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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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On Sept. 7th -- Philo Farnsworth transmits the first "electric television" picture (about the size of a postage stamp, an inch and a half square) in his San Francisco Laboratory.
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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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Billboard magazine publishes its first music chart of performed songs.
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The Edison Co. ceases the manufacturing of sound recordings.
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To improve TV pictures, German scientist Fritz Schroeter applies for a patent on interlaced scanning.
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Vladimir Zworykin applies for a patent on a TV camera vacuum tube he calls the "Iconoscope."
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Western Union introduces the first "singing telegram" service.
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Richard M. Hollingshead opened the first Drive-In Movie Theater in Camden, NJ on June 6
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Regular FM Radio broadcasting begins in New York City.
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Captured German magnetic tape recorders brought to the United States which are copied for commercial use by A. M. Polikoff who founds AMPEX (he added "EX" for excellence.)
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NBC's weekend radio format MONITOR is cancelled after nearly 20 years --
It's final broadcast airs on Sunday jan, 26 -
Garrett Brown invents the gyroscopic Steadicam, a motion picture camera stabilizer
mount, worn by the cameraman himself, first used in the movie "Rocky." -
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 on August 12th --
"Personal Computer" becomes the popular name of what used to be called a "micro-
computer" system; It uses the "DOS" -- Disk Operating System -- provided by
enterprenour Bill Gates who bought the rights to it from a local company in Seattle
for a pittance, and resold it under his company's name -- "Microsoft" -
The digital Compact Disc (CD) is introduced by a Japanese conglomerate.
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In November, U.S. computing student Fred Cohen created the very first computer
virus -- as a research project. -
The first CD titles are released in the US in June (12 CBS, 15 Telarc, 30 Denon.
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- The (128K) Apple Macintosh personal computer debuts with a Graphical User Interface advertised as "the computer for the rest of us", expected sales of 50,000 the first month at $2495, the industry (and Apple) is surprised when 75,000 orders pour in...perhaps due in part to a novel TV ad aired during the Football Superbowl game.
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NBC broadcasts the first television programs with stereo sound
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Adoption of the CD starts taking a huge bite out of LP sales, causing them to drop 25%.
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The Recording Industry Association of America (the RIAA) announces on June 19 that
CDs have overtaken LP sales in the U.S. -
The CD overtakes LP sales worldwide; CD-ROMs are developed as a computer medium
able to store around 750 MegaBytes per disc. -
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. CEDAR
is an acronym for Computer Enhanced Digital Audio Restoration. Other companies in
the U.S. soon followed. One of them -- Sonic Solutions -- began in San Rafael, California
as a spin-off of a project called "Edit-Droid" from George Lucas' company Lucasfilm.
Sonic Solutions sells a syst -
Phillips introduces a digital audio tape recorder (DAT) using a digital casette.
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The "SoundScan" barcode tracking system of reporting music recording sales begins
to bring accurate sales figures to record charts; Country music is now a bigger segment. -
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. -
Personal computers outsell TV sets for the first time in the United States
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The Internet starts to "take off" as a major computing platform due to the World Wide
Web being "discovered" for a myriad of commercial and social uses; junk EMail begins -
The online auction community eBay starts out as "AuctionWeb.com", programmed
by General Magic engineer Pierre Omidyar who started it as a hobby project.
It debuts on the Web in September 1995, and 10 years later in September, 2005
eBay will boast 157 million registered users worldwide, 75 million in the U.S. -
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.. -
The world falls in love with everything Internet, and there is talk of a "New Economy"
where the old rules don't apply. But by 2001, the speculative bubble bursts, leaving
many computer engineers jobless; and fueling the trend toward hi-tech outsourcing. -
First regular transmissions of HDTV (High-Definition Television) begin in major cities
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Recordable CD-R digital audio disc technology becomes part of personal computer systems.
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Broadband Internet service providers begin to be offered to consumers faster Web page
downloads and smoother and faster streaming media. -
Internet music-swapping site "Napster" is created, and alarms the recording industry
which mounts a massive campaign to shut it down despite First Amendment concerns. -
The first year recording sales actually declined -- record industry blames online music
swapping as the cause and tried to advance digital copy protection schemes. -
Digital electronic books (E-Books) become a small part of the publishing industry, and
several competing companies attempt to introduce the standards for them. -
March 10 -- the so-called "Internet Bubble" burst leading to a recession/shakeout
of the inflated technology industry, as reality started to replace "irrational exuberance." -
Consumer DVD recorders were introduced at the Comdex Consumer Electronics
show in Las Vegas priced at $1000, but by the 2001 show came down to around $500;
these video recorders can hold up to 4.7 gigabytes of video and multimedia content -
Napster is forced to "filter out" content due to RIAA lawsuit; hints at fees to come
other free peer-to-peer software including Gnutella are developed to take Napster's place -
Intel announces a breakthrough in the speed of computer processing chips that will make
computers several THOUSAND times faster; first systems expected to be sold in 2007 -
DVD video disk players outsell VHS video cassette recorder/players for the first time
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Music DVD's are introduced which can contain 7 - 10 times the amount of music, or
multimedia content to augment the usual sound recordings. -
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. -
Reminiscent of VHS/Betamax, an alternate standard for consumer DVD writable disks
is introduced to thwart piracy called DVD+RW (as opposed to original DVD-RW);
Microsoft is among the chief proponents of DVD+RW; Apple remains with DVD-RW -
October 23 - 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. -
The F.C.C. (U.S. Federal Communications Commision) requires all new U.S.
television TV sets to include digital receivers in order to help the transition to digital
transmission by February 17, 2009. -
October 10 - The F.C.C. approves a digital radio broadcast standard developed by
iBiquity Digital Corp., a company backed by broadcasters including ABC and Viacom. -
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 (but illegal) file swapping -
Retailers Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Circuit City announce they will stop selling
VHS Video Cassette tapes since DVD's are now the medium of choice for most consumers -
December 20 -- the U.S. Congress agreed that Standard NTSC analog TV broadcasts will
cease in favor of all digital TV transmission nation-wide on February 17, 2009 -
January 27 - Western Union stopped delivering telegrams as of this date --
ending a service in the United States that it began in 1851; Their primary
business is still money transfers. -
February 22 - Apple Computer's online music store integrated into its iTunes software
and iPod hardware, sold it's one-billionth song on this date, proving that digital music
can be accepted by the public when distributed across a network in a virtual form, as
opposed to inscribed only in discrete tangible media. -
Digital music sales top physical sales
