Telecommunications Timeline Outline

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

The Chappe Telegraph
(1794)

The First Working Electric Telegraph
(1816)

Origins of the Morse Code
(1837)

The First Commercial Electric Telegraph
(July 25, 1837 – January 1, 1845)

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

Sending Weather Information by Telegraph
(1847)

The Associated Press is Founded
(1848)

The First Telegraph Cable between England and France
(1850 – November 13, 1851)

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
(1852)

Cyrus Field Intends to Lay an Atlantic Cable
(1854 – 1856)

Cyrus Field and Partners Found The Atlantic Telegraph Company
(1856)

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

Reuters Expands, Following Telegraph Lines
(1858)

The Atlantic Cable Operates Successfully for Three Weeksication on the Cable Fails Within 3 Weeks
(August 16 – September 18, 1858)

The Origins of Network Neutrality
(June 16, 1860)

New York and San Francisco are Connected by Telegraph
(October 24, 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 Baudot Code, The First Means of Digital Communication
(1870 – 1874)

The First Significant Series of Illustrations in a 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)

Emile Berliner Invents the Microphone
(March 4, 1877)

Formation of the Bell Telephone Company, then the American Bell Telephone Company
(July 9, 1877 – March 1880)

David Hughes Invents the Loose-Contact Carbon Microphone
(1878)

The First Regular Telephone Exchange is Established in New Haven, Connecticut
(January 1878)

One of the Earliest Systems of Television Transmission
(1880)

The First Separate Publication on Television
(1880)

The First Wireless Telephone Communication
(April 1, 1880)

AT&T is Founded
(March 3, 1885 – 1892)

Hertz Proves the Existence of Electromagnetic Waves
(1887)

The Telautograph
(July 31, 1888)

Electromagnetic Waves: the Basis for Radio
(1892)

Invention of Radio
(1895)

About 240,000 Telephones Are in Use in the U.S.A.
(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 Beginning of Electronics
(November 16, 1904 – September 21, 1905)

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)

George Owen Squier Invents Telephone Carrier Multiplexing
(1910)

Teletype Invented
(1914)

The First Transcontinental Telephone Call
(January 25, 1915)

Invention of SONAR
(1917)

The First Radio News Broadcast
(August 31, 1920)

The First Commercial Radio Broadcast
(November 2, 1920)

George Owen Squier Invents Muzak
(1922 – 1936)

The BBC is Founded
(October 18 – November 14, 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)

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover Participates in the First American Demonstration 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)

"Waldo" : Imagining Remote Manipulators and TeleRobotics
(August 1942)

Alan Turing Consults in New York
(1943)

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

Communication by Geosynchronous Satellites Predicted
(October 1945)

The First Commercial Television Network
(1946 – 1956)

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

The Hamming Codes
(1950)

Pioneer Televangelist
(1951)

The National Security Agency is Founded
(November 4, 1952)

The First Transatlantic Telephone Cable is Operational
(1955 – September 25, 1956)

The First Operational Satellite Navigation System
(October 4, 1957 – 1960)

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 Corona Strategic Imaging Satellites
(June 1959 – May 1972)

Invention of the First Working Laser
(1960)

Technical Basis for the Development of Phreaking
(November 1960)

Precursor of Word Processing and Email
(1961)

The First Human to Travel into Space and the First to Orbit the Earth
(April 12, 1961)

The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962)

The First Digitally Multiplexed Transmission of Voice Signals
(1962)

Packet Switching
(April 1962)

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

Foundation of Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center
(1963)

The First Geosynchronous Communications Satellite is Launched
(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 Commercial Communications Satellite to be Placed in Geosynchronous Orbit
(April 6, 1965)

The First "Actual Network Experiment"
(October 1965)

The Viterbi Algorithm
(1967)

The First Live, International Satellite Television Production
(June 25, 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 Wireless 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)

The First Public Computerized Bulletin Board System
(1973)

The First International Connections to ARPANET
(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)

Prototype Cellular Telephone System
(1977)

The First GPS
(February 1977)

The First Intentional Spam
(May 1, 1977)

The Network Nation
(1978)

The Minitel
(1978 – June 30, 2012)

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 is Developed
(1980)

CSNET
(1981)

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

"Dial-a-Game": the Earliest Origins of America Online (AOL)
(1983)

The Declining Role of Print in Total Information Flow
(1983)

The First Commercial Analog Cellular Telephone Service
(October 13, 1983 – 1984)

Moderated Newsgroups
(1984)

Breakup of AT&T
(January 1, 1984)

Quantum Computer Services, Precursor of AOL, Launches an Online Bulletin-Board Service
(May 1, 1985)

GSM is Developed
(1987)

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

Digital HDTV
(1989)

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

Sirius Satellite Radio is Founded
(July 1990 – July 2002)

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)

Neil Papworth Sends the First SMS Text Message
(December 3, 1992)

The First Successful Telepresence Company
(1993)

The First Tablet Computer with Wireless Connectivity
(April 1993 – July 1994)

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 First Traditional Radio Station to Initiate 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)

The First Public HDTV Broadcast in the United States
(July 23, 1996)

WAP
(June 1997)

Voice Over Internet Protocol
(1998)

MP3
(1998)

The First Long Distance Transmission of One Terabit per Second
(1998)

The First Continuous Live Webcasts
(January 1998)

Bluetooth
(1999)

The First Full Internet Service on Cell Phones
(1999)

The BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Protocol
(July 2, 2001)

Satellite Radio Broadcasting Begins
(September 25, 2001)

Origins of Cyberspace
(2002)

The First Cell Phone Novel
(2003)

Skype is Founded
(August 2003)

"From Gutenberg to the Internet"
(2005)

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

Hepting v. AT&T
(January 31, 2006)

Crowdsourcing
(June 2006)

Like Teleporting in Star Trek
(June 2006)

Google Apps are Introduced
(August 2006)

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

Google Buys YouTube
(November 6, 2006)

In 2007 There Were 12,000,000 U.S. Blogs
(February 2007)

Apple Introduces the iPhone
(June 29, 2007)

The World Wide Telecom Web for Illiterate Populations
(August 2007)

The Amazon Kindle
(November 19, 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)

U.S. National Text Pager Intercepts from 9/11 Are Released
(November 26 – November 26, 2009)

3 Billion iPhone and iPod Apps Were Downloaded in less than 18 Months
(January 5, 2010)

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

Google Announces "Replay" for Twitter
(April 14, 2010)

Spam Declines from 90% of Email Traffic to Only 72.9%
(July 2010 – June 2011)

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

Twitter Has 175 Million Users
(October 30, 2010)

An App the Promotes the Value of Impermanence
(2011 – 2013)

The Smartphone Becomes the CPU of the Laptop
(January 2011)

More than Ten Billion Apps are Downloaded from the Apple App Store
(January 22, 2011)

Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.5 Billion
(May 2011)

200 Million Tweets Per Day: 100 Fold Increase Since 2009
(June 30, 2011)

Leading British Tabloid Closed Because of Cell Phone Hacking Scandal
(July 7 – July 17, 2011)

Google Agrees to Acquire Smart-Phone Maker Motorola Mobility
(August 15, 2011)

Texting During the Climb up El Capitan in Yosemite
(November 2011)

The Swedish Twitter University Begins
(November 14, 2011)

The ILAB Launches a Mobil App
(March 2012)

Nearly 50% of U.S. Mobile Subscribers Own Smartphones
(March 29, 2012)

The First Teleportation from One Macroscopic Object to Another
(November 8, 2012)

"Anonymous" Plans to Shut Down Syrian Government Websites in Response to Countrywide Internet Blackout
(November 29 – December 1, 2012)

@Pontifex Sends First Tweet
(December 12, 2012)

The FDA Approves the First Medical Robot for Hospital Use
(January 26, 2013)

Drone Pilots Experience Stress Possibly Greater than Actual Combat Pilots
(February 23, 2013)