I am perpetually captivated by how APIs have come to be. I have heard since I started talking about APIs that they’ve been around longer than I state in my history narrative or within blog posts. Honestly, if you see application as all about applying a concept or resource of some kind, then APIs go way back to even African drumming circles. Every once in a while I geta wild hair and scratch at this narrative, and this page reflects what I consider to be the API timeline.
1753
Charles Morrison Says Electricity Can Transmit Messages
1753
Electrostatic Telegraph
1770
Music box
1775
Electric Telegraph
1790
Barrel Organ
1801
Loom
1804
Electrochemical Telegraph
1805
Barrel Piano
1816
First Working Telegraph
1822
Charles Babbage takes first steps in the construction of machines that would compute numbers
1822
Steam Calculator
1830
Steam Locomotive
1837
Charles Babbage published a paper describing a mechanical computer that is now known as the Analytical Engine
1839
First Commercial Telegraph (Railway)
1842
Punch Tape Player Pianos
1843
Ada Lovelace first describes what is known as a computer and its software
1844
First Long Distance Telegraph Message
1844
Innocenzo Manzetti Modeled Speaking Telegraph
1846
Punch Tape Telegrams
1846
Printing Telegraph
1847
Paper Roll Traveling Valve Reed Organ
1851
Morse Code
1854
Principes of the Telephone
1860
Panetelegraph
1861
First Speech-Transmitting Telephone
1871
Intent to Invent Sound Telegraph
1876
Bell Patents Telephone
1876
Bell sends “Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!”
1877
First Telephone Exchange in Boston
1877
First long-distance telephone line
1880
Scanning Phototelegraph
1887
Multiplex Switchboard
1888
Telautograph
1888
Hertz Detects Radio Waves
1890
Punch Cards
1899
Marconi Establishes Radio Link Between England and France
1904
First Radio Transmission of Music
1906
First Radio Program of Voice and Music in US
1908
Radiofax
1911
IBM
1914
WWI
1919
ShortWave Radio
1927
First Transatlantic Telephone Call
1932
Drum Memory
1933
Telex Messaging
1934
FCC Founded
1935
FM Radio
1936
Turing Machine
1937
Harvard Mark 1
1939
Hewlett Packard
1939
WWII
1941
Store Information In Memory
1943
ENIAC
1946
UNIVAC
1947
Transistor
1948
Mathematical Theory of Communication
1949
Memex (Linked Documents)
1949
Computer Talks Over Phone
1953
COBOL
1954
FORTRAN
1957
Sputnik
1958
Digital Phone Lines
1958
Integrated Circuit
1959
Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Wide Area Network
1960
Object Oriented Programming
1961
Computer Time Sharing
1962
Telstar satellite transmits the first TV picture
1962
Database
1963
Hypertext (Ted Nelson)
1963
Hypermedia (Ted Nelson)
1964
Mouse
1964
GUI
1964
Electronic File System
1964
Sync Satellite Television Network
1964
IBM SABRE Reservation System
1965
CODASYL Database
1966
Xerox unveils the first fax machine
1966
Michigan Educational Research Information Triad (MERIT)
1967
First ATM is installed in London
1967
Melvin Conway introduces what is later called Conways Law
1968
Multiplexing
1968
The Mother of All Demos by Douglas Engelbart
1969
UNIX
1969
Moon Landing
1969
Mass produced software components By McIlroy, Malcolm Douglas
1969
Host Software The First RFC
1969
ARPANET Four Initial Nodes Established
1969
Compuserve
1970
Intel
1970
QUEL Query Language
1970
DRAM
1971
Floppy Disk
1970
ARPANET Reaches East Coast (MIT)
1971
1971
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
1971
TELNET
1971
ARPANET Has 23 nodes
1972
Relational Database Model
1972
ARPANET Has 29 nodes
1973
Ethernet
1973
GPS Project Begins
1973
SEQUEL Query Language
1973
ARPANET Has 40 nodes
1974
ARPANET Has 46 nodes
1974
Transmission Control Program (TCP)
1974
Systems Network Architecture (SNA)
1975
ARPANET Has 57 Modes
1975
Microsoft
1975
Altair 8080
1975
First Edition of Fred Brooks Mythical Man Month published
1976
Entity-Relationship Databases
1976
Apple
1976
CYCLADES Computer Network
1976
X.25 Packet Switching Protocol
1977
TRS-80
1987
VisiCalc
1978
WordStar
1979
Oracle Database
1979
First Commercial Cellular Network
1979
dBase Desktop Database
1980
USENET
1981
ARPANET Has 213 Nodes
1981
TCP/IP
1982
CDROM
1982
Compaq
1982
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
1983
ARPANET Switches to TCP/IP
1983
Lotus 123
1983
IPV4
1983
Berkely Sockets
1984
CD-ROM
1984
Domain Name System (DNS)
1984
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
1984
Open Systems Interconnect (OSI)
1985
Windows
1985
Dell beings assembling made to order computers
1985
symbolics.com
1985
Whole Earth Lectronic Link (WELL)
1985
National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET)
1986
386 Computer
1987
Transport Layer Interface (TLI)
1987
Microsoft Excel
1989
SQL Server
1990
HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
1991
Linux
1991
Gopher
1991
Windows Sockets API
1991
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
1991
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 1.0
1992
Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
1992
Microsoft Access
1993
Mosaic
1993
Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
1994
PHP
1995
PC Gaming
1995
GPS Military Operational
1994
Netscape Navigator
1994
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
1994
MySQL
1994
Design Patterns book, by the Gang of Four published; includes axioms like Program to an interface, not an implementation
1995
Apache HTTP Server
1995
Internet Explorer
1995
Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)
1995
JavaScript
1995
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 2.0
1995
Secure Socket Shell (SSH)
1995
Java
1995
Open Network Computing (ONC) Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
1996
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.0)
1996
Active Server Pages (ASP)
1996
XML
1996
1996
HTTP/1.1
1996
Web Users Reach 36 Million
1996
Application Service Provider (ASP)
1997
802.11
1997
RSS
1998
XML-RPC
1998
IPV6
1999
MQTT
2000
REST
2000
Salesforce
2000
SOAP
2000
eBay
2001
Protocol Buffers
2002
Amazon
2003
Delicious
2003
Object Relational Mapping (ORM)
2003
64-Bit Processor
2003
AMQP
2003
Google AdSense
2004
NGINX
2004
Firefox
2004
Flickr
2004
Web Services
2005
JSON-RPC
2005
ProgrammableWeb
2005
YouTube
2005
AdWords
2005
Atom
2006
Amazon S3
2006
Google Analytics
2006
Google Maps
2006
JSON
2006
2006
Amazon EC2
2006
2006
Mashery
2006
OAuth 1.0 (final draft released December, 2007)
2007
iPhone
2007
Twilio
2008
GitHub
2008
Android
2008
2009
NoSQL
2009
Foursquare
2009
Amazon RDS
2009
Node.js
2009
Google Analytics API
2010
iPad
2010
SaaS
2010
Nest
2010
2010
Oracle V Google API Copyright
2010
Swagger
2010
Docker
2011
Fitbit
2011
Apiary + API Blueprint
2011
Stripe
2011
Microservices
2011
Websockets
2011
Kafka
2011
Steve Yegge AWS Rant
2011
Fast Healthcare interoperability Resources (FHIR)
2012
President Obama Federal Government API Mandate
2012
OAuth 2.0
2012
Twitter Quadrant Post
2012
API Strategy & Practice Conference
2012
APIDays Conference
2013
Slack
2013
Google Reader Shutdown
2014
Kubernetes
2014
James Lewis and Martin Fowler popularize the microservice architectural pattern
2014
Uber
2014
Postman
2014
Spotify
2014
Serverless
2014
ESPN ends its public API program, signaling broader shifts in API strategies
2015
OpenAPI
2015
gRPC
2015
JSON Web Token (JWT)
2015
Apigee IPO
2012
Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2)
2015
HTTP/2
2015
Amazon Launches AWS API Gateway
2015
GraphQL
2016
GDPR
2016
AsyncAPI
2016
Amazon Alexa Voice Service
2018
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
2018
HTTP/3
2021
Oracle v Google Supreme Court Decision
I am also playing around with another view of this same landscape with my resource timeline to look at API providers by the digital resources they provide. I have also begun studying the early regulation of the railroad, telecommunications, electiricity, and radio–creating a timeline to help be understand how regulation unfolded for these industries, and why we pushed it forward.
