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3200 BCE
Hieroglyphs
The first widely-known use of writing as communication was with the Egyptians and their Heiroglyphics. There wasn't necessarily written language, but they used various images to describe events or tell a story to those that would observe it. -
776 BCE
Messenger Pigeon
The Greeks first utilized birds as a method of message delivery to deliver the results of the 776 Olympiad. This worked because pigeons were exceptionally skilled at tracing their direction back to their home, and would always return back to where they lived once set loose with a message. This was an incredibly smart way to deliver messages, and worked very well for the Greeks. Humans wouldn't even be used to deliver messages until much later. -
200 BCE
Smoke Signals
Using smoke as a means to communicate first occurred in China. There needed to be a way to send messages across the Great Wall, and smoke patterns proved the easiest way to send simple messages across. They would have people raise torches and light fire in specific numbers and arrangements to convey a pre-established meaning to those on the other side of the wall. -
1436
Printing Press
Johannes Guttenberg created the first practical printing press, which used an oil based ink system and adjustable molds for letters. This was the first machine that made books significantly easier to mass produce, and made books as communication, news, and entertainment sources far more popular. -
Newspaper
The first newspaper titled "Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien" (or "Account of all distinguished and commemorable news") was printed by Johann Carolus in Germany. It was the first sheet of paper simply dedicated to recent news, and was posted in locations that people frequented often instead of being distributed individually. -
Photography
The first photograph was not captured by a machine at all, but instead used inks and sunlight to create an image of the space it was facing. This popularized the idea of creating a device that could do this quickly, and evolved into the first Kodak film roll camera, created by George Eastman in 1888. -
Postage Stamps
Writing letters to people has existed for almost as long as writing has, but the postal system as we know it today was not created until 1837, when a British teacher named Rowland Hill conceptualized the postage stamp, and soon after created the postage system. Before this, letters were simply sent along with a messenger - which proved to be far less efficient than this new, global system. -
Telegraph
The telegraph was a device used to send electrical signals over a wire that would decode into a message the the user has sent. Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph from Washington D.C. to Baltimore Maryland, and from here the telegraph would be used largely in business communications. There were also public telegraphs for people to use, which would have a direct line to services like dentists, doctors, etc. -
Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell worked alongside and against others in creating the telephone, which allowed people to speak to each other with their voices from different locations for the first time. There were many overlapping concepts, but his patent was eventually the one that won out, and his version of the telephone became immensely popular. The design was constantly improved and iterated upon, and continues refinement to this very day. -
Radio Broadcasting
The radio was originally patented by Nikola Tesla in 1897, but wouldn't be used in a radio broadcast until 1916 by Tufts University. The device was quickly adopted and radio stations began to crop up everywhere, delivering news and entertainment to all those listening. It is also used as a communication device. -
Television
The first image to display an image was in this year, created by John Logie Baird. Although it was only able to display around 12 framed in a minute in half tones, it was very impressive and improved upon throughout many years. -
CRT Television
The Cathode Ray Tube television was the first major improvement to television, utilizing the tool it was named after to produce images on the screen faster and clearer than ever before. Although the detail was unparalleled, it was still only able to display in black and white. However, this paved the way TV to become a household item, and quickly began to be one of the best ways to receive news and entertainment. -
Color Television
Color television was introduced in this year, providing images the detail that they were missing for almost as long as twenty years since they began appearing in black and white. It was at this time that there started to be many options when it came to models and channels - popularizing the device more than ever. -
Electronic Mail
E-mail was first used as a method communication by Ray Tomlinson on ARPANET. At this time, both the sender and receiver of the message needed to be online for it to transfer, but with the birth of the internet e-mail became widely used by everyone as the quickest method of communication. To this day, it is one of the easiest ways to communicate and share multimedia files with other people. -
Cellular Phone
The cell phone was created by Martin Cooper and Motorola, and was far from practical to use in its first iteration, but the device served its purpose. Quickly, many companies began making their own portable phones with the aim of making the device smaller and easier to use (and last for longer periods of time). This would eventually evolve into digital phones that could save phone numbers, perform utility functions, and play games. -
Dial-up Internet
The first commercially available internet service provider was called "The World" stationed in Brookline Massachusetts. This allowed anyone who paid to access whatever information that was stored on a variety of networks, but it wasn't until the World Wide Web and web browsers were created that the internet was popularized heavily. This connection ran through phone lines, and users were unable to operate their phone and connect to the internet simultaneously. -
SMS Messaging
SMS (or text messaging) was first utilized to send a message to the president of Vodafone in the United Kingdom. The message was sent using a computer and received by the president's mobile device, and it simply read "Merry Christmas". In 1993, SMS became available to use on mobile phones, and was mostly used to notify owners of a voicemail message. Nokia was the first phone company to support users sending SMS messages to each other. -
Social Networking
The first social network type website was called Six Degrees, and allowed users to upload a profile picture, list family and friends, and post text and images to their pages. Although this functionality was very basic compared to today, it was the first website that people utilized to share information about themselves easily. Blogs and other social networks like MySpace came along to replace it later. Six Degrees only continued service until 2001. -
High Definition Television
Although the term "High Definition" was used throughout television's history, the standard 16:9 aspect ratio and HD resolution we know today originated in 1998. These TVs were extremely expensive, so HD TV did not become largely popular until the mid 2000's, but it has become the standard for television that we know today. 1080p has been relevant for a very long time, with 4K resolution now on the rise. The first channel to support HD television was NBA in 1999. -
Broadband Internet
DSL internet provided significantly faster speeds than dial-up had previously - all without requiring the total use of a phone line, which enabled users to connect multiple devices and use a telephone at the same time. This system was gradually improved upon and made widely available, and is still in use to provide customers internet to this day. Internet is now often distributed using power lines instead of phone lines, providing significantly faster speeds than ADSL had. -
Smartphone
The smartphone as we know it today originated with the iPhone created by Apple. Before this, BlackBerry and other companies had been releasing phones with more advanced features such as slide out QWERTY keyboards for text messaging. It wasn't until the iPhone that we saw the touch screen design that we still use today, and operating a phone has never been the same or easier since then. It is difficult to meet a person without a mobile phone in our current time.
