| Year |
|
|
Keyword |
|
Event and Description |
| 1000 |
it |
ma |
Computer |
K |
The
Indian mathematician Sridhara recognizes the importance of the zero. |
| 1041 |
it |
o |
Print |
C |
Movable
type for printing will be used in the next 8 years by the Chinese printer Pi
Sheng, who will use hundreds of clay blocks bearing Chinese ideograms. |
| 1202 |
it |
ma |
Computer |
K |
Liber
Abaci by Italian traveler-mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (Leonardo da Pisa)
introduces Europe to Arabic numerals from North Africa and the zero from
India, making calculation much easier than with Roman numerals. |
| 1250 |
it |
ma |
Computer |
K |
The
Crusaders have introduced Arabic numerals and the Arabic decimal system, both
of Indian origin, to Europe (see 1202). |
| 1642 |
it |
ma |
oa |
K |
French
mathematical prodigy Blaise Pascal, 19, invents a machine that adds and
subtracts using wheels numbered from 0 to 9 with an ingenious ratchet
mechanism to carry the 1 of a number greater than 9. Pascal has made the
machine to help his father compute taxes at Rouen (see 1692). |
| 1692 |
it |
ma |
oa |
K |
A
calculating machine invented by German philosopher-mathematician Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibniz, 45, multiplies by repeated addition and divides as well
as doing the adding and subtracting performed by the 1642 Blaise Pascal
machine. Leibniz employs a stepped drum to mechanize the calculation of
trigonometric and astronomical tables (see Babbage, 1833). |
| 1801 |
it |
c |
Silk |
K |
The
automatic Jacquard loom developed by French inventor Joseph Marie Jacquard,
49, employs punched cards to guide the movements of a loom that weaves
figured silk fabrics and will later be used for making figured worsteds. It
encounters initial resistance from weavers fearful of being displaced but
will gain acceptance within the decade. France will have 11,000 Jacquard
looms in operation by 1812. |
| 1831 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
C |
Telegraphy
is pioneered by Joseph Henry who sees that an electromagnet can be used to
send messages over great distances by wiring the magnet to a switch, turning
it on and off to attract and release a piece of iron, and thus producing a
pattern of clicks. Henry exhibits his 14-inch-long device at Albany, N.Y.,
transmitting signals over more than a mile of wire, but does not patent the
device or put it to any practical use (see Morse, 1832). |
| 1832 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
C |
New
York University art professor Samuel F. B. Morse begins development of an
electric telegraph that will speed communication (1827, 1837; Henry,
1831). |
| 1833 |
it |
c |
Computer |
K |
English
mathematician Charles Babbage, 41, proposes an “analytical engine,” a
large-scale digital calculator that will go far beyond a “difference engine”
he proposed in 1822. Babbage will obtain some government financial support to
develop his calculator but will finance the work largely with his own
fortune. |
| 1837 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
C |
Samuel F. B. Morse gives a
public demonstration of his magnetic telegraph and is granted a U.S. patent
September 23 |
| 1839 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
O |
Telegraph
pioneer Samuel F. B. Morse makes the first Daguerrotype portraits to be
produced in America. He returns from a visit to Paris with the process he has
learned from Daguerre and teams up with English-American physician-scientist
John William Draper, 28, who will make important contributions to
photography, photochemistry, radiant energy, and the electric telegraph (see
1837; telegraph line, 1843). |
| 1842 |
it |
c |
Computer |
K |
The British government rejects
the calculating machine on which Charles Babbage has been working since 1833
after it has advanced £17,000 to help Babbage develop the machine (he has
spent some £20,000 of his own capital). Prime Minister Robert Peel has joked,
“How about setting the machine to calculate the time at which it will be of
use?” but an Italian engineer publishes an account of Babbage’s “difference
engine” in French and it is read by Augusta Ada Lovelace, 27, the only
legitimate daughter of the late Lord Byron, who sees possibilities in
Babbage’s calculator, translates the account into English, has it published
over her initials A. A. L. in Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, and shows the
translation to Babbage. He asks why she did not write an original paper and
Lady Lovelace responds with an extension of the Italian’s paper that is three
times longer, corrects some serious errors in Babbage’s own work, and
compares his machine with the Jacquard loom of 1801 which is also programmed
with punched cards. “It weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom
weaves flowers and leaves,” she writes, but Babbage and Lady Lovelace will
lose heavily with an “infallible” betting system for horse races that employs
the “difference engine” (see Burroughs, 1888). |
| 1843 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
The
typewriter patented by Worcester, Mass., inventor Charles Thurber, 40, is a
hand-printing “chirographer” with a cylinder that moves horizontally and
contains a device for letter spacing (see Sholes, 1867). |
| 1843 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
C |
Congress
appropriates $30,000 to enable Samuel F. B. Morse to build an experimental
telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore (see 1837). He obtains
help from Ithaca, N.Y., miller Ezra Cornell, 36, and Rochester, N.Y.,
banker-businessman Hiram Sibley, 36, and proceeds to construct the world’s
first long-distance telegraph line (see 1844). |
| 1845 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
C |
The
telegraphic Morse code developed by Andrew Vail in 1837 will soon come into
universal use as Charles Wheatstone and W. F. Cooke in England have a falling
out as to who shall receive chief credit for the improved single-key
telegraph to which they are granted patent rights (see 1837, 1844; Electric
Telegraph Co., 1846; Western Union, 1856). |
| 1855 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
C |
Congress authorizes a telegraph
line to link the Mississippi River with the Pacific Coast and commissions
James Eddy |
| 1856 |
it |
t |
Western Union |
C |
Western
Union is chartered as an amalgamation of small U.S. telegraph companies by
Ezra Cornell and Hiram Sibley who financed Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844. Sibley
organized the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Co. in 1851,
and he becomes president of the new Western Union whose facilities will be
greatly expanded (see 1859). |
| 1857 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
T |
Congress
passes an Overland California Mail bill; John Butterfield of American Express
organizes an Overland Mail Co. (see 1850). He wins the government contract to
carry mail from St. Louis to San Francisco via Little Rock, El Paso, Tucson,
Yuma, and Los Angeles using the route pioneered in large part by Philip
Cooke’s Mormon Battalion in 1847 (see 1858). |
| 1861 |
it |
t |
Western Union |
C |
A
Western Union telegraph line opens between New York and San Francisco, one of
whose hills will hereafter be called Telegraph Hill. The wire has been strung
across the continent despite opposition from hostile tribes and Confederate
sympathizers who have tried to prevent it, and it brings an end to the
money-losing Pony Express started last year by William Hepburn Russell (see
Holladay, 1862). |
| 1866 |
it |
e |
Siemens |
U |
Telegraph
pioneer Werner von Siemens develops the first practical dynamo-electrical
machine (see 1847). It permits production of electricity in great
quantity. |
| 1866 |
it |
t |
Western Union |
C |
Western
Union Telegraph absorbs two smaller telegraph companies to gain control of
75,000 miles of wire and become the first great U.S. industrial
monopoly. |
| 1868 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
A patent for a typewriter is
issued to Christopher Sholes, Carlos G. Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule (see
Sholes, 1867). |
| 1868 |
it |
t |
Westinghouse |
T |
The
Westinghouse air brake devised by U.S. inventor George Westinghouse, 22, will
permit development of modern rail travel, although Cornelius Vanderbilt has
dismissed it as a “fool idea.”
Westinghouse invented a device 3 years ago for rerailing derailed
cars, he will make his air brake automatic in 1872, and it will permit an
engineer to set the brakes simultaneously throughout a whole train by means
of a steam-driven air pump (see Union Switch and Signal, 1882). |
| 1869 |
it |
t |
Telegraph |
C |
Cyrus
Field completes a cable connection between France and Duxbury, Mass. His 1858
cable ceased to operate after a few weeks but his new one embodies technical
improvements that will make it a great success (see wireless, 1901;
telephone, 1927). |
| 1872 |
it |
t |
AT&T |
C |
Western Electric is founded
April 2 to sell telegraph equipment and pursue experiments on an electric
telephone. |
| 1874 |
it |
o |
Remington |
C |
The
Remington typewriter introduced by F. Remington & Sons Fire Arms Co.
begins a revolution in written communication. Philo Remington, 68, has headed
his late father’s company since 1868 (see 1845), he has acquired sole rights
to the Sholes typewriter of 1868 for $12,000, but the $125 price of the
Remington typewriter is more than a month’s rent for many substantial
business firms and Remington produces only eight machines (see 1876). |
| 1875 |
it |
t |
Telephone |
C |
Alexander Graham Bell, 28,
pioneers the electric telephone that will revolutionize communication. The
Scottish-American inventor came to the United States in 1871 as a teacher of
speech to the deaf and conceived the idea of “electric speech” last year while
visiting his parents at Brantford, Ontario. While trying to perfect a method
for carrying more than two messages simultaneously over a single telegraph
line, Bell hears the sound of a plucked spring along 60 feet of wire June 2
in the attic electrical workshop of Charles Williams at 109 Court Street,
Boston. The spring has been plucked by Bell’s young assistant Thomas A.
Watson who is trying to reactivate a harmonic telegraph transmitter, one of
several whose reeds or springs are each tuned to a different signal
frequency; a contact screw has been screwed down so far that a circuit has
been left unbroken that should have been broken only intermittently and a
current is being transmitted that corresponds to a reed in Bell’s room. When
he hears the sound of the plucked spring he recognizes its significance and
realizes that the speaking telephone can be achieved by means of a simple
mechanism (see 1876). |
| 1876 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
Stenotypy
begins to facilitate courtroom reporting and make records of legal
proceedings more accurate. New York inventor John Colinergos Zachos patents a
“typewriter and phonotypic notation” device with type fixed on 18 shuttle
bars, two or more of which may be placed in position simultaneously, the
device has a plunger common to all the bars for making impressions, and it
permits printing a legible text at a high reporting speed. |
| 1876 |
it |
t |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
Western
Union retains Thomas A. Edison to improve on Bell’s telephone. He builds a
laboratory at Menlo Park, N.J., with $40,000 earned from a patented stock
ticker, opens the world’s first research laboratory, and finds that carbon
black makes a perfect transmitter. Edison develops a carbon transmitter that
will make the telephone commercially practicable and his invention of
carbonization will soon find other applications (see mimeograph, 1875; Swan,
1878; Cabot, 1887). |
| 1876 |
it |
t |
Telephone |
C |
Bell
demonstrates his telephone at the U.S. Centennial Exposition; the Brazilian
emperor Dom Pedro II jumps out of his seat June 25 saying, “I hear, I
hear!” |
| 1876 |
it |
t |
Telephone |
C |
“Mr.
Watson, come here. I want you,” says Alexander Graham Bell March 10 in the
first complete sentence to be transmitted by voice over wire. Bell has
improved the telephone he invented in 1875, has been granted a patent on his
29th birthday March 3, and uses the instrument at 5 Exeter Place, Boston, to
speak with his assistant Thomas A. Watson. Elisha Gray of the 4-year-old
Western Electric Co. will challenge the patent, the courts will uphold Bell’s
claim, and Western Electric will manufacture the Bell telephone (see
1882). |
| 1876 |
it |
t |
Western Union |
C |
Western
Union president William Orton turns down an offer to acquire the Bell
telephone for $100,000, calling it a toy, a “scientific curiosity” that
permits users to speak or listen but not both at once. |
| 1877 |
it |
av |
Edison |
C |
A
hand-cranked “phonograph or speaking machine” demonstrated by Thomas Edison
November 29 records sounds on grooved metal cylinders wrapped in tinfoil.
Edison has followed up on his telephone research, shouts the verses to “Mary
Had a Little Lamb” into his machine, is astonished when it plays his voice
back, applies for a patent in December, and is soon attracting paid audiences
at “exhibitions” of the machine (see 1887). |
| 1877 |
it |
t |
Telephone |
C |
The
first telephone switchboard is installed May 17 in the Boston office of Edwin
T. Holmes, proprietor of Holmes Burglar Alarm Service. Bell loans Holmes 12
telephones and the switchboard at 342 Washington Street is used for telephone
service by day and a burglar alarm at night. |
| 1878 |
it |
t |
AT&T |
C |
The
Bell Co. buys Emile Berliner’s loose-contact telephone transmitter. Berliner
patents the use of an induction coil in a transmitter (see 1877;
gramophone |
| 1879 |
it |
c |
NCR |
K |
National
Cash Register (NCR) has its beginnings in a register patented November 4 by
Dayton, Ohio, saloon-keeper James J. “Jake” Ritty whose health has been
undermined by his bartenders’ pilfering. Ritty took a sea voyage to Europe to
recover and was inspired by a recording device on the steamship marking the
revolutions of the vessel’s propeller and giving its officers a complete and
accurate daily record of the ship’s speed. “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier” in
its first version merely registers the amount of each cash transaction on a
dial, but a second model elevates a small plate to display the amounts so
both clerk and customer can see it. The inventor and his brother will develop
an improved model that records each day’s transactions on a paper roll that
can be checked by a store owner against the amount of cash in the cashbox,
but manufacturing the register will prove too big a job and Ritty will sell
his business and patent rights for $1,001 (see Patterson, 1884). |
| 1880 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
The
first wireless telephone message is transmitted June 3 by Alexander Graham
Bell on the photophone he has invented (see Hertz, 1887; Marconi, 1895). |
| 1881 |
it |
t |
Western Union |
C |
Western
Union Telegraph is created by a consolidation of Western Union Co. with two
smaller telegraph companies to form a giant monopoly (see 1866). Financier
Jay Gould and railroad magnate William H. Vanderbilt have effected the
consolidation (see Postal Telegraph, 1836). |
| 1882 |
it |
t |
AT&T |
C |
Western
Electric wins a contract February 6 to produce telephones for the Bell Co.,
which will acquire the firm (see 1872; 1876). |
| 1884 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
The
Linotype typesetting machine patented by German-American mechanic Ottmar
Mergenthaler, 30, will revolutionize newspaper composing rooms. The Linotype
has a keyboard much like that of a typewriter (see Sholes, 1868). Depressing
a key on the keyboard releases a matrix from a magazine, and this small rod
with the die of a character on its vertical edge falls into a line-composing
box where little wedges automatically adjust the spaces between the words.
When a line of matrices has been set, it is carried off to be cast in metal
slugs made to the width of a newspaper column, the metal slugs are assembled
in a form, compositors add hand-set headlines and line illustrations, and the
form is ready for the press or for casting into a stereotype plate (see 1725;
halftones, 1886; New York Tribune, 1886). |
| 1884 |
it |
c |
NCR |
E |
National
Cash Register Co. is founded at Dayton, Ohio, by local coal merchant John
Henry Patterson, 40, who has bought a controlling interest in a company that
has bought the Ritter cash register of 1879 and improved it by adding a cash
drawer and a bell that rings every time the drawer is opened. Patterson is
ridiculed for investing $6,500 in a company that makes anything so useless,
he offers the seller $2,000 to let him out of the deal, is refused, changes
the firm name, and goes to work improving the cash register. Patterson will
innovate the idea of exclusive sales territories, pay large commissions to
salesmen, organize a force of well-trained service men to maintain the
machines he sells, and make NCR prosper (see 1912; Watson, 1903). |
| 1886 |
it |
o |
Print |
O |
A
process for halftone engraving developed by U.S. inventor Frederick Eugene
Ives, 30, uses small raised dots of varying sizes. Ives pioneered color
photography 5 years ago by making the first trichromatic halftone process
printing plates. He will also invent a process for gravure printing that will
employ minute pits etched into a metal plate, and although rotogravure will
replace his photogravure, the Ives halftone process will endure in
photoengraving (see 1880; Tribune, 1897). |
| 1886 |
it |
tv |
Television |
C |
German
inventor Paul O. Gottlieb Nipkov, 26, pioneers television with his rotating
scanning device (see Baird, 1926). |
| 1886 |
it |
t |
Western Union |
C |
Postal
Telegraph breaks Western Union’s telegraph monopoly. Commercial Cable’s J. W.
Mackay starts the company that will be headed by his son Clarence Hungerford
Mackay beginning in 1902 (see 1881; 1883; 1928). |
| 1887 |
it |
av |
Edison |
M |
Thomas
Edison invents the first motor-driven phonograph and opens a new laboratory
at West Orange, N.J., that is 10 times the size of his Menlo Park laboratory
of 1876. Edison’s new phonograph plays cylindrical wax records (see 1877). |
| 1887 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
Heinrich
Hertz’s electric waves will be the basis of radio communications (see
Marconi, 1895). |
| 1887 |
it |
t |
Edison |
M |
The
gramophone patented by Emile Berliner of 1877 loose-contact telephone
transmitter fame improves on Edison’s phonograph by substituting a disk and a
horizontally moving needle for Edison’s cylinder and vertically moving
needle. The groove in Berliner’s disk propels the arm of his gramophone
automatically, eliminating the need for the separate drive mechanism that
Edison’s machine requires, but the pivoted tone arm of the gramophone has a
fixed head and a tracking error that causes distortion in the music amplified
through the large horn attached to its tone arm (see 1900; Victrola,
1906). |
| 1887 |
it |
c |
OfficeAutomation |
K |
The
Comptometer introduced by the new Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Co. of
Chicago is the first multiple-column calculating machine to be operated
entirely by keys and be absolutely accurate at all times. Local inventor Dorr
Eugene Felt, 25, has gone into partnership with Robert Tarrant to produce the
machine (see Burroughs, 1888). |
| 1887 |
it |
c |
OfficeAutomation |
K |
The
machine à calculer invented by French engineering student Leon Bolle, 18, is
the first machine to automate multiplication using a direct method. Bolle’s
machine has a multi-tongued plate that constitutes a multiplication table and
represents a marked advance over calculators that employ multiple additions
for multiplication (see 1642; 1692; 1833; 1842). |
| 1888 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
The
first typewriter stencil is introduced at London by immigrant Hungarian
inventor David Gestetner who 7 years ago introduced the first wax stencil
duplicating machine to be marketed commercially. Chicago’s A. B. Dick Co.
will introduce its first typewriter stencil in 1890 (see 1875). |
| 1890 |
it |
o |
Computer |
K |
U.S.
engineer Herman Hollerith, 30, pioneers punch-card processing by adapting
techniques employed in the Jacquard loom of 1801 and the player piano of 1876
to devise a system for punching holes in sheets of paper to record U.S.
census statistics. Tabulating Machine Co. will acquire patents to the
Hollerith system (see Babbage, Lovelace, 1842; Watson, 1912). |
| 1892 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
The
Addressograph invented by Sioux City, Iowa, engineer Joseph Smith Duncan
prints mailing addresses automatically. Duncan will obtain a patent for his
“addressing machine” in 1896, his first model employs a revolving hexagonal
block of wood to which he has glued rubber type torn from rubber stamps, a
new name and address advances to the printing point each time the block is
turned, and the process of turning the block re-inks the type. |
| 1895 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
Underwood
Typewriter Co. is founded by New York ribbon and carbon merchant John Thomas
Underwood, 38, to develop and market a machine patented 2 years ago by
Brooklyn inventors Franz X. and Herman L. Wagner, whose typewriter enables
the typist to see what is being typed. |
| 1895 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
Guglielmo
Marconi, 21, pioneers wireless telegraphy. The Italian inventor has studied
the Hertz discovery of 1887, set up a laboratory at his family’s country
house outside Bologna, and in September transmits a mes-sage to his brother
who is out of sight beyond a hill. Marconi’s mother is British, and he will
apply in June of next year for a British patent on his wireless (see
1896). |
| 1896 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
Marconi’s
Wireless Telegraph Co., Ltd., establishes the world’s first permanent
wireless installation in November at The Needles on the Isle of Wight,
Hampshire, England. Guglielmo Marconi’s British relatives have set up the
firm (see 1895; 1901; Braun, 1897). |
| 1897 |
it |
tv |
Television |
C |
A
cathode-ray tube (Braun tube) invented at Strassburg (Strasbourg) by German
physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun, 47, pioneers development of television and
other electronic communications. Braun has improved the Marconi wireless by
increasing the energy of sending stations and arranging antennas to control
the direction of effective radiation (see 1895; 1907). |
| 1898 |
it |
av |
Edison |
C |
The
Telegraphone patented by Danish electrical engineer Valdemar Paulsen, 29, is
the world’s first magnetic wire recording device (see 1929). |
| 1901 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
Guglielmo
Marconi receives the first transatlantic wireless message December 12 in
Newfoundland (see 1896). An English telegrapher at Poldhu, Cornwall, has
tapped out the letter “S,” and Marconi picks it up with a kite antenna. He
will build a station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, next year, and he will send
the first readable message across the Atlantic to begin regular transatlantic
wireless service (see 1903). |
| 1901 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
The
American Multigraph Co. is founded at Cleveland to produce the newly patented
Multigraph, the first machine designed to print from a typed or handwritten
image. |
| 1903 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
Guglielmo Marconi sends a
wireless greeting January 19 from President Roosevelt to Britain’s Edward VII
(see 1901). |
| 1903 |
it |
c |
NCR |
E |
National
Cash Register’s J. H. Patterson gives his executive Thomas John Watson, 29, a
budget of $1 million to start a company that will pose as a rival to NCR but
will actually take control of the U.S. used cash-register business (see
1884). Watson’s Cash Register and Second Hand Exchange opens on New York’s
14th Street, undersells competitors, and drives them out of business or
forces them to sell out. Watson will set up similar operations in
Philadelphia and Chicago (see THINK, 1908). |
| 1905 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
Royal
Typewriter Co. is founded by New York financier Thomas Fortune Ryan who puts
up $220,000 to back inventors Edward B. Hess and Lewis C. Meyers (see
Southern Railway, 1894). The Royal typewriter has innovations that include a
friction-free ball-bearing one-track rail to support the weight of the
carriage as it moves back and forth, a new paper feed, a shield to keep
erasure crumbs from falling into the nest of type bars, a lighter and faster
type bar action, and complete visibility of words as they are typed. |
| 1905 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
L.
C. Smith & Brothers sells its first typewriter to the New York Tribune
for the paper’s newsroom. The Syracuse, N.Y., firm will for years be the
largest producer of typewriters. |
| 1907 |
it |
r |
Radio |
Y |
Radio
pioneer Lee De Forest invents electrical high-frequency “radio” surgery (see
1906). |
| 1907 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
Wireless
telegraphy service begins October 18 between the United States and Ireland
(see Marconi, 1901; United Fruit, 1910; Sarnoff, 1912). |
| 1908 |
it |
c |
IBM |
E |
Thomas
J. Watson makes an easel presentation to National Cash Register salesmen and
writes the word “THINK” at the head of every sheet of paper (see 1903). NCR
president J. H. Patterson sees the presentation and orders that “THINK” signs
be made up for every NCR office (see 1910). |
| 1908 |
it |
av |
CBS |
M |
Columbia
Phonograph Co. introduces the first two-sided disks. |
| 1910 |
it |
c |
NCR |
E |
National
Cash Register has sales of $100,000 (see THINK, 1908). The registers have
been improved by the addition of a small electric motor, invented by Dayton,
Ohio, electrical engineer Charles Franklin Kettering, 34, that eliminates
manual operation (see 1912; self-starter, 1911). |
| 1910 |
it |
c |
Unisys |
T |
Sperry
Gyroscope Co. is established at Brooklyn, N.Y., by Elmer A. Sperry to
manufacture a gyroscopic compass and other instruments invented by Sperry to
stabilize ships in rough waters (see 1879; patent, 1913). |
| 1910 |
it |
t |
AT&T |
C |
American
Telephone and Telegraph chief Theodore N. Vail has himself elected president
of Western Union and abolishes the 40¢ to 50¢ charge for placing telegraph
messages by telephone. Vail has acquired a controlling interest in Western
Union from the Jay Gould estate for $30 million in AT&T stock, and while
the courts will force AT&T to sell its Western Union stock in 1914, free
placement of telegraph messages by telephone will continue even after Vail
resigns (see 1913). |
| 1912 |
it |
c |
NCR |
E |
Some
30 National Cash Register officers including J. H. Patterson and Thomas J.
Watson are indicted for criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade (see 1910).
Patterson fires Watson, who will become general manager of the
Computer-Tabulating-Recording Co. (C-T-R), a holding company with a
subsidiary that employs Herman Hollerith and has acquired the Hollerith
punched card patents of 1890 (see IBM, 1924). |
| 1912 |
it |
t |
AT&T |
C |
AT&T’s
Western Union buys U.S. rights to a multiplex device that permits up to four
messages to be sent at once over the same circuit. The multiplex takes
advantage of the difference between the speed of mechanical impulses and the
speed of electrical impulses. |
| 1912 |
it |
r |
AT&T |
C |
Bell
Laboratories physicist H. D. Arnold produces the first effective high-vacuum
tube for amplifying electric currents (see Edison, 1883; Langmuir;
transistor, 1948). |
| 1913 |
it |
g |
AT&T |
C |
AT&T
president Vail has his vice president N. C. Kingsbury meet with Attorney
General George Wickersham, the company divests itself of its Western Union
holdings to avoid antitrust action, losing $7.5 million by the divestiture;
it halts plans to take over some midwestern telephone companies but retains
its valuable Western Electric acquisition (see 1910; dial telephone,
1919). |
| 1916 |
it |
e |
Co. |
Y |
GE’s
William D. Coolidge revolutionizes X-ray technology. He patents a hot-cathode
X-ray that will replace the cold aluminum-cathode tube and be the prototype
of all future tubes (see 1895). |
| 1917 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
A
superheterodyne circuit developed by U.S. Army Signal Corps major Edwin
Howard Armstrong, 26, will become the basic design for all amplitude
modulation (AM) radios. It greatly increases the selectivity and sensitivity
of radio receivers over a wide band of frequencies (see 1906; FM, 1933). |
| 1917 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
David
Sarnoff urges marketing of a simple “radio music box.” The American Marconi
Co. says his plan will make the radio “a ‘household utility’ in the same
sense as the piano or phonograph” (see 1912; 1920). |
| 1919 |
it |
g |
GE |
C |
U.S.
Navy officials advise General Electric president Owen D. Young, 45, that GE’s
high-frequency Alexanderson alternator is vital to long-distance wireless
communications and must remain in U.S. hands. British Marconi has offered $5
million for rights to the alternator but the Navy urges GE to start its own
radio company. |
| 1919 |
it |
r |
RCA |
C |
Radio
Corp. of America (RCA) is founded by Owen D. Young who loans Ernst
Alexanderson to RCA which will employ him as chief engineer for 5 years (see
1906). RCA will acquire the Victor Co. and become a radio-phonograph colossus
but anti-trust court actions will separate RCA from GE (see Victrola, 1906;
NBC, 1926). |
| 1920 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
The
world’s first radio broadcasting station goes on the air November 2 to give
results of the Harding-Cox election. Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad, 46,
has set up KDKA at East Pittsburgh but only about 5,000 Americans have radio
receivers, mostly “cats-whisker” crystal sets (see radio advertising,
1922). |
| 1920 |
it |
r |
RCA |
C |
David
Sarnoff proposes a plan for making $75 radio music boxes; at least a million
could be sold in 3 years, he predicts (see 1917; NBC, 1926). |
| 1920 |
it |
t |
ITT |
C |
International
Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) is founded by Puerto Rican sugar broker
Sosthenes Behn, 38, and his brother Hernand to run telephone and telegraph
operations in Cuba and Puerto Rico (see Tropical Radio Telegraph, 1910). Born
in the Virgin Islands of Danish-French parents, the Behn brothers have
acquired a small San Juan telephone business to satisfy a bad debt (see
1925). |
| 1922 |
it |
r |
BBC |
C |
The
BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) is founded under the leadership of English
engineer John Charles Reith, 33, a six-foot-six misanthrope who will run BBC
for the next 16 years and make it one of Britain’s most revered institutions,
supported by the public with license fees. |
| 1922 |
it |
av |
AT&T |
M |
A
Western Electric Company research team led by J. P. (Joseph Pease) Maxfield,
34, invents a phonograph record graver that permits recording in acoustically
correct studios rather than by singing or playing directly into horns. It
chisels vibrations into wax at the rate of 30 to 5,500 wiggles per second
(see Victrola, 1906). Electric impulses derived from sound waves as in the
telephone vibrate the graver with augmented power to improve the fidelity of
phonograph records (see vinylite records, 1946, 1948). |
| 1923 |
it |
c |
Unisys |
T |
Elmer
Sperry invents a device for detecting and measuring defects in railroad
rails. He will perfect the device in 1928 and the first Sperry detector cars
will go into service in November of that year. |
| 1923 |
it |
r |
Zenith |
C |
Zenith
Radio is founded by Chicago auto-finance entrepreneur Eugene F. McDonald,
Jr., 33, who obtains exclusive rights to market products of the Chicago Radio
Laboratory founded by former U.S. Navy radio electricians Karl E. Hassel, 27,
and R. H. G. Matthews. They constructed a longwave radio receiver for the
Chicago Tribune in 1919 and have developed the trademark Z-Nith from the call
letters of their amateur radio station 9ZN. The Tribune was able to pick up
news dispatches from the Versailles peace conference and thus gain a 12- to
24-hour lead over papers using the jammed Atlantic Cable, Major Edwin H.
Armstrong has licensed Chicago Radio to produce sets using his patents,
McDonald has raised $330,000 to start Zenith, and he also starts the National
Association of Broadcasters with himself as president (see Armstrong, 1917;
FM, 1940). |
| 1924 |
it |
c |
IBM |
E |
International
Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is organized at New York by former National
Cash Register executive Thomas J. Watson who has changed the name of C-T-R to
IBM (see 1912; Mark I computer, 1944). |
| 1924 |
it |
r |
CBS |
Q |
Columbia
Pictures is founded by Harry Cohn, 33, who 6 years ago joined Universal
Pictures as secretary to Carl Laemmle, learned the rudiments of picture
making, and 2 years later formed CBS Sales Co., which he has reorganized. |
| 1925 |
it |
g |
AT&T |
C |
American
Telephone and Telegraph’s Western Electric Co. splits off its international
holdings in anticipation of antitrust action. ITT’s Sosthenes Behn and his
brother Hernand get backing from the J. P. Morgan banking house to buy
International Western Electric for $30 million and become owners of a network
of overseas manufacturing companies that will compete with Siemens, the
Swedish firm Ericson, but not with AT&T, which will use ITT as its export
agents under a mutual agreement not to compete with ITT abroad while ITT
refrains from competing with AT&T in the United States (see 1920; Geneen,
1959). |
| 1925 |
it |
t |
AT&T |
C |
AT&T
establishes Bell Laboratories to consolidate research and development for the
Bell System’s telephone companies (see transistor, 1948). |
| 1926 |
it |
tv |
Television |
C |
Scottish
inventor John L. Baird, 28, gives the first successful demonstration of
television, but his mechanical system is based on the van Nipkov rotating
disk of 1886 and has serious limitations (see 1927). |
| 1926 |
it |
r |
RCA |
C |
The
National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is founded November 11 by David Sarnoff
whose nine-station network soon has 31 affiliates (see 1922; 1927). |
| 1927 |
it |
tv |
Television |
C |
Development
of television is thwarted by the fact that it takes a frequency band of 4
million cycles, versus only 400 for an ordinary radio band, to transmit the
250,000 elements needed for a clear picture. |
| 1927 |
it |
tv |
Television |
C |
Television gets its first U.S.
demonstration April 7 in the auditorium of New York’s Bell Telephone
Laboratories by AT&T president Walter S. Gifford who lets a large group
of viewers see Commerce Secretary Herbert C. Hoover in his office at
Washington while hearing his voice over telephone wires BBC, 1936 |
| 1927 |
it |
tv |
Television |
C |
Utah
engineer Philo Taylor Farnsworth, 21, invents a television image dissector
tube. He has been inspired by accounts of work done in the Soviet Union by
Boris Bosing to transmit moving pictures by electricity (see Baird, 1926). |
| 1927 |
it |
r |
RCA |
C |
David
Sarnoff’s year-old National Broadcasting Co. has so many radio stations that
it splits up into a Blue Network and a Red Network (see American
Broadcasting, 1943; CBS, 1928). |
| 1928 |
it |
tc |
Co. |
C |
The
world’s first combined radio, cable, and telegraph service company is created
by a merger of Clarence Mackay’s Commercial Cable-Postal Telegraph with
International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). Mackay, whose father broke
Western Union’s telegraph monopoly in 1886, inherited the J. W. Mackay
communications empire in 1902, completed a transpacific cable in 1903,
established wire communications with southern Europe via the Azores in 1907,
put a cable into service between New York and Cuba in 1907 and from Miami to
Cuba in 1920, and in 1923 completed a wire link to northern Europe via
Ireland. |
| 1928 |
it |
tv |
GE |
C |
General
Electric station WGY, Schenectady, N.Y., broadcasts the first regularly
scheduled television programs beginning May 11 (see 1927; BBC, 1936). |
| 1928 |
it |
tv |
CBS |
C |
Columbia
Broadcasting System (CBS) is founded by Congress Cigar Co. advertising
manager William S. Paley, 27, who has been receiving $50,000 per year from
his father’s firm and last year committed the company to an advertising
contract of $50 per week with Philadelphia’s 225-watt radio station WCAU
while his father was away on vacation. Young Paley was criticized for making
the contract but has seen sales of La Palina cigars soar in response to radio
advertising; he sells some of his stock in Congress Cigar to raise upwards of
$275,000, buys into financially ailing United Independent Broadcasters (which
controls Columbia Phonograph), is elected president of the 22-station network
September 26, and keeps CBS solvent by selling a 49 percent interest to Adolph
Zukor’s Paramount-Publix motion picture firm (broadcasting 16 hours per day
over long-line telephone wires costs $1 million per year). He will move CBS
to New York next year and make it a rival to David Sarnoff’s NBC (see ABC,
1943). |
| 1929 |
it |
r |
Motorola |
C |
The
Motorola auto radio invented by University of Illinois engineering school
graduate Paul Vincent Galvin, 34, is the first commercially successful radio
for automobiles. Galvin started a business in a Chicago garage last year with
$565 in capital, he will develop it into Motorola Co., but while his first
radio plays in a moving car it is twice the size of a tackle box, its bulky
speaker is stuffed under the floorboards, and its audio qualities leave much
to be desired. |
| 1929 |
it |
av |
AT&T |
M |
The
Orthophonic phonograph developed by Western Electric Company engineer H. C.
Harrison is an improved electric gramophone that will replace wind-up
mechanical record players. |
| 1930 |
it |
c |
Computer |
K |
A
“differential analyzer” devised by Vannevar Bush and some colleagues is the
first analog computer (see Babbage, 1833, 1842; Bush, 1922; Mark I,
1944). |
| 1933 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
Frequency
modulation (FM) provides static-free radio reception. Edwin H. Armstrong of
1917 superheterodyne circuit fame proved in 1915 that radio waves and static
have the same electrical characteristics. Having insisted that any attempt to
eliminate static without some radically new principle would be fruitless, and
that hundreds of patents for static eliminating devices are worthless, he
perfects FM (see Zenith, 1940). |
| 1933 |
it |
o |
IBM |
C |
IBM
enters the typewriter business by acquiring a firm that has been trying for
10 years to perfect an electric office typewriter 1924; IBM Selectric,
1961). |
| 1937 |
it |
o |
Xerox |
C |
Xerography,
pioneered by New York pre-law student Chester Floyd Carlson, 31, is a
dry-copying process that will revolutionize duplication of papers in offices,
schools, and libraries. Photostats are costly, carbon copies often blurred,
and few can be made at one time, but Carlson has observed the demand for
multiple copies of patent specifications and other documents while working in
the patent department of a New York electronics firm, and he sees
possibilities in a process based on principles of photoconductivity and
electrostatics. Taking a sulfur-coated zinc plate, he gives it an
electrostatic charge by rubbing it with a handkerchief in the dark, places
over it a transparent celluloid ruler, and then exposes the zinc plate to
light for a few seconds, neutralizing the charge except where the markings of
the ruler have blocked the light. Dusting lycopodium powder over the plate
and blowing away the excess, Carlson is left with a perfect image of the
ruler (see 1938). |
| 1937 |
it |
r |
RCA |
M |
The
National Broadcasting Co. starts the NBC Symphony with Arturo Toscanini as
conductor. Now 70, Toscanini has been replaced as conductor of the New York
Philharmonic after 8 years but will conduct the NBC Symphony until his
retirement in 1954. |
| 1938 |
it |
o |
Xerox |
C |
The
first true Xerox image appears October 22 at Astoria, Queens. The
electrophotographic image is im-printed on wax paper which has been pressed
against an electrostatically charged 2- by 3-inch sulfur-coated zinc plate
that has been dusted with lycopodium powder. Chester Carlson, who has been
helped by a German refugee physicist, attends New York Law School night
classes, will be admitted to the bar in 1940, and will receive his first
patent that year for the process he will call “xerography,” using the Greek
word xeros for dry, but he will fail in his initial attempts to get financial
backing (see 1937; 1946). |
| 1938 |
it |
tv |
Radio |
C |
John
L. Baird gives the first demonstration of high-definition color television
February 4 at London’s Dominion Theatre, Tottenham Court Road. He transmits
color films and shows them on a 9- by 12-foot screen via a 120-line-per-inch
system (see 1926). Within 2 weeks he transmits live action in color from the
Baird Studios at Crystal Palace, but his refusal to consider electronic
transmission in place of mechanical transmission blocks commercial
development (see Goldmark, 1940). |
| 1939 |
it |
c |
Hewlett-Packard |
K |
Hewlett-Packard
is founded by California engineers William Redington Hewlett, 26, and David
Packard, 27, whose firm will become the leading U.S. producer of electronic
instruments. |
| 1939 |
it |
tv |
RCA |
C |
NBC
televises opening ceremonies of the New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows
April 30. One thousand viewers see the telecast, which is picked up by from
100 to 200 experimental receivers set up in the metropolitan area (see 1945;
BBC, 1936). |
| 1939 |
it |
r |
Radio |
C |
FM
radio receivers go on sale for the first time (see Armstrong, 1933; Zenith,
1940). |
| 1940 |
it |
av |
Television |
C |
Hungarian-American
engineer Peter Carl Goldmark, 34, of CBS pioneers color television, but his
system requires special receivers. It will give way in the 1950s to an RCA
system whose signals will be compatible with conventional black and white TV
signals (see 1939; long-playing records, 1948). |
| 1944 |
it |
c |
OfficeAutomation |
K |
The first automatic,
general-purpose digital com-puter is completed at Harvard University, where
it has been built under |
| 1946 |
it |
c |
OfficeAutomation |
K |
ENIAC (electronic numerical
integrator and computer) is the world’s first automatic electronic digital
computer and |
| 1946 |
it |
o |
Xerox |
C |
Xerography wins support from the
Rochester, N.Y., firm Haloid Co. whose research director John H. Dessauer has
seen |
| 1948 |
it |
m |
AT&T |
S |
The transistor announced by Bell
Telephone Laboratories will permit miniaturization of electronic devices such
as |
| 1949 |
it |
av |
CBS |
M |
CBS introduces improved
long-playing vinyl plastic phonograph records (see RCA, 1946; Goldmark,
1948). RCA |
| 1950 |
it |
av |
Sony |
C |
The first Japanese tape
recorder, produced by Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Sony), weighs nearly 40 pounds,
uses tape made |
| 1950 |
it |
o |
Xerox |
C |
Haloid Co. of Rochester, N.Y.
produces the first Xerox copying machine (see Carlson, 1938; Haloid, 1946;
model 914, |
| 1950 |
it |
tv |
Television |
C |
U.S. television set sales begin
a rapid rise (see 1948). By June more than 100 TV stations operate in 38
states, and while |
| 1951 |
it |
c |
Unisys |
K |
Remington Rand introduces the
Univac computer on a commercial basis for use by business firms and
scientists. The |
| 1951 |
it |
tv |
CBS |
C |
CBS broadcasts color television
programs on a commercial basis beginning June 25, but conventional sets
cannot pick |
| 1951 |
it |
m |
AT&T |
C |
Bell Telephone gives transistors
their first commercial application October 10, using them in a trunk dialing
apparatus |
| 1952 |
it |
av |
Television |
C |
U.S. inventors John Multin and
Wayne Johnson demonstrate the first videotape November 11 at Beverly Hills,
Calif. |
| 1953 |
it |
c |
IBM |
K |
The IBM 701 is the first IBM
computer (see ENIAC, 1946; Univac, 1951). The scientific electronic computer
competes |
| 1954 |
it |
c |
Unisys |
K |
Electronic
computers are applied for the first time to business uses (see Univac, 1950;
IBM, 1955). |
| 1954 |
it |
m |
TI |
K |
The first practical silicon
transistors, introduced by Texas Instruments, are much cheaper than germanium
transistors and |
| 1954 |
it |
o |
Wang |
K |
Wang Laboratories is founded at
Lowell, Mass., by Chinese-American computer engineer An Wang, 34, to make
small |
| 1954 |
it |
tv |
RCA |
C |
RCA introduces the first U.S.
color television sets but color reception is unreliable at best. No other
company will enter |
| 1956 |
it |
g |
IBM |
E |
IBM signs a consent decree
agreeing to sell its tabulating and computer machines as well as leasing
them, thus ending a |
| 1956 |
it |
av |
Co. |
C |
The first successful videotape
recorder (VTR) is demonstrated in February in an Ampex Corp. laboratory at
Redwood |
| 1957 |
it |
c |
OfficeAutomation |
K |
Some
1,000 electronic computers are shipped to U.S. and foreign customers, up from
20 in 1954 (see 1960). |
| 1957 |
it |
c |
CDC |
K |
Control Data Corp. is organized
to produce computers designed by Minneapolis engineer-mathematician Seymour
R. |
| 1959 |
it |
m |
TI |
K |
The microchip invented by Texas
Instruments engineer Jack Kilby and Fairchild Semiconductor engineer Robert
Noyce. |
| 1959 |
it |
pc |
RCA |
K |
The RCA 501 computer introduced
by Radio Corp. of America is the world’s first fully transistorized computer
(see |
| 1959 |
it |
tc |
ITT |
E |
International Telephone and
Telegraph (ITT) names former Raytheon executive vice president Harold Sydney
Geneen, |
| 1960 |
it |
o |
Xerox |
C |
The Xerox 914 copier begins a
revolution in paperwork reproduction (see 1950). The first production line
Xerox copier |
| 1961 |
it |
o |
IBM |
C |
The IBM Selectric typewriter
designed by Eliot Fette Noyes, 51, is introduced by International Business
Machines (see |
| 1962 |
it |
tc |
Satellite |
C |
Telstar I is launched the night
of July 10. The new satellite is used to transmit the first live
transatlantic telecasts between |
| 1962 |
it |
tc |
Satellite |
C |
Congress creates COMSAT
(Communications Satellite Corp.) to handle space communications on a
profit-making basis |
| 1963 |
it |
tv |
Zenith |
C |
Zenith Radio and Sylvania begin
producing their own color picture tubes for television sets after having
bought the tubes |
| 1965 |
it |
tc |
Satellite |
C |
“Early Bird” is put into orbit
by the 3-year-old Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) and relays
telephone |
| 1965 |
it |
av |
Sony |
C |
Sony introduces Betamax, a small
home “videocorder”; by the late 1970s Japanese companies will own the VCR |
| 1976 |
it |
o |
OfficeAutomation |
C |
Fax (facsimile transmission)
machines gain ground as second-generation technology cuts transmission time
from 6 |
| 1976 |
it |
o |
Wang |
C |
Word processors made by Wang
Laboratories begin to revolutionize offices with work stations that share
central |
| 1976 |
it |
pc |
Apple |
K |
Apple Computer is founded in a
California garage to produce personal computers. Founders Stephen G. Wozniak,
26, |
| 1977 |
it |
pc |
Apple |
K |
The Apple II personal computer
introduced by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs requires that users employ
their TV |
| 1977 |
it |
m |
Motorola |
K |
U.S. semiconductor makers
Motorola, Advanced Micro Devices, Fairchild, Intel, and National
Semiconductor form the WEMA |
| 1979 |
it |
av |
Sony |
C |
The Walkman cassette player
introduced by Sony Corp. is a $200 pocket stereo with two pairs of earphones,
making it |
| 1981 |
it |
pc |
IBM |
K |
IBM introduces its first
personal computer August 12 and soon has 75 percent of the market. Its PC
uses a Microsoft |
| 1982 |
it |
o |
Computer |
C |
“Electronic mail” via fax
machines gains popularity as third-generation Japanese technology cuts
transmission time to 20 |
| 1982 |
it |
g |
AT&T |
C |
American Telephone &
Telegraph agrees January 8 to be broken up in settlement of an anti-trust
suit filed in 1974. |
| 1984 |
it |
g |
AT&T |
C |
American Telephone &
Telegraph Co. divests itself January 1 of its 22 Bell operating companies
pursuant to a federal |
| 1984 |
it |
m |
AT&T |
K |
Bell Laboratories announces
December 20 that it has perfected a one-megabit random access memory chip
able to store |
| 1985 |
it |
tv |
GE |
C |
General
Electric acquires RCA and its National Broadcasting Co. for $6.3 billion in
December. |
| 1986 |
it |
tv |
CBS |
C |
Columbia Broadcasting (CBS) is
acquired in a leveraged buyout by investor Laurence A. Tisch and CBS founder |
| 1986 |
it |
vg |
Co. |
L |
Nintendo video games debut in
America and wow the youngsters with sophisticated graphics |
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