Timeline: History of Communication Technologies

Oct 29, 1969

First Inter-Computer Message Sent

UCLA student programmer sends word 'login' between computers using ARPANET - the precursor to the internet developed for governmental and research use

Period: Jan 1, 1970 to Dec 31, 2009

Historical Dates in Communication Technologies

Apr 3, 1973

First Cell Phone Call Made

Although the widespread use of mobile phones didn't really occur until 1979 with the development of 23 base stations in Tokyo, Japan, the first phone call on a Motorola cell was made on this date in New York, US

Mar 1, 1974

First Personal Computers Commerically Marketed

Scelbi Computer Consulting begin to publicly sell the first micro-computers, transforming the use of computers socially forever

Jan 3, 1982

TIME Magazine Names Computer as "Man of the Year"

A bold diversion from tradition, TIME recognised the enormous social impact and power of the computer early on

Sep 19, 1982

:-) First Used

Scott E Fahlman proposes the use of :-) and :-( to distinguish between joking and serious information online - the first emoticons

Sep 2, 1993

First Search Engine on Web

W3 Catalogue is launched. Relies on already existing high-quality lists of websites rather than crawlers and indexers as more recent search engines

Jun 11, 1997

First Photo Taken on Camera Phone

Philippe Kahn used a primitive version of a mobile phone camera to take and transmit a photo of his newborn daughter, heralding the age of pervasive recordability with cameras always in our pocket

Aug 1, 2003

Myspace Launched

In August 2003, several people developed Myspace based on ideas from site Friendster. Myspace was arguably the first widely successful social networking site, ushering in the social media age.