Tech That Changed Everything
From the first internet message to ChatGPT: the inventions that built the online world.
The timeline
1969
ARPANET
A US government network sends its first message between two computers. It’s the ancestor of the internet.
1971
The first email
Programmer Ray Tomlinson sends the first network email and picks the @ sign to separate the user and computer.
1973
The first cellphone call
Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call. The phone weighed about a kilogram.
1981
The personal computer
The IBM PC brings computers into offices and homes. Apple’s Macintosh follows in 1984.
1991
The World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN, makes the web public: pages, links and browsers on top of the internet.
1998
Google
Two Stanford students launch a search engine. "Google it" becomes a verb.
2004–2005
Social media era
Facebook launches in 2004 and YouTube in 2005, with "Me at the zoo" as its first video.
2007
The iPhone
Steve Jobs unveils a phone that’s also an iPod and an internet device. The App Store follows in 2008.
2009
Bitcoin
The first cryptocurrency launches, created by someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who that is.
2016–2018
TikTok
ByteDance launches Douyin in China, takes it worldwide as TikTok, and merges it with Musical.ly.
Nov 2022
ChatGPT
OpenAI releases ChatGPT, and AI chatbots go mainstream almost overnight.
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