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Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone after being born into a family focused on impairments of speech and hearing. His father and grandfather were experts in elocution and the correction of speech. Nearly all early telephones were installed in businesses. Leasing a telephone was expensive, and most people focused on the commercial value rather than its social value. Obviously this would change over the coming decade.The importance of this type of communication was underestimated at first. -
Cash Register
Cash Register were a huge advancement in technology that mainly helped store owners of smaller businesses. The cash register served as a solution to the challenges of accounting and embezzlement. Keeping store records became more and more difficult as stores grew larger and larger. It was nearly impossible with many clerks and several different departments. Now it was very easy for department store owners to compare cash on-hand against sales receipts. This made department stores possible. -
Television
Broadcasting video over a wire began around 1884 with the invention of the electromechanical television by Paul Nipkow. The first completely electronic television transmission was made in 1927 by Philo Farnsworth. The potential of the television's ability to send a message around the country was demonstrated with hundreds of millions of people watching as US astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped on to the surface of the moon. -
Wireless Networks (Cell Phones)
Cell phones, also known as mobile phones, allow telephones calls to be made over radio links. Advances in integrated circuits and other technologies have allowed companies to shrink the size and the weight drastically while increasing their capabilities. People living in areas never reached by wired telephone service now have the ability to communicate with others and access the internet. Today, about 66% of the world have cell phones. -
Internet
Robert Kahn developed the concept of open architecture networking, in which individual networks could be quite different as long as they shared a common "internetworking architecture". Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn designed the TCP/IP protocol that would support open architecture networking. The internet is the network of networks that communicate using TCP/IP. -
Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing refers to the utilization of remote computing resources over the Internet. The term comes from the tradition of representing networks as clouds in technical diagrams. Several important breakthroughs made cloud computing possible: high-speed networks, high-performance, low-cost microprocessors, low-cost of storage devices, and software that enables a single physical computer to emulate many virtual computing devices. These are very widely used today through companies like Google.
