overview

primers

snapshots




dates

to 1900

to 1919

to 1939

to 1949

to 1959

to 1969

to 1979

to 1984

to 1989

to 1994

to 1999

to 2004

2005 -

     to 1900

This page highlights ICT industry developments to 1900.

It covers -

• 1625
• 1840
• 1850
• 1860
• 1870
• 1880
• 1890
• 1900

Context is provided by the broader media and communications timeline elsewhere on this site.

     1625

• Oughtred invents sliderule

     1861

• first US transcontinental telegraph completed by Western Union

     1892

• Edison and Dickson invent peepshow Kinetoscope
• four colour rotary press
• portable typewriters
• General Electric (GE) formed through merger of Edison General Electric & Thomson-Houston Electric

     1893

• financial panic in US
• end of Land Boom and financial crisis in Australia
• Coca-Cola trademark registered
• La Fontaine & Otlet establish Institut international de bibliographie
• Steiger's calculator
• auto number plates introduced in France
• Hall's braille writer
• Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co case in UK

     1894

• Marconi invents wireless telegraphy

     1895

• Lumière Bros invent Cinématograph
• Friese-Greene invents phototypesetting
• Kellogg's Corn Flakes
• Budapest gains first European subway

     1896

• Underwood model permits typists to see what they are typing
• X-ray photography invented
• UK Locomotives on Highways Act increases speed limit for self-propelled vehicles to 12 mph
• British Thomson-Houston formed

     1897

• Braun invents cathode-ray tube
• General Electric creates corporate publicity department
• Hermann Helmholtz' Die elektromagnetische theorie des lichts
• Durkheim's Suicide

     1898

• Compagnie Générale d'Electricité (CGE) established
• Northern Electric & Manufacturing (later Nortel) founded
• Chicago Mercantile Exchange founded

     1899

• loudspeaker invented
• Emerson founds prototype management consulting company
• Johan Vaaler invents paperclip
• magnetic sound recording
• American Marconi Company (forerunner of RCA) founded
• Burroughs Adding Machine Company founded
• Eiffel Tower
• NEC established in Japan
• Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class

     1900

• Marconi forms Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co in UK
• Bell System recapitalised as AT&T (US$120m assets, 0.8m phones)
• Fairchild forms International Time Recording Company in US

   next page (1901 to 1919)