The following timeline tables list the discoveries and inventions in the history of electrical and electronic engineering.^[1][2]

History of discoveries timeline

History of associated inventions timeline

Innovations in consumer electronics

1843–1923: From electromechanics to electronics

• 1843: Watchmaker Alexander Bain 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, optics, and 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 so that the needle had contact with the tin foil.
• 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 gramophone record inventor.
• 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 ran 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 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 paved the way for 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 selenium phototube invention 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 that 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 publicly demonstrated the first wireless remote control of a model ship.
• 1899: The dog "Nipper" is used in "His Master's Voice", the trademark for gramophones and records.
• 1901
  • The Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo began the development of a system, which he called Telekine for testing dirigible balloons of his creation without risking human lives. Unlike previous mechanisms which carried out actions of the 'on/off' type, Torres defined a method for controlling any mechanical or electrical device with different states of operation. The transmitter of the Telekino could send up to 19 different commands to the receiver, which was able to interpret and execute the orders implicit in the codes transmitted by electromagnetic waves. With the Telekine, Torres laid down modern wireless remote-control operation principles.^[21]
• 1902
  • Otto von Bronk patented his "Method and apparatus for remote visualization of images and objects with a temporary resolution of the images in parallel rows of dots". This patent, initially developed for phototelegraphy, impacted the development of color television, particularly the NTSC implementation.
  • For the first time, audio records are printed with paper labels in the middle.
• 1903: Guglielmo Marconi provides evidence that wireless telegraphic communication is possible over long distances, such as across the Atlantic. He used a transmitter developed by Ferdinand Braun.
• 1904
  • For the first time, double-sided records and those with a diameter of 30 cm are produced, increasing playing time up to 11 minutes (5.5 minutes per side). These are created by Odeon in Berlin and debuted at the Leipzig Spring Fair.
  • The German physicist Arthur Korn developed the first practical method for telegraphy.
• 1905: The Englishman Sir John Ambrose Fleming invents the first electron tube.
• 1906
  • Robert von Lieben patented his "inertia working cathode-ray-relays". By 1910 he developed this into the first real tube amplifier, by creating a triode. His invention of the triode is almost simultaneously created by the American Lee de Forest.
  • Max Dieckmann and Gustav Glage use the Braun tube for playback of 20-line black-and-white images.
  • The first jukebox with records comes on the market.
  • American Brigadier General Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody files for a patent for a carborundum steel detector for use in a crystal radio, an improved version of the Cat's-whisker detector. It is sometimes credited as the first semiconductor in history. The envelope detector is an important part of every radio receiver.
• 1907: Rosenthal puts in his image telegraph for the first time a photocell.
• 1911: First film studios are created in Hollywood and Potsdam- Babelsberg .
• 1912: The first radio receiver is created, in accordance with the Audion principle.
• 1913: The legal battle over the invention of the electron tube between Robert von Lieben and Lee de Forest is decided. The electron tube is replaced by a high vacuum in the glass flask with significantly improved properties.
  • Alexander Meissner patented his process "feedback for generating oscillations", by his development of a radio station using an electron tube .
  • The Englishman Arthur Berry submits a patent on the manufacture of printed circuits by etched metal.
• 1915: Carl Benedicks leads basic studies in Sweden on the electrical properties of silicon and germanium. Due to the emerging tube technology, however, interest in semiconductors remains low until after the Second World War.
• 1917
  • Based on previous findings of the Englishman Oliver Lodge, the Frenchman Lucien Levy develops a radio receiver with frequency tuning using a resonant circuit.
• 1919: Charlie Chaplin founds the Hollywood film production and distribution company United Artists
• 1920: The first regularly operating radio station KDKA goes on air on 2 November 1920 in Philadelphia, USA. It is the first time electronics are used to transmit information and entertainment to the public at large. The same year in Germany an instrumental concert was broadcast on the radio from a long-wave transmitter in Wusterhausen.
• 1922: J. McWilliams Stone invents the first portable radio receiver. George Frost builds the first "car radio" in his Ford Model T.
• 1923
  • The 15-year-old Manfred von Ardenne is granted his first patent for an electron tube having a plurality of electrodes. Siegmund Loewe (1885–1962) builds with the tube his first radio receiver "Loewe Opta-".
  • The Hungarian engineer Dénes Mihály patented an image scanning with line deflection, in which each point of an image is scanned ten times per second by a selenium cell.
  • August Karolus (1893–1972) invents the Kerr cell, an almost inertia-free conversion of electrical pulses into light signals. He was granted a patent for his method of transmitting slides.
  • Vladimir Kosma developed the first television camera tube, the Ikonoskop, using the Braun tube.
  • The German State Secretary Karl August Bredow founds the first German broadcasting organization. By lifting the ban on broadcast reception and the opening of the first private radio station, the development of radio as a mass medium begins.

1924–1959: From cathode ray tube to stereo audio and TV

• 1924: the first radio receivers are exhibited at the Berlin Radio Show
• 1925
  • Brunswick Records in Dubuque, Iowa produced their first record player, the Brunswick Panatrope with a pickup, amplifier and loudspeaker
  • In the American Bell Laboratories, a method for recording of records obtained by microphone and tube amps for series production. Also in Germany working on it is ongoing since 1922. 1925 appear the first electrically recorded disks in both countries.
  • At the Leipzig Spring Fair, the first miniature camera "Leica" is presented to the public.
  • John Logie Baird performs the first screening of a living head with a resolution of 30 vertical lines using a Nipkow disk.
  • August Karolus demonstrated in Germany television with 48 lines and ten image changes per second.
• 1926
  • Edison developed the first "LP". By dense grooves (16 grooves on 1 mm) and the reduction of speed to 80 min −1 (later 78 min −1) increases the playing time up to 2 times 20 minutes. He carries himself with the decline of his phonograph business.
  • The German State Railroad offers a cordless telephone service in moving trains between Berlin and Hamburg – the idea of mobile telephony is born.
  • John Logie Baird developed the first commercial television set in the world. It was not until 1930, he is called a " telescreen sold "at a price of 20 pounds.
• 1927
  • The first fully electronic music boxes ("Jukeboxes") used in the USA on the market.
  • German Grammophon on sale due to a license agreement with the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company. Its first fully electronic turntables.
  • The first industrially manufactured car radio, the "Philco Transitone" from the "Storage Battery Co." in Philadelphia, USA, comes on the market.
  • The first shortwave radio – Rundfunkübertragung overseas broadcast by the station PCJJ the Philips factories in Eindhoven in the Dutch colonies.
  • Opening of the first regular telegraphy -Dienstes between Berlin and Vienna.
  • First commercial sound films ("The Jazz Singer", USA) using the "Needle sound" back in sync with the film screening for LPs over loudspeakers.
  • First public television broadcasts in the UK by John Logie Baird between London and Glasgow and in the US by Frederic Eugene Ives (1882–1953) between Washington and New York.
  • The American inventor Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906–1971) developed in Los Angeles, the first fully electronic television system in the world.
  • John Logie Baird developed his Phonovision, the first videodisc player. 30-line television images are stored on shellac records. At 78 RPM mechanically scanned, the images can be played back on his "telescreen". It could not play sound nor keep up with the rapidly increasing resolution of television. More than 40 years later, commercial optical disc players came onto the market.
• 1928: Fritz Pfleumer got the first tape recorder patent. It replaces steel wire with paper coated in iron powder. According to Valdemar Poulsen (1898) to the second crucial pioneer of magnetic sound, image and data storage
  • Dénes Mihály presented in Berlin a small circle, the first authentic television broadcast in Germany, having worked at least since 1923 in this field.
  • August Karolus and the company Telefunken put on the "fifth Great German Radio Exhibition Berlin 1928" the prototype of a television receiver, with an image size of 8 cm × 10 cm and a resolution of about 10,000 pixels, a much better picture quality than previous devices.
  • In New York (USA) the first regular television broadcasts of the experiment station WGY, operated by the General Electric Company (GE). Sporadic television news and dramas radiate from these stations by 1928.
    • The first commercially produced television receiver of the Daven Corporation in Newark is offered for $75.
  • John Logie Baird transmits the first television pictures internationally, and the same across the Atlantic from London to New York. He also demonstrated the world's first color television transmission in London.
• 1929
  • Edison withdraws from the phono business – the disk has ousted the cylinder.
  • The company Columbia Records developed the first portable record player that can be connected to any tube radio. It also created the first radio / phonograph combinations, the precursor to the 1960s music chests.

• • The German physicist Curt Stille (1873–1957) records magnetic sound for film, on a perforated steel band. First, this "Magnettonverfahren" has no success. Years later it is rediscovered for amateur films, providing easy dubbing. A "Daylygraph" or Magnettongerät had amplifier and equalizer, and a mature Magnettondiktiergerät called "Textophon".
  • Based on patents, which he had purchased of silence, brings the Englishman E. Blattner the " Blattnerphone "the first magnetic sound recording on the market. It records on a thin steel band.
  • The first sound film using optical sound premiers. Since the early 1920s, various people have developed this method. The same optoelectronic method also allows for the first time the post-processing of recorded music to sound recordings of it.
  • The director Carl Froelich (1875–1953) turns "The Night Belongs to Us", the first German sound film.
  • 20th Century Fox presents in New York on an 8 m × 4 m big screen the first widescreen movie.
  • The radio station Witzleben begins in Germany with the regular broadcasting of television test broadcasts, initially on long wave with 30 lines (= 1,200 pixels) at 12.5 image changes per second. It appear first blueprints for television receiver.
  • John Logie Baird starts in the UK on behalf of the BBC with regular experimental television broadcasts to the public.
  • Frederic Eugene Ives transmits a color television from New York to Washington.
• 1930
  • Manfred von Ardenne invented and developed the flying-spot scanner, Europe's first fully electronic television camera tube.
  • In Britain, the first television advertising and the first TV interview
• 1931
  • The British engineer and inventor Alan Dower Blumlein (1903–1942) invents "Binaural Sound", today called "Stereo". He developed the stereo record and the first three-way speaker. He makes experimental films with stereo sound. Then he becomes leader of the development team for the EMI-405-line television system.
  • The company RCA Victor presents to the public the first real LP record, the 35 cm diameter and 33.33 RPM give sufficient playing time for an entire orchestral work. But the new turntables are initially so expensive that they are only gain broad acceptance after the Second World War – then as vinyl record.
  • The French physicist René Barthélemy in Paris broadcasts the first television signal from a radio transmitter rather than by wire. The BBC launches first Tonversuche in the UK.
  • Public World Premiere of electronic television – without electro-mechanical components such as the Nipkow disk – on the "eighth Great German Radio Exhibition Berlin 1931 ". Doberitz / Pomerania is the first German location for a tone-TV stations.
  • Manfred von Ardenne can be the principle of a color picture tube patent: Narrow strips of phosphors in the three primary colors are closely juxtaposed arranged so that they complement each other with the electron flow to white light. A separate control of the three colors has not yet provided.
• 1932
  • The company AEG and BASF start for the magnetic tape method of Fritz Pfleumer to care (1928). They develop new devices and tapes, in which celluloid is used instead of paper as a carrier material.
  • In Britain, the BBC sends first radio programs time-shifted instead of live.
  • The company telephone and radio apparatus factory Ideal AG (today Blaupunkt) provides a car radio using Bowden cables to control it from the steering column.
• 1933
  • After the Nazi seizure of power in Germany is broadcasting finally a political tool. Systematic censorship is to prevent opposition and spread the "Aryan culture". Series production of the " People's recipient VE 301 "starts.
  • Edwin Howard Armstrong demonstrates that frequency-modulated (FM) radio transmissions are less susceptible to interference than amplitude-modulated (AM). However, practical application is long delayed.
  • In the USA the first opened drive-in theater.
• 1934: First commercial stereo recordings find little favor – the necessary playback devices are still too expensive. The term "High Fidelity" is embossed around this time.
• 1935
  • AEG and BASF place at the Berlin Radio Show, the tape recorder " Magnetophon K1 "and the appropriate magnetic tapes before. In case of fire in the exhibition hall all four exhibited devices are destroyed.
  • In Germany the world's first regular television program operating for about 250 mostly public reception points starts in Berlin and the surrounding area. The mass production of television receivers is – probably due to the high price of 2,500 Reichsmarks – not yet started.
  • At the same time, the research institute of the German Post (RPF) begins with development work for a color television methods, but which are later reinstated due to the Second World War.
• 1936
  • Olympic Games in Berlin broadcast live.
  • "Olympia suitcase", battery-powered portable radio receiver, introduced.
  • The first mobile television camera (180 lines, all-electronic) is used for live television broadcasts of the Olympic Games.
  • Also in the UK are first regular television broadcasts – now for the perfect electronic EMI system, which soon replaced the mechanical part Baird system – broadcast.
  • Video telephony connections between booths in Berlin and Leipzig. Later connections from Berlin to Nuremberg and Munich added.
  • The Frenchman Raymond Valtat reports on a patent, which describes the principle of working with binary numbers abacus.
  • Konrad Zuse works on a dual electromechanical computing machine that is ready in 1937.
• 1937
  • First sapphire needle for records of the company Siemens
  • The interlaced video method is introduced on TVr to reduce image flicker. The transmitter Witzleben uses the new standard with 441 lines and 25 image changes, i.e. 50 fields of 220 half-lines. Until the HDTV era the interlace method remains in use.
  • First movie encoder make it possible not to send the TV live, but to rely on recordings.
• 1938
  • The improved AEG tape-recorder "Magnetophon K4" is first used in radio studios. The belt speed is 77 cm / s, which at 1000 m length of tape has a playing time of 22 minutes.
  • Werner Flechsig invents the shadow mask method for separate control of the three primary colors in a color picture tube.
• 1939
  • On the "16th Great German Radio and television broadcasting exhibition Berlin 1939 ", the" German Unity television receiver E1 "and announces the release of free commercial television. Due to the difficult political and economic situation, only about 50 devices are sold instead of the planned 10,000.
  • In the USA the first regular television broadcasts take place.
• 1940
  • The development of television technology for military purposes increases the resolution to 1029 lines at 25 frames per second. Commercial HDTV television reached that resolution almost half a century later.
  • The problem of band noise with tape devices is reduced dramatically by the invention of radio frequency bias of Walter Weber and Hans-Joachim von Braunmühl.
• 1942: The first all-electronic computer is used by John Vincent Atanasoff, but quickly fades into oblivion. Four years later the ENIAC completed – the beginning of the end of Electromechanics in computers and calculators.
• 1945–1947: American soldiers capture in Germany some tape recorders. This and the nullified German patents leads to the development of the first tape recorders in the United States. The first home device " Sound Mirror "by the Brush Development Co. is there on the market.
• 1948
  • The American physicist and industrialist Edwin Herbert Land (1909–1991) launches the first instant camera, Polaroid camera Model 95 on the market.
  • Three American engineers at Bell Laboratories (John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley) invent the transistor. Its lesser size and power compared with electron tubes brings (from 1955) portable radio receivers starting its march through all areas of electronics.
  • The Hungarian-American physicist Peter Carl Goldmark (1906–1977) invents the vinyl record (first published 1952), much less noisy than their predecessors shellac. Thanks to micro-groove (100 grooves per cm) can play 23 minutes per side. The LP record is born. This one is the redemption of the claim "high fidelity one step closer" to the end of the shellac era.
  • The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) leads the music format with 45 RPM records, later to conquer the market for cheap players. The first publication in Germany in this format appears 1953rd
  • The British physicist Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) invents holography. This method of recording and reproducing image with coherent light allows three-dimensional images. It was not until 1971 when the procedure gained practical importance, he received the Nobel Prize for Physics.
• 1949
  • In Germany, FM broadcasting starts regular program operation.
  • Experimentally since 1943, series production since 1949 there are for professional use stereo – Tonbandgeräte and matching ribbons. Also portable devices for reporters, initially propelled by a spring mechanism, has been around since 1949
• 1950
  • In the USA the first prerecorded audio tapes are marketed.
  • Also in the USA the company Zenith markets the first TV with cable remote control for channel selection.
• 1951
  • The CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) broadcasts in New York the first color television program in the world, but using the field sequential standard, not reaching to the resolution of the black and white television and was to be incompatible.
  • With the " tape recorder F15 "from AEG 's first home tape recorder appears on the German market.
  • RCA Electronic Music is the first synthesizer prior to the creation of artificial electronic sounds.
• 1952
  • Reintroduction of regular television broadcasts in Germany after the Second World War.
  • 20th Century Fox developed with "Cinemascope" the most successful wide-screen process to better compete with television. Only some 50 years later pulls the TV with the 16: 9 size screen after.
• 1953
  • The "National Television System Committee" (Abbreviated as NTSC) normalized in the USA named after her black-and-white-compatible NTSC -Farbfernseh process. A year later, this method is introduced in the United States.
  • The car radio top model "Mexico" from Becker for the first time to an FM area (in mono) and an automatic tuning.
• 1954
  • RCA developed for the first apparatus for recording video signals on magnetic tapes. 22 km magnetic tape are needed per hour. By 1956, succeeds the company Ampex through the use of multiple tracks, the tape speed to more practicable 38.1 cm / s lower.
  • The European Broadcasting Union is founded "Euro Vision".
  • First regular television broadcasts in Japan.
• 1955
  • The second generation "TRADIC" (Transistorized Digital Computer), first to use only transistors therefore much smaller and more powerful than its predecessor tube computers.
  • The Briton Narinder Singh Kapany investigated the propagation of light in fine glass fibers (optical fibers).
  • The first wireless remote control for a television US-based Zenith consists of a better flashlight, with which one lights up in one of the four devices corners to turn the unit on or off, change the channel or mute the sound.
• 1956
  • The company Metz introduces radio device type 409 / 3D. First mass production of printed circuit boards. This follows since the 1930s, several improvements to the manufacturing technology.
  • The company Ampex introduces the "VR 1000" the first video recorder. That same year, CBS uses it for the first magnetic video tape recording (VTR) from. Although other programs are produced in color since 1954, the VTR cannot record color.
• 1957: The Frenchman Henri de France (1911–1986) developed the first generation of color TV system SECAM, which avoids some of the problems of the NTSC method. The weaknesses of the SECAM system be fixed in later modifications of the standard for the most part.
• 1958
  • By merging the Edison patents and the Berliner, the Blumlein stereo recording method becomes commercially viable. The company Mercury Records launches the first stereo record on the market.
  • The company Ampex expands the video recorder with the Model "VR 1000 B" to give it color capability.