It really is hard to fathom how long FIRST has been impacting people's lives. To try to grasp perspective, I am one of the oldest students on my team and I wasn't born until about 8 months AFTER the first FRC competition was held. That's fairly mind blowing considering that one of my mentors has been doing this since before I was born.
After some brief research of competition robotics on wikipedia, it appears that FRC is tied for the longest sustaining robotics competition.
Here are a few places where the history of the FRC competitions have been documented:
http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/....aspx?id=18620 <----- the FIRST website, of course
swift.auburn.wednet.edu/amhs/stim/documents/frc-history.ppt <------ A powerpoint by Andy Baker which focuses on trend-setting, unique, and dominant designs over the years (I couldn't get all of the links to work but a cool resource none the less)
http://team20.com/pastrobots.htm <----- Team 20's website, where we have compiled photos of our past robots and competition footage for most of the FRC competitions to date