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200,000 BCE
Birth of human speech.
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35,000 BCE
Cave Paintings
Rock paintings have been made since the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 years ago.
They have been found in Europe, Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia.
It is widely believed that the paintings are the work of respected elders or shamans.
The most common themes in European cave paintings are large wild animals, such as bison, horses, aurochs, and deer, and tracings of human hands [which was said to be the signature of the artist who painted it] as well as abstract patterns. -
3300 BCE
Pictographic Writing
The hieroglyphics was developed about four thousand years before Christ. Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. Also the upper symbols are read before the lower. -
1800 BCE
Cuneiform Writing
Cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge," is the term applied to a mode of writing which used a wedge-shaped stylus to make impressions on a clay surface, and also on stone, metal, and wax. Most of the clay tablets were sun-baked, making surviving tablets very fragile. This technique originated in ancient southern Mesopotamia and the earliest texts in cuneiform script are about 5000 years old. -
1500 BCE
Alphabetic writing
Alphabetic writing systems represent the phonological structure of the language. The smallest pronounceable segment of speech is a syllable, but a syllable may be analyzed into the distinctive underlying constituents called phonemes. -
450 BCE
Greek Optical Telegraph
Optical telegraph (also known as frictoria) is a way of communication that was used in ancient Greece. According to it, they used two sets of 5 torches each and, each time they wanted to send a signal, they put fire on the appropriate torches and the station on the other hill (usually 20 miles far away) relayed the message to the next hill in succession. It was invented by the Greek engineers Kleoxenis and Dimoklitos in the 2nd century BC. -
60 BCE
Motion Picture Theorized (Lucretius, Gk)
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600
Woodblock Printing
Woodblock Printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and from Egypt to the 4th century. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the block-books produced mainly in the fifteenth century. -
1450
Printing Press
Printing press, machine by which text and images are transferred to paper or other media by means of ink. Although movable type, as well as paper, first appeared in China, it was in Europe that printing first became mechanized. The earliest mention of a printing press is in a lawsuit in Strasbourg in 1439 revealing construction of a press for Johannes Gutenberg and his associates. -
Photography
A photograph can be either a positive or negative image. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus an object’s visible wavelengths (the light reflected or emitted from it) into a reproduction on a light-sensitive surface of what the human eye would see.
The word photograph was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek word ‘phos’, meaning ‘light’, and ‘graphê’, meaning ‘drawing’ – so ‘drawing with light. -
Telegraph
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. -
Telephone
Telephone, an instrument designed for the simultaneous transmission and reception of the human voice. The telephone is inexpensive, is simple to operate, and offers its users an immediate, personal type of communication that cannot be obtained through any other medium. As a result, it has become the most widely used telecommunications device in the world. Billions of telephone sets are in use around the world. -
Television
These early televisions started appearing in the early 1800s. They involved mechanically scanning images then transmitting those images onto a screen. They were extremely rudimentary.
One of the first mechanical televisions used a rotating disk with holes arranged in a spiral pattern. This device was created independently by two inventors: Scottish inventor John Logie Baird and American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins. Both devices were invented in the early 1920s. -
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
NIAC, in full Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, built during World War II by the United States. -
Transistor Radio
The transistor, a revolutionary solid-state device capable of amplification, had been invented back in 1947, but its actual application to mass-produced consumer items had been limited.
Transistors offered many improvements over the vacuum tube: They were smaller, used much less power, and were more reliable. Efforts were underway to refine transistor production so that individual devices would become inexpensive enough for use in consumer items. -
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)
This machine should be able to hold any programme in memory that was fed to it. This would be possible because EDVAC was going to have more internal memory than any other computing device to date. In other words a multipurpose computer. -
IBM 704
IBM 704 Data Processing System, the world’s first mass produced computer to feature floating point arithmetic hardware. Besides this ultra-geeky distinction, the IBM 704 will leave its mark in computer history before it is discontinued on April 7, 1960. Both the FORTRAN and LISP programming languages were first developed for the IBM 704, as well as the first music application, MUSIC. Physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr. of Bell Labs will synthesize speech for the first time in history on an IBM 704. -
Punchcards
Until the mid-1970s, most computer access was via punched cards. Programs and data were punched by hand on a key punch machine and read into a card reader. Large computing sites such as Columbia University purchased cards by the truckload and furnished them free of charge to users. During the IBM 360 era (1969-80) Columbia's cards were embossed with the legend "CUCC 360" (Columbia University Computer Center IBM 360) and the Columbia shield (In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen). -
Personal Computers
A personal computer is a general-purpose, cost-effective computer that is designed to be used by a single end-user. Every PC is dependent on microprocessor technology, which allows PC makers to set the entire central processing unit (CPU) on a single chip. -
Web Browser
Web browser is a software program that you use to access the internet and view web pages on your computer. Browser is your gateway to the internet. The main purpose of an internet browser is to translate, or render, the code that websites are designed in into the text, graphics, and other features of the web pages that we are all used to seeing today. -
Projector
A projector or image projector is an optical device that projects an image (or moving images) onto a surface, commonly a projection screen. Most projectors create an image by shining a light through a small transparent lens, but some newer types of projectors can project the image directly, by using lasers. A virtual retinal display, or retinal projector, is a projector that projects an image directly on the retina instead of using an external projection screen. -
Social Networks
Social networking is the practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals, often through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. -
Search Engines
Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. A search engine is really a general class of programs, however, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web. -
Video Chat
Technology for conducting audio and video interaction in real time between users at disparate locations. Video chats are typically conducted via a computer, tablet or smartphone device (also called videophone chatting), and may involve point-to-point (or one-to-one) interaction, as in the case of FaceTime and Skype, or multipoint (or one-to-many) interaction, as in the typical case of Google Hangouts. -
YouTube
ouTube is a video sharing service that allows users to watch videos posted by other users and upload videos of their own. The service was started as an independent website in 2005 and was acquired by Google in 2006. Videos that have been uploaded to YouTube may appear on the YouTube website and can also be posted on other websites, though the files are hosted on the YouTube server. -
Portable Computer
A portable computer is a personal computer that is designed to be easily transported and relocated, but is larger and less convenient to transport than a notebook computer. The earliest PCs designed for easy transport were called portables. As the size and weight of most portables decreased, they became known as laptop computer and later as notebook computer. -
Microblog
A type of blog that lets users publish short text updates. Bloggers can usually use a number of service for the updates including instant messaging, e-mail, or Twitter. The posts are called microposts, while the act of using these services to update your blog is called microblogging. Social networking sites, like Facebook, also use a microblogging feature in profiles. On Facebook this is called "Status Updates". -
Smart Phones
A smartphone is a mobile phone that includes advanced functionality beyond making phone calls and sending text messages. Most smartphones have the capability to display photos, play videos, check and send e-mail, and surf the Web. Modern smartphones, such as the iPhone and Android based phones can run third-party applications, which provides limitless functionality. -
Wearable Technology
Wearable technology is clearly gadgets you wear, but there are important distinctions. Wearable tech isn't a trendy pair of headphones, for example, or a digital watch. The new age of wearables tap into the connected self – they're laden with smart sensors, and make use of a web connection, usually using Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to your smartphone.
