My, how things have changed since Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine got its start in 1947. Over the past six decades, we've witnessed quiet breakthroughs, giant technological advances and great tragedies. Click through our timeline to see some of the notable events and cultural markers that have helped shape the past 60 years.
The slide show begins to the right . . .
Photo: iStockphoto
Compiled by Amy M. Pollak
1947
TRUSTED PERSONAL FINANCE ADVICE IS BORN
W.M. Kiplinger had an idea to launch a consumer magazine designed to help Americans' manage their personal finances. The first issue came out two years after the end of World War II, as millions of former American servicemen and women were buying homes and starting families. The publication pioneered personal finance journalism, and 60 years later, still provides highly trusted, practical advice for generations of people.
Photo: Kiplinger Archives
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1953
A MEAL IN MINUTES?
It didn't take long for TV to change the way many Americans enjoyed their family dinnertime. As the 1950s got into full swing, Swanson introduced the first TV dinner consisting of turkey, cornbread dressing and gravy, buttered peas and sweet potatoes. Instead of table talk, many started eating their dinner on trays in front of the black-and-white screen.
Photo: Courtesy Swanson
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1963
THAT AWFUL DAY IN DALLAS
Camelot ended when Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy, as the President was traveling in a Dallas motorcade. Today, millions of Americans still remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news, much as their parents remembered the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Photo: John F. Kennedy Library & Museum
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1969
DOING THE MOON WALK
On July 20, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Americans watched astronaut Neil Armstrong climb down a ladder and set his left foot on the lunar landscape, as he uttered the now-historic line: "One small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind." At the time, many Americans believed interplanetary space travel would be routine by 2001. How wrong they were.
Photo: Courtesy GRIN
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1969
MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN. THE WORLD COMES LATER Sesame Street got its start, leading to 4,000 episodes of the popular children's TV program that can still be seen to this day in multiple languages. Jim Henson's Muppets have taught three generations of children shapes, colors and math in more than 120 countries.
Photo: Courtesy Sesame Street
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1976
BEHOLD THE MIRACLE OF INDEXING
Mutual fund legend John Bogle devised the first stock index fund, the Vanguard 500, and offered it to individual investors. Today, with more than $950 billion in total assets and more than 21 million shareholders, the Vanguard 500 index fund remains one of the world's largest index funds.
Photo: Courtesy Vanguard
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1981
THE PC IS BORN
IBM debuted the world's first desktop personal computer. It quickly became a success--even though there wasn't much consumers could do on it other than make bar graphs, calculate numbers and play primitive computer games. Nowadays, PCs are inexpensive, ubiquitous and connect to the World Wide Web. Seems like there's not much you can't do with one.
Photo: Courtesy IBM
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1981
VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR
MTV, a station shown only on cable TV, began with nonstop music videos. News and entertainment programming for teenagers and young adults followed. Then came shows featuring real teens and college students in a format quickly dubbed "Reality TV." MTV has spawned sister stations, a film subsidiary and many imitators.
Photo: Courtesy MTV
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1983
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
Remember when you only had a land line rotary phone? Remember phone booths? Hard to imagine. The first cell phone debuted in 1983. Today the phones are much smaller, but come equipped with cameras, games, daily planners and Internet access. Some are so tiny you can wear them in your ear, looking to all the world like you're talking to yourself.
Photo: Courtesy Motorola
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1998
FOUR HOURS? CALL YOUR PHYSICIAN
With the rollout of Sildenafil Citrate, more commonly known as Viagra, the little blue pill instantly became a blockbuster drug, advertised incessantly on TV. It soon led to a raft of other treatments for erectile dysfunction--and more commercials.
Photo: Courtesy Pfizer
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1998
I'VE GOT ALGORITHM
Google began as a research project. Graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to create a better tool for finding information on the World Wide Web. Now Google is a multibillion-dollar search engine giant, and its name has become a verb in today's vocabulary.
Photo: AP
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