1970s in science and technology
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The spirit of discovery and exploration characterized the 1970s in science and technology in several disciplines.
The 1970s in science and technology reached its height with the ambitious Voyager Program, which sent the Voyager I and Voyager II unmanned expeditions to several of the outer planets in the solar system. The program also included a Voyager Golden Record with the spaceships in hopes of presenting aspects of life on Earth to intelligent alien life forms. The record contained pictures and other data about human beings and other living beings on earth. It also had an assortment of music from across cultures.
Coupled with the zenithal achievements of the Voyagers was the end of NASA's Apollo lunar spacecraft program, with the final flight, Apollo 17, in 1972. The Apollo-Soyuz and Spacelab programs ended in 1976, and there would be a five-year hiatus in American manned spaceflight until the flight of the Space Shuttle. The Soviet Union developed vital technologies involving long-term human life in free-fall on the Salyut and later Mir space stations.
The 1970s witnessed an explosion in the understanding of solid-state physics, driven by the development of the integrated circuit and the laser. The evolution of the computer produced an interesting duality in the physical sciences at this period — analogue recording technology had reached its peak and was incredibly sophisticated. However, digital measurement and mathematical tools, now becoming cheaper (though still out of reach for the general public) allowed discrete answers and imaging of physical phenomena, albeit at a low resolution and a low bandwidth of data. This tendency was to reach its peak in 1982, though the period 1974–1982 represents the 'period of dichotomy' in the metrication of the sciences.
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