Stone to Silicon

Timeline · 97 technologies

Communication

c. 152,000 years ago to April 2026. Each one is placed by when it first worked.

Open the living tree

  1. c. 152,000 years agoSpoken languageHumans begin trading complex ideas in sound, and every later tool can be taught, not just copied.
  2. c. 100,000 years agoEngraved ochre (Blombos)Geometric patterns cut into red ochre preserve an early tradition of deliberate abstract mark-making.
  3. c. 68,000 years agoCave artHand stencils and painted animals leave images on cave walls that outlast their makers.
  4. c. 43,000 years agoTally marks (Lebombo bone)Notches cut in a baboon fibula: the first surviving external record of a count.
  5. c. 8,000 BCEClay accounting tokensSmall clay cones, spheres and discs stand for jars of grain and heads of livestock.
  6. c. 3,500 BCECylinder sealA carved stone cylinder rolled over wet clay prints a unique signature, again and again.
  7. c. 3,350 BCEProto-cuneiformTemple accountants in Uruk draw numbers and pictographs on clay tablets.
  8. c. 3,250 BCEEgyptian hieroglyphsEgypt develops its own picture-and-sound script, carved on monuments for 3,500 years.
  9. c. 3,200 BCEWriting (cuneiform)Wedge-shaped marks in clay begin to record speech, and history begins with them.
  10. c. 2,900 BCEPapyrusPressed reed strips make a light, rollable writing sheet that serves the Mediterranean for 3,000 years.
  11. c. 1,850 BCEAlphabet (Proto-Sinaitic)Semitic workers in Egypt pick a few hieroglyphs to stand for single consonants.
  12. c. 1,250 BCEOracle bone scriptShang diviners carve questions to the ancestors on turtle shells and ox bones.
  13. c. 1,050 BCEPhoenician alphabetMediterranean traders standardise 22 consonant letters and carry them to every port.
  14. c. 800 BCEAramaic alphabetThe script of Near Eastern empires becomes the ancestor of Hebrew, Arabic and Indian scripts.
  15. c. 800 BCEGreek alphabetGreeks repurpose unused Phoenician letters as vowels, creating the first full alphabet.
  16. c. 700 BCELatin alphabetRomans adopt letters via the Etruscans and create the most widely used script on Earth.
  17. c. 650 BCELibrary of AshurbanipalAn Assyrian king collects over 30,000 clay tablets into a catalogued royal library.
  18. c. 550 BCEPersian royal postRelays of mounted couriers carry royal messages across an empire in days, not months.
  19. c. 300 BCEMaya scriptMesoamerica invents writing independently, with hundreds of glyphs mixing words and syllables.
  20. c. 285 BCELibrary of AlexandriaThe Ptolemies try to collect every book in the world, and scholars flock to read them.
  21. c. 260 BCEBrahmi scriptAshoka's edicts spread an Indian script that becomes the parent of Devanagari, Tamil and Thai.
  22. c. 200 BCEParchmentScraped and stretched animal skin gives a durable writing surface that can be folded and reused.
  23. c. 20 BCECursus publicusAugustus builds a state courier and transport network along Rome's roads.
  24. c. 100 CECodex (bound book)Pages stacked and bound at one edge replace the scroll and invent the book as we know it.
  25. c. 105 CEPaperCai Lun reports a cheap sheet made from bark, hemp and rags, and writing gets inexpensive.
  26. c. 700 CEWoodblock printingA whole page is carved into wood, inked and pressed onto paper, again and again.
  27. c. 830 CEHouse of WisdomAbbasid Baghdad translates Greek, Persian and Indian science onto cheap paper.
  28. 868 CEDiamond Sutra (dated print)The oldest surviving dated printed book, a 5-metre scroll from Dunhuang.
  29. c. 1021Camera obscuraLight through a pinhole paints an inverted image of the world on a dark wall.
  30. c. 1040Movable type (Bi Sheng)Individual characters baked in clay are arranged, printed and reused.
  31. c. 1276Water-powered paper millWater-driven hammers pulp rags at Fabriano, scaling paper for European demand.
  32. 1377Metal movable type (Jikji)Korean monks print a Buddhist text with cast metal type, 78 years before Gutenberg's Bible.
  33. c. 1440Movable-type printing pressGutenberg combines cast metal type, oil ink and a screw press, and books become cheap.
  34. 1490Imperial post (Thurn und Taxis)A family business runs relay posts across Europe on fixed schedules.
  35. 1605Printed newspaperA Strasbourg printer publishes weekly news, and the periodical press begins.
  36. 1665Scientific journalThe Royal Society starts a periodical, and science gets a public, dated, citable record.
  37. 1794Optical telegraphTowers with movable arms relay coded signals across France faster than any horse.
  38. 1796LithographyGrease and water repel on flat stone, letting images be printed without carving.
  39. 1803Continuous paper machineA moving wire belt makes paper in endless rolls instead of single hand-dipped sheets.
  40. 1814Steam-powered pressThe Times prints on a steam-driven cylinder press at 1,100 sheets an hour.
  41. 1837Electric telegraphMessages travel by electric current, and news outruns the fastest horse for the first time.
  42. 1839PhotographyDaguerre and Talbot fix images made by light itself, and memory gets an objective record.
  43. 1840Uniform Penny PostOne cheap prepaid stamp sends a letter anywhere in Britain.
  44. 1844Morse codeDots and dashes over a single wire: 'What hath God wrought' reaches Baltimore.
  45. 1858Transatlantic telegraph cableA copper cable on the Atlantic floor cuts Europe-America news from ten days to minutes.
  46. 1868TypewriterA keyboard prints letters directly, and QWERTY is born.
  47. 1876TelephoneThe human voice travels over a wire, and conversation no longer needs presence.
  48. 1877PhonographEdison records 'Mary had a little lamb' on tinfoil and plays it back.
  49. 1878Telephone exchangeA switchboard lets any subscriber call any other, and the phone becomes a network.
  50. 1886Linotype machineA keyboard casts whole lines of hot-metal type, ending hand typesetting.
  51. 1888Roll film camera (Kodak)'You press the button, we do the rest': photography becomes something anyone can do.
  52. 1895CinemaThe Lumiere brothers project moving pictures to a paying Paris audience.
  53. 1895RadioMarconi sends telegraph signals through the air, with no wire at all.
  54. 1920Broadcast radioKDKA airs the US election returns, and scheduled broadcasting reaches the home.
  55. 1927Sound filmThe Jazz Singer speaks, and silent film ends within a few years.
  56. 1927TelevisionMoving images are sent electronically, and the living room gets a window on the world.
  57. 1935Magnetic tape recordingAEG's Magnetophon records sound on coated plastic tape that can be edited and erased.
  58. 1945Memex (As We May Think)Vannevar Bush imagines a desk that stores all your records and links them by association.
  59. 1948Information theoryShannon defines the bit and proves how much any channel can reliably carry.
  60. 1956TAT-1 telephone cableThe first transatlantic telephone cable carries 36 simultaneous calls.
  61. 1958ModemComputers start talking to each other over ordinary telephone lines.
  62. 1962Telstar communications satelliteLive television crosses the Atlantic by satellite for the first time.
  63. 1964Geostationary satellite (Syncom)A satellite hanging still over the Pacific broadcasts the Tokyo Olympics live.
  64. 1964Packet switchingMessages are chopped into small blocks, each routed independently to be reassembled.
  65. 1965HypertextTed Nelson coins a word for text that links to other text.
  66. 1969ARPANETUCLA sends 'LO' to Stanford before crashing: the first message of the internet's ancestor.
  67. 1970Low-loss optical fiberCorning pulls glass so pure that light carries data for kilometres.
  68. 1971EmailRay Tomlinson picks the @ sign, and messages start moving between computers.
  69. 1973EthernetXerox PARC links office computers on a shared coaxial cable at 2.94 Mbit/s.
  70. 1974TCP/IPCerf and Kahn design a protocol that lets any network connect to any other.
  71. 1975Digital cameraA Kodak engineer records a 0.01-megapixel image to cassette tape in 23 seconds.
  72. 1976Public-key cryptographyTwo strangers can agree on a secret key over a public line.
  73. 1983Cellular phone networkHandoffs between small radio cells make phones truly mobile.
  74. 1983Domain Name SystemHuman-readable names like example.com replace numeric addresses, in a distributed hierarchy.
  75. 1986NSFNET backboneA national science backbone connects universities and grows into the commercial internet.
  76. 1988TAT-8 fiber cableThe first transatlantic fiber-optic cable carries 40,000 calls at once.
  77. 1991GSM (2G digital cellular)Europe's digital standard makes phones roam across borders and carry data.
  78. 1991World Wide WebTim Berners-Lee's links, URLs and HTML turn the internet into a universal library.
  79. 1992Text messaging (SMS)'Merry Christmas' is sent as the first text message.
  80. 1993Mosaic web browserA graphical browser shows images inline with text, and the web takes off.
  81. 1993MP3 audio compressionPsychoacoustics shrinks a song about tenfold, and music moves onto networks.
  82. 1995SSL/TLS encryptionThe padlock in the browser makes it safe to send a credit card number over the web.
  83. 1997Wi-FiIEEE 802.11 cuts the cord, and networks go wireless in homes and cafes.
  84. 1998Web search (Google PageRank)Ranking pages by who links to them makes the whole web findable.
  85. 20013G mobile dataNTT Docomo's FOMA brings broadband-class data to a phone.
  86. 2001WikipediaAnyone can edit, and the largest encyclopedia in history is written by volunteers.
  87. 2004Social networking (Facebook)Profiles, friends and feeds put social life online for billions.
  88. 2005Online video (YouTube)Anyone can broadcast: 'Me at the zoo' opens a platform with billions of viewers.
  89. 2007SmartphoneA touchscreen computer in every pocket puts the whole internet within reach of billions.
  90. 2008App StoreA single marketplace lets any developer ship software to millions of phones.
  91. 20094G LTEAll-IP mobile broadband makes streaming video on a phone routine.
  92. 2013End-to-end encrypted messagingMessages only the sender and recipient can read, for over a billion people by default.
  93. 2016Algorithmic short video (TikTok)A recommendation engine, not a friend list, decides what billions watch next.
  94. 20195GWider spectrum and massive antenna arrays push mobile speeds toward gigabits.
  95. 2025Direct-to-cell satellite serviceOrdinary phones text straight to satellites where no tower reaches.
  96. 2025Streaming overtakes broadcast TVIn US homes, streaming passes broadcast and cable combined.
  97. April 2026Amazon Leo broadbandA second low-orbit broadband network opens to customers.

Projections 4

  1. around 2028Universal real-time translationEarbuds translate spoken conversation in any major language with natural voices and little lag.
  2. around 2029Satellite broadband to every phoneAn ordinary phone gets data anywhere on Earth straight from orbit.
  3. around 2032Brain-computer interfaces restore speechImplants decode intended speech so people who have lost their voice can talk fluently again.
  4. around 2040Continental quantum networksEntangled photons link cities, enabling eavesdrop-proof keys and networked quantum computers.