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

The First Working Electric Telegraph
(1816)

The Morse Code
(1837)

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

An Information Bridge Across the Ocean
(1845)

Telegraph Apparatus Adopted throughout England
(1845)

The First Telegraph Cable between England and France
(1850)

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

Speeding Communication between Paris and London
(1854)

Cyrus Field Intends to Lay an Atlantic Cable
(1854)

Printing Telegraph Messages
(1855)

The Atlantic Telegraph Company
(1856)

The First Attempt to Lay the Atlantic Cable Fails
(1857)

Reuters Expands, Following Telegraph Lines
(1858)

The Second Attempt to Lay an Atlantic Cable Succeeds, Briefly
(June 25, 1858)

Communication on the Cable Fails Within 3 Weeks
(August 16, 1858)

New York and San Francisco are Connected by Telegraph
(1861)

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

The Atlantic Cable Snaps after 1200 Miles
(July 1865)

The Third and Successful Atlantic Cable
(July 27, 1866)

The Stock Ticker
(1867)

9,158,000,000 Telegraph Messages
(1870)

British Telegraph is Nationalized
(1870)

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

ALA is Founded
(October 6, 1876)

The First Regular Telephone Line
(1877)

The First Telephone Switchboard
(1877)

Invention of the Microphone
(March 4, 1877)

Edison Invents the Phonograph
(August 12, 1877)

The Loose-Contact Carbon Microphone
(1878)

The First Regular Telephone Exchange
(January 1878)

Edison Describes Future Uses for his Phonograph
(June 1878)

The First Telephone Directory
(November 1878)

One of the Earliest Systems of Television Transmission
(1880)

The First Separate Publication on Television
(1880)

AT&T
(March 3, 1885)

The Flat Disc Gramophone
(1887)

Electromechanical Punched Card Tabulating
(1890)

Long-Distance Telephone Extends from NY to Chicago
(1892)

Electromagnetic Waves
(1892)

Invention of Radio
(1895)

About 240,000 Telephones
(1895)

The Automatic Punched Card Feed
(1900)

Most of the Civilized World is Connected by Telegraph
(1900)

The First Transmission of Speech over Radio Waves
(December 23, 1900)

Early Facsimile Transmission
(Circa 1901 – 1907)

The First Transatlantic Radio Transmission?
(December 12, 1901)

The First Audio Radio Broadcast of Entertainment and Music
(December 24, 1906)

Probably the Earliest Concept for CRT Television
(June 18, 1908)

Teletype Invented
(1914)

The First Transcontinental Telephone Call
(January 25, 1915)

The Theremin
(1919)

The First Radio News Broadcast
(August 31, 1920)

The First Commercial Radio Broadcast
(November 2, 1920)

The BBC is Founded
(October 18, 1922)

The First Electronic Television Camera
(1923)

The First Hi-Fi Sound Recording
(1924)

Sarnoff Creates NBC
(1926)

The First Demonstration of Television
(January 26, 1926)

Invention of Magnetic Tape
(1927)

The First Long Distance Test of Television
(April 7, 1927)

The First All-Electronic Television
(September 7, 1927)

"Regular" Television Broadcasting
(May 11, 1928)

CBS
(September 1928)

The First Experimental Television Service
(1929)

The First "Talking-Books"
(1931)

An Electronic Machine for Searching Through Information
(December 29, 1931)

Public Television Broadcasting Begins
(1932)

Frequency Modulation (FM)
(1933 – 1936)

The First Practical Tape Recorder
(1935)

The First Electronic Speech Synthesizer
(1936 – 1939)

Mass Hysteria Induced by Electronic Media
(October 30, 1938)

The Use of Telegraphy Peaks in the U.S.
(1945)

Six TV Stations
(1946)

The First Long Playing Record (LP)
(1948)

Introduction of Cable Television
(June 1948)

10,000,000 TV Sets
(1949)

Developing Vannevar Bush's Rapid Selector
(1949)

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

The Oldest Known Recordings of Computer Music
(Circa November 1951)

The First Video Game
(1958)

First Book on Computer Music
(1959)

The First Operational Satellite Navigation System
(1960)

The First Computer-Animated Film
(1961)

The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962)

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

Touch-Tone
(November 1963)

"The Medium is the Message"
(1964)

First Consumer Product with an Integrated Circuit
(February 14, 1964)

The Moog Synthesizer
(October 1964)

Email Begins
(1965)

Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Hyperlink
(1965)

The Word Multimedia Coined
(July 1966)

A Sensor for Recording Images
(1969)

Books on Tape
(1970)

Speech Recognition Technology
(1971)

The @ in Email
(March 1971)

Probably the World's First Online Community
(1973)

First Public Computerized Bulletin Board System
(1973)

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

Systems Network Architecture
(1974)

An Antitrust Suit to Break up AT&T
(November 20, 1974)

First Print-to-Speech Reading Machine
(1976)

First CRT Based Word Processor
(June 1976)

Prototype Cellular Telephone System
(1977)

The First GPS
(February 1977)

The First Speech Synthesis Chip
(June 11, 1977)

The Network Nation
(1978)

Early Interactive Computing and Virtual Reality
(1978 – 1979)

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

Compuserve
(1979)

USENET: One of the First Computer Network Communications Systems
(1980)

Digital Cellular Telephone Technology
(1980)

CNN
(June 1, 1980)

The First Commercial Electronic Camera--Not Digital
(1982)

One of the First Films to Incorporate Computer Graphics
(1982)

The First Scanner?
(November 1982)

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

The First Commercial Analog Cellular Telephone Service
(October 13, 1983)

Moderated Newsgroups
(1984)

Breakup of AT&T
(January 1, 1984)

The Perseus Digital Library Project
(1985)

The First Hand-Held Electronic Book, or e-Book
(1986)

Forerunner of Photoshop
(1987)

One of the First Digital Cameras
(1989)

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

Digital HD-TV
(1989)

Invention of "Buffered Media," the Basis for Webcasting
(1989)

Pioneering Collaboration of Electronic Librarianship, Journalism and Telecommunications
(1992)

The First Successful Telepresence Company
(1993)

The Beginning of Video Webcasting over the Internet
(June 1993)

First Internet Radio Broadcast
(May 3 – May 5, 1994)

The Rolling Stones Present the First "Cyberspace Multicast Concert"
(November 1994)

The Traditional Radio Station Begins Internet Broadcasts
(November 7, 1994)

The First Television Show Broadcast over the Internet
(November 23, 1995)

More Email is Sent than Paper Mail
(1996)

www.nytimes.com
(January 19, 1996)

DVDs
(September 1996)

The WIPO Copyright Treaty
(December 20, 1996)

Electronic Paper by E Ink Corporation
(1997)

The JPEG 2000 Standard for Still Images
(March 17, 1997)

WAP
(June 1997)

Voice Over Internet Protocol
(1998)

MP3
(1998)

The First Continuous Live Webcasts
(January 1998)

The Romensko Blog on Journalism and Media
(1999)

Napster
(June 1999)

Satellite Radio Broadcasting Begins
(September 25, 2001)

iPod Launched
(October 23, 2001)

Origins of Cyberspace
(2002)

Sirius Satellite Radio
(July 1, 2002)

The First Cell Phone Novel
(2003)

Apple Opens the iTunes Store
(April 28, 2003)

Grand Text Auto
(May 2003)

"Broadcast Yourself"
(February 2005)

The Google Video Store Opens
(January 6, 2006)

File-Sharing Exceeds Sales of Digital Music Downloads
(January 22, 2006)

Over One Billion Downloads
(February 22, 2006)

Like Teleporting in Star Trek
(June 2006)

The Sony Reader PRS-500
(Circa September – October 2006)

Google Buys YouTube
(November 6, 2006)

YouWitnessNews
(December 5, 2006)

The Importance of Social Networking on the Internet
(December 16, 2006)

LC Launches RSS
(December 18, 2006)

The iPhone
(June 29, 2007)

The Amazon Kindle
(November 19, 2007)

Five Billion Songs
(June 2008)

Sirus XM Satellite Radio
(July 29, 2008)

Untitled
(2009)

The U.S. Converts from Analog to Digital TV Broadcasting
(June 12, 2009)

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

Amazon Sends Orwell eBooks Down the "Memory Hole"
(July 16, 2009)

Convergence of Media: Packaging Blu-ray Discs in Books
(December 2009)

Untitled
(April 7, 2010)

Stanford's New Engineering Library Will House Few Physical Books
(July 8, 2010)