Headphones grew out of the need to free up a person's hands when operating a telephone. By the 1890s the first device that is unmistakably a headphone was made by a British company called Electrophone. It was not until 1910 that Nathaniel Baldwin of Utah invented a prototype telephone headset due to his inability to hear sermons during Sunday service. His innovations were the basis of “sound-powered” telephones or phones that required no electricity, which were used during World War II.
Previously, headphones were used only by the US navy, telephone and radio operators, and individuals in similar industries. Using them for entertainment purpose was not a possibility until 1958, when John C. Koss, an audiophile and jazz musician from Milwaukee, produced the first stereo headphones.
Take a look through these 24 fascinating vintage ads of old-school headphones from the 1950s to 1980s:
It’s hard to imagine a life without a computer nowadays, but 40 years ago it was not that common. In a certain era in the past, vintage advertisements usually reflect how people felt and thought about things at the time, and in the early age of personal computer ads, technology companies tried to convince their potential consumers that these machines were not only a link to the future but also immensely fun.
Take a look back at a time when computers first entered schools and homes through these fascinating ‘80s ads:
Charles Schridde was born in 1926 and grew up in rural Illinois. He was an artist from an early age and received a scholarship to the Chicago Art Institute when he was age 17. He began at the institute, but was then enlisted in the Navy for two years. When he returned from the Navy, Charles began his career as a free-lance commercial illustrator. His major clients included The Saturday Evening Post, Life magazine, Motorola and Chevrolet.
In 1961, Motorola asked Charles Schridde to envision the homes of the future centered around Motorola’s most recent line of electronics. The ads created by Schridde ran in Life Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post from 1961 to 1963 and depicted an optimistic future made of lavish, elegant, dream-homes, where domestic technologies and serene landscapes coexisted harmoniously. Through his stunning drawings, we were offered a fascinating glimpse of what the past thought the future would be like, and how home technology companies capitalized on their consumers’ minds by swaying them in the direction that these electronic products were relevant to that ultimate future.
The rollout of General Motors’ broad lineup of “X-Car” compact cars for 1980–which consisted of four separate vehicle lines spread across four brands–was a big event in the American automotive industry. Not surprisingly, GM backed up its ambitious new product initiative with a massive presence in TV and magazine advertising.
1980 Dodge Aspen
The rollout of General Motors’ broad lineup of “X-Car” compact cars for 1980–which consisted of four separate vehicle lines spread across four brands–was a big event in the American automotive industry. Not surprisingly, GM backed up its ambitious new product initiative with a massive presence in TV and magazine advertising.
Though launched almost at the same time in 1979, the Buick Skylark, Chevrolet Citation, Oldsmobile Omega, and Pontiac Phoenix were all 1980 models, and the media blitz lasted throughout that calendar year. Here, a collection of 10 classic automotive print ads from 1980:
Chevrolet Monte Carlo
Dodge Aspen
Ford Fairmont
International Scout
Lincoln Continental Mark VI
Mercury Zephyr
Oldsmobile Omega
Pontiac Grand Prix
Toyota Celica
1980 Volkswagen Pickup Truck
(This original article was written by Tom Appel, and published on The Daily Drive)
The seventies was a decade of cool motorcycles, but wacky, corny and overtly sexist advertisements, as they were, like in the sixties, made to target the male consumers. On the cover there was usually a pair of a typical 70’s style macho dude, dressed in an open leather jacket, a collared blue shirt, bell-bottom trousers and heeled boots and a groovy chick in sexy clothes. The selling feature here was, undoubtedly, getting a motorcycle equaled to a man’s sure ticket to getting the ladies.
Take a look back through these 26 vintage ads below:
“All the best people come to Pontins” was the caption printed on a publicity brochure of Pontins, a British company operating holiday parks in the UK, founded in 1946 by Fred Pontin. It specializes in offering half-board and self-catering holidays featuring entertainment at resorts, or "holiday parks", as they have branded them. Accommodation is usually in the form of chalets (which Pontins calls "apartments").
Fred Pontin opened his first holiday camp just after the Second World War (during which he had established hostels for construction workers in Scotland and in England) when he took advantage of a former U.S. army base at Brean Sands near Weston-super-Mare in Somerset. The ex-stockbroker, who had left school at fifteen without qualifications, had not the £23,000 to buy it. Instead, Pontin formed a syndicate, in which he held 50% control, to own the camp. Within a year he had six camps. Over the years he bought more camps and personally ran them for a year, before selling them to the syndicate. Twenty-five years later, at its peak, the company was running twenty-two holiday camps with a million visitors a year.
Television was introduced to Americans in 1939 and began to gain a foothold after World War II (1939–45). In the 1950s, the sale of TV sets and the boom in programming made TV America’s favorite source of entertainment.
Consider the numbers: In 1946, 7,000 TV sets were sold; in 1948, 172,000 sets were sold; and in 1950, 5 million sets were sold. In 1950, just under 20 percent of American homes contained a TV set. Ten years later, nearly 90 percent of homes contained a TV—and some even had color TVs. The number of TV stations, channels, and programs all grew to meet this surging demand.
The 1950s truly were the decade of the TV.
Here below is a set of vintage photos from a 1956 Motorola television catalog. It features all the makes and models available that year.
Motorola Color TV With Large Two-in-One Picture 19CK2
“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” is a pop song that originated as the jingle “Buy the World a Coke” in the groundbreaking 1971 “Hilltop” television commercial for Coca-Cola and sung by The Hillside Singers. “Buy the World a Coke” was produced by Billy Davis and portrayed a positive message of hope and love, featuring a multicultural collection of teenagers on top of a hill appearing to sing the song.
The popularity of the jingle led to it being re-recorded in two versions; one by The New Seekers and another by The Hillside Singers, as a full-length song, dropping references to Coca-Cola. The song became a hit record in the US and the UK.
The idea originally came to Bill Backer, an advertising executive working for McCann Erickson, the agency responsible for Coca-Cola. Backer, Roger Cook and Billy Davis were delayed at Shannon Airport in Ireland. After a forced layover with many hot tempers, they noticed their fellow travelers the next morning were talking and joking while drinking Coca-Cola.
Backer later wrote: “In that moment, (I) saw a bottle of Coke in a whole new light… (I) began to see a bottle of Coca-Cola as more than a drink that refreshed a hundred million people a day in almost every corner of the globe. So (I) began to see the familiar words, ‘Let’s have a Coke,’ as more than an invitation to pause for refreshment. They were actually a subtle way of saying, ‘Let’s keep each other company for a little while.’ …So that was the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be — a liquid refresher — but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples…”
According to Bill Backer, the audience understood that Coca-Cola “could be a little social catalyst that can bring people together, talk things over, and sometimes communications get better if you’re just sitting over a bottle of Coke and looking people in the eye.”
Bad Weather Ruins Two Commercial Shoots
Phil Messina, the agency’s producer, planned the filming of Gabor’s visual concept on the cliffs of Dover. Hundreds of British schoolchildren and 65 principals were cast to lip-sync the song. Three days of continuous rain scrubbed the shoot. The crew moved to Rome.
New young people were cast and taught by Davis to lip-sync the song. The opening shot of the commercial had to have that “right” face, which was filled by a young lady on vacation in Rome from Mauritius.
The production was delayed by more rain. Finally, late in the day, the crew completed the climactic helicopter shot. The next day revealed that the young people looked as though they had really been in a rainstorm. The film was unusable, the budget was spent and the young people were released to go on their way.
Because of Bill Backer’s confidence in the hillside concept, Sid McAlister, the account supervisor on the Coke account, went to bat on another budget to re-shoot the spot, and McCann Erickson tried again. The new budget eventually topped $250,000, a staggering amount in that era.
Harvey Gabor directing the 'Hilltop' shoot in Rome, 1971.
Several Hundred Thousand Dollars Later, Success
Five hundred young people were hired for the chorus from embassies and schools in Rome. This was a substantial reduction from the original rained-out chorus. A British governess Davis and Gabor found pushing a baby carriage in the Piazza Navona was hired for the lead female role. The Italian film company Roma Film filmed the commercial and this time the weather cooperated. Close-ups of the young “leads” were actually filmed at a racetrack in Rome, separate from the larger chorus shots. Some of the distinctive camera angles were forced on the crew as they tried to avoid power and telephone lines.
“I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” was released in the U.S. in July 1971 and immediately struck a responsive chord. The Coca-Cola Company and its bottlers received more than 100,000 letters about the commercial. Many listeners called radio stations begging to hear it.
A New Pop Version Is Recorded
Billy Davis wanted to produce a record version of the commercial with the New Seekers, but the group’s manager claimed they didn’t have time in their schedule to do so. Davis allowed a group of studio singers to record the new song lyric to “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.” They called themselves “The Hillside Singers” in order to identify with the TV image. Within two weeks of the release of the Hillside Singers recording, it was on the national charts. Two weeks after that, Davis was able to convince the New Seekers to find the time and record their version of “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony),” the new title for the song version of “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.”
He took them to the studio on a Sunday and produced the record which became the Top 10 hit, followed by the Hillside Singers’ version as No. 13 on the pop charts. The song was recorded in a wide range of languages and sold more sheet music than any song in the previous 10 years.
The Coca-Cola Company donated the first $80,000 in royalties earned from the song by writers and publishers to UNICEF under an agreement with the writers.
“I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” has had a lasting connection with the public. The commercial has consistently been voted one of the best of all time and the sheet music continues to sell today. The song version is being sung in school glee clubs and church choirs and played by high school bands all over the world. Thirty years after Bill Backer was stranded by fog, Coca-Cola is still more than a beverage. It is a common connection between the people of the world.
The trend for wearing matching family clothes was undeniably a huge thing among families in the past, as you clearly can see numerous cringeworthy memes about it.
Take a look at these wool-clad families modeling their matching sweaters through 20 intensely awkward vintage photographs from the sixties:
