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30,000 BCE
Prehistoric Petroglyphs
As tools were crude and a formal system of writing was not yet available, the first forms of media that emerged were cave drawings and art. The oldest known one is located in Sulawesi, Indonesia which is believed to be 35,400 years old. The picture showcases the one located in Chauvet Cave in Ardèche, France which is approx. 30,000 - 28,000 years old. -
17,000 BCE
Prehistoric Pictography
It is the creation of monochrome or polychrome images through the application of pigments. Stone age artists used these to create images of animals and humans. It became the basis of cuneiform and hieroglyphic writings. One of the most important ones that have been discovered is the one in the ceilings of Lascaux Cave, France. -
9500 BCE
Prehistoric Megalithic Carving
The main type of megalithic rock art was stone carving or engraving, which mostly consisted of prehistoric abstract signs and geometric motifs. Arguably more sophisticated than the past 2, however all three have been used throughout all periods of the Stone Age. Relief Sculpture of Bull, Fox and Crane (9100-8800 BCE) of Gobekli Tepe in Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey. -
3100 BCE
Sumerian Language
The oldest known language and method of writing (cuneiform) which was formed at around 3100 BCE in southern Mesopotamia. The earliest Sumerian writing is almost exclusively represented by texts of business. -
1450 BCE
Oldest Extant Song
The Hurrian Hymn No. 6 is an ode to the goddess NIkkal which was composed in cuneiform by ancient Hurrians around 14th century BCE. The clay tablets containing the tune were excavated in the 1950s from the ruins of the city of Ugarit in Syria. It included the set of musical notations as well as instructions on how to play the song. -
868
Early Books and Documents
From the Latin term "libri manu scripti" which means "book written by hand", the very first handwritten documents were written on vellum as paper was not widely available. Most books and documents were for religious doctrines, as writing one was considered a form of worship. The most famous and oldest surviving texts is a Buddhist holy text, the Diamond Sūtra -
1436
The Printing Press
German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press around 1436. Although woodblock printing was already present in East Asia as early at the 9th century, Gutenberg's adaptation employed a screw-type wine press which was used in the modern age. It became the key to inexpensively mass-produce books and became a catalyst for revolutionary ideas spreading all around, including in the famous Renaissance. -
First Newspapers
The oldest direct handwritten news sheets circulated widely in Venice as early as 1566. Avvisi, or gazettes contained weekly news on wars and politics in Italy and Europe. The image below shows the title page of Carolus' Relation from 1609, the earliest newspaper. -
The Jacquard Loom
Joseph-Marie Jacquard's card-programmed loom (1805) was the first machine to make use of punched cards as an information storage device. The stored data was used to control woven fabric patterns. The idea of the punched card as a data input device was adopted by Charles Babbage for his designs of mechanical computers. -
The First Photograph
"View from the Window at Le Gras", made in 1826 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, is believed to be the oldest surviving photograph. The photo of farm buildings and a field was made as a positive image on a metal plate (thought to be pewter) coated with bitumen, a somewhat light sensitive petroleum derivative. The exposure time was 8 hours. -
The Telegraph and the Morse Code
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines. -
Typewriters Emerge
The first practical typewriter was completed in September, 1867, although the patent was not issued until June, 1868. The man who was responsible for this invention was Christopher Latham Sholes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The first power operated machine of practical value was invented in 1914 by James Fields Smathers though production was halted during the war. -
Storing Sound
When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, he created the first technology for recording and reproducing sounds as perceived by people. Edison used a vibrating stylus connected to a sound collecting horn to record sound vibrations as a vertical pattern of waves on the surface of a rotating tinfoil cylinder. By the 1970s, it had been largely displaced by magnetic tape. -
First Radio Booms
Though radio waves were discovered in 1893 by inventor Nikolai Tesla, prior to 1920s, radios were only used to contact ships out at sea. After the war, civilians began to purchase radios for personal use and the National Broadcasting company began running sponsored news programs as well as radio dramas. By 1940, 835 of households had a radio -
The Era of Television
The world’s first electronic television was created by a 21 year old inventor named Philo Taylor Farnsworth. Electronic televisions rely on a technology called a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). The first mechanical TV station was called W3XK and aired its first broadcast on July 2, 1928. -
Cable Television
Cable television originated in the United States to enhance poor reception of over-the-air television signals in mountainous or geographically remote areas. Cable operators began to take advantage of their ability to pick up broadcast signals from hundreds of miles away. -
Period: to
The Development of the Internet
The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. On October 29, 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another. The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. -
Brand New Communication: Emails
Ray Tomlinson became the first person to send an email in 1971. He was also one of the developers of ARPANET - which would later become the Internet. It was Tomlinson who decided to use the now-ubiquitous “@” symbol to separate the recipient’s name from their location – to indicate that the user was “at” some other host rather than being local. -
The Rise of Computers
A small firm named MITS made the first personal computer, the Altair. This computer, which used Intel Corporation’s 8080 microprocessor, was developed in 1974. Though the industry only truly began in 1977 with the introduction of Apple Computer Inc.'s products Apple II, the Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80, and the Commodore Business Machines Personal Electronic Transactor (PET) -
Websites: a New World
The first website contained information about the World Wide Web Project. It launched at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, where it was created by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee (the creator of the World Wide Web). On it, people could find out how to create web pages and learn about hypertext (coded words or phrases that link to content). -
Digital Media Giant YouTube
YouTube was created on February 14th, 2005 in San Mateo, California by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The three founders knew each other from working together at another Internet start up, PayPal. The very first YouTube video was uploaded on April 23rd, 2005 at 3:27:12 UTC by the site’s co-founder, Jawed Karim.