List of IEEE Milestones

The following list of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) milestones represents key historical achievements in electrical and electronic engineering.

Prior to 1800

• 1751 – Book Experiments and Observations on Electricity by Benjamin Franklin
• 1757–1775 – Benjamin Franklin's Work in London
• 1799 – Alessandro Volta's Electrical Battery Invention

1800–1850

• 1804 – Francisco Salvá Campillo's Electric Telegraph
• 1820–1827 – The Birth of Electrodynamics
• 1828–1837 – Pavel Schilling's Pioneering Contribution to Practical Telegraphy
• 1836 – Nicholas Callan's Pioneering Contributions to Electrical Science and Technology
• 1838 – Demonstration of Practical Telegraphy

1850–1870

• 1852 – Electric Fire alarm system
• 1860–1871 – Maxwell's equations
• 1860–1863 – First Studies on Ring Armature for Direct-Current Dynamos
• 1861 – Transcontinental Telegraph
• 1861–1867 – Standardisation of the Ohm
• 1866 – Landing of the Transatlantic Cable
• 1866 – County Kerry Transatlantic Cable Stations

1870–1890

• 1876 – First Intelligible Voice Transmission over Electric Wire
• 1876 – Thomas Alva Edison Historic Site at Menlo Park
• 1876 – First Distant Speech Transmission in Canada
• 1882 – Vulcan Street Plant
• 1882 – First Central Station in South Carolina
• 1882 – Pearl Street Station
• 1884 – First AIEE Technical Meeting
• 1885 – Galileo Ferraris's Rotating Fields and Early Induction Motors
• 1886 – Alternating Current Electrification, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, by William Stanley, Jr.
• 1886 – First Generation and Experimental Proof of Electromagnetic Waves
• 1886–1888 – Electric Lighting of the Kingdom of Hawaii
• 1887 – Thomas A. Edison West Orange Laboratories and Factories
• 1887 – Weston Meters, first portable current and voltage meters
• 1888 – Richmond Union Passenger Railway
• 1889 – Power System of Boston's Rapid Transit
• 1889 – First Exploration and Proof of Liquid Crystals

1890–1900

Krka-Šibenik Electric Power System plaque dedicated in 2013

• 1890 – Discovery of Radioconduction by Édouard Branly, making use of a coherer
• 1890 – Keage Power Station, Japan's First Commercial Hydroelectric Plant
• 1891 – Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant
• 1893 – Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant
• 1893 – Birth and Growth of Primary and Secondary Battery Industries in Japan
• 1894 – First Millimeter-wave Communication Experiments by Jagadish Chandra Bose
• 1895 – Adams Hydroelectric Generating Plant
• 1895 – Popov's Contribution to the Development of Wireless Communication
• 1895 – Guglielmo Marconi's Experiments in Wireless telegraphy
• 1895 – Electrification by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
• 1895 – Krka-Šibenik Electric Power System
• 1895 – Folsom Powerhouse three-phase system
• 1896 – Budapest Metroline No. 1
• 1897 – Chivilingo Hydroelectric Plant
• 1898 – Decew Falls Hydro-Electric Plant
• 1898 – Rheinfelden Hydroelectric Power Plant
• 1898 – French Transatlantic Telegraph Cable
• 1899–1902 – First Operational Use Of Wireless Telegraphy in the Anglo-Boer War
• 1899 – Calcutta Electric Supply Corp

1900–1920

• 1900 – Georgetown Steam Hydro Generating Plant
• 1901 – Transmission of Transatlantic Radio Signals
• 1901 – Reception of Transatlantic Radio Signals
• 1901 – Early Developments in Remote-Control by Leonardo Torres Quevedo
• 1901–1902 – Rationalization of Units
• 1901–1905 String Galvanometer
• 1902 – Poulsen-Arc Radio Transmitter
• 1903 – Vučje Hydroelectric Plant
• 1904 – Alexanderson Radio Alternator
• 1904 – Fleming valve
• 1904 – Radar Predecessor
• 1906 – Pinawa Hydroelectric Power Project
• 1906 – First Wireless Radio Broadcast by Reginald Fessenden
• 1906 – Grand Central Terminal Electrification
• 1907 – Alternating-Current Electrification of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad
• 1909 – Shoshone Transmission Line
• 1909 – World's First Reliable Hight Voltage Power Fuse
• 1911 – Discovery of superconductivity
• 1914 – Panama Canal Electrical and Control Installations
• 1915–1918 – Invention of Sonar
• 1916 – Czochralski Process

1920–1930

• 1920 – Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA (AM)
• 1920 – Funkerberg Königs Wusterhausen first radio broadcast in Germany
• 1921–1923 – Piezoelectric Oscillator
• 1921 – RCA Central, 220 kW transoceanic radio facility
• 1922 – Neutrodyne Circuit
• 1924 – Directive Shortwave Antenna (Yagi–Uda antenna)
• 1924–1941 – Development of electronic television
• 1924 – Enrico Fermi's major contribution to semiconductor statistics
• 1925 – Bell Telephone Laboratories
• 1926 – First Public Demonstration of Television
• 1928 – One-way police radio communication
• 1928 – Raman Effect
• 1929 – Shannon Scheme for the electrification of the Irish Free State
• 1929 – Largest private (DC) generating plant in the U.S.A.
• 1929 – Yosami Radio Transmitting Station
• 1929 – First blind takeoff, flight, and landing; using designated radio and aeronautical instrumentation

1930–1940

• 1930–1945 – Development of Ferrite Materials and their applications
• 1931 – Invention of Stereo Sound Reproduction
• 1932 – First Breaking of Enigma Code by the Team of Polish Cipher Bureau
• 1933 – Two-Way Police Radio Communication
• 1933 – Invention of a Temperature-Insensitive Quarz Oscillaiton Plate
• 1934 – Long-Range Shortwave Voice Transmissions from Byrd's Antarctic Expedition
• 1937 – Westinghouse Atom Smasher
• 1938 – Zenit Parabolic Reflector L-Band Pulsed Radar
• 1939 – Atanasoff–Berry Computer
• 1939–1945 – Code-breaking at Bletchley Park during World War II
• 1939 – Single-element Unidirectional Microphone – Shure Unidyne
• 1939 – Claude Shannon, development of Information Theory
• 1939–1949 – Development of the Cavity Magnetron

1940–1950

• 1940 – FM Police Radio Communication
• 1940–1945 – MIT Radiation Laboratory
• 1940–1946 – Loran, long range navigation
• 1941 – Opana Radar Site
• 1942–1945 – US Naval Computing Machine Laboratory
• 1944–1959 – Whirlwind Computer, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 1944–1959 – Harvard Mark 1 Computer
• 1945 – Merrill Wheel-Balancing System
• 1945 – Rincón del Bonete Plant and Transmission System
• 1946 – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
• 1946–1953 – Monochrome-Compatible Electronic Color Television
• 1946 – Detection of Radar Signals Reflected from the Moon
• 1947 – Invention of the First Transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
• 1947 – Invention of Holography
• 1948 – Birth of the Barcode
• 1948 – The Discovery of the Principle of Self-Complementarity in Antennas and the Mushiake Relationship
• 1948 – First Atomic Clock
• 1948–1951 – Manchester University "Baby" Computer and its Derivatives

1950–1960

• 1950–1969 – Electronic Technology for Space Rocket Launches
• 1950 – First External Cardiac Pacemaker
• 1951 – Manufacture of Transistors
• 1951 – Experimental Breeder Reactor I
• 1951–1958 – SAGE-Semi-Automatic Ground Environment
• 1951–1952 – A-0 Compiler and Initial Development of Automatic Programming
• 1953 – First Television Broadcast in Western Canada
• 1954 – Gotland High Voltage Direct Current Link
• 1955 – WEIZAC Computer
• 1956 – RAMAC
• 1956 – The First Submarine Transatlantic Telephone Cable System (TAT-1)
• 1956–1963 – Kurobe River No. 4 Hydropower Plant
• 1956 – Ampex Videotape Recorder
• 1956 – Birth of Silicon Valley
• 1957–1958 – First Wearable Cardiac Pacemaker
• 1957 – SRC/Thyristor
• 1957–1962 – Atlas Computer and the Invention of Virtual Memory
• 1958 – First Semiconductor Integrated Circuit (IC) by Jack Kilby
• 1958 – Star of Laufenburg Interconnection
• 1958 – The Trans-Canada Microwave System
• 1959 – Semiconductor planar process by Jean Hoerni and silicon integrated circuit by Robert Noyce
• 1959 – Commercialization and industrialization of photovoltaic cells by Sharp Corporation

1960–1970

• 1961–1984 – IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
• 1960 – TIROS I Television Infrared Observation Satellite
• 1960 – First Working Laser
• 1961–1964 – First Optical Fiber Laser and Amplifier
• 1962–1967 – Object-oriented programming
• 1962 – Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
• 1962 – Alouette-ISIS Satellite Program
• 1962 – First Transatlantic Television Signal via Satellite
• 1962 – First Transatlantic Transmission of a Television Signal via Satellite
• 1962 – First Transatlantic Reception of a Television Signal via Satellite
• 1962–1967 – Pioneering Work on the Quartz Electronic Wristwatch at Centre Electronique Horloger, Switzerland
• 1962 – Mercury spacecraft MA-6, Col. John Glenn piloted the Mercury Friendship 7 spacecraft in the first FAI-legal completed human-orbital flight on 20 February 1962.
• 1962–1972 – Grumman Lunar Module
• 1962–1972 – Apollo Guidance Computer
• 1962–1968 – First Geographic Information System
• 1962 – Semiconductor Laser
• 1963 – Taum Sauk Pumped-Storage Electric Power Plant
• 1963 – NAIC/Arecibo Radiotelescope
• 1963 – Taum Sauk Pumped-Storage Electric Power Plant
• 1963 – First Transpacific Reception of a Television (TV) Signal via Satellite
• 1963 – ASCII
• 1964 – Mount Fuji Radar System
• 1964 – Tokaido Shinkansen (Bullet Train)
• 1964–1973 – Pioneering Work on Electronic Calculators by Sharp Corporation
• 1964 – TPC-1 Transpacific Cable System
• 1964 – High-definition television System
• 1964 – BASIC Computer Language
• 1965–1984 – Alvin Deep-Sea Research Submersible
• 1965 – First 735 kV AC Transmission System
• 1965–1971 – Railroad Ticketing Examining System (developed by OMRON of Japan)
• 1965 – Dadda multiplier
• 1965 – Moore's Law
• 1965–1978 – Development of Computer Graphics and Visualization Techniques
• 1966 – Interactive Video Games
• 1966 – Shakey, the first mobile robot to be able to reason about its actions
• 1966 – DIALOG Online Search System
• 1967 – First Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry
• 1968 – CERN Experimental Instrumentation
• 1968 – Liquid-crystal display by George H. Heilmeier
• 1968 – Public Demonstration of Online Systems and Personal Computing
• 1969 – Electronic Quartz Wristwatch, Seiko Quartz-Astron 35SQ
• 1969 – Birth of the Internet
• 1969 – Inception of the ARPANET
• 1969–1975 – Invention of Public-key Cryptography
• 1969 – Apollo 11 Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment (LURE)
• 1969 – Parkes Radiotelescope
• 1969–1995 – Mode S Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon System

1970–1980

• 1970 – World's First Low-Loss Optical Fiber for Telecommunications
• 1971–1978 – The first word processor for the Japanese Language, JW-10
• 1969–1970 – SPICE Circuit Simulation Program
• 1971 – Demonstration of the ALOHA Packed Radio Data Network
• 1971 – First Computerized Tomography (CT) X-ray Scanner
• 1971–1977 – Development of the Commercial Laser Printer
• 1972 – Nelson River HVDC Transmission System
• 1972 – Development of the HP-35, the First Handheld Scientific Calculator
• 1972 – Eel River High Voltage Direct Current Converter Station
• 1972 – First Practical Field Emission Electron Microscope
• 1972 – SHAKEY: The World’s First Mobile Intelligent Robot
• 1972 – Polymer Self-Regulating Heat-Tracing Cable
• 1972–1989 – Gravitational-Wave Antenna
• 1972–1987 – Deep Space Station 43
• 1972–1983 – The Xerox Alto Establishes Personal Networked Computing
• 1973–1985 – Superconducting Magnet System for the Fermilab Tevatron Accelerator/Collider
• 1973 – The First Two-Dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI)
• 1973–1985 – Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN)
• 1974 – First 500 MeV Proton Beam from the TRIUMF Cyclotron
• 1974–1982 – First Real-Time Speech Communication on Packet Networks
• 1974 – The CP/M Microcomputer Operating System
• 1974 – Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Enables the Internet
• 1975 – Line Spectrum Pair (LSP) for high-compression speech coding
• 1975 – Gapless Metal Oxide Surge Arrester (MOSA) for electric power systems
• 1975 – Handheld Digital Camera
• 1976 – Development of VHS, a World Standard for Home Video Recording
• 1976–1978 – The Floating Gate EEPROM
• 1977 – Lempel–Ziv Data Compression Algorithm
• 1977 – Vapor-phase Axial Deposition Method for Mass Production of High-quality Optical Fiber
• 1977 – Perpendicular Magnetic Recording
• 1978 – Speak & Spell, the First Use of a Digital Signal Processing IC for Speech Generation
• 1978 – First Digitally Processed Image from a Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar
• 1978 – First Demonstration of a Fibre Bragg Grating
• 1979 – Compact disc Audio Player
• 1979 – 20-inch Diameter Photomultiplier Tubes
• 1979 – Amorphous Silicon Thin Film Field-Effect Transistor Switches for Liquid Crystal Displays
• 1979 – HEMT (high-electron-mobility transistor)

1980 to present

• 1980 – International Standardization of Group 3 Facsimile
• 1980–1982 – First RISC (Reduced Instruction-Set Computing) Microprocessor
• 1980 – Outdoor large-scale color display system
• 1980 – MPD7720DSP, programmable digital signal processor chip μPD7720
• 1980–1981 – Inverter-Driven Air Conditioner
• 1980–1999 – Origin of the IEEE 802 Family of Networking Standards
• 1981 – 16-Bit Monolithic Digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for Digital Audio
• 1981 – Map-Based Automotive navigation system
• 1981–1988 – The Development of RenderMan for Photorealistic Graphics
• 1982 – Nobeyama 45-m Telescope
• 1982 – Human Rescue Enabled by Space Technology
• 1982 – First Large-Scale Fingerprint ID
• 1982 – Commercialization of Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors with Nickel Electrodes
• 1984 – First Direct-broadcast satellite Service
• 1984 – The MU (Middle and Upper atmosphere) radar
• 1984–1989 – Active Shielding of Superconducting Magnets
• 1984–1993 – MPEG Multimedia Integrated Circuits
• 1984 – TRON Real-time Operating System Family
• 1984–1996 – Development of 193-nm Projection Photolithography
• 1985 – Toshiba T1100, a Pioneering Contribution to the Development of Laptop PC
• 1985 – Emergency Warning Code Signal Broadcasting System
• 1985 – Multiple Technologies on a Chip
• 1985 – IEEE Standard 754 for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic
• 1986 – Fiber Optic Connectors
• 1987 – High-Temperature Superconductivity
• 1987 – SPARC RISC Architecture
• 1987 – Superconductivity at 93 Kelvin
• 1987 – WaveLAN, Precursor of Wi-Fi
• 1987–1995 – MTI Portable Satellite Communication Terminals
• 1988 – Sharp 14-Inch Thin Film Transistor Liquid-Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) for TV
• 1988 – Virginia Smith High-Voltage Direct-Current Converter Station
• 1988 – Trans-Atlantic Telephone Fiber-optic Submarine Cable, TAT-8
• 1988 – First Robotic Control from Human Brain Signals
• 1989 – Development of CDMA for Cellular Communications
• 1994 – Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope
• 1994 – QR (Quick Response) Code
• 1996–1998 – PageRank and the Birth of Google
• 1996 – Large-Scale Commercialization of a CDMA Cellular Communication System

External links

• Map of IEEE Milestone plaques