroflot demonstrated the Tu-144, the first supersonic airliner. | 3 |
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| 1969, Oct. 1 |
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| The Concorde supersonic airplane made its first flight. | 4 |
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| 1974 |
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| The Airbus A300B, assembled in Toulouse, France, began to challenge Boeing for the world jet aircraft market. Airbus Industrie was a consortium of government-owned British and French aircraft makers with some private German companies and 4 percent Spanish participation. | 5 |
| The computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanner, developed in England by EMI, Ltd., with money from sales of Beatles records, gained wide use not only for diagnosing brain damage but also for whole-body scanning. | 6 |
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| 1977, May 22 |
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| The Orient Express, which had begun service in 1883, made its last trip into Istanbul from Paris. Most travelers now preferred to cover the 1,900 miles in 3 hours by air rather than taking 60 hours by rail. | 7 |
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| 1978, July 25 |
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| The world's first “test-tube baby,” Louise Brown, was born. | 8 |
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| 1979 |
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| The British Post Office inaugurated a Prestel system that gave subscribers access to 160,000 pages, or television screenfuls, of information. Using telephones, computers, and TV sets, subscribers could obtain information such as rail and air schedules and stock and commodity quotations, buy airline tickets, reserve hotel rooms, and book theater seats by remote control. The government spent $30 million to develop the system. A Prestel set, which could also receive ordinary TV programming, cost at least $2,000, and the subscriber was also billed for the amount of time the set was used. | 9 |
| A similar French system, Minitel, was launched in a two-year development effort in 1980. The sets were free, and a charge was made for use. | 10 |
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| 1980 |
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| The steroid abortifacient drug RU486 was developed by French endocrinologist Etienne-Emile Baulieu. | 11 |
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| 1981, Sept. 22 |
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| France's TGV train began service from Paris to Lyons. Powered by electricity and capable of going 236 mph, it was Europe's first super-high-speed passenger line. | 12 |
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| 1983 |
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| Dr. Luc Montagnier and a team of researchers discovered the putative cause of HIV and AIDS. | 13 |
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| 1986 |
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| Superconductivity made news in January as Swiss physicist K. Alex Müller and German physicist J. Georg Bedornz of IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory discovered zero resistivity in a ceramic material that permits superconductivity at -397° F—a much more extreme temperature than was ever before possible. | 14 |
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