Chronology
This is a media timeline – a chronology of major theoretical, technological, political, social and economic developments in media and communications. Dates of key works are for first publication. [Please feel free to email me if there are any key media events or works of theory that you think are missing here.]
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|
YEAR/S |
KEY EVENTS |
KEY WORKS |
| c.3000 BC | Invention of writing | |
| c.2600 BC | Earliest known written papyrus | |
| c.370 BC | Plato, Phaedrus | |
| c.350 BC | Aristotle, Rhetoric | |
| c.62 BC | First documented postal service (Rome) | |
| 105 | Invention of paper (Cai Lun, China) | |
| c.200 | Woodblock printing (China) | |
| 868 | First block-printed book (the ‘Diamond Sutra’) | Diamond Sutra (earliest known printed book) |
| c.1011 | First camera obscura (Alhazen) | Alhazen, Book of Optics |
| c.1040 | Invention of movable type (China) | |
| c.1155 | First printed map (China) | |
| c.1230 | First metal movable-type printing (Korea) | |
| c.1439 | Gutenberg invents mechanical movable-type printing press | |
| c.1455 | Gutenberg Bible (first major movable-type printed book) | |
| 1468 | First printing press in Paris | |
| 1476 | First printing press in London (William Caxton) | |
| 1506 | First printed map to include America | |
| 1513 | John Skelton’s A Ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge (earliest known printed song in England) | |
| 1526 | First full version of the New Testament in English (trans. William Tyndale) | |
| 1564 | First Index of Prohibited Books | |
| 1576 | First theatre in London | |
| 1599 | Globe Theatre, London opens to plays by Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare | |
| 1609 | First regular news sheets (the earliest newspapers) printed (Germany) | |
| 1611 | Authorised Bible published | |
| 1618-48 | Thirty Years’ War hastens the spread of printed news communications in Europe | |
| 1620 | Ben Jonson, News from the New World Discovered in the Moon (masque) | |
| 1621 | The Weekly Newes (first news sheet in England) | |
| 1626 | Ben Jonson, The Staple of News (play) | |
| 1642-60 | English Civil War | |
| 1644 | John Milton, Areopagitica (prosaic polemic against censorship) | |
| 1646 | First printed usage of the term ‘electricity’ in English | |
| 1649 | Treason Act (Britain) censors press criticism of Parliament | |
| 1662 | Printing Act (Britain) tightens controls on the press | |
| 1688 | Glorious Revolution in England sets the conditions for greater press freedom | |
| 1693 | Ladies Mercury becomes the first female-readership news publication | |
| 1695 | Censorship laws lapse in England | |
| 1702 | First regular newspaper in England (Daily Courant) | |
| 1710 | First copyright law (Britain) | |
| 1712 | Taxation (stamp duty) imposed on British newspapers and advertisements | |
| 1718 | First issue of the Leeds Mercury | |
| 1719 | Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (first novel in English) | |
| 1730 | First issue of the Daily Advertiser sparks the growth of newspaper advertising | |
| 1749 | Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering experiments with electricity lead him to invent the lightning rod | |
| 1751-72 | Denis Diderot et al’s Encyclopedie published in France (first encyclopaedia) | |
| 1776 | American Declaration of Independence | |
| 1780 | First Sunday newspaper (the British Gazette and Sunday Monitor) | |
| 1787 | Constitution of the USA | |
| - | Edmund Burke first uses the term Fourth Estate to refer to the free press | |
| 1788 | First issue of The Times, London | |
| 1789-99 | French Revolution | |
| 1792 | Chappe invents semaphore (long-distance signalling system) in France | |
| 1799 | First paper-making machine (France) | |
| 1800 | Invention of the battery (Alessandro Volta) | |
| 1802 | First issue of William Cobbett’s Political Register (flagship newspaper of the British radical press) | |
| 1807 | Camera lucida (England) | |
| 1811 | First steam-powered printing press | |
| 1812 | First advertising agency (London) | |
| 1820 | Electromagnetism discovered by Hans Christian Oersted | |
| 1821 | First issue of the Manchester Guardian | Jeremy Bentham, On the Liberty of the Press and Public Discussion |
| 1823 | James Mill, Liberty of the Press | |
| 1825 | Thomas Curson Hansard, Typographia, an Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Art of Printing | |
| 1826 | First photograph (Joseph Niepce, France) | |
| 1829 | First typewriter | |
| 1830 | First passenger railway (Liverpool and Manchester Railway, England) | |
| 1832 | Charles Knight’s Penny Magazine (Britain) inspires the growth of the penny post, especially in the US | |
| - | Phenakistoscope (Belgium) | |
| 1834 | Zoetrope patented (England) | |
| 1835 | First news agency (Agence France-Presse) | |
| 1837 | First commercial electric telegraph (Cooke and Wheatstone, London) | |
| - | Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine (the original design for a programmable computer) | |
| - | Pitman shorthand (popular system of English-language abbreviation) | |
| - | First comic book | |
| 1839 | Invention of photography in the form of the daguerreotype process (France) | |
| - | Penny post introduced in the UK | |
| 1841 | First issue of the New York Tribune | |
| 1842 | First issue of The Illustrated London News (first newspaper containing pictures) | |
| 1843 | First telegraph message using Morse code | |
| - | First fax machine (Alexander Bain) | |
| 1844 | Cooke and Wheatstone form the Electric Telegraph Company | |
| 1845 | Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (first published in 1932) | |
| 1846 | Associated Press (the world’s second news agency) formed in New York | |
| - | Printing telegraph (US) | |
| 1850 | Magic lantern (photographic) slides | |
| c.1850 | Wet plate photography | |
| 1851 | Reuters founded (London) | |
| - | First use of railway telegraphy (Erie Railroad, US) | |
| - | First issue of The New York Times | |
| 1855 | Taxation (stamp duty) on British newspapers abolished (began 1712) allowing for the rise of the cheap popular press | |
| 1857 | Phonautograph (first sound-recording device) invented (France) | |
| 1858 | First aerial photography (over Paris) | |
| 1859 | John Stuart Mill, On Liberty | |
| - | Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy | |
| - | Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species | |
| 1861-5 | American Civil War | |
| 1861 | First colour photograph (based on James Maxwell’s three-colour method) | |
| 1865 | First transatlantic cable | |
| 1867 | First commercially successful typewriter (Christopher Latham Sholes) | Marx, Capital Volume 1 |
| 1869 | First full-service advertising agency (N. W. Ayer and Son, Philadelphia) | Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy |
| 1870 | Education Act sets the conditions for the growth of mass literacy in Britain | |
| 1873 | First QWERTY keyboard (Sholes) | James Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism |
| 1876 | First telephone (Alexander Graham Bell) | |
| - | First microphone demonstrated by Emile Berliner | |
| 1877 | Thomas Edison invents phonograph (first gramophone – sound recorder and player) | |
| - | Moving pictures of a galloping horse demonstrated by Edward Muybridge | |
| - | Praxinoscope (France) animation device improves on the zoetrope | |
| 1878 | Dry plate photography | |
| 1879 | Muybridge invents the zoopraxiscope (first motion-picture projector) | |
| 1880 | First (halftone) photo in a newspaper (The Daily Graphic, New York) | |
| 1884 | First film in roll form (George Eastman) | |
| 1885 | Marx, Capital Volume 2 | |
| 1887 | Heinrich Hertz experiments with (electromagnetic) radio waves | |
| 1888 | First hand-held camera (Kodak, perfected by Eastman) | |
| - | First use of celluloid in photography | |
| - | First moving pictures on film (Louis Le Prince) | |
| - | First gramophone disc record (Emile Berliner, Germany) | |
| 1889 | Edison’s motion-picture camera | |
| - | Nintendo founded (Japan) | |
| - | First coin-operated public telephone | |
| 1891 | Telephoto lens | |
| - | Kinetoscope (William Dickson) | |
| 1892 | First long-distance telephone call (New York-Chicago) | |
| - | Eastman Kodak Company formed | |
| 1893 | First movie studio (Edison, New Jersey) | |
| 1894 | Lumiere brothers patent the cinematograph (first film camera and projector) | Marx, Capital Volume 3 |
| - | First issue of Billboard (US) | |
| 1895 | First wireless telegraphy (radio) signal (Guglielmo Marconi, Italy) | |
| 1896 | First issue of the Daily Mail (Lord Northcliffe) pioneers a new journalism of spectacle and sensationalism in the UK | |
| - | Pathe Freres company formed in France (becomes largest film production during the next ten years) | |
| 1897 | Marconi founds the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company | Bram Stoker, Dracula (first major novel depicting the mass media age – shorthand, telegrams, news-clippings, etc.) |
| - | First UK recording studio (London) | |
| 1899 | Magnetic sound-recording (Valdemar Poulsen, Denmark) | Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class |
| 1900 | Kodak Brownie becomes first mass-produced hand-held camera | Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams |
| 1901 | First transatlantic wireless signal (Marconi) | Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life |
| 1902 | First electric typewriter (US) | |
| 1903 | First silent narrative film (The Great Train Robbery, US) | |
| 1904 | Wireless Telegraphy Act (Britain) places the General Post Office (GPO) in charge of overseeing developments in broadcasting media | |
| 1905 | First neon signs | |
| - | First Nickelodeon (Pittsburgh) | |
| - | British film Rescued by Rover introduces innovative film editing techniques | |
| 1906 | First feature film (The Story of the Kelly Gang, Australia) | |
| - | First audio (voice) radio transmission (Reginald Fessenden) | |
| 1907 | First slow motion (slowmo) film (August Musger) | |
| - | Theory of television outlined by Boris Rosing | |
| - | Chicago becomes first US city to censor films, triggering fears about the effects of movies on public morals/behaviour | |
| 1908 | Northcliffe buys The Times | |
| - | Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) formed in US to end the domination of foreign movies and monopolise film distribution/exhibition | |
| - | First colour movie (A Visit to the Seaside, filmed in Brighton, England) | |
| - | First newsreel (Pathe Freres, France) | |
| - | First Russian film studio | |
| 1909 | 8-10,000 Nickelodeons operating in US, attracting 200,000 customers per day | Charles Cooley, Social Organisation |
| - | The New York Times coins the term ‘stars’ to describe leading movie actors | |
| - | National Board of Review of Motion Pictures establishes film censorship in US | |
| 1910 | First movie star (Canadian actress Florence Lawrence) | |
| 1911 | First Hollywood studio | |
| - | International Business Machines (IBM) established | |
| - | The Daily Mirror (Northcliffe) becomes the first UK daily newspaper to reach a circulation of 1 million readers | |
| 1912 | British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) established | |
| - | First American Radio Act | |
| - | Irving Berlin’s When I Lost You establishes the form for twentieth-century love ballads | |
| 1913 | First Bollywood film | |
| - | Portable phonograph | |
| - | Billboard publishes first list of the top 10 songs | |
| 1914-18 | First World War | |
| 1914 | Charlie Chaplin makes first appearance as the Little Tramp | |
| - | First Hollywood feature film (The Squaw Man) | |
| - | First colour feature film (The World, the Flesh and the Devil, UK) | |
| 1915 | First transcontinental (America) telephone call | |
| - | D. W. Griffith’s controversial film The Birth of a Nation released in US to huge commercial success | |
| 1916 | Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (English trans. 1974) | |
| 1917 | Freud, Introduction to Psychoanalysis | |
| 1919 | Radio Corporation of America (RCA) established | |
| 1920 | First commercial radio broadcasting in the US (KDKA, Pittsburgh) and Europe | Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News |
| - | Electrical sound recording | |
| 1921 | First wirephoto transmitted (Western Union, US) | |
| - | Shortwave radio | |
| 1922 | British Broadcasting Company (BBC) formed by the GPO | Norman Angell, The Press and the Organisation of Society |
| - | First 3-D film (The Power of Love) demonstrated in Los Angeles | Robert Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control |
| - | First documentary film (Nanook of the North, US) | Lippmann, Public Opinion |
| 1923 | First issue of Time (pioneering news magazine) | Freud, The Ego and the Id |
| - | The Walt Disney Company founded (to become the world’s largest media conglomerate) | |
| - | 80,000 radios in the UK | |
| 1924 | 2.5 million radios in the US | |
| - | 1 million radios in the UK | |
| 1925 | First commercial 35mm camera (Leica) | Lippmann, The Phantom Public |
| - | 2 million radios in the UK | |
| - | First radio station in Japan | |
| 1926 | First television images demonstrated by John Logie Baird (London) | |
| - | Federal Radio Commission (later Federal Communications Commission) established to regulate US radio (later television and telecommunications too) | |
| - | The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) formed (to become the first US radio and – later – TV network) | |
| - | First weekly music newspaper (Melody Maker) (UK) | |
| - | General Strike in the UK leads to (brief) state control of the BBC | |
| - | British filmmaker John Grierson coins the term documentary | |
| 1927 | British Broadcasting Company becomes the state-funded, non-commercial British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) | Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War |
| - | First BBC disc jockey (DJ) Christopher Stone begins broadcasting | John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems |
| - | Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) launched (to become the second major radio network and third major TV network in the US) | Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament (essay) (English trans. 1975) |
| - | First sound feature film (The Jazz Singer, Hollywood) | |
| 1928 | Mickey Mouse debuts (Disney) | Edward Bernays, Propaganda |
| - | First regular scheduled television broadcasts (US) | |
| - | First regular coast-to-coast US radio network (NBC) | |
| 1929 | Wall Street Crash (the Great Depression lasts until the late 1930s) | Robert Lynd & Helen Lynd, Middletown |
| - | Kodak 17mm colour film | |
| - | Flashbulb photography (Germany) | |
| - | Decca Record Company founded | |
| 1930 | 10-inch 78rpm record becomes the music industry standard | F. R. Leavis, Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture |
| - | First car radio (Galvin Manufacturing) | |
| 1931 | Times New Roman typeface commissioned by The Times (to become one of the publishing world’s most popular typefaces) | |
| - | First Indian sound film (Alam Ara) triggers the growth of Bollywood | |
| 1932 | BBC Empire Service (short-wave) launched (later known as BBC World Service) | Q. D. Leavis, Fiction and the Reading Public |
| - | EMI (record company) formed | |
| 1933 | First Fireside Chats (radio broadcasts) by an American President (Roosevelt) are a precursor to the Weekly Radio Address | F. R. Leavis and Denys Thompson, Culture and Environment |
| - | International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) formed | Herbert Blumer, Movies and Conduct |
| - | Television demonstrated by RCA | |
| - | British Film Institute (BFI) founded | |
| - | Radio Luxembourg becomes first major commercial broadcaster to the UK (though without a license it is effectively the first pirate radio station) | |
| - | First Drive-in movie theatre (New Jersey) | |
| 1934 | Frequency Modulation (FM) radio demonstrated by Edwin Howard Armstrong (New York) | |
| - | Muzak (elevator music company) formed | |
| - | Half of US homes have radios | |
| 1935 | 35mm Kodachrome film (first successful colour still film) | Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport, The Psychology of Radio |
| - | First mass-market paperback books (Penguin, London) | Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity |
| - | First audio-tape recorder (Germany) | |
| 1936 | BBC television service launched (service is suspended 1939-46) | Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (essay) (English trans. 1969) |
| - | Re-launched Life magazine (US) marks a golden age of photojournalism | |
| - | Social science meets public opinion as George Gallup’s survey sampling method correctly predicts the US Presidential Election result – and revitalises the status of the opinion poll | |
| - | Audimeter device attached to US radio sets monitors audience use | |
| - | First live televised Olympic Games (Berlin) | |
| 1937 | The Turing machine (Alan Turing’s theoretical computer algorithm device) | Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson, Mass-Observation |
| - | Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage | |
| - | BBC Listener Research Department begins gathering audience-research reports | |
| - | First feature-length animated film (Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) | |
| 1938 | First foreign-language BBC broadcast (Arabic) | |
| - | Orson Welles’s notorious The War of the Worlds broadcast on CBS radio network | |
| - | First issue of Picture Post (pioneering British photojournalistic magazine) | |
| 1939-45 | Second World War | |
| 1939 | First Hollywood blockbuster films (Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz) | Alfred Lee and Elizabeth Lee, The Fine Art of Propaganda |
| - | 9 million UK homes have radio sets | George Gallup, Public Opinion in a Democracy |
| - | 51 million radio sets in the US | Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass-Observation |
| 1940 | First stereophonic sound film (Disney’s Fantasia) | Cantril, The Invasion from Mars |
| - | Sega Corporation founded (US) | |
| - | Juke box craze begins in the US | |
| - | Billboard calculates the first ever Music Popularity Chart | |
| 1941 | Citizen Kane (Welles) portrays the life of American media tycoon and yellow journalism pioneer William Randolph Hearst | Theodor Adorno (with George Simpson), On Popular Music (essay) |
| - | First commercial television (US) | |
| 1942 | US Government-owned Voice of America (VoA) begins transmitting live radio broadcasts overseas to Germany | |
| 1943 | The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) becomes the third major US radio network (and second major TV network from 1948) | |
| 1944 | Max Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (English trans. 1972) | |
| - | Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice | |
| 1945 | First Citizens’ Band (CB) radio (US) | |
| 1946 | First regular US television broadcasting | Robert Merton, Mass Persuasion |
| - | First TV soap opera (Faraway Hill, US) | |
| - | Sony Corporation founded (Japan) | |
| 1947 | First colour television system (RCA) | |
| - | First regular US television network (NBC) | |
| - | First transistor (capable of magnifying electronic messages) | |
| - | Melody Maker publishes first UK (sheet) music charts | |
| 1948 | First modern electronic computer (Manchester, England) | Lasswell, The Structure and Function of Communication in Society (essay) |
| - | First long-playing (LP) (33 1/3rd rpm) record | Lazarsfeld and Merton, Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organised Social Action (essay) |
| - | Cable television invented (US) | Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics |
| 1949 | First 45 rpm (single) record | George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four |
| - | Claude Shannon & Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication | |
| - | Carl Hovland, Arthur Lumsdaine and Fred Sheffield, Experiments in Mass Communications | |
| 1950 | First television remote control (US) | Harold Innis, Empire and Communications |
| - | 150,000 TV sets in the US | David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd |
| - | Nielsen ratings begin (to become the world’s main system of television audience measurement) | |
| 1951 | First live coast-to-coast television broadcast in the US | Innis, The Bias of Communication |
| - | 1.5 million TV sets in the US (compared to 1.4 million in the UK) | Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride |
| 1952 | Sega Corporation relocates to Japan | |
| - | Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) founded | |
| - | New Musical Express publishes first UK (record) music charts | |
| - | First graphical computer game (OXO, Alexander S. Douglas) | |
| 1953 | CinemaScope and 3-D cinema | |
| - | First IBM computer (IBM 701) | |
| 1954 | First transistor (pocket-sized) radio (Texas Instruments) | Frederic Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent |
| - | First network television colour broadcast (NBC, US) | |
| - | National Educational Television launched in the US (replaced by PBS in 1970) | |
| - | First BBC TV news bulletin | |
| - | Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets | |
| 1955-75 | Vietnam War | |
| 1955 | Independent Television (ITV) becomes first commercial channel in the UK | Elihu Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence |
| - | Rock ‘n’ Roll record craze begins in US as Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets plays over the opening credits of the film Blackboard Jungle | |
| - | 65% of all US homes have a TV set (only 4.5 million TV households in the UK) | |
| 1956 | First computer disk drive (IBM) | Fred Siebert, Theodore Peterson and Wilbur Schramm, Four Theories of the Press |
| - | First transatlantic telephone cable | Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction (essay) |
| - | 6 million UK homes have a TV set | |
| 1957 | First Earth-orbiting artificial satellite (Sputnik 1, launched by Soviet Union) | Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy |
| - | First mass-marketed stereophonic LP (New York) opens way for the high fidelity (hi-fi) boom | Roland Barthes, Mythologies (English trans. 1972) |
| - | Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders | |
| 1958 | First integrated circuit (microchip) invented by Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) | Raymond Williams, Culture and Society |
| - | Stereophonic records and the high fidelity (hi-fi) boom | Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art |
| - | Billboard Hot 100 music charts begin | |
| - | Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock) released, later acclaimed as the greatest film ever made | |
| 1959 | First major motorway in UK (M1) | Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life |
| - | TV licences overtake radio-only licences in the UK | |
| 1960 | First laser device (California) | Kracauer, Theory of Film |
| - | Coronation Street (UK) begins (to become the world’s longest-running TV soap opera) | Joseph Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication |
| - | First worldwide televised Olympic Games (Rome) | |
| 1961 | In-flight entertainment introduced | Williams, The Long Revolution |
| - | 11 million TV licences in the UK | Daniel Boorstin, The Image |
| 1962 | Compact (audio) Cassette (Philips, Netherlands) | McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy |
| - | Williams, Communications | |
| - | Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (English trans. 1989) | |
| - | Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations | |
| 1963 | Assassination of US President John F. Kennedy televised (but not live) | Howard Becker, Outsiders |
| - | First instant replay on television (CBS) | Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique |
| - | First computer graphics program (Sketchpad by Ivan Sutherland) | |
| 1964 | Radio Caroline (UK pirate radio station) | McLuhan, Understanding Media |
| - | First satellite televised Olympic Games (Tokyo) | |
| 1965 | First commercial communications satellite (Intelsat 1) | |
| - | First electronic mail (email) | |
| 1966 | Regular colour television begins in the US | Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (English trans. 1977) |
| 1967 | First satellite television network (USSR) | |
| - | American Film Institute (AFI) founded | |
| - | Pirate radio banned in UK | |
| - | BBC Local Radio begins (Radio Leicester) | |
| 1968 | Major political and anti-war protests in France and the US (accentuated by film and television coverage) | Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, Politics and Television |
| - | First computer mouse (Douglas Engelbart) | |
| - | 78 million TV sets in the US (and approximately 200 million worldwide, including 15 million in the UK) | |
| 1969 | First moon landing televised across the world | Herbert Schiller, Mass Communications and American Empire |
| - | ARPANET (prototype network of the Internet) | Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (English trans. 1972) |
| - | First laser printing (US) | |
| - | Regular colour television begins in UK | |
| - | First video cassette (U-matic, Sony) | |
| 1970 | First fibre optics technology as a medium for communication | Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy (English trans. 1971) |
| - | Quadraphonic records introduced | |
| - | The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) launched (US) | |
| 1971 | First commercial microprocessor (Intel 4004) paves the way for the personal computer (PC) | Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (written 1929-35) |
| - | First video cassette recorder (VCR) (Sony) | |
| - | First Dolby Sound film (A Clockwork Orange) | |
| - | First floppy disk (IBM) | |
| - | Radio-only licences abolished in the UK | |
| 1972 | First mainstream video game (PONG, Atari) | John Berger, Ways of Seeing |
| - | Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics | |
| 1973 | TV coverage of Watergate scandal | Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-industrial Society |
| - | British Phonographic Industry (BPI) formed to fight copyright infringement | Albert Bandura and R. H. Walters, Social Learning and Personality Development |
| - | First mobile phone (Motorola) | Graham Murdock and Peter Golding, For a Political Economy of Mass Communications (essay) |
| - | Independent (commercial) local radio begins in the UK (LBC) | |
| 1974 | First teletext information service (BBC’s Ceefax) | Jay Blumler and Katz (eds), The Uses of Mass Communications |
| - | Electronic News Gathering (ENG) begins to replace the older filming technique, opening the way for near-instantaneous breaking news | Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form |
| - | Colin MacCabe, Realism and the Cinema (essay) | |
| 1975 | Home Box Office (HBO) pioneers satellite transmissions on cable TV (with coverage of the Thrilla in Manila), kick-starting rapid growth of cable in the US | Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (essay) |
| - | The ‘microcomputer revolution’ begins with the first mass-produced home computer (Altair 8800) | Foucault, Discipline and Punish (English trans. 1977) |
| - | First commercial PC (Sphere 1) | Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (English trans. 1983) |
| - | Dolby film sound | |
| - | Microsoft Corporation founded | |
| - | Betamax home video cassette (Sony) | |
| 1976 | Video Home System (VHS) cassette (JVC) (later defeats Betamax to become the dominant home video format) | Williams, Keywords |
| - | Apple Computer (corporation) founded | |
| - | Television introduced to South Africa (the last major developed country to operate a national TV network) | |
| 1977 | First interactive cable television (QUBE) | Barthes, Image, Music, Text |
| - | Apple II (pioneering mass-produced home microcomputer) | Angela McRobbie, Jackie Magazine: Romantic Individualism and the Teenage Girl (essay) |
| - | Pay-per-view (PPV) TV takes off in the US thanks to basketball and – later – boxing | Dallas Smythe, Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism (essay) |
| - | Colour TV licences overtake black-and-white TV licences in the UK | Jeremy Tunstall, The Media are American |
| 1978 | Dallas (TV soap opera) begins (to become a huge US media and cultural export) | Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements |
| - | PBS switches to satellite delivery | Edward Said, Orientalism |
| - | John Fiske and John Hartley, Reading Television | |
| 1979 | First portable audio cassette player (Sony Walkman) | Dick Hebdige, Subculture |
| - | News Corporation founded by Rupert Murdoch | Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (English trans. 1984) |
| - | First commercial mobile phone network (Japan) | Goffman, Gender Advertisements |
| - | Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (English trans. 1984) | |
| - | Richard Dyer, Stars | |
| 1980 | First rolling (24-hour) TV news channel (CNN) | Stuart Hall, Encoding/decoding (essay) (first presented in 1973) |
| - | Ronald Reagan becomes first US President to hail from Hollywood | Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave |
| - | Barthes, Camera Lucida (English trans. 1981) | |
| - | Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (English trans. 1984) | |
| 1981 | MTV launched (NewYork) – its first music video is Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles | James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility |
| - | Audio home taping legalised in the US | Andrea Dworkin, Pornography |
| - | Said, Covering Islam | |
| - | Goffman, Forms of Talk | |
| 1982 | First Compact Disc (CD) (Philips) | Becker, Art Worlds |
| - | Michael Jackson releases Thriller (to become the biggest-selling album ever) | Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance |
| - | Channel 4 (UK) begins broadcasting | |
| - | CD album introduced | |
| - | Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum 8-bit home computers released | |
| 1983 | First home camcorder (Sony) | |
| - | First laptop computer (Epson HX-20) | |
| 1984 | VCR home taping legalised in the US | Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society |
| - | Amstrad colour personal computer | William Gibson, Neuromancer |
| - | Janice Radway, Reading the Romance | |
| 1985 | CD-ROM format established by Sony and Philips | Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place |
| - | Home Shopping Network (HSN) pioneers cable shopping in the US | Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death |
| - | Early virtual community (The WELL) | Ien Ang, Watching Dallas |
| - | Microsoft launches its Windows software operating system (later defeats competitor Apple Macintosh system) | |
| - | Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) released (first worldwide-successful home video game console) | |
| - | CD single introduced | |
| 1986 | Television remote controls commonly used in the US | |
| - | Fox Broadcasting Company (US TV network) founded by Murdoch | |
| 1987 | First Digital Audio Tape (DAT) (Sony) (not widely adopted) | Fiske, Television Culture |
| - | Half of US households with TV are on cable | |
| - | TV set-top boxes introduced (Pace, UK) | |
| 1988 | International Services Digital Network (ISDN) defined | Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent |
| - | Sega Mega Drive/Genesis released in Japan | |
| - | First Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) digital radio transmission (Germany) | |
| 1989 | Tiananmen Square protests broadcasted across the world | Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture |
| - | International television coverage of the Fall of the Berlin Wall | Fiske, Reading the Popular |
| - | Nintendo Game Boy (first commercially successful handheld games console) | |
| 1990 | British Sky Broadcasting (later Sky) launched in the UK and Ireland | Judith Butler, Gender Trouble |
| - | British Broadcasting Act deregulates commercial broadcasters, leading to the sale of regional ITV franchises | Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity |
| - | First web browser (World Wide Web) launched by Tim Berners-Lee | Tamar Liebes and Katz, The Export of Meaning |
| - | Time Warner formed (the world’s second largest media conglomerate) | |
| - | First commercial digital camera | |
| 1990-91 | Gulf War | |
| 1991 | Release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) sparks a console war with the Sega Mega Drive (Nintendo prevails) | Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |
| - | BBC World News launched | Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place |
| - | PC Card (first memory card format) | |
| - | First website and web page (info.cern.ch) (Berners-Lee/CERN) | |
| - | Release of Terminator 2 (James Cameron) takes CGI technology to a new level | |
| 1992 | First MiniDisc (MD) (Sony) (not widely adopted) | Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers |
| - | Independent (commercial) national radio begins in the UK (Classic FM) | Daniel Dayan and Katz, Media Events |
| - | First SMS/text message | |
| 1993 | Mosaic web browser popularizes the World Wide Web | George Ritzer, The McDonaldisation of Society |
| - | World Wide Web made free to everyone | Said, Culture and Imperialism |
| - | First web search engine (ALIWEB) | |
| - | MP3 digital data compression format introduced | |
| 1994 | The term Information Superhighway (referring to the Internet) popularized by US Vice-President Al Gore | Roger Silverstone, Television and Everyday Life |
| - | Silvio Berlusconi becomes first media mogul to serve as a Prime Minster (Italy) | |
| - | Sony PlayStation launched (proves a major competitor to Nintendo) | |
| - | Amazon.com established | |
| - | Yahoo! founded | |
| - | Wireless data-exchange technology (Bluetooth, Ericsson) | |
| 1995 | Invention of a standard-format Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) | Bill Gates, The Road Ahead |
| - | National Science Foundation Network (US) hands over the Internet to business and personal interests | |
| - | Microsoft Windows 95 launched | |
| - | Microsoft Internet Explorer browser | |
| - | eBay founded (under its former name AuctionWeb) | |
| - | Craigslist launched | |
| - | Toy Story (Pixar) becomes the first film made entirely with computer-generated imagery (CGI) | |
| - | First issue of Metro (pioneering free daily national newspaper published in many European and North American countries) | |
| - | First DAB radio service (BBC) | |
| 1996 | Google begins (founded 1998) (to become the world’s most popular search engine and website) | Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society |
| - | Al Jazeera (Arabic satellite network) begins broadcasting from Qatar | Bourdieu, On Television (English trans. 1998) |
| - | First digital HDTV broadcast (US) | Ang, Living Room Wars |
| - | Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology | |
| - | 60 million Internet users worldwide | |
| 1997 | Channel 5 (UK) begins broadcasting | Hall (ed), Representation |
| - | Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, broadcast around the world | Chomsky, Media Control |
| - | Elton John releases Candle in the Wind 1997 (to become the biggest-selling single ever) | Regis Debray, Transmitting Culture (English trans. 2000) |
| - | Plasma TV screens introduced | |
| - | First portable MP3 player (Audio Highway’s Listen Up) | |
| 1998 | Digital terrestrial television (DTT) begins broadcasting in the US and UK | |
| - | First commercial Video on Demand (VOD) service in the UK (Kingston Communications) | |
| - | Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) founded | |
| 1999 | First Big Brother (Netherlands) marks new craze in reality television | |
| - | Emergence of the blog (web log) | |
| 2000 | Dot-com bubble bursts (many web firms cease trading) | Jay D. Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation |
| - | Broadband cable rolled out in the UK | Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point |
| - | First USB flash drive (memory stick) (Trek Technology/IBM) | |
| 2001-Pres. | War in Afghanistan | |
| 2001 | 9/11 terrorist attacks covered on live rolling news media (Fox’s WNYW reports the first plane attack on the World Trade Center within 2 minutes) | Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media |
| - | Microsoft releases its first video game console (Xbox) | Castells, The Internet Galaxy |
| - | Wikipedia launched | |
| - | Apple iPod and iTunes launched | |
| - | Napster (illegal music file-sharing service) forced to shut down | |
| 2002 | Friendster becomes the first major social networking website | |
| - | BlackBerry launched (first wireless email smartphone) | |
| 2003-10 | Iraq War | |
| 2003 | Myspace founded (sold to News Corporation in 2005) | Nick Couldry, Media Rituals |
| - | UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom formed | |
| 2004 | Facebook founded (to become the world’s most popular social network) | |
| - | The term Web 2.0 begins common usage | |
| - | ITV plc founded (a single company for all ITV franchises) (UK) | |
| - | Asian tsunami highlights the new media phenomenon of citizen journalism (using mobile phones, camcorders, etc.) | |
| 2005 | YouTube launched (sold to Google in 2006) | Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good for You |
| - | Google Earth released | |
| 2006 | Nintendo Wii released (first major motion-sensing video game console) | Chris Anderson, The Long Tail |
| - | First Blu-ray Disc (designed to overtake DVD technology) | Jenkins, Convergence Culture |
| - | WikiLeaks founded | Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, Wikinomics |
| 2007 | Twitter launched | Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur |
| - | UK digital switchover begins | |
| - | Apple iPhone released | |
| - | BBC iPlayer released | |
| 2008 | Global financial crisis (begun in 2007) deepens significantly | Nick Davies, Flat Earth News |
| - | Google Street View released internationally (2007 release in US) | |
| 2009 | Digital television switchover completed in the US | Castells, Communication Power |
| - | Avatar (Cameron) becomes highest-grossing film of all time and sparks a 3-D movie explosion | |
| 2010 | Digital Economy Act (UK) clamps down on (online) copyright infringement and proposes universal broadband provision | Couldry, Why Voice Matters |
| - | Google halts state censorship of its Chinese site (the Chinese Government later decides that Google can continue to operate in mainland China) | |
| - | Lady Gaga becomes first artist to hit one billion viewers on YouTube | |
| - | Apple iPad released | |
| - | 3-D-ready TV sets and channels introduced | |
| - | 3-D video games introduced | |
| 2011 | Arab Spring apparently aided by Facebook and other social media | |
| 2012 | UK/EU digital television switchover/analogue shutdown | |
| - | 244 years on, the Encyclopaedia Britannica ends its print publication | |
| - | London Olympics hailed as biggest ever TV event (with 219 million viewers on the US network NBC alone) |