1727

Experimenters sent an electrical impulse along a wire thread over a distance of more than 0.25 km.

MARYJANE CORAZA IV-STAR PHYSICS

1791

Claude Chappe invented the semaphore telegraph. It was used to send an optical image over a distance of almost 700 km in less than one hour.

1819

Hans Oersted reported the deflection of a pivoted, magnetized needle by an electric current.

1831

Michael Faraday showed that vibrations of a piece of iron or steel could be converted into electrical impulses.

1832

Samuel Morse developed ideas to use electromagnets in telegraphy

1835

Samuel Morse developed the Morse Code as a series of dots and dashes

1837

The English inventors, Cooke and Wheatstone, demonstrated the use of a five needle electric telegraph for the railroad in England.

1837

Samuel Morse demonstrated his first telegraph key and filed a patent for it.

1842

Samuel Morse oversaw the laying of the first underwater cable in New York Harbor

1843

The first telegraph line was built. It ran between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington- a total distance of 60 km.

Public use of telegraph lines began

1844

1846

Royal E. House invented the printing telegraph. It was a primitive system that required two operators to send a message. It only lasted a few years.

1848

The Associated Press was established to pool telegraphic expenses.

1854

The telegraph was first used by the Anglo-French military to maintain contact between troops and their command headquarters during the Crimean war. Two submarine cables were laid from Newfoundland to Canada.

1856

1866

Two submarine cables were laid from Ireland to Newfoundland

1874

Thomas Edison designed the quadruplex, enabling eight telegraph operators to handle four messages simultaneously, two in each direction, all on the same line.

1875

C.R. Carey designed a primitive kind of television system. The system was not practical for wide use.

1876

Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone

1878

The first commercial telephone switching station was set up in Connecticut. It served 21 telephones

1778

Telephones were becoming generally available to the public

1880

Paul Nipkow was granted the first patent for a television device in Germany. Nipkow could not afford to develop his television scanner very far, and his patent lapsed.

1884

The Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi sent the first recorded message through space by electromagnetic waves, i.e. radio waves

1896

Strong copper wire was developed. Prior to this, all wires were made of iron, which rusted quickly and did not conduct electricity as well as copper. Marconi succeeded in transmitting and receiving wireless signals between Newfoundland and Cornwall , England.

1900

1901

Donald Murray of England introduced a scheme that involved punching holes in paper tape to send a message. This was the forerunner of the more common teleprinters, such as the teletype.

1903

Lee de Forest invented the three-element vacuum tube, which became useful as an amplifier in a telephone repeating system.

1923

Vladymir K. Zworykin patented the iconoscope, an electronic scanning vacuum tube. Tubes like these were soon to be incorporated into television.

1926

Teletype machines became widely used in North America.

1927

John Baird demonstrated a complete television system that used mechanical scanning of the objects. The pictures produced were very poor.

1939

NBC of New York gave public demonstrations of television transmissions at the World s Fair.

High frequency microwave radio links were introduced.

1946

1948

The first commercial operation of television systems began in the United States.

1950

RCA received approval from the Federal Communications Commission for their development of a color television that was compatible with existing systems.

1957

The world s first human made satellite was put into orbit by the Soviet Union

1962

Telstar was launched. It was the first active satellite that functioned as a microwave transmitter and receiver. It transmitted live telephone and television conversations over the Atlantic. It was only used fro several months before becoming outdated

1963

Syncom II, the first geosynchronous satellite (a satellite that orbits the Earth at the speed of the Earth s rotation, thus remaining continuously over one spot on Earth) was positioned over theAtlantic Ocean.

1964

Syncom III transmitted the first sustained television picture, the opening of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, from across the Pacific.

1969

The sending of the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the Moon. On July 20, Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar landing module and transmitted his message to Earth: That s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind .

1972

Canada became the first country to establish a geosynchronous domestic satellite system (TELESAT) for television programming. With increasing technology, the sizes of receiving dishes werebeing reduced. This enables an explosion in the number of receiver stations around the world as both radio and television industries became active users of satellites.

1981

Deployment of the Canadarm, a remote manipulator system used on the space shuttle. It is used to place, repair, and retrieve communication satellites in space. Voyager 2 transmits satellite information and images of the Planet Uranus to Earth

1986

1988

World s first transoceanic optic fiber submarine cable is laid from New Jersey to France, a distance of 6500 km.