When some people talk about pornography, they think it’s all just a lot of mindless sex. But the truth is that pornography – the art form and the industry that drives

it – has been a force for plenty of change throughout history. Here we have gathered together a list of five times pornography was more than just a quick roll in the hay.

Porn Made Cable TV

Remember way back in the olden days when you could choose from any program playing on the whopping 5 channels you were able to get locally? The advent of cable television gave people greater choice and made it possible for networks and artists to create more diverse programming. But it never would have even gotten off the ground if not for sex. Pornography – often referred to as the more socially acceptable ‘adult entertainment’ back in the day – made cable a consumer product. People simply weren’t that bothered about expanding the line of crappy TV they could choose from – until they learned that after hours, some channels were willing to show some boobs.

Porn Picked the Winner in the Great VCR Wars

Back in the 70s and 80s, VCRs were the truly hot item everyone had to have. And people were willing to pay some pretty big money just to have the units in their home. There were, at that time, two formats for VCRs – Betamax and VHS. Betamax tapes were smaller, had better picture quality and were overall generally considered the better format. But VHS tapes continued to increase in sales. The fight between Betamax and VHS raged for years until VHS finally emerged the victor. While the picture quality of Betamax was much better than VHS, the fact was VHS tapes could hold more data which translated into longer movies. The porn industry used that format for their adult tapes and – surprise, surprise – sales of VHS tapes and VCRs went through the roof.

The Internet!

Today, porn and the Internet are almost synonyms but when the Internet was first introduced in the late 70s and early 80s, it was strictly text based since images were too large to transmit efficiently. Engineers and web gurus worked to improve how data was stored and sent and the first porn sites began popping up in the late 80s and early 90s.That also happened to be the same time the Internet really took off and became a mainstay in almost every home in the country. Coincidence? Probably not. Today, porn pretty much runs the Internet, with more than 4 million porn sites in the US alone.

Online Payment Systems

Speaking of the tole pornography played in the Internet, let’s not overlook the role it played in the development of easy ways to pay for goods and services online. The next time you’re paying with PayPal keep in mind the technology behind the site was originally developed as a way for people to pay to get off. While the entire industry helped pave the way for online sales, we can specifically thank Richard Gordon. Good old Richard founded Electronic Card Systems in the 1990s.His company created credit card payment systems for a number of different porn sites. Thanks, Dick!

Netflix

The next time you crack a joke about ‘Netflix and Chill’ thank porn for the fact that you can stream movies at home while trying to make your move. As more and more people flocked to Internet sites for their porn fix, the companies needed a way for them to watch movies without having to wait for longer downloads. That’s where streaming technology was born and, since then, it has been adapted to create everything from Youtube to Netflix.