Walter Hinz (1910 - 1981)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Walter's lifetime.

In 1910, in the year that Walter Hinz was born, Thomas Edison introduced his kinetophone, which he hoped would make "talkies" a reality. But the sound wasn't synchronized to the pictures and only 45 Kinetophones were made.

In 1944, by the time he was 34 years old, on December 16th, The Battle of the Bulge began in the Ardennes forest on the Western Front. Lasting for a little over a month, the battle began with a surprise attack by Germany on the Allied forces The U.S. suffered their highest casualties of any operation in World War II - 89,000 were casualties, around 8,600 killed - but Germany also severely depleted their resources and they couldn't be replaced.

In 1964, by the time he was 54 years old, on February 9th, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. 73 million people watched - although the Beatles couldn't be heard because of the loud screaming of the female teenage audience.

In 1975, he was 65 years old when in January, Popular Mechanics featured the Altair 8800 on it's cover. The Altair home computer kit allowed consumers to build and program their own personal computers. Thousands were sold in the first month.

In 1981, in the year of Walter Hinz's passing, on August 1st, MTV debuted. It was the first music video TV channel. The first music video played was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" - the second was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run".