HOME

Timeline of Communication

DATE

3000 BC

Sumerian writing system uses pictographs to represent words

2900 BC

Beginnings of Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing

1300 BC

Tortoise Shell and Oracle Bone Writing - the first Chinese writing

500 BC

Papyrus roll used instead of clay tablets for writing. Books on papyrus were rolled on a hardwood stick with an identifying leather tag on one end. As the book was read, the scroll was rolled and unrolled onto another such stick.

220 BC

Chinese Small Seal writing developed - seen on early coins

100 AD

First Roman books with pages - called Codex

105 AD

Wood block printing and paper is invented by the Chinese

641 AD

The library at Alexandria was one of the largest and oldest collections of manuscripts from the ancient world. When it destroyed, a huge amount of knowledge was lost.

1455

Johann Gutenberg invents printing press using movable type cast from metal. After a way had been found to cast precisely sized and shaped type, it became possible to arrange the individual letters in a wooden frame bound together with clamps. The first book published using this method was a translation of the Bible in 1455.

1755

Samuel Johnson's dictionary brings standardized spelling to the English Language. Before that, people made up their own way to spell words.

1830s

Augusta lady Byron, Countess of Lovelace, was the first person to write a program designed to run on a computer. She worked with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine, whose design included data to be input on punched cards, a primitive central processing unit (CPU), a form of memory, and a printer to output data. The entire design was the first digital computer in the world. Sadly, it was never built because the technology at that time was not sufficient. She was the daughter of the famous poet, Lord Byron.

1837

Invention of Telegraph in Great Britain and the United States. Samuel F. B. Morse and the two British engineers Sir William Cook and Sir Charles Wheatstone developed a method of sending an electronic message over a distance of several miles almost instantaneously. For the first time in history, being a long distance away was no longer a barrier to communication.

1837

Daguerrotype photography invented - the first photographs.

1861

Motion pictures projected onto a screen, giving the world the first movies. They were jerky, but they were movies.

1876

Dewey Decimal System introduced - a way of organising books in libraries. (University, most community college, and special libraries use the Library of Congress classification system, however.)

1877

Edweard Muybridge demonstrates high - speed photography, taking photos of a horse and proving that for a split second, it runs with all four feet off the ground at once.

1877

Wax cylinder phonograph invented by Thomas A. Edison. For the first time, sounds could be recorded and played back.

1877

Alexander Graham Bell invents first practical telephone

1899

First magnetic recordings made by Valdemar Poulsen - forming the basis for modern recording of music.

1902

Motion picture special effects first used. George Melies, a French magician, experimented with stop - action photography, fades, and transitions. By stopping the film, he could cause things to appear and disappear and by backing up the film, he could create a double exposure or a fade from one scene to the next. He was the father of all these things we consider cute when used once or twice but which become so tedious when they are overused.

1906

Lee Deforest invents electronic amplifying tube (triode). This allowed weak signals (for instance when two people were on the phone and a long way apart) to be amplified. This was an important discovery that allowed long distance communication by voice, and you didn't have to rely on the telegraph and Morse Code.

1923

Television camera tube invented by Vladimir Zvorkyn, a Russian born American inventor. Rapid advances in radio tube technology were being made at the time, and the technology of broadcast television was developed a short time later. The first TV broadcasts were made in England in 1927 and the U. S. in 1930. This TV set was made in 1936.

1926

Early movies were silent, with words printed on the screen, and music played in the theatre. The first "Talkies" didn't come out until 1926 when Warner Brothers Studios developed a technology that recorded sound separately from the film on large disks and synchronized the sound and motion picture tracks upon playback. In 1927 the first real talking picture to be played in theatres was released, the Warner Brothers production The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.

1940's

Information science as we know it had its beginnings in the 1940's. The information needs of science, engineering, the military, and logistical management during World War II led to the development of early automated search methods. When the digital computer made its appearance after the war, information could be stored on tape and other digital media. The development of controlled vocabularies and Boolean search techniques made it possible to write search engine programs. These could efficiently search through vast collections of on-line documents to find the little piece of information that was required for a particular need.

1946

ENIAC I was the world's first practical all electronic digital computer. It had input/output, memory. a CPU, and electronic logic switching in the form of 18,000 vacuum tubes. Programming was done by teams of programmers with patch cables who hard - wired each program into the computer and had to repeat the process each time a program was changed. A problem that occurred during the hard wiring of an early computer program led to one of today's most popular though dreaded computer terms. When one of the early systems went down and nobody could figure out what had gone wrong, an intensive search for the source of the difficulty led to the discovery of a moth that had gotten into the wiring and had shorted out a circuit. When programmers (or users) say that a program has bugs, this bug is the original great granddaddy to which they are referring.

1948

1948 Scientists at Bell Telephone labs invent the transistor. The new amplifier was much smaller and more rugged than the vacuum tube amplifier it replaced. There was almost no limit to how small a transistor could be made. The invention of the transistor paved the way for the development of the integrated circuit chip and microelectronics in general. Personal computers as we know them would be impossible without transistors.

1971

Intel introduces the first microprocessor chip - this is what makes a computer work.

1977

Apple Computer begins delivery of the Apple II computer - an easy to use computer that people could have in their homes, or in schools.

1984

Apple Macintosh computer introduced. The Macintosh was the first computer to come with a graphical user interface and a mouse pointing device as standard equipment. No longer merely a mathematical tool of scientists, banks, and engineers, the micro was becoming the tool of choice for many graphics artists, teachers, instructional designers, librarians, and information managers. It introduced the idea of the computer screen looking like a desktop with its little folders and paper documents.

1987

Hypercard developed by Bill Atkinson - the idea of things being linked together. (We now use HyperStudio - a development of this programme).

1991

450 complete works of literature on one CD-ROM. For the first time, lots of text, and even some pictures, could be stored on a single CD Rom.

1992

The start of the World Wide Web, or the internet. For the first time, people can access information on computers all over the world, simply and easily.