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25,000 BCE
Cave Paintings
Paintings were made from dirt or charcoal mixed with saliva or animal fat. Researchers have theorised that cave paintings were made to tell stories or show the importance of particular animals -
3500 BCE
Written Language
Sumerians of Mesopotamia have the oldest known written language. At the time it was used for tax purposes and record keeping. -
1800 BCE
Smoke Signals
Smoke signals were used by Chinese soldiers on the Great Wall of China to warn their comrades of an impending enemy attack. -
900 BCE
Postal System
Chinese people developed a postal system for transporting official military documents. -
776 BCE
Messenger Pigeons
The Greeks, for the first time in recorded history, had a messenger pigeon deliver results of the first Olympiad in 776. -
59 BCE
Public Notices
Acta Diurna (meaning daily acts) were daily Roman official notices. They were carved on stone or metal and presented in message boards in public places like the Forum of Rome. -
Typewriter
Descriptions of typewriter machines have been dated back to 1714, but were unreliable and hard to use. In 1867 Christopher Sholes patented the first commercially sold typewriter. -
Morse Code and Telegraphy
Samuel F. B. Morse, Joseph Henry and Alfred Vail invented an electrical telegraph system which could send messages over long distances by using pulses of electricity to signal a machine to make marks on a moving paper tape. -
Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell designed the first telephone. The first words spoken through the telephone were “Watson, come here! I want to see you!” -
Radio
Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, proved the feasibility of radio communication. He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. By 1899, he flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel and two years later received the letter "S," which was telegraphed from England to Newfoundland. -
Public Television Broadcast
Dr. Ernst Frederik Werner Alexanderson performs the first successful public television broadcast. The pictures were received on sets with 1.5 sq. inch screens in the homes of four General Electric executives in Schenectady, New York. The sound was transmitted over the WGY radio station. -
Computer
The Colossus was the first electric programmable computer, developed by Tommy Flowers, and first demonstrated in December 1943. The Colossus was created to help the British code breakers read encrypted German messages during WWII. -
Email
The first email is created and sent by Ray Thomlinson, a computer engineer working under ARPAnet. -
Cell Phone
The first cell phone (DynaTAC) was invented by Motorola researcher, Martin Cooper and weighed 2kg. -
World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989. The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automatic information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world. -
Short Messaging Service
The first SMS ever sent was by Brit Neil Papworth who texted ‘Happy Christmas’ to Vodafone director Richard Jarvis at a staff Christmas party. Papworth sent the Short Messaging Service from his work computer to an Orbitel 901 handset.
