Volume VI · 11 landmarks

Communications

Writing to wireless: how ideas left the room and then the planet.

1. 

   c. 3200 BCEWritingSpeech vanishes as it is spoken.

2. 

   105 CE (imperial report); earlier Chinese usePaperPapyrus is a strip of plant.

3. 

   c. 1040 (Bi Sheng); 1450s (Gutenberg)Movable-type printingWoodblock printing is a carved page.

4. 

   1837–1844Electric telegraphA current in a wire can mean a letter.

5. 

   1876TelephoneA diaphragm, a magnet, a current that wiggles as a voice wiggles air.

6. 

   1895–1906RadioA spark, an antenna, a coherer or later a tube: wireless telegraphy threw Morse across a gap with no wire between.

7. 

   1927 (Farnsworth); 1930s broadcastsElectronic televisionMechanical scanning disks could send a crude picture.

8. 

   1969 (ARPANET); 1983 (TCP/IP cutover)Packet internetARPANET’s first login, UCLA to Stanford in 1969, crashed after two letters.

9. 

   1989 (proposal); 1991 (public)World Wide WebThe internet already moved files.

10. 

    1995 (full operational capability)GPS as a systemA constellation of satellites broadcasts time.

11. 

    2007 (iPhone as mass template)SmartphoneA smartphone is a pocket computer that is also a radio, a camera, a map, and a store of other people’s software.