Major Milestones of the Telecommunications Industry

1837 Samuel Morse invents the telegraph - The information age began with the telegraph, which was invented by Samuel F.B. Morse in 1837. This was the first instrument to transform information into electrical form and transmit it reliably over long distances. The earliest form of electrical communication, the original Morse telegraph of 1837 did not use a key and sounder. Instead it was a device designed to print patterns at a distance.
1858 Transoceanic telegraph cable is laid – The transoceanic telegraph cable is an undersea cable running under the Atlantic Ocean used for telegraph communications. The first communications occurred August 16, 1858, reducing the communication time between North America and Europe from ten days, the time it took to deliver a message by ship, to a matter of minutes.
1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone - The telegraph was followed by Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in 1876. The magneto-telephone was one of the first telephones on which both transmission and reception were done with the same instrument.
1885 - Incorporation of the American Telephone and Telegraph company (AT&T). After its incorporation in 1885, the American Telephone and Telegraph company dominated the telecommunications market.
1888 - Heinrich Hertz discovers the electromagnetic wave
1895 - Marconi begins experimenting with wireless telegraph
1901 Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio—the first wireless electronic communications system.
1906 - The first commercial wireless voice transmitting system utilizing electromagnetic waves, the radio, was built in the United States.
1934 – Communications Act of 1934. FCC was established and charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable.
1939 - American mathematician and physicist, John Vincent Atanasoff designed the first electronic computer. The modern computer era commenced with the first large-scale automatic digital computer, commonly referred to as Mark I.
1941 – The marriage of computers and communication was a major milestone. In that year a message recorded in telegraph code on punched tape was converted to a code used to represent the message data on punched cards read by a computer.
1948 – John Bardeen, William Bradford Shockley, and Walter Houser Brattain, employed at Bell Telephone Labs, invented the transistor. This is said to me one of the most important milestones in the history of electronics.
1961 – Invention of the Integrated Circuit (IC) by Fairchild and Texas Instruments. This marked another turning point in the computing industry. It became possible to develop miniature devices like amplifiers and microprocessors which had low power requirements.
1968 – Microwave Communications Inc (MCI) began constructing a microwave network between Chicago and St. Louis. MCI took its interconnection request to the courts and prevailed, though it nearly drove the company bankrupt.
1969 - The first prototype of the internet was ARPNET. It was funded in 1969 by the Defense Advanced research Projects Agency.
1971 – The desktop personal computer (PC) made its market debut after Intel developed the microprocessor in 1971.
1974 – The AT&T monopoly prompted the U.S. Justice Department to file an antitrust lawsuit against the company in early 1974.
1976 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened long distance telephone service to competition from other long distance carriers, also called Inter Exchange Carriers.
1978 – National Telecommunications and Information Administration created. The NTIA represents the Executive Branch of the government in both domestic and international telecommunications information and policy activities.
1978 – Development of the Unix to Unix copy program.
1979 – The USENET (user’s network) was developed.
1981 – Development of CSNET and BITNET based soley on interest and willingness to connect.
1982 – The term Internet is coined.
1982 – Antitrust restructuring agreement that began with a lawsuit in 1974 with AT&T was signed.
1984 – Antitrust restructuring agreement went into effect.
1986 – Establishment of NSFNET, a network of super computers.
1989 – CSNET and BITNET merge to form CREN.
1990 – World Wide Web becomes a functioning part of the Internet.
1991 – The Federal government enacted legislation designed to rationalize and upgrade the internet
1991 – The Federal government upgrades the internet to a high-speed backbone network.
Mid 1990’s – Emergence of Intranets, which are corporate networks based on the internet.
1996 – Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of the telecommunication laws in about 62 years. The goal is to let anyone enter any communications business and to let any communications business compete in any market against any other.