1900-1909 | 1910-1919 | 1920-1929 | 1930-1939 | 1940-1949 | 1950-1959 | 1960-1969 | 1970-1979 | 1980-1989 | 1990-1999
20th Century
Fifth Decade

1940: Fantasia introduces stereo sound to American public.
1941: Stereo is installed in a Moscow movie theater .
1941: FCC sets U.S. TV standards.
1941: CBS and NBC start commercial transmission; WW II intervenes.
1941: Goldmark at CBS experiments with electronic color TV.
1941: Microwave transmission.
1941: Zuse's Z3 is the first computer controlled by software.
1942: Atanasoff, Berry builds the first electronic digital computer.
1942: Kodacolor process produces the color print.
1943: Repeaters on phone lines quiet long distance call noise.
1944: Harvard's Mark 1, first digital computer, put in service.
1944: IBM offers a typewriter with proportional spacing.
1948
-1944
:
NBC presents first U.S. network newscast, a curiosity.
1945: Clarke envisions geo-synchronous communication satellites.
1945: It is estimated that 14,000 products are made from paper.
1946: Jukeboxes go into mass production.
1946: Pennsylvania's ENIAC heralds the modem electronic computer.
1946: Automobile radio telephones connect to telephone network.
1946: French engineers build a phototypesetting machine.
1947: Hungarian engineer in England invents holography.
1947: The transistor is invented, will replace vacuum tubes.
1947: The zoom tens covers baseball's world series for TV.
1947: Holography invented.
1948: The LP record arrives on a vinyl disk.
1948: Shannon and Weaver of Bell Labs propound information theory.
1948: Land's Polaroid camera prints pictures in a minute.
1948: Hollywood switches to nonflammable film.
1948: Public clamor for television begins; FCC freezes new licenses.
1948: Airplane re-broadcasts TV signal across nine states.
1949: Network TV in U.S.
1949: RCA offers the 45 rpm record.
1949: Community Antenna Television, forerunner to cable.
1049: Whirlwind at MIT is the first real time computer.
1949: Magnetic core computer memory is invented.

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