COLOUR wall charts in newspapers and pioneering space missions were among the defining features of life in the early 1970s.

Not a World Cup, Olympic Games or touring exhibition of ancient Egyptian artefacts went by without countless newspapers producing lavishly coloured spreads to mark the occasion.

The Adver was no exception, and this week in 1973 we produced an especially lavish example to coincide with the launch of Skylab.

The copies in the Adver archives of bound volumes, printed on old-fashioned paper, are fragile and a little faded but still give a sense of wonder.

By 1973 the Apollo moon landings were over, but on May 14 the last of the huge Saturn V rockets was used to put Skylab, a huge laboratory, in orbit.

A few days beforehand, we urged readers to reserve their Adver so as to get their hands on a copy of the poster.

We wrote: “The era when man sets foot on the planets comes a step closer on Monday, when America’s first space station blasts off into earth orbit.

“During the eight-month Skylab programme, man will take a close look at the earth, the sun and his own ability to live and work in weightlessness inside a large metal cylinder, 270 miles above the earth.

“The project will also furnish information on the feasibility of using a space station as a jumping-off point for journeys into deep space.”

The poster, we said, would be an ideal teaching tool. It included a description of everything from experiments due to be carried out to that old favourite, toilet arrangements.

Colour pages in newspapers were a rarity in the early 1970s, being costly to produce. Most colour pages were accounted for by advertisers with deep pockets, which is probably why the only other colour page in the Adver that week was an advert for Consulate menthol cigarettes.

The first of three Skylab Apollo crews lifted off later in the month; the last returned to earth the following February.

A final Apollo flight took place in 1975, when a capsule linked with a Russian Soyuz in a joint project. The next crewed US space mission was the first shuttle flight in 1981.