It’s hard to believe that it is just 30 years since business class was first invented. Until that time, the choice was economy (or tourist) and first class.

Business class has changed dramatically in that time. Business class these days means fully flat seats and audio and video on demand and there are (still) even a few airlines running planes that are entirely fitted with business class seats.

The recently launched Times Archive gives an opportunity to see just how much business class has changed.

The Times has scanned and digitised back issues of the newspaper between 1785 and 1985, putting it all online in a huge searchable archive including the adverts. Looking back at the adverts for business class from those days, it all seems very basic.

Here are my Top 10 adverts from the archive:

1. There’s some dispute around which airline actually invented the business class concept. Qantas say it first came up with the idea in 1979 and it touted its first-mover status in many of its early adverts, including this one featuring a bowler-hatted koala. (Note that you will need to register to see the adverts and you may need to zoom out using the controls at the right of the article to see them in full.)

2. Now defunct Pan Am also claims it was the first in this advert for Clipper Class, dating from 1983. Note the free helicopter service to Manhattan, something that airlines have reintroduced in recent years.

3. Yet British Caledonian says it was there earlier than either airline with its transatlantic Executive class, introduced in 1978. This advert from 1983 announces the launch of Executive’s successor - Super Executive. This offered pillows that weren’t covered with paper and seven – rather than nine seats - abreast and with a cool 38 º of seat recline.

4. Another airline that no longer flies, TWA, went even further with its Ambassador Class. This offered a seat which “reclines more than any other business class seat – a full 45º”. And how about this for innovation? “You get your boarding cards and seat reserved before you leave for the airport.”

5. World Airways, still going but no longer offering scheduled international services, announced their own take on business class – Executive/One – in 1981. This had just four seats across and central restaurant style tables. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the airline made enormous losses on these services and retreated from the market.

6. Continental, meanwhile, was targeting oil industry travellers, particularly those based in Aberdeen with its Gatwick-Houston service, which leaves “almost an hour earlier than British Caledonian” and lets you connect with the carrier’s 40 destinations in North America and Canada. These days it serves 111 destinations in the US alone.

7. Thai’s Royal Executive Class from 1983 offered the ground-breaking idea of meal choice – “So now you can choose between the Chicken Legs and the Beef Stroganoff,” the airline said in its advert. Whether they were joking or not is unclear.

8. The adverts mark the decline of first class on European routes too. This 1981 advert from Lufthansa makes a virtue of the German airline’s decision to keep first class on short-haul routes while others, including BA, were ditching theirs. European first class seems an anachronism now.

9. The changing demographics of business travel are clear from looking at these adverts too. This front page advert from 18 February 1969 shows that despite the decade, business class travel was seen as a male preserve, certainly by British Airways’ predecessor BOAC. You wouldn’t get away with a line like “Send your male first class” these days.

10. Yet things had hardly changed by 1984 when Virgin Atlantic launched its first services - between London and New York. In a bid to encourage business travellers to try out its new Upper Class service, the airline was offering free tickets and suggesting that passengers might give them to their secretaries.

A cartoon in its 1984 advert showed a harassed (male) business traveller with a glamorous secretary suggesting that she should get the free ticket or else she would spill the beans about the weekend in Brighton.

No doubt we’ll all be smirking at BA’s Terminal 5 is working and (defunct) Silverjet’s Fly Sivilised adverts in 30 years’ time.