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1851 - The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company is founded in Rochester, New York, which will become Western Union-- this major message service also offered delivery of Telegrams.
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1856 - The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company acquires several competing companies and changes its name to Western Union; its service of deliveringTelegrams will continue until January 27, 2006 -- 150 years after the name change.
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1861 - Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line -- providing fast, coast-to-coast communications during the U.S. Civil War.
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1866 - Christopher Latham Sholes of Danville, PA and his colleagues, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé developed the first practical typewriter (and the QWERTY keyword.)
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1873 - The Remington Arms company signs a deal to market Sholes' Typewriter under their name; later they merge with the Rand company to form Remington-Rand.
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1876 - Alexander Graham Bell issued a patent for the Telephone on March 7th. By the early 1800's many experimental uses were attempted for this invention including what was later called "Audio Theatre" -- plays and readings performed over the telephone.
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1877 - Edison invents the cylinder "phonograph" used to record and playback sound. Originally thought to be useful as a business machine for dictation (like the dictaphone which would come later.) Other uses: recordings of plays pre-dating Radio Drama nearly 50 years
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1895 - The Lumiere Brothers use (piano) music with a motion picture program (of short subjects) for the first time at a Dec. 28th -screening at the Grand Café in Paris
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1896 - An orchestra is used with (silent) motion pictures for the first time in April in London.
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1897 - Shellac gramophone disks developed by Emile Berliner - speeds will vary on discs issued by companies in different countries (80 rpm was used on some British recordings)
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1900 - Eldredge Johnson perfects first system of mass duplication of pre-recorded flat disks.
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1902 - April 16 - "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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1906 - British scientist John Ambrose Fleming develops the first vacuum tube called a "Valve."
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1907 - Lee de Forest is granted a patent on January 15 for the first triode (three-element) vacuum tube which he calls the "Audion". It was similar to Flemings diode (two-element)vacuum tube called a "Valve". But de Forest's third element (called a "grid") allowed the Audion tube to amplify signals -- which made radio with voice and music practical.
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1908 - The first double-sided phonograph records are introduced by Columbia. Soon its competitors follow suit; Prior to this time, all records had sound only on one side; the back side was a blank (un-grooved) side
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1909 - Charles "Doc" Herrold and his assistant Ray Newby begin experimental "wireless" vice and music broadcasts from San Jose, California using experimental radio station call letters "FN" and "SJN". They transmit with a series of arcing street lamps under liquid.
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1910 - Mary Pickford becomes the first American "Motion Picture Star" via her silent films
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1912 -Disk recordings overtake cylinders in the popular market. Columbia drops cylinders.
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1913 - Cecil B. DeMille and Jesse Lasky produce the first "feature-length" film called "The Squaw Man
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1923 - Western Union introduces teletypewriters, joining branches and individual companies.
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1924 - Electrical records replace acoustic discs, via a process developed by Western Electric.
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1925 - Vitaphone introduces a sound system to synchronize music and sound effects with a motion picture.
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1926 - 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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1926 - NBC -- the "National Broadcasting Company" begins as the first radio network.
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1926 - Scotsman John Logie Baird invents mechanical television which he calls a "Televisor", a postcard-sized black and pink (not black and white) image with 30 scan lines running at a flickering 12 1/2 frames per second.
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1928 - January 4th - is the date of the first broadcast of the expanded NBC -- all the way to the West Coast, for a total of 47 stations in the chain (now called a "Network")
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1928 - Billboard magazine publishes its first music chart of performed songs.
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1928 - Scotsman John Logie Baird demonstrates his system of mechanical television, transmitting its signal from England to the United States over the Atlantic ocean.
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1928 - In the United States, a young comedian named Milton Berle is the first person to be seen on television, on an experimental broadcast.
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1929 - The Edison Co. ceases the manufacturing of sound recordings.
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1929 - Philo Farnsworth transmits the first TV picture of a living person - his wife - on Oct. 19, in his San Francisco laboratory; the picture is only about 3 1/2 inches square.
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1933 - January 30 - The first episode of "The Lone Ranger" radio series debuts on radio station.
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1933 - Western Union introduces the first "singing telegram" service.
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1933 - Richard M. Hollingshead opened the first Drive-In Movie Theater in Camden, NJ on June 6.
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1936 - Billboard magazine publishes its first chart of top-selling records.
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1939 - Electronic television demonstrated at the Chicago Worlds Fair by RCA / NBC.