Timeline of communication technology 3500s BC[?] - The Sumerians develop cuneiform writing and the Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing 1500s BC - The Phoenicians develop an alphabet 170 BC - Parchment is discovered in Pergamum 105 - Tsai Lun[?] invents paper 350 - The Chinese develop a method for printing pages using symbols carved on a wooden block 1450 - The Chinese develop wooden block movable type printing 1454 - Johannes Gutenberg finishes a printing press with metal movable type 1793 - Claude Chappe establishes the first long-distance semaphore telegraph line 1831 - Joseph Henry proposes and builds an electric telegraph 1835 - Samuel Morse develops the Morse code 1843 - Samuel Morse builds the first long distance electric telegraph line 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson[?] exhibit an electric telephone 1877 - Thomas Edison patents the phonograph 1889 - Almon Strowger patents the direct dial telephone 1901 - Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland 1925 - John Logie Baird transmits the first television signal 1948 - Claude Shannon writes a paper that establishes the mathematical basis of information theory 1958 - Chester Carlson[?] presents the first photocopier suitable for office use 1966 - Charles Kao realizes that silica-based optical waveguides offer a practical way to transmit light via total internal reflection 1969 - The first hosts of ARPANET, Internet's ancestor, is connected. 1973 - Akira Hasegawa[?] and Fred Tappert[?] propose the use of solitary waves to carry information in optical fibers 1977 - Donald Knuth begins work on TeX 1980 - Linn Mollenauer[?], Rogers Stollen[?], and James Gordon[?] demonstrate that solitary waves can be propagated through optical fibers 1989 - Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau[?] built the prototype system which became the World Wide Web at CERN 1991 - Anders Olsson[?] transmits solitary waves through an optical fiber with a data rate of 32 billion bits per second