Timeline of communication technology
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Timeline of communication technology
Contents
Graphical overview[edit]
Pre 21st Century Media Impact[edit]
- 30,000 BC – In ice-age Europe, people mark ivory, bone, and stone with patterns to keep track of time, using a lunar calendar.[1]
- 14,000 BC – In what is now Mezhirich, Ukraine, the first known artifact with a map on it is made using bone.[1]
- Prior to 3500BC – Communication was carried out through paintings of indigenous tribes.
- 3500s BC – The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing and the Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing.
- 16th century BC – The Phoenicians develop an alphabet.
- AD 26–37 – Roman Emperor Tiberius rules the empire from the island of Capri by signaling messages with metal mirrors to reflect the sun.
- 105 – Tsai Lun invents paper.
- 7th century – Hindu-Malayan empires write legal documents on copper plate scrolls, and write other documents on more perishable media.
- 751 – Paper is introduced to the Muslim world after the Battle of Talas.
- 1250 – The quill is used for writing.[1]
- 1305 – The Chinese develop wooden block movable type printing.
- 1450 – Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type.
- 1520 – Ships on Ferdinand Magellan's voyage signal to each other by firing cannon and raising flags.
- 1792 – Claude Chappe establishes the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line.
- 1831 – Joseph Henry proposes and builds an electric telegraph.
- 1836 – Samuel Morse develops the Morse code.
- 1843 – Samuel Morse builds the first long distance electric telegraph line.
- 1844 – Charles Fenerty produces paper from a wood pulp, eliminating rag paper which was in limited supply.
- 1849 – Associated Press organizes Nova Scotia pony express to carry latest European news for New York newspapers.
- 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson exhibit an electric telephone in Boston.
- 1877 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.
- 1889 – Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone.
20th century[edit]
- 1902 – Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland.
- 1920 – Radio station KDKA based in Pittsburgh began the first broadcast.
- 1925 – John Logie Baird transmits the first television signal.
- 1942 – Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invent frequency hopping spread spectrum communication technique.
- 1947 – Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young of Bell Labs propose a cell-based approach which led to "cellular phones."
- 1947 – Full-scale commercial television is first broadcast.
- 1949 – Claude Elwood Shannon, the "father of information theory", mathematically proves the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.
- 1958 – Chester Carlson presents the first photocopier suitable for office use.
- 1963 – First geosynchronous communications satellite is launched, 17 years after Arthur C. Clarke's article.
- 1965 - First email sent (at MIT).[2]
- 1966 – Charles Kao realizes that silica-based optical waveguides offer a practical way to transmit light via total internal reflection.
- 1969 – The first hosts of ARPANET, Internet's ancestor, are connected.[3]
- 1971
- Erna Schneider Hoover invent a computerized switching system for telephone traffic.
- 8-inch floppy disk removable storage medium for computers is introduced.[4]
- 1975 - "First list servers are introduced."[4]
- 1976 – The personal computer (PC) market is born.
- 1977 – Donald Knuth begins work on TeX.
- 1981
- Hayes Smartmodem introduced.[5]
- Nordic Mobile Telephone, the world´s first automatic mobile phone is put into operation
- 1983 - Microsoft Word software is launched.[6]
- 1989
- Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau build the prototype system which became the World Wide Web at CERN.
- WordPerfect 5.1 word processing software released.[5]
- 1991
- Anders Olsson transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion bits per second.
- GSM is put into operation
- 1992
- Neil Papworth sends the first SMS (or text message).
- Internet2 organization is created.
- IBM ThinkPad 700C laptop computer created. It was lightweight compared to its predecessors.[5]
- 1993 - Mosaic graphical web browser is launched.[7]
- 1994 – Internet radio broadcasting is born.
- 1996 - Motorola StarTAC mobile phone introduced. It was significantly smaller than previous cellphones.[5]
- 1999 – 45% of Australians have a mobile phone.
- 1998 - Lotus Notes software is launched.[7]
- 1999
- Sirius satellite radio is introduced.
- Napster peer-to-peer file sharing is launched.[5]
21st century[edit]
- 2001 – First digital cinema transmission by satellite in Europe of a feature film by Bernard Pauchon and Philippe Binant.
- 2003 – MySpace is launched.
- 2003 – Skype video calling software is launched.
- 2004 – What would become the largest social networking site in the world, Facebook is launched.
- 2005 – YouTube, the video sharing site, is launched.
- 2006 – Twitter, microblogging
See also[edit]
- History of communication
- List of years in home video
- Timeline of photography technology
- Category:Computing timelines
References[edit]
- ^ a b c "Invention and Technology". Volume Library 1. The Southwestern Company. 2009. pp. 9–15.
- ^ Tom Van Vleck (2001), "History of Electronic Mail", Multicians.org
- ^ Anton A. Huurdeman (2003). "Chronology". Worldwide History of Telecommunications. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-20505-0.
- ^ a b Cornell University Library (2003). "Digital Preservation and Technology Timeline". Digital Preservation Management. USA. Retrieved August 2015. Check date values in:
|access-date=(help) - ^ a b c d e Christopher Null (April 2007), "50 Best Tech Products of All Time", PC World, USA
- ^ Paul Ford (April 2014), The Great Works of Software – via Medium
- ^ a b Matthew Kirschenbaum (July 2013), "10 Most Influential Software Programs Ever", Slate, USA
