'What hath God wrought': the telegraph
Samuel Morse's line between Washington and Baltimore carried the first formal message in code — information traveling without any physical carrier to see.
Humanity
115 events across three thousand years — chosen to be multi-regional and honest about uncertainty. Follow a thread to trace one capability through time, or filter by region and kind.
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Spatial timeline — scroll horizontally
Bell patents the telephone
Alexander Graham Bell's patent — hours ahead of a rival filing — turned the telegraph's clicks into the human voice over wire.
ARPANET sends its first packets
The first node at UCLA attempted to log in to a machine at SRI; the system crashed after 'LO' — but packet switching worked, and the network grew.
The smartphone puts the network in every pocket
The iPhone fused phone, iPod and internet device with a multitouch screen; Android followed within a year, and mobile apps became a new layer of civilization.
Chronology
'What hath God wrought': the telegraph
Samuel Morse's line between Washington and Baltimore carried the first formal message in code — information traveling without any physical carrier to see.
Bell patents the telephone
Alexander Graham Bell's patent — hours ahead of a rival filing — turned the telegraph's clicks into the human voice over wire.
ARPANET sends its first packets
The first node at UCLA attempted to log in to a machine at SRI; the system crashed after 'LO' — but packet switching worked, and the network grew.
The smartphone puts the network in every pocket
The iPhone fused phone, iPod and internet device with a multitouch screen; Android followed within a year, and mobile apps became a new layer of civilization.