What Life Was Like 50 Years Ago Compared to Now
For starters, The Beatles were still a band.
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The world has changed a lot over the years—mostly for the better. Take a look back at what life looked like when the voting age was 21, seat belts weren't mandatory, and humans hadn't yet walked on the moon.
Getting cash required a trip to the bank.
Although Barclays introduced the world's first automated teller machine in London in 1967, ATMs didn't make their way across the big pond until 1969.
The were no 'R' rated movies.
Or any other rated films, in fact. The voluntary Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system replaced the all-or-nothing Motion Picture Production Code on Nov. 1, 1968 with G, M, R, and X designations.
The Beatles were still a band.
The group released their White Album and their movie, Yellow Submarine, in November 1968.
Humans hadn't walked on the moon.
In 1968, the Apollo program's second manned spacecraft orbited the moon and safely returned on Dec. 28—seven months before Apollo 11's actual moon landing.
Housing discrimination was rampant.
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also called the Fair Housing Act, on April 11, 1968, just seven days after King's assassination. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or national origin when renting or selling a home.
Couples married much earlier in life.
In 1968, the median age of first marriage was 20 for women and 23 for men. Back then, close to 70 percent of American adults were married; today only 51 percent are, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2011. The modern bride is 26.5 years old on average and the groom 28.7.
Pictured: Julie Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon, and David Eisenhower, grandson of former President Dwight Eisenhower, on their wedding day, Dec. 22, 1968.
Secret Service didn't protect presidential candidates.
After presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on the campaign trail on June 5, 1968, Congress passed legislation calling for Secret Service protection for major presidential candidates.
The drinking age was 18.
It became 21 when Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act on July 17, 1984.
Interracial romance wasn't for TV.
William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols broke that barrier with a kiss on Nov. 2, 1968 in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren." Before it aired, NBC censors reportedly expressed concern that Southern TV affiliates would refuse to run it.
Seat belts weren't mandatory.
The first federal seat belt law, requiring all new cars to have a belt for each seat, took effect in1968, but it would be decades before the first state law that required wearing one—that happened in New York on December 1, 1984.
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A gallon of gas cost 34 cents.
That's the equivalent of $2.31 today when adjusted for inflation—very comparable to today's national average of $2.48 a gallon.
Air travel was for the privileged.
The 1969 debut of the Boeing 747, which could hold double the number of passengers as its predecessor, the 707, led to a dramatic drop in flight prices.
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9-1-1 didn't exist.
A single, nationwide phone number for emergency assistance was established in1968 following a meeting between the FCC and AT&T. The digits 9-1-1 were chosen because they had never before been used as an area code or other service code.
Pictured: 911 call center workers in Los Angeles circa 1996.
Lead-based paint was all the rage.
Widely used in homes and schools, the hazardous substance wasn't banned until 1978, which is why the CDC recommends that children and pregnant women stay away from any homes built before then that are undergoing renovation.
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Cars weren't equipped with airbags.
The automated safety devices were invented in 1968 and developed to deploy on impact, inflating with nitrogen gas.
Heart transplants weren't an option.
Although South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard completed the first successful heart transplant in 1967, the first adult heart transplant in the U.S. took place at the Stanford University Hospital in 1968. Of the roughly 100 heart transplants worldwide that year, only a third were successful beyond three months.
Pictured: A mock operating theatre at the Heart of Cape Town museum at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
Dialing involved clockwise finger rotation.
Push-button phones became available commercially in1963, but rotary phones remained popular for household use until well into the '70s.
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Phone calls meant staying in one spot.
Unless you had a really long cord. A cordless phone prototype was invented in 1965, but it didn't become popular for residential use until the early '80s. The first cell phone came along in 1979, followed by the digital cell phone 1988.
Local calls were only 7 digits.
Calling someone in the same town didn't require an area code until the early 2000s, when, the New York Times reported, telecomm regulators began facing "number exhaustion" due to an expanding population.
Getting a credit card was a breeze.
In fact, many were opened by credit card companies on behalf of the recipient without their consent. Consumers received active cards in the mail that they hadn't even applied for. The Unsolicited Credit Card Act of 1970 put a stop to that practice.
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