The Most Successful Inventions of the 1960s

The 1960s were a wild time. Fresh off the economic prosperity of the 1950s and the baby boom that came along with it, the '60s became an era of radical reshuffling, cultural upheaval, and possibility. It wasn't just culture that evolved, however. Some of the most successful products of all time were invented in the 1960s.

While there's a long list of appliances that came about, there are just as many inventions from the period that changed the world. Be it useful commerce devices like automatic teller machines (ATMs) or more novelty products like lava lamps, the '60s saw the best and brightest innovate to a remarkable degree. Let's explore some of the most successful inventions of the 1960s. (For the longevity of '60s musicians, discover 14 musical acts from the 1960s that are still touring.)

To compile a list of the most successful inventions of the 1960s, 24/7 Tempo Consulted a range of engineering, entertainment, and lifestyle publications including Interestingengineering.com, MeTV, and Fiftiesweb.com. We selected a range of inventions introduced in the 1960s that had wide-reaching effects and implementation. After that, we confirmed aspects of our research using sites like The New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine.

One of the most successful inventions of the 1960s is the ATM. Arguably, Luther Simjian created the first automated teller machine in 1960. Called the Bankograph, the device could accept cash, coins, and cheques but could not dispense them. The City Bank of New York installed the first Bankograph but pulled it from service due to a lack of customer use.

Various iterations of the ATM would spring forth throughout the sixties. The ATM as we know it today can be credited to Don Wentzel. An employee of Docutel, Wentzel created the first modern ATM in 1968 after witnessing earlier prototypes in Europe. At first, banks were reticent about the idea, but the placement of several test ATMs around the country inspired newfound confidence. By 1974, Docutel had acquired 70% of the market. As the years went on, ATMs grew increasingly advanced and ubiquitous until they became a staple of commerce across the world.

Before the advent of CDs and MP3 players, the audio cassette reigned supreme. Credit for this device goes to Lou Ottens, an engineer and inventor working for Philips. First, he led the development of the first portable tape recorder, the EL 3585. Due to the product's success, Philips had Ottens create an audio cassette. RCA had previously created a type of cassette but Ottens found it wasn't suitable for Philips' purposes, so he created his own.

First, he carved a wood block that could fit in his jacket pocket. Once the dimensions were squared away, Ottens directed a team of audio engineers to revamp earlier cassette designs to be thinner and use narrower magnetic tape. It proved a success but not for a couple of years. What made the Philips model stand out from those of competitors was their willingness to let other manufacturers use the patent for free. By the end of the 1960s, the Philips audio cassette and accompanying player were worth $150 million. By the time the '70s hit, the Philips audio cassette had become a world standard, easily outselling products of a similar design.

Some products are invented by way of happy accident. Take bubble wrap, for example. In the late 1950s, inventors Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes attempted to create a new type of wallpaper that was three-dimensional and plastic. Air bubbles kept getting trapped in the plastic filament, however, so Fielding and Chavannes tore their hair out employing different strategies to rid their product of bubbles. They considered their plastic wallpaper idea to be a failure but realized it might serve different applications better and created the Sealed Air Corporation in 1960.

Call it the right place and right time, but IBM had just released the 1401 computer and needed a way to safely ship its expensive computer across the world. Now operating under the name Sealed Air Corp., Fielding and Chavannes pitched their plastic wrap as a solution. The rest, they say, is history. Nowadays, practically every fragile item is wrapped and shipped in some form of the original bubble wrap.

The year was 1964, and chemical giant Dupont was seeking a way to make strong but lightweight car tires in anticipation of a gas shortage. It tasked chemist Stephanie Kwolek with figuring out a solution. She and her team began working with polymers like polyphenylene-terephthalate and polybenzamide. This resulted in solutions that were cloudy with a low viscosity but formed liquid crystals, something unique to polymers at the time. Since the solution didn't solve the strong car tire problem, it was usually thrown out. Kwolek sensed potential, however, and persuaded technician Charles Smullen to test her polymer solutions.

Smullen was shocked to discover that Kwolek's liquid crystal polymers refused to break, even under strong pressure. This created the field of polymer chemistry and led to the development of kevlar shields and bulletproof vests. Though Kwolek had little hand in the first kevlar vests, her discovery proved to be a turning point in polymer strength potential. Nowadays, kevlar saves countless lives. It also can be found in other products like car brake pads, musical instruments, cable and wire reinforcement, and much more. (For more car talk, discover 10 tips to get the most out of a tank of gas.)

Edward Craven Walker, the inventor of the lava lamp, first came upon the notion while in a Dorset, England, pub. They had an egg timer that used nonmixable fluids to tell time. Sensing potential, Walker set about creating his version in the form of a lamp. He built a laboratory in a shed on his property and mixed different fluids until he came upon the right formula. Officially invented in 1963, Walker's lamp was called the "Astro Lamp." It worked by using heat to melt wax, which subsequently floated up and down in a water-based liquid.

Adolph Wertheimer and Hy Spector were intrigued by Walker's contraption when they saw it at a German trade show in 1965. They bought the American rights and began manufacturing the lamps at the Lava Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago. Thanks to the burgeoning hippy movement, the trippy lamps caught on and became a staple of psychedelic bedrooms everywhere. Though lava lamps fell out of favor in the 1970s, they remain a potent symbol of the 1960s. Millions were sold and it won several design awards as well. These funky lamps can still be found in some stores today.

Felt tip pens were already a well-known item but the Sanford Ink Company realized it could do better. The pens were clunky and hard to write with, and in response, Sanford Ink chemists created a pen with a plastic foam tip and named it after employee Camden "Sharpie" Johnson. Whereas older felt models were prone to breaking, the Sharpie could write on practically any surface with ease.

This first pen-style permanent marker became an instant hit and earned endorsements from leading '60s media figures like Jack Parr and Johnny Carson. Initially, it only came in black. In subsequent years, however, various colors were offered and over 200 million were sold by 2011. Though Newell Brands bought the Sharpie in 1990, not much has changed in terms of the permanent marker's design. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

The advent of World War II saw the U.S. Postal Service lose a considerable number of its carriers to the war effort. To help the newer, more inexperienced carriers find obscure geographic locations, the Post Office implemented postal zones. By the 1960s, the Post Office realized it needed a more specific type of zoning to help organize mail routes. Thus, the ZIP Code was born. ZIP stands for Zoning Improvement Plan.

Eventually, the war subsided and the baby boomer population exploded. As such, the Post Office needed a way to tackle the increasing amount of mail being sent every day. They brought back the Zoning Improvement Plan in 1963, adding five numbers that we now know as the ZIP Code. While it is hard to say exactly who invented the ZIP Code, credit goes to Robert Moon, a postal inspector who submitted a proposal for coding addresses via digits back in 1944.

Some products are so revolutionary that no one recognizes their brilliance or application for decades. Take the computer mouse, for example. While working at the ARPA-funded Augmentation Research Center in Stanford, California, Douglas Engelbart and his team created a gaggle of computer innovations that still see application today like hypertext and word processing. One of his most enduring designs, however, was the computer mouse. In 1967, Engelbart filed a patent for the first computer mouse which featured a wooden shell and two metal wheels. Though he described it in the patent filing as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system," his nickname for the device stuck.

Since the device required a wire coming out of one end to attach to a computer, Engelbart nicknamed it the mouse. The first iteration had a cursor that pointed directly upward, but this was switched to a more diagonal angle so the XEROX PARC machine's on-screen text could be read more easily. The computer mouse has probably sold by the billions but Engelbart never received any royalties for his innovative design. No one, including Engelbart, realized the value of the computer mouse until much later.

While working as an engineer at Sanders Associates in New Hampshire, Ralph Henry Baer came up with the idea of using television screens to play games. First, he wrote a four-page proposal that convinced his supervisors to let him tackle the project. They gave him a $2,500 budget and the time of two fellow engineers, Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch. Within a few months, Baer and his team created the "Brown Box" video game console system.

It took its name from the tape blanketing the product that made it resemble wood veneer. Even before release, it saw success. While demonstrating the system for attorneys and patent examiners, Baer said "Within 15 minutes, every examiner on the floor of that building was in that office wanting to play the game." In short order, a patent was approved, and Baer sold it to Magnavox which released it as the commercial product Magnavox Odyssey in 1972.

Pong, created by Nolan Bushnell at Atari, however, was released just one month after the Odyssey. This kicked off a lengthy feud over the true inventor of the video game console. In time, Baer got the lion's share of the credit even though he was willing to concede to Bushnell. Instead, Baer eventually became known as the "father of video games" while Bushnell got credit for creating the concept of the first arcade machine.

Arguably the most successful invention of the 1960s is the internet. It was called something different back then, however. Building off the ideas of computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider, Bob Taylor at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA) created the ARPANET project to share information between remote computers. Taylor combined various computer science and engineering concepts like packet switching and dynamic routing to create the first internet network. The world came online, so to speak, when the first remote computers were connected via a network in 1969.

As the network grew (rapidly) the project became too big for DARPA to handle. They shifted control to the Defense Communications Agency in 1975. As time went on, various innovations like creating networks out of networks allowed the burgeoning ARPANET to grow to gargantuan proportions. One of the most successful inventions of the 1960s, if not of all time, the early ARPANET paved the way for the internet as we know it. (For more '60s innovation, discover 17 ways baby boomers shaped modern society.)