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1600 BCE
alphabet
The alphabet is invented in Lebanon and Israel -
1445
printing press
By 1452, Gutenberg entered into a business partnership with Fust in order to continue funding his printing experiments. Gutenberg continued to refine his printing process and by 1455 had printed several copies of the Bible. -
1512
Royal Mail
Royal Mail and its forerunner organisations are responsible for a number of global firsts, ranging from the Penny Black stamp to the world's first 'one-price-goes-anywhere' Universal Service. -
first American newspaper
On September 25, 1690, the first colonial newspaper in America,
Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, was published.
Although some English newspapers and single-page broadsides had been
available to read before, this was the first true multi-page colonial newspaper -
telegraph, Isaac Pitman invents shorthand.
He also printed standard works in shorthand, and his book Phonography (1840) went through many editions. He was an enthusiastic spelling reformer and adopted a phonetic system that he tried to bring into general use. In 1894 he was knighted. -
telephone
Samuel F.B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible between two distant points. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a “harmonic telegraph,” a device that combined aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance. -
radio message across the Atlantic
Marconi sends first Atlantic wireless transmission. Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less. -
first handheld cell phone
Alexander Graham Bell, on March the 10th, 1876, made the historic first telephone call that gave birth to a cultural and business shift which changed the world. 97 years later, in 1973, Motorola installed a base station to handle the first public demonstration of a phone call over a cellular network. -
Satellite television
British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) was a television company, headquartered in London, that provided direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom. The company was merged with Sky Television plc on 2 November 1990 to form British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB).
