This chronology explores the origins and evolution of the
components that comprise modern-day Digital media:
 c. 15,000–13,000 BC—Prehistoric
humans paint images on the walls
of their caves (including a narrative
composition) in the Grotte de
Lascaux, France.
 c. 3500 BC—The roots of Western music are developed in
Mesopotamia. Future artefacts will include an undecipherable song
carved in stone (800 BC).
 65 BC—Roman poet Lucretius discovers the persistence of
vision. The phenomenon (proved 230 years later by the
Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy) allows the eye to see a series
of rapid stills as one moving image, the future basis of motion
pictures.
 c. 1450—Johann Gutenberg invents movable type,
allowing mass production of documents. The
history of art, music, and literature is too immense
to cover in this chronology, but let’s just say we owe
a lot to Marcel Duchamp, the Beatles, and
Shakespeare.
 1702—The first English daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, begins
publication.
 1834—Charles Babbage designs
the first automatic digital computer,
the Analytical Engine.
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/exhibits/cb.
html A working model is not built
until 1991.
 1837—Samuel Morse debuts the telegraph. The invention
revolutionizes the transmission of information.
 1851—Sir David Brewster exhibits
the Stereoscope at the Crystal
Palace in London. Queen Victoria
is amused. Over the next 70 years,
the three-dimensional picture
viewer (think View-Master) will
become as ubiquitous in
households as television is today.
 1855—Roger Fenton photographs
the Crimean War, but the pictures
remain unseen by the general
public because newspapers cannot
yet publish photos.
 1858—A transatlantic telegraph cable briefly links Europe
and North America; by 1866, the system is up to stay. News
that once took months to travel now takes seconds.
 1876—Alexander Graham
Bell makes the first phone
call. Pizza is still another 75
years away.
 1877—Thomas Alva Edison invents the Phonograph. He also cuts the
first recording, a soulful rendition of “Mary had a Little Lamb.”
 1888—Now everyone gets the
picture: George Eastman
introduces the Kodak camera
and roll film.
 1901—Guglielmo Marconi
perfects a wireless radio system
that transmits Morse code over
the Atlantic Ocean.
 1902—Georges Méliès releases
Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to
the Moon), his most famous film.
Besides stop motion, he also
pioneers the use of split screens
(you can blame him for
Woodstock) and the dissolve.
 1903—The fax machine is
invented by German scientist
Arthur Korn.
 1912—David Sarnoff, a Marconi wireless
operator in New York, receives the SOS
from the sinking Titanic. He stays at his
post for three days, receiving and
passing on news of the disaster.
Promoted by the Marconi Company,
Sarnoff will go on to create RCA, and its
spin-off, NBC.
 1914—Winsor McCay popularises animation
with his Gertie the Dinosaur (consisting of
10,300 separate drawings). McKay would
sometimes make appearances during
showings of the film and “interact” with his
creation.
 1915—D.W. Griffith releases The
Birth of a Nation, the first modern
film. Moving camera shots and
close-ups are just two of the film’s
many innovations.
 1925—Potemkin is released. Director Sergei
Eisenstein pioneers montage, an editing
technique that juxtaposes successive
images to stir up an audience’s emotional
response.
 1926—J.L. Baird demonstrates the
first practical television system
(based on a spinning mechanical
disc created in 1884 by German
scientist Paul Nipkow). Baird
debuts the first colour TV two
years later.
 1927—“You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”
The Jazz Singer is the first film to
feature spoken dialogue. (Clip
courtesy of the Al Jolson Society.)
http://www.jolson.org/
 1927—Telephone service is
established between London and
New York.
 1927—Telephone service is established
between London and New York.
 1928—Walt Disney debuts Steamboat
Willie, the second short starring a mouse
named Mickey, and the first cartoon to use
synchronized sound. Disney writes the
soundtrack with future Warner Brothers
composer Carl Stalling.
 1928—WGY in Schenectady, New York
becomes the first experimental television
station.
 1935—Germany begins airing regular public TV
broadcasts.
 1937–1942—John Atanasoff
develops the Atanasoff-Berry
Computer, or ABC, the first
electronic digital computer.
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/jvaarchive.shtml
 1937—“Oh, the humanity!” As the
German zeppelin Hindenburg
explodes above Lakehurst, New
Jersey, Herbert Morrison delivers
the first-ever coast-to-coast
broadcast on U.S. radio. Orson
Welles takes note; Led Zeppelin
gets a cool album cover.
 1938—Orson Welles scares the daylights out of America.
His radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds
realistically simulates news coverage of an invasion by
hostile Martians.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1570717141/wr
itingformultim/102-3068820-6038542 Thousands fall for
the hoax; panic ensues. The next day, Wells feigns
surprise at the uproar.
 1941–1945—U.S. involvement in World War
Two. Great leaps forward are made in
communications and computer technologies.
Disney uses animation to illustrate complex
subjects in technical training films.
 1948—The transistor is invented at Bell
Telephone Laboratories.
 1948—Columbia Records
introduces the 33 1/3 RPM vinyl
record (also known as the longplaying record, or LP).
 1949—RCA counters with the 45
RPM record (also known as the
single).
 Early 1950s—Computer technology is used in flight
simulators; arguably the first application of computer
interactivity.
 1952—Bwana Devil, the first 3-D film using
polarized lenses, is released.
 1953—Ian Fleming introduces superspy James Bond in
Casino Royale. • In 1962, 007 will make the transition from
literature to the big screen, becoming the most successful
fictional character ever. For our purposes, the Bond movies
represent the establishment of film as a mass-marketable
commodity, launching everything from toys and cologne to
current-day product tie-ins such as Omega watches and
BMW automobiles.
 1962—Telstar, the first communications satellite
(based on an idea by writer Arthur C. Clarke) is
launched into orbit. The first satellite telecast
soon follows, including part of a baseball game
between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia
Phillies.
 1965—IBM introduces the word
processor.
 1968—Stanley Kubrick releases 2001: A
Space Odyssey. Based on a short story by
Arthur C. Clarke, the film was the first to
portray realistic space flight, and has much
to say on the dehumanising influences of
technology. Among 2001’s more
questionable predictions are a financially
healthy Pan Am and Picture phones for all.
 1969—The U.S. effort to land a man on
the moon and return him safely to Earth
pays off handsomely. Technology spinoffs include laptop computers, small solidstate lasers (which lead to Compact
Discs), cordless power tools, solar power
cells, liquid crystals, and Tang.
 • 1969—ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, is
established by the U.S. Department of Defence.
 1972—Nolan Bushnell and Atari introduce
Pong, the first coinoperated video game.
http://www.thetech.org/revolutionaries/bushn
ell/
 1974—MITS releases the first successful personal
computer. The Altair is named for a planet from the Star
Trek television series (or is the planet later named for
the computer?). It uses Intel Corporation’s 8080
microprocessor, also developed in 1974. The PC will
not really catch on until the advent of the Apple II.
 1975—Bill Gates
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/defa
ult.asp and Paul Allen
http://www.paulallen.com/chooser.asp
adapt BASIC to run on the Altair 8800,
and sell the interpreter to MITS. It’s the
first computer language program written
for the PC. By the end of November, the
duo’s new company has a name: Microsoft.
 1976—Personal computing’s other two
wunderkinder, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs
form Apple (the name is licensed from the
Beatles).
http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/jobs.html
 1977—The Apple II changes everything. It’s the first PC
to use colour graphics.
 1979—The first commercial cellular phone
system begins operation in Tokyo.
 1981—IBM releases its first PC.
 1982—Can you
say cyberpunk?
Ridley Scott
releases Blade
Runner.
 1983—The Internet as we know it is created on January 1st
when a standard networking protocol (TCP/IP) is adopted by all
ARPANET users.
 1984—“They’ll never let me forget
it.” William Gibson coins the term
“cyberspace” in his novel
Neuromancer.
 1985—Microsoft
Windows version 1.0 hits
the streets.
 1988—Macromind (now Macromedia) releases Director, a
multimedia authoring tool.
 1989—British physicist Tim Berners-Lee proposes a
global hypertext system, the World Wide Web. During
the next few years, he will develop the standards for
URL, HTML, and HTTP.
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
 1991—The World Wide Web makes its debut on the
Internet. http://www.w3.org/People/BernersLee/WorldWideWeb.html
 1991—James Cameron releases
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The
film sets a new standard for the use
of computer-generated special
effects.
 1991—The MP3 digital audio compression format is
invented at the Fraunhofer Institute, a German
research lab.
 1992—Hypertext mark-up language
(HTML), debuts, giving anyone with an
interest the tools to build their own Web
page.
 1993—Mosaic, the first
graphical Web browser, is
released.
 1994—Broderbund releases Myst, the
first successful interactive 3-D
computer game. To date, it has sold
more than 6.3 million copies.
 1995—Windows 95 creates a public
hysteria unseen since Orson Welles’
1938 War of the Worlds broadcast.
 1995—RealAudio brings streaming
audio to Web users. Streaming
video soon follows.
 • 1995—Disney releases Toy Story, the first featurelength movie totally comprised by computer graphics.
The 77-minute film takes four years to make, and
800,000 machine hours to render.
 1996—Affordable digital cameras (another
spin-off from the U.S. space program)
become widely available.
 1996—DVD video is introduced; full-length movies are
now distributed on a single CD. The DVD format also
promises to transform the music, gaming and computer
industries.
 1999—Napster debuts, allowing users to download (and share) their
favourite MP3s. The service puts peer-to-peer computing on the map
enabling individual computers to interact with each other, instead of
downloading from a centralized server. Napster also becomes the focal point
in a battle royal over copyright and intellectual property in the wired age.
 2007 – Apple presents the iphone
 2010 - Apple presents the IPAD

Write an article entitled ‘Digital graphics in the
21st Century ’ explaining how digital graphics
is used and in what format and for what
purpose?