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

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

The Chappe Telegraph
(1794)

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)

Sending Weather Information by Telegraph
(1847)

The Associated Press is Founded
(1848)

The First Telegraph Cable between England and France
(1850)

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

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)

Field Equations
(1865)

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)

The First Significant Series of Illustrations in Daily Newspaper
(June 30, 1875)

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

The First Regular Telephone Line
(1877)

The First Telephone Switchboard
(1877)

The Loose-Contact Carbon Microphone
(1878)

The First Regular Telephone Exchange
(January 1878)

One of the Earliest Systems of Television Transmission
(1880)

The First Separate Publication on Television
(1880)

Hertz Proves the Existence of Electromagnetic Waves
(1887)

Invention of Radio
(1895)

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)

An Early Sci-Fi View of the Internet and Virtual Reality
(November 1909)

Teletype Invented
(1914)

The First Transcontinental Telephone Call
(January 25, 1915)

Invention of SONAR
(1917)

The First Commercial Radio Broadcast
(November 2, 1920)

The BBC is Founded
(October 18, 1922)

The First Electronic Television Camera
(1923)

A Logarithmic Law for Communication
(1924)

The Creation of Bell Labs
(1925)

Sarnoff Creates NBC
(1926)

The First Demonstration of Television
(January 26, 1926)

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

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

Hartley's Law
(1928)

"Regular" Television Broadcasting
(May 11, 1928)

CBS
(September 1928)

The First Experimental Television Service
(1929)

Frequency Modulation (FM)
(1933 – 1936)

Creation of the FCC
(1934)

Invention of Radar
(February 12, 1935)

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

The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem
(1940)

Actress Hedy Lamarr Invents Spread-Sprectrum
(1940)

Converting Zuse's Logical Designs into Switching Circuits
(1941)

Alan Turing Consults in New York
(1943)

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

Communication by Geosynchronous Satellites Predicted
(October 1945)

"Mr. Television" Causes the Sale of TV Sets to Double
(1948)

The Hamming Codes
(1950)

Pioneer Televangelist
(1951)

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)

The First Operational Satellite Navigation System
(1960)

Technical Basis for the Development of Phreaking
(November 1960)

Precursor of Word Processing and Email
(1961)

The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962)

Packet Switching
(April 1962)

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

The First Geosynchronous Communications Satellite
(July 26, 1963)

Mathematical Theory of Data Communications
(1964)

The First Online Reservation System
(1964)

"The Medium is the Message"
(1964)

The First Geostationary Communication Satellite
(August 19, 1964)

Email Begins
(1965)

Optical Fibers Proposed as a Medium for Communication
(1965)

The First "Actual Network Experiment"
(October 1965)

The Viterbi Algorithm
(1967)

The First Commercial Online Service
(1969)

Problem with the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer Nearly Prevents the First Moon Walk
(July 21, 1969)

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

The First Packet-Switched Data Network
(1970)

Optical Fibers for the Internet Backbone
(1970)

Phreaker Underground Telephone System Culture
(1971)

The @ in Email
(March 1971)

The First Email Management Program
(July 1971)

Probably the World's First Online Community
(1973)

First Public Computerized Bulletin Board System
(1973)

The First International Connections to ARPANET
(1973)

Systems Network Architecture
(1974)

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

Prototype Cellular Telephone System
(1977)

The First GPS
(February 1977)

The First Intentional Spam
(May 1, 1977)

The Network Nation
(1978)

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

Compuserve
(1979)

The Basis for Cellular Telephone Technology
(May 1, 1979)

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

Digital Cellular Telephone Technology
(1980)

CSNET
(1981)

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

"Dial-a-Game"
(1983)

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

Moderated Newsgroups
(1984)

Breakup of AT&T
(January 1, 1984)

Origins of AOL
(May 1, 1985)

GSM is Developed
(1987)

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)

Junk Faxes are Outlawed
(1991)

The First GSM Cellular Phone Call
(March 27, 1991)

2G Cellular Telecom
(July 1, 1991)

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

The First Successful Telepresence Company
(1993)

The First Tablet Computer with Wireless Connectivity
(April 1993)

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

Wireless Internet Access
(1994)

Commercial Spaming Starts with the "Green Card Spam"
(April 12, 1994)

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

The First Access to the Mobile Web
(1996)

WAP
(June 1997)

Voice Over Internet Protocol
(1998)

MP3
(1998)

The First Continuous Live Webcasts
(January 1998)

The First Full Internet Service on Cell Phones
(1999)

Satellite Radio Broadcasting Begins
(September 25, 2001)

Origins of Cyberspace
(2002)

Sirius Satellite Radio
(July 1, 2002)

The First Cell Phone Novel
(2003)

Skype Founded
(August 2003)

From Gutenberg to the Internet
(2005)

Adoption of User-Generated Content by Mainstream Media
(July 7, 2005)

Crowdsourcing
(June 2006)

Like Teleporting in Star Trek
(June 2006)

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

Google Buys YouTube
(November 6, 2006)

12,000,000 U.S. Blogs
(February 2007)

The iPhone
(June 29, 2007)

The iTunes App Store Opens
(July 10, 2008)

Sirus XM Satellite Radio
(July 29, 2008)

More than 200,000,000 Apps Downloaded
(October 21, 2008)

2.5 Trillion Text Messages
(December 26, 2008)

Reinventing Email and Internet Communication
(May 28, 2009)

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

The First College Journalism Course Focused on Twitter
(September 1, 2009)

3 Billion iPhone and iPod Apps Have Been Downloaded
(January 5, 2010)

World Texting Competition Won by Koreans
(January 14, 2010)

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