The compact cassette, launched by Dutch company Philips at the Berlin Radio Show on 28 August 1963.
The audio cassette first appeared in 1888 when Oberlin Smith invented a method of recording sound by magnetising wire. Fritz Pfleumer invented magnetic tape in 1928 and this led to the first reel-to-reel tape recorders, in 1935.
Lou Ottens and his Philips team miniaturised the initially bulky and expensive system and made it commercially viable. Although designed for dictation, music lovers soon realised that they could use the compact cassette to compile their own albums, and a new way of listening to music was born.
The Mercedes-Benz W 113 was introduced at the 1963 Geneva Motor Show. The company produced 48,912 W 113s and sold 40% of them to the American market.
At the car’s launch, technical designer Fritz Nallinger said, “It was our aim to create a very safe and fast sports car with high performance, which despite its sports characteristics, provides a very high degree of travelling comfort.”
My narrator, enquiry agent Elinor Mansfield, will drive a Mercedes-Benz W 113 in my forthcoming novel, Songbird.
As listed by the Office of National Statistics, the most popular names in Britain in 1963
Susan
Julie
Karen
Jaqueline
Deborah
Tracy
Jane
Helen
Diane
Sharon
David
Paul
Andrew
Mark
John
Michael
Stephen
Ian
Robert
Richard
🖼️ My Howe ancestors in 1911
The coins we used – the halfpenny. Originally minted in copper, from 1860 until decimalisation in 1969, the halfpenny was minted in bronze.
Along with an image of the monarch, the halfpenny featured an image of Britannia, from 1672 until 1936, and an image of the Golden Hind, from 1937 until 1969.
Halfpenny was colloquially written as ha’penny, and it’s a rare example of a word in the English language containing a silent f.
Apparently, you could buy sweets like white mice, fruit salad and liquorice for a halfpenny – a small coin with a big appeal.
La Planète des singes, known as Planet of the Apes in America and Monkey Planet in Britain, was published in 1963. Written by Pierre Boulle, the novel was adapted into a film in 1968 and launched an ongoing media franchise.
La Planète des singes is a story about three human explorers who visit a planet orbiting the star Betelgeuse. On Betelgeuse great apes are the dominant, intelligent and civilized species, whereas humans are IQ-challenged savages. It’s total fiction, of course.
Coming soon, Songbird, my novel set in 1963
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Hannah Howe 