During the recession, BAIE membership numbers fall and the membership becomes more diversified. Chairman Les Holloway notes: “The common ground between them is communication, not the house journal.”
BAIE launches the Editors Handbook.
A BAIE survey reveals that one in three members have split roles between external and internal, and the membership is made up of older men and younger women.
Motorola releases the first commercial mobile phone – the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. It provides 30 minutes of talk time and can store 30 phone numbers.
A year-long strike led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) starts on 6 March 1984, with a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery. Strikebreakers, known as scabs, began returning to work in earnest in early 1985 when union pay ran out. The NUM’s eventual defeat weakened the trade union movement.
PowerPoint 1.0 for Macintosh is released. To date, there have been no actual deaths by PowerPoint.
In a lab in Switzerland, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee devises the concept of a World Wide Web to share information.
The Rubik’s Cube debuts at the International Toy Fair.
Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? raises more than £8 million within a year for famine relief efforts.
Three UK scientists report that there is a hole in the upper atmosphere’s ozone layer, which absorbs ultra-violet radiation from the sun.
Demolition of the Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961 to cut off West Berlin from East Germany and East Berlin, begins in November.