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

Evidence of Early Trade Routes?
(Circa 80,000 BCE)

Early Example of Assembly Line Production
(215 BCE – 210 BCE)

The First Income Tax
(10 CE)

At the Beginning of the Dark Ages Production of New Manuscripts Essentially Ceased
(Circa 400 CE – 600)

Introduction of Paper Money in China
(Circa 960)

Chinese Paper Money
(994)

The Domesday Book
(December 1085 – August 1086)

First Recorded Issue of Paper Money in the Mongol Empire
(1224 – 1227)

Edward I's Statute of the Jewry
(1275)

Edward I Expells the Jews from England
(1290)

A Clear Record of Early Block Printing in Tabriz
(1294)

The Lure and Romance of Travel to the East
(1298 – 1299)

The European Table Abacus
(Circa 1299)

The Earliest Use of Paper Money in Japan
(1319 – 1327)

An Idea of the Costs of Producing Medieval Manuscripts
(1374)

Costs for a Missal Produced in 1382
(1382)

Earliest European Document on the Production of Paper
(1390)

Card Printing in Venice Has Outside Competition
(1441)

Printing Decreased the Costs of Books by 80%
(1468)

The Beginning of Printing in Venice
(September 1469)

The First Great General Work on Mathematics
(November 10 – November 20, 1494)

The First Large-Scale Production-Line
(Circa 1525)

The Beginning of the Collection of Medical Statistics
(1592 – 1593)

Demography & Vital Statistics
(1662)

Argument for Forest Management
(1664)

The World's Oldest Auction House
(1674)

Political Arithmetick
(1690)

The Breslau Tables
(1693)

150 Paper Mills in England
(1699)

Theory of Annuities
(1725)

Proving the Need for a Healthy and Industrious Population
(1742)

The First Correct Life Tables
(1746 – 1760)

Probably the Most-Widely Read English Cookery Book of the 18th Century
(1747)

Printing about 100 Sheets per Hour
(Circa 1750)

"The First Treatise on Economics" (Jevons)
(1755)

Hargreaves Invents the Spinning Jenny
(1764)

The Earliest Large-Scale Data-Processing Organization
(1770)

The Age of "Laissez-Faire"
(1776)

Technology Leading to Disruptive Economic and Social Change
(1781)

Foundation of Statistical Graphics: the Line Chart and Bar Chart
(1785 – 1786)

"The Magna Carta of Industrial America"
(December 5, 1791)

Malthus on Population
(1798)

The Industrial Revolution Advances
(1800)

11,000 Tons of Paper
(1800)

Mathematical Tables Calculated by Hairdressers Unemployed after the French Revolution
(1801)

Invention of the Pie Chart
(1801)

The Jacquard Loom Uses Punched Cards to Store Patterns
(1803)

Fourdrinier Machines for Paper Manufacture
(1804)

The Distribution of Wealth, Including How it Applies to the Value of Rare Books
(1817)

Foundation of the Birth Control Movement
(1822)

Brownian Motion
(1828)

The Beginning of Operations Research
(1832)

Exposition of Bubbles
(1841)

Beginning of the American Conservation Movement
(1846)

100,000 Tons of Paper, Only 4% Made by Hand
(1860)

Origins of the Internal Revenue Service
(July 1, 1861 – 1862)

British Telegraph is Nationalized
(1870)

Traveler's Cheques
(1874)

First Use of the Term "Credit Card"
(1887)

77 Windmill Factories Employ 1,100 Workers in the U.S.
(1889)

The First Production Automobiles
(1893 – 1894)

First Automotive Assembly Line in America
(1901)

The World's First Shopping Center
(1923)

The Minimax Theorem
(1928)

Hundreds of Thousands of Wind Turbines Power Farms in the U.S.
(Circa 1930 – 1945)

"Modern Times"
(1936)

The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
(1944)

The First Credit Card
(March 1950)

Fractals
(1975)

Selling Wine without Bottles
(1994)

The Beginning of the "Dot-Com Bubble"
(August 9, 1995)

Where's George?
(December 23, 1998)

Computers Have Not Caused a Reduction in Paper Usage or Printing
(1999)

Climax of the Dot-Com Bubble
(March 10, 2000)

Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction
(December 14 – December 21, 2000)

"The Long Tail"
(October 2004)

Reborn Digital: The First Fully Digital University Press in the United States
(July 13, 2006)

"Anshe Chung Becomes First Virtual World Millionaire"
(November 26, 2006)

The Leading Classified Advertising Service
(September 2008)

Apple Eliminates Anticopying Restrictions from iTunes
(January 6, 2009)

Size of the Online Book Market in the U.S.
(June 1, 2009)

"Revenue at Craigslist is Said to Top $100,000,000" (N.Y. Times)
(June 9, 2009)

Employment in the Field of Simulation
(June 14, 2009)

General Statistics on U.S. Book Publishing Industry
(May 6, 2010)