Sally's Technology Milestones timeline

In the modern world seemingly everyone has a phone and is in the social network, but that is not what it always was. Networks started with the telegraph in 1843 created by Samuel Morse. As the wires spread around the nation and the world it gave us the ability to communicate over long distances quickly and open the door for the telephones we have today. Fun fact, the word telegraph comes from the greek words têle, "at a distance" and gráphein, "to write".

I love to shop, therefore the mechanics of the cash register was extremely fascinating to me. In 1879 James Ritty made the first cash register to prevent workers from stealing money. The "ding" it made ensured every transaction was made and the itemized receipt let the costumer confirm they were not over charged. It ultimately improved the ethics around sales. It also caused the Bill Bryson Odd Pricing. Prices such as $1.49 ensured the worker would have to open the cash register to make change.

I love to shop, so the cash register is a frequent technology in my life. In 1879 James Ritty made the first cash register, the Ritty Model I. It was made to reduce employees stealing and falsifying transactions. The iconic "ding" was made to tell the owner a transaction was made and reciepts for buyers to know what they were charged for. From this, the Bryson Odd Pricing was created. Prices have odd cents, for example $1.49, to ensure the cashier has to use the cash register.

A TV is in most American homes today as a staple of family living. But, it wasn't until 1939 that Americans were introduced to electronic television transmission created by Philo Farnsworth in 1927. Furthermore they were a rarity due to price and weren't a household staple until the 1950s. It is incredible to think that less than 100 years ago the TV was not common, and now today we have flat screen and 3D. And since 2015 there has been a rise in Smart TVs.

As a student of computer science, I could not fathom coding in 1s and 0s. One of the first letter based programming language was FORTRAN in 1957 invented by John Backus. It was feared that this automatic programming compiler would be inefficient, but it was proven to be more efficient and less error prone. Without FORTRAN we wouldn't have the modern languages that we have today such as Python in 1991 and Java in 1995.

A majority of people in the USA have or have used a laptop and/or a smart phone. We can have several different functions on these devices and this is thanks to virtualization. Virtualization first began in the 1960s and is when a single physical computer can emulate many other devices digitally. From this come many types of virtualization such as running an app or opening a virtual machine. Virtualization is a key component of the cloud computing we have today.