Sound / Video Recording Timeline Outline

The Earliest Sound Recordings, without Playback
(1860)

Emile Berliner Invents the Microphone
(March 4, 1877)

Edison Invents the Phonograph
(August 12, 1877)

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

Edison Describes Future Uses for his Phonograph
(June 1878)

Listening to the Earliest Surviving Recording of a Musical Performance
(June 22, 1878 – October 2012)

The Flat Disc Gramophone
(1887)

The First Known Motion Picture with Live-Recorded Sound: Invention of the Kinetophone
(1893 – 1895)

The Oldest Surviving Magnetic Audio Recording
(1900)

The First Hi-Fi Sound Recording
(1924)

Invention of Magnetic Tape
(1927)

The First Full-Length Film with Synchronized Dialogue
(October 1927)

The First All-Talking Feature Film
(1928)

The First "Talking-Books"
(1931)

The First Practical Tape Recorder
(1935)

The First Long Playing Record (LP)
(1948)

The First Rock and Roll Recording, Named After First American Muscle Car?
(March 3 – March 5, 1951)

The Oldest Known Recordings of Computer Music
(Circa November 1951)

One of the Earliest Surviving British Television Dramas
(December 12 – December 14, 1954)

The First Video Tape Recorder
(1956)

Invention of the First Working Laser
(1960)

Books on Tape
(1970)

The CD is Developed
(1976 – 1983)

Launching "Messages in a Bottle" into the Cosmic Ocean
(1977)

The First Speech Synthesis Chip
(June 11, 1977)

The First Music CDs Pressed in the United States
(September 1984)

The CD-ROM is Introduced
(1985)

DVDs are Introduced.
(September 1996 – March 1997)

Voice Over Internet Protocol
(1998)

MP3
(1998)

Napster is Founded
(June 1, 1999)

An Injunction Against Napter to Prevent Trading of Copyrighted Music
(March 5, 2001)

iPod Launched
(October 23, 2001)

"Broadcast Yourself"
(February 2005)

File-Sharing Exceeds Sales of Digital Music Downloads
(January 22, 2006)

Over One Billion iTunes Downloads
(February 22, 2006)

The Biggest Music Retailer in the World: Apple's iTune Store
(April 23, 2006)

Five Billion Songs
(June 2008)

Europeana, the European Digital Library, Museum and Archive
(November 20, 2008)

Downloads Trump CDs
(November 25, 2008)

Universal Music Group Donates a "Mile of Music" to the Library of Congress
(January 10, 2011)