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Period: Jan 1, 1400 to
Print technologies
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Jan 1, 1439
The invention of the Printing Press
Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press. The invention of the press revolutionized communication and education, allowing the development of newspapers, as well as reasonably priced books. The first product of the press was the Guttenberg Bible. -
The first weekly Newspaper
The first weekly newspaper was printed and distributed in Antwerp, Belgium, called 'Relation' -
The first Daily Newspaper
It was first published on 11 March 1702 by Edward Mallet from his premises "against the Ditch at Fleet Bridge". The paper lasted until 1735 when it was merged with the Daily Gazetteer.
The paper consisted of a single page with two columns. Mallet advertised that he intended to publish only foreign news and would not add any comments of his own, supposing other people to have "sense enough to make reflections for themselves." -
The first Magazine published in London
The Gentleman's Magazine, first published in 1731, in London, is considered to have been the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazine under the pen name "Sylvanus Urban," was the first to use the term "magazine," on the analogy of a military storehouse of varied materiel, originally derived from the Arabic makhazin "storehouses" -
Invention of the Cylinder Press
Invented by Richard Hoe. Cylinder press can print 8,000 sheets an hour. -
The invention of the Telephone
Bell's greatest success was achieved on March 10, 1876, marked not only the birth of the telephone but the death of the multiple telegraph as well.
Alexander Graham Bell's notebook entry of 10 March 1876 describes his successful experiment with the telephone. Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you." -
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Telephone technology
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The first Telephone line
In 1877, construction of the first regular telephone line from Boston to Somerville, Massachusetts was completed. By the end of 1880, there were 47,900 telephones in the United States. -
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TV and Radio technologies
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The first Tabloid style newspaper
The first tabloid style newspaper, the Daily Mirror is published. -
BBC Radio begins broadcasting
The BBC radio services began in 1922. It was licensed by the British Government through its General Post Office which had original control of the airwaves because they had been interpreted under law as an extension of the Post Office services. Today radio broadcasting still makes up a large part of the corporation's output and this is still reflected in the title of the BBC's listings magazine called 'Radio Times'. -
BBC begins broadcasting Television in the UK
Mechanically scanned, 30-line television broadcasts by John Logie Baird began in 1929, using the BBC transmitter in London, and by 1930 a regular schedule of programmes was transmitted from the BBC antenna in Brookmans Park. Television production was switched from Baird's company to what is now known as BBC One on 2 August 1932, and continued until September 1935. Regularly scheduled electronically scanned television began from Alexandra Palace in London on 2 November 1936, to just a few hundred -
The first mobile telephone call
The first mobile telephone call made from a car occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on June 17, 1946, using the Bell System's Mobile Telephone Service. -
Invention of the Internet
The first 'packet-switching' began in the early 1960s, creating peer-to-peer communication, this was the start of the internet. -
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Internet technologies
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The first handheld mobile phone call
On 3 April 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first analog mobile phone call using a heavy prototype model. He called Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs -
The first sale of the mobile phone
The new invention sold for an expensive price of $3,995 and weighed two pounds, receiving the nickname "the brick". The DynaTAc mobile phone cost $100m in development costs, and took over a decade to hit the market. When it did hit the market on March 6, 1983, the talk time was only a half an hour and took ten hours to charge. Despite the horrible battery life, weight, and low talk time, that didn't keep down consumer demands. The waiting lists were in thousands. -
Cable becomes widely available in the UK
Due to laws and legislation that was passed, the availability of cable TV increased drastically. -
Sky TV made widely available (UK)
After a merger between Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting most channels at the time were scrapped and replaced with Sky channels instead. -
First text message
SMS messaging being used for the first time was on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old test engineer for Sema Group (now Airwide Solutions), used a personal computer to send the text message "Merry Christmas" via the Vodafone network to the phone of Richard Jarvis. -
The World Wide Web becomes publicly available
The Hyperlinks between webpages began with the release of the WWW to the public in 1993, and describe the Web before the "bursting of the Dot-com bubble" in 2001 -
3G mobile made commercially available
The first commercial launch of 3G was by NTT DoCoMo in Japan on 1 October 2001, although it was initially somewhat limited in scope. -
The 'Web 2.0' concept
visions of a new, much more interactive, and user friendly internet arise, spurring the development of the World Wide Web into action. -
4G Mobile available
On December 6, 2010, ITU-R recognized that these two technologies, as well as other beyond-3G technologies that do not fulfill the IMT-Advanced requirements, could nevertheless be considered "4G", provided they represent forerunners to IMT-Advanced compliant versions and "a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed".
