Yet in some cases, these everyday products, from kitchen staples to office essentials, have been around a surprisingly short time.
Some have added flavour to our lives, others have speeded up daily tasks or made our roads safer.
In some cases, the technology took many years to develop, while other inventions were the result of a happy accident.
Below are nine everyday items we all take for granted today, but which didn’t exist before the 1950s.
What do you think was the greatest invention of the 50s or 60s, and why? And do you remember the days before any of these items existed?
5. Transistor radios
Before the 50s, radios were large, clunky devices, generally designed to be plugged in, with the only portable versions being too bulky and fragile for practical purposes. That all changed with the invention of the transistor, which replaced the much-larger vacuum tube, in 1947. The first practical transistor radio hit the market a few years later in 1954, freeing us up to listen to music and catch up with the news on the move. Cilla Black is pictured here listening to her transistor radio in 1963. | Getty Images Photo: Stanley Bielecki/ASP
6. Correction fluid
Millions of people used to work in typing pools, and when you made a mistake, that often meant starting all over again. That was until Bette Graham, herself a frustrated typist, developed the first correction fluid at home in her kitchen in 1956. She called it 'Mistake Out' and started supplying her colleagues with small branded bottles before quitting her day job to focus full-time on the business. | Getty Images Photo: Bert Hardy Advertising Archive
7. Credit cards
The credit card as we know it has only been around since 1950. The first example was the Diners Club card, an idea businessman Frank McNamara came up with after forgetting his wallet at a restaurant. Within a year, the Diners Club had more than 40,000 members across the US, and by 1953, it was accepted in Canada, the UK and other countries. | Getty Images Photo: Carsten/Three Lions
8. Frozen pizzas
The very idea might seem like sacrilege to many Italians, but the frozen pizza is a great standby when you need a quick and easy meal. It's only been around since the 50s, and it's unclear who first came up with the idea. Some restaurants started selling frozen pizzas for customers to eat at home as the dish became more popular in the US, and more people had freezers. But it was Joseph Bucci, of Philadelphia, US, who filed the first official patent for frozen pizza in 1950. | Getty Images Photo: Orlando /Three Lions