Timeline of communication technology
- 3500 BC - The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing and the Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing
- 1500 BC - The Phoenicians develop an alphabet
- 170 BC - Parchment is discovered in Pergamum
- 105 - Tsai Lun invents paper
- 350 - The Chinese develop a method for printing pages using symbols carved on a wooden block
- 1450 - The Chinese develop wooden block movable type printing
- 1454 - Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type
- 1793 - Claude Chappe establishes the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line
- 1831 - Joseph Henry proposes and builds an electric telegraph
- 1835 - Samuel Morse develops the Morse code
- 1843 - Samuel Morse builds the first long distance electric telegraph line
- 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson exhibit an electric telephone
- 1877 - Thomas Edison patents the phonograph
- 1889 - Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone
- 1901 - Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland
- 1925 - John Logie Baird transmits the first television signal
- 1948 - Claude Shannon writes a paper that establishes the mathematical basis of information theory
- 1958 - Chester Carlson presents the first photocopier suitable for office use
- 1966 - Charles Kao realizes that silica-based optical waveguides offer a practical way to transmit light via total internal reflection
- 1969 - The first hosts of ARPANET, Internet's ancestor, is connected.
- 1973 - Akira Hasegawa and Fred Tappert propose the use of solitary waves to carry information in optical fibers
- 1977 - Donald Knuth begins work on TeX
- 1980 - Linn Mollenauer, Rogers Stollen, and James Gordon demonstrate that solitary waves can be propagated through optical fibers
- 1991 - Anders Olsson transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion bits per second