Media History (by Yoanna Efimova) timeline

In 1440, in Germany, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which started a printing revolution. Gutenberg's most important innovation was the development of hand-molded metal printing matrices, thus producing a movable type–based printing press system. Gutenberg was the first European to use movable type printing, in around 1439.

The 17th century marked the beginning of the history of mechanical calculators. In 1642, Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical calculator which he presented as being able to perform computations that were previously thought to be only humanly possible. Co-opted into his father's labor as a tax collector in Rouen, Pascal designed the calculator to help in the large amount of tedious arithmetic required. This machine could add and subtract two numbers directly and multiply and divide by repetition.

In 1822 Charles Babbage designed his first mechanical machine with basic architecture very similar to a modern computer. In his machine, the data and program memory were separated, the operation was instruction-based, and the control unit could make conditional jumps. This machine used the decimal number system and was powered by cranking a handle.

In 1831, an American scientist, Joseph Henry, made an important discovery in electric induction which became the established underlying principles of the electric telegraph. Henry strung a mile of fine wire, placed an „intensity” battery at one end, and made the armature strike a bell at the other. This was the first discovery of the fact that a galvanic current could be transmitted to a great distance with so little a diminution of force as to produce mechanical effects.

In the 1830s, Samuel Morse created the Morse code (a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations). The code assigned letters in the alphabet and numbers a set of dots and dashes. This was based on the frequency of use of letters used often. For example, letters like E, A will get a shorter code. The Morse code revolutionized how information was transmitted across long distances.

On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, scientist, inventor and innovator, received the first patent for an “apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically,” a device he called the telephone. On March 10, 1876, three days after his patent was issued, Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, made the first successfully transmitted message. Pressing the receiver against his ear, Watson heard Bell’s message: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.

Thomas Alva Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone. His first experiments were with waxed paper. He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877, and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29.

Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) developed, demonstrated and marketed the first successful long-distance wireless telegraph. By 1895 he had succeeded in transmitting a signal just over a mile ‒ but the Italian Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs was not interested in funding further research. On 27 July 1896, Marconi successfully demonstrated his wireless telegraphy system by sending a signal between two Post Office buildings (300 meters).

In 1920, Westinghouse, one of the leading radio manufacturers, had an idea for selling more radios: It would offer programming. Dr. Frank Conrad was a Pittsburgh area ham operator. He frequently played records over the airwaves for the benefit of his friends. This was just the sort of thing Westinghouse had in mind, and it asked Conrad to help set up a regularly transmitting station in Pittsburgh. On November 2, 1920, station KDKA made the nation's first commercial broadcast.

Philo Farnsworth made his first successful electronic television transmission on September 7, 1927, and filed a patent for his system that same year. Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, to a receiver in another room of his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. The source of the image was a glass slide, backlit by an arc lamp. An extremely bright source was required because of the low light sensitivity of the design.

The Z1, designed by Konrad Zuse 1936-1937, was the first freely programmable computer in the world which used Boolean logic and binary floating-point numbers, however, it was unreliable in operation. It was completed in 1938 and financed completely from private funds. This computer was destroyed in the bombardment of Berlin in December 1943, during World War II, together with all construction plans.

Haloid introduced the first commercial xerographic copier, the Xerox Model A, in 1949. The company had announced the refined development of xerography in collaboration with Battelle Development Corporation in 1948. Manually operated, it was also known as the Ox Box. An improved version, Camera #1, was introduced in 1950. One of the most successful Xerox products ever, the 914 model (so-called because it could copy originals up to 9 inches by 14 inches) could make 100,000 copies per month.

One of the first commercially produced computers, the UNIVAC 1101 (ERA 1101), designed by ERA but built by Remington-Rand, was intended for high-speed computing and stored 1 million bits on its magnetic drum, one of the earliest magnetic storage devices and a technology which ERA had done much to perfect in its own laboratories. Many of the 1101’s basic architectural details were used again in later Remington-Rand computers until the 1960s.

In 1953 Dr. Norikazu Sawazaki developed a prototype helical scan video tape recorder. A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio material on magnetic tape. The early VTRs were open-reel devices which record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide (5.08 cm) tape. They were used in television studios, serving as a replacement for motion picture film stock and making recording for television applications cheaper and quicker.

In 1964 the first commercialized version of the modern-day fax machine LDX (Long Distance Xerography) was introduced and patented by the Xerox Corporation using telephone transmission
The System consisted of two separate devices, a Scanner and a Printer. The scanner converted images of documents into video transmission signals while the printer restored the images after transmission and duplicated the original image with a black and white copy.

On October 29, 1969, the first message was sent between two ARPANET computers. They tried to type in “LOGIN,” but the computers crashed after the first two letters.
Later in 1969, an experimental network of 4 computers called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was commissioned by the U.S. government. The computers were located at UCLA, SRI International, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. ARPANET evolved into the network of computer networks we know as the Internet.

The Magnavox Odyssey (known as the Brown Box) is the first commercial home video game console. It was developed by a small team led by Ralph H. Baer at Sanders Associates and released by Magnavox in the United States in 1972. The Odyssey consists of a white, black, and brown box which connects to a television set and two rectangular controllers attached by wires. It is capable of displaying three square dots on the screen in monochrome black and white, with differing behavior for the dots .

MTV (originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American pay television channel, launched on August 1, 1981 and based in New York City. MTV originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys", but in the years since its inception, the network significantly toned down its focus on music in favor of original reality programming targeting teenagers and young adults.

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, introduced in 1984, was the world's first truly portable cell phone that didn't require a mobile operator to connect a call. DynaTAC is a series of cellular telephones manufactured by Motorola, Inc. from 1983 to 1994. A full charge took roughly 10 hours, and it offered 30 minutes of talk time. It also offered an LED display for dialing or recall of one of 30 phone numbers. It was priced at $3,995 in 1984, its commercial release year, equivalent to $9,831 in 2019.