Timeline of communication technology

• 3500s BC - The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing and the Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing
• 3000s BC - Egyptians develop papyrus for writing
• 1500s BC - The Phoenicians develop an alphabet
• 170 BC - Parchment is discovered in Pergamum after the Ptolemaic dynasty cuts off the supply of papyrus
• 26-37 - Roman Emperor Tiberius rules the empire from island of Capri by signalling messages with metal mirrors to reflect the sun
• 105 - Tsai Lun invents paper
• 600s - Hindu-Malayan empires write legal documents on copper plate scrolls, and write other documents on more perishable media
• 1450 - The Chinese develop wooden block movable type printing
• 1454 - Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type
• 1520 - Ships on Ferdinand Magellan's voyage signal to each other by firing cannon and raising flags.
• 1793 - Claude Chappe establishes the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line
• 1831 - Joseph Henry proposes and builds an electric telegraph
• 1835 - Samuel Morse develops the Morse code
• 1843 - Samuel Morse builds the first long distance electric telegraph line
• 1860 - Pony Express deployed before the first transcontinental electric telegraph service
• 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson exhibit an electric telephone in Boston
• 1877 - Thomas Edison patents the phonograph
• 1889 - Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone
• 1901 - Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland
• 1925 - John Logie Baird transmits the first television signal
• 1942 - Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invent frequency hopping spread spectrum communication technique
• 1948 - Claude Shannon writes a paper that establishes the mathematical basis of information theory
• 1958 - Chester Carlson presents the first photocopier suitable for office use
• 1963 - First geosynchronous communications satellite is launched, 17 years after Arthur C. Clarke's article
• 1966 - Charles Kao realizes that silica-based optical waveguides offer a practical way to transmit light via total internal reflection
• 1969 - The first hosts of ARPANET, Internet's ancestor, are connected.
• 1973 - Akira Hasegawa and Fred Tappert propose the use of solitary waves to carry information in optical fibers
• 1977 - Donald Knuth begins work on TeX
• 1980 - Linn Mollenauer, Rogers Stollen, and James Gordon demonstrate that solitary waves can be propagated through optical fibers
• 1989 - Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built the prototype system which became the World Wide Web at CERN
• 1991 - Anders Olsson transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion bits per second

See also

• Timeline of postal history
• List of inventions
• List of inventions named after people

Referenced By