A History of Media

Past - Pixels

A long long time ago

• To be human is to create.

• This human impulse to create and express has always been a part of man’s psyche. This trait can seen man’s distant cousin, the Neanderthal.

45,000 B.C.E.

• In what is now Hungary, a Neanderthal carves onto a mammoth tusk.

30,000 B.C.E.

• In what Modern Germany, someone engraves a horse in a pelvis bone.

10,000 B.C.E

• Writing on skin. Tattooing instruments found in Europe.

4,000 B.C.E

• Egyptian pharaohs listen to flutes and harps.

3372 B.C.E

• Start of the Mayan calendar.

3,000 B.C.E.

• Egypt develops hieroglyphic writing.

• In the Mediterranean or Near East, an abacus derived from counting boards.

Note:

• The Abacus is one of the precursors to the modern computer.

2,000 B.C.E.

• Enheduanna, a woman in Mesopotamia, writes first signed text, a hymn

• Vikings toot on trumpets.

• Nine Greek muses, responsible for poetry, history, comedy, song, dance.

14 C.E.

• Rome sets up network of relay runners carrying messages 50 miles in a day.

70 C.E.

• Estimated date of Matthew's Gospel.

230 C.E.

• Japanese begin keeping historical records.

370 C.E.

• Rome is said to have 28 public libraries.

393 C.E.

• Church sanctions 27 books of the New Testament; Christian Bible is complete.

450 C.E.

• Ink on seals is stamped on paper in China. This is true printing.

598 C.E.

• The first school in England, at Canterbury.

600 - 619 C.E.

• Books printed in China.

• In China, large orchestras, with bells, drums, flutes, gongs, guitars

900 C.E.

• The 1001 Arabian Nights of tales within a tale

1038 C.E.

• Arab scholar Alhazen describes a room-size camera obscura. – Note: This will ultimately lead to photography

and film

1168

• Oxford University is founded.

1300s

• Paper is made in England (1309)

• Dante Alighieri dies after completing his epic poem, The Divine Comedy. (1321)

• Legends of King Arthur are written. (1325)

1387

• Geoffrey Chaucer writes The Canterbury Tales.

1430 – 1450 -1451 - 1465

• Start of Renaissance music era: sacred music, secular madrigals; lute is favored.

• Africans carry culture with them as 400 years of slave exports to West begins

• Gutenberg’s press prints an old German poem.

• Printed music.

1472 -1477

• William Caxton brings Gutenberg’s invention of printing to England.

• An advertising poster in England

1482 - 1498

• Leonardo da Vinci begins filling notebooks with ideas, sketches.

• Leonardo da Vinci completes The Last Supper.

1500 - 1517

• By now approximately 35,000 books have been printed, some 10 million copies.

• Martin Luther nails his "Ninety-five Theses" to a church door in Wittenberg.

1570

• Women forbidden to sing on stage; castration imitates female voice

1593 – 1611-1612

• William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis.

• The King James version of the Bible is published.

• The Tempest is performed .

1750

• J.S. Bach dies, signals end of music’s Baroque period.

1789

• New United States proposes Bill of Rights, with freedom of faith, speech, press.

• In England, the narrative of a former slave is published.

1890

• Typewriters are in common use in offices.

• The $1 Brownie camera; film is 15 cents a roll.

Late 1800s

• 1893: Dickson builds a motion picture studio in New Jersey.

• Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, The Scream.

• Emile Berliner sells 1,000 gramophones, 25,000 records.

1800s

• 1895: In Berlin, Max and Emil Skladanowsky show a 15-minute motion picture

• 1896: The first comic strip, The Yellow Kid, in the New York American.

• 1896: Nikola Tesla invents a spark radio transmitter.

1900s

• 1940: U.S. gets first regular TV station, WNBT, New York; estimated 10,000 viewers.

• 1943: British code breaking machine Colossus cracks Germany’s Enigma code. (Precursor to computer)

• 1949: Network TV established in U.S.

1900s

• 1951: Color television sets go on sale.

• 1952: EDVAC takes computer technology a giant leap forward.

• 1956: IBM ships a hard drive, the 5 MB. 305 RAMAC as big as two refrigerators.

• 1958: The microchip; it will enable the computer revolution.

• 1962: FCC sees a demonstration of cellular technology.

• 1963: Sony offers an open-reel videotape recorder for the home, $995.

• 1964: IBM’s OS/360 is first mass-produced computer operating system.

• 1969: The Woodstock music festival.

• 1971: ARPANET, Internet forerunner, has 22 university, government connections.

• 1973: Computer in England, another in Norway connect to ARPANET.

• 1976: Death Race 98 raises public complaints about video games.

• 1983: Internet domains get names instead of hard-to-remember numbers.

• 1985: Cellphones go into cars.

• 1987: The Simpsons, animated cartoon, introduced on Fox TV.

Work Citied

• "Media History Project." Timeline: Media History n.pag. Web. 23 Aug 2012. <http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/timeline/>.