Technological Development timeline

After hearing through colleague Leonard Gale about a physicist named Joseph Henry ringing a bell at a distance via an electric circuit, Samuel Morse would go on to develop the first electrical telegraph, which would later be used for the in 1844, with the message "What hath God wrought?" being sent from Washington, DC to Baltimore, MD. This would mark the beginning of a more reliable form of long-distance communication, as well as pave the way for other forms such as the telephone and radio.

After hearing of the successful experiments by Heinrich Hertz, Guglielmo Marconi made it his mission to prove the effectiveness of wireless telegraph communications by way of radio signals. His experiments were made with induction coils, spark dischargers, and coherers for sending and receiving, and eventually included odd rods with metal plates on top (antennas) in between two locations for improved distance and connection. This led to the growth of wireless communications that we see today.

Although it's predecessor, the ENIAC, can take credit for being the first big step in programmable computers, the EDVAC took it a step further, by working in binary values rather than decimal, as well as storing programs and data in memory rather than via wiring. These systems would then be used to develop the first commercial computer with the UNIVAC I in 1951.

Starting with Garrett AiResearch's CADC, Texas Instruments' TMS 1802NC, and Intel's 4004, the microprocessor was the idea of a single chip being programmed in many different way's for a user's own specifications, rather than just having multiple types of chips on one machine. These would prove to be a big part of technology in our modern society, with microprocessors being used for phones, media players, even coffee makers.

While ARPANET helped lay the foundation for what we know as the internet today by being a packet-switching network, what most consider as the day the internet came about was when Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn applied their TCP/IP protocol to the ARPANET, allowing for a more open way of communication via the network.

Originally named local area networks (LANs) when it was first proposed by Henrik Sjödin, this allowed companies such as Starbucks, American Airlines, and Hilton Hotels to make their businesses more welcoming than they already were with local internet services. We see these same types of businesses, as well as many others, today providing their locations for social gatherings as well as business meetings.