Evolution of Media timeline.

Communication began as drawing on walls of caves and carvings on bark of trees. https://www.britannica.com/art/cave-painting

Cuneiform, system of writing used in the ancient Middle East. The name, a coinage from Latin and Middle French roots meaning “wedge-shaped,” has been the modern designation from the early 18th century onward. https://www.britannica.com/topic/cuneiform

Alphabet, set of graphs, or characters, used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets the characters are arranged in a definite order, or sequence (e.g., A, B, C, etc.). https://www.britannica.com/topic/alphabet-writing

Papyrus, writing material of ancient times and also the plant from which it was derived, Cyperus papyrus (family Cyperaceae), also called paper plant. The papyrus plant was long cultivated in the Nile delta region in Egypt and was collected for its stalk or stem, whose central pith was cut into thin strips, pressed together, and dried to form a smooth thin writing surface. https://www.britannica.com/topic/papyrus-writing-material

Earliest type of manuscript in the form of a modern book (i.e., a collection of written pages stitched together along one side), the codex replaced the earlier rolls of papyrus and wax tablets. The codex had several advantages over the roll, or scroll. It could be opened at once to any point in the text, it enabled one to write on both sides of the leaf, and it could contain long texts. The difference can be illustrated with copies of the Bible. https://www.britannica.com/topic/codex-manuscript

Woodcut, technique of printing designs from planks of wood incised parallel to the vertical axis of the wood’s grain. It is one of the oldest methods of making prints from a relief surface, having been used in China to decorate textiles since the 5th century CE. https://www.britannica.com/art/woodcut

Paper, matted or felted sheet, usually made of cellulose fibres, formed on a wire screen from water suspension. Paper has been traced to China in about AD 105. It reached Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad by 793, and by the 14th century there were paper mills in several parts of Europe. https://www.britannica.com/technology/paper

Printing press, machine by which text and images are transferred to paper or other media by means of ink. Although movable type, as well as paper, first appeared in China, it was in Europe that printing first became mechanized. The earliest mention of a printing press is in a lawsuit in Strasbourg in 1439 revealing construction of a press for Johannes Gutenberg and his associates. https://www.britannica.com/technology/printing-press

The first book printed in more than one color under Johann Fust and Peter Schoffer partnership is Psalter, a collection of Psalms for devotional use.

Postal system, the institution—almost invariably under the control of a government or quasi-government agency—that makes it possible for any person to send a letter, packet, or parcel to any addressee, in the same country or abroad, in the expectation that it will be conveyed according to certain established standards of regularity, speed, and security. https://www.britannica.com/topic/postal-system

Newspaper, publication usually issued daily, weekly, or at other regular times that provides news, views, features, and other information of public interest and that often carries advertising. Forerunners of the modern newspaper include the Acta diurna (“daily acts”) of ancient Rome—posted announcements of political and social events—and manuscript newsletters circulated in the late Middle Ages by various international traders, among them the Fugger family of Augsburg.

Digital computer, any of a class of devices capable of solving problems by processing information in discrete form. It operates on data, including magnitudes, letters, and symbols, that are expressed in binary code—i.e., using only the two digits 0 and 1. https://www.britannica.com/technology/digital-computer

Braille, universally accepted system of writing used by and for blind persons and consisting of a code of 63 characters, each made up of one to six raised dots arranged in a six-position matrix or cell. These Braille characters are embossed in lines on paper and read by passing the fingers lightly over the manuscript. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Braille-writing-system

Telegraph, any device or system that allows the transmission of information by coded signal over distance. Many telegraphic systems have been used over the centuries, but the term is most often understood to refer to the electric telegraph, which was developed in the mid-19th century and for more than 100 years was the principal means of transmitting printed information by wire or radio wave. https://www.britannica.com/technology/telegraph

Typewriter, any of various machines for writing characters similar to those made by printers’ types, especially a machine in which the characters are produced by steel types striking the paper through an inked ribbon with the types being actuated by corresponding keys on a keyboard and the paper being held by a platen that is automatically moved along with a carriage when a key is struck. https://www.britannica.com/technology/typewriter

Telephone, an instrument designed for the simultaneous transmission and reception of the human voice. The telephone is inexpensive, is simple to operate, and offers its users an immediate, personal type of communication that cannot be obtained through any other medium. As a result, it has become the most widely used telecommunications device in the world. Billions of telephones are in use around the world. https://www.britannica.com/technology/telephone#ref607765

Tape recorder, recording system that makes use of electromagnetic phenomena to record and reproduce sound waves. The tape consists of a plastic backing coated with a thin layer of tiny particles of magnetic powder. The recording head of the tape deck consists of a tiny C-shaped magnet with its gap adjacent to the moving tape. https://www.britannica.com/technology/tape-recorder

Kinetoscope, forerunner of the motion-picture film projector, invented by Thomas A. Edison and William Dickson of the United States in 1891. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Kinetoscope

Vitascope, motion-picture projector patented by Thomas Armat in 1895; its principal features are retained in the modern projector: sprocketed film operated with a mechanism (the “Maltese cross”) to stop each frame briefly before the lens, and a loop in the film to ease the strain. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Vitascope

Radio, sound communication by radio waves, usually through the transmission of music, news, and other types of programs from single broadcast stations to multitudes of individual listeners equipped with radio receivers. From its birth early in the 20th century, broadcast radio astonished and delighted the public by providing news and entertainment with an immediacy never before thought possible. https://www.britannica.com/topic/radio

Television (TV), the electronic delivery of moving images and sound from a source to a receiver. By extending the senses of vision and hearing beyond the limits of physical distance, television has had a considerable influence on society. https://www.britannica.com/technology/television-technology

The "walkie-talkie" is Don Hings' most well-known invention. The earliest versions of this device were designed as portable field radios for the bush pilots of Consolidated Mining and Smelting (now Cominco), who had to fly their planes between remote sites in the far north of Canada. http://dlhings.ca/walkietalkie.html

Cell phone, in full cellular telephone, wireless telephone that permits telecommunication within a defined area that may include hundreds of square miles, using radio waves in the 800–900 megahertz (MHz) band. https://www.britannica.com/technology/cell-phone

The transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories in December 1947 (not in 1948 as is often stated) by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. 'Discovered' would be a better word, for although they were seeking a solid-state equivalent to the vacuum tube, it was found accidentally during the investigation of the surface states around a diode point-contact. https://beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/belllabs_transistor1.html

ARPANET, in full Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, experimental computer network that was the forerunner of the Internet. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an arm of the U.S. Defense Department, funded the development of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in the late 1960s. Its initial purpose was to link computers at Pentagon-funded research institutions over telephone lines. https://www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET

Personal computer (PC), a digital computer designed for use by only one person at a time. A typical personal computer assemblage consists of a central processing unit (CPU), which contains the computer’s arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry on an integrated circuit, and various input/output devices, including a display screen, keyboard and mouse, modem, and printer. https://www.britannica.com/technology/personal-computer

Fax, in full facsimile, also called telefax, in telecommunications, the transmission and reproduction of documents by wire or radio wave. Common fax machines are designed to scan printed textual and graphic material and then transmit the information through the telephone network to similar machines, where facsimiles are reproduced close to the form of the original documents. https://www.britannica.com/technology/fax

Manny Fernandez had the idea for a well-designed laptop for executives who were just starting to use a computer. Fernandez, who started Gavilan Computer, promoted his machines as the first "laptop" computers in May 1983. Many historians have credited the Gavilan as the first fully functional laptop computer. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-laptop-computers-4066247

World Wide Web (WWW), byname the Web, the leading information retrieval service of the Internet (the worldwide computer network). The Web gives users access to a vast array of documents that are connected to each other by means of hypertext or hypermedia links—i.e., hyperlinks, electronic connections that link related pieces of information in order to allow a user easy access to them. https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-Wide-Web

Yahoo!, in full Yahoo! Inc., global Internet services provider based in Sunnyvale, California, and owned by Verizon Communications since 2017. It was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, graduate students at Stanford University in California. Yahoo! provides users with online utilities, information, and access to other Web sites. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yahoo-Inc

Social networking has become one of the biggest things to hit the Internet since Google, and Friendster was one of the first Web sites to bring it into mass culture. Started in 2002 by U.S. businessman Jonathan Abrams, Friendster.com was designed as a place to connect with friends, family, colleagues and new friends over the Internet. But it went beyond just a one-way communication like Evite, which connects the social lives of people who already know each other.

Skype, software for communication over the Internet, which includes voice, video, and instant message capabilities. Skype was one of the early successes in using the voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP). Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies, founded by Niklas Zennström of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark, first introduced the software client in 2003. The number of registered users of Skype was about 50 million in 2005 and increased more than 10-fold to more than 600 million just five years later.

Facebook, American company offering online social networking services. Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, all of whom were students at Harvard University. Facebook became the largest social network in the world, with more than one billion users as of 2012, and about half that number were using Facebook every day. The company’s headquarters are in Menlo Park, California. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Facebook

YouTube, Web site for sharing videos. It was registered on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of the American e-commerce company PayPal. They had the idea that ordinary people would enjoy sharing their “home videos.” The company is headquartered in San Bruno, California. https://www.britannica.com/topic/YouTube

Twitter, online microblogging service for distributing short messages among groups of recipients via personal computer or mobile telephone. Twitter incorporates aspects of social networking Web sites, such as Myspace and Facebook, with instant messaging technologies to create networks of users who can communicate throughout the day with brief messages, or “tweets.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Twitter

Photo-sharing platform launched by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger on July 16, 2006. It is now filled with selfie-filled, multi-million dollar beast used by 500 million people.

Facebook Messenger is a mobile tool that allows users to instantly send chat messages to friends on Facebook. Messages are received on their mobile phones. Facebook Messenger also enables users to send chat messages to people who are logged onto their Facebook accounts. It is is available for Android phones, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry devices. It operates on iOS, Windows (Windows 7 and Vista) and Android. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/28490/facebook-messenger