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Prehistoric humans paint images on the walls of their caves
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Chinese entertainers use firelight to project silhouettes of puppets onto a screen.
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Leone Alberti writes Della Pictura, a treatise on the laws of perspective. The book systematizes
the rules for drawing three-dimensional scenes on two-dimensional planes. -
Johann Gutenberg invents movable type, allowing mass production of documents.
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Franklin discovers electricity
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The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of
the press. -
Babbage designs Analytical Machine, often considered to be the first general-purpose computer.
Lady Byron writes programs for the machine -
Samuel Morse debuts the telegraph. The invention revolutionizes the transmission of
information. -
George Boole: develops binary mathematical language of 1’s and 0’s (Boolean Algebra)
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Europe and North America are briefly linked by a transatlantic telegraph cable; by 1866, the system is up to stay. News that once took months to travel now takes seconds.
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Alexander Graham Bell makes the first phone call. Pizza is still another 75 years away.
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Alexander Graham Bell makes the first phone call.
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Thomas Alva Edison invents the Phonograph. He also cuts the first recording, a soulful rendition of “Mary had a Little Lamb.
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Mood Music for Film: Musical scores sent along for organ accompaniment
Gramophone: disks manually rotated @ 70 rpm Film: Sequential photographs with sprockets manually pulled through a projector -
Eastman introduces the Brownie, a one-dollar camera designed for children.
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Guglielmo Marconi perfects a wireless radio system that transmits Morse code over the Atlantic Ocean.
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The fax machine is invented by German scientist Arthur Korn.
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KDKA-AM Pittsburgh signs on the air. Still running, it's the world's first commercial radio station, and the first to present news, reporting results of the 1920 Harding-Cox presidential race.
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"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" the first full-length animation is released.
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Bwana Devil, the first 3-D film using polarized lenses, is released.
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Phillips first compact audio cassette. First home video tape recording
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The U.S. effort to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth pays off handsomely. Technology spinoffs include laptop computers, small solid-state lasers (which lead to Compact Discs), cordless power tools, solar power cells, liquid crystals, and Tang.
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MITS releases the first successful personal computer. The Altair is named for a planet from
the Star Trek television series (or is the planet later named for the computer?). It uses Intel Corporation's 8080 microprocessor, also developed in 1974. The PC will not really catch on until the advent of the Apple II. -
SONY Betamax VCR with a one hour, ½ inch video cassette tape
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The Apple II changes everything. It's the first PC to use color graphics.
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Microsoft Windows version 1.0 hits the streets.
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British physicist Tim Berners-Lee proposes a global hypertext system, the World Wide Web. During the next few years, he will develop the standards for URL, HTML, and HTTP.
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The MP3 digital audio compression format is invented at the Fraunhofer Institute, a German research lab.
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Disney releases Toy Story, the first feature-length movie totally comprised by computer graphics. The 77-minute film takes four years to make, and 800,000 machine hours to render.
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The revolution will be downloaded: Apple introduces iTunes (January) and the iPod (October).
