history of muiltmedia
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIMEDIA:
A STORY OF INVENTION, INGENUITY AND VISION.
Today multimedia might be defined as the seamless digital integration of text, graphics, animation, audio, still images and motion video in a way that provides individual users with high levels of control and interaction. The evolution of Multimedia is a story of the emergence and convergence of these technologies.
As these technologies developed along separate paths for disparate purposes, visionaries saw the possibilities for the sum of the parts as well potential personal application in the broader societal context This chapter highlights visionaries and technological developments from the development of the printing press to the emergence of the WWW .
"The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilisation at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trailblazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected." Vannevar Bush (1945).
This chapter is constructed around five themes developed over a time line. Presented within an interactive timeline framework, the reader has the option to pursue elaboration with a click of the mouse.
Visionaries: From the ingenious idea of the programmable computer, trace the innovations of the outstanding thinkers that had a direct impact on the explosion of the technological age.
Text, Processing and Software: Inventions and innovations that spawned the development of software enabling computers to move from mathematical processing to technology that creates and delivers multi media.
Computers: From the printing press through the exclusive military and academic and corporate worlds trace computer development into the ubiquitous role of the desktop personal computer of today.
Audio & Communication: From the telegraph signal to cellular telephones, follow the development from signal transmission to digital transmission of voice
Video &Animation: From manually manipulated negative film and hand drawn sketches, video and animation develops to sophisticated digital creation and rendering of motion
Chapter Contents
Case study
Pre 20th Century
1900 - 1933
1934 - 1945
1946 - 1956
1957 - 1964
1965 - 1974
1975 - 1979
1980 - 1989
1990 - date
credits
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
Pre20th Century
1455 Printing Press Gutenberg and Caxton, movable type printing
1780
FRANKLIN
Franklin discovers electricity
1822
BABBAGE
Charles Babbage designs the Difference Engine
1833
LADY BYRON
Babbage designs Analytical Machine, often considered to be the fist general-purpose computer.
Lady Byron writes programs for the machine
1837
MORSE
Telegraph receiver and transmitter
1839 Daguerreotype: photographs produced using a paper negative
1854
BOOLE
George Boole: develops binary mathematical language of 1’s and 0’s (Boolean Algebra)
1858 Transatlantic cable laid
1867 Remington Manual Typewriter
1876
BELL
telephone
1879
EDISON
Granted a phonograph patent
1886 Burroughs: First commercially successful adding machine.
1888
Mood Music for Film: Musical scores sent along for organ accompaniment
Gramophone: disks manually rotated @ 70 rpm
Film: Sequential photographs with sprockets manually pulled through a projector
1890
HOLLERITH
Tabulating Machine for the U.S. Gov.Census using punch cards. The tabulating machine later became IBM.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1900-1933
1920 Commercial radio: KDKA Pittsburgh
1925 Electronically recorded sound discs
AT&T’s Bell labs allow recording of whole symphonies
1927 "Talkies": The first commercial talkie film using optical sound recording.
Juke Box: Automatic Music Instrument Company –coin operated phonograph
Telephone becomes operational between London and New York.
"The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolsen.
First public demonstration of T.V.
1928
DISNEY
"Steamboat Willie" first cartoon with a fully synchronized soundtrack
1931
ZUSE
Conrad Zuse
First calculator.
1932 Magnetic tape
BASF introduces magnetic tape recording
1933 Dudley
Vocoder – voice coder
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Tele-communication Video & Animation
1934 - 1945
1936
TURING
"Turing’s Machine" defined as capable of computing any calculable function
1937 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" the first full-length animation is released.
1939
ATANASOFF
John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry design a prototype of the ABC computer (the first automated digital computer).
1940 First colour T.V.broadcast.
1941 "Colossus" built for the British military from Alan Turing’s design
1943 Zuse – Z3: First machine to work on a binary system rather than decimal system.
1945
BUSH
"As we may think" in the Atlantic Monthly Memex
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1946 - 1956
1946
MAUCHLY
ENIAC Electronic Numerator Integrator and Calculator the first successful high speed digital computer. However, it used the same concepts that Atanasoff and Berry used to build the ABC computer.
1948 Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain develop the transistor. More reliable and cheaper to run than vacuum tubes. Open reel tape recorder by Magnecord
1951 UNIVAC Computer used magnetic tape for buffer memory.
1952 IBM 701: First electronic stored computer that used vacuum tubes, RAM, punch cards and was the size of a piano.
1953 Electric typewriter
1954 Transistor radio: First commercial use of transistor radio developed in 1947 @ Bell labs
1956 First Transaltantic telephone cable CBS broadcast
First network broadcast using video tape.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1957 - 1964
1957 Sputnik launched
1958 CRAY: Builds the CDC 1604 for Control Data Corporation. The first fully transistorized supercomputer.
Texas Instruments develops the first Integrated Circuit. Solves the problems of speed, size and wiring.
1959 Second generation computer introduced by IBM. Used transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
1960 Removable disks
Paul Baran sees a communications network different than the traditional point to point links. He envisioned a "fishnet network".
1963 CAD (Computer Aided Design)
Sketchpad uses the first light pen.
Phillips first compact audio cassette.
First home video tape recording
1964
McLUHAN
"Understanding Media" postulates the global village. Third generation of computers included the photo printing of conductive circuit boards to eliminate wiring.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1965 - 1974
1965
NELSON
Xanadu hypertext project
1969
VanDAM
Development of hypertext editing system Dolby labs produces Dolby noise reduction for prerecorded tapes
1970 Fourth generation computer by IBM uses chips to reduce size and cost.
1971 Intel 4004 chip developed by Hoff. Computers can now be owned by individuals.
1972
Phillips laserdisc playback only deck
PONG, first commercial video game
1973 Metcalf outlines ideas for ethernet Kahn &Cerf present ideas for structure of Internet
1974 Intel 8080 microprocessor which was to be used in many PC’s.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1975 - 1979
1975
GATES
Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates. DND takes over ARPANET SONY Betamax VCR with a one hour, ½ inch video cassette tape.
1976 JVC introduces VHS format.
1977
JOBS & WOZNIAK
Apple was founded by Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak Email provided to 100 researchers
1978 First commercially available cell phone
1979 VisiCalc: the first spreadsheet
Wordstar: word processing package is released.
Walkman: SONY introduces a portable audio cassette player.
First MUD, MUD1, by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw at U of Essex
Beginning of on-line services with CompuServe and The Source.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1980-1989
1980 Word Processing Machine
Single purpose machine with limited storage on magnetic material.
SONY introduces the consumer camcorder
1981 The MS-DOS, or Microsoft Disk Operating System Adam Osborne completed the first portable compute Apollo Computer unveiled the first work station
1982 Lotus 1-2-3, software writes directly into the video system of the IBM PC First digital audio 5’’ compact disc. Computer-generated graphics in movies step forward with Disney's "Tron."
1983 First PC clone Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) introduced
Internet is born
TCP/IP protocol
1984
ENGLEBART W. Gibson in Neuromancer coins the term "cyberspace." Apple Computers introduces the Macintosh with the first mouse driven GUI (Graphical User Interface). 3 1/2-inch "microfloppy" diskette
DNS: domain name server introduced
voicemail developed
1985 Desktop publishing
Aldus PageMaker for the Macintosh
NSFNET: linking five universtiy supercomputer centers
(550 mg)CD-ROMs evolve from CDs on which music is recorded.
1986 optical transistor patented, a component central to digital optical computing. SONY Betamax removed from consumer shelves
1987 Hypercard : Apple (1987) actually hypermedia (nonsequential links to documents) includes authoring system -tool for building interactive hypermedia documents (Authorware Model,Linkway) First digital audio tape players
1988 Robert Morris' worm flooded the ARPANET. 3D Graphics: 3D graphical supercomputers
Pixar's "Tin Toy": the first computer-animated film to win an Academy Award,
1989 Handwriting recognition is introduced by grid with a touch sensitive pad on a lap top computers. Battery powered ,fully functional notebook computer. Corporation for Research and Education Networking (CREN) is formed by merging CSNET into BITNET
Maxis released SimCity, a sophisticated video game launching a new genre 'simulation'.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1990-date
1990 IBM, Tandy AT &T, and others announce the software specifications for multimedia platforms.
ARCHIE
IBM, Tandy AT &T, and others announce the hardware specifications for multimedia platforms. The birth of theWorld Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee, develops HTML ( HyperText Markup Language)
1991 GOPHER
PGP encryption released by Phillip Zimmerman
National Science Foundation lifts ban on commerce on the Internet.
1992
BERNERS LEE
VERONICA World Wide Web
1993
Mosaic developed by M. Andreessen Internet
1994 Internet goes interactive; shopping, banking, live concerts, radio broadcasting, spamming
1995
A STORY OF INVENTION, INGENUITY AND VISION.
Today multimedia might be defined as the seamless digital integration of text, graphics, animation, audio, still images and motion video in a way that provides individual users with high levels of control and interaction. The evolution of Multimedia is a story of the emergence and convergence of these technologies.
As these technologies developed along separate paths for disparate purposes, visionaries saw the possibilities for the sum of the parts as well potential personal application in the broader societal context This chapter highlights visionaries and technological developments from the development of the printing press to the emergence of the WWW .
"The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilisation at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trailblazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected." Vannevar Bush (1945).
This chapter is constructed around five themes developed over a time line. Presented within an interactive timeline framework, the reader has the option to pursue elaboration with a click of the mouse.
Visionaries: From the ingenious idea of the programmable computer, trace the innovations of the outstanding thinkers that had a direct impact on the explosion of the technological age.
Text, Processing and Software: Inventions and innovations that spawned the development of software enabling computers to move from mathematical processing to technology that creates and delivers multi media.
Computers: From the printing press through the exclusive military and academic and corporate worlds trace computer development into the ubiquitous role of the desktop personal computer of today.
Audio & Communication: From the telegraph signal to cellular telephones, follow the development from signal transmission to digital transmission of voice
Video &Animation: From manually manipulated negative film and hand drawn sketches, video and animation develops to sophisticated digital creation and rendering of motion
Chapter Contents
Case study
Pre 20th Century
1900 - 1933
1934 - 1945
1946 - 1956
1957 - 1964
1965 - 1974
1975 - 1979
1980 - 1989
1990 - date
credits
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
Pre20th Century
1455 Printing Press Gutenberg and Caxton, movable type printing
1780
FRANKLIN
Franklin discovers electricity
1822
BABBAGE
Charles Babbage designs the Difference Engine
1833
LADY BYRON
Babbage designs Analytical Machine, often considered to be the fist general-purpose computer.
Lady Byron writes programs for the machine
1837
MORSE
Telegraph receiver and transmitter
1839 Daguerreotype: photographs produced using a paper negative
1854
BOOLE
George Boole: develops binary mathematical language of 1’s and 0’s (Boolean Algebra)
1858 Transatlantic cable laid
1867 Remington Manual Typewriter
1876
BELL
telephone
1879
EDISON
Granted a phonograph patent
1886 Burroughs: First commercially successful adding machine.
1888
Mood Music for Film: Musical scores sent along for organ accompaniment
Gramophone: disks manually rotated @ 70 rpm
Film: Sequential photographs with sprockets manually pulled through a projector
1890
HOLLERITH
Tabulating Machine for the U.S. Gov.Census using punch cards. The tabulating machine later became IBM.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1900-1933
1920 Commercial radio: KDKA Pittsburgh
1925 Electronically recorded sound discs
AT&T’s Bell labs allow recording of whole symphonies
1927 "Talkies": The first commercial talkie film using optical sound recording.
Juke Box: Automatic Music Instrument Company –coin operated phonograph
Telephone becomes operational between London and New York.
"The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolsen.
First public demonstration of T.V.
1928
DISNEY
"Steamboat Willie" first cartoon with a fully synchronized soundtrack
1931
ZUSE
Conrad Zuse
First calculator.
1932 Magnetic tape
BASF introduces magnetic tape recording
1933 Dudley
Vocoder – voice coder
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Tele-communication Video & Animation
1934 - 1945
1936
TURING
"Turing’s Machine" defined as capable of computing any calculable function
1937 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" the first full-length animation is released.
1939
ATANASOFF
John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry design a prototype of the ABC computer (the first automated digital computer).
1940 First colour T.V.broadcast.
1941 "Colossus" built for the British military from Alan Turing’s design
1943 Zuse – Z3: First machine to work on a binary system rather than decimal system.
1945
BUSH
"As we may think" in the Atlantic Monthly Memex
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1946 - 1956
1946
MAUCHLY
ENIAC Electronic Numerator Integrator and Calculator the first successful high speed digital computer. However, it used the same concepts that Atanasoff and Berry used to build the ABC computer.
1948 Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain develop the transistor. More reliable and cheaper to run than vacuum tubes. Open reel tape recorder by Magnecord
1951 UNIVAC Computer used magnetic tape for buffer memory.
1952 IBM 701: First electronic stored computer that used vacuum tubes, RAM, punch cards and was the size of a piano.
1953 Electric typewriter
1954 Transistor radio: First commercial use of transistor radio developed in 1947 @ Bell labs
1956 First Transaltantic telephone cable CBS broadcast
First network broadcast using video tape.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1957 - 1964
1957 Sputnik launched
1958 CRAY: Builds the CDC 1604 for Control Data Corporation. The first fully transistorized supercomputer.
Texas Instruments develops the first Integrated Circuit. Solves the problems of speed, size and wiring.
1959 Second generation computer introduced by IBM. Used transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
1960 Removable disks
Paul Baran sees a communications network different than the traditional point to point links. He envisioned a "fishnet network".
1963 CAD (Computer Aided Design)
Sketchpad uses the first light pen.
Phillips first compact audio cassette.
First home video tape recording
1964
McLUHAN
"Understanding Media" postulates the global village. Third generation of computers included the photo printing of conductive circuit boards to eliminate wiring.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1965 - 1974
1965
NELSON
Xanadu hypertext project
1969
VanDAM
Development of hypertext editing system Dolby labs produces Dolby noise reduction for prerecorded tapes
1970 Fourth generation computer by IBM uses chips to reduce size and cost.
1971 Intel 4004 chip developed by Hoff. Computers can now be owned by individuals.
1972
Phillips laserdisc playback only deck
PONG, first commercial video game
1973 Metcalf outlines ideas for ethernet Kahn &Cerf present ideas for structure of Internet
1974 Intel 8080 microprocessor which was to be used in many PC’s.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1975 - 1979
1975
GATES
Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates. DND takes over ARPANET SONY Betamax VCR with a one hour, ½ inch video cassette tape.
1976 JVC introduces VHS format.
1977
JOBS & WOZNIAK
Apple was founded by Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak Email provided to 100 researchers
1978 First commercially available cell phone
1979 VisiCalc: the first spreadsheet
Wordstar: word processing package is released.
Walkman: SONY introduces a portable audio cassette player.
First MUD, MUD1, by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw at U of Essex
Beginning of on-line services with CompuServe and The Source.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1980-1989
1980 Word Processing Machine
Single purpose machine with limited storage on magnetic material.
SONY introduces the consumer camcorder
1981 The MS-DOS, or Microsoft Disk Operating System Adam Osborne completed the first portable compute Apollo Computer unveiled the first work station
1982 Lotus 1-2-3, software writes directly into the video system of the IBM PC First digital audio 5’’ compact disc. Computer-generated graphics in movies step forward with Disney's "Tron."
1983 First PC clone Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) introduced
Internet is born
TCP/IP protocol
1984
ENGLEBART W. Gibson in Neuromancer coins the term "cyberspace." Apple Computers introduces the Macintosh with the first mouse driven GUI (Graphical User Interface). 3 1/2-inch "microfloppy" diskette
DNS: domain name server introduced
voicemail developed
1985 Desktop publishing
Aldus PageMaker for the Macintosh
NSFNET: linking five universtiy supercomputer centers
(550 mg)CD-ROMs evolve from CDs on which music is recorded.
1986 optical transistor patented, a component central to digital optical computing. SONY Betamax removed from consumer shelves
1987 Hypercard : Apple (1987) actually hypermedia (nonsequential links to documents) includes authoring system -tool for building interactive hypermedia documents (Authorware Model,Linkway) First digital audio tape players
1988 Robert Morris' worm flooded the ARPANET. 3D Graphics: 3D graphical supercomputers
Pixar's "Tin Toy": the first computer-animated film to win an Academy Award,
1989 Handwriting recognition is introduced by grid with a touch sensitive pad on a lap top computers. Battery powered ,fully functional notebook computer. Corporation for Research and Education Networking (CREN) is formed by merging CSNET into BITNET
Maxis released SimCity, a sophisticated video game launching a new genre 'simulation'.
Back to Contents
Time & Vision Text , Processing & Software Computers Audio & Telecommunication Video & Animation
1990-date
1990 IBM, Tandy AT &T, and others announce the software specifications for multimedia platforms.
ARCHIE
IBM, Tandy AT &T, and others announce the hardware specifications for multimedia platforms. The birth of theWorld Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee, develops HTML ( HyperText Markup Language)
1991 GOPHER
PGP encryption released by Phillip Zimmerman
National Science Foundation lifts ban on commerce on the Internet.
1992
BERNERS LEE
VERONICA World Wide Web
1993
Mosaic developed by M. Andreessen Internet
1994 Internet goes interactive; shopping, banking, live concerts, radio broadcasting, spamming
1995
Comments