Media Timeline: 1901-1925

1901

first electric typewriter, the Blickensderfer

first UK cinema opens

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams

Gillette introduces double-edged safety razor

Marconi sends radio signal across Atlantic

establishment of Australian Commonwealth; PostMaster-General's 16,000 staff account for 90% of federal bureaucracy

22,310 telephone subscribers in Australia (79% in capital cities)

1902

US Navy installs radio telephones aboard ships

photoelectric scanning used for image transfer

invention of the Teddy Bear

national syndication of comic strips in US begins when Hearst licenses his strips to other newspapers

Trans-Pacific telephone cable connects Canada and Australia

1903

London Daily Mirror illustrates only with photographs

Ford Motor Co incorporated

Schreiber and Aronson found Les Échos

1904

telephone answering machine

photograph transmitted by wire in Germany

comic book

death of Joseph Pulitzer

double-sided phonograph disc

Jaures founds L'Humanité

1905

invention of the Yellow Pages

juke box

Marcus Loew and Adolph Zukor form Loews Consolidated theatre chain

Australian Wireless Telegraphy Act regulates local airwaves

1906

offset press

first classical music radio broadcast

de Forest invents three-element vacuum tube

Dunwoody and Pickard build crystal-&-cat's-whisker radio

animated cartoon film

Fessenden invents wireless telephony

experimental sound-on-film motion picture

experimental radio transmissions at Queenscliff, Victoria and Devonport, Tasmania by the Marconi Company

1907

Bell & Howell develop a film projection system

Lumiere brothers invent still colour photography process

electric washing machine - The Thor

United Press International (UPI) founded

Melbourne to Sydney telephone trunk line

1908

Ford's Model T

electric iron and toaster patented

Mills & Boon founded

Sidgwick & Jackson founded

Christian Science Monitor founded

1909

radio distress signal saves 1,700 lives after ships collide

first broadcast talk (on votes for women)

pianos reach maximum market penetration in UK households at one per ten people

1910

Amalgamated Wireless Australia (AWA) formed

first live opera broadcast

Harrap founded

1911

UK and Australian Copyright Acts provide protection for author's lifetime plus 50 years

American Tobacco Company controls 92% of world's tobacco business, just a bit more than Microsoft's share of the browser market in early 2001

Photoplay magazine launched - first movie fan magazine and "genesis of celebrity culture"

nationalisation of National Telephone Co in UK

1912

WW Astor and WT Stead die in the Titanic

Mises' The Theory of Money & Credit

US passes law to control radio stations

first neon sign

first airmail

first automatic telephone exchange in Australia

1913

portable phonograph

est one-third of British households own a phonograph

first newspaper crossword puzzle

1914

radio message is sent to an airplane

35mm still camera

American Audit Bureau of Circulations formed

ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers) founded

Allen & Unwin founded

first transcontinental telephone call in US

Melbourne to Adelaide telephone trunk

1915

wireless radio service connects US and Japan

radio-telephone carries speech across Atlantic

Birth of a Nation

electric loudspeaker

1916

United Newspapers formed in UK

Hugenberg gains control of Scherl

Sarnoff envisages radio as "a household utility"

cameras get optical rangefinders

radios get tuners

US postal inspectors solve last known stagecoach robbery

1917

photocomposition begins

Wente's condenser microphone

Capek uses term "robot" in Opilek

1915

first regular airmail service: Washington to New York

Beaverbrook founds Sunday Express

first direct radio message from UK to Australia received at AWA's Wahroonga facility

1919

rotary dial telephones

Eccles & Jordan's flip-flop circuit

shortwave radio

est. 1 million miles flown on scheduled routes (with 7,500 passengers)

Joseph Medill Patterson founds New York Illustrated Daily News

Crowell Publishing Company buys Colliers

1920

Pearson-controlled Westminister Press buys UK provincial newspaper chains

merger of Agence Havas and Société Générale des Annonces advertising agency

Heinemann founded

Nazi Party buys Franz Eher Verlag and Völkischer Beobachter

first broadcasting stations opened

KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcasts first scheduled radio programs

first US transcontinental airmail

1921

Wittgenstein's Tractatus

de Volkskrant founded

Western Union begins wirephoto service

soap powder for washing machines

first hamburger chain, White Castle

Thorsten Veblen's The Engineers & the Price System

1922

UK BBC formed as commercial radio broadcaster

UFA film company consolidated

Technicolour introduces two-colour process for movies

average US weekly movie attendance is 40 million (1.56 per household)

first film with optical sound track produced by UFA

first radio advertisement in USA, US$100 for ten minutes

first 3-D movie

Dwiggins coins term 'graphic design'

Nanook of the North, first documentary

first portable radio in US

PCF gains control of L'Humanité

1923

Sydney to Brisbane telephone trunk line

Disneys found film studio in Hollywood

electric guitar

first commercial radio broadcasting in Australia

Book-of-the-Month Club founded

Phaidon founded

Zworykin's electronic iconoscope camera and kinescope display

A C Nielsen founded

Young & Rubicam founded

16mm nonflammable film

Kodak introduces home movie equipment

Time magazine

Edward Bernays writes Crystallizing Public Opinion

1924

Marlboro is launched, targeted at women with the line 'Mild as May'

invention of spiral binding for notebooks

invention of Vegemite

The Eveready Hour is first sponsored radio program in US

IBM incorporated

Music Corporation of America (MCA) founded

2.5 million radio sets in the US

MacFadden launches New York Evening Graphic

Coolidge spends US$120,000 on radio time in first radio presidential campaign

Loew buys Metro Pictures

Bathursts sell Morning Post to Duke of Northumberland consortium

1925

Leica 35 mm camera

commercial picture facsimile radio service across the US

electric phonograph

wide-screen film

Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

AT&T establishes Bell Labs

Random House founded

Faber & Gwyer founded

Marinho takes control of O Globo newspaper