Milestones in Electronics (Floyd and Chattopadhyay)

• 1838 - telegraph - Samuel F. B. Morse
  

• 1844 - wireless telegraphic communications
• 1864 - James Clerk Maxwell proposed EM wave theory
  
• 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the first voice transmission
  
• 1879 - light bulb - Thomas Edison: discovered diode effect while working with VT
• 1888 - Heinrich Hertz experimented on detection of EM radiation; he published the results in the paper entitled on electromagnetic waves in air and their reflection.
  
• 1889 - first electromechanical telephone switching machine
• 1896 - Sir J. C. Bose developed devices to generate, radiate, and receive millimeter waves.
  
• 1897 - electron, CRT - Sir Joseph John Thomson
• 1901 - patent for experimental setup of Reginald Fessenden for AM
• 1906 - Christmas, first wireless radio broadcast - Fessenden, Brant Rock, MA

• 1904 - Fleming valve: vacuum tube in one direction - John A. Fleming
• 1907 - audiotron: tube with added grid that can amplify signals - Lee De Forest
• 1912 - radio amateur in San Jose, California was able to broadcast music.
• Regenerative amplifier - invented by Edwin Armstrong.
• Oscillator - invented by Lee De Forest.
• 1918 - Multivibrator was invented by Eccles-Jordan.
  

• 1921 - the secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, issued the first license to a broadcast radio station;

superheterodyne - invented by Edwin Armstrong solved the problem for high frequency communications

• 1923 - first TV picture tube iconoscope - Vladimir Zworykin (USA)
• experimental demonstration of single sideband AM - R. A. Heising
• 1925 to 1927 - J. L. Baird demonstrated actual TV (Britain)
  
• 1926 - pentode - Bernard D. H. Tellegan
  
• 1927 - patent for the first complete TV system - Philo T. Farnsworth
• negative feedback - invented by Harold S. Black, Bell Laboratories
• 1929 - pentode was introduced commercially
  
• 1930s - development in radio, metal tubes, AGC, midget radios, directional antenna, etc.
• FM - Edwin Armstrong (USA)
  
• 1937 - John Atanasoff of Iowa State University envisioned a machine that can do complex math works

• 1939 - Atanasoff and student Clifford Berry constructed binary machine called ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer)
• ABC used VT for logic and capacitor for memory

• magnetron: a microwave oscillator - Henry Boot and John Randall (Britain)

• klystron tube - Russell and Sigurd Varian, Stanford University (USA)

• 1940s - radar and VHF comm were made possible by magnetron and klystron
• 1946 - ENIAC: first stored program computer - John von Neumann, University of Pennsylvania
• 1947 - transistor - Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, William Shockley
• printed circuits were invented
• 1948 - 604 types - IBM
  
• 1950 - Colour TV was adopted in US
• Ebers developed SCR or thyristor
  

First world-wide TV was made possible by TELSTAR satellite.

• 1951 - commercial manufacturing of transistors
• JFET - proposed by William Shockley
• 1954 - MASER - Charles H. Townes
  
• 1958 - September 12, integrated circuit - Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments
• Tunnel diode - L. Esaki
  

• 1960s - precursors to the Internet began, ARPANET
• LASER
  
• 1960 - first MOSFET - announced by Kahng and Attla, Bell Laboratories
• 1961 - digital IC - Buie, Pacific Semiconductor
  
• 1965 - muA709, first successful op-amp, - Bob Widlar, Fairchild Semiconductor; this design suffered from latch-up
• The 741, also from Fairchild solved the problem.
• IMPATT - Johnston, DeLoach, and Cohen
• 1966 - proposals of light communication via optical fiber - Kao and Hockham, Werts
  
• 1969 - CCD (charge-coupled device) - Willard Boyle and George Smith, Bell Laboratories
  

Octopus system - 100 terminals on a computer - Lawrence Livermore, National Laboratory

• 1970s - introduction to pocket calculators and optical ICs
• 1970 - BJT-based RAM
  
• 1971 - Intel was formed by a group from Fairchild. 4004 chip was introduced.
• Ted Hoff - designed 4-bit microprocessor at Intel Corp.
  

• 8008 - the first 8-bit microprocessor
• 1973 - MOS-based RAM
• 1974 - Intel 8080 - first general purpose microprocessor

Intel 80286/386/486 - 32-bit CPUs

***Computer Generations:
1st - valve-based
2md - transistor-based
3rd - IC-based
4th - VLSI architecture-based

• 1975 - first personal computer, by Altair, featured by Popular Science in January
  
• 1977 - LASER diodes using AlGaAs
  
• 1978 - 64kB RAM chip
• 1979 - Intel 8088 - 16-bit microprocessor
  
• 1980s - cable hookups
• 1990s - wide application of the Internet, e-commerce
• 1990 - world-wide web - Tim Berness-Lee
  
• 1993 - 130 websites
• 1995 - FCC alloted spectrum space for Digital Audio Radio Service
• 1996 - FCC adopted digital TV standards
  
• 2001 - 24 million websites