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Data storage

Classification

Inventions from the ORAL ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
Cave paintings image data 50,000 BCE Indonesia
Rock art petroglyphs Aborigine 45,000 BCE Australia
Baboon bone Lebombo bone, 29 tally marks 30,000 BCE Africa
Star chart Lascaux cave wall art 22,000 BCE Lascaux, France
Lunar calendar Lascaux cave wall art 15,000 BCE Lascaux, France
Map on bone carved map on bone 15,000 BCE Ukraine

Inventions from the TOKENS ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
Solar calendar engraved on bone 10,000 BCE France
Clay token system proto writing system 7500 BCE Mesopotamia
Map painted on wall 6500 BCE Catalhoyak, Turkey

Inventions from the WRITTEN ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
Cuneiform first written language 3500 BCE Sumer, Mesopotamia (2)
Base 60 numbers counting time, seconds, minutes 3100 BCE Sumer, Mesopotamia
Math number systems 2700 BCE Egypt
Ink for writing on papyrus 2500 BCE Egypt, China
Map on clay tablet navigation 2300 BCE Babylonia
Proto semitic alphabet consonants only, no vowels 2000 BCE Mesopotamia
Phoenician alphabet consonants only, no vowels 1100 BCE Phoenicia
Dictionary reference book 1000 BCE China

Inventions from the ALPHABET ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
True alphabet including vowels 700 BCE Greece (35)
Musical notation 700 BCE India
Geometry shapes and math 500 BCE Pythagoras Greece
Pen improved ink 350 BCE India/Egypt
Comprehensive star chart 150 BCE Hipparchus of Nicaea Rhodes, Greece
Parchment animal skin for writing 150 BCE Pergamum, Turkey
Book bound parchment 150 BCE Pergamum, Turkey
Calendar days, months, years 45 BCE Julius Caesar/Gregory XIII Rome
Encyclopedia 77 AD Pliny the Elder Rome
Wood block printing on paper 220 AD China
Decimal point 400 AD India
Trigonometry math angles 450 AD Siddhantas India

Inventions from the NUMBERS ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
Modern fractions 499 AD Aryabhata India
Quill pen feather writing 580 Sevilla, Spain
Mathematical zero 628 AD Brahmagupta India
Paper currency money 800 AD China (54)
Hindu-Arabic numbers base 10 modern numbers 820 AD India/Middle East (13)
Algebra complex math 850 AD Syria
University 859 AD Fez, Morocco
Movable type printing metal 1088 AD Bi Sheng, Song Dynasty China (6)
True university Europe 1088 AD Bologna Italy
Modern musical notation 1120 AD Giudo d'Arezzo Italy
Bank money storage 1149 AD Genoa Italy

Inventions from the PRINT ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
Printing press with movable metal type 1450 AD Johannes Gutenberg Mainz, Germany (3)
Mercator projection map for plotting navigation 1535 AD Geraedus Mercator Netherlands
Graphite pencil 1564 AD Conrad von Gesner Switzerland
Gregorian calendar 1582 AD Pope Gregory XIII Vatican City, Italy
Calculus 1680 AD Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz UK/Germany
Binary language computers 1689 AD Gottfried Leibniz Germany
Rubber eraser 1770 AD Joseph Priestly UK
Mechanical calculator analytic machine, later "computer" 1821 AD Charles Babbage UK (7)
Primitive photograph 1822 AD Joseph Nicephore Niepce France (36)
Camera 1826 AD Joseph Nicephore Niepce France (36)
Negative for photography 1835 AD William Henry Talbot UK

Inventions from the WIRED ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
Pitman shorthand data recording manually 1837 Isaac Pitman UK
Silver based photo processing Daguerrotype 1837 Louis Daguerre France
Rotary printing press 1843 Richard Marx Hoe USA
Color photography images in color 1855 James Clerk Maxwell UK
Continuous roll printing press high volume printing 1863 William A. Bullock USA
Typewriter QWERTY keyboard 1866 Christopher Latham Sholes USA
Phonograph sound recording 1877 Thomas Alva Edison USA (88)
Ball point pen early 1880 Alonzo T. Cross USA
Fountain pen no dip required 1884 Lewis Waterman USA
Plastic film 1884 George Eastman USA
Typewriter ink ribbon continuous ink for typing 1886 George K. Anderson USA
Gramophone disc phonograph recorder on records 1887 Emile Berliner Germany/USA
Shellac (wax) compounds for phonographic discs 1887 Emile Berliner Germany/USA
Push button film camera easy photography 1888 George Eastman (Kodak) USA
Kinetoscope motion pictures 1888 Thomas Alva Edison USA
Juke box record playing machine 1889 Lewis Glass USA
Motion picture camera and projector 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumiere France (37)

Inventions from the WIRELESS ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
Talking sound film talkies 1923 Lee DeForest USA
Leica 35 film camera single lens reflex SLR camera 1925 Oskar Barnack Germany
Audio tape recorder magnetic tape sound 1928 Fritz Pfleumer Germany
Vinyl record disc phonograph recording 1932 RCA Victor
Photocopying xerography 1937 Chester F. Carlson USA
Practical ballpoint pen ink writing made easy, inexpensive 1938 Lazio and Georg Biro Hungary
Bombe Enigma code breaker universal Turing machine 1940 Alan Turing, Harold Keen UK
Instant Poloroid photograph black and white, 60 second 1946 Edwin Herbert Land USA
Long playing record, 45 min LP phonograph record 1948 Peter Carl Goldmark USA
Holography 3-dimensional image 1948 Dennis Gabor Hungary
Magnetic tape storage 1951 Univac/IBM, USA (81)
       
Universal bar code 1952 N. Joseph Woodland, Bernard Silver USA
Computer mouse mechanical 1952 Douglas Englebart USA
Videotape recorder 1953 Norikazu Sawazaki Japan
Felt tip pen Magic Marker 1953 Sidney Rosenthal USA
Fortran computer programming language 1954 John Backus, IBM USA
Hard drive memory RAMAC 305 1956 Reynold B. Johnson , IBM USA
Rolodex rotary card filing system 1956 Hildaur L. Neilsen, Arnold Neustadter USA
Card magnetic stripe 1958 Forrest Parry USA
Personal computer single user 1958 IBM USA
Optical disc 1961 David Paul Gregg, James Russell USA
Audio cassette tape 1962 Phillips Netherlands
Color Polaroid photograph instant color picture 1963 Edwin Herbert Land USA
BASIC language beginner's all purpose symbolic instruction code 1964 John Kemeny, Tom Kurtz USA
8 track tape 1964 Bill Lear USA
CD-ROM compact disc, read only memory 1966 James T. Russell USA
Hypertext language of the internet 1968 Ted Nelson, Andries van Dam USA
Graphical user interface 1968 Douglas Englebart USA
Microprocessor chip in credit card improved security of data 1968 Helmut Grottup, Jurgen Dethloff Germany
RAM random access memory 1968 Robert Dennard USA
ARAPANET Dept of Defense 1969 Advanced Research Projects Agency USA
E book electronic book 1969 Alan Kay USA
Pascal programming language 1970 Niklaus Wirth Switzerland
Video cassette recorder VCR 1970 Charkes Paulson Ginsburg USA
Floppy disc memory 1971 David L. Noble, IBM USA
Single chip microprocessor, Intel 4004 90,000 operations/second 1971 Federico Fagin, Ted Hoff USA
Universal product code UPC 1971 George Laverer USA
Internet protocol TCP/IP 1973 Vinton Cerf, Robert E. Kahn USA
Voicemail 1973 Scott A. Jones USA
Digital camera 1975 Steven Sasson Kodak USA
Laptop computer, notebook portable computer 1975 IBM, Compaq USA
Cray supercomputer 1976 Seymour Cray USA
Apple II computer 1976 Steve Wozniak USA
Optical mouse LED 1980 Steve Kirsch, Richard F. Lyon USA
Flash memory 1980 Fujio Masuoka, Toshiba USA
Camcorder video recorder 1983 Jerome Lemelson, SONY Japan
Microsoft Word digital documents 1983 Charles Simonyi, Richard Brodie USA
Cloud storage, business, government off site data storage 1983 Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider USA
Apple Macintosh mouse driven with graphic user interface 1984 Steve Jobs et al. USA
C++ language computer programming 1985 Bjarne Stroustrup Denmark
Windows OS operating system for computers 1985 Bill Gates, Microsoft USA
Touch pad 1988 George Gerpheide USA

Inventions from the INTERNET ERA Era

InventionDescriptionYearInventorCountry
World Wide Web internet 1989 Tim Berners-Lee UK. (24)
MP3 compression allows music with far less memory 1989 Karlheinz Brandenburg Germany
USB flashdrive small, portable memory 1989 Dov Moran Israel
Python computer programming language 1989 Guido van Rossum Netherlands
Digital camera practical, consumer 1990 Steven Sasson, Logitech USA
Photoshop image manipulation 1990 Thomas Knoll, John Knoll USA
Linux operating system Linux OS 1991 Linus Torvalds Finland/USA
Digital video disc DVD 1993 consortium of companies Japan/USA/Netherlands
Mosaic XS web browser early search engine 1993 Marc Andreessen, Eric Bina USA
Personal cloud storage virtually limitless offsite digital storage 1994 Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider USA
Yahoo search engine 1994 Jerry Yang, David Filo USA
Compact flash memory small, portable 1994 San Disk USA
C-MOS image sensor for digital camera 1994 Eric R. Fossum USA
Java computer programming language WORA write once, run anywhere 1995 James Gosling USA
Digital video recorder DVR records TV programs for later viewing 1995 Panasonic and SONY Japan
Compact disc - reWritable CD-RW allows changes in data stored 1997 James Russell USA
WiFi protocol WiFi 802.11 wireless internet 1997 John O'Sullivan Australia (70)
Recordable digital video disc video recorded and edited with much storage of data 1997 David Paul Gregg, James Russell USA
Google popular search engine 1998 Larry Page, Sergey Brin USA (55)
Human radiofrequency identification chip RFID chip with digital, retrievable data 1998 Charles Walton UK/USA
WWW mobile phone access internet on your phone 1999 NTT DoCoMo Japan
TiVo digital video recorder, smart DVR 1999 Jim Barton, Mike Ramsey USA
Blu-Ray enhanced video quality 2000 Shuji Nakamura Japan
Camera phone images anywhere, anytime 2000 Phillip Kahn, Sharp France/USA/Japan
Solid state disc module memory SSD card, easily transferable data 2000 SanDisk, Toshiba, Matsushita USA/Japan
WiFi router wireless internet in your home/office 2000 John O'Sullivan, Vic Hayes, William Yeager Australia
Ipod compact music, data delivery 2001 Tony Fadell USA
Itunes database of digital music 2001 Bill Kincaid USA
Wikipedia internet encyclopedia 2001 Larry Sanger, Jimmy Wales USA/UK
Body camera for law enforcement 2005 first used Denmark
YouTube personal submission video platform 2005 Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen USA (95)
Mirrorless camera allows smaller size, lighter body 2005, 2008 SONY, Panasonic Japan
Printing on demand reduces inventory 2006 Victor Celorio USA
Netflix internet movies and programming on demand 2007 Marc Randolph, Reed Hastings USA
Android operating system Android OS 2008 Andy Rubin,Rich Miner, Nick Sears, Chris White USA
3-dimensional 360 degrees hologram 3D images 2010 SONY Japan
Instagram image sharing platform 2010 Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger USA
Ipad tablet computer 2012 Steve Jobs et al. USA
Google glass computer worn 2012 Sebastian Thrum USA

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