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?