From Gutenberg to the Internet: Timeline 1920 to 1929

From Gutenberg to the Internet Timeline

An Annotated Chronology of the History of Information from about 30,000 B.C.E. to the present, by Jeremy M. Norman.

1920	Karel Capek publishes R. U. R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in Prague. This play, written in Czech except for the title, introduces the word "robot" and explores the issue of whether worker-machines will replace people.
November 2	KDKA, a Pittsburgh Westinghouse station, transmits the first commercial radio broadcast.
	Albert Skolem proves the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem, a landmark in mathematical logic.
1922	Lewis Fry Richardson, an early advocate of the team approach to the solution of large-scale computing problems, publishes Weather Forecasting by Numerical Process, in which he describes a fantasy weather forecast “factory” of sixty-four thousand human computers working in “a large hall like a theatre,” calculating the world’s weather forecasts from meteorological data supplied by weather balloons spaced two hundred kilometers apart around the globe.
October 18	The British Broadcasting Corporation is formed for radio broadcasting. Its first broadcast from London will occur on November 14.
1923	Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian immigrant to the United States, patents the iconoscope, the first electronic television camera.
1924	Watson, president of C-T-R, changes the name of the company to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
	In “Certain Factors Affecting Telegraph Speed,” Harry Nyquist analyzes factors affecting telegraph transmission speed. He also presents the first statement of a logarithmic law for communication, and the first examination of the theoretical bounds for ideal codes for the transmission of information.
1925	Walter Gifford, president of AT&T, creates Bell Telephone Laboratories.
	Bell Labs develops the first high-fidelity sound recording. It extends the reproducible sound range by more than an octave on the high and low end.
1926	David Baxandall compiles an annotated and well-illustrated catalogue of Calculating Machines and Instruments at the Science Museum, South Kensington. Machines on exhibition include those formerly owned by Babbage.
	David Sarnoff of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) creates the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) for radio broadcasting.
January 26	John Logie Baird gives the world's first demonstration of his electromechanical television system to fifty scientists assembled in his attic workshop.
1927	The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions ( IFLA) is founded in Edinburgh, Scotland.
January 25	James Henry Rand, Jr., merges Rand-Kardex with Remington Typewriters and several other office supply companies to form Remington Rand.
April 7	Bell Labs and the U.S. Department of Commerce conduct the first long distance test of television between Washington D.C. and New York City, sending images of Herbert Hoover (soon to be President) over telephone lines.
1928	Returning to a question he had raised in 1900, Hilbert asks, Is mathematics complete, is it consistent, and is it decidable? Three years later, the first two of these questions will be answered in the negative by Kurt Gödel . Working independently, Alonzo Church, Alan Turing, and Emil Post will publish answers to the third question in 1936.
	IBM adopts the eighty-column punched card, the standard for about the next fifty years.
	Philo T. Farnsworth introduces the first all-electronic television.
May 11	General Electric (GE) begins regular television broadcasting with a 24-line system from a station that will become WGY in Schenectady, NY. By the end of the year, over 15 stations will be licensed for TV broadcasting;
	Leslie J. Comrie discovers how to use a commercial accounting machine as a difference engine. With this technique he reforms the production of the Nautical Almanac.
	Comrie uses punched-card machines to calculate the motions of the moon. This project, in which twenty million holes are punched into five hundred thousand cards, continues into 1929. It is the first use of punched cards in a purely scientific application. (See Reading 4.4.)
	Ralph V. R. Hartley publishes “Transmission of Information,” in which he arrives at some of the fundamental ideas of the mathematical theory of communication.
	John von Neumann publishes the minimax theorem, inventing the theory of games. It will be used later in game-playing programs.
	Zworykin demonstrates an all-electronic television camera and receiver.
March	Television. The World’s First Television Journal, begins publication in England. (See Readings 5.5 and 5.6.)
September	William S. Paley takes over the failing United Independent Broadcasters network with its 16 affiliate stations and reorganizes it as the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) for radio broadcasting.
1929	John Logie Baird begins the first experimental television service at the German Post Office using his 30 line mechanical system.
	Leo Szilard discovers a theoretical model that serves both as a heat engine and an information engine, establishing the connection between entropy and information.

(This page was last revised on January 24, 2006. Please report errors and broken links to jnorman@jnorman.com.)

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