MSCM 430 Communication History Timeline

By jamcdona
  • 100

    600 BC, Writing in Central America

  • 100

    1200 BC, Writing in China

  • 100

    3300 BC, Writing in Mesopotamia

  • 100

    2500 BC, Writing in Egypt

  • 100

    2500 BC Papyrus, Egypt

  • 150

    1st cent. CE, Silk, China

  • 250

    2nd cent. CE, Rag/Cloth fiber, China

  • 350

    3rd. cent. CE, Bamboo, China

  • Jan 1, 1050

    10th cent. CE, Wood/Ceramic Block Printing, Korea

  • Jan 1, 1350

    Wycliffe translates Bible in English

  • Jan 1, 1450

    Gutenberg Press (Mainz, Germany)

  • Jan 1, 1529

    Henry VIII splits from Catholicism, heads the Church of England

  • First English news sheets (Amsterdam)

  • English settlers establish Jamestown colony (Virginia, USA)

  • Puritans establish Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts, USA)

  • Charles I extends licensing to all printed materials

  • Milton publishes Areopagitica, argument against state licensing/censorship

  • Hobbes publishes Leviathan

  • Locke publishes the Treatises on Government

  • Cato's letters

  • Period: to

    French & Indian Wars

  • Stamp Act

  • Declaration of Independence

  • Federalist Papers

  • Period: to

    Partisan Period

    The press as the public forum for the arguments over the form and role of the new US government. Press freedom as a double-edged sword; essential to democracy but a challenge for effective government.

  • Alien & Sedition Acts

  • Period: to

    Louis Daguerre (France): copper plate imaging

  • Period: to

    Samuel Morse: Telegraph

  • George Archer (Britain): glass plate imaging

  • Abraham Lincoln elected

  • Civil War begins (Fort Sumpter, Charleston, SC)

  • Emancipation Proclamation

  • Battle of Gettysburg

  • New York Draft Riots

  • James Clerk Maxwell theorizes the existence of electromagnetic waves

  • Civil War ends (Appomattox Courthouse, VA)

  • Thomas Edison invents electric light

  • Alexander Graham Bell: telegraphy (telephone)

  • Thomas Edison: phonograph

  • George Eastman (US): celluloid film imaging

  • Thomas Edison: full motion photography & reproduction (kinetoscope)

  • Lumiere brothers (France): perfect Edison's system, motion pictures

  • British Marconi Company established

  • Period: to

    Marconi: Radio

  • American Marconi Company established

  • Ida Tarbell's History of Standard Oil

  • The Great Train Robbery (first American feature film)

  • Lincoln Steffins' The Shame of the Cities & Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

  • Lee Deforest: Audion

  • Reginald Fessenden: broadcast of music via radio

  • Wireless Ship Act requires ocean-going US passenger ships to have wireless

  • Titanic sinks

  • Radio Act of 1912

    Mandates continuous monitoring of wireless distress channels by shipboard operators.

  • Birth of a Nation (DW Griffith)

  • MMPC declared illegal

  • US enters WWI, nationalizes all radio communication & patents

  • Radio Corporation of America established (RCA)

  • Period: to

    Chaos Period: Unregulated Radio

  • KDKA Pittsburgh broadcasts results of Presidential Election

  • AT&T begins radio advertising

  • 3 million radio receivers in homes

  • Sarnoff establishes NBC

  • AT&T and Warner Bros. patent system for synchronizing sound for film using recorded discs

  • Radio Act of 1927

    government controls all channels and uses of radio. Act establishes the FRC, overlooks chain broadcasting.

  • CBS established

  • Hays Code adpoted

  • Period: to

    Golden Age of Radio

  • President Roosevelt begins the Fireside Chats

  • Communications Act of 1934

    Creates the FCC, puts radio & telephone regulation under one agency.

  • First FM radio station established

  • Edward R. Murrow broadcasts Hitler's entrance into Vienna

  • War of the Worlds broadcast

  • NBC forced to sell Blue Network; Blue becomes ABC

  • US v. Paramount forces studios to divest interest in theaters.

  • Radio becomes a format medium as TV becomes the program medium

  • US starts to release Vietnam casualty figures to press

  • Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite's "Report from Vietnam"

  • Pentagon Papers

  • Nixon's plumbers break into psychiatrist's office in Watergate complex

  • Nixon's plumbers are caught in Democratic Party headquarters in Watergate complex

  • Student protest at Kent Sate University, four students killed by NG troops

  • Vietnam cease-fire agreement

  • House of Reps holds televised hearings on Watergate scandal

  • House of Reps votes to impeach Nixon; Nixon resigns.

  • Iranian Revolution--63 Americans taken hostage (Kennedy)

  • Reagan elected President

  • US invades Grenada, first war with zero media access

  • Iran-Contra scandal breaks in Lebanese Magazine Al Shira'a

  • Fall of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, Berlin Wall

  • Operation Desert Storm

    embedded journalists

  • 8th cent. CE, Wood/Ceramic Block Printing, China

  • 9th cent. CE, Wood/Ceramic Block Printing, Japan