From Papyrus to Post-Its

Think your office equipment is dated? You’re right. Many of the tools of the “modem” office date back decades, even centuries. From the abacus to the Apple, here’s a desktop view of five millennia of paper-pushing.

3000 BC: First writing systems appear in the Middle East and China. Babylonians develop the abacus, the ancestor of modern calculators and computers.

1800 BC: Egyptians invent papyrus. Royal scribes are among the first office workers.

2500 BC: Chinese develop ink from glue vapor and aromatic substances.

2nd century BC: Animal skin parchment appears in Asia Minor.

2nd century AD: Chinese produce paper from plant fiber paste.

1440: German printer Johann Gutenberg develops movable type.

1602: Englishman J. Willis develops the first modern shorthand.

1642: Frenchman Blaise Pascal builds the first mechanical adding machine.

1750: Portuguese physicist invents the rubber eraser.

1773: Englishman James Watt invents the first duplicating machine to cope with burgeoning business correspondence at his Birmingham factory.

1795: Frenchman Jacques Conte invents the modern pencil.

1806: Englishman R. Wedgewood patents carbon paper.

1874: New York-based Remington & Sons markets the first commercial typewriter.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.

1877: Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, the first practical device for recording and reproducing sound. He will later adapt the technology to produce the first office dictation machine.

1879: Thomas Edison gives world the electric light.

1880s: More than 400 fountain pen patents are registered.

1886: William Seward Burroughs develops first commercially successful adding machine.

1898: Valdamar Poulsen of Denmark builds first magnetic recorder, the forerunner of audiotape recording.

1906: American law clerk G.C. Beidler patents the photocopy machine.

1921: Filofax system of time management is born.

1924: Electric printing calculator is introduced.

1925: The modern fax emerges with the Belinograph, a French device to convert images into transmittable electric impulses. An engineer at 3M invents Scotch tape.

1933: IBM introduces the “Electromatic” electric typewriter.

1938: Xerography, an electrostatic copying process, is invented by American Chester Carlson. Hungarian Laszlo Biro invents the ballpoint pen.

1941: First truly electronic computer is built for the British government at Manchester University. It will help break Axis codes during World War II.

1946: First mobile phones is introduced.

1949: Bell Telephone Laboratories introduces traditional black, rotary-dial desk model telephone.

1951: Rolodex “Rolomatic” is introduced. Texan Betty Nesmith starts cooking up typewriter correction fluid in her kitchen. The cottage industry will eventually become Liquid Paper Corp.

1958: Microchip is invented.

1959: First commercial Xerox copier is introduced.

1961: IBM introduces the Selectric typewriter.

1969: Arpanet, the “mother of the Internet,” is begun as a U.S. government experiment linking researchers with remote computer centers.

1970: Floppy disk is introduced for computer data storage.

1972: First pocket calculator, the TI-2500, is introduced by Texas Instruments.

1974: 3M develops Post-It Notes.

1975: IBM introduces laser printer.

1977: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak begin marketing the Apple II, the world’s first personal computer.

1981: IBM introduces its personal computer, based on an operating system developed by Microsoft.

1984: CD-ROM is introduced. Apple begins marketing the Macintosh.

1985: Microsoft develops Windows operating system for the IBM PC.

1994: Netscape Navigator browser is unveiled.

1997: An estimated 50 million-plus Americans have Internet access.

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Sources: World Almanac Book of Inventions; Inventive Genius; 100 Inventions That Shaped World History; Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution