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Abbreviations
Glossary
Standards
 

1793  Semaphore is invented

1822  An English mathematician, Charles Babbage, invents 'the difference machine' to
              compute mathematical solutions. The mechanical device has some 25,000 parts
              and weighs around fifteen tons (UK)

1837  An electric telegraph machine is unveiled, by William Cooke and Charles
              Wheatstone, that uses moving needles to point to letters of the alphabet (UK)

1840  The telegraph is patented (by Samuel Morse)

1842  Charles Babbage's difference machine (see 1822) could only solve pre-set
              mathematical problems whereas his Analytical Engine (produced in this year)
              has an input/output system and can be programmed using punched cards (UK)

1843  A fax machine is patented (by Scot Alexander Bain)

1844  The first telegraph link is completed (between Washington DC and Baltimore,               Maryland USA). Samuel Morse sends the first public message (the arrangement
              of dots and dashes used became known as the Morse code)

1856  The Western Union Telegraph Company is formed (USA)

1861  Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line (USA)

1865  The first commercial fax service opens, between Paris and Lyon. It was
              abandoned after five years due to lack of interest!

1870  UK Telegraph services operated by private companies are transferred to the
              British Post Office
           Western Union launches a time service (USA)

1874  Christopher Sholes invents the first QWERTY typewriter (USA)

1876  First transatlantic cable laid
           Scot Alexander Graham Bell files a patent for the telephone
              (New York City USA, 14 February)
           Elisha Gray files a caveat for a variable-resistance liquid microphone
              (USA, 14 February)
          "Mr Watson, come here, I want you" — spoken by Bell to his assistant in the first
              intelligible call over a telephone link (Boston Massachusetts USA, March)

1877  The carbon transmitter is invented by American Thomas Alva Edison
           The Bell Telephone Company is formed

1878  The first telephone exchange opens in the US (New Haven, CT) under licence
             from the Bell Telephone Company

1879  Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent electric lighting (New Jersey, USA)
           First public telephone exchange established in London, with eight subscribers
              (by the Telephone Company Ltd, UK)

1880  First known telephone directory in the UK (by the Telephone Company Ltd)
           Electric light bulb patented by Edison
           Oliver Heaviside, following research into the 'skin effect', patents co-axial cable
              (England, UK)

1882  The American Bell Telephone Company acquires a majority interest in the
             Western Electric Company (USA)

1885  The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is formed, as a subsidiary of
             the American Bell Telephone Company (USA)
           AT&T completes in first long-line (supporting just one call) between New York
             and Philadelphia

1887  Oliver Heaviside proposes that induction coils may be used to extend the reach
              of telegraph and telephone lines (England) His work was later developed and
              extended by AT&T

1889  Herman Hollerith (a mining engineer) is granted a patent for a system of data
              storage using punched cards  (8 January). His company — The Tabulating
              Machine Company — later merges with two others and, in 1924, is re-named
              International Business Machines Corporation, IBM
           The telephone switch is invented (by Almon B Strowger, a Kansas City undertaker)
           The dial telephone is invented (by Strowger)

1891  A London–Paris telephone link established

1895  Wireless telegraph is invented (by Italian Guglielmo Marconi)

1896  British patent is issued to Marconi for a wireless telegraph (2 June)

1897  Marconi communicates across the Bristol Channel and the Solent (both UK)

1898  French engineer Pierre Azaria sets up the Compagnie Générale d'Electricité — CGE
             (France)

1899  First International radio message, a Morse message from France to Dover
              (by Marconi, 27 March)
           The theory of loading coils is developed [independently by Michael Pupin of
              Columbia University and George Campbell of AT&T] and patents obtained by
              AT&T (USA)

1901  First wireless transmission across the Atlantic (by Marconi)

1904  Patent awarded for the Thermionic Diode Valve, developed by John Ambrose
              Fleming at Ediswan's Ponders End laboratories (November, UK)

1906  S O S (three dots three dashes three dots, in Morse code) adopted as the
              international call for help at sea (by a conference in Berlin)

1912  First public automatic telephone exchange in the UK (at Epsom, Surrey)

1915  First transcontinental telephone service opens. The inaugural call took place
              on 25 January between New York City, San Francisco,
              Washington DC [the White House] and Jekyll Island, Ga (USA)

1919  AT&T installs the first dial telephones in the Bell system (Norfolk VA, USA)

1922  The British Broadcasting Company is formed
             (by a group of radio manufacturers, including Marconi)
           The first ship-to-shore voice communication
              (between a station at Deal Island, NJ USA and the SS America, 650km away)

1925  AT&T sells its overseas operations resulting in STC (UK), ITT (Europe),
             NEC (Japan) and Northern Telecom (Canada)
           AT&T establishes Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc as its R&D subsidiary

1927  Public demonstration of video-phone technology
             (between New York and Washington DC)
           A transatlantic radio-based telephone service begins between the US and London
           The BBC changes from a company to a Corporation
           Mayday (a corruption of the French m'aidez) adopted as the international
              distress call for maritime radio telephone

1929  The modern form of co-axial cable is invented (USA)

1932  First microwave telephone link between Vatican City and Castel Gandolfo
             (Marconi)

1934  A transpacific radio-based telephone service opens between the US and Japan

1936  The BBC begins the world's first public television broadcast service (November,
              Alexandra Palace, UK)
           TIM, a speaking clock service, introduced in London

1937  An emergency service using '999' introduced to 91 telephone exchanges in the
             London area (30 June)

1939  Voice synthesiser exhibited (at the World's Fair in New York)

1943  Digitised, enciphered voice system deployed, SIGSALY (USA/UK)
           First programmable electronic computer, Colossus (UK)

1945  Cellular technology invented (USA)

1946  Work starts on using a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) as a digital storage device. It
              became known as the Williams Tube and was patented on 11 December
             (Freddie Williams, Malvern UK)
           AT&T offers a mobile telephone service with a single aerial covering an entire
             metropolitan area
           TIM, the UK's speaking clock service, goes nationwide

1947  The transistor is invented by AT&T BTL scientists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain
              and William Shockley (USA, 16 December)

1948  The world's first stored-program computer ran its first program, written by
              Tom Kilburn to find the highest factor of a number, for 42 minutes
              on 21 June (UK - Manchester University)

1951  LEO (an acronym for the Lyons Electronic Office) begins operations at  Lyons'
              headquarters, as the first-ever business computer (Sep, London, UK). Within
              two years, reliability had improved to the point where it could be trusted
              with the payroll run
           AT&T introduces the customer-dialling of long-distance calls (11 November,
             Englewood NJ)

1956  First repeater-ed transatlantic telephone cable laid, TAT1, between Scotland
              and Newfoundland)
           Generally regarded as the inventor of the hard disk drive, Reginald Johnson (at
              IBM) invents the RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting Control) drive,
              which used disks rather than cylinders to hold data.

1957  The world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, is launched (4 Oct, USSR)
           Sputnik II is launched on 3 November (USSR)

1958  Western Union introduces Telex, direct-dial teleprinter service (USA)
           AT&T introduces the first commercial modem (modulator-demodulator)
           LASER invented at Bell Labs (USA)
           Long-distance direct-dialling introduced in the UK (5 Dec, Bristol)

1959  The integrated circuit is invented
           The UK's first public mobile telephone service (called System 1) is introduced,
              covering the South Lancashire area
           Long-distance dialling from payphones introduced in the UK (5 Sep, Bristol)

1960  The first working LASER is demonstrated at Hughes Research Labs (16 May, USA)

1962  The first communications satellite is launched, Echo 1, a 30m balloon with an
              aluminium coating that passively reflected broadcast signals back to Earth.
              It continued in use until 24 May 1968 (Cape Canaveral, USA)
           AT&T launches Telstar 1, the first active communications satellite (USA)
           'Arthur' (Goonhilly One) begins operation at the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station
              (11 July, Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, UK)
           Telstar transmits the first live television across the Atlantic

1964  The computer mouse is invented by Douglas Engelbart (USA)

1965  Operator-controlled car telephone service starts in London
           The first commercial communications satellite, Early Bird, enters service,
              operated by Intelsat
           The world's first electronic switch installed in a telephone exchange by AT&T
             (NJ, USA)

1966  CGE absorbs Société Alsacienne de Constructions Atomiques, de
              Télécommunications et d'Electronique — Alcatel (France)

1967  Colour television is launched in the UK (on BBC2 only)
           Thorn EMI Ferguson launches the world's first solid-state colour TV receiver (UK)

1968  '911' introduced as the USA's nationwide emergency number

1969  The Unix operating system is created by Bell Labs (USA)

1970  Customer-dialling of international telephone calls introduced between London
             and Manhattan

1971  The first e-mail is sent by Ray Tomlinson, with body text of QWERTYUIOP. It was
              Ray who decided that the @ symbol should separate the recipient's name and
              their location
           The first microprocessor, the 4004, is introduced by Intel with 2300 transistors
              and a clock speed of 108kHz (November, USA)

1972  Alan Shugart and others (at IBM) invent the floppy disk, with a diameter of 8
              inches. Shugart went on the found Seagate in 1979

1975  Northern Electric (later Northern Telecom, then Nortel) ships its first SL-1 digital
             switching system

1976  Western Union launches Westar I, the first domestic communications satellite
              for America

1976  The UK's last manual telephone exchange closes (Portree, Isle of Skye). As a
             result, the '999' service achieves nationwide coverage

1978  A marketing message is sent via Arpanet, inviting 400 recipients to go to a
              presentation of DEC's System-20 minicomputer — possibly the first SPAM
              message [USA, 3 May]
           Norman Ken Ouchi, an IBM engineer, invents the Redundant Array of Inexpensive
              Disks, or RAID, to provide a resilient arrangement for data storage

1979  INMARSAT (the International Maritime Satellite Organization) comes into being
              (16 July)
           Larry Boucher (at Shugart Associates) invents the Small Computer System
              Interface, or SCSI
           Northern Telecom launches the DMS-100, a local/toll digital switch

1980  The CCITT (now ITU-T) publishes the Group 3 standard for facsimile

1981  British Telecom takes on responsibility for the UK's public telephone system
           IBM announces, in New York City, the IBM 5150 PC (12 August)
           Fujio Masuoka (at Toshiba) invents Flash Memory, a non-volatile storage method
              that doesn't require continuous power

1982  The INMARSAT system becomes operational, leasing commercial capacity on
              three Marisat satellites covering the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean regions
              (1 February)
           Groupe Speciale Mobile (GSM) is formed by CEPT to design a pan-European mobile
             technology
           3Com ships the first personal computer Ethernet LAN adaptor (29 September)

1983  The first computer virus to replicate surreptitiously is demonstrated by
              PhD student Fred Cohen (11 November, USA)

1984   1 January: AT&T broken up — the Bell System ceases to exist and is replaced by
              seven Regional Bell Operating Companies [RBOCs] and an AT&T responsible only
              for its long-distance telephone, manufacturing, and R&D operations (USA)
           The first urban satellite earth station opens, the London Teleport
             (London Docklands, UK)

1985  The first mobile phone call made in the UK (by Ernie Wise from St Katherine's
              Dock, London to Vodafone's office in Newbury) on 1 January. Cellnet (now O₂)              launched its network on 10 January

1986  The UK's '999' emergency service is extended to mobile telephones

1987  GSM Memorandum of Understanding formed (February)

1990  Tim Berners-Lee starts work on a global hypertext browser, having proposed the
              idea in 1989 (UK)

1991  CGE changes its name to Alcatel Alsthom
         First GSM call made by Radiolinja (Finland)

1992  The Microsoft Windows 3.1 operating system launched
           First international roaming agreement signed between Telecom Finland and
             Vodafone UK
           10 November: Nokia launches the world's first mass-produced commercially-
             available GSM mobile phone — the 1011. It weighed in at 475g, offered
             90 minutes talk time, 12 hours standby time and a two-line display. But no
             ringtones, Bluetooth or camera (Finland)
           3 December: First commercial SMS sent (via the Vodafone network, UK) from a
             PC to an Orbitel 901 handset

1993  In line with a European Directive to provide a Europe-wide emergency services
             telephone number, the '112' service is introduced in the UK

1996  Hotmail launched

1998  Alcatel Alsthom becomes plain Alcatel

2000  BT Cellnet launches the first GPRS service in the UK. Initially, it is restricted to
              corporate customers only, providing constant mobile access to e-mail and the
              corporate Intranet (26 June)

           For the first time, the volume of data traffic on the AT&T network exceeds that
              of voice traffic (USA)

2001  The first 3GSM network launches

2002  The first Multimedia Messaging Services go live

2003  Cingular launches the first commercial EDGE service (July)

2005  AT&T taken over by SBC Communications
           Cingular launches the first extensive commercial HSDPA service (December)

2006  Western Union closes its telegram service (January, USA)

2009  TeliaSonera launches the first 4G LTE mobile service in Stockholm and Oslo
             (14 December)
           Nortel Networks Corporation completes the sale of most of Nortel Networks Ltd's
             Enterprise Solutions business to Avaya (18 December, USA)

2010  Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom announce the successful completion of the
              UK merger of T-Mobile and Orange, and the formation of a new Joint Venture
              (1 April, UK)

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Page updated 02/04/2010