1989: Margaret Thatcher: 'We Have Become A Grandmother!'

It was sometimes said in the 1980s that Mrs Thatcher and the Queen did not see eye-to-eye and that Mrs T had her eye on the throne.

Outrageous! Ridiculous! Wasn't it?

Nobody knows what caused the Prime Minister to use the royal 'We' while announcing the birth of her first grandchild, but it caused a lot more talk.

There she was. Three general election wins. The Iron Lady. Had it all gone to her head?

And it turned out her first grandson was a Texan. Born In Dallas. Just like JR Ewing.

Strange days indeed...

From the Cambridge Evening News, 4/3/1989:

Thatcher Baby A Texan

Baby Michael Thatcher, the Prime Minister's first grandchild, will be an American citizen because he was born in Texas.

But he will be entitled to British citizenship by descent the Home Office confirmed.

Mrs Thatcher's son, Mark, and his American wife, Diane, became parents in Dallas on Tuesday.

Of course, despite her use of the royal 'We', Mrs Thatcher did not become Queen.

But I was feeling quite tired and jaded as this colourful, contrasting and often completely OTT decade roared towards its close and wouldn't have been a bit surprised if she had!

Fashions Of The 1980s - Jelly Shoes...

Sue writes:

I recall having a pair of jelly shoes when they were a brand new trend and I was about 7 years old in the late 1980s. I loved them. They were a lovely pink colour, and they came from a range called 'Jelly Brights'. Do you recall them? And do you have any good pics or articles about the '80s jelly shoes fashion? It's so funny to see them back in fashion over the last few years. I was there first time around in the '80s.

I do recall them, Sue, and I have a pic from the 1989 Look Again catalogue showing the very range, "Jellybrights", that you remember! I hope you like it.

1989: The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

Thinking about 1989 the other night, two events sprang into my mind, followed by a whole battalion of others. I haven't much time, so I'll just toddle through the first two here...

The first of the 1989 events that came to mind when I focused the little grey cells on that memorable twelve months, was the invention of the World Wide Web by English software engineer Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland.

This event passed unnoticed by the vast majority of us at the time - we would not discover its wonderful, world-altering significance until the 1990s. Read all about it here.

The second event to trot into my noddle was the Fall of the Berlin Wall...

An absolutely stunning historical moment...

Here's how the Daily Mirror reported events on Saturday, November 11, 1989:

TOGETHER AT LAST

on the day the world became a better, braver place...

Holes were bulldozed in the Berlin Wall and East Germany promised free elections yesterday as thousands of her citizens continued to pour out to the West.

Minutes after the election announcement, East German bulldozers began smashing two more holes as exit points in the wall. And eight more border crossings will be made next week.

For the Communists it is a calculated gamble in an attempt to stem an exodus. For the East German people, already almost delirious with the pace of change, it is another giant step to freedom.

The East German Communist Party unveiled an amazing package of reforms, including free elections, changes in the economy and parliamentary control over the army.

This revolutionary programme means party bosses have now given thousands of demonstrators everything they demanded during peaceful candlelit protests.

They knew that East Germany's 16 million people would never have halted the protests unless free elections were granted.

Yesterday the East Germans were walking and driving through the Wall at the rate of 800 an hour, sounding their car horns and weeping with emotion.

For some, however, the dizzying pace was almost too much. The East German guards did not know quite how to react to the West German who stretched out the hand of friendship near the Checkpoint Charlie crossing.

But for the families who were crossing into West Berlin all day there were no doubts. They came, they saw... and they fell in love with the capitalist world they had for so long been taught to distrust.

With the toys in the shops - the Batman cars, the walking, talking, living dolls, the video games, the mountain bikes.

With the clothes. The baby wear. The range of cars.

But, most of all, with the overflowing shelves in the supermarkets. For many who are younger than the 28-year-old wall, it was their first day of freedom. Their lives have been dominated by secrecy and shortages.

Their first taste of Western plenty was a free handout.

Police and savings banks told excited East Germans who wanted to go shopping the way to social security offices.

There they were given 100 West German marks - worth about £35 - in "welcome money."

Gunter Martin, a factory worker from Halle, waved a wad of East German marks and said: "This is completely useless to me here.

"It's the most unbelievable day of my life. I just shut up my car repair shop and jumped in my car as fast as I could."

Reinhold Haupt, a 41-year-old electrician who drove from Ashersleben to spend the weekend in West, was showered with hospitality by a crowd of West Germans giving the new arrivals a heroes' welcome.
 
Within minutes someone offered him a bed, another said he would take him on a tour, a third handed him a cup of coffee and a woman pressed a 10-mark note into his hand.

He spent his "welcome money" on bananas, oranges, coffee and chocolate, all in short supply in East Germany.

Civil servant Thomas Kolbar said: "I turned up at my aunt's house last night and she nearly died of shock."

The Communists' gamble may pay off. Most East Germans are only visiting the West, happily returning home after partying or sight-seeing in the West.

No one could count the numbers going to the West in Berlin. But elsewhere, 45,000 East Germans swarmed to the West yesterday and only 2,500 stayed.

More from 1989 soon.

Back To The Future Part 2

Which way to 1985 - and which 1985 will it be?!

From the Sun, 23/11/1989... 

He has soft, shoulder-length auburn hair. His 5ft 4 in frame is draped in a blue blouse and hot pants.

He is Michael J. Fox, who swaps sex for frocks in his latest movie, "Back To The Future 2". 

The 28-year-old heart-throb returns to British [cinema] screens tomorrow as Marty McFly, the small-town boy from California, who's transported to the year 2015 and then all the way back to the Fifties. 

The topsy-turvy time-warp not only calls on Michael to play his own father. It also demands that he turns into a Foxy Lady, depicting his daughter Marlene as a future shocker.

The part called for Michael to wiggle as he walked. Which is probably why he reddens as he talks about the gender-bender role.

"God, it took me an hour to stop myself blushing in that outfit," he says. "But the general consensus was that I was cute and had great legs."

The technology used on the movie to put all his characters together on one screen meant he was playing them all on the same days.

"At least that way they all stayed fresh in my mind," he says. "It was one thing playing a depressed older man and an insane teenage boy but I had to change gear for Marlene.

"I felt completely ridiculous but I could approach it like a character role, not like a guy just dressed up as a girl."

And this is about the right time to explain the mind-boggling plot. First the young hero travels into the future to save his kids from being thrown into jail. He sees his older self there as well as his girlfriend who has become his wife. 

Then he and his scientific sidekick Doc [Christopher Lloyd] return to 1985 to find their town is now a vision of vigilante hell. 

His father has been killed. His school enemy Biff has married his mother. And Fox and friend realise they have taken a wrong time turn and arrived in a different 1985.

So, quite naturally, he travels back in time to 1955 where he finds the bloke he was in the first "Back To The Future", 1985's top-grossing film...

Meanwhile Fox's own future is assured. There's the heavyweight "Casualties of War" also to be screened in Britain...

He has his own production company and there's his son, six-month-old Sam, the major reason why the baby-faced star has grown up.

"All in all I'm pretty happy, " he says. "Heck I'm even changing nappies." 

Which is probably more pleasant than changing sex.

1989: The True End Of The Cold War

Faye asks:

Did the Cold War end in 1989 or 1991?

There seem to be differing views on this and I'd value yours!

I'll give you the view of Mikhail Gorbachev, who became Soviet President in March 1985, interviewed by Katrina vanden Heuval and Stephen F Cohen of The Nation Magazine in November 2008, Faye!

Mikhail Gorbachev: 

... If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable. But what happened between Reagan and me would also have been unimaginable if earlier we had not begun perestroika in the Soviet Union. Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present. 

Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor. Something had to be done before we destroyed each other. Therefore the big changes that occurred with me and Reagan had tremendous importance. But also that George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan, decided to continue the process. And in December 1989, at our meeting in Malta, Bush and I declared that we were no longer enemies or adversaries.

KVH/SFC:

So the cold war ended in December 1989?

MG:

I think so.

KVH/SFC:

Many people disagree, including some American historians.

MG:

Let historians think what they want. But without what I have described, nothing would have resulted.

When you consider that after Reagan and Gorbachev first met in 1985, Reagan declared: "Gorbechev is a diehard Bolshevik!" and Gorbachev stated that Reagan was "A real dinosaur!" it seems amazing just how their relationship thawed. Do read the full article, it's fascinating (here), but the dramatic events of 1989 certainly left most of us agreeing with Mikhail Gorbachev that the Cold War had ended. Things no longer felt "Cold" - hadn't felt that "Cold" for a few years in fact - and there seemed no prospect of a "War".

Why this tendency persists to state that the Cold War ended in 1991 with the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, I don't know. Nothing 'signed' in 1989? The Cold War was never signed into being in the first place. I suspect though that many of the "great and good", including many highly respected historians, have a hard time allowing the limelight to fall on the 1980s, a decade many of them like to scapegoat and revile.

So they gabble things like: "and in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. In 1991 a whole new era began as the Cold War ended and the world looked on stunned as the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place before their very eyes..."

I'm afraid, after 1989, that was no great surprise.

1989 - the year the Cold War ended? I'm sure that sticks in more than a few priggish gullets! But I'd much rather listen to Gorbachev.

Home Decor: Living Rooms To Die For - 1980s Style!

Black was the colour... highly popular for furniture in the mid-to-late 1980s. Argos catalogue, spring/summer 1989.

In the 1980s, there was something of a revolution in home decor. Rather than follow mass trends, many more people wanted to be individualistic and felt it was important that their homes said something about them and, most importantly, their lifestyle. The '60s, despite its reputation for being thoroughly modern, had a passion for Victoriana and the 1920s. The '70s had continued many of the '50s and '60s trends whilst exhibiting a strong hankering for retro of all sorts.

In the mid-1980s, with credit booming, we asked ourselves would our home be ultra modern? Or antique effect? Black became hugely popular (remember black ash and those black tables, corner units and so on?). TV casings joined the black trend in the late 1980s as the old wood effect finally said farewell. Other coloured TV casings were available in the mid-1980s. Cloth bottomed and backed directors' chairs (very Hollywood!) in black or bright colours became household furnishings (it was all so stylish!), and futons became mega. In the decade of yuppies, it was appropriate that vertical boardroom blinds appeared at house windows.

Black ash effect lounge unit and a sofa bed - Argos, 1989. The black, grey and red patterning is incredibly 1980s!

Some people were overly grandiose. A friend of mine, living in an ex-council house, had a huge chandelier suspended from the ceiling in her miniscule lounge. Window blinds became narrower and were highly popular in black or red. Standing up-lighters - particularly with black supports - became a wow, and wall up-lighters swept back late in the decade, in antique or modern stylings. Once again, the watch word was style, darling!

In the 1980s, we stripped out the darned awful wallpaper which had blighted the '70s (those designs dated back to the late 1960s anyway) and went for pastel colours or strange slanting striped wallpaper which made your eyes go funny. My mother bought some particularly awesome wallpaper for the lounge circa 1984: it showed part of the interior of what appeared to be some sort of castle, with an archway, some stairs and a window repeating all over it. It was grey and white. LOVELY!

Index catalogue, 1989.

Does anybody else remember the mid-to-late '80s trend for having a light suspended from the ceiling low over the dining table? It gave things a faintly "gamblers' den" appearance and I'm sure many decor buffs thought it the height of style. Well, I remember going to dinner at a friend's house circa 1987. There were three of us there and we had been having a political discussion between courses. I recall that the topic of conversation was Ronald Reagan. I got up to go to the loo, conversing quite passionately (politics provoked passionate feelings in many of us back then!) and, waving my arms about as I'm apt to do whilst conversing passionately, I became entangled with the light shade, denting it, causing the bulb to fall out, and setting the shade swinging furiously.

Stylish the "gamblers' den" lighting might have been, but practical it was not - particularly if you wanted to encourage spirited conversation at your dinner party! 

Garfield, Garfield Everywhere...

Favourite fat cat Garfield, creation of American cartoonist Jim Davis, first appeared as a comic strip, syndicated in 41 US newspapers, on 19/6/1978. The illustration above, showing Garfield and Jon Arbuckle, is a panel from that first outing. Didn't they look different?! Especially Garfield. Gradually, the characters evolved. By the early 1980s, Garfield was recognisable as the Garfield we know today, but it still took some years before he stood up on two legs. Studying pictures of Garfield over the years is fascinating.

Garfield is greedy, cynical and lazy. He has a passion for lasagna, a love/hate relationship with Odie, the dog, and is pretty loyal to his not-terribly-bright owner, Jon Arbuckle, all things considered.

This advertisement appeared in a Cambridge, England, newspaper in December 1983. The local branch of Clinton Cards was introducing the city to a flood of Garfield merchandising. 

I have had several queries about the "1978" copyright label on some Garfield merchandise. This refers to the year the character was first copyrighted. If you have an early Garfield toy, mug etc, it will have been manufactured in the 1980s. As can be seen in the illustration at the top of this post, Garfield looked rather different in 1978! 

Garfield creator Jim Davis’ company, Paws, Inc, was founded in 1981 to take care of the creative side of the Garfield licensing business.
-

This girly, wearing a "Frankie Say Relax" T-shirt with very fancy lettering indeed, nipped out to her local Bejam's one morning. On her way home, she spotted this major celebrity presiding over the re-opening of her local Post Office, which had been closed for a refit. 

Swoon, swoon!

Well, it seemed to be love at first sight, but in reality the celebrity had simply spotted the frozen lasagna in her shopping bag. We tried to warn her that it was only cupboard love - but would she listen?!

This card was received by me on my 21st birthday in 1986 and originally had a plastic "key to the door" stuck to the top right hand corner. I was quite a fan of Garfield back then and still enjoy reading the comic strip today. In the 1980s, Garfield posters adorned my bedroom wall, my tea was drunk from a Garfield mug and a Garfield cuddly toy lived under my bed. 

And sometimes in my bed, if I had nobody else to cuddle.

Did you take Garfield for a ride in your motor?!

A Christmas card from 1988.

The wit inside the card!

This Garfield phone was available in the Index catalogue from September 1989 onwards.

Pump Up The Jam - Changing Charts Of 1989...

In the final year of the glorious decade, we saw Technotronic arrive. 

Formed in 1988 as the Pro 24's and changing their name to Technotronic the following year, this Belgian group wasted no time. Pump Up The Jam was released in 1989, based on their 1988 instrumental piece, Technotronic. The 1989 revamp came complete with the lovely (and sometimes blue-lipped) Felly as singer in the video, and the first album Technotronic, which contained other goodies such as Rockin' Under The Beat in November '89.

But the lovely (and sometimes blue lipped) Felly wasn't the singer. Ya Kid K was the one, and with that revelation, the picture of Felly on the album's cover was removed!

Pump Up The Jam reached No 2 in the UK hit parade in September 1989. Enjoy it by the magic of YouTube above!
 

Pump Up The Jam - The Album, released in November 1989. This one has the original cover photograph of fashion model Felly Kilingi, complete with her famous blue lips.

The Poll Tax

An anti-Poll Tax poster from early 1989. The introduction of the Community Charge or Poll Tax in England was set for the 1st of April 1990, and in 1989 we were not taking the news lying down...

The 'father of the poll tax' was a Scotsman called Douglas Mason. It was his brainchild. Even as the unrest raged over the new tax, he stuck by his claim that the Poll Tax was fairer than the old rates system. The Secretary of State for Scotland, George Younger, was a fervent admirer of the tax and fought for it to be introduced in 1989 in Scotland. Why should his country wait for England and Wales, he 'reasoned'?

From Don't Register, Don't Pay, an information sheet circulated around Cambridge, England, December 1988. For full details, click on image above.

What is the Poll Tax?

At the moment, each household pays a domestic rate which varies according to where you live. From 1st April 1990, the Community Charge, better known as the Poll Tax, will replace the rates.

Each person over the age of 18 years will pay a Poll Tax of around £300 per year in the Cambridge area, regardless of your income and whether or not you can afford it. Even people on State Benefits, students and those receiving State Pensions will have to pay 20% of the Poll Tax (Student Nurses will have to pay the full rate).

Join the Fight Back

Together we can stop this unfair tax. A group of people are meeting regularly to organise opposition to the Poll Tax. You can contact them at the address below, or simply come along to the meetings.

Meetings take place at The Bath House on Mill Road at 7.30pm on alternate Mondays, commencing 2nd January 1989, then 16th Jan, 30th Jan, 13th Feb... etc.

Similar meetings were taking place up-and-down the country.

Back to the information sheet...

Registration

Registration starts in May this year. An army of canvassers will be calling at every house in the country between April and October. Don't be tempted to take on a job as canvasser, and don't allow your friends to become involved either.

LET'S PUT A SPANNER IN THE WORKS leaflet (Campaign Against The Poll Tax Resource & Information Centre, Leeds), early 1989.

WE ARE UNDER ATTACK

Poll Tax attacks the less well-off, community services, local democracy, and our civil liberties.

We must convince the Government that it cannot go ahead with the Poll Tax.

JOIN THE RESISTANCE

If Britain were invaded, a network of local Resistance groups would be formed to make life difficult for the enemy.

We need to defend ourselves against the Poll Tax enemy. Join your local group.

A few resistance tips from the leaflet...

ASK WHY YOU ARE THE "RESPONSIBLE PERSON"

Before you can get a Poll Tax bill, there has to be a Poll Tax Register.

Before there can be a Register, the Registration Officer has to get a "responsible person" for each household.

The Officer will send a form to someone in your household he thinks is the "responsible person". He may even have filled in the names of people he thinks live there. He wants you to check and sign it.

DON'T SIGN IT. SEND IT BACK with some questions:

Why was I chosen?

What will be my duties?

How can I appeal against being chosen?

You are perfectly entitled to ask these questions.

DEALING WITH CANVASSERS

In some areas, canvassers will call. They will want you to give information on residents in the household. They will get a bonus of 40p for every form they get filled in.

Only the "responsible person" can be required to give information. Ask the canvasser to return when the "responsible person" is home.

Of course, there is no law to say that you must answer your door if someone knocks.

Some areas have plans to alert all residents if Poll Tax canvassers appear. A bell or a drum or a loud-hailer stands ready...

I attended this Anti-Poll Tax Campaign Benefit on the 1st of April 1989 - a year before the planned introduction of the Tax.

The Poll Tax issue was a bone of contention which would take us into the new decade.

Via The Log Lady: A Twin Peaks Series Script From 1989

Welcome To Twin Peaks! Scene from the opening credits - filmed in 1989 and included in the 1989 self contained ending video release version.

Margaret Lanterman - aka the Log Lady - played by Catherine E Coulson, communes with her log.

Little town of secrets - rich widow Josie Packard (Joan Chen) was having an affair with Sheriff Harry S Truman (Michael Ontkean). But was she really a widow? Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was dispatched to the town in February 1989 to investigate the murder of Home Coming Queen Laura Palmer. Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie) schemed and plotted.

I was jealous to the max when a pal of mine recently chortled: "I've got an original Twin Peaks script, used by Catherine E Coulson, the Log Lady herself!"

I was slightly mollified when he told me I could scan or photograph the script, and I even contemplated the idea of starting a '90s blog to write about it. Then I discovered that - oh joy - the script dated from 1989! As this is '80s ACTUAL and we like to feature actual 1980s artifacts, it belongs here!

In our main Twin Peaks article, we covered the series's origins in the late 1980s, the pilot film, which was produced in early 1989 (most of which was used for the series pilot and dream sequences in the show), the fact that Angelo Badalamenti wrote the music in '89 and that production started on the first series, but I must say I'm surprised how far that work went. My pal's script is for episode five of series one, and dates from November 1989!

I was even more surprised to discover that the script for episode six, by Harley Peyton, was also written in November 1989.

Anyway, my pal's script was written by Mark Frost (Hill Street Blues), who co-created Twin Peaks with David Lynch.

A quick hunt around the Web reveals that a revised first draft script for the 1989 pilot film (originally to be called Northwest Passage) dates back to December 1988, and the script for episode one of the series dates back to July (first draft) and August 1989.

I hope you enjoy the photographs below! All I can burble is "WOW, BOB, WOW!" and "Damn fine coffee!"

Agent Cooper discovers little Audrey Horne in his bed at the Great Northern Hotel...

Highly confidential!

Drafts of the episode five script - and a note from Catherine E Coulson!

Agent Cooper regrets leaving his Ear-Pillow Silicon Ear Plugs behind!

Enquiry - Depeche Mode: Enjoy The Silence - 1989 Or 1990?

Shanice writes:

Please, please, please answer my question! I've been getting into Depeche Mode and I know the band formed in Basildon, Essex, in 1980, and so on, but I'm puzzled by the dating of their single Enjoy The Silence. Some people say 1989, some say 1990. Do you know which year it was?

The mighty Mode (how do I love them? Let me count the ways...) recorded Enjoy The Silence in 1989, Shanice. It was released as a single in early 1990 - so, it's a 1989 song and a 1990 release. It also featured on the band's 1990-released album Violator.

Lovely to hear from you and a pleasure to answer your enquiry. Here at '80s Actual our motto is:

Sound and caring,
Help the helpless,
But always remain
Ultimately selfish...

Guess where we got that from! xxx

Fashion 1989 - Beach - And Other Wear...

Twirling back to 1989 and the final year of our decade of uproar with a look at fashion. Chris Rea, of course, knew all about being on the beach, and so did the young lady above, in her highly lovely wetsuit-style fitted swimsuit with fluorescent pink trim. WOW! And what about the round the middle garb? Pass. And the wrist garb? Sports band? Wrist warmer? Pass again! Anneka Rice had a jump suit of a similar colour scheme to this costume in the hugely popular Channel 4 Treasure Hunt series.

All-in-one baggy fit trousers with braces back. Terrific.

Into the sea, you and me... lovely stretch jeans and colourful rugby tops. The jeans on the left were available in two washes and had ankle zips - so practical. Many jean legs were so narrow in the 1980s it was clear the designers had never heard of feet.

An array of lovely swimming costumes for that up-to-the-moment look. The two on the right would create a very interesting tan line!

Another all-in-one. Not sure why these were popular really.

Step out in leggings. From around 1982 onwards these things were all the rage and seem as much an '80s fashion statement as shoulder pads to me!

"Hot off the West Coast, beachboys and girls hit the streets and shores with the latest surf inspired style. A cult rather than a craze, the look injects colour into casual fun looks."

Goodness - what an industrial looking belt - and as for the ear-rings!

Nice shoulders... enjoy the power-dressed look in cool cotten.

Flourescent pink newsprint swimsuit. Gorgeous!

Here's Lorraine Chase having her own collection in the 1989 Look Again catalogue: "Glamorous good looks come easily with careful planning. Plan now with this fabulous collection of stylish separates and you just can't go wrong!" Not 'arf!

1989 - Tim Berners-Lee - The Invention Of The World Wide Web...

It's hard to imagine the world without WWW. but in the 1980s that's just how it was. The basis for the Internet had been invented in the 1960s and was up and running by the end of that decade - this was ARPANET, developed by the USA's Department of Defence.

During the 1980s, the home computing era got underway, but it was the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 which would transform attitudes to computers in the 1990s and create a whole new way of life. Have you checked your e-mails? Updated your web site/blog? Checked Wikipedia's latest suspect information? No? Well, better get to it. It's as easy as shelling peas.

This is thanks to an English software engineer, Tim Berners-Lee. The origins of the idea for the Web can be traced back to June - December 1980, when Mr Berners-Lee wrote ENQUIRE, his first computer program for storing information. At this time he was working a six month stint as a consultant software engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

He left CERN for a spell, returning in 1984, and in March 1989 invented the World Wide Web.

From Tim Berners-Lee's own site biography:
 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989.

He is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a Web standards organization founded in 1994 which develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. He is a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation which was launched in 2009 to coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity. 

A graduate of Oxford University, Sir Tim invented the Web while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread.

Click on the red text to go to Sir Tim's site.
 
Up and running in the early 1990s, the Web made the Internet easy for all and things would never be the same again. 

And even confirmed technophobes like me, who had looked at the emerging home computer era with trepidation back in the 1980s, are now happily surfing the Web.
Thank you, Sir Tim!

March 1989 - the historic document!

Tim Berners-Lee at the www@20 celebration at CERN, 13 March, 2009.

1989: The Motorola MicroTAC - A Far More Mobile Mobile... And A Bit About GSM...

Advances in technology brought about the revolutionary Motorola MicroTAC phone of 1989 - the first step towards smaller mobile phones.

It was also massively influential, being the world's very first flip phone. The aerial, by the way, was simply ornament!

It really was incredible as, at that time, mobiles were like grandiose walkie-talkies. And you had to be a yuppie (or Del Boy Trotter) to afford one.

The decade which introduced the very first hand-held mobile, the DynaTAC 8000x in 1983, very much a brick, roared towards its end with this little beauty.

Of course it was analogue, but the current system was on its way, and had been since 1982 when Groupe Spécial Mobil (GSM) was formed to design a pan-European mobile technology.

Behind the scenes planning often long pre-dates technology hitting the streets, and in that light it's amusing to relect that there were no hand-held mobile phones in 1982, and that the Mobira Senator, Nokia's very first mobile phone - a car phone released in 1982, weighed around twenty one pounds!

From 1982-1984, agreement on strategic targets for GSM was reached.

From 1985-1987, agreement on principles for services, network architecture, radio and speech coding in GSM was reached.

In 1986, trials of different digital radio transmission schemes and different speech codecs were carried out in several countries and comparative evaluations carried out by GSM.

1987 was the birth year of the current system, with GSM agreeing its basic parameters. This was finalised in May 1987 in Bonn. Then, in September 1987, a proposal was put forward to create an operator agreement in the form of a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’. This was drawn up and signed in Copenhagen in September by fifteen members from thirteen countries that committed to deploying GSM.

The BBC reported in 2007:

The technology behind the mobile phone is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

On 7 September 1987, 15 phone firms signed an agreement to build mobile networks based on the Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications.

According to the GSM Association there are more than 2.5 billion accounts that use this mobile phone technology.

Adoption of the technology shows no signs of slowing down with many developing nations becoming keen users of mobile handsets.

Robert Conway, head of the GSM Association, said the memorandum of understanding signed in 1987 is widely seen as the moment when the global mobile industry got under way.

Although work on the GSM technical specifications began earlier (1982), the agreement signed in 1987 committed those operators to building networks based upon it.

"There's no doubt that at the time of the agreement in 1987 no one had an idea of the explosive capabilities in terms of growth that would happen after the GSM standard was agreed," he said.

As Paul Simon said back in the '80s, "These are the days of miracle and wonder..."

Acid House

One of the big "things" in 1988 and 1989 - the smiley face! Created in the 1960s and long associated by us plebs with kids' badges and jolly tea mugs, the face was suddenly the symbol of a rather frantic and frankly rather naughty progression from the House Music scene called Acid House. I was confused. House music had been created in Chicago - 1983 was 'Year Zero' for House - and the sound had not begun to go wide until midway through the decade.

And now we had ACID House. Say what?!

The smiley face was soon cropping up on T-shirts everywhere, accompanied by the slogan "Right On One Matey!" The elders got themselves into a right old stew about it all, whilst many youngsters, bored with being garishly posh, gothy, Indie or synthy, eagerly embraced the chance to get sweaty under strobe lights, and move about to weird electronic noises and samples.

And if you had to break into somebody else's warehouse or barn to do it, all the better!

Some newspapers seemed alarmed. A new drug culture, and the kids acting up again. Oh dear! Where had Acid House sprung from?

The Observer observed in 1988:

Drugs Fear as the 'acid house' cult revives a Sixties spectre

"Acid house" started in four London clubs... In the past month it has "taken off", spreading to other clubs around the country.

1988 and 1989 were wild. Absolutely evil according to some! The elders were definitely rattled!

From the Sun, August 28, 1989:

More than 25,000 youngsters - some aged only ELEVEN - went wild at a huge acid house party yesterday as the police watched helplessly.

Dozens of evil pushers raked in a fortune openly selling the mind-bending drug Ecstacy at £10 a time - with a bottle of mineral water to wash it down.

A police superintendent and WPC moved through throngs of spaced-out teenagers as dealers chanted "E, hash, weed" to the beat of the music.

School-age children rolled their own reefers.

But the officers were only there to make sure there was no trouble while notices about the noise were served on the organisers.

The 15-hour bash started on Saturday night when hordes of acid house fans converged on the village of Effingham, Surrey.

Cars, coaches and vans poured into Newmarsh Farm for the £30-a-head "Energy Summer Festival".

Youngsters from as far way as Leeds, Swindon and Ipswich screamed "Mental, mental" as lasers lit the sky.

Headlines from the Sun CONDEMMING the drug craze flashed on a huge video screen.

Party organisers made an estimated £500,000 from the bash - which cost about £50,000 to stage.
Police, who only heard of the party hours before, at first stopped youngsters entering the site.
But as thousands joined the crush, senior officers decided it was safer to let them in.

About 70 police were on duty, but there were only seven arrests - two for alleged drug offences.
Police will quiz the organisers and those responsible for the land.

A spokesman said:

* An acid house bash, tagged The Heat, was smashed at the weekend because it was a FIRE RISK.

* Around 10,000 revellers were expected to head for a disused factory at West Bromwich, West Midlands.

* But the local council won an injunction to ban the party after fire experts declared the building unsafe.

* Only 30 youngsters, mainly from London, arrived at the factory, but were promptly turned away by the police.

"There could be criminal charges."

Michael Grylls, MP for North West Surrey, said: "It is a massive indictment of parents that they allow their children to attend this sort of thing."

Fellow Tory Terry Dicks said: "These parents should be fined, if not sent to prison."
Monks at a silent order at West Kingsdown, Kent, were disturbed by 3,000 at a nearby acid house party.

Master of a little-known DJ skill called Transformer Scratching (making a record sound like a robot's voice), James Dorrell was hailed as a pioneer of "English hip-hop". Dorrell, who was also in M/A/R/R/S (Pump Up The Volume), was interviewed in 1988 and said of Acid House:

"It's really crazy, psychedelic music. There's no real tune, just lots of studio technology. You can also scratch other bits of records over the top of the beat and add to the effect. The other day I found an amazing old record by Brian Clough of all people! I used this bit where he says, "He's got a good left foot that lad!" over a serious Chicago House groove. It sounded brilliant!"
Mind you, imagination and originality were needed. Dorrell again:

"If I hear another James Brown yelp or This is a journey into sound again I'll scream!"

Despite the '60s psychedelic references (particularly the return of the lava lamp, which became HUGE in the 1990s, reaching its highest ever sales), the new drug culture (just what was this ecstacy?!) and so on, followers of Acid House were not hippies. From what I saw, they were harder, more streetwise, more working class - "On One Matey!" rather than "Peace Man!" The music too was very different. 20th Century Words by John Ayto, describes it thus:

Acid House n (1988) a type of house music with a very fast beat, a spare, mesmeric, synthesised sound, and usually a distinctive gurgling bass noise. Also applied to the youth cult associated with this kind of music, characterised by a vogue for warehouse parties, a revival of psychedelia, and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. "Acid" may well be the slang word for LSD, although many cultists claim that it comes from the record "Acid Trax" by Phuture (in the slang of Chicago, where this music originated in 1986, "acid burning" means "stealing", and the music relies heavily on "sampling" a polite word for stealing musical extracts).

Did you join in or want to put an end to the "menace"? From the "Sun", November 18, 1988.