The story of human communication is a long one, dating all the way back to 100,000 BC with the dawn of human speech. Our ability to communicate and our social societies set humans apart from animals. Our advanced communities wouldn’t be possible without inventions that allowed us to perfect the way we share and spread ideas, information, emotions, and needs. This timeline from Ooma shows us how we’ve come to make human communication a global endeavor through the progress of communication technology.
Follow along the timeline to see how each invention builds on all that came before. It’s almost as if the progress of these technologies holds us in conversation with our ancestors, a beautiful concept perfectly illustrated by the timeline.
Some of the key inventions include:
- Ts’ai Lun invents paper in 105
- The first pencil is created in France in 1795
- The Cooke and Wheatstone system introduces electric telecommunication in 1838
- The first telephone is designed in 1849
- Radio waves are discovered in 1887
- Commercial televisions are broadly available in 1929
- The Internet Age dawns in 1969
- The first PC arrives on the scene and sends the first email in 1971
- Mobile phones are available to the public in 1984
- The first instant messaging system, the IRC is invented in 1988
- Humans create the search engine in 1990
- The webcam makes futuristic dreams a reality in 1991
- The first text, a “Merry Christmas” message, is sent in 1992
- Mosaic makes history as the first graphical web browser in 1993
- IBM creates the first smartphone in 1994
- WI-Fi improves Internet access for millions in 1997
- Napster becomes the first file-sharing system in 1999
- Facebook changes the face of social media when it launches in 2004
- The first Zoom call occurs in 2012
- 5G phones launch in 2019
This is just a sampling of the many pivotal technologies you’ll find on the timeline. Discover all the links between them by delving deeper.
