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It all began on Easter Sunday in 1963, when Harold Wilson, then leader of the Labour opposition and subsequently Prime Minister, wrote the outline of a proposal for a University of the Air. He recounted later that he didn’t get much interest in the idea, but he also said, "...that if I said something was going to happen then I intended it to happen". He certainly emerged as a man ahead of his time when discussing his thoughts on this University of the Air. He encountered opposition - even hostility - in his words, "every kind of obstruction". But he had a secret weapon - and her name was Jenny Lee, then Minister of Arts in Wilson’s government. The rest is history, as they say.
From those initial radical thoughts, the UK’s largest university was created and founded on the belief that, no matter what a person’s previous educational qualifications were, he or she should be given the opportunity to succeed. More than that, such a person should be given the opportunity irrespective of where they were or when they had time to study: education would come to them. Wilson’s enthusiasm for harnessing the possibilities of what was then referred to as the ‘white heat’ of the new scientific and technological revolution resulted in every available communication technology being used to further this aim. They planned, furthermore, to break with any traditional educational practice that stood in the way of accessible high quality education. To communicate their intentions they devised a name that said it all: The Open University.
| 1963 | Harold Wilson, then leader of the opposition Labour Party sketches out his plan for a ‘university of the air’ |
| 1969 | Moon landing |
| The granting of the Royal Charter, establishing The Open University | |
| 1970 | Apollo 13 splashes down safely in the Pacific; the Beatles disband |
| 1971 | CT scanning technology |
| The Open University first started broadcasting course material on BBC2 and Radio 4 | |
| 1972 | Atari release the first ever arcade version of Pong; Watergate |
| 1973 | The internet's predecessor was "Arpanet" and is widely heralded as the first computer network for data exchange. The first Arpanet (to become the internet) connection outside the states was to NORSAR in Norway in 1973 |
| 1974 | Structural and functional organization of the cell discovered |
| 1975 | Birth of the home computer |
| 1976 | VHS and Betamax technology launched |
| 1977 | Maiden voyage of space shuttle |
| 1978 | World’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown, born |
| 1979 | Margaret Thatcher becomes first female Prime Minister of the UK. |
| 1980 | Recombinant DNA technology was made possible by the discovery of restriction endonucleases |
| 1981 | The Osborne 1 in 1981, a portable computer that weighed 24 pounds and cost $1795; Diana Princess of Wales marries HRH Prince Charles |
| John Horlock becomes the second Vice-Chancellor of the OU | |
| 1982 | HRH Prince William, second in line to the sovereignty of 16 independent states, is born. |
| 1983 | Motorola introduces first hand held mobile phone |
| The OU Production Centre pioneered the use of lightweight VT recording for non-news programmes | |
| The Open University launches the Business School - worldwide success has seen it become the largest business school in Europe. | |
| 1984 | The biggest exam shake-up in the British education system in over 10 years is announced, with O-level and CSE exams to be replaced by a new exam, the GCSE; British Telecom is privatised. |
| 1985 | Microsoft releases the first version of Windows, Bob Geldoff host Live Aid, Ronald Reagan is re-elected for a second term. |
| Video cassettes were made available to students on loan | |
| 1986 | the world's first successful double-lung transplant at the Toronto General Hospital |
| 1987 | discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity |
| 1988 | Pan Am Flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a total of 270 people. |
| 1989 | invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks |
| 1990 | John Major elected as British PM |
| Sir John Daniel becomes the third Vice-Chancellor of the OU | |
| OU programmes moved from evening and weekend slots to the BBC’s overnight Learning Zone, in response to most students having access to video recorders. | |
| The OU celebrates it’s 100,000th graduate | |
| 1991 | Internet browser developed |
| 1992 | Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman elected Speaker of the British House of Commons. |
| The first MBAs are awarded by the OU | |
| 1993 | The world wide web is born at CERN; Bill Clinton elected President of the USA; EU is created |
| An eight-week experimental course XT001 Renewable Energy Technology was presented entirely through computer-mediated communication. | |
| The Homer CD-ROM was the OU’s first venture into multi-media which was used as part of A295 Homer: Poetry and Society. | |
| 1994 | The Channel Tunnel opens |
| The Human Cognition Research Laboratory hosts the Virtual Summer School | |
| 1995 | DVD players introduced |
| KMi, the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, is founded to create and study future technologies for the benefit of Open University students, staff, industrial sponsors, as well as local and global learning communities | |
| 1996 | Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be successfully, cloned is born |
| First undergraduate to use the internet as part of the Infosystems activity at T102 Summer School | |
| Over 200,000 students are now studying with the OU | |
| 1997 | NASA launches the Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn; Tony Blair becomes British PM; Diana, Princess of Wales, dies. |
| 1998 | Google set up as a private company |
| 1999 | Blackberry mobile devices first go on sale. |
| You, your computer and the net (T171) is the first fully online course at the OU |
| 2000 | Scientists discover how to remove genes from pigs, paving the way for xenotransplants |
| First virtual OU graduation | |
| Over 50% of the OU’s students link to the University through the internet | |
| 2001 | Ipods first go on sale; George W Bush elected President of the USA |
| The OU’s intranet is developed and launched | |
| In this year the OU produced 773,000 CD-ROMs and 3,000 DVDs | |
| 2002 | Iris scanners installed at airports for security |
| Lyceum was developed by the OU and introduced into language tutorials, allowing groups to speak to one another over the internet | |
| Professor Brenda Gourley becomes the fourth Vice-Chancellor of the OU | |
| 2003 | magnetic resonance imaging technologies discovered |
| OU Production Centre, which produced TV programmes, is closed. This reflected a shift towards the use of CDs and DVDs rather than broadcast for courses | |
| The Beagle 2 spacecraft was successfully ejected from Mars Express on 19th December 2003 | |
| 2004 | Facebook founded |
| First phase of the Virtual Learning Environment | |
| 2005 | You Tube goes live |
| OU announces that it will use Moodle as the basis for its own VLE | |
| 2006 | Space Shuttle Discovery is launched to the International Space Station; The Met Office announces that England has experienced its warmest year since records began in 1659. |
| The last OU course programme is broadcast, as the material is now available on podcast, DVD and new virtual learning environments. | |
| OU’s first island materialises in Second Life virtual world | |
| The OU is ranked first in the National Student Survey | |
| OpenLearn, the OU’s suite of short, introductory courses is launched online | |
| 2007 | Tony Blair steps down as British PM |
| Work begins on the Digital Audio Project to create and distribute digital talking books | |
| 2008 | Cervical cancer vaccine introduced; Barack Obama elected President of the US |
| OpenLife replaces CETLment in Second Life virtual world | |
| Launch of OU View YouTube channel opened | |
| The first social work degrees are awarded by the OU | |
| 2009 | The Open University turns 40 |
| Martin Bean, general manager responsible for product management, marketing and business development for Worldwide Education Products Group at Microsoft, is appointed as the OU’s fifth Vice Chancellor |
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