From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media Communication Outline

Early Attempt to Record Information or Early Art?
(Circa 75,000 BCE – 73,000 BCE)

The Earliest Examples of Figurative Art
(Circa 38,000 BCE – 33,000 BCE)

The Earliest Zoomorphic / Anthropomorphic Sculpture
(Circa 30,000 BCE)

The Advantages of Orally Transmitted Traditions
(Circa 30,000 BCE)

The Oldest Known Ceramic Figurine
(29,000 BCE – 25,000 BCE)

The Venus of Willendorf
(Circa 24,000 BCE – 22,000 BCE)

One of the Earliest Known Realistic Representations of a Human Face
(Circa 23,000 BCE)

Horse Domestication Revolutionizes Transportation, Communication, and Warfare
(Circa 3,500 BCE)

The Royal Road
(Circa 450 BCE – 420 BCE)

How Herodotus Used Writing and Messages in his Histories
(Circa 450 BCE – 420 BCE)

The Hydraulic Telegraph
(350 BCE)

The Cursus publicus
(Circa 20 BCE)

The Earliest Surviving Letter Known to Have Been Written from One Englishman to Another
(704 – 705)

The Tabula Peutingeriana
(Circa 1250)

Carrying the Pope's Response to Kublai Khan
(1271)

The Inca Road System
(1453 – 1533)

The Beginning of Printing in Venice
(September 1469)

The First "Unbreakable" Text Autokey Cipher
(1553)

The First Prepaid Letter Sheets
(1608)

Faster than a Messenger on Horseback
(March 2, 1791)

The Chappe Telegraph
(1794)

The First Working Electric Telegraph
(1816)

The Braille System of Printing and Reading for the Blind
(1829)

The Morse Code
(1837)

The Penny Post
(1837)

The Penny Black
(May 1, 1840)

Morse Transmits the First Message by Morse Code
(May 24, 1844)

Using a Fleet of 45 Carrier Pigeons to Deliver News
(1850)

Using a Fleet of 200 Carrier Pigeons and the Telegraph
(1851)

The True Inventor of the Telephone?
(October 27, 1861)

The Pigeon Post into Paris: The First Important Application of Microfilm
(1870 – 1871)

Bell Invents and Patents the Telephone
(March 10, 1876)

The First Regular Telephone Line
(1877)

The First Wireless Telephone Communication
(April 1, 1880)

Lewis Carroll Wrote or Received 98,000 Letters
(January 14, 1898)

A Logarithmic Law for Communication
(1924)

Hartley's Law
(1928)

The First Electronic Speech Synthesizer
(1936 – 1939)

The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem
(1940)

Actress Hedy Lamarr Invents Spread-Sprectrum
(1940)

Communication by Geosynchronous Satellites Predicted
(October 1945)

A Mathematical Theory of Communication
(July – October 1948)

The Hamming Codes
(1950)

After 1954 More News Was Distributed Electronically than on Paper
(1950)

Sputnik is Launched
(October 4, 1957)

An Improved Modem
(1958)

The U.S. Launches Explorer-1
(January 31, 1958)

The First Voice Transmission from the First Communications Satellite
(December 19, 1958)

Human Versus Machine Intelligence and Communication
(1959)

Technical Basis for the Development of Phreaking
(November 1960)

Precursor of Word Processing and Email
(1961)

The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962)

The First Satellite to Relay Signals from Earth to Satellite and Back
(June 10, 1962)

The First Geosynchronous Communications Satellite
(July 26, 1963)

The First Geostationary Communication Satellite
(August 19, 1964)

Email Begins
(1965)

The First "Actual Network Experiment"
(October 1965)

The First Message Sent Over the ARPANET
(October 29, 1969)

The First Email Management Program
(July 1971)

First Public Computerized Bulletin Board System
(1973)

First Electronic Pagination System, Forerunner of Email and Instant Messaging
(1973)

The Network Nation
(1978)

The First Dial-UP CBBS
(February 16, 1978)

The First Cellular Telephone Service in the United Sates
(December 16, 1982)

Critique of Computational Linguistics
(1987)

The First Commercial Network-Based Groupware Program
(1988)

The First Gateways Between Private E-Mail Carriers and the Internet
(1989)

The First SMS Text Message
(December 3, 1992)

The Web's First and Longest Continuously Running Blog
(1993)

More Email is Sent than Paper Mail
(1996)

The Average Person Receives 733 Pieces of Paper Mail Each Year, Half of Which is Junk
(1998)

The Growing Spam Problem
(April 1998)

Origins of Cyberspace
(2002)

The First U.S. Standards for Sending Commercial E-Mail
(December 16, 2003)

The Institute for the Future of the Book
(2004)

The First Intelligible Word from an Extinct South American Civilization?
(August 12, 2005)

Like Teleporting in Star Trek
(June 2006)

Twitter: "What Are You Doing?"
(October 2006)

Change.gov
(November 5, 2008)

First Reported Case of ZZZ-Mailing
(December 15, 2008)

Reinventing Email and Internet Communication
(May 28, 2009)

"The Web Pries Lid off Iranian Censorship"
(June 23, 2009)

After the Earthquake in Haiti, Donating by SMS Text
(January 13, 2010)

Introduction of Apple's iPad
(January 27, 2010)

Cell Phones Are Now Used More for Data than Speech
(May 13, 2010)

Data on Mobile Networks is Doubling Each Year
(August 1, 2010)