The USENET service is established by three graduate students at the University of North Carolina and Duke University.
Motorola releases its 68000 microprocessor. Apple will use this powerful processor for its Lisa and early Macintosh computers.
In 1979 the first Japanese commercial cellular network is started. U.S. cellular telephone networks began a few years later. However, until the early 1990s cell phones were so large that they were used primarily as car phones.
WordStar, one of the
first commercially successful word processing software programs for
personal computers, is released by Micropro International.
July 1, 1979 -- The first Sony Walkman is sold. (You might say the audio cassette Walkman and the first commercial transistor radio (1954) were the iPods of their generations.)
The Atari
company introduces its 400 and 800 computers. This is the beginning of
the "Atari 8-bit" series.
THE MEDIA
British Telecom introduces an interactive videotex system called Prestel.