Ed Tech Technology History Timeline

By hannahstibbe
  • First Car Radios

    First Car Radios

    The Detroit Police Department began using mobile radios in their police cars. They used them to talk between cars and it broadcast at a frequency just above AM radio, but it didn't work very well.
  • First Radio in the War

    First Radio in the War

    The US Army Signal Corps communicate via radio in the field during wartime. They used horses to hold and carry the radios.
  • First Cordless Phone

    First Cordless Phone

    A jazz musician named Teri Pall invented a version of the cordless phone but could not sell it due its 2-mile range caused its radio signals to interfere with aircraft communications.
  • First Cell Phone

    First Cell Phone

    The first moblie phone was introduced by Dr. Martin Cooper. He made the first call on April 3rd, 1973. He was a Motorola researcher and executive.
  • Cell Phones Available to Buy

    Cell Phones Available to Buy

    10 years later after the prototype, Motorola's DynaTAC cellular phone was made available to the public, weighing under 2 pounds, but costing nearly $4,000 (almost $9,000 today)
  • First Flip Phone

    First Flip Phone

    Next was Motorola's MicroTAC, which introduced the first flip phone design. The hardware was place in a hinged section of the phone, reducing the phone's size when not in use.
  • First Handheld Phone

    First Handheld Phone

    The Motorola International 3200 became the first hand-sized digital mobile phone that used 2G digitally encrypted technology
  • First "Smart" Phone

    First "Smart" Phone

    IBM Simon was a mobile phone, pager, fax machine and PDA, all rolled into one.It had a calendar, address book, clock, calculator, notepad, email, gamers and a touchscreen with QWERTY keyboard. It originally sold for $899, which would be just over $1,300 nowadays.
  • An Even Smaller Phone

    An Even Smaller Phone

    Motorola unveiled the first clamshell mobile phone with StarTAC. It improved the folding feature by collapsing in half, which is why it's called "clamshell"—because it resembles a clam opening and closing shut.
  • Start of the Cell Phone Era

    Start of the Cell Phone Era

    The Nokia 9000 Communicator was what really brought on the smartphone era. It was the first cell phone that could also be called a mini-computer even though it had limited web access.
  • No More Antennas

    No More Antennas

    The Nokia 8810 was the first cell phone without an external antenna whip or stub-antenna and also had its sliding keypad cover.
  • First Texting

    First Texting

    One of the most popular mobile phones in history was the Nokia 3210. It was one of the first to allow picture messages, but only preinstalled ones like "Happy Birthday".
  • First Camera in a Phone

    First Camera in a Phone

    In Japan, Kyocera's Visual Phone (VP-201) was the first to have a built-in camera. I.t was designed primarily as a peer-to-peer video phone
  • First Camera Phone in America

    First Camera Phone in America

    The Sanyo 5300 from Sprint was the first camera phone sold in North America.
  • First Phone To Have Songs

    First Phone To Have Songs

    Motorola ROKR E1 was the first phone to have songs, but it only could manage 100 songs at a time
  • First iPhone

    First iPhone

    Steve Jobs debuted the Apple iPhone, a touchscreen smartphone. It wasn't the first smartphone, but it was the first to get the user interface right, eventually adapting 3G technology (which was already available since 2001)
  • First Android

    First Android

    The first smartphone to run Google's Android OS was the HTC Dream slider smartphone. It featured a QWERTY keyboard, full HTML web browser, Gmail, YouTube and mor.