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The History of Electronics, part 6
The History of Electronics
Inventors and their Inventions
Over the last five issues, we have described many individuals and organisations that
made vital contributions to electronics. Their work made modern technology possible.
Many significant developments also emerged from universities, companies and other
organisations since 1962, described in this sixth and ultimate part of the series.
Part 6: by Dr David Maddison
T
his final article covers significant inventions that cannot be
attributed to an individual
made from 1963 to the present. They
are associated with a company or
governmental organisation, either
because we don’t know the name(s)
of the inventors, or because they were
part of a team. Unlike the first four
parts, which were organised by the
date of birth of the inventor, this one
(like the last) will list them by the
year of the invention or discovery.
Image Source: www.pexels.com/photo/2047905/
Because this list is of more recent
inventions, you will notice that most
of the entries are related to developments in computers, communications
and software.
Of course, there are too many technological developments over the last
62 years to list them all here; this will
merely be a sampling of what we think
are the most significant developments.
Philips compact casette, ASCII etc
1963
COMPAC (the Commonwealth Pacific Cable System) undersea telephone
cable was completed, linking Australia,
New Zealand and Canada via Hawaii
and Fiji. Parts had been operating since
1961. This coaxial cable could handle
80 phone calls or 1760 teleprinter circuits. It replaced HF radio telephone
calls, which had to be booked and
were delayed if transmission conditions were bad.
Philips introduced the first audio
cassette tape, the “Compact Cassette”.
The first transpacific television transmission via satellite was made between
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Practical Electronics | June | 2025
13
Feature Article
Japan and the USA, via the experimental Relay 1 communications satellite
in an elliptical orbit.
Nottingham Electric Valve Company in the UK released the Telcan
(Fig.68), a videotape recorder intended
for domestic use. It used ¼-inch audio
reel-to-reel tape running at 305cm per
second, a very high speed for this type
of tape, and could record up to 20 minutes of monochrome video on one of
two tracks. The recording bandwidth
of 2.6MHz provided 405 lines.
It was mainly sold as a kit, for £60,
equivalent to about £1000 today. It was
a commercial failure; for more details,
see https://pemag.au/link/abp1
The first edition of the ASCII character encoding standard was published.
TPC-1, Xerox fax system, BASIC etc
1964
The Trans-Pacific cable system,
TPC-1, linking Japan, Guam, Hawaii
and the mainland USA became operational. It carried 128 telephone
circuits.
Xerox introduced the first modern
commercial fax system, which they
called Long Distance Xerography or
LDX.
The BASIC computer programming
language was released.
The first prototype Moog electronic
music synthesiser was built by Robert
Moog (1934-2005). Commercial models
were produced from 1967.
geosynchronous satellite Intelsat I etc
1965
The Dadda hardware binary multiplier was invented by Luigi Dadda
(1923-2012) for computer arithmetic
operations. It was smaller and faster
than the previous implementation.
Sony released the CV-2000 (CV =
“consumer video”), the first mass-
produced domestic video tape recorder
(see Fig.69). It recorded in monochrome
and used 13mm tape in a reel-to-reel
format. It had broad uptake among
business and educational institutions.
Its inability to adjust head tracking
meant it was impossible to swap tapes
between machines; that was corrected
in later versions.
The first commercial geosynchronous satellite, Intelsat I, was launched.
It carried either 240 telephone circuits or one TV circuit. It was in use
for over four years until it was deactivated, with a temporary reactivation for use for the Apollo 11 mission,
and another temporary reactivation in
1990 to mark its 25th Anniversary. It
is still in orbit.
Magnafax telecopier (fax machine)
PAL standard, ATM, WRESAT etc
1967
The SECAM colour television standard was released and adopted in France.
PAL standard colour television started broadcasting in the UK.
The world’s first automated teller
machine (ATM) was installed at Barclay’s Bank, Enfield, UK. It was operated by inserting cheques, previously
issued by a teller, marked with radioactive carbon-14 for machine readability and to confirm their authenticity.
Australia’s first locally made satellite, WRESAT, was launched. Silicon
Chip had an article on WRESAT in its
October 2017 issue (see siliconchip.
au/Article/10822).
LCDs, Group 1 fax standards
1968
A team at RCA Laboratories demonstrated an 18×2 matrix liquid crystal
display (LCD) using dynamic scattering mode (DSM), invented by George
Figs.68: a Telcan home video recorder, sold mainly
as a kit using ¼-inch audio tape. Source: www.
nottinghampost.com/news/history/20-best-thingsnottingham-given-192680
14
1966
Xerox introduced the first easy-to-use
fax machine, the Magnafax Telecopier,
that used standard telephone lines.
Heilmeier (described in the April issue).
The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) released Group 1 fax
standards. Conforming machines took
about six minutes to transmit a page at
96 lines per inch (38 per cm).
MOS DRAM, Unix, ARPANET etc
1969
Commercial production of MOS
DRAM (metal oxide semiconductor
dynamic random access memory) was
started by Advanced Memory Systems,
Inc, and was offered to selected companies. The chips contained 1024 bits
of memory.
In the same year, Intel produced the
1103 memory chip, also with 1024
bits, and sold it on the open market.
It was used in popular computers
such as the HP 9800 series and the
PDP-11.
The Unix operating system for computers was released.
The first commercial quartz oscillator watch was introduced, the Seiko
Quartz-Astron 35SQ. It had an accuracy of ±5 seconds per month and a
battery life of around one year.
The US Department of Defense (DoD)
Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) established a packet-switched
computer network, ARPANET (see
Fig.70), which eventually evolved into
the internet we have today.
digital fax machine, pocket calculator
1970
Dacom produced the first digital fax
machine, the DFC-10, that used data
compression and could transmit a page
in under one minute.
The Pascal computer programming
language was released.
The first commercial handheld
pocket calculator, the Canon Pocketronic (Fig.71), became available.
It was influenced by the prototype
Fig.69: the Sony CV-2000, the first mass-manufactured video
recorder for the domestic market. It used half-inch (12.7mm) reelto-reel tape. Source: www.smecc.org/sony_ cv_ series_video.htm
Practical Electronics | June | 2025
The History of Electronics, part 6
Texas Instruments Cal Tech calculator of 1967 and used three TI MOS
integrated circuits. It had no display;
results were printed on paper tape.
For more information, see https://
pemag.au/link/abp4
Intel 4004, Kenbak-1 PC, EPROM etc
1971
The first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004, was released. It
was mainly intended for calculators
and cash machines.
The US DoD funded a five-year program to make a speech recognition machine that could recognise 1000 words
within sentences. A machine called
Harpy was built that recognised 1,011
words; see the PDF at https://pemag.
au/link/abp5
Docutel introduced the “Total Teller”
machine, an ATM that could accept
deposits, transfer from one account to
another and dispense cash. It operated offline using plastic cards and had
a mechanical display with messages
on a printed cylinder. By 1975, 3000
ATMs had been installed worldwide,
80% from Docutel. In 1982, Docutel
merged with Olivetti.
The first personal computer (without a microprocessor) was released,
the Kenbak-1 (Fig.72). Only 40 were
sold.
Intel released the first EPROM
(Erasable Programmable Read Only
Memory), invented by Dov Frohman. The Intel 1702 could store 256
bytes of data.
Sony released the U-matic video
cassette format to market, the first
commercial video cassette format.
It used ¾-inch (19mm) tape. It was
initially intended for the consumer market but was too expensive; it
became popular in the institutional
and industrial markets, plus the television industry.
S ilicon C hip magazine had a detailed series of articles on the history
of videotape recording in its March,
April, May & June 2021 issues (see
siliconchip.au/Series/359).
Intel 8008, C, Pong, blue LEDs etc
Fig.70: a map of ARPANET, the internet’s predecessor, as it appeared in 1973.
Source: https://w.wiki/7FPK
Fig.71 (below): the Canon Pocketronic, the
first commercial handheld electronic
calculator. Source: https://w.
wiki/7EG3 (CC-BY-SA-4.0).
Fig.72 (below): Kenbak-1, the first
personal computer from 1971. Source:
https://w.wiki/7FPV (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
1972
The Philips VCR (video cassette recorder) format N1500 player/recorder
was introduced for the domestic market.
The last Philips VCR recorder was released in 1979.
The eight-inch (20.3cm) floppy disk
was commercially released.
The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) Group 2 fax standards were published. Conforming machines took about three minutes to
Practical Electronics | June | 2025
15
Feature Article
transmit a page at 96 lines per inch
(38 per cm).
Cartrivision, a consumer videotape
cartridge format, was introduced. The
machines were built into expensive
TV sets, which were a commercial
failure. See www.angelfire.com/alt/
cartrivision/
The Unix operating system was
rewritten in the C language, so 1972
could be considered a date when C
became mainstream. C was mainly
developed between 1969 and 1973
and is still widely used today (in its
original form and derivatives like
C++ and C#).
The first microprocessor for personal computers was released, the 8-bit
Intel 8008.
The world’s first scientific pocket
calculator was introduced, the HP-35.
Pong, the first commercially successful computer game, was released. We
created a modern, miniaturised version that was published as a project
in the August 2022 issue of Practical
Electronics.
The first blue LED was invented at
RCA by Herbert Paul Maruska (1944~),
but the company was in turmoil and
the project was cancelled. Also, the
device was too dim for practical use;
see https://pemag.au/link/abp6
Eventually, Isamu Akasaki (19292021), Hiroshi Amano (1960~), and
Shūji Nakamura (1954~) won the
Nobel Prize in 2014 for their 1993 invention of high-brightness blue LEDs
at Nagoya University in Japan.
White LEDs are blue LEDs with
a scintillator coating (similar to a
phosphor).
SPICE, Ethernet, graphical interfaces
EDUC-8 computer, CP/M OS etc
16
1974
Electronics Australia published what
was thought at the time to be the world’s
first kit computer, the EDUC-8 (Fig.75),
but it was later found to have been
beaten by a competitor by one month,
the Mark-8. However, the EA design
was considered superior.
Bravo was the first ‘WYSIWYG’ document preparation program, running
on the Xero Alto computer, an early
word processor.
The CP/M computer operating system
was introduced, later displaced by
MS-DOS.
Kodak digital camera, Betamax etc
Fig.73: the Xerox Alto computer from
1973. Source: https://w.wiki/7EG4
1973
Micral released the first personal
computer with a microprocessor (the
Intel 8008).
The SPICE (Simulation Program with
Integrated Circuit Emphasis) analog
circuit simulation program was introduced. It and its derivatives (like
LTspice) are still widely used today.
Ethernet was invented by Robert
Melancton Metcalfe (1946~) and his
team working at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) in California. It is one of the key technologies
of the internet.
Motorola demonstrated the cellular
mobile phone, although it took some
time to commercialise.
The first tuneable laser was demonstrated at Bell Labs.
The Xerox Alto computer (Fig.73)
was released, the first computer with
a graphical user interface and a mouse
(see Fig.74), ten years before the Apple
Lisa. It cost US$32,000, equivalent to
$330,000 today. It also had a portrait-
orientated display.
1975
The first self-contained digital
camera was invented by Steven Sasson
(1950~) at Kodak. It had a 100×100
pixel resolution and images were
recorded digitally on cassette tape,
taking 23 seconds.
The Altair 8800 personal computer
kit was released, considered by many
to have started the microcomputer
revolution.
The Betamax home video recording
system was released (the Silicon Chip
series mentioned earlier also covers
Betamax in detail).
The Steadicam was invented by Garrett Brown and produced by Cinema
Products Corporation. It is used for
camera stabilisation, as it isolates the
operator’s movement from the camera.
Silicon Chip described the Steadicam in
its November & December 2011 issues
(siliconchip.au/Series/33).
VHS tape system, 5.25in floppy etc
1976
The first word processor for home
computers was released, called “Electric Pencil”, for use on computers such
as Altair 8800, Sol-20 and later, the
TRS-80 and the IBM PC.
The VHS home video tape system
was released.
5.25-inch (13.3cm) floppy disks
became available.
Apple II, Commodore PET, TRS-80 etc
1977
The first practical optical fibre link
was installed in Turin, Italy.
The influential Apple II, Commodore PET and TRS-80 home computers were released.
speech synthesis, LaserDisc etc
1978
Texas Instruments released the first
speech synthesiser chip, the TMS5100.
It used “pitch-excited linear predictive
coding” to greatly decrease the volume
of data required to generate speech. It
was used in the “Speak & Spell” educational toy.
The LaserDisc was released on the
market. Machines could play prerecorded videos but could not record. Technology from LaserDisc was later incorporated into Compact Discs, DVDs and
Blu-rays. It was never hugely popular
but offered good-quality video reproduction for the period, far superior to VHS.
Fairlight CMI, 1G phone networks etc
1979
The Australian Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) was released.
It was based on a design by Tony Furse,
licensed by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel
(ex ETI magazine). It was “one of the
earliest music workstations with an
embedded sampler”, considered revolutionary at the time. See the video
titled “How the Fairlight CMI changed
the course of music” at https://youtu.
be/jkiYy0i8FtA
The very popular WordPerfect word
processor was released.
Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) deployed the first 1G
cellular phone network.
Philips and Grundig released the
Video 2000 consumer video cassette
format, discontinued in 1988.
The VisiCalc spreadsheet program
was released. It was considered a “killer
application” for the Apple II and ran
on many other computers. It is the predecessor to programs like Excel. For
more details, visit: http://danbricklin.
com/visicalc.htm
Practical Electronics | June | 2025
The History of Electronics, part 6
Commodore VIC-20 computer etc
1980
The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) Group 3 fax standards (digital) were released. The time
to transmit a page was reduced to 6-15
seconds, not including handshaking.
It supported a variable scanning resolution, up to 400 lines per inch (157
per cm).
The Commodore VIC-20 computer
was released.
MS-DOS V1.0, 16-bit DAC etc
1981
The MS-DOS V1.0 computer operating system was released, along with
the IBM PC.
The Osborne 1 was released, it is
considered to be the first commercial
truly portable/luggable computer. It
is not obvious what device should get
the credit for the first ‘laptop’; many
contenders exist.
The PCM53/DAC700 16-bit single-
chip audio digital-to-analog converter
(DAC) was released. Designed by Jimmy
Naylor and a Texas Instruments/BurrBrown design team, it became the basis
of nearly all audio CD players.
RCA released its Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED), an analog video
disc playback system. A stylus with
mechanical tracking read the disc.
The discs were 30cm in diameter and
could record 60 minutes of NTSC
video per side. The product was
unpopular and discontinued due to
competition from LaserDisc players
and other reasons.
CD player, Commodore 64
1982
The first audio Compact Disc (CD)
player (co-developed by Philips and
Sony) was released in Japan.
The Commodore 64 computer was
introduced.
3.5in floppy disk, C++ language etc
Fig.74: the Xerox Alto GUI from 1973. Source: https://interface-experience.org/
objects/xerox-alto/
1983
The first 3.5-inch (8.9cm) floppy
disks became available, based on the
Microfloppy Industry Committee (MIC)
specification.
The C++ programming language was
released, an ‘object-oriented’ version of
C that’s still widely used today.
The first personal computer with
a built-in hard disk, the IBM PC XT
with 10MB standard capacity, went
on the market.
Motorola released the first ‘mobile’
phone, the DynaTAC 8000X. It
weighed nearly a kilogram, took
10 hours to charge and retailed for
US$3995 (about $18,750 in today’s
money) – see Fig.76.
Dr Mitsuaki Oshima at Panasonic invented electronic image stabilisation.
Practical Electronics | June | 2025
Fig.75: the Electronics Australia EDUC-8 computer. Source: https://w.wiki/7EG6
17
Feature Article
tially thought that its capacity would
never be reached. Sharks also attacked
the cable, possibly due to them being
able to sense its electromagnetic
radiation.
It was instrumental in the development of the internet, providing a
dedicated high-speed T1 connection
between CERN in Europe and Cornell
University in the USA.
GPS receiver, World Wide Web etc
1989
The first commercial handheld GPS
receiver was released, the Magellan
NAV 1000.
CDMA (Code Division Multiple
Access) was demonstrated for cellular telephone systems.
The World Wide Web was invented
by Tim Berners-Lee and released to the
public in 1991.
DragonDictate speech recognition
1990
The first consumer speech recognition software, DragonDictate, was released. Nowadays it’s called “Dragon
NaturallySpeaking” and is now owned
by Microsoft.
2G networks, Linux, Python
1991
Panasonic released the first video
camera to feature electronic image
stabilisation later, in 1988.
2G (GSM) telephone networks were
introduced.
The Linux operating system for computers, a free/open-source version of
Unix, was released.
The Python programming language
was released.
Apple Macintosh, CD-ROM
TASMAN2 cable, Windows 3.1 etc
Fig.76: a Motorola DynaTAC 8000X
mobile phone. Source: https://w.
wiki/7FPn (CC-BY-SA-3.0)
1984
The Apple Macintosh was released.
The Commodore Amiga computer was
also introduced.
The CD-ROM for data storage, based
on the audio CD, was announced.
IBM Tangora speech recognition
1985
The IBM experimental speech recognition system Tangora became available. It ran on an IBM PC AT and recognised 20,000 words, converting
them to text.
Sony D-1 video recording format
1986
The professional studio Sony D-1
digital video recording format was
introduced.
Higher temperature superconductors
1987
“Higher temperature” superconductors were discovered. Currently, the
highest-temperature superconductor
works at around -135°C at normal atmospheric pressure.
TAT-8 transatlantic optical fibre cable
1988
The first transatlantic optical fibre
cable, TAT-8, became operational. It
had a capacity of 280Mbit/s, equivalent to 40,000 telephone circuits.
It was retired in 2002; it rapidly
reached capacity when it was ini18
1992
Australia’s first undersea optical
fibre, TASMAN2, connected us to
New Zealand with a speed of around
1Gbps.
Windows 3.1 was released, marking
a shift away from the command-line
DOS interface on PCs towards graphical interfaces.
The Apple Newton MessagePad was
released, an early ‘personal digital assistant’ with handwriting recognition
that helped form the basis of later
smart devices.
Windows NT, HAARP
1993
Windows NT was released. Its core
still underlies modern Windows versions such as 10 & 11. However, its GUI
was still similar to that of Windows 3.1.
HAARP (High-frequency Active
Auroral Research Program) was established for upper atmosphere and
ionospheric research.
CompactFlash memory cards etc
1994
The first CompactFlash memory
cards were produced by SanDisk, starting at 2MB. It was the first widespread,
dedicated flash memory card format.
Apple released home and office
computers using IBM’s 32-bit PowerPC processors, marking a shift away
from the Motorola processors they
previously used.
IBM released the Simon Personal Computer (SPC), the first ‘smartphone’, although that term didn’t exist
at the time.
It had an LCD touchscreen and
could be used to make or receive
phone calls, send and receive faxes,
emails and pages (‘instant messages’).
50,000 were sold for US$1099 (about
$3500 today).
Windows 95, DAB radio
1995
Windows 95 was released, with a
GUI reminiscent of modern Windows
versions.
DAB digital radio broadcasting began
in Europe.
DVD player, PalmPilot “smartphone”
1996
The first digital video disc (DVD)
player was released in Japan.
The ATSC digital television standard was released.
The PalmPilot was released, an early
predecessor to the modern smartphone.
MPMan F10 portable MP3 player
1997
The DVB-T digital television standard was released, with the first broadcast in Sweden.
The first portable MP3 player was
released, the MPMan F10 by Saehan
Information Systems.
ADSL standard
1998
ADSL (Asymmetric digital subscriber
line) technical standard ANSI T1.413
Issue 2 was released. ADSL enabled
high-speed data over standard copper
telephone lines. It was introduced in
Australia in 2000.
Bluetooth devices
1999
The first Bluetooth device was introduced to the market.
SD memory cards, Windows 2000
2000
The first SD (Secure Digital) memory
cards were released with 32MB and
64MB capacities.
Windows 2000 was released, merging the core of Windows NT with the
graphical interface of Windows 95. It
was the basis of the modern Windows
operating system in 2023.
3G networks, Mac OS X, iPod
2001
3G telephone networks were introduced, offering high-speed mobile data,
up to 7.2Mbps.
Apple released Mac OS X, a cleansheet redesign of their graphical operating system based on FreeBSD,
still their primary operating system
today.
Apple released the iPod MP3 player.
Practical Electronics | June | 2025
The History of Electronics, part 6
Terrington
Components
• Project boxes designed and manufactured in the UK.
• Many of our enclosures used on former Maplin projects.
• Unique designs and sizes, including square, long and deep
variaaons of our screwed lid enclosures.
• Sub-miniature sizes down to 23mm x 16mm, ideal for
IoT devices.
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ISDB-T digital TV broadcasts
2003
Japan started digital TV broadcasts
using the ISDB-T standard.
LongPen remote signing device
2004
Margaret Atwood (1939~) invented
the LongPen, a remote signing device,
mainly for authors to sign copies of
books. It was released to the market in
2006. It is reminiscent of Elisha Gray’s
telautograph from 1888.
DMB standard
2005
South Korea adopted DMB (Digital
Multimedia Broadcasting), for mobile
video streaming, a development of the
DAB radio broadcasting standard.
DTMB standard, OPAL reactor
2006
Further reading
● “Phonogram Images on Paper, 1250-1950” at https://youtu.be/TESkh3hX5oM
● “Experiments and Observations on Electricity” made at Philadelphia in America by
Benjamin Franklin, 1751 – https://pemag.au/link/abpf
● Simple construction project video: “Voltaic Pile, the First Battery” at https://youtu.
be/pW4UUOgJX6k
● “Electric Incandescent Lighting” by Edwin James Houston and Arthur Edwin
Kennelly, 1896 – https://pemag.au/link/abpe
● “The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century” by Edward W. Byrn, 1900 –
https://pemag.au/link/abpc
● “A History of Wireless Telegraphy” by J.J. Fahie, Third Edition, 1902 – https://
pemag.au/link/abpd
● “How does a spark gap transmitter sound?” at https://youtu.be/VMdYte66D2Y
● The First Digital Voltmeters and the Birth of Test Automation – www.hp9825.com/
html/dvms.html
● The oldest surviving video recording: “The Edsel Show - CBS-TV (October 13,
1957)” at https://youtu.be/Ze0Az9tdkHg
● “Oldest surviving color videotape recording: WRC-TV dedication May 22, 1958” –
https://youtu.be/4vBEMGTdDYc
The DTMB (Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcast) TV standard was
adopted in China.
OPAL (the Open-pool Australian
lightwater reactor) was commissioned
to replace HIFAR for research and radioisotope production (eg, for medical procedures and industrial applications).
DAB+ broadcasting began, starting
in Australia, using less bandwidth for
similar audio quality to DAB.
5G telephone networks were introduced.
Apple iPhone
4G networks
Apple Silicon (ARM CPU)
2007
Apple introduced the iPhone, the
first truly modern smartphone (the
Blackberry was released in 2000, but
phones with inbuilt keyboards eventually fell out of favour).
2009
4G (LTE) telephone networks were
introduced.
Apple iPad
2010
Apple released the iPad, an early
touchscreen tablet computer.
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2019
2020
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