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Communication History
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Samuel Morse invents the first long distance telegraph line.
Samuel F.B. Morse sent the First Telegraphic Message. What was the first telegraph message? Sent by inventor Samuel F.B. Morse on May 24, 1844, over an experimental line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, the message said: "What hath God wrought?" -
Sholes invented the first successful and modern typewriter.
The first typewriter to be commercially successful was invented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use, or even to recommend it. The working prototype was made by the machinist Matthias Schwalbach. The patent was sold for $12,000 to Densmore and Yost, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons (then famous as a manufacturer of sewing mach -
First telephone answering machines were invented.
In 1949 the first commercially successful answering machine was the Electronic Secretary created by inventor Joseph Zimmerman and businessman George W. Danner, who founded Electronic Secretary Industries in Wisconsin. The Electronic Secretary used the then 'state-of-the-art' technology of a 45 rpm record player for announcements and a wire recorder for message capture and playback. -
Thomas Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture.
The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures. -
The Warner Brothers invented a way to record sound separately from the film.
Warner Bros. Records was established in 1958 as the recorded music division of the American movie studio Warner Bros. Pictures. For most of its existence it was one of a group of labels owned and operated by larger parent corporations. The sequence of companies that controlled Warner Bros. and its allied labels evolved through a convoluted series of corporate mergers and acquisitions from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. They became one of the top recording labels in the world. -
Joseph Begun invents the first tape recorder for broadcasting.
The earliest known audio tape recorder was a non-magnetic, non-electric version invented by Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory and patented in 1886. -
Network television starts in the US.
Television broadcasting in the United States was heavily influenced by radio. Early individual experimental radio stations in the United States began limited operations in the 1910s. In November 1920, Westinghouse signed on "the world's first commercially licensed radio station", in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -
Computers are first sold commercially.
The first sale, to the Census Bureau, was marked with a formal ceremony on March 31, 1951, at the Eckert–Mauchly Division's factory at 3747 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia. The machine was not actually shipped until the following December, because, as the sole fully set-up model, it was needed for demonstration purposes, and the company was apprehensive about the difficulties of dismantling, transporting, and reassembling the delicate machine. As a result, the first installation was with the secon -
Zip codes invented in the United States.
By the early 1960s a more organized system was needed, and on July 1, 1963, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP codes were introduced nationwide. Simultaneously, along with the introduction of the ZIP code, two-letter state abbreviations were introduced, which are generally written with both letters capitalized. -
The computer floppy disk was invented.
The earliest floppy disks, developed in the late 1960s, became commercially available in 1971. These disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation. The term "floppy disk" appeared in print as early as 1970, and although in 1973 IBM announced its first media as "Type 1 Diskette" the industry continued to use the terms "floppy disk" or "floppy".
