Timeline of communication technology

Timeline of communication technology

3500s BC - The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing and the Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing
3000s BC - Egyptians develop papyrus for writing
1500s BC - The Phoenicians develop an alphabet
170 BC - Parchment is discovered in Pergamum after the Ptolemaic dynasty cuts off the supply of papyrus
26-37 - Roman Emperor Tiberius rules the empire from island of Capri by signalling messages with metal mirrors to reflect the sun
105 - Tsai Lun invents paper
600s - Hindu-Malayan empires write legal documents on copper plate scrolls , and write other documents on more perishable media
1450 - The Chinese develop wooden block movable type printing
1454 - 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.
1793 - Claude Chappe establishes the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line
1831 - Joseph Henry proposes and builds an electric telegraph
1835 - Samuel Morse develops the Morse code
1843 - Samuel Morse builds the first long distance electric telegraph line
1849 - Associated Press organizes Nova Scotia pony express to carry latest European news for New York newspapers

1860 - Pony Express deployed before the first transcontinental electric telegraph service
1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson exhibit an electric telephone in Boston
1877 - Thomas Edison patents the phonograph
1889 - Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone
1901 - Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland
1925 - John Logie Baird transmits the first television signal
1942 - Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invent frequency hopping spread spectrum communication technique
1948 - Claude Shannon writes a paper that establishes the mathematical basis of information theory
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
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.
1971 - Erna Schneider Hoover invented a computerized switching system for telephone traffic.
1973 - Akira Hasegawa and Fred Tappert propose the use of solitary waves to carry information in optical fibers
1977 - Donald Knuth begins work on TeX
1980 - Linn Mollenauer , Rogers Stollen , and James Gordon demonstrate that solitary waves can be propagated through optical fibers
1989 - Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built the prototype system which became the World Wide Web at CERN
1991 - Anders Olsson transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion bits per second

Timeline of communication technology

See also