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

1900: Kodak Brownie makes photography cheaper and simpler.
1900: Pupin's loading coil reduces telephone voice distortion.
1901: Sale of phonograph disc made of hard resinous shellac.
1901: First electric typewriter, the Blickensderfer.
1901: Marconi sends a radio signal across the Atlantic.
1902: Germany's Zeiss invents the four-element Tessar camera lens.
1902: Etched zinc engravings start to replace hand-cut wood blocks.
1902: U.S. Navy installs radio telephones aboard ships.
1902: Photoelectric scanning can send and receive a picture.
1902: Trans-Pacific telephone cable connects Canada and Australia.
1903: Technical improvements in radio, telegraph, phonograph, movies and printing.
1903: London Daily Mirror illustrates only with photographs.
1904: A telephone answering machine is invented.
1904: Fleming invents the diode to improve radio communication.
1904: Offset lithography becomes a commercial reality.
1904: A photograph is transmitted by wire in Germany.
1904: Hine photographs America!s underclass.
1904: The Great Train Robbery creates demand for fiction movies.
1904: The comic book.
1904: The double-sided phonograph disc.
1905: In Pittsburgh the first nickelodeon opens.
1905: Photography, printing, and post combine in the year's craze, picture postcards.
1905: In France, Pathe colors black and white films by machine.
1905: In New Zealand, the postage meter is introduced.
1905: The Yellow Pages.
1905: The juke box; 24 choices.
1906: In Britain, new process colors books cheaply.
1906: A program of voice and music is broadcast in the U.S.
1906: Lee de Forest invents the three-element vacuum tube.
1906: Dunwoody and Pickard build a crystal-and-cat's-whisker radio.
1906: An animated cartoon film is produced.
1906: Fessenden plays violin for startled ship wireless operators.
1906: An experimental sound-on-film motion picture.
1906: Strowger invents automatic dial telephone switching.
1907: Bell and Howell develop a film projection system.
1907: Lumiere brothers invent still color photography process.
1907: DeForest begins regular radio music broadcasts.
1907: In Russia, Rosing develops theory of television.
1908: In U.S., Smith introduces true color motion pictures.
1909: Radio distress signal saves 1,700 lives after ships collide.
1909: First broadcast talk; the subject: women's suffrage.

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