Timeline of communication technology

Timeline of communication technology

• 3500s BC - The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing and the Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing
• 1500s BC - The Phoenicians develop an alphabet
• 170 BC - Parchment is discovered in Pergamum
• 105 - Tsai Lun invents paper
• 350 - The Chinese develop a method for printing pages using symbols carved on a wooden block
• 1450 - The Chinese develop wooden block movable type printing
• 1454 - Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type
• 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
• 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson exhibit an electric telephone
• 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
• 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
• 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, is connected.
• 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