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- The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company acquires several competing companies and changes its name to Western Union
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Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line
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Christopher Latham Sholes of Danville, PA and his colleagues, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé developed the first practical typewriter
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Alexander Graham Bell issued a patent for the Telephone
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Edison invents the cylinder "phonograph" used to record and playback sound
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- Emile Berliner invents the flat record player ("gramophone") using acoustic horn and licenses technology to record companies
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Louis Glass invents the modern jukebox
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The first "million-seller" song hit (sold via sheet music) was "After The Ball" by Charles K. Harris
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The Lumiere Brothers use (piano) music with a motion picture program (of short subjects) for the first time
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Shellac gramophone disks developed by Emile Berliner
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Eldredge Johnson perfects first system of mass duplication of pre-recorded flat disks
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"The Electric Theater" in Los Angeles is opened by Thomas L. Tally: the first Nickelodeon, a multimedia movie palace, that spawned imitators nationwide;
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RCA Victor's "Victrola" model record player is introduced.
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Lee de Forest is granted a patent on January 15 for the first triode (three-element) vacuum tube which he calls the "Audion
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Disk recordings overtake cylinders in the popular market
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Edison Co. finally introduces a disk player
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Western Union introduces the first consumer charge card
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AT&T engineer C. G. Hensley got the idea for the loudspeaker when he thought about what would happen if he made a telephone receiver really big.
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- The Orig. Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) makes the first "Jazz" recording.
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The first automatic "record changer" turntable is patented for a stack of 78's
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- Electrical records replace acoustic discs
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Vitaphone introduces a sound system to synchronize music and sound effects with a motion picture
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Scotsman John Logie Baird invents mechanical television which he calls a "Televisor", a postcard-sized black and pink image
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- Bell Laboratories develops a 33 1/3 rpm disk system to synchronize a music track for the Warner Brothers film "Don Juan"
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CBS - the "Columbia Broadcasting System" begins radio broadcasting
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a young comedian named Milton Berle is the first person to be seen on television
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Billboard magazine publishes its first music chart of performed songs.
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Scotsman John Logie Baird demonstrates his system of mechanical television, transmitting its signal from England to the United States
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RCA convinces phonograph labels including its own Victor label as well as Columbia and other manufacturers to standardize on 78.26 rpm as the speed of all phonograph records
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The Edison Co. ceases the manufacturing of sound recordings
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The Duke Ellington recording of "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" starts the "swing music" dance craze.
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RCA laboratories work on a 33 1/3 rpm record system, but the system fails because the material does not stand up to repeated plays
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Vladimir Zworykin applies for a patent on a TV camera vacuum tube he calls the "Iconoscope
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An experimental "binaural" phonograph system is created by Bell laboratories. The two channels of sound were on separate grooves of a 78rpm vinyl record, requiring
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Richard M. Hollingshead opened the first Drive-In Movie Theater in Camden, NJ
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Western Union introduces the first "singing telegram" service
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Harry Lubke, a former associate of Philo Farnsworth, builds an electronic television transmitter
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AEG/Telefunken exhibits the first magnetic tape recorder in Germany
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The first "3-strip Technicolor" feature-length motion picture -- "Becky Sharp" is made by simultaneously exposing three black & white camera negatives through colored filters
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National radio hit advertising jingle "Pepsi-Cola Hits The Spot" is written by Eric Siday and Ginger Johnson, adapted from the tune of an 18th-century English hunting song titled "John Peel". Johnson-Siday would write early
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- The first cable TV systems appear
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The Audio Engineering Society (The AES) is formed
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Zenith introduces the "Lazy Boy" -- the first television remote control (it had a cable.)
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The NBC-TV series "Hank McCune Hall" used laugh tracks from other shows on its soundtrack since it was filmed without a studio audience
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CBS television broadcast the first color TV program to five
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The first ID jingle company to "sing-over" pre-recorded backgrounds - PAMS, Inc. is formed in Dallas, Texas
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The first episode of "I Love Lucy" aired on Monday, October 15th on the CBS Television Network
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Coast-to-coast network TV is a reality via telephone company coaxial cables.
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The first pre-recorded reel-to-reel tape (at 7 1/2 ips) is offered for sale.
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rca first colored tv is created
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The First "transistor radio" went on sale in the U.S. named The Regency TR-1
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Swanson employee Gerry Thomas invents the frozen "T. V. Dinner" to get rid of extra turkey.
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Larger 12" LP's overtake 10" LP's as the preferred size for long-playing records
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Ampex Co. of Redwood City, CA demonstrates the first videotape system
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Compatible Stereo disks and record players are offered for sale
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Sony introduces the first "solid-state" TV set, using transistors instead of vacuum tubes
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Multitrack analog tape recording starts being used in recording studios
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Compact stereo tape cassettes and players are developed by Phillips.
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1964 - The 8-track stereo tape cartridge is developed for automobile use by Lear
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1966 - The "Dolby-A" professional noise reduction system is used in some recording studios
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1968 - The "Dolby-B" noise reduction system is introduced for consumer reel-to-reel and cassette tape recorders.
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1969 - The first Microprocessor (computer on a chip) is introduced by Intel
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1971 - Gloria Gaynor records "Never Can Say Goodbye" -- the first disco record on US radio
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1972 - Atari of Santa Clara, CA develops "Pong" -- the first electronic computer arcade game.
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1974 - The first all solid-state video cameras are introduced using Bell Labs "CCD" (charge-coupled device) instead of an Image Orthicon or Plumbicon camera tube
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The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", is the first hip-hop record to reach Top 40 radio
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The MTV Music TV Cable Network debuts on the air at Midnight
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The first IBM-brand "PC" (for "Personal Computer") is released
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The digital Compact Disc (CD) is introduced by a Japanese conglomerate.
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1982 - The first CD released (in Japan) is Billy Joel's "52nd Street"
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NBC broadcasts the first television programs with stereo sound
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The Apple Macintosh personal computer debuts with a Graphical User Interface advertised as "the computer for the rest of us
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CEDAR Audio Ltd. of Cambridge, England develops a Noise Reduction system to fix clicks, pops and crackle from old records re-mastered for release on CD's
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Phillips introduces a digital audio tape recorder (DAT) using a digital casette
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soundcan developeds barcode tracking system for music
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The Moving Picture Experts Group MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3) compressed audio file format becomes an international standard, and eventually the most popular format for distributing digital audio over the Internet.
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Personal computers outsell TV sets for the first time in the United States
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The online auction community eBay starts out as "AuctionWeb.com", programmed by General Magic engineer Pierre Omidyar who started it as a hobby project
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The DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) increases capacity of digital storage of audio and video on a CD (Compact Disc) medium; can store on to 4.7 GigaBytes per side; double-sided disks are possible though rare...
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First regular transmissions of HDTV (High-Definition Television) begin in major cities
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Internet music-swapping site "Napster" is created, and alarms the recording industry which mounts a massive campaign to shut it down
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Consumer DVD recorders were introduced at the Comdex Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas priced at $1000
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Digital electronic books (E-Books) become a small part of the publishing industry, and several competing companies attempt to introduce the standards for them
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DVD video disk players outsell VHS video cassette recorder/players for the first time.
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The TV screen gets more junked up by "crawls" -- banners at the bottom of the screen, and other distracting divisions of the screen in imitation of computer desktops.
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Reminiscent of VHS/Betamax, an alternate standard for consumer DVD writable disks is introduced to thwart piracy called DVD+RW
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Apple Computer introduces the iPod portable music player for playing mp3 files, and it is a big hit, helping re-establish Apple's innovative reputation and improve their bottom line.
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Apple Computer introduces a downloadable music service via its iTunes music application, which proved that people would pay 99-cents-per-tune to download music legally in the wake of peer-to-peer free
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Retailers Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Circuit City announce they will stop selling VHS Video Cassette tapes
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Apple Computer's online music store integrated into its iTunes software and iPod hardware, sold it's one-billionth song on this date
