Digital Timeline

  • Electric light

    Electric light

    Humphry Davy invents the first electric light, however it was too bright for practical use and did not last long enough.
  • Photograph

    Photograph

    Nicéphore Niépce makes the first known photograph, a picture of the courtyard of his house
  • First telegraph

    First telegraph

    Samuel Morse invented the first telegraph at this time. He used it and sent a message from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. The first message to be sent, "What hath God wrought"
  • First Telephone

    First Telephone

    Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call, addressing his assistant “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you.”
  • Radio

    Radio

    Guglielmo Marconi sends a Morse code message of the letter "S" across the Atlantic
  • Television

    Television

    Philo T. Farnsworth makes the first electronic television transmission, which was a horizontal line
  • Computer

    Computer

    John Atanasoff designs the first digital electronic computer. It would use binary numbers and its data stored in capacitors.
  • Artificial Intelligence

    Artificial Intelligence

    Arthur Samuel writes a checkers program
  • Personal Computer

    Personal Computer

    The first computer that is small enough for home use, the Altair, is invented
  • Internet

    Internet

    Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn produced the TCP/IP which is the basis for how data is transmitted over the internet