See also :Chronology of Communication after electronics to
1998,
A Chronology of Communication from electricity to electronics,
A Convoluted History of Early Telecommunications.
c. 20,000 B.C.-
Cave painting is widespread in
Eurasia. Etchings are figurative and revolve
around hunting and animal migration.
Representation is seen as a form of
magic.
3500 B.C. - Earliest use of clay bullae in
Sumeria, envelopes bearing marks
that correspond to clay tokens inside; the precursor of the Sumerian
writing system.
3100 B.C.- Earliest
cuneiform markings representing words in Sumer, first
language based writing system. Sharpened reeds are used to mark clay tablets,
which are then dried in ovens. While cumbersome, many survive today (
analog
sometimes has one up on
digital mediums).
c. 3000 B.C.- In
Egypt, the earliest instances of
hieroglyphic writing
appear on slabs of slate in chapels and tombs. The
papyrus roll and clay
tablet soon become the dominant surfaces of
writing.
c. 2800 B.C.- Egyptians introduce lunar
calendar of 365 days as a civil
calendar.
c. 2500 B.C.-
Ink is in use in both
Egypt and
China.
c. 1800 B.C.- Earliest known samples of
Chinese writing.
c. 1800 B.C.- The
Babylonians are using an early form of the
abacus.
c. 1500 B.C.-
Water clock used in
Egypt, cementing the idea of consistent and
linear
time into human affairs.
c. 1500 B.C.- Earliest organization of
Vedas, an orally transmitted
collection of sacred literature, chants and hymns, in South
Asia.
c. 1400 B.C.- Linear B develops as a Mycenaean Greek
orthography,
scratched with a
stylus on sun dried clay.
c 1300 B.C.- Chinese use primitive
books made of wood or bamboo strips
bound together with cords.
Page-flipping is at last possible.
c. 1000 B.C.- Earliest surviving
Phoenician inscriptions, in North
Semitic
Alphabet, probably ancestor of
Greek alphabet and 22-letter
Phoenician alphabet.
c. 1000 B.C.- First recorded use of
pen by Chinese calligraphers.
c 750 B.C.- Development of
Brahmin, the ancestor of modern
Indian
writing systems.
c. 750 B.C.- Earliest examples of
Greek writing, based on
Phoenician
writing system.
c. 710 B.C.- Egyptians invent the
sundial as a means to keep time.
c. 700 B.C.- Date of Praeneste Fibula, gold brooch containing earliest
example of
Latin alphabet.
c. 660 B.C.-
Archive and
library are organized by
King Ashurbanipal in
Nineveh, marking
the first systematically organized
library, born in the ancient
Middle East. Some 20,000
tablets from it survive today, although the
Persian Gulf War in 1990 saw heavy
NATO
bombing of the Ninevah library site.
c 550 B.C.- Appearance of
writing from left to right. First
public library founded in
Athens by
Pisistratus.
c. 500 B.C.- pre-
Columbian civilizations use
paper, and develop a
simple
mathematical notation.
c. 360 B.C.-
Aristotle's school, the
Lyceum, becomes a centre of
philosophical
investigation, which immediately begins to annoy
elite leaders in
Athens,
and the philosopher ends up exectuted by the State.
c 350 B.C.- The Ionic alphabet of 24 letters is in use in
Greece.
c. 345 B.C.-
Speusippus writes first known fragments of an
encyclopaedia.
c 300 B.C.- Emergence of a distinct
Hebrew alphabet.
280 B.C.- Museum in
Alexandria founded by
Ptolemy I. Its first librarian,
Zenodotus of
Ephesus, provides the basis for modern
textual criticism by making the first critical edition
of
Homer from the
manuscripts it holds.
The Great Library of Alexandria gradually
becomes the
apex of gathered
knowledge until the
Renaissance.
200 B.C.- Chinese perfect
silk paper.
163 B.C.-
Nien-hao dating system adopted by Emperor
Wen Ti. The Chinese
division of time into "eras" persists until 1911; they also begin using common plants in
paper making.
c. 50 B.C.- The Julian
calendar is perfected by the astronomer
Sosigenes,
who lengthens the Egyptian solar calendar of 365 days to 365 1/2.
59 B.C.-
Acta Diurna ("Daily Events") is published as a daily
gazette in
Rome; it marks the first diffusion of public news.
c. 90-
Quintilian elaborates principles for
rhetorical education,
classical
sentence structure and the principles of rhetorical argument in
Institutio Oratoria.
105- The Chinese develop a process for making
paper, which reaches
Central
Asia by 751 and
Baghdad in 793. Paper will not be introduced to Europe for
another 1000 years.
c. 160-
Parchment is developed in Asia Minor; it is said to have been
invented in
Pergamum in the second century B.C. as a reponse to an embargo on exporting
papyrus from Egypt then ruled by
Ptolemy. The Egyptians hoped to prevent Pergamum from
developing their own libraries by curtailing writing materials.
c. 250- First codification of
Hebrew oral laws in the
Mishna.
c. 300 - The
Mayans invent system of hieroglyphic
writing.
c. 350- Development of the
Arabic alphabet.
c. 350 - Development of Ethiopic script, originally used for Ge'ez, still
used as a liturgical language in
Ethiopia and
Eritrea.
c. 350-
Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest known Greek bound
volume of pages.
c. 390 -
Saint Augustine, while a wild one in his youth, coverts from Manicheanism to
Christianty, becomes a respectable scholar and frames a system which dominates the structure of
encyclopaedias. It is based on the ordering of human
knowledge of the world and human customs
as they pertain to
salvation.
c. 400- Earliest "illustrated" Chinese
scroll, forerunner to the
narrative type, are used to depict
moral lessons.
c. 550- Chinese develop block book
printing, carving the proofs for pages
in wood.
c. 550- The
astrolabe is developed, reaching
Europe from the
Islamic
world, and proves among the most versatile and important
medieval
instruments.
550-
Cassiodorus founds a
monastery and establishes a
scriptorium at
Vivarium where pagan works are copied and preserved, which stands out as a fairly
controversial but enlightened stance for a clergyman to take in the midst of the
Dark Ages.
618- First hand-copied pao, reports of court affairs, circulate among the
educated
civil servants of
Peking.
C. 620-
Wei Cheng writes the bibliographic section of the official
Sui
Dynasty History, dividing the books into four categories: Confucian
classics, historical records, philosophical writings, and miscellaneous
works.
c. 630- First specific reference made to a quill pen, in the writings of
Isidore of
Seville.
c. 700-
Xylography, or wood engraving, is widespread in China.
712- The Kojiki is the first extensive document using
Chinese characters
to represent
Japanese.
c. 750-
Musical notation first developed in Europe. Chanting gets to be fairly popular, as
musical instruments are expensive and materials scarce.
c. 830- Foundation of the
Bayt al-Hikmah ("
House of Wisdom"), in
Baghdad, an academy
which contains a
public library with a large collection of materials on a wide range of
subjects. It should be noded that at this time, as Europe languished in the worst of the
Middle Ages, there were street lamps, perfumed avenues, manicured gardens, purified water and
treated sewage in the major centers of the
Middle East.
c. 850-
Ibn Qutayba assembles first known
Arabic encyclopaedia.
c. 850- Development of the
cyrillic alphabet, used widely for
Slavic
languages.
868- In
China, the first printed
book, the Buddhist
Diamond Sutra, is
produced using carved blocks of wood. It includes a
woodcut title page and numerous images.
ca 1000-
Talmudic academies in
Babylon and
Palestine complete the
Masoretic text, an authentic text of the
Old Testament that synthesizes
written versions and
oral tradition.
c 1000- French scholar
Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II,
introduces a type of
abacus, in which numbers are
represented by stones bearing
Arabic numerals.
c. 1000- First references are made to
movable type in China.
c. 1050- The translations of
Arabic works lead to the introduction in Europe of the system of
Arabic numerals, which greatly facilitate
computation. Most of these materials become
available in the
West only after the
Crusades.
1025-
Guido of Arezzo develops the elements of musical staff
notation
in
Benedictine abbey at Pomposa.
c. 1050- Foundation of
University of Bologna, oldest in Europe, as a
centre of civil and canon law.
c. 1050- The Chinese mathematician
Shen Kua writes first description of
movable type.
1086-
William the Conqueror undertakes the first complete
government census
of land, possessions, and inhabitants, leading to the establishment of public archive.
c. 1100- First wax seals used to sign documents.
1135- Hugh of St. Victor establishes the
encyclopaedia as a structure of
Adamic knowledge in his
Didascalion.
c. 1140-
Decretum Gratiani ("Decree of Gratian"), a 12th-century collection
of papal decrees, provides Europe's framework for legal education and decisions.
c. 1150- First European
paper produced; the technique arrives via Italian
ports with active commercial relations with the
Arab world and also, probably, by the
overland route from Spain to France. Suddenly pig and
calfskin seem silly things to use for
book pages.
c. 1190- The magnetic
compass is in use in
China and
Mediterranean.
c. 1200- The
Inca are using the quipu, an elaborate
accounting apparatus
consisting of a long rope from which hang a number of knotted cords representing units, tens,
and hundreds and designating the different concerns of government.
1260- Franco of
Cologne codifies time values in music, providing the basis
for notation from thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.
1268- First recorded reference to
eyeglasses is made by
Roger Bacon.
1296- Oldest surviving Portolan chart, which plots coastlines in a way that
will allow navigational distances to be measured by means of rhumb lines. It marks the birth of
cartography as a profession.
c. 1300- Xylography appears in Europe, a system of printing by woodcuts.
1335- The first public mechanical
clock that strikes the hours is erected
in
Milan, Italy.
c. 1350- Paper mills appear in Europe.
1370- Charles V of France standardizes the time of clocks in Paris as part
of his effort to increase commerce in the capital. The Sun King will later, during the
French
Revolution, have his archers shoot the faces off these clocks in order to create public
confusion among the uprising.
1373- The first inventory is made of the massive book collection housed in
the
Louvre, which later forms the basis for the
Bibliothèque Nationale.
c. 1380- Xylography is first used to print engravings in Europe.
1383- Francesco Datini's use of double entry
bookkeeping indicates the
diffusion of the new commercial record keeping practice in Italy, which soon marks the
beginnings of commercial banking.
1406-7- The Hellenistic authors
Claudius Ptolemy's
Geografia is first translated in
Italy from Greek manuscripts. As well as providing a map that includes the Africa and Asia as
continents, it provides a mathematically consistent method to project a curved sphere onto the
flat surface along a grid.
1421- The first recorded
patent for an industrial invention is granted to
Filippo Brunelleschi.
c. 1430- First metallographic
printing begins in [Holland and
Rhineland. The
encouraging results obtained with large type demonstrate the validity of the idea of
typography and visual composition.
c. 1430-
Leone Battista Alberti teaches artists techniques of perspective,
which are later elaborated by
Albrecht Durer in an influential 1537 treatise.
1444- King Sejong commissions invention of Korean
Han'gu brevl, an
alphabetic
script whose letter shapes are based on phonetic properties of sounds.
Han'gul does not come into wide use until 1880.
c. 1450- Appearance of
incunabula, referring to those books printed in the first 50 years of
printing, roughly upto 1500, and which were largely about religious subjects (the hot topic of
the time) and were modelled after
medieval manuscripts.
1455- With the innovation of
movable type,
Guttenberg produces the first printed bibles.
1463- The first printed
title page is used on a
papal bull.
1489- The first printed
plus and
minus signs appear in Germany.
c. 1490- News books are issued at the rate of 20 a year in England and the
Continent, providing
information on major events and public issues.
c. 1500- Appearance of the
parenthesis completes the modern repertory of
standard
punctuation symbols.
1507- Martin Waldseemuller publishes the first maps that unite disparate
lands in the
New World into a land mass of
America. His 120 engraved sheets integrate the
latest discoveries into a series of precise visual maps.
1512- Franz von Taxis,
postmaster to the
Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I
from 1489 and to Philip I of Spain from 1504, secures the right to carry both government and
private mail throughout Europe.
1522-
Martin Luther publishes the first
vernacular translation of the Bible, which makes
the
Roman Catholic Church really annoyed, as adds to
theological criticism and acts to
demystify doctrine.
1537-
Albrecht Durer publishes a manual that deals with the instruction and
analysis of
perspective in
drafting illustrations, a book with immense
influence on European cartographers.
1543- Andreas Vesalius publishes the first illustrated systematic
anatomical
atlas of the human body.
1552- Richard Huloet publishes
English Latin Abecedarium, containing a
greater number of English words than had before appeared in any similar
dictionary. Along
with other books of this type, it reflects an increase in
literacy among a broad range of
society.
1555-
Conrad Gesner, Swiss naturalist, completes his
Bibliotheca
Universalis, a classification of all past and present writers.
1564- First catalogues of
Frankfurt and
Leipzig Book Fairs.
1565- First known description of the writing pencil.
1569- The Mercator projection introduced; it allows cartographers to plot
navigational bearings as straight lines.
1570- Abraham Ortelius publishes the first modern atlas of the world, the
Theatrum Orbis Terraru.
1571- The
Medici make the books and classical manuscripts they have
collected since the fifteenth century available to the public when they
open their
library in
Florence.
1578- Introduction of
Gregorian calandar or New Style solar dating system now in
general use. It is proclaimed in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII to maintain coincidence of calendar
and seasons- in it, no century is a leap year unless it is divisible by 400.
1583- By comparing previous calendars, Joseph Justus Scaliger correlates
computations of time made by the various civilizations of antiquity, corrects their errors, and
for the first time establishes
chronology as a discipline on a scientific basis.
1584- The
library of the Escorial opens in Spain. It is the first
library
to place books against the walls, set at right angles to the light source.
1585- The Dutchman Simon Stevin publishes an elementary and thorough account of
decimal
fractions and their daily use in a small pamphlet,
La Thiende ("The Tenth").
1586- William Camden's Britannia publishes first comprehensive
topographical survey of all
England.
1604- Publication of the first purely
English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey's
A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard
usuall English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French
&c... Why we don't still have titles this good, who can say?
1608- The Dutch lens grinder Hans Lippershey applies for a
patent on a
telescope.
1612- Accademia della Crusca publishes the first dictionary that bases its
definitions on literary examples of usage.
1614- The Scottish baron
John Napier publishes the first table of
logarithms, based on the principle that addition and subtraction are easier
to compute than division and multiplication.
1620-
Francis Bacon's
Great Instauration published, the first comprehensive
plan for organizing
knowledge around the human sciences, separating external
nature from
man. Wilhelm Schickard develops first working mechanical calculator.
1627-
Kepler's
Tabulae rudolphinae establish schema of planetary positions.
Tycho
Brahe later uses the tables for his calculations of planetary orbits.
1627- Gabriel Naudé, later the
librarian of the Bibliothèque Mazarine,
publishes the first study of library science,
Advice on Establishing a Library.
1642-
Blaise Pascal invents a
digital calculator with numbers entered by
dial wheels; later in the century
Leibniz invents a more sophisticated
device.
1656- Christiaan Huygens invents the
pendulum clock.
1660- The
Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge
opens its public meetings in Britain. It is the first such scientific society in Britain.
1665- The
Royal Society begins publishing its
Philosophical Transactions,
the earliest scientific periodical in the West. The French
Journal des Savants is
launched in the same year, followed by journals in Germany, Holland, and Italy.
1666-
Samuel Pepy's diaries makes first mention of domestic bookcases in
Europe.
1675- The
Greenwich Observatory is founded for navigational purposes by the
King of England,
Charles II, in an attempt to determine
longitude by the determination of
star positions. It is the first scientific institution established in England.
1683- The Ashmolean museum opens in Oxford, the first public museum of art,
archaeology, and natural history in Great Britain.
c. 1690-
Gottfried Leibniz conceives of national bibliographic organization
in his role as librarian of the duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. He is also widely credited for
establishing the theory of
binary number system. He also owned a world-famous
cookie factory.
c. 1690-
Gottfried Leibniz develops positional number systems.
1695- Expiration of
Licensing Act in England leads to a huge growth of
political literature and of journalism, like the Spectator of Addison and
Steele (1711-12). This is turn sparks what
Jonathan Swift referred to as the
Battle of the
Books.
1704- The first officially sanctioned North American
newspaper, the Boston
Newsletter, begins publication, replacing the proclamations and pamphlets that had previously
brought news from England.
1710- Publication of
John Locke's Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge.
1710- The Statute of Anne, passed in England, sets the basis for the
copyright laws by defining the author as the primary beneficiary of legal protection.
1735- Carolus Linnaeus offers first systematic organizational schema to
understand the variety of life in the natural order, which is the basis of
taxonomical nomenclature.
1755-
Samuel Johnson, after ten years of research and combing for germane quotations,
publishes the first comprehensive and authoritative
dictionary in English.
1759- The
British Museum opens to the public in London.
1762-72-
Denis Diderot supervises publication of
Encyclopédie, the first
systematic treatment knowledge, practices, and customs of man
1765- Publication of the first volume of William Blackstone's Commentaries
on the Laws of England, which sets down and systematizes the English common law.
Claude Chappe develops
semaphore towers, set ten miles apart, which carry messages from Lille to Paris in two minutes using telescopes and flagbars.
1768-71- The
Encyclopædia Britannica is published in three volumes in
Edinburgh, Scotland. By 1974, the Encyclopaedia has gone through fifteen editions; in the early
1990s, it became available on CD-ROM.
1775- Former Philadelphia postmaster
Benjamin Franklin is appointed the
first U.S. Postmaster General. By 1820, the cheap, extensive U. S.
postal service carries
news and information throughout the country, a model for postal service in other nations.
1776- The marquis de Condorcet publishes Fragments on Freedom of the Press,
which lays the philosophical groundwork for the modern concept of the marketplace of ideas and
is influential in the reformulation of the notion of
intellectual property after the French
Revolution.
1786- Samuel Taylor invents the first influential modern shorthand system.
1789-94- Appearance of the first Russian dictionary.
1789- The French National Archives open to public, as the state formally
accepts responsibility to preserve an open record of public documents.
1790- First
patent law in United States;
copyright law is adopted in the
United States in the same year.
1794- Founding of Ecole Polytechnique, setting a precedent for providing
university education outside the liberal arts.
1794- Frenchman
Claude Chappe invents the
semaphore, a signalling system
employing a set of arms that rotate on a post.
1795- Opening of the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, holding an estimated
300,000 volumes. The collections more than double by 1818.
1795- France adopts the
metric system.
1798- Noah Webster undertakes the compilation of a book to be called A
Dictionary of the American Language. It appears in 1828 in its final form as An American
Dictionary of the English Language.
1800- The
Library of Congress opens in Washington as the national library
of the United States. Joseph Marie Jacquard develops his
Jacquard loom.
c. 1800- New developments in the bleaching of
paper allow the production of
books and newspapers for a large reading public.
1804-
Joseph-Marie Jacquard of France devises an automatic loom in which
the woven pattern is controlled by a series of
punched cards.
1804- In France, formulation of the
Napoleonic Code, which attempts to
codify national law on rational principles. During the nineteenth century it becomes the model
for the legal systems of a number of European powers.
1813-
U.S. Army issues the first printed orders, a process later adopted by
other large organizations, which makes for the more efficient management of hierarchical
organizations.
1814- The Times of London is the first newspaper to begin printing
newspapers on a steam powered flatbed press, which permits production of 5,000 copies an hour.
1820- The first commercially available
calculator, the arithmometer, is
produced in France by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar.
1821- The Cherokee writing system invented by Sequoyah.
1822-
Charles Babbage builds a prototype of his difference engine, a
computing machine based on the method of finite differences.
1826- Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce produces the first permanent
photograph from
nature.
1827- Karl Baedeker of Koblenz publishes the first of a series of travel
guides that systematize tourist information and adopt a system of stars to
classify amenities and attractions.
1828- John Mitchell of Birmingham, England, begins production of machine
made steel pen points.
1828- The London Zoo is opened in Regent's Park by the Zoological Society
of London. Other major zoological gardens are opened in Berlin (1841), Antwerp (1843),
Copenhagen (1859), Moscow (1864), Rotterdam (1887), and New York (1899).
c. 1830- The English mathematician William Oughtred invents the
slide rule.
1836- US Patent Office opens.