Network Communication Services history

1893: Wireless telegraphy: Nikolai Tesla was the first to successfully transmit radio waves wirelessly through a transmitter in 1893.

In 1896, he sent his first long-distance wireless transmission.

1915: First North American transcontinental telephone calling: Alexander Graham Bell is back in the history books again after he made the first coast-to-coast call by phone in January of 1915 to his assistant.

1927: Television: Phillip T. Farnsworth made media history on September 7, 1927, when he demonstrated the first working television set.

1930: First experimental videophones: In 1930, AT&T had decided to create a two-way experimental videophone they called the Iconophone.

1934: First commercial radio-telephone service, United States-Japan: The first radio telephone calls from the United States to Japan were first made in 1934.

1936: World's first public videophone network: The world, now in the throes of World War II, sees the first public videophone network installed in Nazi Germany in March of 1936 during a trade fair.

Bush publicizes the Memex concept in 1945 articles in The Atlantic Monthly and Life.

1946: Limited-capacity mobile telephone service for automobiles: In June of 1946, the first telephone call was made from an automobile phone.

1956: Transatlantic telephone cable: The first 36-circuit transatlantic telephone cable was installed in 1956.

1962: Commercial telecommunications satellite: The Communications Satellite Act was officially passed in 1962, allowing telecommunications to finally go into space.

1964: Fiber-optic telecommunications: In 1964, Charles Kao and George Hockham published a paper that proved that fiber-optic communication could be possible as long as the fibers used to transmit the information were free of impurities.

1965: First North American public videophone network: In 1965, the first picturephone service began in trials.

1969: Computer networking: In October of 1969, the first data traveled between nodes of the ARPANET, a predecessor of the Internet.

Ray Tomlinson of Bolt, Beranek and Newman chooses the now-iconic “@” sign for his networked email protocol on the ARPAnet and by 1973, well over 50% of traffic on that research-oriented network is email.

In 1974 it announces Systems Network Architecture (SNA), a set of protocols designed for less centralized networks.

Bolt Beranek and Newman, which had built the original IMP and designed important parts of the ARPAnet, had also been a key participant in ARPA’s 1977 internetworking experiments.

The network was originally launched only in Tokyo in 1979 and then was expanded.

Without being named as such, hyperlinks had also been used in some online help systems and CD-ROMs. It got so obscure that the main father of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, may have unknowingly re-invented it in 1980.

1981: First mobile phone network: The first commercially automated cellular network was launched in Japan in 1981.

AMPS, an analog frequency division multiplexing network was first implemented in Chicago in 1983, and was completely saturated with users the next year.

Usenet is the first; though mostly for geeks its discussion groups are quite popular and it gets ported to run over the Internet by 1986.

At the instigation of computer pioneers, Senator Al Gore begins working in 1987 on what will become his High Performance Computing and Communication Act.

At the world’s biggest physics laboratory, CERN in Switzerland, English programmer and physicist Tim Berners-Lee submits two proposals for what will become the Web, starting in March of 1989.

DEC and Xerox will also begin commercializing their own proprietary networks, DECNET and XNS. At it’s peak around 1990, IBM’s SNA will quietly carry most of the world's networking traffic.

When it is funded in 1991, the Act creates the National Information Infrastructure, which promotes and funds over $600 million worth of various networking initiatives.

By 1992 the Internet will have emerged as the new global standard, linking a million computers.

By 1993, the gopher developers are planning to add hyperlinks and even virtual reality features.

In 1994, Enterprise Integration Technologies (EIT) founds the CommerceNet consortium to encourage Web commerce, and demonstrates secure credit-card transactions that same year.

The first businesses to earn substantial profits on the Web are pornography and gambling sites, by 1995.

At the end of 1996, the 36 million Web users surpass the 30 million or so on France’s Minitel, until now the most popular online system.

1998: Mobile satellite hand-held phones: The first canopy of 64 satellites was put into place by a company called Iridium in 1998.

In 1999, the growing IEEE 802.11b short-range radio networking standard is rebranded “Wi-Fi” by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The Directorate General of Telecommunications of the former MPT was renamed China Telecom in May 2000 to operate the nationwide fixed-line telecommunications business and specialized telecommunications support businesses.

Since 2001, China Telecom has carried out a series of restructuring of its telecommunications business, including restructuring of specialized telecommunications support services business.

In November 2002, China Telecom Corporation Limited completed its initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.

2003: VoIP Internet telephony: In 2003, phone calls were now capable of being transmitted over a computer through Internet protocols.

In 2004, Google is the first major Web company to float a publicly traded stock since the go-go days of the dot-com boom.