Skip to Main Content

Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide

Beginning information about artificial intelligence and how to use it effectively.

A Communications Revolution 800 Years in the Making

Artificial Intelligence is the latest development in a long line of communication tools.

  • Around 1440. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.
  • 1821. British mathematician Charles Barbage designs a Victorian-age computer.
  • 1837. Samuel Morse, the creator of Morse Code, granted a patent on an electromagnetic telegraph.
  • 1837. Daguerre invents the first camera.
  • 1848. British mathematician Ada Lovelace writes the world's first computer program. 
  • 1861-1865. Matthew Brady records the Civil War with his camera.
  • 1876. Alexander Graham Bell acquires a patent on the telephone.
  • 1877. The invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison.
  • 1891. William Dickson, under Thomas Edison's direction, invents the motion picture camera.
  • 1896. Guglielmo Marconi files his first patent for the radio.
  • 1917. Livery Stable Blues was the first million selling record.
  • 1920. Broadcast of the first commercial radio station by KDKA in Pittsburgh.
  • 1927. Philo Farnsworth demonstrates a primitive version of television in San Francisco.
  • 1942. Alan Turing cracks the Enigma Code with the Bombe machine, an early version of AI.
  • 1948. Commercial television in the US is born: four television networks begin broadcasting regularly scheduled programs.
  • 1950. Alan Turing creates the Turing Test..
  • 1951. Christopher Strachey writes the first AI program.
  • 1953. Grace Hopper devlops the first computer language, COBOL.
  • 1954. RCA begins selling color television sets.
  • 1962. American-built Telstar 1 communications satellite relayed the first transatlantic television signals
  • 1964. Joseph Wiezenbaum invents the chatbot.
  • 1969. Neil Armstrong stepped out on the moon. Live film beamed back to earth was seen by 650 million people.
  • 1969. Shakey, the first general-purpose mobile robot, developed by Stanford Research Labs.
  • 1975. HBO became the first American network to deliver its programming by satellite. 
  • 1977. The first personal computer, the Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor (PET), goes on sale. 
  • 1979. WordStar, the world's first commercially successful word processor, is released.
  • 1985. AOL begins offering online services. 
  • 1997. Deep Blue beats Garry Kasparov in chess.
  • 1999. Shawn Fanning creates Napster, a popular online shariing program. 
  • 2003. MySpace becomes the first social media platform to reach a global audience.
  • 2002. Roomba, the vacuum-cleaning robot, goes to market.
  • 2008. Voice recognition feature on the iPhone and Siri.
  • 2011. IBM Watson, the Q/A computer system, understands natural language.
  • 2022. ChatGPT 3.5 goes public online.

Source: Britannica.com