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This chronology explores the origins and evolution of the components that comprise modern-day multimedia. Seemingly disparate breakthroughs often occurred within a period of months; as you'll discover, it's all about convergence.

(Some of these multimedia classics are available for purchase from Amazon.com...just follow the links.)

• c. 15,000–13,000 BC—Prehistoric humans paint images on the walls of their caves (including a narrative composition) in the Grotte de Lascaux, France.
• c. 3500 BC—The roots of Western music are developed in Mesopotamia. Future artifacts will include an undecipherable song carved in stone (800 BC).
• c. 3000 BC—Chinese entertainers use firelight to project silhouettes of puppets onto a screen. Unfortunately for those watching these “shadow plays,” popcorn is still confined to North America.
• c. 540 BC—Thespis of Attica introduces the actor (or protagonist) to Greek drama, which until now had consisted of recitations and dancing by a chorus. Further innovations are added by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
• 65 BC—Roman poet Lucretius discovers the persistence of vision. The phenomenon (proved 230 years later by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy) allows the eye to see a series of rapid stills as one moving image, the future basis of motion pictures.
• 1435—Leone Alberti writes Della Pictura, a treatise on the laws of perspective. The book systematizes the rules for drawing three-dimensional scenes on two-dimensional planes.
• c. 1450—Johann Gutenberg invents movable type, allowing mass production of documents. The history of art, music, and literature is too immense to cover in this chronology, but let's just say we owe a lot to Marcel Duchamp, the Beatles, and Shakespeare.
• 1702—The first English daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, begins publication.
• 1771—England's Parliament formally concedes the right of journalists to cover its proceedings.
• 1776—“The World Turn'd Upside Down.” The American Colonies declare their independence from Great Britain. Mass production and distribution of the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Paine's Common Sense (both based on writings by European philosophers) help usher in a new era of personal freedom, one that stresses public education and citizen involvement. While the transformation (even in the United States) will take many years to reach its full potential, an informational Rubicon has been crossed.
• 1791—The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
• 1834—Charles Babbage conceives the first automatic digital computer, the Analytical Engine. A working model is not built until 1991.
• 1837—Samuel Morse debuts the telegraph. The invention revolutionizes the transmission of information.
• 1837—Louis Daguerre invents the daguerreotype, the first practical form of photographic reproduction.
• 1839—Magazines begin publishing woodcuts and lithographs produced from daguerreotypes.
• 1841—William Henry Fox Talbot patents the Calotype, a negative-positive photo process.
• 1843—Ada Byron, a mathematician and daughter of the famed poet, translates an article on Babbage's Analytical Engine, and at Babbage's request, adds her own extensive notes. She predicts that such machines might someday be used to create graphics and compose music.
• 1848—Six U.S. newspapers pool their resources to establish The Associated Press. The partnership is designed to help defray the huge expense of sending news stories via telegraph.
• 1851—Sir David Brewster exhibits the Stereoscope at the Crystal Palace in London. Queen Victoria is amused. Over the next 70 years, the three-dimensional picture viewer (think View-Master) will become as ubiquitous in households as television is today.
• 1855—Roger Fenton photographs the Crimean War, but the pictures remain unseen by the general public because newspapers cannot yet publish photos.
• 1858—Europe and North America are briefly linked by a transatlantic telegraph cable; by 1866, the system is up to stay. News that once took months to travel now takes seconds.
• 1875—The Associated Press leases its own telegraph line (from New York to Washington, D.C.), over the objections of Western Union. The link allows AP to move news more quickly and efficiently.
• 1876—Alexander Graham Bell makes the first phone call. Pizza is still another 75 years away.
• 1877—Thomas Alva Edison invents the Phonograph. He also cuts the first recording, a soulful rendition of “Mary had a Little Lamb.”
• 1878—Inventors in the U.S. and Germany debut the dynamic microphone.
• 1879—How about a light? Edison invents the incandescent light bulb.
• 1880—While tabulating the 1880 U.S. census, statistician Herman Hollerith invents an electromechanical machine that reads holes in perforated cards. In 1896 he founds the Tabulating Machine Company, which later becomes International Business Machines Corporation.
• 1881—Development of the halftone process makes it possible to reproduce photographs in books and newspapers.
• 1888—Now everyone gets the picture: George Eastman introduces the Kodak camera and roll film.
• 1888—Edison and William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson debut the Kinetograph, the world's first motion picture camera. It will be followed by the Kinetoscope (1889) and the Vitascope (1896).
• 1889—Dickson demonstrates the Kinetophonograph to Edison. This device synchronizes sound from a phonograph to images from a Kinetoscope. Never successfully developed, synchronized sound will not make its debut for another 37 years.
• 1895—Louis and Auguste Lumiére make La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumiére à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumiére Factory in Lyon), considered the first motion picture. Also during this time, Georges Méliès invents stop motion animation.
• 1898—Edison photographer William Paley films the Spanish-American War in Cuba.
• 1898—Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton introduce stop-motion animation in The Humpty Dumpty Circus.
• 1900—Eastman introduces the Brownie, a one-dollar camera designed for children.
• 1901—Guglielmo Marconi perfects a wireless radio system that transmits Morse code over the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1902—Georges Méliès releases Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), his most famous film. Besides stop motion, he also pioneers the use of split screens (you can blame him for Woodstock) and the dissolve.
• 1903—Edwin Porter releases The Great Train Robbery, which will popularize the Nickelodeon.
• 1903—The fax machine is invented by German scientist Arthur Korn.
• 1906—Victor Talking Machine Company introduces the Victrola. RCA will buy the company (and its Little Nipper dog, too) in 1929.
• 1906—James Stuart Blackton introduces animation to film with his short Humorous Phases of Funny Faces.
• 1912—David Sarnoff, a Marconi wireless operator in New York, receives the SOS from the sinking Titanic. He stays at his post for three days, receiving and passing on news of the disaster. Promoted by the Marconi Company, Sarnoff will go on to create RCA, and its spinoff, NBC.
• 1914—The teletype is introduced. Journalism is no longer predicated on the knowledge of Morse Code.
• 1914—Winsor McCay popularizes animation with his Gertie the Dinosaur (consisting of 10,300 separate drawings). McKay would make live appearances during showings of the film and “interact” with his creation, an early form of blending live action and animation.
• 1914—Max Fleischer creates animation by tracing live action film, a technique known as rotoscoping. Fleischer (best known for the Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman animated films) would also further develop the blending of animation with live action footage.
• 1915—Transcontinental telephone service is established between New York and San Francisco.
• 1915—D.W. Griffith releases The Birth of a Nation, the first modern film. Moving camera shots and close-ups are just two of the film's many innovations.
• 1916—Griffith follows up with Intolerance. The film eschews traditional linear narrative, instead intercutting between four different storylines. This editing technique would have a profound effect on subsequent filmmakers, particularly Sergei Eisenstein.
• 1917—The first professional Japanese anime, Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki (The Story of the Concierge Mukuzo Imokawa), is released. For our money, Battle of a Monkey and a Crab, released four months later, sounds a lot more interesting.
• 1919—Robert Wiene releases The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The sets are designed by German Expressionist artists.
• 1920—KDKA-AM Pittsburgh signs on the air. Still running, it's the world's first commercial radio station, and the first to present news, reporting results of the 1920 Harding-Cox presidential race.
• 1920—“Whispering” by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra becomes the first record to sell one million copies.
• 1925—Potemkin is released. Director Sergei Eisenstein pioneers montage, an editing technique that juxtaposes successive images to stir up an audience's emotional response.
• 1926—J.L. Baird demonstrates the first practical television system (based on a spinning mechanical disc created in 1884 by German scientist Paul Nipkow). Baird debuts the first color TV two years later.
• 1926—American Telephone & Telegraph's Vitaphone system allows synchronization of sound and film. Warner Brothers releases Don Juan, the first full-length motion picture to incorporate recorded music and sound effects.
• 1927—“You ain't heard nothin' yet!” The Jazz Singer is the first film to feature spoken dialogue. (Clip courtesy of the Al Jolson Society.)
• 1927—Telephone service is established between London and New York.
• 1927—Philo Farnsworth transmits the first electronic TV picture. Bell Telephone Laboratories tests wireless TV broadcasts.
• 1928—Walt Disney debuts Steamboat Willie, the second short starring a mouse named Mickey, and the first cartoon to use synchronized sound. Disney writes the soundtrack with future Warner Brothers composer Carl Stalling.
• 1928—WGY in Schenectady, New York becomes the first experimental television station.
• 1935—The Associated Press introduces the Wirephoto, allowing newspapers to receive photos almost as soon as they are developed, instead of waiting for them to arrive in the mail.
• 1935—Germany begins airing regular public TV broadcasts.
• 1937–1942—John Atanasoff develops the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, or ABC, the first electronic digital computer.
• 1937—“Oh, the humanity!” As the German zeppelin Hindenburg explodes above Lakehurst, New Jersey, Herbert Morrison delivers the first-ever coast-to-coast broadcast on U.S. radio. Orson Welles takes note; Led Zeppelin gets a cool album cover.
• 1938—Orson Welles scares the daylights out of America. His radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds realistically simulates news coverage of an invasion by hostile Martians (simply looking for a little lebensraum). Thousands fall for the hoax; panic ensues. The next day, Welles feigns surprise at the uproar.
• 1938—Speaking of strange visitors from other planets, Superman makes his debut. The Man of Steel (along with Batman and numerous other champions) will first help popularize comic books, and then punch their way into the cultural mainstream. Face it: most of us know more about Jor-El and Lara than we do about George Washington's parents.
• 1939—It isn't the first color movie, and it isn't the last black and white one, but no film more memorably shows the difference between the two formats than The Wizard of Oz.
• 1939—“Who's on first?” Major league baseball debuts on television, as the Brooklyn Dodgers take on the Cincinnati Reds at Ebbets Field. However, the first televised baseball game is actually broadcast several months earlier, as Princeton defeats Columbia. Due to the use of a single stationary camera, viewers can only see the action around home plate.
• 1940—Walt Disney releases Fantasia, often regarded as the high-water mark of animation.
• 1940—Dorothy Kunhardt's Pat the Bunny is published. A simple book employing multimedia and interactivity, it will teach millions of children to think outside of the box.
• 1940—“This is London...” Edward R. Murrow brings the reality of the Luftwaffe's bombing of the British capital into the homes of millions of Americans. Five years later, he will present an unflinching radio report about the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp. During the latter part of his career, Murrow will set the standard for American broadcast journalism through television shows like See It Now and Harvest of Shame.
• 1941—Orson Welles releases Citizen Kane, a skillful blending of varied media. Hollywood barely notices, but it will eventually be deemed the greatest film of all time.
• 1941—Both NBC and CBS launch commercial television stations in New York City; however, the effort will be largely put on hold during World War Two.
• 1941–1945—U.S. involvement in World War Two. Great leaps forward are made in communications and computer technologies. Disney uses animation to illustrate complex subjects in technical training films.
• 1945—In an article in The Atlantic Monthly, Vannevar Bush proposes “memex,” a proto-hypertext/encyclopedia system.
• 1947—Edwin Land debuts the Polaroid instant camera.
• 1948—The transistor is invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories.
• 1948—Columbia Records introduces the 33 1/3 RPM vinyl record (also known as the long-playing record, or LP).
• 1949—RCA counters with the 45 RPM record (also known as the single).
• Early 1950s—Computer technology is used in flight simulators; arguably the first application of computer interactivity.
• 1950—Ernie Kovacs makes a quantum leap from radio to television. During the next 12 years, he will poke, prod and rewrite the rules, literally knocking on America's TV screens.
• 1951—The first U.S. coast-to-coast television broadcast takes place as President Harry S. Truman addresses the opening of the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco.
• 1952—Bwana Devil, the first 3-D film using polarized lenses, is released.
• 1953—Ian Fleming introduces superspy James Bond in Casino Royale. In 1962, 007 will make the transition from literature to the big screen, becoming the most successful fictional character ever. For our purposes, the Bond movies represent the establishment of film as a mass-marketable commodity, launching everything from toys and cologne to current-day product tie-ins such as Omega watches and BMW automobiles.
• 1956—The Picturephone is first tested at Bell Telephone Laboratories.
• 1959—Debut of the integrated circuit.
• 1962—Telstar, the first communications satellite (based on an idea by writer Arthur C. Clarke) is launched into orbit. The first satellite telecast soon follows, including part of a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies.
• 1962–1970—The Beatles revolutionize the way music is recorded in the studio, using increasingly complex sound and tape effects. The innovations are not only sonic: their many films and promotional clips, especially Help! (directed by Richard Lester) and Magical Mystery Tour (directed by the band) virtually invent the modern music video.
• 1965—IBM introduces the word processor.
• 1966—Rock bands begin to add visual effects to their performances, most notably the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead in San Francisco, and the Pink Floyd in London.
• 1967—Pop music and pop art converge on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The concept album's packaging features a ground-breaking cover, lyrics to the songs, a decorative inner sleeve (instead of one hawking other releases), and a cut-out sheet that includes a groovy moustache.
• 1968—Stanley Kubrick releases 2001: A Space Odyssey, which relies on visuals, sound and music to tell its story. Based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, the film was the first to portray realistic space flight, and has much to say on the dehumanizing influences of technology. On the prognostication side, it absolutely nails the flat screen monitors which now appear in airplane seatbacks. Among 2001's more questionable predictions are a financially healthy Pan Am and Picturephones for all.
• 1969—The U.S. effort to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth pays off handsomely. Technology spinoffs include laptop computers, small solid-state lasers (which lead to Compact Discs), cordless power tools, solar power cells, liquid crystals, and Tang.
• 1969—Yellow Submarine is released, featuring the eponymous Tang-colored submersible. The animated film blends a variety of artistic styles with the music of the Beatles. The accompanying marketing blitz puts psychedelic art on main street.
• 1969—ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, is established by the U.S. Department of Defense.
• 1969—Nonlinearity meets the masses: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is published. In true multimedia fashion, the work will be presented as a film (1972) and a CD-ROM (1994).
• 1969—At a school demonstration, the author of this chronology hears how the Picturephone will soon change his life. He's still waiting.
• 1971—Computer engineer Ray Tomlinson sends the first e-mail message: most likely, it “was QWERTYIOP or something similar.” Tomlinson also designates @ as the locator symbol for electronic addresses.
• 1972—The Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game system, is released.
• 1972—Nolan Bushnell and Atari introduce Pong, the first coin-operated video game.
• 1974—MITS releases the first successful personal computer. The Altair is named for a planet from the Star Trek television series (or is the planet later named for the computer?). It uses Intel Corporation's 8080 microprocessor, also developed in 1974. The PC will not really catch on until the advent of the Apple II.
• 1975—Bill Gates and Paul Allen adapt BASIC to run on the Altair 8800, and sell the interpreter to MITS. It's the first computer language program written for the PC. By the end of November, the duo's new company has a name: Micro-soft.
• 1976—Personal computing's other two wunderkinder, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs form Apple (the name is licensed from the Beatles).
• 1977—The Sex Pistols quickly deconstruct the bloated rock ethos of the ‘70s; then they deconstruct themselves.
• 1977—The Apple II changes everything. It's the first PC to use color graphics.
• 1977—Beatlemania opens on Broadway. This multimedia show juxtaposes the music of the Beatles (played by four impersonators) with film clips, photographs, and news headlines from the 1960s.
• 1979—The first commercial cellular phone system begins operation in Tokyo.
• 1980—Pink Floyd performs The Wall. The shows (limited to only four cities) incorporate music, animations, giant puppets, a 35-foot wall, and the obligatory inflatable pig. A film interpretation of the album follows in 1982.
• 1981—MTV debuts.
• 1981—IBM releases its first PC.
• 1982—Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan becomes the first film to utilize an all-digital computer graphic sequence (used to depict the “Genesis Effect”).
• 1982—Can you say cyberpunk? Ridley Scott releases Blade Runner.
• 1983—The Compact Disc is introduced.
• 1983—The Internet as we know it is created on January 1st when a standard networking protocol (TCP/IP) is adopted by all ARPANET users.
• 1984—“They'll never let me forget it.” William Gibson coins the term “cyberspace” in his novel Neuromancer.
• 1984—Apple unveils the Macintosh during Superbowl XVIII. The now-classic commercial (directed by an Orwell-inspired Ridley Scott) is a thinly-veiled broadside at IBM. The Mac also introduces the general public to the mouse.
• 1985—Microsoft Windows version 1.0 hits the streets.
• 1985—The Commodore Amiga combines advanced graphics, sound and video capabilities to create the first true multimedia computer.
• 1986—The Academic American Encyclopedia becomes the first CD-ROM encyclopedia.
• 1988—Macromind (now Macromedia) releases Director, a multimedia authoring tool.
• 1989—British physicist Tim Berners-Lee proposes a global hypertext system, the World Wide Web. During the next few years, he will develop the standards for URL, HTML, and HTTP.
• 1991—ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US. Zero Wing, an obscure 1989 Japanese video game, is released for the Sega Genesis game system. Its badly mistranslated introduction will one day rule the world. For great justice.
• 1991—The World Wide Web makes its debut on the Internet.
• 1991—James Cameron releases Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The film sets a new standard for the use of computer-generated special effects.
• 1991—The MP3 digital audio compression format is invented at the Fraunhofer Institute, a German research lab.
• 1992—MS Windows version 3.1 is released.
• 1992—Hypertext markup language (HTML), debuts, giving anyone with an interest the tools to build their own Web page.
• 1993—Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, is released.
• 1993—The Internet's first radio station (imaginatively named Internet Talk Radio) begins broadcasting. It uses Mbone (IP Multicast Backbone) technology.
• 1993—Wired debuts. The magazine, which chronicles the growing cyberculture, bends many traditional graphic design rules.
• 1994—Broderbund releases Myst, the first successful interactive 3-D computer game. To date, it has sold more than seven million copies.
• 1994—The Rolling Stones become the first major band to broadcast a live performance over the Internet, using Mbone to transmit 25 minutes from a concert in Dallas, Texas.
• 1994—WXYC-FM in Chapel Hill, North Carolina becomes the first radio station to simulcast its signal over the Internet.
• 1995—Windows 95 creates a public hysteria unseen since Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast.
• 1995—Xing Technologies releases StreamWorks, the first 24-hour live streaming audio and video broadcast system for the Internet. Xing is bought by RealNetworks in 1999.
• 1995—Disney releases Toy Story, the first feature-length movie totally comprised by computer graphics. The 77-minute film takes four years to make, and 800,000 machine hours to render.
• 1996—Affordable digital cameras (another spin-off from the U.S. space program) become widely available.
• 1996—Fifty million channels and nothin' on. JenniCAM debuts. She and thousands of successors redefine the way people look at the Web...and each other.
• 1996—WRAL-HD in Raleigh, North Carolina becomes the first commercial high-definition TV station in the U.S.
• 1996—DVD video is introduced; full-length movies are now distributed on a single CD. The DVD format also promises to transform the music, gaming and computer industries.
• 1998—Saehan-Eiger Labs releases the MPMan F10/F20, the first portable MP3 player.
• 1999—SETI@home becomes the poster child for distributed Internet computing. Set up by the University of California at Berkeley to search for signs of extraterrestrial communication, the project uses millions of volunteer computers to create a low-cost supercomputer.
• 1999—Napster debuts, allowing users to download (and share) their favorite MP3s. The service puts peer-to-peer computing on the map, enabling individual computers to interact with each other, instead of downloading from a centralized server. Napster also becomes the focal point in a battle royal over copyright and intellectual property in the wired age.
• 1999—RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is officially introduced. The format allows instant syndication of news and other content, and will pave the way for the rapid rise of blogs and podcasts.
• 2000—Postmodern humans project images on the walls of their pyramids. For one magical night, we all party like it's 1999, and the world really does seem like a smaller place. Unless you went to bed early.
• 2001—The revolution will be downloaded: Apple introduces iTunes (January) and the iPod (October).