Timeline of Communications, Transport and Military Technology

The information has been drawn from a variety of sources around the Internet and has been summarized extremely heavily. Searching suitable keywords on Wikipedia or Google will provide greater detail.

• 10000BC: Cave painting (exact dates arguable).
• 7000BC: Walls of Jericho built with flint tools.
• 4800BC: Beginning of Yang-shao culture in China.
• 4500BC: Beginning of Uruk period of Sumer. Uruk was a walled city built on the banks of the Euphrates river dominating Mesopotamia.
• 3761BC: Year 1 of Jewish Calendar.
• 3400BC: Earliest known wheel, near the Black Sea.
• 3400BC: Early Egyption hieroglyphic writing.
• 3200BC: Early Sumerian clay tablets containing cuniform script.
• 3000BC: Beginning of libraries in Egypt, 12 month, 365 day calendar.
• 2800BC: Papyrus used by Egyptian scribes to support painted hieroglyphics.
• 2800BC: Sumerian base 6 and 12 numbers.
• 2100BC: Epic of Gilgamesh (fifth king of Uruk) written on clay tablets in Sumerian cuniform and later translated to Akkadian.
• 1750BC (approx): King Hammurabi of Babylon establishes stable hegemony over Mesopotamia and enshrines a code of laws. Babylonian mathematicians established a place-value number system (using base 60 -- a product of small primes 2 * 2 * 3 * 5) used for astronomy, geometry and navigation. The base 60 system still remains in use for time measurements and map coordinates (degrees, minutes and seconds).
• 1700BC: Height of the Minoan bronze-age civilisation in Crete, probably centered on trade in tin.
• 1700BC: Phaistos Disc manufactured by pressing stamps into clay, representing the first example of printed font, and the last example for 1000 years. The meaning of the disc has never been deciphered and the language used has not be found on any other artifact. The writing runs in a spiral from the centre outward, a configuration next used by "Compact Disc" systems 3500 years later.
• 1600BC: Beginning of Mycenaean civilization, defeating the earlier Minoan Greeks and adopting elements of Linear-A.
• 1500BC (approx): Rigveda (earliest Vedic Sanskrit text, consisting of Hindu Hymns) completed in written form, basen on earlier oral tradition of the same hymns.
• 1500BC: Proto-Canaanite alphabet (22 symbols, no vowels, ancestor of Hebrew and Aramaic).
• 1400BC: Establishment of Linear-B script of Mycenaean Greece.
• 1300BC: Early Chinese painted characters on Woven silk paper.
• 1200BC: Start of Phonecian Alphabet.
• 1000BC: Aramaic script starts to spread through Middle East, replacing Akkadian.
• 950BC: Early Hebrew script (resembling Aramaic and Arabic, no vowels used).
• 950BC: Founding of Sparta in Greece.
• 750BC: Start of "Classic" Greek Alphabet.
• 750BC: Expansion of Sparta subjugating the surrounding population, all Spartan citizens must be soldiers.
• 500BC: Early Roman Alphabet.
• 386BC: Dionysius I of Syracuse battles the Carthaginians, lays seige to and defeats Rhegium. Greek catapults were used as artillery during the siege.
• 371BC: Battle of Leuctra -- Spartan hoplite phalanx (containing substantial numbers of conscripted troops), was defeated by a smaller Theban infantry phalanx because the Thebans focused their force on the elite Spartan units.
• 338BC: Battle of Chaeronea -- Philip II of Macedon defeats the combined forces of Athens and Thebes using an organised partial withdrawal to open a gap in enemy lines followed by a decisive cavalry charge (led by his son Alexander). Athenian democracy ends. Alexander dominates Greece and raises a Macedonian & Greek army against Persia.
• 333BC: Battle of Issus -- Macedonian/Greek army commanded by Alexander the Great defeats Persian army of Darius III. The battle was fought in confined space in the Pass of Jonah and was won by the superior infantry fighters breaking through the Persian defenses.
• 332BC: Siege of Tyre -- Alexander the Great uses siege engines to break into the fortified city.
• 331BC: Battle of Gaugamela -- Macedonian phalanx (plus mix of light and heavy cavalry) commanded by Alexander the Great defeats Persian army of Darius III (which included chariots and Indian elephants). Catapults were used to provide covering fire.
• 326BC: Battle of the Hydaspes River -- King Purushotthama of India charges Alexander the Great's army with 200 war elephants, Alexander's cavalry are afraid to face the elephants but beat the Indian cavalry. The hoplite spear-men stand up to the elephant charge with heavy losses on both sides, resulting in a costly victory for Alexander. The army refuses to move any deeper into India.
• 300BC (approx): "Ramayana" (Valmiki), epic poem of Prince Rama written in Classical Sanskrit. The work forms a body of Hindu folklore and parables.
• 231BC: Death of King Ashoka who spread Buddhism throughout India and Pakistan and left stone pillars inscribed in the Brahmi script with messages of moral virtue and righteous behaviour.
• 168BC: Battle of Pydna -- Roman Legions commanded by Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeat the Macedonian Phalanx commanded by Perseus of Macedon. Both sides had approx 40000 infantry and 4000 cavalry. The Roman infantry had larger shields, better armour and short swords while the Greeks had long spears. Although the phalanx was able to drive the legion back against the foothills of Mount Olocrus, they lost structure on the uneven ground and Perseus was too cowardly to deliver the charging cavalry wedge that was the hallmark of his ancestor Alexander's victories. This battle marks the rise of the power of Rome and the decline of the Macedonians.
• 59BC: Acta-diurna hand written news poster (Julius Caesar).
• 50BC: Roman invasion brings writing to England.
• 9: Teutoburg Forest -- 3 Roman legions plus cavalry cross the Rhine under the leadership of Publius Quinctilius Varus. On unfamiliar, obstructive terrain they meet a well organised coalition of Germanic tribes who mount a series of guerrilla attacks culminating in an all-out offensive, resulting in over 30000 Roman casualties. No Romans returned and the Roman Empire never again sent troops past the Rhine.
• 100 (approx): Roman army employs the onager (single arm torsion catapult with sling) as a siege weapon.
• 410: Alaric sacks Rome. Emperor Honorius withdraws Roman troops from Britain. Steady migration of Saxons, Angles and Jutes into Britain occurs for the next few centuries.
• 552: Silkworms smuggled out of Southeast Asia.
• 600 (approx): Evidence of place-value number system used by Indian Hindus. Some earlier texts used a dot for a zero, some used a word but no special symbol.
• 672: Use of Greek Fire (petroleum-based flamethrower) by Byzantine fleet defeats Arab attack. Used on both land and water, Greek Fire becomes the most feared weapon of the medieval world.
• 700: Chinese printing using movable type.
• 713: Handwritten news sheet "Kaiyuan" published in Beijing, China.
• 741: Chinese defeated by Arabs at the battle of Talas River, Islamic world begins to manufacture paper from wood pulp.
• 793: Vikings raid Northumbrian monastery at Lindisfarne. Typical weapons include sword (approx 1m long), round shield with central iron boss, broad blade spear, hand axe and bows and arrows. Armour consisted of iron helmet, chain mail, leather and wool. Transport was via longboat with square-rig sail. Viking tactics used initial trading parties as scouts followed by highly mobile, well armed raiding parties.
• 800: Chinese printing.
• 800: A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages (al-Kindi), oldest known documentation of cryptanalysis by frequency analysis.
• 850: Cyrillic alphabet (St. Cyril, Byzantine missionary) was derived from the Greek uncial alphabet fitted to the Bulgarian language. Cyrillic becomes widely adobted by Slavic people in Eastern Europe.
• 876: Gwalior tablet stone shows base 10 place-value number system used in India with symbol for zero.
• 1065: Battle of Stamford Bridge -- King Harold of England repels Norwegian Viking invasion force.
• 1066: Battle of Hastings -- William the Conquerer leads Norman invasion of Anglo-Saxon England and defeats Harold's army. Use of heavy mounted knights to charge the Saxon shield-wall infantry gives the advantage to the Normans.
• 1156: Hogen Rebellion in Japan was faught over the Imperial succession. Samurai from the Minamoto and Taira clans fought on both sides. This established the samurai as a professional fighting force and a political power, leading to rivalry between the Minamoto and Taira clans and marking the start of Feudal Japan.
• 1159: Heiji Rebellion in Japan marked a victory of Taira no Kiyomori over the Minamoto clan.
• 1185: Dan-no-ura no Tatakai -- naval battle in Japan where Minamoto no Yoshitsune led the Genji clan to victory over the Heike clan fleet led by Taira no Kiyomori.
• 1192: Establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate by Minamoto no Yoritomo in Japan. The samurai are now the major power in Japan and form the basis of a Feudal military government.
• 1216: Siege of Dover -- medieval trebuchet used in England.
• 1392: Copper type used for printing in Korea.
• 1453: Johannes Gutenberg built the first European movable-type printing press.
• 1500: The Court of the Star Chamber (England) awards unlimited monopoly rights to the guild of printers (the "Stationers' Company") giving them exclusive control over the printing industry.
• 1516: First Postmaster in England (Sir Brian Tuke).
• 1519: Cortez lands on the coast of Mexico, beginning European conquest of South America. Cortez later defeated the Aztec emporer Montezuma taking advantage of cavalry, firearms and steel weapons and armour to confuse and defeat a much larger force. Europeans also spread disease amongst the Indians.
• 1532: Fransisco Pizaro defeated the Inca emperor Atahuallpa at Cajamarca.
• 1586: "A Treatise on Secret Writing" (Blaise de Vigenere, France).
• 1586: Early paper cartridges for muzzle loading firearms contained a measure of powder and a bullet but the cartridge was torn open to empty the contents into the gun.
• 1600: British East India Company founded by royal charter of Elizabeth I.
• 1602: Founding of the Dutch East India Company.
• 1603: Establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan leading to policy of trade restriction, suppression of Christianity and enforced isolation from Spanish, Dutch and other European contact.
• 1605: Printed newspaper in Strasburg (Johann Carolus).
• 1609: Weekly newspaper, Northern Germany.
• 1620: Mayflower lands at Cape Cod, transporting "Pilgrim Fathers" from Plymouth, England and beginning European conquest of North America.
• 1621: Weekly newspaper, London.
• 1624: Statute of Monopolies: English parliament constrains the crown to only issue "letters patent" to the inventors or introducers of original inventions. Such patents had a limited duration.
• 1631: Founding of French newspaper "La Gazette".
• 1635: King Charles the First rules that Thomas Witherings should run a postal service between London and Ireland and that no other messengers were to be used. Carriage of mail was partly on foot, partly horseback.
• 1645: Battle of Naseby -- Parliamentarian soldiers of Sir Thomas Fairfax defeat Royalist forces commanded by Prince Rupert. Oliver Cromwell commanded the Parliamentarian cavalry and encouraged promotion based on proficiency rather than social standing.
• 1657: Oliver Cromwell declares one General Post Office and Postmaster General of England, no other postal service was allowed.
• 1660: King Charles II of England affirms the General Post Office monopoly.
• 1662: The Licensing Act (England) established a register of licensed books, requiring one copy of each book to be deposited with Stationers' Company.
• 1681: Repeal of the Licensing Act (England), Stationers' Company gives rights of ownership for books to its own members and maintains monoloply on printing.
• 1687: "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (Isaac Newton), describes Newton's laws of motion and law of gravitation as well as laying the foundations for calculus.
• 1690: First piston engine pump (Denis Papin, France).
• 1690: First American newspaper in Boston, suppressed after one issue.
• 1698: First steam-piston engine pump (Thomas Savery, England)
• 1694: John Locke argued before the House of Commons (England) that protection of one's intellectual works is a "natural" right.
• 1701: Seed drill invented by Jethro Tull, improves land productivity, reduces labor requirements.
• 1710: Statute of Anne passes into English law giving authors exclusive control over their works for the first 28 years after publication, after which their work becomes public domain.
• 1712: Steam condensation piston engine (Thomas Newcomen, England). Newcomen forced into partnership with Savery because of patent on engine based on fire. These engines were used to pump water from coal mines and were the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
• 1715: Battle of Preston -- Oliver Cromwell leads Parliamentarian troops to victory over Royalists and Scotts commanded by James Hamilton.
• 1725: Newcomen atmospheric engine utilised piston and cross beam. Popular for pumping coal mines.
• 1729: English chemist Stephen Gray transmitted electricity over a wire.
• 1742: "New Principles in Gunnery" (Benjamin Robins) -- Robins encouraged the use of a thinner, non-spherical bullet and a rifled barrel as well as providing information on air resistance and range calculations for artillery.
• 1758: Founding of the Middleton Railway, Leeds.
• 1769: London publishers win their claim, "Copyright is forever" (Miller v. Taylor).
• 1769: James Watt steam engine with speed governor.
• 1774: English House of Lords reverses earlier ruling and denies London publishers claim, "Copyright is forever" (Donaldson v. Beckett). The works of Shakespeare become public domain.
• 1775: Benjamin Franklin is named first Postmaster General (US).
• 1776: American Revolutionary War -- Early submarine attempted to sink British warship in New York harbour (but failed).
• 1784: Carriage of mail via horse drawn coach in England.
• 1787: US Constitution is completed.
• 1788: First fleet lands at Sydney (8 months after leaving England), beginning European conquest of Australia.
• 1789: French Revolution creates the first modern republic in Europe, surrounded by monarchy.
• 1789: Flanged wheels for rail wagons (William Jessup, England).
• 1789: US Constitution ratified by 13 states.
• 1790: US Congress passes first US Copyright act, "An Act For The Encouragement of Learning". Original protection is for 14 years, after which the work was to pass into the public domain. Registration of Copyright and inclusion of Copyright notices are required.
• 1790: Indexing system using numbered papers used by British Post Office Headquarters.
• 1791: Bicycle without pedals, "celerifer" or "wooden horse" (Comte de Sivrac, France).
• 1793: Semaphore telegraph (Claude Chappe, France), visual signaling system with mechanical arms or lights and shutters along a line of towers.
• 1796: Carl Freidrich Gauss describes modular arithmetic which is useful for both number theory and cryptography.
• 1799: The Ship Letter Act (England) gave the Post Office power to use private ships (including warships).
• 1800: Alessandro Volta produced the first battery.
• 1800: Gas lighting in the Lyceum theater, London.
• 1800: Non-condensing high pressure stationary steam-engine (Oliver Evans, US).
• 1800: Patented vertical steam engine without beam (Phineas Crowther, England).
• 1800: James Watt's patent expires.
• 1802: The "Charlotte Dundas", prototype steamboat, stern paddle and horizontal cylinder (William Symington).
• 1802: US Copyright extended to cover graphic prints.
• 1803: First Australian newspapers -- "Sydney Gazette" and "New South Wales Advertiser".
• 1804: Napoleon Bonaparte becomes Emperor of France.
• 1804: Propeller "screw" driven steamboat (Colonel Stevens, US).
• 1804: "Wylam" steam locomotive (Richard Trevithick) with horizontal cylinder.
• 1805: Battle of Trafalgar -- British Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet (and dies in battle) ensuring continued British control of shipping and blockade of French trade.
• 1807: The "Clermont" (Robert Fulton, US), first steamship passenger service.
• 1807: Patent for fulminating powder, chlorate of potash, sulphur and charcoal (Rev. A. J. Forsyth)
• 1809: Isaac Nichols, first Postmaster in Sydney, Australia.
• 1811: Patent for high pressure compound steam engine (Arthur Woolf, Cornwall).
• 1812: Blenkinsop's rack locomotive.
• 1812: American soldiers drive the British out of the Appalachians.
• 1813: Patent and construction of "Puffing Billy" locomotive (William Hedley).
• 1813: Napoleon Bonaparte defeated at the Battle of Leipzig facing the Sixth Coalition including troops from Britain, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Austria, Sweden and Germany.
• 1815: Stephenson locomotive with multitubular boiler and 6 wheels.
• 1815: Road re-surfacing with gravel base and sealed surface (John MacAdam, England).
• 1817: Patented "Velocipede" bicycle without pedals (Baron Karl von Drais, Germany).
• 1819: Patented improved bicycle (W.K. Clarkson), still no pedals.
• 1820: Gas lighting through most main streets of London.
• 1820: Danish physicist Christian Oersted discovered electromagnetism.
• 1821: Michael Faraday built the first electric generator.
• 1822: The Stockton and Dallington rail line (Stephenson, England).
• 1822: Patent for the percussion cap (Joshua Shaw). This invention was known years before the patent was filed and could well have been invented by someone other than Shaw.
• 1828: Postal deliveries in Sydney, Australia.
• 1830: Carriage of mail via railroad in England.
• 1831: US Congress extends US Copyright law to include musical compositions. Protection is extended to 42 years (28 years plus 14 year extension) after publication.
• 1831: British Factory Act restricts working hours (based on age of worker), rationale is to prevent unfair competition.
• 1832: Carriage of mail via railroad in US.
• 1832: First experimental electromagnetic telegraph (Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling), using single needle deflection.
• 1833: First operational electromagnetic telegraph (Carl Freidrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber).
• 1834: US Supreme Court upholds the limited duration of Copyright protection (Wheaton v. Peters).
• 1836: Invention of the Flobert cartridge and pinfire cartridge -- metal cartridges made breach-loading rifles practical for the first time.
• 1837: Rowland Hill proposes that all postage is prepaid at a uniform low rate.
• 1838: British army uses the percussion-lock Brunswick rifle.
• 1838: Pre-paid postage using embossed covers (James Raymond, Australia).
• 1838: Overland mail service between Sydney and Melbourne.
• 1839: Charles Weetstone and Edward Cooke, commercial magnetic deflection telegraph used by British Railway.
• 1839: Beginning of the First Opium War -- Emperor Qing attempted to restrict opium trade but the British navy soon proved superior to that of the Chinese, resulting in British control of Hong Kong.
• 1840: Bicycle with pedals and steerable front wheel (Kirkpatrick McMillan, Scotland).
• 1840: First postage stamp (Penny Black) in England.
• 1840: Steamship mail service London to New York.
• 1841: Augustin-Louis Cauchy Proposes a Sampling Theorem.
• 1842: The standary "Brown Bess" British military musket switched over from flint lock to percussion cap (still muzzle loading).
• 1846: Improvements to the pinfire cartridge (Houiller, Paris) using a brass and paper cartridge shell with percussion cap that expands with the explosion to make a good seal against the breach of the barrel.
• 1846: Early electric telegraph.
• 1847: Postage stamps available in the US.
• 1848: Mexican War -- USA takes control of Texas
• 1849: British army conquer the Punjaub using muzzle loading "Brown Bess" muskets.
• 1849: Postage stamps available in Sydney, Australia.
• 1850: Rimfire cartridge, no primer required, useful for low calibre rifles.
• 1852: Mail carriage via steamship "Chusan" between Australia and Britain.
• 1853: US Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that translation of a book into another language was not covered by Copyright protection (Stowe v. Thomas).
• 1854: Charles Babbage draws plans for the Analytical Engine and also finds a method for breaking the Vigenere cypher.
• 1854: "An Investigation Into the Laws of Thought" (George Boole), foundations for boolean (and binary) arithmetic.
• 1855: Registered mail service available in the US.
• 1856: Beginning of the Second Opium War which saw British and French forces gain further control of Chinese ports, demand tribute from China and legalise the opium trade.
• 1857: Berdan or Boxer primed centrefire cartridge, eventually becomes the standard military cartridge design, such cartridges are reusable.
• 1861: US transcontinental telegraph line completed, the "Pony Express" becomes obsolete.
• 1861: American Civil War -- fought between the Northern states and the Southern states.
• 1862: US military submarine "Aligator" built but never used in combat.
• 1864: Mail money orders available within US.
• 1864: Confederate US submarine "CSS Huntly" attacked and sank USS Housatonic in the Charleston Harbor, but sank itself soon afterwards.
• 1865: End of American Civil War, slavery is abolished in USA.
• 1866: Internal combusition engine (Nikolaus Otto).
• 1867: US Congress extends US Copyright law to include photography.
• 1869: Construction of the "Logical Abacus" or "Logical Piano", a mechanical device for solving 4 variable boolean expressions (William Stanley Jevons).
• 1870: British Post Office is granted control of telegraph service.
• 1871: US Congress extends US Copyright law to include paintings, statues and other fine arts.
• 1873: Start of the Dewey decimal system of knowledge organisation (Melvil Dewey).
• 1874: Original Baudot Code (Emile Baudot), a five bit code used for telegraph now called International Telegraph Alphabet No 1 (ITA1).
• 1876: First functional telephone (Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson, probably incorporating ideas from Elisha Gray).
• 1877: Wax cylinder phonograph (Thomas Edison).
• 1880: Mail carriage via bicycle in Coventry, England.
• 1885: Early motorcycle (Gottfried Daimler).
• 1887: Disc phonograph (Emily Berliner).
• 1886: Berne Convention (Europe): Copyright protection is automatic, neither registration nor inclusion of a Copyright notice is required. Minimum duration of protection is 50 years after the death of the author. US does not agree to join.
• 1888: Spanish submarine "Peral" demonstrates electric propulsion and launches a torpedo underwater.
• 1889: International Copyright Act, England gives recognition to US authors and provides for exclusive right to import or produce translations.
• 1887: England ratifies the Berne Convention.
• 1891: Mail carriage via bicycle (Queensland, Australia).
• 1891: International Copyright Treaty, US gives recognition to European authors.
• 1896: Marconi files patent in Britain for radio communication.
• 1898: Spanish-American War -- USA defeats Spanish forces, further weakening European control over the New World. USA follows up with an invasion of the Phillipines.
• 1901: Modernised Baudot code (Donald Murray) became International Telegraph Alphabet No 2 (ITA2) which is still used in limited applications today.
• 1901: Carriage of mail via automobile (US).
• 1901: Federation of Australia. Commonwealth of Australia established the Postmaster General's Department (PMG) to control all posts and telegraphs.
• 1906: Lee De Forest developed a triode in a vacuum tube, demonstrated amplification of electrical signals.
• 1908: Revision of Berne Convention (Berlin, Europe), duration of protection is set at the life of the author plus 50 years.
• 1909: US Congress revises US Copyright law, extends coverage for the motion picture and radio broadcasting industries. Protection is extended to 56 years after publication (28 years plus 28 year extension).
• 1911: Spark-gap transmitters fitted to British submarines.
• 1911: Carriage of mail by airplane within US.
• 1911: Copyright Act (England): Duration of Copyright protection extended, unpublished works excluded from Copyright protection (apart from unpublished paintings drawings and photographs), records, perforated rolls, sound recordings and works of architecture granted protection. Registration of Copyright with Stationers Hall no longer required.
• 1912: British Post Office is granted control of telephones.
• 1915: First Battle of the Atlantic -- German submarines prove successful in warfare, sinking some British warships, many cargo and merchant ships and the famous "Lusitania" luxury passenger liner.
• 1917: Russian Civil War -- American Capitalist ideologues unsuccessfully attempt to defeat the Bolsheviks
• 1919: Airmail between England and Australia (Ross and Keith Smith).
• 1919: Airmail between London and Paris.
• 1919: Establishment of 8 hour working day / 48 hour working week (ILO, Washington USA).
• 1920: First transcontinental airmail in the US.
• 1927: International airmail in and out of US.
• 1928: Revision of the Berne Convention (Rome, Europe), moral rights granted to authors allowing protection of the author's reputation. Protection for radio and television programs, sound recordings and performing arts.
• 1928: "Certain Topics in Telegraph Transmission Theory" (Harry Nyquist).
• 1928: Short film "Steamboat Willie" (Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks) introduces Mickey Mouse to the world in a send-up of Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill". This year represents the end of the public domain in the US.
• 1932: "Regeneration Theory" (Harry Nyquist), method for using the open loop response of a system to determine stability under closed loop feedback.
• 1935: Mechanical letter sorting machines in use (England).
• 1935: Trans-Pacific airmail.
• 1937: "On Computable Numbers" (Allan Turing), first description of a universal Turing machine and proof that a mechanistic device cannot enumerate all the undecidable problems of mathematics.
• 1937: A. Reeves invents pulse code modulation (PCM), now used by computers and CD's for audio.
• 1937: H. Aiken from Harvard approaches IBM and proposes a electrical computing machine.
• 1939: Trans-Atlantic airmail.
• 1940: Radar invented, later leading to microwave communications.
• 1941: Second Battle of the Atlantic -- many new technologies came to play in naval warfare including proximity mines dropped by aircraft and advanced German U-boats that inflicted heavy losses on British and American cargo shipping.
• 1942: Battle of Stalingrad -- Nazi blitzkreig fails to achieve a quick victory against Soviet ground forces, most of the city is reduced to rubble, mechanised movement is obstructed by the ruins, fighting devolves to "Rattenkrieg" (rat-war). Both Stalin and Hitler enforce a "no surrender" policy, with both sides poorly supplied and freezing. At approx 2 million casualties this is the bloodiest battle in human history.
• 1942: Introduction of airbourne sea-scanning radar, British anti-U-Boat frigates and the cracking of the "Enigma" code defeat the German attack on British supply shipments.
• 1943: ENIAC (University of Pennsylvania) electronic computer built from vacuum tubes.
• 1945: First nuclear weapon detonated. End of WWII.
• 1947: Magnetic tape recorders available in US.
• 1947: First transistor, point contact type (John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, Bell Labs).
• 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author".
• 1948: Revision of the Berne Convention (Brussles, Europe).
• 1948: "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" (Claude E. Shannon).
• 1949: Start of Korean War -- fought between Communist North Korea and Capitalist South Korea supported primarily but the USA but also by other Capitalist allies. Weapons and combat style are similar to WWII, no nuclear weapons are used.
• 1949: Junction transistor (Bill Shockley, Bell Labs), first type of transistor to go into mass production.
• 1950: Single error correction codes (Richard W. Hamming).
• 1952: Sony Electronics produces pocket transistor radios.
• 1952: Universal Copyright Convention joined US and Europe as an alternative to the Berne Convention.
• 1952: US Patent Act.
• 1952: "A Method for the Construction of Minimum-Redundancy Codes" (David A. Huffman).
• 1954: End of Korean War resulting in a military stalemate. Korea remains divided with North Korea increasingly cut off from world trade and South Korea beginning a strong phase of industrialisation and economic growth.
• 1954: FORTRAN 0 -- theoretical description of a computer language that could translate mathematical formulae into computer instructions (no implementation).
• 1956: The Copyright Act (England) extended protection to new forms of media including films and broadcasts. The Performing Right Tribunal was established.
• 1956: First FORTRAN compiler (John Backus, IBM).
• 1957: Philips OC70 transistor available in Australia.
• 1957: Sputnik launched -- first artificial earth satellite.
• 1957: Formation of Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
• 1958: Early integrated circuit (Texas Instruments).
• 1959: First LISP system (John McCarthy, MIT).
• 1959: SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) begins operation in Syracuse, New York providing a computerised system to track enemy bombers entering the USA. Phone lines were used to transmit data via an early modem.
• 1960: "COBOL 60" (Grace Hopper and CODASYL) programming language specification.
• 1960: Patent for the laser (Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes), first working ruby laser built by Theodore Maiman.
• 1960: Phosphor dot mail coding (England).
• 1960: Multiple error correction codes (I.S. Reed and G. Soloman).
• 1961: MIT buys its first PDP-1 computer.
• 1962: On Distributed Communications Networks (Paul Baran, RAND).
• 1962: AT&T releases a commercial modem, the Bell 103 providing 300 baud.
• 1963: "Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code" EBCDIC developed by IBM as an 8 bit code for both numerical and textual data. It kept compatibility with earlier punch-cards and EBCDIC also provided both a space and a non-breaking space.
• 1963: CPL (Combined Programming Language), collaboration between the University of Cambridge, and the University of London.
• 1964: Start of Vietnam War -- USA backs the South Vietnamese government despite widespread support for Communism in both North and South Vietnam.
• 1964: Early BASIC system at Dartmouth College (J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz).
• 1964: PL/1 (Programming Language One) designed by IBM to be the best features of FORTRAN, ALGOL and COBOL.
• 1964: Early document formatting program "RUNOFF" (J. H. Saltzer).
• 1965: Software controlled telephone switches (Bell Telephone).
• 1966: Introduction of postcodes into England.
• 1966: BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) designed as a simplification of CPL (M. Richards, Cambridge University).
• 1967: Four digit postcodes allocated to every Australian suburb for electronic mail sorting.
• 1967: First publication of ASCII standard, a 7 bit code providing 95 printable characters and 33 control characters that soon displaced Baudot Code. Despite the majority of computer and communications systems moving to 8 bits as a standard data storage unit and despite EBCDIC coming first, ASCII eventually displaced EBCDIC too and became the most widely used encoding for computer and communications data.
• 1967: First design paper on ARPANET by Lawrence G. Roberts.
• 1967: Revision of the Berne Convention (Stockholm, Europe), administration assigned to World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
• 1969: Initial stages of UNIX development at Bell Labs.
• 1969: ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking.
• 1969: RFC0001 -- Host Software (S. Crocker).
• 1969: RFC0020 -- ASCII format for network interchange (V.G. Cerf).
• 1969: "roff" document formatting program rewritten in BCPL (D. McIlroy).
• 1970: Glass disc prototype optical digital storage media (Compaan and Pete Kramer, Philips).
• 1971: Intel 4004 designed by Fedrico Faggon.
• 1971: Charles H. Moore uses the "Forth" language program the radio telescope for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
• 1971: "The Programming Language Pascal" (Niklaus Wirth).
• 1971: Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a distributed network (SNDMSG and READMAIL).
• 1971: "roff" document formatting program first ported to Unix (J. Ossanna), later: nroff, troff, groff, etc.
• 1972: First C compiler (Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs), ancestor of BCPL.
• 1972: RFC0318 -- Telnet Protocols (J. Postel).
• 1972: RFC0354 -- File Transfer Protocol (A.K. Bhushan).
• 1972: G.711 (uLAW and aLAW) -- 8 bits per sample, logarithmic, 64 kbit/s audio encoding used for digital telephony (CCITT).
• 1973: The U.S. Court of Claims ruled that photocopying of medical articles from journals for medical research was "fair use" (Williams and Wilkins Co. v. United States).
• 1973: RFC0524 -- Proposed Mail Protocol (J.E. White).
• 1973: RFC0561 -- Standardizing Network Mail Headers. (A.K. Bhushan, K.T. Pogran, R.S. Tomlinson, J.E. White).
• 1974: Satellite transmission of MAILGRAMs, (US).
• 1974: RFC0644 -- On the problem of signature authentication for network mail (R. Thomas).
• 1974: ANSI COBOL-74 programming language standard.
• 1974: "Pascal User Manual and Report", (Kathleen Jensen and Niklaus Wirth).
• 1975: The Jargon File (various authors, mostly MIT) documents early network and hacker slang.
• 1975: RFC0706 -- On the junk mail problem (J. Postel).
• 1975: Postmaster General's Department in Australia was split into Australia Post and Telecom.
• 1975: Altair Microcomputer (MITS), sold as hobbyist kit.
• 1975: Tiny BASIC for Altair (Dick Whipple and John Arnold).
• 1976: Smalltalk-76 -- Early "object oriented" language introduces the concept on inheritance allowing more specialised code to borrow general behaviour from less specialised code (Alan Kay & Dan Ingalls at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center).
• 1976: First issue of "Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia".
• 1976: "Strawman" specification for the Ada programming language.
• 1976: US Congress revises US Copyright. An author's Copyright is extended to 50 years after the author's death (Steamboat Willie is 48 years old). A work-for-hire Copyright is extended to 75 years after publication or 100 years after creation. Coverage includes "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, and otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device". Explicit exemption is made for fair use, "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright".
• 1976: Agreement on Guidelines for Classroom Copying in Not-for-Profit Educational Institutions with Respect to Books and Periodicals was adopted in US.
• 1976: US Congress appoints the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works to establish guidelines for the "minimum standards of educational fair use".
• 1976: "Tinman" specification for the Ada programming language.
• 1976: UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with UNIX one year later.
• 1977: Patent of RSA public key encryption (Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Loenard Adleman).
• 1977: RFC0733 -- Standard for the format of ARPA network text messages (D. Crocker, J. Vittal, K.T. Pogran, D.A. Henderson).
• 1977: UCSD Pascal (Kenneth Bowles, University of California, San Diego).
• 1978: Establishment of SF-LOVERS (science fiction discussion group).
• 1978: Video disc player (Philips).
• 1978: CBBS (Computerized Bulletin Board System) created by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess providing a dial-in message exchange system
• 1978: DEC produces the VT100 terminal, ANSI X3.64 compliant, powered by Intel 8085 microprocessor and set to be the industry-standard by which all future text terminals would be judged.
• 1979: "The C Programming Language" (Brian Kernigan and Dennis Ritchie)
• 1979: "TeX and MF: New Directions in Typesetting" (Donald E Knuth)
• 1979: Public release of VisiCalc, first spreadsheet software
• 1979: The very first MUD was written by Roy Trubshaw, Essex University. Richard Bartle was involved in early testing and later development.
• 1979: Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis and Steve Bellovin used uucp and their own conferencing software to pass news between computers at Duke University and UNC marking the beginning of Usenet.
• 1980: Compact Disc optical media standard (Philips & Sony). ?? Red Book? Yellow Book?
• 1980: "Stoneman" Ada reference manual.
• 1980: Smalltalk-80, widespread standard for the Smalltalk language featuring well established object oriented structure and tagged function arguments.
• 1980: Bill Atkinson produced Hypercard for Apple Macintosh.
• 1980: RFC0768 -- User Datagram Protocol (J. Postel).
• 1980: Satellite transmission of British mail (Intelpost, London to Toronto).
• 1980: US Congress provides copyright protection to computer software.
• 1981: US Supreme Court ruled that computer software to determine rubber curing temperatures and times was patentable on the basis that it was not a mathematical algorithm, but was a process for molding rubber.
• 1981: BITNET started, providing mailing lists and similar services to Usenet.
• 1981: Mark Horton and Matt Glickman released upgraded Usenet software able to handle larger volumes of postings.
• 1981: RFC0791 (STD0005) -- Internet Protocol (J. Postel).
• 1981: RFC0792 (STD0005) -- Internet Control Message Protocol (J. Postel).
• 1981: RFC0793 (STD0007) -- Transmission Control Protocol (J. Postel).
• 1981: Start of British Telecom, British Post Office loses control of telephones.
• 1981: US Supreme Court opens the floodgates for software patents (Diamond v. Diehr)
• 1980: ANSI standard for Ada programming language.
• 1982: Compact Disc market launch.
• 1983: US court ruled that videotaping of public broadcast educational programs and redistribution to schools was not fair use (Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corp. v. Crooks).
• 1983: Version 1 of Gnu General Public License, GPL (R. Stallman).
• 1983: TIES (The Interactive Encyclopedia System) produced a simple hypertext system (B. Shneiderman, University of Maryland).
• 1983: FidoNet developed by Tom Jennings.
• 1983: RFC0883 -- Domain names: Implementation specification (P.V. Mockapetris).
• 1984: "The TeXbook" (Donald E Knuth), the TeX computer typesetting system now common in academic circles.
• 1984: RFC0921 -- Domain name system implementation schedule - revised (J. Postel).
• 1984: US Congress extends copyright protection to semiconductor chips.
• 1984: Release of the Postscript printer control language.
• 1985: First printing of LaTeX User's Guide and Reference Manual (Leslie Lamport), LaTeX 2.09 was first widely used version of LaTeX.
• 1986: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in US ruled that quoting 4.3% of an author's work was not excessive (Maxtone-Graham v. Burtchaell).
• 1986: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) comes into existence under the IAB.
• 1986: "Computers and Typesetting" in five volumes (Donald E Knuth)
• 1987: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in US ruled that that quoting or paraphrasing from unpublished materials in an unauthorized biography was not fair use (Salinger v. Random House).
• 1987: RFC1034 (STD0013) -- Domain names - concepts and facilities (P.V. Mockapetris)
• 1988: Early version of gcc -- GNU C compiler project later to support C++, FORTRAN, Java and other languages becoming the most widely ported, widely used and powerful compiler toolkit (started by Richard Stallman, later contributions from many people).
• 1988: The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (England).
• 1988: Early CD-Recordable devices available.
• 1988: Early versions of the GNU texinfo documentation system and info reader available.
• 1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed by Jarkko Oikarinen
• 1989: United States becomes a member of the Berne Convention. Copyright notices are no longer required in the US.
• 1989: Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first HTML document at CERN.
• 1989: Early versions of the amigaguide.library hypertext documentation system distributed with Workbench v1.4 beta, and later in v2.0 production systems.
• 1989: RFC1107 -- Plan for Internet directory services (K.R. Sollins).
• 1989: Wide Area Information Server Concepts (Brewster Kahle), Thinking Machines Inc.
• 1989: Early version of PKZIP (Phil Katz).
• 1989: US invasion of Panama, defeat of Manuel Noriega. Panama puts up no significant defense against the US military but thousands of civilans were killed.
• 1989: First version of the Gnu "General Public License" (Richard Stallman).
• 1990: US Congress gives copyright owners control of commercial lending of computer software with an exception for libraries (Computer Software Rental Amendment Act).
• 1990: RFC1150 (FYI0001) -- FYI on FYI: Introduction to the FYI Notes (Gary Scott Malkin and Joyce K. Reynolds).
• 1990: Tim Berners-Lee distributed the first web browser.
• 1990: Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and Peter Deutsch at McGill University in Montreal start the first Archie server (search engine for ftp sites).
• 1990: LambdaMOO (based on TinyMUD) started at Xerox by Pavel Curtis.
• 1990: RFC1171 -- Point-to-Point Protocol for the transmission of multi-protocol datagrams over Point-to-Point links (D. Perkins)
• 1990: Early version of djgpp -- GNU gcc/g++ suitable for MSDOS machines (D. J. Delorie).
• 1991: Unicode 1.0 -- a standard that extends ASCII to larger numbers of bits and includes encoding of all the major languages on Earth. The initial Unicode was 16 bits (the "Basic Multilingual Plane") then more bits were added with the "Supplimentary Multilingual Plane" and the "Supplementary Ideographic Plane"), in principle the code goes up to 32 bits giving plenty of space for historic characters, runes and fictional alphabets.
• 1991: A Federal District Court in New York ruled that commercial sale of photocopied coursepacks (including book chapters) to students was not fair use and that classroom guidelines did not apply to a commercial copying company (Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corp).
• 1991: "Gopher.txt" (aka "protocol.txt") released containing specification of gopher protocol (Bob Alberti, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Mark McCahill, Daniel Torrey).
• 1991: The US Supreme Court ruled that "comprehensive collections of facts arranged in conventional formats" (in this case a "White Pages" phone book) were not protected by Copyright (Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.).
• 1991: GSM (Groupe Speciale Mobile, later Global System for Mobile Communications) -- a family of technologies designed to support mobile phone networks including an efficient compressed speech codec (based on linear predictive coding and a model of the human vocal tract), TDMA digital radio, GPRS mobile data, shared-key cryptography and SMS (Short Message Service).
• 1991: Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) released by Thinking Machines Corporation (Brewster Kahle).
• 1991: Version 2 of the Gnu "General Public License", GPL (Free Software Foundation).
• 1991: WWW-Talk mailing list starts.
• 1991: First Gulf War -- Saddam Hussein leads Iraqi forces to invade Kuwait and combined force of US allies retaliate. Strong air superiority is decisive with air attacks destroying most of the Iraqi mechanised ground forces. Dwindling world oil reserves and industrialised nations depending on oil for both economic and military purposes, leads to oil being a pivotal resource for future conflict.
• 1992: US Congress makes Copyright renewal automatic.
• 1992: "Literate Programming" (Donald E. Knuth)
• 1992: University of Minnesota released the gopher system.
• 1992: Joseph Hardin and Dave Thompson start work on NCSA Mosaic.
• 1992: Marc Andreessen contributes the IMG tag to Mosaic and HTML.
• 1992: Veronica, a gopherspace search tool, is released by the University of Nevada System Computing Services group (some references date this as 1993).
• 1993: Unicode 1.1
• 1993: European Community directive supports 48 hour working week.
• 1993: Lou Montulli releases the lynx browser.
• 1993: Dave Raggett begins work on the Arena browser.
• 1993: The Florida Northern District Court ruled that Copyright was infringed by a magazine photograph being digitised and distributed through a bulletin board system and also ruled that an unintentional infringer is liable (Playboy Enterprises Inc. v. Frena).
• 1993: RFC1460 -- Post Office Protocol - Version 3 (M. Rose)
• 1993: World Wide Web Wanderer (Matthew Gray, MIT) probably earliest Web robot.
• 1993: Publication of MPEG-1 standard (ISO/IEC 11172-3, Motion Picture Expert Group)
• 1993: First release of the Mosaic browser.
• 1993: "Gopher+.txt" released -- specification for enhancements to the gopher protocol.
• 1993: Jughead program (Rhett "Jonzy" Jones) first used to serve as index of a Gopher server with keyword search facilities available (similar to Veronica).
• 1994: The US Supreme Court ruled that song parody was fair use; commercial use can be fair use when the derivative work has a different market to the original work (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc.).
• 1994: Launch of Galaxy -- first searchable Web directory.
• 1994: Linux kernel v1.0 released under GPL.
• 1994: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) sets up an HTML working group.
• 1994: Early days of the Yahoo searchable directory, later becoming full search engine.
• 1994: HTML 2 specification is released.
• 1994: WebCrawler (Brian Pinkerton, University of Washington) starts providing a full-text index of HTML pages as it actively collects data by visiting each page in turn.
• 1994: Lycos (Michael Mauldin, Carnegie Mellon University) provides another full-text search facility with data collection system that actively visits web pages.
• 1994: MPEG-2 Encoder / Decoder, Version 1.0 released in source code form (Motion Picture Expert Group, Software Simulation Group).
• 1994: Software MP3 encoder released as source code (Fraunhofer Society)
• 1994: Netscape is formed.
• 1994: The World Wide Web Consortium forms.
• 1994: Infoseek search engine begins public operation (similar principles to Lycos and WebCrawler).
• 1994: Launch of Excite search engine (Stanford).
• 1994: TRIPS agreement.
• 1994: CompuServe and Unisys use the LZW compression patent to enforce new licensing terms for the (until now) popular GIF image file format.
• 1995: The Northern District Court of California ruled that an Internet Service Provider was liable for contributory Copyright infringement for failing to remove subscriber-posted material (Religious Technology Center v. Netcom).
• 1995: NII Copyright Protection Act is presented to US Congress.
• 1995: HTML 3 is published as an Internet Draft.
• 1995: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.
• 1995: New image file format PNG becomes an unencumbered replacement for GIF using the "deflate" format borrowed from ZIP files (Greg Roelofs and others).
• 1995: Internationalization of HTML Internet Draft.
• 1995: Publication of MPEG-2 standard (ISO/IEC 13818-3, Motion Picture Expert Group)
• 1995: Netscape decides to make Infoseek the default search engine for the Netscape browser.
• 1995: AltaVista (Digital Equipment Corporation runing on clustered Alpha machines) search engine commences public operation.
• 1996: Unicode 2.0
• 1996: Start of DVD technology.
• 1996: G.729 -- Conjugate structure, algebraic code excited linear prediction (CS-ACELP) codec used to encode and compress speech, approved by ITU but subject to software patent encumbrance.
• 1996: V2.00 of djgpp (gcc/g++ for MS-DOS i386 systems), first self bootstrapping version.
• 1996: US respects Copyright of additional countries under TRIPS/GATT Agreement.
• 1996: H.323 standard for multimedia over packet switching networks (ITU)
• 1996: Database Investment and Intellectual Property Antipiracy Act is introduced to US Congress.
• 1996: MetaCrawler (Erik Selberg and Oren Etizioni, University of Washington) commences operation, first search engine to split a query between other search engines.
• 1996: "Using Gopher" (Johnson, Keith et. al)
• 1996: Inktomi Corporation (Eric Brewer and Paul Gauthier, University of California at Berkeley) starts the HotBot search engine.
• 1996: Linux kernel v2.0 released under GPL.
• 1997: HTML 3.2 is released.
• 1998: Unicode 2.1
• 1998: Launch of Open Directory Project -- multi-editor collaborative Web directory.
• 1998: Launch of Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford University).
• 1998: Launch of Microsoft MSN Search.
• 1998: Early version of mingw32 compiler -- GNU gcc for native Microsoft-Win32 environment (Colin Peters, later by Jan-Jaap van der Heijden and Mumit Khan)
• 1998: HTML 4.0 is a W3C Proposed Recommendation.
• 1998: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended the duration of protection from 50 years after the death of the author to 70 years after the death of the author. For corporate authorship protection is extended from 75 years to 95 years (Steamboat Willie is 70 years old).
• 1998: Digital Millenium Copyright Act signed into US Law which (among other things) outlaws the circumvention of protection mechanisms, outlaws the distribution and ownership of tools used for circumvention of protection mechanisms, extends Copyright protection to cover designs for useful articles, and enshrines in US law particular protection devices that must be installed into video recorders and that may not be removed or disabled.
• 1999: Unicode 3.0
• 1999: The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that lists of facts (in this case legal decisions) arranged in an obvious manner were not protected by Copyright (Bender v. West Publishing Co.).
• 1999: Napster file sharing program is released (Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker), later becoming the centre of legal disputes over Copyright.
• Linux kernel v2.2 released under GPL.
• 2000: Rock band Metallica sues Napster with the accusation that they assisted Copyright infringement.
• 2001: Linux kernel v2.4 released under GPL.
• 2001: World Trade Center is destroyed utterly after civilian aircraft are hijacked. Two of the three towers are hit by aircraft. Approx 3000 Americans are killed, including many wealthy businessmen and key trading personnel.
• 2001: Unicode 3.1
• Linux kernel v2.6 released under GPL.
• 2002: Unicode 3.2
• 2003: Second Gulf War -- Allied forces (mostly US and some English) invade Iraq on the pretense that Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction" (which were later found not to exist), and in revenge for the World Trade Center (which Saddam Hussein had no involvement with).
• 2003: Unicode 4.0
• 2004: Firefox v1.0 continues the mozilla heritage.
• 2005: Unicode 4.1
• 2005: Firefox v1.5 continues the mozilla heritage.