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100,000 BCE
Language
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3500 BCE
Writing
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3300 BCE
Cities
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1500
Printing
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Photography
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Telegraph
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Telephone
6 October 1861: Johann Philipp Reis (1834–1874) publicly demonstrated the Reis telephone before the Physical Society of Frankfurt. Reis' telephone was not limited to musical sounds. Reis also used his telephone to transmit the phrase "Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat" ("The horse does not eat cucumber salad"). -
Motion Pictures
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Radio
Starting in late 1894, Guglielmo Marconi began pursuing the idea of building a wireless telegraphy system based on Hertzian waves (radio). Marconi gained a patent on the system in 1896 and developed it into a commercial communication system over the next few years -
TV
On December 25, 1926, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a TV system with a 40-line resolution that employed a CRT display at Hamamatsu Industrial High School in Japan.[15] This was the first working example of a fully electronic television receiver. Takayanagi did not apply for a patent.[45] -
Digital Media
The first modern, programmable, digital computers, the Manchester Mark 1 and the EDSAC, were independently invented between 1948 and 1949.[5][6] Though different in many ways from modern computers, these machines had digital software controlling their logical operations. They were encoded in binary, a system of ones and zeroes that are combined to make hundreds of characters. The 1s and 0s of binary are the "digits" of digital media -
Internet
In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks. -
Laptop
The first laptop in the modern form was the Grid Compass 1101, designed by Bill Moggridge in 1979–80, and released in 1983. Enclosed in a magnesium case, it introduced the now familiar clamshell design, in which the flat display folded shut against the keyboard. -
World Wide Web
By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9,[38] the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also a HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server,[39] and the first Web pages that described the project itself. -
Digital Cellular Phones
In the 1990s, the 'second generation' mobile phone systems emerged. Two systems competed for supremacy in the global market: the European developed GSM standard and the U.S. developed CDMA standard. The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and this era also saw the advent of prepaid mobile phones. In 1991 the first GSM network (Radiolinja) launched in Finland. -
SMS
The first SMS message[23] was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1992, from Neil Papworth of Sema Group (now Mavenir Systems) using a personal computer to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone using an Orbitel 901 handset. The text of the message was "Merry Christmas."[24] -
GPS
Operational since 1978 and globally available since 1994, GPS is currently the world's most utilized satellite navigation system. -
Social Media
In 2002, social networking hit really its stride with the launch of Friendster. -
Multi-Touch Smartphone
In early 2007, Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone, one of the first smartphones to use a multi-touch interface. The iPhone was notable for its use of a large touchscreen for direct finger input as its main means of interaction, instead of a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical for smartphones at the time