Collective term for the various technologies involved in processing and transmitting information. They include computing, telecommunications, and microelectronics. The term became popular in the UK after the Government's ‘Information Technology Year’ in 1972.
| 1440 | Germany | German craftsman Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, is the first European to develop a method of printing by movable metal type, improving on the current Chinese and Korean methods. |
| 1454 | Germany, Holy Roman Empire | Johann Gutenberg produces the first printed calendar, in Mainz, Germany. |
| 1500 | England | English printer Wynkyn de Worde establishes the first press in Fleet Street, London, England. The street will become synonymous with printing and newspapers. |
| 1502 | Mexico, Aztec Empire | Spanish printer Juan Pablos sets up a printing press in Mexico and produces the first printed book in the Americas, Christian Doctrine in the Mexican and Castilian Language. |
| 1725 | France | French weaver Basile Bouchon invents the punched card system to operate weaving looms. Holes in the card, unrolled slowly from a drum, determine whether needles on the loom are raised or lowered. |
| 1868 | USA | US printer Christopher Latham Sholes develops a typewriter with a ‘QWERTY’ keyboard that permits documents to be typed faster than they can be written out. The position of the keys reduces the chance of them jamming. |
| 1884 | USA | German-born US inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler patents the first Linotype typesetting machine. Characters are cast as metal type in complete lines rather than as individual letters as in a monotype machine. |
| 1903 | USA | The Telegraphone, the first magnetic recorder, is launched in the USA. It is initially intended for office uses such as recording telephone messages and dictation. Though limited in scope, its technology forms the basis of current telephone answering machines. |
| 1930 | | US electrical engineer Vannevar Bush builds the differential analyser. The first analogue computer, it is used to solve differential equations. It is the forerunner of modern computers. |
| 1943 | USA | The US physicists John V Atanasoff and Clifford Berry build the Atanasoff–Berry computer; designed to solve linear equations, it uses vacuum tubes and stored programs. |
| 1946 | England | The English computer scientist Maurice Wilkes writes the first assembly language – a mnemonic code using alphabetic symbols that translates instructions into computer machine language. |
| 1946 | USA | ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator, Analyser, and Calculator), the first general purpose, fully electronic digital computer, is completed at the University of Pennsylvania for use in military research. It uses 18,000 vacuum tubes instead of mechanical relays, and can make 4,500 calculations a second. It is 24 m/80 ft long and is built by electrical engineers John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, with input from John Atanasoff. |
| 1947 | USA, Hungary | The US-Hungarian mathematician John Von Neumann introduces the idea of a stored-program computer, in which both instruction codes and data are stored. |
| 1949 | USA | The US engineer John W Mauchly develops the Short Code, the first high-level programming language, which allows computers to recognize two-digit mathematical codes. |
| August 1949 | USA | BINAC (acronym for binary automatic computer) is built by US scientists John W Mauchly and John Presper Eckert. It is the first electronic stored-program computer to store data on magnetic tape. |
| 12 September 1958 | USA | US electrical engineer Jack Kilby demonstrates the first integrated circuit. It consists of transistors, resistors, and capacitors contained within a silicon substrate. It leads to the third generation of computers. |
| 1962 | Netherlands | The Dutch firm Philips introduces the audiocassette for recording sound on magnetic tape. |
| c. 1971 | USA | A technique known as large-scale integration (LSI) is developed in the USA which makes it possible to pack thousands of transistors, diodes, and resistors on a silicon chip less than 5 mm/0.2 in square; it makes possible the development of microprocessors and microcomputers. |
| 1972 | Netherlands | The Dutch company Philips patents the video disk. Information is contained in 45,000 grooves, all of the same width and depth but varying in length and spacing, cut in a spiral onto the plastic disc, and reproduced by a laser. |
| 1 April 1973 | USA | A committee of grocers and manufacturers recommends the use of Universal Product Codes (UPC) (bar codes) on items sold in grocery stores. The codes will permit electronic scanning of items, reduce cashier error, and improve stock control; a few stores use it from 1974 and it comes into general use in the USA in 1980. |
| 1979 | USA | The Xerox Corporation introduces the Ethernet, an office communications network. |
| 1982 | USA | US company Intel introduces the 16-bit 80286 microprocessor; it has 130,000 transistors and runs at speeds up to 12 MHz. |
| 1984 | Netherlands, Japan | The Dutch company Philips and Japanese firm Sony introduce the CD-ROM, a laser-read, read-only disk. |
| 1985 | USA | The US Bell Laboratories develops an optical fibre capable of simultaneously sending 300,000 telephone conversations or 200 high-resolution television channels. |
| 1986 | Japan | The Japanese company Fuji launches the disposable camera, designed so that the whole unit is handed over for processing. |
| November 1992 | USA | The US national on-line information service Delphi becomes the first national US service to open a gateway to the Internet. |
| 23 April 1998 | England | The first cash machines to use ‘iris recognition technology’ to identify the user and dispense money, enter service in Swindon, England. |
