1926 to 1950

This page of the timeline covers -

• 1930
• 1935
• 1940
• 1945

     1926

General Electric forms Radio Corporation of America (RCA)

UK government nationalises BBC

first radio jingle: Wheaties

Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship case (Engineers Case) in Australia

sales of pianos in western economies peak?

first telephone cable laid across New Zealand's Cook Strait

first traffic lights in Berlin

James McKinsey founds McKinsey & Co

commercial picture facsimile radio service across Atlantic

Baird demonstrates electro-mechanical TV system

first 16mm movie is shot in the US

NBC radio network

Bell Labs transmit film by television

Associated Telephone Utilities established in US

Aniline printing developed

     1927

first Hawthorne study at Western Electric

NBC begins two radio networks

Jolson's The Jazz Singer is the first popular "talkie"

Lang's Metropolis

Japanese financial crisis

Movietone offers sound newsreels

US Radio Act declares public ownership of the airwaves

Technicolor

International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) formed

JVC formed

Heidegger's Sein und Zeit

Banks of NSW buys Western Australian Bank (founded 1841)

Remington Rand formed from Powers Accounting Machine, Remington Typewriter and Rand Kardex

Lindbergh Bubble in US high tech stocks

G J Coles & Co expands to Sydney

Myer buys Jas. Marshall & Co of Adelaide

1 car per 5 people in US, 1 per 44 people in France, 1 per 200 in Germany

     1928

UK Imperial Wireless & Cable Conference

US broadcasters agree to ban radio ads during 'family hour'

Baird demonstrates colour TV on electro-mechanical system

first Mickey Mouse cartoon

Pleumer patents magnetic tape

teletype machine

Bernays' Propaganda

Jacob Schick devises practical electric razor

Baird beams TV image from UK to US

first scheduled television broadcasts in US

IBM adopts 80-column punched card

United Independent Broadcasters restructured as Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)

Olmstead v US wiretapping decision by US Supreme Court

Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques and Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston establish Alsthom

     1929

Nyquist Theorem

telegraph ticker sends 500 characters per minute

ship passengers can phone relatives ashore

Sydney-Melbourne picturegram service launched

Cobb & Co dissolved

brokers watch stock prices on an automated electric board

car radio invented

Dewey's The Quest For Certainty

first magnetic sound recording on plastic tape

first television studio built in London

Variety reports that 'Wall Street Lays An Egg'

Bell Labs transmits stills in colour by mechanical scanning

Zworykin's cathode-ray tube "kinescope" receiver, 60 scan lines

Imperial & International Communications (successor to Eastern Telegraph Company) in UK transmits 244 million words

Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co in UK merges with Imperial & International

     1930

first Australia-New Zealand telephone link

Tolley v J S Fry & Sons Ltd

experimental 30-line TV transmissions in the UK

photo flashbulbs replace flash powder

first use of TV for advertising via closed circuit in UK and US

Lowell Thomas comperes first regular US network newscast

Bush's differential analyzer

Lasswell's Psychopathology & Politics

Bank for International Settlements founded

International Convention for the Suppression of Counterfeiting Currency

Geophysical Service Inc founded in US, later becomes Texas Instruments

AT&T trials picture telephone

Melbourne to Perth telephone trunk line

London to Melbourne telephone service

500,000 telephones in Sweden

Keynes' A Treatise On Money

     1931

commercial teletype service

Bell & another v Lever Brothers Ltd & others

Macmillan Committee report on UK Finance & Industry

electronic TV broadcasts in Los Angeles and Moscow

exposure meters on sale to photographers

Creditanstalt and Därmstadter & National banks fold

Bank of NSW buys Australian Bank of Commerce

Goldberg gains US patent for applying electronic signals to selection of data on microfilm

Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften

EMI formed in UK

Empire State Building, New York (1,250 feet)

France and US hold est 75% of world's gold stock

Crossley system for rating size of radio program audiences

     1932

General Electric divests RCA

Donoghue v Stevenson

first colour photo in a British newspaper, The Times

Times uses Morrison's new Times Roman typeface

Kodak introduces 8 mm film for home movies

stereophonic sound in a motion picture, Gance's Napoleon

zoom lens invented

NBC and CBS allow prices to be mentioned in radio commercials

International Telecommunications Union

Berle & Means' The Modern Corporation & Private Property

Ottawa Agreement on Commonwealth Preference in Trade

Coles expands to Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth

     1933

first Mars bar

Volksempfaenger radio in Germany

US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) established

Edwin Armstrong invents FM

singing telegrams

Dreft, first household detergent

stereo phonograph records

Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) established

IBM buys Electromatic Typewriters Inc

HW Egli Bull renamed Compagnie des Machines Bull

Montevideo Convention on the Rights & Duties of States

renationalisation of most of Italy's telephone industry under umbrella of Istituto per la Recostruzione Industriale

Coles expands to Launceston

     1934

drive-in movie theater opens in New Jersey

Associated Press starts wirephoto service

first overseas radiophoto published in Australian newspapers

first mobile television truck captures Nazi rally

Parker Bros launch Monopoly

3-colour Technicolor used in live action film

Bradford develops 'law of scattering' in citation analysis

half US homes have radios

Muzak founded

Pu Yi becomes emperor of Manchukuo

Marconi-EMI Television Co. Ltd formed

Imperial & International Communications becomes Cable & Wireless

23,827,000 automobiles in US, 866,000 in Germany and 109,000 in Japan

     1935

audio tape recorders on sale in Germany

Duncan v Jones

IBM markets electric typewriter

IBM markets 601 tabulator

IBM buys 86% of Bull AG

first Kit Kat in UK

BHP acquires Australian Iron & Steel

first Penguin paperback

all-electronic VHF television

Eastman-Kodak develops Kodachrome colour film

Watson Davis proposes mechanised literature searching machine

Associated Telephone Utilities in US reorganised as General Telephone (later GTE)

Allport & Cantril's The Psychology of Radio

patents registered by USPTO reach 2 million mark

     1936

Berlin Olympics are televised closed circuit

Sim v Stretch

first commercial fluorescent lights

Warner Brothers Pictures Inc v Nelson

Crystal Palace at Sydenham burns down

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) established

coaxial cable connects New York to Philadelphia

Turing describes a general purpose computer

Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Life launched

Packers buy Sydney Daily Telegraph

Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest & Money

     1937

Turing's On Computable Numbers introduces Turing machine

Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation

Coase argues that "changes like the telephone and telegraph which tend to reduce the cost of organising spatially will tend to increase the size of the firm"

NBC sends mobile TV truck onto New York streets

American Documentation Institute founded (becomes American Society for Information Science in 1963)

Hindenburg crash broadcast coast to coast in US

Greater Union Theatres (GU) group in Australia

Snow White is first feature-length cartoon

     1938

Baird demonstrates live TV in colour

Biro brothers invent ballpoint pen

New York Times announces death of the pencil

first synthesis of lysergic acid diethylamide

CBS World News Roundup ushers in modern newscasting

radio surpasses magazines as a source of ad revenue in US

Cable & Wireless (successor to Imperial & International) in UK transmits transmits 231 million words

War of the Worlds broadcast frightens chattering classes

Zuse's prototype mechanical binary programmable calculator

Carlson's prototype xerographic image

Samsung established

     1939

Atanasoff-Berry Computer, first electronic digital computer

Bush constructs prototype Microfilm Rapid Selector (MRS)

New York World's Fair shows television to public

first regular TV ads

AT Kearney founded

radio in 75% of German households

Drucker's The End of Economic Man

Hewlett-Packard founded

     1940

Disney's Fantasia introduces stereo sound

CBS demonstrates color television in New York

80% of US homes have radio

Lazarsfeld's Radio & the Printed Page

400 television sets in USSR

Wilson's To the Finland Station

Sutherland coins 'white collar crime'

     1941

Citizen Kane

stereo installed in Moscow movie theater

Liversidge v Anderson

FCC sets US TV standards

first colour TV commercial, for Bulova watches

microwave transmission

Zuse's Z3 computer

electricity in 85% of US homes

52% of US homes have electric refrigerators, 79% have electric irons

BHP opens blast furnace and shipyard at Whyalla

     1942

Academic Press founded

Lamarr & Antheil patent for secure "spread spectrum" communications

Statute of Westminster Adoption Act

Kodacolor process produces the colour print

459,361 phone subscribers in Italy

Wannsee Conference

Drucker's The Future of Industrial Man

Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy

     1943

PA Consultants founded

Autism identified

Lyndall Urwick's The Elements of Administration

     1944

Harvard's Mark I, first digital computer

IBM offers typewriter with proportional spacing

first high-fidelity recordings

Lemkin coins term 'genocide'

Commonwealth introduces Pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) tax system

von Neumann & Morgenstern's Theory of Games & Economic Behavior

Asperger's Syndrome identified

     1945

Clarke describes geosynchronous communication satellites

UNESCO founded

Simon's Administrative Behaviour

first bumper stickers in US

Bush's 'Memex' article

Bush's Science, the Endless Frontier: Report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research

launch of monthly Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS)

establishment of Ecole Nationale d'Administration

     1946

Lanham Act in US

Joyce v The Director of Public Prosecutions

Price Waterhouse forms consulting unit

United Nations established

Warren Avis founds Avis Airlines Rent-A-Car

term 'bit' used for first time by John Tukey

first network tv soap opera

jukeboxes go into mass production

ENIAC makes 5,000 additions in one second

International Court of Justice replaces Permanent Court of International Justice

automobile radio telephones connect to US phone network

Love Me Sailor censorship trial in Australia

Drucker's Concept of the Corporation

over 200 new mass-oriented magazines launched in US

IBM markets 603 electronic tabulator

English Electric buys Marconi

     1947

Marshall Plan

invention of transistor

zoom lens used in US baseball world series TV

holography invented

Booz Allen's revenue reaches US$2m pa

nationalisation of Cable & Wireless in UK

International Telecommunication Union (ITU) becomes UN agency

Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) formed in Australia

'loi Bichet' in France

supposed Roswell Incident

     1948

Claude Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication

Harry Stockman's Communication by Means of Reflected Power lays foundation for RFID development

Wiener's Cybernetics

Wertham's The Show of Violence

invention of LP record and Polaroid camera

McCollum v Champaign Board of Education (US)

News of the World sells 8 million copies in UK

Holtzbrinck founded

launch of Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP)

Berlin Airlift

establishment of Australian Broadcasting Control Board

US weekly cinema population peaks at 90 million

Organization for European Economic Cooperation

Universal Postal Union becomes UN specialised agency

IBM markets 604 tabulator

Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN) founded

National Bank of Australasia buys Queensland National Bank

Wheare Committee on Children & the Cinema in UK

     1949

birth of US network TV

disposable syringe invented in Australia

RCA introduces 45 rpm record

Mao proclaims Peoples Republic of China

regional use of cable television in US

first commercial computer

magnetic core computer memory

Australian CSIRAC computer perform its first controlled program

Olivetti-Bull joint venture established

Alfred Jones launches first hedge fund

Western Electric sells stake in Northern Electric

Coles buys Neway Cash & Carry Stores and Hoskins Stores

SITA formed to provide data services to airline industry

The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy initiate television Western genre

     1950

Turing's Computing Machinery & Intelligence

Riesman's The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character

Berkner Report on S&T information in the US

Remington-Rand acquires Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp

Polaroid begins to photograph CRT displays, precursor of computer output microfilm (COM)

NBC launches Today show and The Adventures of Superman (faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings etc)

Phonevision, first pay-per-view service

AC Nielsen's Audimeters start to track TV viewing

changeable typewriter typefaces in use

first credit card - Diners Club

Cable & Wireless in UK transmits 650 million words pa

European Coal & Steel Community founded

Canadian Overseas Telecommunication Corporation founded

Celler-Kefauver Act (US)





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