It seems that the years ending in 9 make great moments for inventions, and there are truly massive ones for us to celebrate. But also, there are a number of interesting ones in years that are at the mid-point, ie 25 or 15 or 35 year anniversaries. Lets celebrate in order of age:
Just now, actually literally on 29th of October is the 40th anniversary of the internet, as Professor Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA made the first connection and communication with Stanford Research Institute, connecting the first two 'nodes' of the ARPANET what later became the internet. We celebrate 40 years of the internet, and from those very humble beginnings, at the end of 1969 there were only 4 nodes on this fledgeling global computer network, and today we have over one billion users on the internet. What a ride... Note that this is quite fast, as previously other billion-user systems took forever to reach that level, the telephone (landline phone obviously) took over 120 years to reach a billion users. Television took over 60 years to achieve that. And the internet did it in a little under 40 years. But its not the only new billion-user system we celebrate today.
Because from 1974 we find the first personal computer. The Altair launched 35 years ago, and yes, the world has also last year passed the point of one billion PCs in use around the world. Wow.
Another milestone, which may be more subtle and treacherous, is that of the pocket computer. While nobody dared to suggest it was one, the first user-programmable pocket calculator, the HP 65 was also launched in 1974, so this, very modest but by all definitions still it was the first pocketable computer - think your iPhone today - traces its history to this year and celebrates 35 years. Star Trek's Spock would be proud... Obviously we don't have a billion pocketable computing devices, if we define the smartphone as a pocket PC, but will soon achieve that, within a couple of years. So it will soon become yet another billion-user gadget.
Fast forward five years, and we get to 1979. It was first of December 1979, that the world's first commercial cellular automated (and 'modern') mobile telecoms network went live in Tokyo Japan, launched by NTT.ANd yes the mobile phone subscriber count will hit 4.6 billion by the end of the year. We passed a billion users in 2002, so it only took 23 years to hit a billion mobile phones on the planet.
Another massive consumer hit was launched in 1979, also in Japan, when Sony introduced the Walkman. Pocketable music players, initially cassette based Walkmans and clones, then CD players and now MP3 players like the iPod have certainly sold into the far past half billion level, although I do think we are still a way from a billion stand-alone pocketable MP3 players.. Now, if we count all musicphones also into the mix - and why not, many of them are also used as MP3 players - then yes, we shoot past another billion users. Thank you Sony..
And while the music entertainment got a massive new hit product in 1979, so too did the movies and TV industry, but this was a somewhat stillborn solution. Philips and Sony released the first Digital Video Disk system commercially in 1979. You might think that must be the DVD we all have in our homes, but no, this is the predecessor, the giant platters - size of old LP record alums, or bigger than dinner plates - but it was the start of the home video disk player market for movies, and it later spawned the smaller DVD format and another platform that is soon approaching a billion devices in use in most homes that have a TV set.
Now, while the PC is 35 years old today, the 'modern' PC is not. Those early PCs required users to go to take courses just to be able to operate the PCs. The modern PC era was ushered in by the Apple Macintosh, and all modern PCs, Windows based, Linux based and Macintosh based, can trace their user interface and ease-of-use to that ground-breaking personal computer. And yes, the Mac was launched in 1984, so it is 25 years old this year. Thank you Apple ! How many "windows" style PCs are there in use, yes, over a billion.
The really big innovation for the media industries is the digitalization of all content. The mass market solution for that was the music CD, which converted the music industry from analog recording media to the CD format and digital songs. The MP3 market such as the iPod would have been impossble without it, as all songs had to be converted to digital format. When did the CD Rom arrive? Sony and Philips introduced the CD Rom in 1984, so it too is 25 years old, and has passed a billion player devices in use around the planet by now.
Lets skip to 1989, and another technology familiar to all of our readers appears, as Tim Berners-Lee invents the WorldWide Web. Note this is not the same as the internet, even though most users today equate the internet with 'the web' - on the internet you can do a lot of various communication and data activities using the "IP" Internet Protocol. You can do emails, chat, upload and download files using FTP, do voice calls like Skype using Voice over IP, etc. None of these require users to use the WWW web browser, although often the WWW interface is now used. But like the Mac changed the geeky PC to mass markets, so too did the WWW change the internet from geeky nerds to the masses. And yes, we hit a billion users of the web a couple of years ago. But yes, the worldwide web? is 20 years old this year. Happy birthday.
I just spotted a story earlier today on Twitter, that digital advertising is 15 years old, as the first web banner ads appeared in 1984. While technically that was not the first form of digital advertising, as I have written, the fisrt ever ads on the internet were launched earlier that year, when NYNEX in New York had its yellow pages (ads) launched onto the Prodigy proprietary BBS (Bulletin Board System) in January 1984, and then not related to NYNEX, Prodigy became the first of the major BBS providers to open their system to the full internet in February of that year. That was when any internet users on the planet, could access the NYNEX yellow pages ads that had been on Prodigy.. But nonetheless, digital advertising is now 15 years old, and yes, has more than a billion people viewing digital ads (over 2 billion by now, when we add mobile phone ads which are also digital)
I want to add one interesting anniversary here that is not anywhere near a billion users, but will no doubt get there, and that is multiplayer virtual worlds. Like Second Life, Habbo Hotel, World of Warcraft, etc. The world's first multi-user virtual environment built into 3D was the Virtual Helsinki project, which was opened to users in 1999, so our virtual worlds are also ten years old. I happened to be close to the Virtual Helsinki project as my former employer Helsinki Telephone Company (now known as Elisa) was a sponsor and technology provider to that project and several of my close colleagues were invoved with it, as I had by then moved on and was employed by Nokia.
And last but by no means least, the mobile internet is 10 years old. Launched by NTT DoCoMo of Japan in 1999, its iconic iMode mobile internet was the first mobile-optimized internet service and spawned countless copies and today counting all the WAP users etc, has over a billion users. That in only ten years.. Domo Arigato, NTT DoCoMo, you have invented the fastest technology to spread to a billion users.
So 40 years for the internet, 35 years for the PC and pocket computers, 30 years for mobile phones and digital video disks as well as the Walkman, 25 years for the Mac and the CD Rom, 20 years for the WorldWide Web, 15 years for digital advertising and 10 years for virtual worlds and the mobile internet. Happy birthday all!
Just now, actually literally on 29th of October is the 40th anniversary of the internet, as Professor Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA made the first connection and communication with Stanford Research Institute, connecting the first two 'nodes' of the ARPANET what later became the internet. We celebrate 40 years of the internet, and from those very humble beginnings, at the end of 1969 there were only 4 nodes on this fledgeling global computer network, and today we have over one billion users on the internet. What a ride... Note that this is quite fast, as previously other billion-user systems took forever to reach that level, the telephone (landline phone obviously) took over 120 years to reach a billion users. Television took over 60 years to achieve that. And the internet did it in a little under 40 years. But its not the only new billion-user system we celebrate today.
Because from 1974 we find the first personal computer. The Altair launched 35 years ago, and yes, the world has also last year passed the point of one billion PCs in use around the world. Wow.
Another milestone, which may be more subtle and treacherous, is that of the pocket computer. While nobody dared to suggest it was one, the first user-programmable pocket calculator, the HP 65 was also launched in 1974, so this, very modest but by all definitions still it was the first pocketable computer - think your iPhone today - traces its history to this year and celebrates 35 years. Star Trek's Spock would be proud... Obviously we don't have a billion pocketable computing devices, if we define the smartphone as a pocket PC, but will soon achieve that, within a couple of years. So it will soon become yet another billion-user gadget.
Fast forward five years, and we get to 1979. It was first of December 1979, that the world's first commercial cellular automated (and 'modern') mobile telecoms network went live in Tokyo Japan, launched by NTT.ANd yes the mobile phone subscriber count will hit 4.6 billion by the end of the year. We passed a billion users in 2002, so it only took 23 years to hit a billion mobile phones on the planet.
Another massive consumer hit was launched in 1979, also in Japan, when Sony introduced the Walkman. Pocketable music players, initially cassette based Walkmans and clones, then CD players and now MP3 players like the iPod have certainly sold into the far past half billion level, although I do think we are still a way from a billion stand-alone pocketable MP3 players.. Now, if we count all musicphones also into the mix - and why not, many of them are also used as MP3 players - then yes, we shoot past another billion users. Thank you Sony..
And while the music entertainment got a massive new hit product in 1979, so too did the movies and TV industry, but this was a somewhat stillborn solution. Philips and Sony released the first Digital Video Disk system commercially in 1979. You might think that must be the DVD we all have in our homes, but no, this is the predecessor, the giant platters - size of old LP record alums, or bigger than dinner plates - but it was the start of the home video disk player market for movies, and it later spawned the smaller DVD format and another platform that is soon approaching a billion devices in use in most homes that have a TV set.
Now, while the PC is 35 years old today, the 'modern' PC is not. Those early PCs required users to go to take courses just to be able to operate the PCs. The modern PC era was ushered in by the Apple Macintosh, and all modern PCs, Windows based, Linux based and Macintosh based, can trace their user interface and ease-of-use to that ground-breaking personal computer. And yes, the Mac was launched in 1984, so it is 25 years old this year. Thank you Apple ! How many "windows" style PCs are there in use, yes, over a billion.
The really big innovation for the media industries is the digitalization of all content. The mass market solution for that was the music CD, which converted the music industry from analog recording media to the CD format and digital songs. The MP3 market such as the iPod would have been impossble without it, as all songs had to be converted to digital format. When did the CD Rom arrive? Sony and Philips introduced the CD Rom in 1984, so it too is 25 years old, and has passed a billion player devices in use around the planet by now.
Lets skip to 1989, and another technology familiar to all of our readers appears, as Tim Berners-Lee invents the WorldWide Web. Note this is not the same as the internet, even though most users today equate the internet with 'the web' - on the internet you can do a lot of various communication and data activities using the "IP" Internet Protocol. You can do emails, chat, upload and download files using FTP, do voice calls like Skype using Voice over IP, etc. None of these require users to use the WWW web browser, although often the WWW interface is now used. But like the Mac changed the geeky PC to mass markets, so too did the WWW change the internet from geeky nerds to the masses. And yes, we hit a billion users of the web a couple of years ago. But yes, the worldwide web? is 20 years old this year. Happy birthday.
I just spotted a story earlier today on Twitter, that digital advertising is 15 years old, as the first web banner ads appeared in 1984. While technically that was not the first form of digital advertising, as I have written, the fisrt ever ads on the internet were launched earlier that year, when NYNEX in New York had its yellow pages (ads) launched onto the Prodigy proprietary BBS (Bulletin Board System) in January 1984, and then not related to NYNEX, Prodigy became the first of the major BBS providers to open their system to the full internet in February of that year. That was when any internet users on the planet, could access the NYNEX yellow pages ads that had been on Prodigy.. But nonetheless, digital advertising is now 15 years old, and yes, has more than a billion people viewing digital ads (over 2 billion by now, when we add mobile phone ads which are also digital)
I want to add one interesting anniversary here that is not anywhere near a billion users, but will no doubt get there, and that is multiplayer virtual worlds. Like Second Life, Habbo Hotel, World of Warcraft, etc. The world's first multi-user virtual environment built into 3D was the Virtual Helsinki project, which was opened to users in 1999, so our virtual worlds are also ten years old. I happened to be close to the Virtual Helsinki project as my former employer Helsinki Telephone Company (now known as Elisa) was a sponsor and technology provider to that project and several of my close colleagues were invoved with it, as I had by then moved on and was employed by Nokia.
And last but by no means least, the mobile internet is 10 years old. Launched by NTT DoCoMo of Japan in 1999, its iconic iMode mobile internet was the first mobile-optimized internet service and spawned countless copies and today counting all the WAP users etc, has over a billion users. That in only ten years.. Domo Arigato, NTT DoCoMo, you have invented the fastest technology to spread to a billion users.
So 40 years for the internet, 35 years for the PC and pocket computers, 30 years for mobile phones and digital video disks as well as the Walkman, 25 years for the Mac and the CD Rom, 20 years for the WorldWide Web, 15 years for digital advertising and 10 years for virtual worlds and the mobile internet. Happy birthday all!
Very interesting info you've shared. Thanks!
I personally knew the 40 & 20 for Internet & WWW. But others came as a surprise. I've another one for you which I think will add up to the whole equation I guess i.e. magical number 15 with "Birth of Digital Advertising" http://bit.ly/3eMWn8
Cheers
---
@Sampad
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Best regards.
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Posted by: mobile brands | October 30, 2009 at 10:04 AM
It is big day for all INTERNET user I am regular user of this Internet this land mark invention in this word.Internet is eally prove very amazing things for all of us.
Posted by: r4 revolution ds | November 06, 2009 at 06:31 AM
The internet is 40 years old? i would have never thought that! and i deffinatly never knew the mobile was 30 years old.
Posted by: Carpet Cleaning Edinburgh | November 08, 2009 at 12:45 AM
Hi Sampad, Mobile, r4 and Carpte
Thank you all for the comments. Sampad, I mentioned that interactive ads 15 years of age actually also in the blog.
cheers
Tomi Ahonen :-)
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