When did the full stops disappear from abbreviations?

[SistemaAddict]

Was it around the time lower case letters started being used instead of capitals? My trusty Oxford dictionary from the 1950s gives all abbreviations with a full stop after each capital e.g. B.B.C. rather than bbc. It annoys me that they have disappeared from use but not as much as lower case letters where there should be capitals.

I suspect it coincides with the growth of the use of Word Processors spelling and grammar checkers, as those can't distinguish between a . that indicates that it is part of an acronym, and . that is the end of a sentence, and so autocorrects the next word to start with a capital letter