rootdc.com

a history of communications

1775 BC : Greeks use a phonetic alphabet written from left to right. Amazing.

1400 BC : Oldest found record of writing in China on bones. Chop stick font created.

1270 BC : The first encyclopedia is written in Syria.

900 BC : The very first postal service for government use in China. Dogs were never happier.

776 BC : First recorded use of homing pigeons used to send message - the winner of the Olympic Games to the Athenians.

530 BC : The Greeks start the very first library. Dori’s past life?

300 BC : People wonder why time is moving in reverse.

200 BC : Human messengers on foot or horseback common in Egypt and China with messenger relay stations built. Sometimes fire messages used from relay station to station instead of humans.

14 : Romans establish postal services. Copy-cats.

37 : Heliographs - first recorded use of mirrors to send messages by Roman Emperor Tiberius.

100 : First bound books. Dori, while still pure DNA, rejoices.

105 : Tsai Lun of China invents paper, as we know it. Promptly rolls one.

305 : First wooden printing presses invented in China - symbols carved on a wooden block.

1049 : First movable type invented - clay - invented in China by Pi Sheng.

1450 : Newspapers appear in Europe. The breakfast table forever changed.

1455 : Johannes Gutenberg invents a printing press with metal movable type and subsequently annoys the Catholic Church.

1560 : Camera Obscura invented - primitive image making.

1650 : First daily newspaper Leipzig.

1714 : Englishmen, Henry Mill receives the first patent for a typewriter.

1793 : Claude Chappe invents the first long-distance semaphore (visual or optical) telegraph line.

1814 : Joseph Nicéphore Niépce achieves the first photographic image.

1821 : Charles Wheatstone reproduces sound in a primitive sound box - the first microphone. Is this thing on?

1831 : Joseph Henry invents the first electric telegraph.

1835 : Samuel Morse invents Morse code.

1843 : Samuel Morse invents the first long distance electric telegraph line.

1861 : United States starts the Pony Express for mail delivery. Indians have a field day with the white man.
Coleman Sellers invents the Kinematoscope - a machine that flashed a series of still photographs onto a screen.

1867 : American, Sholes invents the first successful and modern typewriter.

1876 : Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph a copying machine. And I thought it was Xerox, Xerces’ little brother.

1876 : Alexander Graham Bell patents the electric telephone. Busy signals follow.

1876 : Melvyl Dewey writes the Dewey Decimal System for ordering library books. Again, Dori rejoices.

1877 : Thomas Edison patents the phonograph - with a wax cylinder as recording medium.
Eadweard Muybridge invents high-speed photography - creating first moving pictures that captured motion.

1887 : Emile Berliner invents the gramophone - a system of recording, which could be used over and over again.

1888 : George Eastman patents Kodak roll film camera.

1889 : Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone or automatic telephone exchange.

1894 : Guglielmo Marconi improves wireless telegraphy.

1898 : First telephone answering machines.

1899 : Valdemar Poulsen invents the first magnetic recordings - using magnetized steel tape as recording medium - the foundation for both mass data storage on disk and tape and the music recording industry. Loudspeakers invented.

1902 : Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland - the first radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean.

1904 : First regular comic books appear. Also in firsts, nerds are invented.

1906 : Lee Deforest invents the electronic amplifying tube or triode - this allowed all electronic signals to be amplified improving all electronic communications i.e. telephones and radios.

1910 : Thomas Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture.

1914 : First cross continental telephone call made. Phone bills skyrocket.

1916 : First radios with tuners - different stations.

1923 : The television or iconoscope (cathode-ray tube) invented by Vladimir Kosma Zworykin - first television camera. Silly fads.

1925 : John Logie Baird transmits the first experimental television signal. Again, is but a fad.

1926 : Warner Brothers Studios invented a way to record sound separately from the film on large disks and synchronized the sound and motion picture tracks upon playback - an improvement on Thomas Edison's work.

1927 : NBC starts two radio networks. CBS founded. Or see B.S., Get it? First television broadcasts in England. Warner Brothers releases "The Jazz Singer" the first successful talking motion picture.

1930 : Radio popularity spreads with the "Golden Age" of radio.
First television broadcasts in the United States.
Movietone system of recording film sound on an audio track right on the film invented.

1934 : Joseph Begun invents the first tape recorder for broadcasting - first magnetic recording.

1938 : Television broadcasts able to be taped and edited - rather than only live.

1939 : Scheduled television broadcasts begin.

1944 : Computers like Harvard's Mark I put into public service - government owned - the age of Information Science begins.

1948 : Long playing record invented - vinyl and played at 33 rpm.
Transistor invented - enabling the miniaturization of electronic devices.

1949 : Network television starts in U.S. 45-rpm record invented. First neck pains due to “arping” reported.

1951 : Computers are first sold commercially. They only need a bedroom to be stored.

1957 : Sputnik launched. Paranoia ensues.

1958 : Chester Carlson invents the photocopier or Xerox machine.
Integrated Circuit invented - enabling the further miniaturization of electronic devices and computers.

1963 : Zip codes started in the United States.

1965 : Ted Nelson coins the word Hypertext to describe, “non-sequential writing that branches and allows choice to a reader, best read at an interactive screen”.

1966 : ARPA scientist Robert Taylor figures out a way for researchers at various locations to collaborate by means of electronic computer networks.

1966 : Xerox invents the Telecopier - the first successful fax machine. Restaurant menu’s appear as if from nowhere.

1969 : ARPANET - the first Internet started.

1971 : The computer floppy disc and the microprocessor invented considered a computer on a chip.

1972 : HBO invents pay-TV service for cable. Bow-chicka-bow-bow.

1976 : Apple I home computer invented. First nationwide programming - via satellite and implemented by Ted Turner.

1978 : Apple goes public.

1979 : First cellular phone communication network started in Japan. Can you hear me now?

1980 : Sony Walkman invented. Kid’s no longer have to listen to parents.

1981 : IBM PC first sold. First laptop computers sold to public. Computer mouse becomes regular part of computer. Domain Name Service (DNS) is developed.

1983 : Time magazines name the computer as "Man of the Year."
First cellular phone network started in the United States.

1984 : Apple Macintosh released. IBM PC AT released.

1985 : Cellular telephones in cars become widespread… as to car wrecks and “hang up and drive” bumper stickers. CD-ROMs in computers.

1986 : 5,000 Internet hosts. Good thing Al Gore invented it.

1988 : NSFNET backbone is upgraded to T1 (1.544 Mbps). Yes, that fast.
IRC developed [permitting employees to complain about their jobs in foreign lands instead of at home.

1989 : Open Text, a search engine is developed.
First term paper cut-n-pasted shortly after.

1990 : The WWW (world wide web) developed by Tim Berners-Lee rooting the idea in Hypertext.
He also develops a “web browser”.

1991 : AOL starts offering dial-up Internet access. Annoying eee-ohw, eee-ohw sound to follow.

1993 : Marc Andreeson and Eric Bina invent Mosiac a point and click web brower that runs on a UNIX machine.
2 million internet hosts and 600 websites.
Marc Andreeson and Eric Bina also quit their day jobs.

1994 : American government releases control of Internet and WWW is born - making communication at light speed.

1995 : Zeldman starts designing for the web.
6.5 million internet hosts and 100,000 websites.

1996 : 12.8 million hosts and 500,000 websites.

1997 : Amazon begins selling books over the “web”.
Companies start putting an “e” in front of whatever that e-do.
Internet Explorer 3.0 begins to support CSS, but not JavaScript.
Netscape Navigator does not support CSS, but does support JavaScript.
The beginning of my “cranky period”.
19.5 million hosts and 1,000,000 websites.

1998 : The Web Standards Project is born.
1.5 million new web pages appear daily.
Internet traffic doubles every 100 days.
Venture Capitalists give out $5 million to anyone with a business plan written on a cocktail napkin.
Developers spend (on average) 25% of their time just accommodating different browsers. Huge amounts of money are wasted (not the VC’s).
The WaSP Web Standards Project is born. Since the W3C, which creates most of the standards has little police power to enforce them. To the W3C, standards are but recommendations.
The Government begins an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft.

1999 : AOL buys Netscape (oh the horror). 100,000 web-related jobs cannot be filled for lack of talent.

2000 : The year standards broke. Internet Explorer 5 for the Macintosh is released offering near perfect support for HTML 4, CSS 1 and JavaScript.
Netscape Navigator 6 is released and supports XML and the W3C DOM as well as the standards supported by IE/Mac.
Opera 5 is released and supports HTML, CSS, XML, WML, ECMAScript and the DOM.
A number of ill-conceived web businesses fail, causing the usual dire predictions and market panics. A number good web business is dragged down along with the un-worthy ones, while overbuilt web-agencies lay off staff. It’s good fun to watch.