Digital Communication Timeline

  • Telegraph

    Telegraph
    The telegraph was invented by Samuel Morse and it revolutionized long distance communication. The telegraph transmitted electrical signals over a wire that was laid between stations.
  • Camera

    Camera
    This type of camera was invented by Henry Fox Talbot. This camera worked by using a paper negative to make a print with a softer and less sharp image.
  • Typewriter

    Typewriter
    The typewriter was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes. Sholes was originally supposed to develop a machine for numbering books until he was inspired to build a machine that could print words as well as numbers. It took Sholes almost 7 years to make the typewriter.
  • Telephone

    Telephone
    The telephone was invented in 1976 by Alexander Graham Bell. The telephone was used to communicate with other people who are far away.
  • Radio Broadcast

    Radio Broadcast
    The first radio broadcast was invented by Guglielmo Marconi. He would use radio waves to transmit Morse code and the instrument he used became known as the radio.
  • Television

    Television
    The inventor of the television is Philo Taylor Farnsworth. He was able to make the television by using an image dissector tube so he could manipulate electrons in order to change a visual image into a stream of electrical current and then transmit that to another vacuum tube at the receiver, and on a fluorescent screen turn the current back into the visual image again.
  • Computer

    Computer
    The computer was invented in 1945 by John Mauchly. His goal was to make a machine that could handle data in a coded form. When the computer was finished it contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes and it was first used by the U.S. army.
  • Cell phone

    Cell phone
    The cell was invented in 1973 by Martin Cooper. He did not want the cell phone to be chained to a car so instead he made it portable. You were able to talk on the cell phone for 25 minutes before the phone died.
  • CD Player

    CD Player
    The CD Player was invented in 1982 by James Russell. Russell invented the overall concept of the optical digital recording when he joined the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of Battle Memorial institute in Richland.
  • PC tablet

    PC tablet
    The tablet was invented by microsoft in 2002. Their goal for the tablet was to make it a consumer device and not a replacement for a desktop.