For information about the Classroom Edition program call 1-800-544-0522 or visit our Internet site at http://info.wsj.com/classroom
© 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CLASSROOM EDITION
TUNING IN: Communications technologies historically have had broad appeal for consumers
F YOU LOOK AT the history of technology, said high-tech guru George
Forrester Colony in 1995, “there is a
threshold where one day, you had to have
something. You had to have a fax
machine. Remember that day? It was 1981
or something. You had to have a fax
machine on that day. The day before, you
didn’t need it.
“And there came a day, I think it was
last year, when you had to have an e-mail
address,” he continued. “It’s possible that
in the home, there will come a day when
you will need [two-way] video, because
there are enough people out there you
want to talk to who also have video and
it’s cheap enough.
“But I guess I see it as a gradual,
incremental thing. It’s going to take the
regional Bell operating companies many,
many, many more years, chucking in capital year after year, to do this. It’ll take
the cable companies a similar timetable.”
I
W. W.
W. Harding
The Electric Age
The history of communications technology is filled with things people had to
have. In the 1920s and 1930s, it was radio,
which quickly became an important part
of U.S. culture.
Families would gather around the
radio nightly to listen. In 1924, people
were tuning in to political conventions,
which spurred sales of radio sets. In 1925,
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Chicago station WGN broadcast from the
famous Scopes “monkey” trial.
The growing popularity of radio is easy
to see in the chart below. Notice the disparity in the percentage of homes with
radios compared to those with telephones
in the 1930s. By the end of 1939, nearly
80% of homes had radios while only about
36% had telephones.
This trend continued with the advent of
television. A little more than 10 years
after it began to be mass-produced, TV
surpassed the telephone in U.S. household
penetration. By the end of 1957, 80% of
homes had television sets compared to
about 76% with telephones. Radios could
be found in 96% of homes.
Franklin Roosevelt
In the early 1950s, color television
added another dimension to America’s
newfound obsession. Cable-television systems had already begun in 1948 and homeuse video recorders were introduced in
1965, although they didn’t reach significant levels of household penetration until
1979. Within 19 years, however, 91% of
U.S. homes had VCRs.
times faster in performing calculations
than older electromechanical machines.
By the 1950s, other inventions such as
the silicon transistor, silicon chip and
integrated circuit made computers smaller, yet more powerful. These devices also
made computers more affordable and
desirable to businesses.
The Information Age
As the computer age entered the 1960s
and 1970s, the pace of development accelerated. IBM introduced its 360 computer
in 1964. Compatible with a wide range of
peripherals, it became a commercial success. The first home computer, the Altair
8800, appeared in 1975.
The Electronic Age
In the 1940s, an equally important
wave of new technology was emerging:
the computer.
One significant invention was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (Eniac) in 1946. Eniac ran a thousand
Harry Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
In the 1980s, other products such as the
Apple Macintosh, CD-ROM, the laptop
computer and Windows software helped to
revolutionize the industry, making computers easier to operate and more convenient for personal use.
By 1998, about 43% of U.S. homes had
computers — and access to the Internet
suddenly seemed to be the thing everybody had to have. Household penetration
of the Internet stood at 24%, well below
the level many people believe it eventually will reach.
Other hot products in 1998 were the
pager, with penetration of 31%, up from
1% in 1993, and the cellular phone, which
rose to 48% from 1% in 1987.
John Kennedy
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
How to Read this Chart
This chart shows the percentage
of household penetration for consumer-electronics products in the
U.S. from 1920 to 1998.
The colored lines represent the
major product types. The red lines
relate to television; the gold lines,
radio; the blue lines, telephone; and
the green lines, computers. Some
lines aren’t complete because the
data for these products aren’t available for early years of use.
The light-blue vertical areas represent U.S. recessions. The scale on
the left and right sides of the chart
Ronald Reagan
George Bush
are the percentages for household
penetration. The bottom of the chart
shows years, wars and the Great
Depression. The presidents are at
the top (Democrats in light green;
Republicans in gold).
The flags on the chart identify the
introduction of specific consumerelectronics products and services,
and show their relationship to historical events.
This chart allows you to compare
the popularity of these products over
time. Notice the number of products
introduced since the mid-1980s.
Bill Clinton
100%
100%
Scopes ‘monkey’ trial
Hiroshima
Hindenburg crashes
Sputnik I
First weather satellite
AM Radio
Goddard’s rocket
FM Radio
Byrd at North Pole
Nixon’s ‘Checkers’ speech
John Glenn orbit
Univac
Stock Market Crash
‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast
Harding first president on radio
Whirlwind computer
Color TV
Man on the Moon
Telstar communications satellite
Mass-production of computer
First political convention on radio
Electronic switching circuit
U.S. and U.S.S.R. link in space
Apollo 13
Cuban missile-crisis ultimatum televised
IBM Electromatic typewriter
First computer using transistors
Electric printing calculator
First analog computer
‘I Have a Dream’ speech by Martin Luther King Jr. telecast
Computer hard drive
FDR Pearl Harbor radio speech in 79% of American homes
Martin Luther King Jr. funeral televised
JFK assassinated
80%
First space shuttle
Beatles visit U.S.
Computer using binary code
Dial telephones sold to public
First practical TV camera
16-mm film
70%
35-mm camera
IBM’s five-ton calculator
Electronic calculator
Apollo 1 disaster
Eniac
Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter
Direct-dial long distance
Radio telephone service to Europe
Mobile phones
8-mm film
Technicolor
Public demonstration of TV
Color movies
Superheterodyne radio receiver
CBS formed
First radio station
FM radio patented
PageMaker
Commercial TV
Computing Tabulating & Recording Co. becomes IBM
Ernie Kovacs dies
Ernie Kovacs TV show premieres (CBS)
Zenith portable consumer radio
Commercial color TV in U.S.
Zoom lens
H-P programmable pocket calculator
White House, Kremlin phone link
Laser printer
Overseas direct dialing to Europe
PC
Microsoft founded
‘Tonight Show’ premieres (NBC)
NBC begins radio broadcasts
Videotape recorder developed
Federal Radio Commission created
‘Today Show’ premieres (NBC)
KDKA starts 500,000-watt radio broadcasts
40%
Transatlantic optical fiber
Pager
30%
Lotus 1-2-3
BetaMax format
Term ‘computer virus’ is coined
Camcorder
VHS format
CBS ends ‘See It Now’
First issue of TV Guide
Regularly scheduled FM radio
Osborne portable computer
IBM PC with MS-DOS
Pong
First transcontinental broadcast (‘See It Now’ debut on CBS)
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created
PC hard drive
HDTV
First color TV broadcasts
30%
Two-inch LCD TV set
First spreadsheet (VisiCalc)
Apple II
First Miss America broadcast (ABC)
Cable-TV systems in U.S.
Cellular Phone
Game Boy
Altair 8800 microcomputer
Cordless telephone
Army-McCarthy hearings televised
Polaroid camera
50%
Word processing
Arthur Godfrey generates 12% of CBS revenues
Mass production of TV
40%
CD Player
Windows
TI pocket calculator
Color TV demonstrated
Color TV with Stereo
Adobe PostScript
Intel 4004, the first microprocessor
Thin-film transistor
60%
CD-ROM
Floppy disk
First car radio
Mass production of radio
Apple Macintosh
Arpanet (precursor of the Internet)
Integrated-circuit patent
Answering Machine
Compact disks
Some U.S. banks install automated teller machines
CBS begins TV broadcasts
Shortwave radio
Cable TV
Standard set for compact disk
Silicon chip
Bell Labs develops color TV system
70%
Computer mouse
Modem dataphone
Cordless Phone
Philips digital CD
DEC minicomputer
First transatlantic-phone cable
GE begins TV broadcasts
60%
Digital cell phone
Violence at Democratic convention televised
IBM 360 computer standardizes product line
Optical fiber
Kodachrome
Digital audio tape recorder
Digital fax machine
Robert Kennedy funeral televised
IBM Selectric typewriter
Silicon transistor introduced
Transistor
First ‘talkie’
50%
VCR
90%
Lindbergh flight
90%
80%
Telephone
Television
Nixon/Kennedy debate
First laptop (TRS-80)
Cellular telephone
Polaroid instant color film
Long-playing record
Internet
Cellular phone system in Tokyo
Home-use video recorder
20%
DuMont begins TV broadcasts
Dolby sound
AT&T broken up
NBC begins TV broadcasts
Sony Trinitron television
Transistor radio
First World Series telecast (NBC)
ABC begins TV broadcasts
10%
CBS begins TV broadcasts
20%
U.S. cell phone system
DuMont ends TV broadcasts
Netscape IPO
Mosaic
First superstation (WTBS)
Videotape recorder brought to market
Stereo records
World Wide Web
First use of satellites with cable TV (HBO)
ESPN premieres
FM stereo radio
Corporation for Public Broadcasting started
10%
CNN debuts
Audio cassette
First president on broadcast TV (FDR)
President Johnson signs Public Broadcasting Act
Arthur Godfrey’s TV show premieres
Direct Satellite TV
Walkman
First televised political convention
National Public Radio premieres
Inauguration telecast for first time
Election returns telecast first time
PBS begins broadcasts
FOX begins broadcasts
MTV debuts
Telecom Act passed
‘Saturday Night Live’ premieres
America Online
AOL shuts down for 19 hours
0%
0%
1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
The Great Depression
World War II
Korean War
Vietnam War
Gulf War
Karl Hartig
The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition program is sponsored by: COMPAQ COMPUTER CORPORATION • FORD MOTOR COMPANY
Sources: A.C. Nielsen Company, Broadcasting & Cable Yearbook 1996, Electronic Industries Association, Federal Communications Commission, FIND/SVP