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
| Time & Vision | Text , Processing & Software | Computers | Audio & Telecommunication | Video & Animation |
| Pre20th Century | ||||
| 1455 | Printing Press Gutenberg and Caxton, movable type printing | |||
| 1780 | Franklin discovers electricity | |||
| 1822 | Charles Babbage designs the Difference Engine | |||
| 1833 | Babbage designs Analytical Machine, often
considered to be the fist general-purpose computer. Lady Byron writes programs for the machine |
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| 1837 | Telegraph receiver and transmitter | |||
| 1839 | Daguerreotype: photographs produced using a paper negative | |||
| 1854 | George Boole: develops binary mathematical language of 1’s and 0’s (Boolean Algebra) | |||
| 1858 | Transatlantic cable laid | |||
| 1867 | Remington Manual Typewriter | |||
| 1876 | telephone | |||
| 1879 | Granted a phonograph patent |
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| 1886 | Burroughs: First commercially successful adding machine. | |||
| 1888
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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 | Tabulating Machine for the U.S. Gov.Census using punch cards. The tabulating machine later became IBM. |
| 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 |
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| 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. |
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| 1928 | "Steamboat Willie" first cartoon with a fully synchronized soundtrack | |||
| 1931 | Conrad Zuse First calculator. |
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| 1932 | Magnetic tape BASF introduces magnetic tape recording |
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| 1933 | Dudley Vocoder – voice coder |
| Time & Vision | Text , Processing & Software | Computers | Audio & Tele-communication | Video & Animation |
| 1934 - 1945 | ||||
| 1936 | "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 | 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 | "As we may think" in the Atlantic Monthly | Memex |
| Time & Vision | Text , Processing & Software | Computers | Audio & Telecommunication | Video & Animation |
| 1946 - 1956 | ||||
| 1946 | 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. |
| 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. |
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| 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". |
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| 1963 | CAD (Computer Aided Design) Sketchpad uses the first light pen. |
Phillips first compact audio cassette. |
First home video tape recording | |
| 1964 | "Understanding Media" postulates the global village. | Third generation of computers included the photo printing of conductive circuit boards to eliminate wiring. |
| Time & Vision | Text , Processing & Software | Computers | Audio & Telecommunication | Video & Animation |
| 1965 - 1974 | ||||
| 1965 | Xanadu hypertext project | |||
| 1969 | 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 |
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| 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. |
| Time & Vision | Text , Processing & Software | Computers | Audio & Telecommunication | Video & Animation |
| 1975 - 1979 | ||||
| 1975 | 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 | 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. |
| 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 |
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| 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. |
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| 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, |
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| 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'. |
| 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 | VERONICA | World Wide Web | ||
| 1993
|
Mosaic developed by M. Andreessen | Internet | ||
| 1994 | Internet goes interactive; shopping, banking, live concerts, radio broadcasting, spamming | |||
| 1995 | Private ISP becomes big business Netscape goes public |
"Our failure to place affection and empathy at the centre of the educational process says something very grave about us, and I do not think it will be of much value for us to persevere unless we can learn to love our technology less and ourselves more." … Neil Postman (1996)
"In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess."Vannevar Bush (1945)
Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom and wisdom is not foresight. Each grow out of the other and we need them all. Arthur C. Clark (1997)
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Barabash, Craig (Vannevar)
Kyllo, Janice (Ada)
