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Timeline of the History of Information This is a pretty arbitrary list of landmarks in
the history of information (whatever those might be), which I compiled
for the Encyclopedia Britannica with the historian Daniel Brownstein. c. 20,000 B.C. Cave painting is widespread in Eurasia. 3500 B.C. Earliest use of clay bullae in
Sumer, envelopes bearing marks that correspond to clay tokens inside; the
precursor of the Sumerian writing system. 3100 B.C. Earliest cuneiform markings representing
words in Sumer, first language-based writing system. c. 3000 B.C. In Egypt, the earliest instances
of hieroglyphic writing appear on slabs of slate in chapels and tombs. The
papyrus roll and clay tablet soon become the dominant surfaces of writing. c. 2800 B.C. Egyptians introduce lunar calendar
of 365 days as a civil calendar. c. 2500 B.C. Ink is in use in both Egypt and China. c. 1800 B.C. Earliest known samples of Chinese
writing, which originated well before this date. c. 1800 B.C. The Babylonians are using an early
form of the abacus. c. 1500 B.C. Water clocks are used in Egypt. c. 1500 B.C. Earliest organization of Vedas, an
orally-transmitted collection of sacred literature, chants and hymns, in
South Asia. c. 1400 B.C. Linear B develops as a Mycenean Greek
orthography, scratched with a stylus on sun-dried clay. c 1300 B.C. Chinese use primitive books made of
wood or bamboo strips bound together with cords. c. 1000 B.C. Earliest surviving Phoenician inscriptions,
in North Semitic Alphabet, probably ancestor of Greek alphabet and 22-letter
Phoenician alphabet. c. 1000 B.C. First recorded use of pen by Chinese
calligraphers. c 750 B.C. Development of Brahmi, the ancestor
of modern Indian writing systems. c. 750 B.C. Earliest examples of Greek writing,
based on Phonecian writing system. c. 710 B.C. Egyptians invent the sundial as a
means to keep time. c. 700 B.C. Date of Praeneste Fibula, gold brooch
containing earliest example of Latin alphabet. c. 660 Archives and library are organized by King
Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, marking the first systematically organized library
of the ancient Middle East. Some 20,000 tablets from it survive today. c 550 B.C. Appearance of writing from left to
right. c. 500 B.C. Pre-Columbian civilizations use paper,
and develop a simple mathematical notation. c. 360 B.C. AristotleÌs school, the Lyceum, becomes
a center of philosophical investigation. c 350 B.C. The Ionic alphabet of 24 letters is
in use in Greece. c. 345 B.C. Speusippus writes first known fragments
of an encylopaedia. c 300 B.C. Emergence of a distinct Hebrew alphabet. 280 B.C. Museum in Alexandria founded
by Ptolemy I. Its first librarian, Zenodotus of Ephesus, provides the basis
for modern textual criticism by making the first critical edition of Homer
from the manuscripts it holds. 163 B.C. Nien-hao dating system adopted
by Emperor Wen Ti. The Chinese division of time into "eras" persists until
1911. c. 50 B.C. The Julian calendar is perfected by
the astronomer Sosigenes, who lengthens the Egyptian solar calendar of 365
days to 365 1/2. 59 B.C. Acta Diurna ("Daily Events")
is published as a daily gazette in Rome; it marks the first diffusion of
public news. c. 90 Quintilian elaborates principles for rhetorical
education, classical sentence structure and the principles of rhetorical
argument in Institutio Oratoria. 105 The Chinese develop a process for making paper,
which reaches Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad in 793. c. 160 Parchment is developed in Asia Minor; it
is said to have been invented in Pergamum in the second century B.C.. c. 250 First codification of Hebrew oral laws
in the Mishna. c. 300 The Mayans invent system of hieroglyphic
writing. c. 350 Development of the Arabic alphabet. c. 350 Development of Ethiopic script, originally
used for Ge'ez, still used as a liturgical language in Ethiopia
and Eritrea. c. 350 Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest known
Greek bound volume of pages. c. 390 Augustine frames a system which dominates
the structure of encyclopedias. It is based on the ordering of human knowledge
of the world and human customs as they pertains to salvation. c. 400 Earliest "illustrated" Chinese scrolls,
forerunners to the narrative type, are used to depict moral lessons. c. 550 Chinese develop block book printing, carving
the proofs for pages in wood. c. 550 The astrolabe is developed, reaching Europe
from the Islamic world, and proves among the most versatile and important
medieval instruments. 550 Cassiodorus found a monastery and establishes
a scriptorium at Vivarium where pagan works are copied and preserved. 618 First hand-copied pao, reports of court
affairs, circulate among the educated civil servants of Peking. C. 620 Wei Cheng writes the bibliographic section
of the official Sui Dynasty History, dividing the books into four categories:
Confucian classics, historical records, philosophical writings, and miscellaneous
works. c. 630 First specific reference made to a quill
pen, in the writings of Isidore of Seville. c. 700 Xylography, or wood engraving, is widespread
in China 712 The Kojiki is the first extensive document
using Chinese characters to represent Japanese. c. 750 Musical notation first developed in Europe. c. 830 Foundation of the Bayt al-Hikmah ("House
of Wisdom"), in Baghdad, an academy which contains a public library with
a large collection of materials on a wide range of subjects. c. 850 Ibn Qutayba assembles first known Arabic
encyclopaedia c. 850 Development of the cyrillic alphabet, used
widely for Slavic languages. 868 In China, the first printed book, the Buddhist
Diamond Sutra , is produced using carved blocks of wood. It includes
a woodcut title page and numerous images. ca 1000 Talmudic academies in Babylonia and Palestine
complete the Masoretic text, an authentic text of the Old Testament that
synthesizes written versions and oral traditions. c 1000 French scholar Gerbert of Aurillac, later
Pope Sylvester II, introduces a type of abacus, in which numbers are represented
by stones bearing Arabic numerals. c. 1000 First references are made to movable type
in China. c. 1050 The translations of Arabic works lead
to the introduction in Europe of the system of Arabic numerals, which greatly
facilitate computation. 1025 Guido of Arezzo develops the elements of
musical staff notation in Benedictine abbey at Pomposa. c. 1050 Foundation of University of Bologna, oldest
in Europe, as a center of civil and canon law. c. 1050 The Chinese mathematician Shen Kua writes
first description of movable type. 1086 William the Conqueror undertakes the first
complete government census of land, possessions, and inhabitants, leading
to the establishment of public archive. c. 1100 First wax seals used to sign documents. 1135 Hugh of St. Victor establishes the encyclopedia
as a structure of Adamic knowledge in his Didascalion. c. 1140 Decretum Gratiani ("Decree
of Gratian"), a 12th-century collection of papal decrees, provides EuropeÌs
framework for legal education and decisions. c. 1150 First European paper produced; the technique
arrives via Italian ports with active commercial relations with the Arab
world and also, probably, by the overland route from Spain to France. c. 1190 The magnetic compass is in use in China
and Mediterranean (adapted from Technology) c. 1200 The Inca are using the quipu, an
elaborate accounting apparatus consisting of a long rope from which hang
a number of knotted cords representing units, tens, and hundreds and designating
the different concerns of government. 1260 Franco of Cologne codifies time values in
music, providing the basis for notation from thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. 1268 First recorded reference to eyeglasses is
made by Roger Bacon. 1296 Oldest surviving Portolan chart, which plots
coastlines in a way that will allow navigational distances to be measured
by means of rhumb lines. It marks the birth of cartography as a profession. c. 1300 Xylography appears in Europe, a system
of printing by woodcuts. 1335 The first public mechanical clock that strikes
the hours is erected in Milan, Italy. c. 1350 Paper mills appear in Europe. 1370 Charles V of France standardizes the time
of clocks in Paris as part of his effort to increase commerce in the capital. 1373 The first inventory is made of the massive
book collection housed in the Louvre, which later forms the basis for the
BibliothÀque Nationale. c. 1380 Xylography is first used to print engravings
in Europe. 1383 Francesco Datini's use of double-entry bookkeeping
indicates the diffusion of the new commercial record-keeping practice in
Italy. 1406-7 The Hellenistic authors Claudius PtolemyÌs
Geografia is first translated in Italy from Greek manuscripts. As
well as providing a map that includes the Africa and Asia as continents,
it provides a mathematically consistent method to project a curved sphere
onto the flat surface along a grid 1421 The first recorded patent for an industrial
invention is granted to Filippo Brunelleschi. c. 1430 First metallographic printing begins in
Holland and Rhineland. The encouraging results obtained with large type demonstrate
the validity of the idea of typographic composition. c. 1430 Leone Battista Alberti teaches artists
techniques of perspective, which are later elaborated by Durer in an influential
1537 treatise. 1444 King Sejong commissions invention of Korean
Han'gu [brev]l, an alphabetic script whose letter shapes are based on phonetic
properties of sounds. Han'gul, does not come into wide use until 1880. c. 1450 Appearance of incunabula, the first printed
books. 1455 With the innovation of movable type, Guttenberg
produces the first printed bibles. 1463 The first printed title page is used on a
papal bull. 1489 The first printed plus and minus signs appear
in Germany. c. 1490 Newsbooks are issued at the rate of 20
a year in England and the Continent, providing information on major events
and public issues c. 1500 Appearance of the parenthesis completes
the modern repertory of standard punctuation symbols. 1507 Martin Waldseemuller publishes the first
maps that unite disparate lands in the New World into a landmass of "America."
His 120 engraved sheets integrate the latest discoveries into a series of
precise visual maps. 1512 Franz von Taxis, postmaster to the Holy Roman
emperor Maximilian I from 1489 and to Philip I of Spain from 1504, secures
the right to carry both government and private mail throughout the Holy 1522 Luther publishes the first vernacular translation
of the Bible. 1537 Albrecht Durer publishes a manual that deals
with the instruction and analysis of perspectrive in drafting illustrations,
a book with immense influence on European cartographers. 1543 Andreas Vesalius publishes the first illustrated
systematic anatomical atlas of the human body. 1552 Richard Huloet publishes English-Latin
Abecedarium, containing a greater number of English words than had before
appeared in any similar dictionary. Along with other books of this type,
it reflects an increase in literacy among a broad range of society. 1555 Conrad Gesner, Swiss naturalist, completes
his Bibliotheca Universalis, a classification of all past and present
writers. 1564 First catalogs of Frankfurt and Leipzig Book
Fairs. 1565 First known description of the writing pencil.
1569 The Mercator projection introduced; it allows
cartographers to plot navigational bearings as straight lines. 1570 Abraham Ortelius publishes the first modern
atlas of the world, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. 1571 The Medici make the books and classical manuscripts
they have collected since the fifteenth century available to the public when
they open their library in Florence. 1578 Introduction of Gregorian or New Style solar
dating system now in general use. It is proclaimed in 1582 by Pope Gregory
XIII to maintain coincidence of calendar and seasons in it, no century is
a leap year unless it is divisible by 400. 1583 By comparing previous calendars, Joseph Justus
Scaliger correlates computations of time made by the various civilizations
of antiquity, corrects their errors, and for the first time establishes chronology
as a discipline on a scientific basis. 1584 The library of the Escorial opens in Spain.
It is the first library to place books against the walls, set at right angles
to the light source. 1585 The Dutchman Simon Stevin publishes an elementary
and thorough account of decimal fractions and their daily use in a small
pamphlet, La Thiende ("The Tenth"). 1586 William CamdenÌs Britannia publishes
first comprehensive topographical survey of all England. 1604 Publication of the first purely English dictionary,
Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true
writing and understanding of hard usuall English wordes, borrowed from the
Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French &c.. 1608 The Dutch lens-grinder Hans Lippershey applies
for a patent on a telescope. 1612 Accademia della Crusca publishes the first
dictionary that bases its definitions on literary examples of usage. 1614 The Scottish baron John Napier publishes
the first table of logarithms, based on the principle that addition and subtraction
are easier to compute than division and multiplication. 1620 Francis BaconÌs Great Instauration
published, the first comprehensive plan for organizing knowledge around
the human sciences, separating external nature from man. 1627 KeplerÌs Tabulae rudolphinae establish
schema of planetary positions. 1627 Gabriel Naud», later the librarian of the
BibliothÀque Mazarine, publishes the first study of library science, Advice
on Establishing a Library. 1642 Blaise Pascal invents a digital calculator
with numbers entered by dial wheels; later in the century Leibniz invents
a more sophisticated device. 1656 Christiaan Huygens invents the pendulum clock. 1660 The Royal Society of London for the Promotion
of Natural Knowledge opens its public meetings in Britain. It is the first
such scientific society in Britain. 1665 The Royal Society begins publishing its
Philosophical Transactions, the earliest scientific periodical in the
West. The French Journal des Savants is launched in the same year,
followed by journals in Germany, Holland, and Italy. 1666 Samuel Pepy's diaries makes first mention
of domestic bookcases in Europe. 1675 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz develops integral
and differential calculus. It proves more influential than the system developed
by Newton around the same time. 1675 The Greenwich Observatory is founded for
navigational purposes by the King of England, Charles II, in an attempt to
determine longitude by the determination of star positions. It is the first
scientific institution established in England. 1683 The Ashmolean museum opens in Oxford, the
first public museum of art, archaeology, and natural history in Great Britain.
c. 1690 Gottfried Leibniz conceives of national
bibliographic organization in his role as librarian of the duke of Braunschweig-L½neburg. c. 1690 Gottfried Leibniz develops positional
number systems. 1695 Expiration of Licensing Act in England leads
to a huge growth of political literature and of journalism, like the Specator
of Addison and Steele (1711-12). 1704 The first officially sanctioned North American
newspaper, the Boston Newsletter, begins publication, replacing the
proclamations and pamphlets that had previously brought news from England. 1710 Publication of John LockeÌs Treatise Concerning
the Principles of Human Knowledge. 1710 The Statute of Anne, passed in England, sets
the basis for the copyright laws by defining the author as the primary beneficiary
of legal protection. 1735 Carolus Linnaeus offers first systematic
organizational schema to understand the variety of life in the natural order,
which is the basis of taxonomical nomenclature. 1755 Samuel Johnson publishes first comprehensive
and authoritative dictionary in English. 1759 The British Museum opens to the public in
London. 1762-72 Denis Diderot supervises publication of
Encyclop»die, the first systematic treatment knowledge, practices,
and customs of man. 1765 Publication of the first volume of William
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, which sets down
and systematizes the English common law. 1768-71 TheEncyclopedia Britannica is published
in three volumes in Edinburgh, Scotland. By 1974, the Encyclopedia has gone
through fifteen editions; in the early 1990s, it became available on CD-ROM. 1775 Former Philadelphia postmaster Benjamin Franklin
is appointed the first U.S. Postmaster General. By 1820, the cheap, extensive
U. S. postal service carries news and information throughout the country,
a model for postal service in other nations. 1776 The marquis de Condorcet publishes Fragments
on Freedom of the Press, which lays the philosophical groundwork for
the modern concept of the marketplace of ideas and is influential in the
reformulation of the notion of intellectual property after the French Revolution. 1786 Samuel Taylor invents the first influential
modern shorthand system. 1789-94 Appearance of the first Russian dictionary. 1789 The French National Archives open to public,
as the state formally accepts responsiblity to preserve an open record of
public documents. Y¥1790 First patent laws in United States; copyright
laws are adopted in the United States in the same year. 1794 Founding of Ecole Polytechnique, setting
a precedent for providing university education outside the liberal arts. 1794 Frenchman Claude Chappe invents the semaphore,
a signalling system employing a set of arms that rotate on a post. 1795 Opening of the BibliothÀque Nationale in
Paris, holding an estimated 300,000 volumes. The collections more than double
by 1818. 1795 France adopts the metric system. 1798 Noah Webster undertakes the compilation of
a book to be called A Dictionary of the American Language. It appears
in 1828 in its final form as An American Dictionary of the English Language
. 1800 The Library of Congress opens in Washington
as the national library of the United States. c. 1800 New developments in the bleaching of paper
allow the production of books and newspapers for a large reading public. 1804 Joseph-Marie Jacquard of France devises an
automatic loom in which the woven pattern is controlled by a series of punched
cards. 1804 In France, formulation of the Napoleonic
Code, which attempts to codify national law on rational principles. During
the nineteenth century it becomes the model for the legal systems of a number
of European and 1813 U.S. Army issues the first printed orders,
a process later adopted by other large organizations, which makes for the
more efficient management of hierarchical organizations. 1814 The Times of London is the first newspaper
to begin printing newspapers on a steam-powered flatbed press, which permits
production of 5,000 copies an hour. 1820 The first commercially available calculator,
the arithmometer, is produced in France by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar. 1821 The Cherokee writing system invented by Sequoyah. 1822 Charles Babbage builds a prototype of his
difference engine, a computing machine based on the method of finite differences. 1826 Joseph-Nic»phore Niepce produces the first
permanent photograph from nature. 1827 Karl Baedeker of Koblenz publishes the first
of a series of travel guides that systematize tourist information and adopt
a system of stars to classify amenities and attractions. 1828 John Mitchell of Birmingham, England, begins
production of machine-made steel pen points. 1828 The London Zoo is opened in Regent's Park
by the Zoological Society of London. Other major zoological gardens are opened
in Berlin (1841), Antwerp (1843), Copenhagen (1859), Moscow (1864), Rotterdam
(1887), and New York (1899). c. 1830 The English mathematician William Oughtred
invents the slide rule. 1836 US Patent Office opens. (Copy ref from techno
timeline) 1837 British inventors William Cooke and Charlres
Wheatstone patent workable technologies for the electric telegraph. 1837 In England, Sir Rowland Hill publishes
Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. It leads
to the elimination of postal charges by distance in favor of a universal penny
post, for which patrons pay by purchase of adhesive stamps. 1837 Samuel Morse granted a patent on electromagnetic
telegraph, originally a device that embosses a series of dots and dashes
on a paper roll. 1838 The Brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm undertake
the preparation of the Deutsches W‚rterbuch, an authoritative dictionary
of the German language. Numerous scholars labor on the book after the Grimms'
death; it appears in its final form in 1960. 1838 Samuel F. B. Morse develops the Morse Code,
a system for telegraphy. 1838 England introduces the railway post office,
in which mail is sorted on the way to its destination. 1839 Louis-Jacques-Mand» Daguerre and Joseph-Nic»phore
Niepce invent the daguerrotype, the first widely successful form of photography. c. 1842 Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace, British
mathematician, creates the first computer program for BabbageÌs prototype
computer. 1844 The telegraph is used to report results of
Whig convention in Baltimore to New York newspapers. 1845 Perforated strips of postal stamps are first
sold to the public in Britain 1846 The Smithsonian Institution is established
by Congress in Washington, D.C. using funds donated by the English scientist
James Smithson. Other major museums of science and industry open in New York,
London, Paris, Munich, and other cities over the course of the century. 1847 George Boole publishes The Mathematical
Analysis of Logic: Being an Essay Towards a Calculus of Deductive Reasoning
, providing the mathematical basis for the logic of digital computation 1847 A patent issued for the first rotary press
in the United States. The technology makes possible the widespread production
of newpapers in the mid-nineteenth century. 1848 The Associated Press is formed in the United
States to pool telegraph expenses. 1851 The Great Exhibition opens in London, offering
a compendious display of 19th-century technology and culture. 1852 Peter Mark Roget publishes his Thesaurus
of English Words and Phrases. 1853 The Indian telegraph system opens, facilitating
British colonial administration. 1854 Opening of the Astor Public Library, later
the New York Public library. 1855 The British government sends the Roger Fenton
to photograph the war in the Crimea. His pictures portray the war favorably,
and gloss over the disaster of the charge of the Light Brigade. 1857 Work begun on the Oxford English Dictionary. 1858 The first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable
attempted; the first permanently successful cable is laid in 1866. c. 1860 The introduction of practical one-sided
carbon paper makes possible the creation of multiple copies at the time of
composition, and allows copying on thicker paper that can be stored in vertical
files. By 1910 it is the chief means of making copies. 1861 Charles Darwin publishes The Origin
of Species. 1865 The American William Bullock gains a patent
for the first roll-fed rotary press, improving on earlier innovations; it
produces12,000 complete newspapers per hour. 1866 Appearance of Vol. 1 of LarousseÌs Grand
Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Siecle . 1867 American inventor Christopher Latham Scholes
builds the first practical typewriter. In 1873 Remington begins to manufacture
the machines in large numbers. By 1886 there are more than 50,000 machines
in use. 1869 Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev publishes the
periodic law of the elements. c. 1870 Development of the sulfite process for
pulping wood allows increased production of printed material and books. 1870-1890 A musem boom leads to the building of
museums in most major cities in Europe and the Americas. In England, more
than 100 museums are opened in this period. 1870 Balloons are used to deliver mail during
the siege of Paris. 1871 R. L. Maddox introduces dry-plate process
in photography. It will free photographers from the use of tripod and lead
to fast portable cameras. 1871 The first telephone exchange, or central
switching point, is installed in New Haven, Connecticut. 1874 Twenty-two nations sign a treaty in Bern
establishing the General Postal Union, later the Universal Postal Convention,
which sets procedures for the exchange of international mail. 1875 Frank Stephen Baldwin patents an "arithometer"
that can add, subtract, multiply and divide. In 1891, in association with
James Monroe, he patents the Monroe calculator. 1876 Thomas A. Edison patents the spirit duplicator,
which with other methods of mimeography makes possible efficient diffusion
of written communication in large offices and organizations. 1876 Alexander Graham Bell introduces the telephone. 1876 Melvil Dewey outlines the classificatory
system later known as Dewey Decimal. 1876 Henry Martin Robert, a U.S. Army officer,
writes the standard manual on procedure in the United States, known as Robert's
Rules of Order. 1877 Thomas Edison patents the phonograph. 1887 Melvil Dewey establishes the first university
school for librarians at Columbia University. c. 1880 Henry R. Towne publishes first graph of
management data in the Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, presaging the increasing use of graphs in scientific management. 1880 Eadweard Muybridge makes the first motion
picture presentation in San Francisco. 1880 Herman Holllerith, a statistician, develops
the first punch-card machine to process the results of the US Census. He
later founds the company that is to become IBM. 1883 Y¥Joseph Pulitzer purchases the New York
World and initiates a program of sensationalist journalism. Within three
years the paper's circulation has gone from 15,000 to 250,000, signalling
the new era of mass newspapers and the birth of "yellow journalism." 1890 Frederick C. Taylor performs the first time-and-motion
study of work practices at the Hydraulic Works of Philadelphia, laying the
groundwork for the scientific study of industrial management. 1884 Publication of Mark TwainÌs Huckleberry
Finn, the first novel submitted to a publisher in a typewritten form. 1884 L.E. Waterman produces and markets the fountain
pen. 1885 George Eastman introduces the Kodak camera,
containing film for 120 exposures, to be returned to factory for developing
and recharging. 1885 Francis Galton introduces the first system
for classifying fingerprints, after proving that each set is unique. 1890 Jacob A. Riis publishes How the Other
Half Lives, a photographic record of the lives of the poor in New York
City that stimulates legislative reforms. 1892 Emile Reynaud popularizes the projection
of film on the Praxinoscope at the Mus»e Grevin, three years before the LumiÀre
brothers publically demonstrate the Cin»matographe. 1893 Thomas Edison constructs the worldÌs first
motion picture stage, Black Maria, and in the following year introduces the
Kinetoscope, with peepholes that allow one person to watch a moving image. 1893 The vertical file is presented at the Chicago
WorldÌs Fair, where it wins a gold medal. It permits a more rational organization
of documents for large organizations. c. 1896 In France, Auguste and Louis LumiÀre produce
the first motion-picture documentaries and newsreels. 1898 EugÀne Atget starts to produces an extended
photographic record of Paris urban life that he continues until 1927. Largely
ignored during his lifetime, his work is rediscovered by the surrealists
around the time of his death. 1898 Outbreak of the Spanish-American War, largely
incited by William Randolph Hearst's New York Morning Journal and
Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, an indication of the new political
power of the mass press. Article: United States of America: HISTORY: Imperialism,
the Progressive era, and the rise to world power, 1896-1920 1899 Herbert Putnam appointed head of Library
of Congress, and transforms it into one of the most important national collections.
He introduces library services that include the publishing of bibliographies
and the Library of Congress system of classification. 1899 Andrew Carnegie makes the first of grants
that will eventually build more than two thousand public libraries in the
United States and Britain. 1900 The proportion of typists and stenographers
who are women reaches 77 percent, a four-or five-fold increase over the previous
fifty years, reflecting the reorganization and specialization of work practices
induced in part by technologies like the typewriter and dictating machine. 1902 Photographs are transmitted by telegraph
for the first time by German inventor Arthur Korn. 1904 The lithoset or offset printing developed. 1904 French psychologist Alfred Binet develops
the modern intelligence test. 1907 Autochrome, the first practical color photography
process, is introduced in France by Auguste and Louis LumiÀre. 1911 Airmail service begins in England. 1915 D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation
establishes the American narrative film style and marks the arrival of cinema
as an art form. 1917 The use of multiple frequency transmission
makes possible broadcast radio. 1920 The first commercial radio station, KDKA,
goes on the air in Pittsburgh with a broadcast of the returns of the Harding-Cox
election. 1922 The British Broadcasting Company is established
to coordinate production of radio programming. 1923 Americans Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden
found Time Magazine, which establishes the form for modern magazine
journalism. c. 1923 Credit Cards are introduced in United
States at hotels and gasoline stations. 1926 The National Broadcasting Company establishes
a network of radio stations to which it distributes daily programs. 1926 The Book of the Month club is founded in
the United States, distributing over 200,000,000 copies of books to areas
where there were few bookstores and introducing "negative option" mail-orders. 1927 The Radio Act the sets up the agency now
called the Federal Communications Commission to allocate radio frequencies. 1927 The phenomenal success of The Jazz Singer
ensures the conversion of the motion-picture industry to sound films. 1928 The teletypesetter is patented in the United
States. 1928 Eastman Kodak introduces the Recordak system
of microfilming, soon widely used in the storage of organizational records. 1931 Emergence of the telex, the antecedent to
the FAX, in the UK, the U.S., and several European countries. 1932 The Radio Corporation of America demonstrates
an all-electric television using a camera tube called the iconoscope (patented
by Vladimir Zworykin in 1923) and a cathode-ray tube in the receiver. 1933 Publication of Oxford English Dictionary
(OED) , begun in 1857. 1933 The Indian librarian and educator Shiyali
Ramamrita Ranganathan devises the system of colon classification for research
libraries. 1933 Vannevar Bush of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology constructs the differential analyzer, a powerful analog computer. 1934 U.S. National Archives are opened to supplement
the Library of Congress, housing the retired records of the national government. c. 1935 Frequency modulation is developed to overcome
radio transference. 1935 The Farm Security Administration commissions
a group of photographers, including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, to document
conditions among the poor. Their photographs of victims of the Depression
help move states to establish camps for migrant workers. 1937 The coronation of King George VI is telecast
from Hyde Park Corner. 1937-43 The first electronic digital computer
is built by John V. Atranasoff, an American theoretical physicist at Iowa
State College. 1938 Orson Welles' radio presentation of H. G.
Wells' War of the Worlds creates panic among thousands of radio listeners
who have become so accustomed to receiving news by radio that they take the
reports of a Martian invasion of New Jersey in earnest. c. 1938 The Hungarian Laszlo Biro, living in Argentina,
patents and successfully markets the ball-point pen. c. 1938 The Englishman Allen Lane launches Penguin
books, initiating mass production of good-quality paperback books. 1939 The National Broadcasting Company initiates
regular television broadcasts for two hours per week. The CBS and Dumont
networks soon follow suit, but broadcasting is interrupted by World War II. 1941 Kondrad Zuse constructs first fully operational
binary computer, the Z3. 1945 The first modern stored memory computer is
designed by Johann von Neumann, J. Presper Eckert, and John W. Maucly. 1946 Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania
complete ENIAC, a room-sized computer consisting of 10,000 high-speed vacuum
tubes 1947 The transistor is invented at Bell Telephone
Laboratories. 1948 Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-born scientist,
invents holography; in 1971 he receives the Nobel Prize for his invention. 1949 In the U.S., there are 1,000,000 television
receivers in use. The 10,000,000 mark is passed in 1951, and the 50,000,000
mark eight years later. Other developed nations reach these levels of penetration
soon after. 1952 The first numerical control machine tool
is demonstrated at MIT. c. 1952 The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment
(SAGE) system for U.S. air defense is developed at MIT. It is the first computer
network. 1952 Thomas Watson Jr. becomes president of IBM
and launches all-out push into computer markets 1954 Color television broadcasting in the United
States, several years after the first experimental broadcasts; the technology
is adopted in Japan in 1960 c. 1957 First fully automated guidance system
used on missiles Article: "The Technology of War: Guidance Methods," 1960 The Haloid Xerox Company introduces the plain-paper
copier, based on a process invented by Chester F. Carlson. The copier rapidly
revolutionizes office practices and makes carbon paper outdated. c. 1960 Libraries begin to use on-line public
access catalogs (OPAC), which begin to replace card catalogues 1961 The publication of Merriam-Webster's Third
International Dictionary creates a furor in the United States when the
dictionary is charged with abandoning prescriptive judgments of correctness
in favor of neutral linguistic description. 1961 The first programmable industrial robot installed,
for unloading of parts at die-casting operation. 1962 Western Union introduces the telex to the
United States. 1962 The first modem introduced in the United
States marketed by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T). 1962 The first communication satellite, Telstar,
is put into orbit for use by American companies. The first trans-Atlantic
television broadcast is made in this year. 1963 ATT offers push-button dialing to its consumers. 1963 ZIP codes are instituted to facilitate local
sorting and delivery of post in United States. 1963 On November 24, accused presidential assassin
Lee Harvey Oswald is being transferred to a jail cell when he is fatally
shot by Jack Ruby. The assassination is witnessed by millions of people
on live television. c. 1965 The basis of virtual reality technology
emerges in simulators that teach pilots how to fly planes by using head-mounted
displays with tracking systems. 1966 ASCII (the American Standard Code for Information
Exchange) is established as a standard data-transmission code that converts
characters into seven-digit binary numbers. 1968 Douglas Engelbart demonstrates first computer
mouse, hypertext, and WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") display of
text. 1968 The British Library and Library of Congress
collaborate on a new system of cataloging library collections, Machine-Readable
Cataloging Project, known since its revision in 1968 as MARC II. 1969 The Department of Defense establishes the
Arpanet, predecessor of the Internet. 1969 Sony Corporation introduces the videocasette
recorder. c. 1970 American banks introduce electronic teller
machines. 1971 Introduction of the laser printer, which
makes possible high quality computer graphics and desktop publishing. 1971 The Intel corporation introduces the worldÌs
first microprocessor, which combines the electrical functions once performed
as many as 500,000 transistors on a single chip. 1972 Introduction of C, the first widely adopted
general-purpose high-level programming language. 1972 Xerox introduces the Alto, the first computer
with a bit-mapped screen, windows, and a mouse, which becomes the model for
Apple Macintosh and other personal computers. c. 1972 The first electronic mail system introduced. 1973 The grocery industry adopts Universal Product
Code, making possible the use of bar codes for pricing and inventory control. 1976 Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple
Computer Inc., the first company devoted to selling personal computers. 1976 The spacecraft Viking 1 orbits Mars and relays
photographs of the Martian landscape to Earth. 1977 Apple and Radio Shack introduce the first
widely successful pre-assembled personal computers. IBM follows with its
PC in 1981. 1979 The Xerox Corporation introduces the Ethernet,
which becomes the standard computer intercommunications network. 1982 The Gannet company begins publishing USA
Today, the United States' first national, general-interest newspaper. 1982 Introduction of the spreadsheet program Lotus
1-2-3, the "killer application" that ensures wide popularity of personal
computers. 1985 The IRS initiates computerized auditing of
tax returns. 1989 Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN
create the first Web browser, based on the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP),
which standardizes communication between servers and clients. 1990 Start of the project of mapping the location
of all genes on every chromosome in human beings, the Human Genome Project. 1991 The Cable News Network (CNN) is created in
by Ted Turner. The network gains worldwide attention for its around-the-clock
coverage, much of it broadcast from Iraq, of the Persian Gulf War. 1993 Marc Andreessen and others at the University
of Illinois release Mosaic, a graphical Web browser that becomes widely popular
and is the model for browsers from Netscape and Microsoft. By 1995 the World
Wide Web has millions of users. 1995 Release of Disney's Toy Story, the
first full-length computer-generated feature film. c. 1996 Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates becomes
the world's richest person. 1996 In the U. S., the Telecommunications Act
of 1996 authorizes subsidies for information technology to libraries and
schools. The provision of universal access the Internet becomes a policy
goal a number of nations. 1997 The IBM computer Deep Thought defeats world
champion Gary Kasparov in a chess match. 1997 The World Wide Web site for the Mars Pathfinder
space probe receives 220 million hits when it publishes pictures of the mission,
a total that far exceeds NASA's expectations. 1997 Major new libraries are opened in London,
Paris, and New York containing extensive computational facilities. 1998 The on-line bookseller Amazon.com becomes
the world's largest book retailer as measured by market capitalization. The
Internet craze sends the stocks in other Internet-related businesses to unprecedented
highs. 1998 The full testimony of President Clinton gathered
by the special prosecutor Kenneth Starr receives millions of hits when it
is released on the Web, marking the coming of age of the Web as a means for
the dissemination of public information. |
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Copyright © 2002 Geoffrey Nunberg All rights reserved. |