Timeline Of Electrical And Electronic Engineering

The following timeline tables list the discoveries and inventions in the history of electrical and electronic engineering.

History of discoveries timeline

History of associated inventions timeline

List of IEEE Milestones

The following list of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) milestones represent key historical achievements in electrical and electronic engineering.

Prior to 1870

*1745–1746 – Leyden jar capacitor by Ewald Georg von Kleist and Pieter van Musschenbroek
* 1751 – Book '' Experiments and Observations on Electricity'' by Benjamin Franklin
* 1757–1775 – Benjamin Franklin's Work in London
* 1799 – Alessandro Volta's Electrical Battery Invention
* 1836 – Nicholas Callan's Pioneering Contributions to Electrical Science and Technology
* 1828–1837 – Pavel Schilling's Pioneering Contribution to Practical Telegraphy
* 1838 – Demonstration of Practical Telegraphy
* 1852 – Electric Fire Alarm System
* 1857 – Heinrich Geissler discovered the first gas discharge tubes in the world a predecessor of today's neon lighting – Geissler tube
* 1861–1870 – Maxwell's Equations
* 1861 – Transcontinental Telegraph
* 1866 – Landing of the Transatlantic Cable
* 1866 – County Kerry Transatlantic Cable Stations

1871–1890

* 1876 – First Intelligible Voice Transmission over Electric Wire
* 1876 – First Distant Speech Transmission in Canada
* 1876 – Thomas Alva Edison Historic Site at Menlo Park
* 1878 – Ganz Company starts working with single phase AC power systems in Budapest, Austro-Hungary
* 1882 – Vulcan Street Plant
* 1882 – First Central Station in South Carolina
* 1883 – Gaulard–Gibbs AC distribution system was published in Great Britain
* 1884 – First AIEE Technical Meeting
* 1884 – First AC power transmission system (Gaulard–Gibbs) in the world from Lanzo to Turino, Italy
* 1885 – ZBD system AC transformer was invented by three Hungarian engineers: Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy, Miksa Déri
* 1885 – Galileo Ferraris conceives the idea of the first polyphase AC motor
* 1885 – Elihu Thomson at Thomson-Houston started the first company in the USA to work on AC
* 1886 – Buffalo, New York receives the first commercial AC power system in the USA designed by George Westinghouse, William Stanley, and Oliver B. Shallenberger.
* 1886 – Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the first full (community) AC power system in the world demonstrated by William Stanley, Jr.
* 1886 – First Generation and Experimental Proof of Electromagnetic Waves
* 1887 – Charles S. Bradley builds the first AC 3 phase generator in US
* 1887 – Friedrich August Haselwander builds the first AC 3 phase generator in Europe
* 1887 – Thomas A. Edison West Orange Laboratories and Factories
* 1887 – Weston Meters, first portable current and voltage meters
* 1888 – Richmond Union Passenger Railway
* 1889 – Power System of Boston's Rapid Transit
* 1890 – Discovery of Radioconduction with a Coherer by Édouard Branly
* 1890 – Keage Power Station, Japan's First Commercial Hydroelectric Plant

1891–1900

* 1891 – First three phase AC hydro power plant in the world, Lauffen am Neckar, Frankfurt, Germany
* 1891 – International Electrotechnical Exhibition powered 3-phase from Lauffen am Neckar 175 km away
* 1891 – Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant
* 1893 – Birth and Growth of Battery Industries in Japan
* 1893 – Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant
* 1894 – Millimeter-wave Communication Experiments by Jagadish Chandra Bose
* 1895 – Popov's Contribution to the Development of Wireless Communication
* 1895 – Adams Hydroelectric Generating Plant
* 1895 – Krka-Šibenik Electric Power System
* 1895 – Guglielmo Marconi's Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy
* 1895 – Electrification by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
* 1897 – Early Swiss Wireless Experiments that sent a signal over one and a half kilometers.
* 1897 – Chivilingo Hydroelectric Plant
* 1898 – Decew Falls Hydro-Electric Plant
* 1898 – Rheinfelden Hydroelectric Power Plant
* 1899 – First Operational Use Of Wireless Telegraphy in the Anglo-Boer War
* 1900 – Georgetown Steam Hydro Generating Plant

1901–1920

* 1901 – Transmission of Transatlantic Radio Signals
* 1901 – Reception of Transatlantic Radio Signals
* 1901 – Early Developments in Remote-Control by Leonardo Torres-Quevedo
* 1902 – Poulsen-Arc Radio Transmitter
* 1903 – Vucje Hydroelectric Plant
* 1904 – Alexanderson Radio Alternator
* 1904 – Fleming Valve
* 1906 – Pinawa Hydroelectric Power Project
* 1906 – First Wireless Radio Broadcast by Reginald A. Fessenden
* 1906 – Grand Central Terminal Electrification
* 1907 – Alternating-Current Electrification of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad
* 1909 – Shoshone Transmission Line
* 1911 – Discovery of superconductivity
* 1914 – Panama Canal Electrical and Control Installations
* 1920 – Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA (AM)
* 1920 – Funkerberg Königs Wusterhausen first radio broadcast in Germany

1921–1930

* 1924 – Directive shortwave antenna (Yagi–Uda antenna)
* 1924 – Enrico Fermi's major contribution to semiconductor statistics
* 1924–1941 – Development of electronic television
* 1925 – Bell Telephone Laboratories
* 1928 – One-way police radio communication
* 1929 – Shannon Scheme for the electrification of the Irish Free State
* 1929 – Yosami Radio Transmitting Station
* 1929 – Largest private (DC) generating plant in the U.S.A.
* 1929 – First blind takeoff, flight and landing

1931–1950

* 1931–1945 – Development of Ferrite Materials and their applications
* 1931 – Invention of Stereo Sound Reproduction
* 1932 – First Breaking of Enigma Code by the Team of Polish Cipher Bureau
* 1933 – Two-Way Police Radio Communication
* 1934 – Long-Range Shortwave Voice Transmissions from Byrd's Antarctic Expedition
* 1937 – Westinghouse Atom Smasher
* 1938 – Zenit Parabolic Reflector L-Band Pulsed Radar
* 1939 – Atanasoff–Berry Computer
* 1939 – Claude Shannon, development of Information Theory
* 1939 – Single-element Unidirectional Microphone – Shure Unidyne
* 1940 – FM Police Radio Communication
* 1941 – Opana Radar Site
* 1939–1945 – Code-breaking at Bletchley Park during World War II
* 1940–1945 – MIT Radiation Laboratory
* 1942–1945 – US Naval Computing Machine Laboratory
* 1945 – Merrill Wheel-Balancing System
* 1945 – Rincón del Bonete Plant and Transmission System
* 1946 – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
* 1947 – Invention of the First Transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
* 1947 – Invention of Holography
* 1948 – Birth of the Barcode
* 1948 – Junction transistor at Bell Labs
* 1950 – First External Cardiac Pacemaker

1951–1960

* 1951 – Manufacture of Transistors
* 1951 – Experimental Breeder Reactor I
* 1946–1953 – Monochrome-Compatible Electronic Color Television
* 1954 – HVDC Gotland, the first fully commercial static plant for high-voltage direct current transmission (HVDC)
* 1955 – WEIZAC Computer
* 1956 – RAMAC
* 1956 – Ampex Videotape Recorder
* 1956 – The First Submarine Transatlantic Telephone Cable System ( TAT-1)
* 1957–1958 – First Wearable Cardiac Pacemaker
* 1958 – First Semiconductor Integrated Circuit (IC) by Jack Kilby
* 1959 – Semiconductor planar process by Jean Hoerni and silicon integrated circuit by Robert Noyce
* 1959 – MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs
* 1959 – Commercialization and industrialization of photovoltaic cells by Sharp Corporation

1961–1970

* 1961–1984 – IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
* 1961–1964 – First Optical Fiber Laser and Amplifier
* 1962 – Mercury spacecraft MA-6, Col. John Glenn piloted the Mercury ''Friendship 7'' spacecraft in the first FAI-legal completed human-orbital flight on 20 February 1962.
* 1962 – Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
* 1962 – First Transatlantic Transmission of a Television Signal via Satellite
* 1962 – First Transatlantic Television Signal via Satellite
* 1962 – First Transatlantic Reception of a Television Signal via Satellite
* 1962 – Alouette-ISIS Satellite Program
* 1962–1967 – Pioneering Work on the Quartz Electronic Wristwatch at Centre Electronique Horloger, Switzerland
* 1963 – NAIC/Arecibo Radiotelescope
* 1963 – First Transpacific Reception of a Television (TV) Signal via Satellite
* 1963 – Taum Sauk Pumped-Storage Electric Power Plant
* 1963 – ASCII
* 1964 – Mount Fuji Radar System
* 1964 – Tokaido Shinkansen (Bullet Train)
* 1964 – High-definition television
* 1964 – TPC-1 Transpacific Cable System
* 1964–1973 – Pioneering Work on Electronic Calculators by Sharp Corporation
* 1965 – First 735 kV AC Transmission System
* 1965 – Dadda multiplier
* 1965–1971 – Railroad Ticketing Examining System (developed by OMRON of Japan)
* 1966 – Interactive Video Games
* 1966 – Shakey, the first mobile robot to be able to reason about its own actions
* 1966 – First online search system Dialog, originally developed in Lockheed Martin, now owned by ProQuest
* 1967 – First Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry
* 1968 – Liquid Crystal Display by George H. Heilmeier
* 1968 – CERN Experimental Instrumentation
* 1969 – Birth of the Internet
* 1969 – Inception of the ARPANET
* 1950–1969 – Electronic Technology for Space Rocket Launches
* 1969 – First commercially available Electronic Quartz Wristwatch
* 1970 – SPICE Circuit Simulation Program

1971–1999

* 1971–1978 – The First Word Processor for the Japanese Language
* 1972 – Nelson River HVDC Transmission System
* 1972 – Development of the HP-35, the First Handheld Scientific Calculator
* 1974 – Birth of CP/M Operating System
* 1975 – Gapless Metal Oxide Surge Arrester (MOSA) for electric power systems
* 1975 – Line Spectrum Pair (LSP) for high-compression speech coding (developed by NTT)
* 1976 – Development of VHS, a World Standard for Home Video Recording
* 1976 – Introduction of the Apple I Computer
* 1977 – Introduction of the Apple II Computer
* 1977 – LZ77 and LZ78, Lempel–Ziv Data Compression Algorithm
* 1977 – Vapor-phase Axial Deposition Method for Mass Production of High-quality Optical Fiber
* 1978 – Digital Image from Synthetic Aperture Radar
* 1978 – Speak & Spell, the First Use of a Digital Signal Processing IC for Speech Generation
* 1979 – Compact Disc Audio Player
* 1979 – 20-inch Diameter Photomultiplier Tubes
* 1980 – International Standardization of Group 3 Facsimile
* 1980 – RISC (Reduced Instruction-Set Computing) Microprocessor
* 1981 – 16-Bit Monolithic Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) for Digital Audio
* 1981 – Map-Based Automotive Navigation System
* 1984 – First Direct-broadcast satellite Service
* 1984 – The MU (Middle and Upper atmosphere) radar
* 1985 – Toshiba T1100, for Contribution to the Development of Laptop PCs
* 1985 – Emergency Warning Code Signal Broadcasting System
* 1987 – High Temperature Superconductor
* 1987 – SPARC RISC Architecture
* 1988 – Sharp 14-Inch Thin Film Transistor Liquid-Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) for TV
* 1988 – Solid State High Voltage DC Converter Station
* 1988 – Trans-Atlantic Telephone Fiber-optic Submarine Cable, TAT-8
* 1988 – Virginia Smith High-Voltage Direct-Current Converter Station
* 1989 – Development of CDMA for Cellular Communications

Innovations in consumer electronics

1843–1923: From electromechanics to electronics

* 1843: Watchmaker Alexander Bain (inventor) develops the basic concept of displaying images as points with different brightness values.
* 1848: Frederick Collier Bakewell invents the first wirephoto machine, an early fax machine
* 1861: Grade school teacher Philipp Reis presents his telephone in Frankfurt, inventing the loudspeaker as a by-product.
* 1867: French poet and philosopher Charles Cros (1842–1888) presents the construction principle of a phonograph in his 'paréophone', which turned out not to be a commercial success at the time.
* 1867: James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) develops a theory predicting the existence of electromagnetic waves and establishes Maxwell's equations to describe their properties. Together with the Lorentz force law, these equations form the foundation for classical electrodynamics and classical optics as well as electric circuits.
* 1874: Ferdinand Braun discovers the rectifier effect in metal sulfides and metal oxides.
* 1877: Thomas Edison (1847–1931) invents the first phonograph, using a tin foil cylinder. For the first time sounds could be recorded and played. A phonograph horn with membrane and needle was arranged in such a way that the needle had contact to the tinfoil.
* 1880: the American physicist Charles Sumner Tainter discovers that many disadvantages of Edison's cylinders can be eliminated if the soundtrack is arranged in spiral form and engraved in a flat, round disk. Technical problems soon ended these experiments. Still, Tainter is regarded as the inventor of the gramophone record.
* 1884: Paul Nipkow obtains a patent for his Nipkow disk, an image scanning device that reads images serially, which constitutes the foundation for mechanical television. Two years later his patent runs out.
* 1886: Heinrich Hertz succeeds in proving the existence of electromagnetic waves for the first time – now the groundwork for wireless telegraphy and radio broadcasting in physical science is laid.
* 1887: Unaware of Charles Sumner Tainter's experiments, German-American Emil Berliner has his phonograph patented. He used a disk instead of a cylinder, primarily to avoid infringing on Edison's patent. Quickly it becomes obvious that flat Gramophone records are easier to duplicate and store.
* 1888:
** Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) significantly reduces interfering noises by using a wax cylinder instead of tin foil. This paves the way to commercial success for the improved phonograph.
** American Oberlin Smith describes a process to record audio using a cotton thread with integrated fine wire clippings. This makes reel-to-reel audio tape recording possible.
* 1890:
** The phonograph becomes faster and more convenient due to an electric motor. The electric motor brings on the first juke box with cylinders – even before flat disk records were widely available.
** Thomas Edison discovers thermionic emission. This effect forms the basis for the vacuum tube and the cathode ray tube.
* approximately 1893: The invention of the selenium phototube allows the conversion of brightness values into electrical signals. The principle is applied in wirephoto and television technology for a short time. Selenium is used in light meters for the next 50 years.

* 1895: Auguste Lumiere's cinematograph displays moving images for the first time. In the same year, brothers Emil and Max Skladanowsky present their "Bioscop" in Berlin.
* 1897
** Ferdinand Braun invents the "inertialess cathode ray oscillograph tube", a principle which remained unchanged in television picture tubes.
** The Italian Guglielmo Marconi transmits wireless telegraph messages by electromagnetic waves over a distance of five kilometers.
* 1898
** The Danish physicist Valdemar Poulsen creates the world's first magnetic recording and reproduction, using a 1 mm thick steel wire as a magnetizable carrier.
** Nikola Tesla

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