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1100
Medieval european churches
Some historians believe that medieval European cathedral architecture functioned as [the first] mass medium of religious communication by offering biblical stories and religious information to a largely illiterate population through the use of painting, sculpture, and other visual arts. -
1450
The Printing Press
Invented in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg. the Gutenberg Printing Press started to produce “thousands of indulgences for the church” and the following year a “42-line Bible, the first book ever printed on a movable type printing press -
The Telegraph
Invented by Samuel Morse. He created a method called Morse code using dots and dashes too spell out words in the late 19 century. It was the first means of electronic communication. -
The Telephone
Then came the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, this was surprisingly used as means of radio first rather then inter personal communication.(telephone and telegraph were the first forays into what we know today as electronic mass media) -
The Phonograph
The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison. It was the first technology that was designed to reproduce sound recordings. In 1891, Thomas Edison with the “the Edison Company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures” “Later in 1896, Edison showed his improved Vitascope projector and it was the first commercially, successful, projector in the U.S. -
"MEDIA" STARTS WITH PRINT
In the 1920's, the term "Media" was used for the first time and it was considered mass media because one piece of news/opinion or entertainment reached a large audience with one singular medium -
RADIO
Radio invented in 1896 by Guglielmo Marconi. According to Cecil, 2013, “radio stations started broadcasting in the beginning of 1920 . This brought the new concept of listening to radio programming into more peoples homes on affordable radios,” . In return radio audiences grew rapidly and made a huge impact on people’s lives. -
The Television
Although experimentation with television broadcasting began in the late 1920s, technical difficulties, corporate competition, and World War II postponed its introduction to the public until 1946. Television constituted a revolutionary change from radio, but its introduction was not as chaotic as that of radio, for an institutional framework already existed. The television boom occurred between 1949, when 940,000 households had a set, and 1953, when the number soared to 20 million . -
World Wide Web
The computer was the pinnacle of mass media because it was the first platform through which the concept of the Internet was introduced and completely revolutionized mass media to what we know today as New Media. The world wide web was created by Tim Berners Lee
