MODERN TIMES describes the final three decades of the 20th century, from 1970, the year after the first Moon landing, to the millennium. In the 1970s, students in the USA were protesting against the Vietnam War, Cold War rivalry between the West and the Soviet Union created tension in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and apartheid was still in place in South Africa. The Watergate scandal brought down President Nixon, and the world was plunged into recession by the oil crisis. Meanwhile, the pocket calculator was invented, and feminism was popularised with the publication of Germaine Greers The Female Eunuch. By the 1990s, communism had collapsed, South Africa had its first black president in Nelson Mandela, and Vietnam had become one of South-east Asia's fastest-growing economies. Financial markets operated on a global scale, tiny microchips controlled machines as diverse as personal computers, washing machines and missiles; satellites brought together international TV audiences for live sports and news events, and the Internet had emerged into the public domain, providing instant communication around the world.