Professional Documents
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engineering
The following timeline tables list the discoveries and in- • 1874: Ferdinand Braun discovers the rectifier effect
ventions in the history of electrical and electronic engi- in metal sulfides and metal oxides.
neering.[1][2]
• 1877: Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931) invents the
first phonograph, using a tin foil cylinder. For the
1 History of discoveries timeline first time sounds could be recorded and played. A
phonograph horn with membrane and needle was ar-
ranged in such a way that the needle had contact to
2 History of associated inventions the tinfoil.
1
2 3 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
• The phonograph becomes faster and more • The Italian Guglielmo Marconi transmits
convenient due to an electric motor. The elec- wireless telegraph messages by electromag-
tric motor brings on the first juke box with netic waves over a distance of five kilometers.
cylinders - even before flat disk records were
widely available. • 1898
• Thomas Edison discovers thermionic emis- • The Danish physicist Valdemar Poulsen cre-
sion. To this day, this effect forms the basis ates the world’s first magnetic recording and
for the vacuum tube and the cathode ray tube. reproduction, using a 1 mm thick steel wire as
a magnetizable carrier.
• approximately 1893: The invention of the selenium
phototube allows the conversion of brightness val- • Nikola Tesla demonstrated the first wireless
ues into electrical signals. The principle is applied remote control of a model ship.
in wirephoto and television technology for a short
• 1899: The dog “Nipper” is used in "His Master’s
time. Selenium is used in light meters for the next
Voice", the trademark for gramophones and records.
50 years.
• 1902
• 1904
• American Brigadier General Henry Harrison • The 15-year-old Manfred von Ardenne is
Chase Dunwoody files for a patent for a car- granted his first patent for an electron tube hav-
borundum steel detector for use in a crystal ra- ing a plurality of electrodes. Siegmund Loewe
dio, an improved version of the Cat’s-whisker (1885-1962) builds with the tube his first radio
detector. It is sometimes credited as the first receiver “Loewe Opta-".
semiconductor in history. The envelope detec- • The Hungarian engineer Dénes Mihály
tor is an important part of every radio receiver. patented an image scanning with line de-
flection, in which each point of an image is
• 1907: Rosenthal puts in his image telegraph for the
scanned ten times per second by a selenium
first time a photocell.
cell.
• 1911: First film studios are created in Hollywood • August Karolus (1893-1972) invents the Kerr
and Potsdam- Babelsberg . cell, an almost inertia-free conversion of elec-
trical pulses into light signals. He was granted
• 1912: The first radio receiver is created, in accor- a patent for his method of transmitting slides.
dance with the Audion principle.
• Vladimir Kosma developed the first television
• 1913: The legal battle over the invention of the elec- camera tube, the Ikonoskop, using the Braun
tron tube between Robert von Lieben and Lee de tube.
Forest is decided. The electron tube is replaced by • The German State Secretary Karl August Bre-
a high vacuum in the glass flask with significantly dow founded the first German broadcasting or-
improved properties. ganization. By lifting the ban on broadcast re-
ception and the opening of the first private ra-
• Alexander Meissner patented his process dio station, the development of radio as a mass
“feedback for generating oscillations”, by his medium begins.
development of a radio station using an elec-
tron tube .
• The Englishman Arthur Berry submits a patent 3.2 1924-1959: From cathode ray tube to
on the manufacture of printed circuits by stereo audio and TV
etched metal.
• 1924: the first radio receivers are exhibited at the
• 1915: Carl Benedicks leads basic studies in Swe- Berlin Radio Show
den on the electrical properties of silicon and
• 1925
germanium. Due to the emerging tube technology,
however, interest in semiconductors remains low • Brunswick Records in Dubuque, Iowa pro-
until after the Second World War. duced their first record player, the Brunswick
Panatrope with a pickup, amplifier and loud-
• 1917 speaker
• Based on previous findings of the Englishman • In the American Bell Laboratories, a method
Oliver Lodge, the Frenchman Lucien Levy de- for recording of records obtained by micro-
velops a radio receiver with frequency tuning phone and tube amps for series production.
using a resonant circuit. Also in Germany working on it is ongoing
since 1922. 1925 appear the first electrically
• 1919: Charlie Chaplin founded the Hollywood film recorded disks in both countries.
production and distribution company United Artists
• At the Leipzig Spring Fair, the first miniature
camera "Leica" is presented to the public.
• 1920: The first regularly operating radio sta-
tion KDKA goes on air on 2 November 1920 in • John Logie Baird performs the first screening
Philadelphia, USA. It is the first time electronics are of a living head with a resolution of 30 vertical
used to transmit information and entertainment to lines using a Nipkow disk.
the public at large. The same year in Germany an in- • August Karolus demonstrated in Germany
strumental concert was broadcast on the radio from television with 48 lines and ten image changes
a long-wave transmitter in Wusterhausen. per second.
• 1922: J. McWilliams Stone invents the first portable • 1926
radio receiver. George Frost builds the first “car ra-
dio” in his Ford Model T. • Edison developed the first "LP". By dense
grooves (16 grooves on 1 mm) and the reduc-
• 1923 tion of speed to 80 min −1 (later 78 min −1
4 3 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
) increases the playing time up to 2 times 20 (1898) to the second crucial pioneer of magnetic
minutes. He carries himself with the decline sound, image and data storage
of his phonograph business.
• Dénes Mihály presented in Berlin a small cir-
• The German State Railroad offers a cordless cle, the first authentic television broadcast in
telephone service in moving trains between Germany, having worked at least since 1923
Berlin and Hamburg - the idea of mobile tele- in this field.
phony is born.
• August Karolus and the company Telefunken
• John Logie Baird developed the first commer- put on the “fifth Great German Radio Exhi-
cial television set in the world. It was not until bition Berlin 1928” the prototype of a televi-
1930, he is called a " telescreen sold “at a price sion receiver, with an image size of 8 cm × 10
of 20 pounds. cm and a resolution of about 10,000 pixels, a
much better picture quality than previous de-
• 1927
vices.
• The first fully electronic music boxes • In New York (USA) the first regular television
("Jukeboxes") used in the USA on the market. broadcasts of the experiment station WGY,
• German Grammophon on sale due to a li- operated by the General Electric Company
cense agreement with the Brunswick-Balke- (GE). Sporadic television news and dramas ra-
Collender Company. Its first fully electronic diate from these stations by 1928.
turntables. • The first commercially produced televi-
• The first industrially manufactured car radio , sion receiver of the Daven Corporation in
the “Philco Transitone” from the “Storage Bat- Newark is offered for $75.
tery Co.” in Philadelphia, USA, comes on the • John Logie Baird transmits the first television
market. pictures internationally, and the same across
• The first shortwave radio - Rundfunkübertra- the Atlantic from London to New York. He
gung overseas broadcast by the station PCJJ also demonstrated the world’s first color tele-
the Philips factories in Eindhoven in the Dutch vision transmission in London.
colonies. • 1929
• Opening of the first regular telegraphy -
• Edison withdraws from the phono business -
Dienstes between Berlin and Vienna.
the disk has ousted the cylinder.
• First commercial sound films ("The Jazz • The company Columbia Records developed
Singer", USA) using the “Needle sound” back the first portable record player that can be con-
in sync with the film screening for LPs over nected to any tube radio. It also created the
loudspeakers. first radio / phonograph combinations, the pre-
• First public television broadcasts in the UK by cursor to the 1960s music chests.
John Logie Baird between London and Glas-
gow and in the USA by Frederic Eugene Ives
(1882-1953) between Washington and New • • The German physicist Curt Stille (1873-1957)
York. records magnetic sound for film, on a perfo-
rated steel band. First, this “Magnettonver-
• The American inventor Philo Taylor
fahren” has no success. Years later it is re-
Farnsworth (1906-1971) developed in Los
discovered for amateur films, providing easy
Angeles, the first fully electronic television
dubbing. A “Daylygraph” or Magnettongerät
system in the world.
had amplifier and equalizer, and a mature
• John Logie Baird developed his Phonovision, Magnettondiktiergerät called “Textophon”.
the first videodisc player. 30-line television
• Based on patents, which he had purchased
images are stored on shellac records. At 78
of silence, brings the Englishman E. Blattner
RPM mechanically scanned, the images can
the " Blattnerphone “the first magnetic sound
be played back on his “telescreen”. It could
recording on the market. It records on a thin
not play sound nor keep up with the rapidly
steel band.
increasing resolution of television. More than
40 years later, commercial optical disc players • The first sound film using optical sound pre-
came onto the market. miers. Since the early 1920s, various people
have developed this method. The same op-
• 1928: Fritz Pfleumer got the first tape recorder toelectronic method also allows for the first
patent. It replaces steel wire with paper coated time the post-processing of recorded music to
in iron powder. According to Valdemar Poulsen sound recordings of it.
3.2 1924-1959: From cathode ray tube to stereo audio and TV 5
• 1958
4 See also
• Electronics
• History of electronic engineering
5 References
[1] Isaac Asimov:Biographical Encyclopedia of science and
Engineering, London, 1975 ISBN 0-330-24323-3
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