the decision is ours. 7 -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com we have intelligent machines creeping into our daily lives. it's going to be a new world out there. >> the popularity of these video games is nothing short of a social phenomenon. >> personal computers, walk-around stereos, automatic cameras, mobile telephones. >> a major moment in the history of flight. >> the experts tell us all of this is just the tip of the iceberg of what's to come. >> there's literally a hyper culture that is developing. almost a cult. >> we are no longer on the verge of the personal computer revolution. we are right in the midst of it, thank you. ♪

♪ ♪ the average family home, cory practices her violin, christian plays with his cars and mike and carol worry over the bills. >> we went into the 1980s in pretty much the same technology that's been in place for a couple of decades.

typewriter. calculators. tv. oven. a car. you listen to music on a big old stereo system with a turntable. maybe you had a digital watch and that was the only thing that was going to be digital that you actually owned. >> hello? i'm not here now but my faithful machine is. >> there was a handful of technology at that time. one was the telephone answering machine. you would be driving home and you would say i can't wait to check my messages. you know, it becomes part of the day. honey, i'm checking my messages. >> from the noisy streets of new york to the laid-back tranquility of california, americans are tuning out and tuning in. >> when i think of technology in the 1980s, i think of the walkman. the walkman was huge. >> it's the latest fad. tiny stereo cassette players with featherweight head phones. >> it's like carrying your stereo with you on your head.

>> the walkman, you listened to music from a fixed location in your home to mobile. >> you are witnessing the ultimate miniaturization of the cassette player. never has so much genius been coaxed into so little space. >> in all the great bursts of innovation, there is always some kind of scientific breakthrough that has to happen first. and none of this stuff could have happened in the 1980s without the transistor being invented in the late 1940s. japan and sony in particular really understood that this technology could make things smaller, more affordable, more personal. sony was the brand name that really mattered in the 1980s in technology. >> i'll take the sony. >> the original sony walkman was so solid, it was a pleasure to hold. it had density. it had heft. the cassette, pop it in, close it. a very satisfying sound. not just a click-click. it was click-thunk. >> gorgeous, gorgeous machine. it provided you with a

soundtrack to your life. >> transformers and cabbage patch dolls may be the top two toy sellers this year but for adults there's only one hot item. the vcr. >> christmas shoppers made the video cassette recorder one of this year's hottest gifts for grown-ups. they are selling at a million units per month but it's a lot more than a popular christmas gift. it's an invention some say is changing the whole idea of television. >> there's so many inventions where you can trace their success back to the smashing of a limitation and the vcr smashed the limitation of time. >> most people use vcrs for what they call time shifting. say this sunday is your parents' 50th wedding anniversary. but you can't miss the steelers. what you do is set the timer on your recorder, pop in a tape and watch the steelers when you get home. it just changed the paradigm of television. >> the makers of tv programs and movies shown on television claim their films lose their rerun value when they're recorded on home videotape recorders and

then played later. the movie studio said this violated the copyright laws and they sued the home recorder manufacturers for allegedly instigating widespread in the home law-breaking. >> you cannot have high class entertainment if 50 million taping machines are out there in an unauthorized fashion with no compensation to owners, taking from them what rightfully belongs to them. >> the supreme court today answered a multi billion dollar business question affecting the wallets of millions of americans and one of the fastest growing forms of recreation, home videotaping. the court found 5-4 that it is legal and violates no copyright law. >> not only did the movie industry lose that one but they were totally wrong. the vcr turned us into a nation of movie nuts. >> it may be the fastest growing business in america, the sale of video cassette tapes that people buy or more often rent to play at home on their video cassette recorders.

>> more than 24,000 retail outlets across america now sell or rent tapes of all kinds. >> you go to a video store and pick something out that you missed. in the old days if you missed a movie, you would miss the movie. >> the market's not restricted to blockbuster films. jane fonda through her workout tapes has shown one can make money with a product geared specifically to the home video market. >> the success of camcorders marks the second phase of the video revolution. not just taking movies home but making them at home, and anywhere else you happen to go. >> i was a kid who had a camcorder. it was the size of kentucky. it had to be, because it played vhs cassettes. >> it can be used by just about anybody. its advantage over film is about to revolutionize the industry. >> there's no developing. you can rewind and record over it if you didn't like the take. that is an enormous shift. >> americans buy billions of dollars of electronic equipment but just when you think you bought the latest in audio and video, there's a new generation of gear which has clearer

pictures and better sound. >> this camera, using a simple little tape like that, just possibly the wave of the future. craso come dive into disheser like the new alaska bairdi crab dinner with sweet crab from the icy waters of alaska. or try crab lover's dream with tender snow and king crab legs. love crab? then hurry, crabfest ends soon. is it a force of nature? or a sales event? the summer of audi sales event is here. get up to a $5,000 bonus on select audi models. the possibility of a flare was almost always on my mind.

thinking about what to avoid, where to go... and how to deal with my uc. to me, that was normal. until i talked to my doctor. she told me that humira helps people like me get uc under control and keep it under control when certain medications haven't worked well enough. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. raise your expectations. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, control is possible. always has to be who sat your desk? phone now, with one talk from verizon... hi, pete. i'm glad you called. (announcer vo) all your phones can work together on one number.

you can move calls between phones, so conversations can go where you go. take your time. i'm not going anywhere. (announcer vo) and when you're not available, one talk helps find the right person who is. hi, john. (announcer vo) so wherever work takes you, you can put your customers first. introducing one talk-- another way verizon connects your business better. learn how at onetalk.com.

like them or not, video games are the youth phenomenon of our day. quarter by quarter, $6 billion got fed into video game slots last year. that's double what americans spent to go to the movies. >> people flocked to them

because the arcade game could afford expensive hardware at the time and the hardware had enough power to do things we had never seen before. >> there was essentially an arcade in every mall, on every street corner. the lunch money was not safe if there was arcade around. >> arcade games at the time were the first machine that we could really interact with. we could cause a world to do something, so we would grab a joy stick and move a character around or fire something at a spaceship and we never had an experience like that before. >> the popularity of these video games is nothing short of a social phenomenon. pacman is seemingly everywhere. >> retailers can't keep the home version stocked. one dealer describes the demand. >> phenomenal. telephones ringing every five minutes. it's pacman mania. >> my big memory of the '80s was my best friend got this $300

console that connected to your tv. he would just play this thing forever. it was the first time anyone had ever seen anything but tv on a tv, and i thought wow, this is technology. >> the imaginary rockets are controlled by the same chips the u.s. army used in their defense programs. but the significance of the chip does not only lie in gadgets. her whole future will be changed by the silicon chip business. >> it was discovered that you could actually etch a whole lot of transistors on to a piece of silicon which was basically a cheap substance that could be mass manufactured. >> these chips can control the flow of electrical current that in effect enables them to store and remember zillions of bits of information on a surface just a little bit thicker than an eggshell and smaller than a fingernail. >> this silicon chip supplies the brain power for 1,001 electronic gadgets from wrist watches to microwave ovens. >> the mushrooming industry gives birth to a high tech cult

and a place called silicon valley. >> the magic part of silicon valley is that there is this boiling pot of people who were involved in technology, involved in science. silicon valley was hp, sri, xerox and stanford university. that was a hell of a powerful combination. >> there were these two cultures, engineers with ph.d.s and hobbyists. >> it was a time when there was a lot of social [ inaudible ] in and around the area. there was a lot of counter culture people. you had cheap semiconductors, you had people who would look at things differently than what the conventional person was and that's what the technology needed then. >> one of the things that was really hard about making a computer was now on a chip. so all of a sudden, people who had a thirst for this stuff could go out and buy a computer, you could make them yourself. >> there was a lot of this revolutionary theme with a lot of the technical people in it,

changes in technology and how we were part of it even though in our companies we were the fringe element. we had on the jeans. we are not the managers and leaders but boy, just a clever design on its own had value. >> you have these guys like steve jobs and steve wozniak and bill gates and paul allen who had been messing around on the edges of what would become the personal computer industry but no one in corporate america and no one in most of the homes of america thought that the personal computer was anything that would ever have -- would ever even happen, let alone have any relevance to them. >> for all of us, the computer revolution was really exciting. it was like wow, this is wide open. it was a group of people who want to make a change in the world. eventually, the two forces in silicon valley, the hobbyists and the buttoned-down business guys, ended coming together when the chip makers realized that these things the hobbyists were doing could lead to this whole new kind of product called the personal computer. >> it was at a home brewed computer club where steve wozniak and steve jobs first displayed the computer they had been networking on and it caused

a sensation. >> we had absolutely no idea what people were going to do with these things when we started out. matter of fact, the two people it was designed for was woz and myself, because we couldn't afford to buy a computer kit on the market. immediately, everyone wanted one. >> woz was the technical genius and jobs was the marketing genius. >> you needed both of those kinds of mindsets to actually make this new technology work and create this company out of thin air called apple. >> since the apple computer company was founded five years ago, its sales have skyrocketed from about $100,000 to more than $100 million with the most popular typewriter sized computer on the market today. steven jobs is now 26 years old and he sees his computer's future as the future of mankind. >> how many calculators do you own? >> two, maybe. >> right. you use the automatic bank telling machines? >> sure. >> so life is already seducing you into learning this stuff. it's not going to happen at once and it's certainly not a

1984-ish vision at all. it will just be very gradual and very human and will seduce you into learning how to use it. >> random access memory is internal memory built inside of this computer. >> these new computers were big, ugly, difficult to use inventions when they first came out. >> it would crash and you had to figure out what to do. it would not always create the right results. so it really did take a mindset of someone willing to cut it some slack. >> take little steps. don't take big steps. >> everybody kind of agreed that this could be the next great thing after the printing press if we do it right. it's not just having a machine. the world needed to be made better. those are the things that actually can lift a society into a new way of thinking. >> industry experts say we're no longer on the verge of the personal computer revolution. we're right in the midst of it, thank you. and it's gathering steam with more and more people jumping aboard every day.

if you have a typical airline credit card, you only earn double miles when you buy stuff from that airline. wait...is this where you typically shop? you should be getting double miles on every purchase! switch...to the capital one venture card. with venture, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase, everywhere, every day. not just ...(dismissively) airline purchases. seriously... dble miles... everywhere. what's in your wallet?

heythere's a more enjoyabley! way to get your fiber. try these delicious phillips' fiber good gummies, a good source of fiber to help support regularity. mmmm. these are great. my work here is done. phillips'. the tasty side of fiber. t-mobile's coverage is unstoppable. we doubled our lte coverage. and, with extended range lte, it reaches farther than ever. now you can stream video and music free in more places without using any of your data. from skylines to coastlines, out in the country, deep in the city. we got you covered. 311 million americans and counting. and we won't stop. come see why t-mobile is #1 in customer satisfaction. words panera lives by. no artificial flavors, preservatives, sweeteners. no colors from artificial sources. 100% of our food will be clean by year's end. that's food as it shld be. ♪

in the early part of the '80s, the general image of the computer was always this giant machine with little things all over it. the mindset was the computer as the brain and it was a threatening concept.

>> the 1980s is a period of time when the big impersonal giant machine that lives in a huge air conditioned room someplace suddenly becomes something that sits on your desk. >> something is happening out there. something that's expanding your world. small computers are happening. >> as soon as we have intelligent machines creeping into our daily lives, into our factories, into our hospitals, into our businesses, then it's going to be a new world out there. >> computer stores have become the neighborhood soda shops of the binary generation. the disciples, young and old, of smart machines. >> companies that were starting to build personal computers, companies like atari, commodore, apple, began to see them as a home market and it was starting to seep into the public consciousness. >> personal computers have become the business of at least 25 manufacturers with three companies, radio shack, apple and commodore, grabbing three-quarters of the market. >> this personal computer costs

about $1400 and fits nicely on a desk corner. duplicating its performance just five years ago would have cost $75,000 and involve a unit the size of a large refrigerator. >> when the average american thought computer they thought ibm. it made mainframe computers that ran pretty much everything. >> ibm was one of the most powerful corporations in america and in technology, it was the most powerful company that had ever existed in technology. >> because of this activity in personal computers, it started to make ibm look like it was somewhere behind the eight ball. >> they look at the apple ii and say we can make one of those. we build the computers that put america on the moon. we will get in that business, squash these guys, no problem. >> ibm, international business machines, has entered the small computer market for the first time. >> the idea of the small computer has become so big that the giant of computer companies, ibm, is busy marketing its new small computer. >> it will, they say, give

credibility to home computers. they will no longer be just another new gadget. >> ibm has set an objective to build the office of the future. >> before ibm came in, companies would not think about buying personal computers. but suddenly when ibm's selling one, now it becomes a safer decision. >> ibm's personal computer is designed for office, school or home use. it's aimed at exactly the same market as its competitors. >> when ibm started developing the ibm pc it needed an operating system. this young guy named bill gates had started a tiny little company called microsoft. >> bill gates was that unusual combination of a tech guy who was as good as the best tech guys but he also had a business sense. and he had a business vision. >> at the time, everyone was making it up as they went along. there was nothing that came before it. there was no personal computer industry. so when gates said to ibm how

about this, we'll write you an operating system for your pc and we will get a cut of every machine you sell, and in addition, he made sure that it was not an exclusive license, that he was going to be able to sell this software to ibm but he was also going to be able to sell the same software to the other people because gates intuited that there were going to be people who would build knock offs of ibm, the pc clones. >> it was a genius move on the part of the bill gates who was still in his early 20s when he makes this decision. you've got these guys at ibm in their blue suits and dark ties who are looking at this company, microsoft, saying who cares? software, who cares about software, man. we build these big machines. >> ibm did not realize that it was essentially handing all this power to this little nerd. >> if you had stayed at harvard a few more years, would this computer revolution have passed you by? >> perhaps. things move very quickly in the industry and it was really the urgency to get out there and be the first one to put a basic on the microcomputer that caused me to drop out. >> if you don't have one, you will be amazed what these little gadgets can do.

>> the idea was that ordinary people might have a use for computers. now, it took awhile to figure out what those uses might be. >> the main thing was spreadsheets and word processing. the computer was the best typewriter you could ever have. it gave you a new way to write. you could change things around and check your spelling and it would always look perfect. >> bottom line numbers. >> my dad had the large ledger sheets, done them all by hand and i remember taking a computer to show them a spreadsheet and suddenly, he understood the value of a personal computer. >> there is a drastic mindset change in the whole country about what a computer was. it happened in a very short period of time. >> gather round. we'll tell you a little more about the system. >> here at the west coast computer fair, the speed of development in this industry is so great that each day virtually outdates the previous one. >> it is lower prices that helped the tremendous boom in home computer sales but one home

in ten will have a computer by the end of this year. by 1990, the number could be two out of three. >> we knew the personal computer was getting serious when the competition started, because when you have competition, innovation gets stimulated. >> compaq. >> atari. >> this is the one. >> high resolution, more storage and greater expandabily than ibm's pc. >> ibm's entry heated up an already volatile market. one industry innovator, osborn computer, was forced into bankruptcy court last month. and apple, the industry's number one in small computers, had to concede it was now number two behind ibm. >> all of a sudden, you were in an old-fashioned competitive business in which you really had to be better than the other guy. >> there are 150 microcomputer companies. all of them want 10% of the market. that just isn't going to happen. ...clear for take off.

see ya! when you're living with diabetes. steady is exciting. oh this is living baby! only glucerna has carbsteady, to help minimize blood sugar spikes. and try new glucerna hunger smart to help you feel full.

and i didn't get here alone. there were people who listened along the way. people who gave me options. kept me on track. and through it all, my retirement never got left behind. so today, i'm prepared for anything we may want tomorrow to be. every someday needs a plan. let's talk about your old 401(ktoday.

this is the newest kind of office in america and this is the telephone which will ring in it. >> the big thing was the phone in the car, which was like we are now officially in the modern era. the first thing you always said was hey, i'm calling from the car. >> when these things were first starting to pop up in the mid 1980s, the customers were people that had a business reason for having these things.

or some super-rich dude who just wanted to show off. the big breakthrough idea was this idea of cellular systems. >> it's called cellular because your car phone is tied into different radio transmitters. each one called a cell. and as you travel, the signal from your phone travels from cell to cell. >> this was something that had never been done before. >> if you don't have one now, you probably will have one in a decade, say the phone makers, as the price comes down into the range of other high tech toys. >> there were people that understood even in the early days that being trapped in a car was not freedom. people are fundamentally naturally mobile. >> i like to say that technology will go from a phone in the car to a phone in a briefcase to finally a phone in your pocket. >> and this is it. this is a portable cellular phone. you will be able to take this to any american city and call virtually anyplace in the world and its maker, motorola says a

smaller version than this will be on the market next year. >> the first cell phones looked like soviet army field telephones. they were these huge lunch boxes you hold up to your head. >> this is just the birth of this industry. all inventions start out in a very rough state. and whether it's computers or cell phones, it took awhile to refine them and make them into something that all of us use. >> you look at the bottom of your screen, it says please press. >> to defend the computer has become a national mania. we are told miss the electronic boat and you're sunk. >> in the future everything is probably going to be computerized so you have to know how to use computers. >> my son just took a computer class in school. he's only 8 years old. i figure i'd just as soon be as smart as he is. >> for all you hear about friendly, they aren't really especially for playing pacman. >> a small snag in computer marketing has been what is called technophobia. fear of these bloodless little wizards. the manufacturers are trying to overcome it by making them what

they call user-friendly. >> isn't that pretty. now what do i do? >> making computers easy enough to use for a beginner, it wasn't always true. people have never encountered this stuff. >> don't shift. >> so there is a great disconnect between the ambitions of the apples and microsofts and the realities of people trying to use these things for the first time. >> right now, if you buy a computer system and you want to solve one of your problems, we immediately throw a big problem right in the middle of you and your problem, which is learning how to use the computer. substantial problem to overcome. once you overcome that, it's a phenomenal tool. >> steve jobs thought that a computer should require no technical skill. he thought that it should be capable of generating artistic endeavors and not just number crunching business things. >> is there anything you would like the see it do?

>> we would love to have it in a book right now about this size but that's technically impossible. >> steve's like i want to make a friendly computer. a computer that comes from a different kind of place. that owes its inspiration to people who are thoughtful and creative and human and humane. >> this is an experimental office system at the xerox research center in california. >> what flowers? my anniversary. i forgot. >> xerox in the 1980s was one of the most exciting companies in america. xerox had this booming copier business. it wasn't a personal computer company but they opened up this lab called the palo alto research center. >> xerox park was xerox's think tank. they were working on all these crazy out there ideas which included the mouse and overlapping windows and fonts and graphics on the computer screen. just to see if they could do it. steve jobs hears about some of

the work going on at this lab and he wants a look. >> xerox park was an invention place. apple was an innovation place. steve was very visual and could see right away the visual graphic interface was different and more communicative than anything he had seen before. he knew it was effective because it was affecting him. >> jobs realizes this is the future of computing. this is a whole different kind of computer to be built. famously, a computer for the rest of us. >> 1984, the ridley scott commercial for the macintosh. >> it depicted a very thinly disguised representation of ibm's scary 1984's leader on a big screen saying that this tiny little company, apple, is going to destroy the reigning power. >> we shall prevail. >> on january 24th, apple computer will introduce

macintosh. >> the personal computer war heated up today. apple computer officially unveiled its new macintosh. >> i would like to let macintosh speak for itself. >> hello. i'm macintosh. >> the introduction to mac was an event. steve jobs really did think of the mac as a thing that would change the world. >> apple is spending $100 million and admittedly, its future, to make inroads against ibm. >> apple felt like a rock band. it had the same kind of spirit. they seemed to be going up against the man in ibm. >> it is aimed at a largely untapped market of managers, professionals and students. while they make up about 75% of the white collar work force, less than 5% now use computers mostly because of their complexity. macintosh is designed for simplicity, using a palm-sized unit called a mouse. >> it was the first time a

machine was personal, it was simple, it was friendly. >> it took the computer out of the exclusive domain of geeks and nerds and people who had memorized those commands and put it on the desk of everybody, untrained non-technical people. >> stores around the country put them on sale today and analysts say it's a good bet that macintosh could soon be the biggest apple of the industry's eye. >> it's got its best years far ahead of it. >> eventually i want to be able to carry my mac around with me, walk away with it in my pocket. >> you really do like that mac. you would trade it for an ibm? >> are you kidding? >> as materials sciences progressed, more and more circuitry keeps getting put on smaller and smaller chips, circuit boards, so the closer together elements on a chip are, the faster the motion of signals between them. there was something called moore's law, named for gordon moore. one of the engineers who worked at intel.

basically it was an observation computer engineers are getting to the point where they can essentially double the computer power of computer chips every 18 months or so. and this was what really made the power of computers explode in the 1980s, because every 18 months, these things were getting twice as good. >> you could basically put a whole computer on a chip, it was less expensive to manufacture. so you had smaller which led to faster which led to cheaper. >> under any other field of consumer products, things get more expensive over time. milk, gasoline, houses. but not technology. >> one of the striking things about the development of especially hardware during the 1980s, was the fact that it was getting so much more powerful so rapidly that there developed a strong tendency on the part of people who were about to buy a computer, should i buy the computer today? no, in fact if i wait six months for the same money i can get twice the computer. >> the reason why we are attracted to computers, because it is a power tool that gives me power that i feel i should have

had but nature left me without. and i can now explore more of my potential with a computer. ♪ is it a force of nature? or a sales event? the summer of audi sales event is here. get up to a $5,000 bonus on select audi models. always has to be who sat your desk? phone now, with one talk from verizon... hi, pete. i'm glad you called. (announcer vo) all your phones can work together on one number. you can move calls between phones, so conversations can go where you go. take your time. i'm not going anywhere. (announcer vo) and when you're not available, one talk helps find the right person who is. hi, john. (announcer vo) so wherever work takes you,

you can put your customers first. introducing one talk-- another way verizon connects your business better. learn how at onetalk.com. what makes wendy's baconator different? while the other guys use frozen beef from far away. wendy's only serves fresh beef from ranches close by. so we don't have to freeze it. add six strips of thick, applewood smoked bacon. and wendy's baconator isn't just different, it's deliciously different. so guys with ed can... take viagra when they need it. ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension. your blood pressure could drop to an unsafe level. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. ask your doctor about viagra single packs.

this clean was like - pow.ything well? it felt like i had just gone to the dentist. it just kind of like, wiped everything clean. my teeth are glowing. they look great. they are so white. crest hd 6x cleaning. 6x whitening. and at two weeks, superior sensitivity relief to the leading sensitivity toothpaste. i actually really like the two steps! crest hd step 1 cleans, step 2 whitens. it's the whole package. no one's done this. crest - healthy, beautiful smiles for life.

if all goes according to plan, "columbia" will soar like a skylark next month. >> if the shuttle program works the way it's designed to work it will be a technological feat rivaling america's visit to the moon. a major moment in the history of flight. >> the space shuttle had new systems, new technology, primary things. you don't have pulleys and cables, it's all done by electronics. all the commands go through a computer. >> it was built as the world's first reusable spaceship. one that would commute to space, carrying scientists and satellites. >> the most important thing was the digital revolution, faster, more powerful computers with complex software. >> computers are absolutely necessary to fly a spacecraft like the shuttle. it's the most sophisticated, most complex system that has been put into space yet. >> first time i saw "columbia" and got close to it, my whole

thought was oh, my god, it's big. and this is going to go 17,500 miles per hour? >> more than half a million people crowded the beaches around cape kennedy this morning to witness first-hand the first space shuttle launch. >> t minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. we have gone for main engine start. >> we added a giant fuel tank to it and two solid rocket boosters that are the largest pop bottle rockets on the planet. when you light that puppy it's going somewhere. >> america's first space shuttle and the shuttle has cleared the tower. >> "columbia" houston, you're going 40. >> i am in the mission control center but it's only after the fact that you get into orbit that your mouth drops and you calm down, you go wow. that's amazing.

>> and that vehicle is performing like a champ, like all of us had worked so long knew that she would. i think we've got something that's really going to mean something to the country and the world. >> the astronauts have about 14 more hours in space before they touch down tomorrow in california's mojave desert. >> we were in l.a. and we heard the sonic boom. >> that was it, that was it. it's coming down. >> there it is. >> putting that all together and the technology to make it fly, and then landing is remarkable. nothing like it. had ever been done. >> i said it worked. the damn thing worked. >> the day will come, according to nasa, that a launch will be so routine that the press and television won't even bother to cover it. >> 30 weeks later, after "columbia" had been returned to the kennedy space center, astronauts joe engel and dick truly flew into space again. >> space shuttle was like a

large truck that could deploy satellites and it had a robotic arm so that you can repair and upgrade spacecraft. >> and liftoff of the orbitter "challenger." and the sixth flight of the space shuttle. >> this was the birth of space travel not just space missions. we are talking about sending a laboratory, almost like a university in space, and it started feeling like anybody could be an astronaut. >> the countdown is under way tonight at cape canaveral toward sunday's scheduled launch of the shuttle "challenger." a liftoff that will carry america's first teacher into space. >> still doesn't seem real that i'm going to be able to go with these guys. i'm excited. >> the ice is cleared away and "challenger" should be going away very soon. let's go down to the kennedy space center and take a look at "challenger" sitting on the pad as they continue the countdown. >> the "challenger" flight in january '86 was the 25th flight of the space shuttle but it was an especially notable one

because hundreds of thousands, if not millions of school kids around the country were tuned into the launch. >> it was the first mission i wasn't in the mission control center. i was outside standing next to the families. >> t-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower. >> roger roll, "challenger." >> good roll, flight. >> my responsibilities for that flight was i was spacecraft communicator. i was actually communicating with the crew. >> engine's throttling up. >> "challenger" go with throttle up. >> roger, go with throttle up. >> i was looking at my screen and i turned and looked, and i did not understand or recognize

what i saw. it didn't make sense to me, because it was this fiery mess. >> flight. we have negative contact. >> there was this angry red glow and this wail from the hearts of the family because they knew what i knew. that "challenger" crew was gone. >> today is a day for mourning and remembering. the future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted. it belongs to the brave. the "challenger" crew was pulling us into the future and we'll continue to follow them. there will be more shuttle

flights and more shuttle crews and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. nothing ends here. our hopes and our journeys continue. >> to honor our fallen, we have to find this and fix it and fly it again. >> within a matter of days, we knew it was the solid rocket booster joint that had failed. the o-ring was a flawed design that had led to the loss of the "challenger." >> during the 30 months since the "challenger" accident, there had been hundreds of hardware changes to not only the solid rocket booster, but also to the orbiter, the large liquid rocket fuel tank. numerous software changes had been implemented. all had been tested exhaustively. >> i wanted the opportunity to fly on that first return flight and i was fortunate being assigned to that crew. >> 3, 2, 1, 0, and lift off!

>> liftoff! americans return to space. >> i tell you, i held my breath for two minutes until the solid rocket motors come off. i just went thank god. and we continued on into orbit. >> let us remember the "challenger" crew. we can say at long last, dear friends, we continue the journey. and we promise to continue for you. no artificial flavors, preservatives, sweeteners. no colors from artificial sources. 100% of our food will be clean by year's end. that's food as it should be. ♪ the possibility of a flare was almost always on my mind. thinking about what to avoid,

where to go... and how to deal with my uc. to me, that was normal. until i talked to my doctor. she told me that humira helps people like me get uc under control and keep it under control when certain medications haven't worked well enough. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. raise your expectations. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, control is possible. you made with your airline credit card.these purchases hold on...you only got double miles on stuff you bought from that airline?

let me show you something better. the capital one venture card. with venture, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase... not just...(dismissively) airline purchases. every purchase. everywhere. every day. no really! double miles on all of them! what's in your wallet? brewmaster. risktaker.. i sold everything i had to own a brewery. you might have heard its name... stella artois be legacy

this is topo, created by andro bot in san jose. it's predicted they will liberate us from time-consuming and mundane chores. >> he will clean your house, be a companion. >> you are not telling us this is a necessary piece of equipment. this is just a fun item? >> thanks always start off d talking about telephones, they always start out as luxury, and then they turn into a necessity.

>> i did a robotics company that failed, damn it. and i believe if you can envision it in science fiction and if you can do it of course we are going to have robots running around the house. >> why is somebody going to buy this thing? one of the problems was the engineering mentality, we're going to build it because we can. >> watch out, some items have more functions than you might dream, like the samsung micro cave oven, color tv security system. originally they invented microwaves to get you out of the kitchen. now you never have to leave. >> for the car? for the car. >> in the big picture it's frustrating and exhilarating to watch the way technology evolved. >> the home minder would have a memo pad. >> we just spend the rest of our lives hanging around a television set. >> right. >> lnl nobody can say we are going to take technologies to

this point. things that rise and bubble and fall back and great ideas pop up, it is a confluence that all happen at the right time. >> small and portable are the watch words for the '90s according to manufacturers sharing theirwares this week. sony has a camcorder that fits in your hand and a combination tv/vcr that fits into your purse or briefcase. >> if you have one of these and one of these but you don't have one of these you are missing half the fun of owning a computer. this is a modem. with it you can turn your computer into a window on the world. >> i remember the first time i went on comp pew serve. it was like the first time i scuba dived. oh, my god there is a whole world out there. >> there is 23 people in the lobby with us. we can type a message, come down and return and it will be broadcast to everybody in that room. >> does anybody say anything

useful. >> it is more social wanter. >> we heard about people calling in love and getting married on line. >> act andly. >> i remember my first time, the mode emdialing and here was a chat room with 12 other people typing in real time wherever they happened to be, blew me away. >> tremendous demand. if you look at all the on line services, user groups, the bulletin board, various things it is a hyper culture developing, almost a cult. >> greatly multiplied what the personal computer was. >> since they joined pod gee, a computer service accessed by telephone, they do everything from checking the weather map to shopping on line for christmas gifts, they even buy and sell stocks. the experts tell us all of this is just the tip the iceberg of what's to come. >> there were all kinds of crazy ideas that really foreshadowed

the next explosion of technology. >> a human being drives through aspen by touching the tv screen. >> easy to assume that our children have will such devices? >> i thinkis' reasonable to assume you will have all these things in your home in a short amount of time. >> the thing about he can did aids is they don't often arrive on time. when it comes to the world of technology, it really did. the world fundamentally changed in the 1980s and the world we now live i was really born, in some ways. >> this is the decade in which technology in general made our personal lives just that much richer and easier than they had been before. at those of us who could figure out which button to push. >> we went from invention to innovation. innovation is taking an idea into a product. >> they concepts of digital random access mobile portable, and cheap started to catch on. >> different ways to run a

business. different ways to communicate with friends. different ways to experience virtual world. i don't think we've ever seen a decade like that, frankly. >> there was realizing aing that this kind of technology was going to be part of our livesers it's where our work and entertainment and all that is going to reside. >> i believe what is happening today is truly a revolution in the deep essence of the world. that 30, 40 years from now it's going to be hard to recognize the way we live. >> technology can make our life better. and technology means that anything's possible. >> it is a fascinating future but which one computer scientist themselves are beginning to question. for example, with a free flow of information, can someone tap into my home computer and invade my privacy? will electronic mail eventually lead to electronic junk mail? will the stores as we know them today eventually disappear? and don't many shoppers really like squeezing the tomatoes. will we end up with a cashless, paperless society?

and do we really want one? these are the kinds of social questions which the scientists say society should answer. in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. government is the problem. >> if ever a policy reflected a president's own character, it's reaganomics. >> we have faith in our program and we're sticking with it. to the paid political complainers, put up or shut up. >> the president was hit. >> the story from middle east sources is that iran has helped the united states free a hostage from lebanon. >> they called it the reagan revolution. but for me it always seemed more like a rediscovery of our values. once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. ♪