bamboobike4

Families went outside to see Sputnik overhead, and then our own stuff.
Major Matt Mason was sort of the space GI Joe until GI Joe came as an astronaut.
Kids built models of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo "spacecraft."
Walter Cronkite became the go-to guy for the newscasts.
The "countdown" became so famous, it was used in ads, music, etc.

Until the movie Apollo 13, many did not know that calculations were done with slide rules and toggle switches were thrown using a stopwatch.
Mistakes would have been lethal.

Commands from Mission Control had to be done considering the time delay of the radio transmissions.

A friend of mine's mother was one of the mathematicians behind the scenes.
She ended up teaching at Columbia, breaking a ton of barriers.
He majored in "computer science" in the early 80's, turning down a scholarship from Bear Bryant.
(This was just not done in Huntsville in 1979!)

WWII transistors were refined and came out of that era, enabling "transistor radios."
They went into cars, at the same time teenagers were actually coming onto the scene as drivers.
(The affluence of the late 50's created the cruising teens of "American Graffiti," for example)

Car radios and teen independence in cars gave outlets to different types of music, like that horrible "rock and roll."
It wasn't like teens could listen to Wolfman Jack on the living room Victrola. Changes were about.
Then Elvis and the Beatles, and OMG, social change!

I recently went to a swap meet, and the finned bikes were very present, in numbers.
The bike museum nearby had at least a couple of dozen on display.
The collectors there called them "fat tired bikes."
Guys in their 70's listening to The Animals on their BlueTooth speakers.
it was very cool.