1200 BC - Homer talks about signal fires in the Illiad.
700 BC to 300 AD - Carrier pigeons used in Olympic games
200 BC to 100 BC  - Human messengers on foot or horseback common in Egypt and China with messenger relay stations built. Sometimes fire messages used from relay station to station instead of humans.
37BC - Heliographs - first recorded use of mirrors to send messages by Roman Emperor Tiberius.
11BC - Romans establish postal services.
1560 - Camera Obscura invented - primitive image making.
1588  - Arrival of the Spanish Armada announced by signal fires
1714 - Englishmen, Henry Mill receives the first patent for a typewriter.
1791 - Precursor to semaphore. The Chappe brothers, in France obtain permission to set up a signaling system so they can send messages to each other using movable arms on a pole with positions denoting letters of the alphabet.
1793 - The Chappe brothers established the first commercial semaphore system between two locations near Paris. Napoleon loved it and soon there were semaphore signaling systems covering the main cities of France. It spread to Italy, Germany and Russia with thousands employed manning the stations. About 125 characters per minute were possible. Code books were used to represent whole sentences in a few moves. Semaphore wasn't so successful in England because of the fog and smog of the Industrial Revolution. There were also semaphore systems in the U.S. The last operational semaphore system was in Algeria and went out of business in 1860.
1821 - Charles Wheatstone reproduces sound in a primitive sound box - the first microphone.
1830 -  the great American scientist Professor Joseph Henry transmitted the first practical electrical signal; showing that electromagnetism could do more than just create current or pick up heavy weights -- it could communicate.
1837 - Cooke and Wheatstone obtain a patent on telegraph. Morse publicly demonstrates his telegraph.
1840 - Congress was requested to provide funding for a semaphore system running from NYC to New Orleans. Samuel Morse, it is said, advised against funding of this system because of his work on developing the electric telegraph.
1843 - The FAX invented by the Scotch physicist Alexander Bain.
1844 - Morse demonstrates the electric telegraph by sending a message to Baltimore from the chambers of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. The message, "What hath God wrought?," marks the beginning of a new era in communication.
1844 - Morse's first telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore opens in May.
1847 (March 3) - Birth of Alexander Graham Bell, Edinburgh, Scotland.
1851 - There are 51 telegraph companies in operation
1856 - Western Union formed by six men from Rochester, N.Y. They start an acquisition spree.
1858 - Burglar Alarm - Edwin T. Holmes of Boston begins to sell electric burglar alarms. Later, his workshop will be used by Alexander Graham Bell as the young Bell pursues his invention of the telephone. Holmes will be the first person to have a home telephone.
1860 Philipp Reis develops a telephon.
1861 - Both coasts are connected. There are now 2250 telegraph offices in operation nationwide.
1865 - Maxwell mathematically predicts the propagation of electromagnetic waves through space.
1866 - First transatlantic telegraph line successfully laid. Prior to the cable, sending messages between the US and Europe took 11 days. Uninterrupted transatlantic communications are established with the successful laying of the first telegraph cable on 27 July.
1867 - The first Atlantic cable, promoted by Cyrus Field, was layed on July 27th.
1870 - Thomas Edison invents multiplex telegraphy.
1871  - Bell arrived in Boston in April  to start his work in the teaching of the deaf.
1872 - Western Union buys the telegraph equipment manufacturing firm, Gray & Barton, and renamed it Western Electric.
1874 - Alexander Graham Bell discovered the principle of the telephone.
1875   - Bell's theory of the telephone confirmed by experiment, June 2 . First words transmitted by telephone
1876  -The first telephone patent, No. 174,465 was issued to Alexander Graham Bell onMarch 7. The first complete sentence of speech transmitted by telephone in Boston. three days later. US Patent No. 174,465, issued on March 3 for 'Improvements in Telegraphy'.  Elisha Gray applies for a similar patent hours after Bell. Edison invents the electric motor and the phonograph
1877 - Thomas Edison receives a patent in Britain for the 'electro-motograph'. First permanent outdoor telephone wire strung. Commercial telephone service began in the United States. Bell Telephone Company formed, with Alexander Graham Bell as "electrician" and Thomas Watson as "superintendent."
1878 - First commercial telephone exchange in the world opened at New Haven, Conn, January 28.
1880 - American Bell founded. 30,000 phones in use. Bell spoke over a 1300-ft beam of light using his patented Photophone equipment.
1884 - Paul Nipkow obtains a patent in Germany for TV, using a selenium cell and a mechanical scanning disk. First long distance call: Boston to NYC.
1885  - The Bell Telephone Company formed a new subsidiary, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T).
1890 - Herman Hollerith gets a contract for processing the 1900 census data using punched cards. His firm was eventually named IBM in 1924
1892 - Almon Strowger, the St. Louis undertaker, became upset on finding that the wife of a competitor was a telephone operator who made his line busy and transferred calls meant for him to her husband. "Necessity is the mother of invention" so Strowger developed the dial telephone system to get the operator out of the system. He forms a Chicago firm, Automatic Electric, to manufacture step-by-step central office equipment (which is now owned by GTE).
1893 - An early form of broadcasting was started in Budapest over 220 miles of telephone wires serving 6000 subscribers who could listen at regular schedules to music, news, stock market prices, poetry readings and lectures.
1895 - Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio.
1896 - Marconi patents wireless telegraph.
1901 - Marconi signals the letter "S" across the Atlantic from England to Newfoundland. The first radio message is sent a year later.
1902 -  Trans-Pacific telephone cable connects Canada and Australia.
1903 -  Technical improvements in radio, telegraph, phonograph, movies and printing.
1904 -  A telephone answering machine is invented.
1906 - Lee deForest invents the vacuum tube
1907 - United States start to regulate telcos.
1907 - The world's first transatlantic commercial wireless services is established by Marconi with stations at Clifden, Ireland and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia
1909 - Marconi shares the Nobel Prize in Physics, with Karl Ferdinand Braun for their work in the development of wireless telegraphy
1910 - The first commercial radios are sold by Lee de Forest's Radio Telephone Company
1911: Sound arrives for motion pictures.
1913 – Strowger system introduced in Australia and New Zealand. Development of key-type impulse sender, and Simplex dialing on toll lines.
1914: First transcontinental telephone call.
1915 - Vacuum tube amplifiers used the first time in coast-to-coast telco circuits. In opening the service, Bell, in New York, repeated his famous first telephone sentence to his assistant, Mr.Watson, who was in San Francisco, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson replied, "If you want me, it will take me almost a week to get there."
1915 -  The electric loudspeaker.
1919 -  Shortwave radio invented
1920 -  Electric sound recording achieved.
1921 -  Quartz crystals keep radio signals from wandering. Wirephoto - The first electronically-transmitted photograph is sent by Western Union.
1922 - Ship-to-shore conversation by wire and wireless between Bell telephones in homes and offices and the S. S. America 400 miles at sea in the Atlantic. Alexander Graham Bell dies at his summer home in Beinn Breagh, near Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia (August 2). Telephone service is suspended for one minute (6:25pm-6:26pm) on the entire telephone system in the United States and Canada during the funeral service (4 August). British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is formed.
1923 -  A picture, broken into dots, is sent by wire.
1923 -  16 mm nonflammable film debuts.
1924 -  Pictures are transmitted over telephone lines.
1925 - Bell Telephone Laboratories founded. 1.5 million dial telephones in service out of 12 million phones in service
1926 - Baird in Scotland and Jenkins in the U.S. demonstrate TV using neon bulbs and mechanical scanning disks. P.M. Rainey at Western Electric patents the PCM (pulse code modulation) methodology.
1927 - Television - Philo Farnsworth demonstrates the first television for potential investors by broadcasting the image of a dollar sign. Farnsworth receives backing and applies for a patent, but ongoing patent battles with RCA will prevent him from earning his share of the multi-billion-dollar industry his invention will create. Jolson's The Jazz Singer is the first popular "talkie."
1928 -  IBM adopts the 80-column punched card.
1929 -  Ship passengers can phone relatives ashore. Magnetic sound recording on plastic tape. The first telephone is installed on President Hoover's desk. Up to this time, the President talked from a booth outside his executive office. First public demonstration of television, in color, is made at Bell Laboratories in New York on June 27th.
1930 -  AT&T tries the picture telephone.
1931 - Radio Astronomy - While trying to track down a source of electrical interference on telephone transmissions, Karl Guthe Jansky of Bell Telephone Laboratories discovers radio waves emanating from stars in outer space
1933 - Edwin Armstrong demonstrates frequency modulation (FM) to Sarnoff but its real future is 20 years off.   Phonograph records go stereo.
1934 - Joseph Begun invents the first tape recorder for broadcasting - first magnetic recording.

1935 - The first around-the-world telephone conversation takes place. (April 25)
Western Union's "Telefax" begins operating. Telefax sent telegrams, manuscripts, line drawings, maps and page proofs for magazines
1936: Alan Turing's On Computable Numbers describes a general purpose computer.  Invention of coaxial cable is announced at a joint meeting of the American Physical Society and the IRE
1937: Stibitz of Bell Labs invents the electrical digital calculator. Pulse Code Modulation points the way to digital transmission. Carlson invents the photocopier.
1938 - The power of radio is demonstrated by Orsen Wells with the broadcast of War of the Worlds. This causes telephone traffic to peak in nearly all cities and on long distance lines.
1940: Broad band carrier systems are introduced allowing for simultaneous calls over a single pair of wires.
1942 -  Atanasoff Berry builds the first electronic digital computer.
1945 -  Arthur C Clarke envisions geo-synchronous communication satellites
1946 -  ENIAC heralds the modern electronic computer.
1947 -  The transistor is invented - enabling the miniaturization of electronic devices. Cellular systems first discussed.
1948 - Long playing record invented - vinyl and played at 33 rpm.
1949 - Network television starts in U.S.  45 rpm record invented.
1950 - The volume of telephone calls reaches 180 million a day in the US, 75 per cent of lines are party lines. There are 72 television stations in 42 cities across the US, making it available to half the population.
1951 -  Computers are sold commercially.
1954 -  The USSR launches Sputnik. Radio sets now outnumber newspapers printed daily. Regular colour TV broadcasts begin in the US. Gene Amdahl developed the first computer operating system for the IBM 704. Sony introduces the first transistor radio that sold for $US49.95. Raytheon introduces the transistor for hearing aids replacing its line of subminiature tubes. Zenith's highly successful hearing aids using subminiature tubes, about the size of a pack of cigarettes with a separate battery pack sold for about $25.00. The first in-the-ear hearing aids appeared about 1955-1956.
1956 -  First transatlantic telephone calls by cable.
1957 -  Soviet Union's Sputnik sends signals from space, FORTRAN becomes the first high-level language.
1958 -  Data moves over regular phone circuits, broadcast bounced off rocket, pre-satellite communication, the laser.
1959 -  The microchip is invented.
1960 - ECHO I communications satellite is launched on 12 August. Provides first satellite television broadcast of 1962. Laser is invented
1961 -  IBM Germany comes up with "Tele-Processing", data which can be transmitted over the phone to another computer. Bell Labs tests communication by light waves. IBM introduces the golf ball typewriter. A time-sharing computer is developed.
1962 -  The minicomputer arrives. A satellite transmitted the first television images and telephone calls
1963  -  Communications satellite placed in geo-synchronous orbit.
1964 -  Intelsat, international satellite organisation formed.
1965 -  The space probe Mariner 4 passed Mars closer than 10000 km (6200 miles). 21 pictures were transmitted via radio along with data about the atmosphere.
1966 -  Scientist Charles Kao from USA firstly used light conductor fibre to transmit phone calls. The property of homogeneous glass fibre, to conduct light without distortion was also discovered by Narinder S. Kapany in 1955. Kao sends invisible electromagnetic waves through an extremely thin glass fibre.
1967 -  Cordless telephones get some calls.
1967 -  Approx. 200 million telephones in the world, half in U.S.
1968 -  Intelsat completes global communications satellite loop.
1968 -  Photo telegraphy. German electronic firm Grundig introduced a small band picture transfer process, enabling transfer of TV pictures by telephone. Within a minute a photographic recording could be printed.
1969 -  ARPANET was established to link four universities.  The universities were Stanford Research Institute, University of CA at LA, University of CA at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Soon, methods were built into the system for file transfer and for electronic mail (email). The net kept functioning when one or more lines went down by switching to others lines using dynamic rerouting. The internet was born
1970 -  Time division multiplex (TDM) and direct dial introduced, the computer floppy disc is an instant success.
1971 -  Intel builds the microprocessor, "a computer on a chip.", Wang 1200 is the first word processor, Rank Xerox puts the first telecopier onto the market. Project Gutenberg is started by Michael Hart with the purpose of making copyright-free works, including books, electronically available. The first text is the US Declaration of Independence
1972 -  Digital television comes out of the lab. The first international connections to ARPANET established. Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it becomes a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning
1973 -  Bob Metcalfe's Harvard PhD Thesis outlines idea for Ethernet which is tested on Xerox PARC's Alto computers. The first Ethernet network is called the Alto Aloha System. Bob Kahn  starts Internetting research program at ARPA. Vinton Cerf sketches gateway architecture on back of envelope in a San Francisco hotel lobby in March. Cerf and Kahn present basic Internet ideas at Univ of Sussex, Brighton, UK
1974  -  Cerf and Kahn publish design of a Transmission Control Program (TCP). The BBC transmits Teletext data to TV sets. Hewlett-Packard introduces the first programmable pocket calculator the HP-65.
1975 -  The microcomputer kit reaches hits the home market, IBM introduces laser printers on the market,
1976: Queen Elizabeth II sends out an email on 26 March from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern
1976 - Apple I home computer invented.
1978 -  TCP split into TCP and IP
1979 -  Sony develops the small radio-cassette player, Inmarsat is founded, the Japanese firm Matsushita is granted a patent for a TV screen made out of liquid crystals. CompuServe goes on line. The number of subscriber telephone lines in the United States is now 175.2 million. First cellular phone communication network started in Japan.
1980 -  Microchip capacity increases to register up to 6400 bits and are used in computers (RAM & ROM). The first pocket computers arrive and British engineers bring the first home computer, the Sinclair ZX 80 to market. Broadband  transmission using the MHz bandwidths is formalised. ARPANET grinds to a complete halt on 27 October because of an accidentally-propagated status-message virus
1981 -  The IBM PC,. MS-DOS was developed by Microsoft and marketed by IBM, the laptop computer, The first mouse pointing device. Multi-channel sound introduced for broadcasting, first CD players and compact disks introduced. Minitel (Teletel) is deployed across France by France Telecom, mainly used for porno not directory information as planned.
1982 -  The protocol that carries most of the information across the web, TCP/IP Protocol established, the Telefax or is introduced in Germany, Great Britain and Sweden which transmits messages from  text machine to another typing machine at a speed of 1200 bit/s.
1983: Time names the computer "Man of the Year", AT&T forced to break up; seven Baby Bells are born. The scramble begins within AT&T to divest itself. ISDN trials begin in Japan. The U.S. has its first cellular subscriber. Microsoft announces Windows.
1984 -  Apple Macintosh, IBM PC AT, the 32-bit microprocessor, the one megabyte memory chip. Internet Domain Name System (DNS) introduced. Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET. Cult sci-fi book Neuromancer by William Gibson inspires net community.
1985 -  CD-ROM stores 270,000 pages of text, the first version of Microsoft Windows, cellular telephones in cars become wide-spread. CD-ROMs in computers.
1986 -  NFSNET established to link five supercomputers which becomes the network backbone for the Internet
1987 -  The earth is mapped from space. The survey of the surface is done by means of navigation satellites. The digital-audio-tape (DAT) is introduced. The US reaches its one millionth cellular subscriber. ISDN trials begin in the United States.
1988 -  The first transatlantic fiber optic cable is completed. The Morris internet worm burrows through the net affecting 6000 of the 60,000 hosts. NSFNET backbone upgraded to T1 (1.544Mbps). Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established in December with Jon Postel as its director. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed by Jarkko Oikarinen
1989: Number of hosts breaks 100,000. The World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners Lee. Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll tells the real-life tale of a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US facilities. Countries connecting to NSFNET: Australia (AU), Germany (DE), Israel (IL), Italy (IT), Japan (JP), Mexico (MX), Netherlands (NL), New Zealand (NZ), Puerto Rico (PR), United Kingdom (UK) .Digital satellite broadcasting starts in Germany. The High Definition Television is presented. Space probe Voyager 2 transmits signals  4.4 billion kilometres from the planet Neptune. The first ISDN communications system is established in Rotterdam as an extension of the public telephone network, designed to carry digitised voice calls, or data.
1990 -  Microsoft releases Windows 3.0 a completely new version which will sell more then 3 million copies in one year. Creative Labs introduces SoundBlaster Pro. The first search engine Gopher is developed at the University of Minnesota. Intel releases the 80386SL processor which uses low power for portable computers. Telecom New Zealand becomes the first carrier to be completely privatised. Electronic Frontier Foundation (ELF) founded by Mitch Kapor. The World comes on-line world.std.com becomes the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access. The first remotely operated machine to be hooked up to the Internet, the Internet Toaster by John Romkey, (controlled via SNMP) makes its debut at Interop.
1991 -  Following its decision not to develop operating systems cooperatively with IBM, Microsoft changes the name of OS/2 to  Windows NT, Pretty Good Privacy more commonly known as PGP a public key used for encryption is released as Freeware by Philip Zimmerman.  TrueType a scalable font is introduced and developed by Microsoft  and Apple and is used on all Apple computers and PC computers running Windows. MS-DOS 5.0 is released. NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps) traffic passes 1 trillion bytes/month and 10 billion packets/month.
1992  -  Microsoft introduces Windows 3.1which sells more than 1 million copies in the first two months, Intel releases the 486DX2 chip, TWAIN a standard interface for scanning is developed by a consortium Aldus, Caere, Eastman, Kodak, Hewlett Packard and Logitech. One-millionth host connected to the Internet, with the size now approximately doubling every year. The term 'surfing the internet' is coined by Jean Armour Polly
1993 -  There are 50 known World Wide Web servers. Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) established for reliable transmission over the internet in conjunction with the Transport Control Protocol (TCP). Intel releases the Pentium Processor. operating at 60 MHz. Windows NT 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 released, the first browser Mosaic is launched in April and takes the Internet by storm, Web proliferates at a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is 997%.. Worms of a new kind find their way around the Net - WWW Worms (W4), joined by Spiders, Wanderers, Crawlers, and Snakes ... Internet Talk Radio begins broadcasting. Businesses and media begin taking notice of the internet.  The PowerPC processor for the Apple PowerMac is developed by IBM, Motorola and Apple. Computer games Doom and Myst are released. Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines (ADSL) standardised using the discrete multi-tone technique to allow greater services to be provided over the plain old telephone service (POTS).
1994 -  Netscape is founded by Marc Andreesen and James H. Clark, Commodore files for bankruptcy. Rolling Stones live to 200 workstations worldwide on the MBone. A dozen nations ban or restrict satellite dishes to reduce Western influence. US vice president Al Gore coins the term 'information superhighway'. The World wide Web Consortium (W3) is founded by Tim Berners-Lee to help develop common protocols for the evolution of the Web. Microsoft,  Yahoo, another search engine site is launched
1995 -  Windows 95 is released and within four days sells more then 1 million copies  the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard is released, There are now 25 million cellular subscribers in the U.S. Worldwide, 30 million users are now on the Internet. Traditional online dial-up systems Compuserve and America On-line begin providing internet access. Richard White becomes the first person to be declared a munition, under the USA's arms export control laws, because of an RSA file security encryption program tattooed on his arm 
1996 -  Google is first developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. AT&T spins off the system and technology unit which renames itself  Lucent Technologies, IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer beats chess master Garry Kasparov in two chess matches. Microsoft releases Windows CE. Sun Microsystems releases its line of network computers. 1000Base-T standardisation begins for 1Gbps Ethernet. Internet phones catch the attention of US telecommunication companies who ask the US Congress to ban the technology which has been around for years. Various ISPs suffer extended service outages, bringing into question whether they will be able to handle the growing number of users. MCI upgrades internet backbone adding 13,000 ports, bringing the effective speed from 155Mbit/sec to 622Mbit/sec. The Web browser war, fought primarily between Netscape and Microsoft, has rushed in a new age in software development, whereby new releases are made quarterly with the help of internet users eager to test upcoming (beta) versions.
1997 -  Digital Video Discs / Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs) go on sale. Windows 98, Office 97, Apple release Mac OS/8. Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple Computers. Bill Gates is now the world’s richest businessman. Intel Pentium II 233 MHz processor is released. The NASA Pathfinder Web site, running real-time images from Mars gets more than 100 million hits in its first four days forcing NASA to sets up 25 mirror pages to handle the traffic which sets a new popularity record.
1998 -  Google founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Intel releases the Celeron processor, Compaq Computer purchases Digital Equipment Corporation for $US9.6 billion , Hearings open between  Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice over claims of a monopoly in the software market. Apple introduces the iMac, which helps address flagging sales. Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba announce they will join to develop Bluetooth for wireless data exchange between handheld computers or cellular phones and stationary computers. The Worldcom purchase of MCI is approved. SBC announces its plan to "merge" with Ameritech. Bell Atlantic announces plans to merge with GTE. Web size estimates range between 275 (Digital) and 320 (NEC) million pages
1999 -  The Intel Pentium III 500 MHz is released. Organisations all around the world spend billions of dollars as they try to make their telecommunications systems and networks Y2K compliant for the turn of the century. MCI/Worldcom, the vBNS provider for NSF, begins upgrading the US backbone to 2.5GBps, the Melissa virus is released.
2000 -  Years of preparation and billions of dollars result in the Y2K 'Bug' prove an anti-climax but have forced major systems upgrades in preparation for the next burst of growth in business and on-line technology.  Mergermania strikes.  Lucent Technologies announces spins off its enterprise solution group creating Avaya Communications. Bell Atlantic and GTE announce that their new combined company will be named Verizon (derived from the Latin for truth) moving the "Bell" name into history. Cisco and Nortel networks jockey for position as leaders in voice and data communications and the Internet. A massive denial of service attack is launched against major web sites, including Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay in early February , Web size estimates by NEC-RI and Inktomi surpass 1 billion indexable pages, Internet2 backbone network deploys IPv6 in May, the Love Letter virus is released into the wild.   The year turns into a financial disaster for many so called dot com companies as venture capital and high stock prices dry up resulting in layoffs, bankruptcies having a snowballing effect on on-line industries which will hereafter being known as the dotcom bomb.
2001 -  The dotcom bomb continues to take its toll and the telecommunications industry worldwide heads for a slump. Apple Computer introduced its new operating system OS-X, Microsoft has its court-ordered breakup overturned settling the antitrust case with the Department of Justice. PC sales slump.  Napster keeps finding itself embroiled in litigation and is eventually forced to suspend service; it comes back later in the year as a subscription service, Code Red worm and Sircam virus infiltrate thousands of web servers and email accounts in July causing a spike in internet bandwidth usage and security breaches. Nimda and BadTrans also appear. First uncompressed real-time gigabit HDTV transmission across a wide-area IP network takes place on Internet2 .
2002 -  Hundreds of internet radio stations observe a Day of Silence in protest of proposed song royalty rate increases, Internet2 now has 200 university, 60 corporate, and 40 affiliate members, having your own Blog becomes hip
2003 -  The first official Swiss online election takes place in Anières. The SQL Slammer worm causes one of the largest and fastest spreading DDoS attacks ever. Taking roughly 10 minutes to spread worldwide, the worm took down 5 of the 13 DNS root servers along with tens of thousands of other servers, and impacted a multitude of systems ranging from bank ATM systems to air traffic control to emergency (911) systems. This is followed in August by the Sobig.F virus, the fastest spreading virus ever, then  the Blaster (MSBlast) worm another highly destructive internet interloper. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues 261 individuals on 8 Sep for allegedly distributing copyright music files over peer-to-peer networks
To be continued....

Resources: Culled from the Timeline Media History Project (URL) with additional research from 200 Year Condensed History of Telecommunicaitons ,Airwav's timeline Airewav.com, IEEE ( Institute of Electrical and Electronics  Engineers ), The Web History of Telecommunications , Private Lin Private Line (Telephone History), Computer Hopes Computer History pages, Webb & Associates http://www.webbconsult.com/hist-time.html , Robert H Zakon's amazing efforts at Hobbes Internet Timeline . Photographs from Union of Concerned Scientists ( http://www.ucsusa.org  ), Forbes ( www.forbes.com/2001/ 07/11/attindex.html ), Mercurians ( http://www.mercurians.org  ), A History of the Telephone by Dawne M. Flammger, Cellular News ,