communication

Paleolithic Cave Art

40,000 BCE

cave art, generally, the numerous paintings and engravings found in caves and shelters dating back to the Ice Age (Upper Paleolithic), roughly between 40,000 and 14,000 years ago. See also rock art. The first painted cave acknowledged as being Paleolithic, meaning from the Stone Age, was Altamira in Spain.

Cuneiform

3500 BCE

Cuneiform was first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia around 3,500 B.C. The first cuneiform writings were pictographs created by making wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets with blunt reeds used as a stylus. Cuneiform isn't a single writing system, however.

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

3100 BCE

The hieroglyphic script originated shortly before 3100 B.C., at the very onset of pharaonic civilization. The last hieroglyphic inscription in Egypt was written in the 5th century A.D., some 3500 years later.

Hand written/ Illuminated Manuscripts

1100

Illuminated manuscripts were produced between 1100 and 1600, with monasteries as their earliest creators. Wealthy patrons also wanted these illustrative works for personal libraries and encouraged the formation of private workshops that flourished in French and Italian cities between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Printing Press

1435

German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press around 1436, although he was far from the first to automate the book-printing process. Woodblock printing in China dates back to the 9th century and Korean bookmakers were printing with movable metal type a century before Gutenberg.

Telegraph

1835

New York University professor Samuel Morse. Began working on his version of the telegraph in 1832; he developed Morse Code (a set of sounds that corresponded to particular letters of the alphabet), in 1835; and by 1838 he had presented his concept to the U.S. Congress.

Telephone

1875

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with being the inventor of the telephone since his patent and demonstrations for an apparatus designed for “transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically… causing electrical undulations” were successful. First Bell Telephone, June 1875.

Radio

1893

Italian inventor Guillermo Marconi first developed the idea of a radio, or wireless telegraph, in the 1890s. His ideas took shape in 1895 when he sent a wireless Morse Code message to a source more than a kilometer away.

Television

1927

Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927. The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, who had been working on it since 1920. Electronic television is a type of television that uses electronic signals to produce images on a video screen.

Computers

1945

The first computer was invented by Charles Babbage (1822) but was not built until 1991! Alan Turing invented computer science. The ENIAC (1945) was the first electronic general-purpose digital computer; it filled a room. The Micral N was the world's first “personal computer”

Gaming Systems

1970

History. The first video game consoles were produced in the early 1970s. Ralph H. Baer devised the concept of playing simple, spot-based games on a television screen in 1966, which later became the basis of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972.