Communication to Social Media Timeline

By facebooker_2459329470747219
  • 200 BCE

    Smoke Signals

    Originally used in Ancient China to send messages along the Great Wall of China in case of invasions or other visitations.
  • 150 BCE

    Polybius advances the smoke signal

    Greek Historian Polybius devises a system of smoke signals that were visual repesentations of the alphabet.
  • 1150

    Carrier Pigeons

    As early as 1150 AD, carrier pidgeons were used to send messages over long distances. messages were written on small aprchments and held in metal canisters on a bird's leg.

  • Bottled Messages

    Although bottled messages have been used since around 310 BC, the Britsh Navy often used messages in a bottle to send messages about enemy positions to the shore. Queen Elizabeth I created the position of "Official Opener of Bottles" and if anyone else opened the bottles found on shore, they would face a death penalty.

  • Telegraph

    Originally invented by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone.

  • Morse code

    Samuel Morse develops the American Morse code along with Joseph Henry and Alfred Vail.

  • Fax Machines

    Scottish inventor Alexander Bain invented The Electric Printing Telegraph machine in 1843. However, the Fax machine that we know only became popular around the 1980s.

  • The Pony Express

    The service that would later become the groundwork for the United States Postal Service, The Pony Express, was invented and lasted little more than a year. Beginning on April 3rd, 1860 and ending on October 26th, 1861.

  • Balloon Mail

    Originally used to send messages from Paris during the Siege of Paris. A parchment or pice of mail was attached to a helium balloon and sent to an unknown location in hopes of receiving aid from outside parties.

  • Telephone

    Despite controversy between Thomas Edison, Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell and his associate Thomas Watson hold the patent for the telephone.

  • Pagers

    The first paging system was put into use by the Detroit Police Department in 1921. But the first telephone pager was invented by Al Gross in 1949 and his pagers were first used in New York City's Jewish Hospital.

  • Cell phones

    Motorola created the first cell phones in 1973. These "Dinosaurs" weighed a whopping 4.4lbs each.

  • Predictive Text

    Cliff Kushler invented T9 Predictive texting software. T9 is short for "Txting on Nine Keys".

  • Instant Messaging

    Modern, GUI-based messaging clients such as AOL's "AIM" and ICQ emerged as prevalent messaging platforms.

  • Texting

    Nokia was the first handset manufacturer whose phones supported user-sent SMS messaging.

  • SixDegrees

    SixDegrees.com becomes the first social messaging platform on the internet.

  • Blogger

    The world's first blogging platform is created as "Blogger".

  • Friendster

    Friendster, an early facebook-like platform became popular.

  • Myspace

    Myspace became popular and Tom made a LOT of friends.

  • Harvard's "Facebook"

    The Harvard Facebook is invented as a dating platform for college students.

  • Twitter/Facebook

    Twitter, the short-form social media platform is invented and released. The Harvard Facebook is released to the public as "Facebook", a social media and networking website.