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The Boston Public Library opens to the public. It is the first "free municipal library" in the U.S.
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Work begins on The Oxford English Dictionary.
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Christopher Sholes invents the "modern" typewriter. Known as the Sholes Glidden, it is first manufactured by E. Remington & Sons in 1873.
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The Society to Encourage Studies at Home is founded in Boston by Anna Eliot Ticknor, daughter of Harvard professor George Ticknor. It's purpose is to allow women the opportunity for study and enlightenment and becomes the first correspondence school in the United States.
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Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone, though the true ownership of the invention remains controversial even today.
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Thomas Edison invents sound recording and patents the phonograph the next year.
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Benday process for production of color images in newspapers
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Charles Eastman invents plastic photographic film.
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Linotype, the first successful automatic typesetting machine, set up at New York Tribune.
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Thomas Edison and W.K. Dickson develop the Kinetoscope, a peep-show device in which film is moved past a light.
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Two French brothers, Louis and August Lumiere patent a combination movie camera and projector, capable of projecting an image that can be seen by many people.
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The Association of American Universities is founded to promote higher standards.
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Joliet Junior College, in Joliet, Illinois, opens. It is the first public community college in the U.S.
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Modern screen printing process developed.
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Philo T. Farnsworth invents modern electronic television.
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Wirephoto transmitted by telephotography.
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Spirit duplicator (ditto machine) developed.
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Leitz markets a derivative of Barnack's camera commercially as the "Leica", the first high quality 35mm camera.
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Western Electric and Warner Bros. agree to develop a system for movies with sound.
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Peter Goldmark pioneers color television.
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Inception of Technicolor for movies, where three black and white negatives were made in the same camera under different filters.
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Chester Carlson invents Xerography (photocopying) developed in New York.
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US government scientist Vannevar Bush proposes a kind of desk-sized memory store called Memex, which has some of the features later incorporated into electronic books and the World Wide Web (WWW).
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The computer age begins as the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), the first vacuum-tube computer, is built for the U.S. military by Presper Eckert and John Mauchly.
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John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the transistor, which allows electronic equipment to made much smaller and leads to the modern computer revolution.
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Phototypesetting developed.
