Looking back: 1982

In 1982 (35 years ago!) I finished my basic undergraduate degree, majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science (after sniffing around the job market, I continued my studies for an honours year). This was the year that the compact disc and the Commodore 64 computer came out:

Also that year, Stephen Cook won the Turing award for his work on computational complexity theory. The then Soviet Union landed two spacecraft in the hellish inferno that is Venus, and took photographs:

It was also a year of conflict – Argentina started a war with the UK over the Falklands Islands, and Israel invaded Lebanon. On a more positive note, there were several movies which became cult classics, such as Tron, E.T., and Conan the Barbarian. The superb science fiction movie Blade Runner stood out from the crowd (even with the flaws in the original cinema release):

In literature, Isabel Allende published her debut novel, as did Kazuo Ishiguro. In music, The Alan Parsons Project released their album Eye in the Sky and Australian band Icehouse (originally Flowers) released their classic single “Great Southern Land”:

Overall, it was a great year (apart from the wars).

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