List of IEEE milestones

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

• 1836 – Nicholas Callan's Pioneering Contributions to Electrical Science and Technology
• 1828–1837 – Pavel Schilling's Pioneering Contribution to Practical Telegraphy
• 1838 – Demonstration of Practical Telegraphy

  1850–1870

• 1852 – Electric Fire Alarm System
• 1861–1870 – Maxwell's Equations
• 1861 – Transcontinental Telegraph
• 1866 – Landing of the Transatlantic Cable
• 1866 – County Kerry Transatlantic Cable Stations

  1870–1890

• 1876 – First Intelligible Voice Transmission over Electric Wire
• 1876 – First Distant Speech Transmission in Canada
• 1876 – Thomas Alva Edison Historic Site at Menlo Park
• 1882 – Vulcan Street Plant
• 1882 – Pearl Street Station
• 1882 – First Central Station in South Carolina
• 1884 – First AIEE Technical Meeting
• 1886 – Alternating Current Electrification
• 1886 – First Generation and Experimental Proof of Electromagnetic Waves
• 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

  1890–1900

• 1890 – Discovery of Radioconduction with a Coherer by Édouard Branly
• 1890 – Keage Power Station, Japan's First Commercial Hydroelectric Plant
• 1891 – Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant
• 1893 – Birth and Growth of Battery Industries in Japan
• 1893 – Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant
• 1894 – Millimeter-wave Communication Experiments by Jagadish Chandra Bose
• 1895 – Popov's Contribution to the Development of Wireless Communication
• 1895 – Adams Hydroelectric Generating Plant
• 1895 – Krka-Šibenik Electric Power System
• 1895 – Guglielmo Marconi's Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy
• 1895 – Electrification by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
• 1897 – Early Swiss Wireless Experiments that sent a signal over one and a half kilometers.
• 1897 – Chivilingo Hydroelectric Plant
• 1898 – Decew Falls Hydro-Electric Plant
• 1898 – Rheinfelden Hydroelectric Power Plant
• 1899 – First Operational Use Of Wireless Telegraphy in the Anglo-Boer War

  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
• 1902 – Poulsen-Arc Radio Transmitter
• 1903 – Vucje Hydroelectric Plant
• 1904 – Alexanderson Radio Alternator
• 1904 – Fleming Valve
• 1906 – Pinawa Hydroelectric Power Project
• 1906 – First Wireless Radio Broadcast by Reginald A. Fessenden
• 1906 – Grand Central Terminal Electrification
• 1907 – Alternating-Current Electrification of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad
• 1909 – Shoshone Transmission Line
• 1911 – Discovery of superconductivity
• 1914 – Panama Canal Electrical and Control Installations

  1920–1930

• 1920 – Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA
• 1920 – Funkerberg Königs Wusterhausen first radio broadcast in Germany
• 1924 – Directive Short Wave Antenna
• 1924 – Enrico Fermi's Major Contribution to Semiconductor Statistics
• 1924–1941 – Development of Electronic Television
• 1925 – Bell Telephone Laboratories
• 1928 – One-Way Police Radio Communication
• 1929 – Shannon Scheme for the Electrification of the Irish Free State
• 1929 – Yosami Radio Transmitting Station
• 1929 – Largest Private Generating Plant in the U.S.A.
• 1929 – First Blind Takeoff, Flight and Landing

  1930–1950

• 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
• 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 – Claude Shannon, development of Information Theory
• 1939 – Single-element Unidirectional Microphone - Shure Unidyne
• 1940 – FM Police Radio Communication
• 1941 – Opana Radar Site
• 1939–1945 – Code-breaking at Bletchley Park during World War II
• 1940–1945 – MIT Radiation Laboratory
• 1942–1945 – US Naval Computing Machine Laboratory
• 1945 – Merrill Wheel-Balancing System
• 1945 – Rincón del Bonete Plant and Transmission System
• 1946 – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
• 1947 – Invention of the First Transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
• 1947 – Invention of Holography
• 1948 – Birth of the Barcode
• 1948 – Junction transistor at Bell Labs

  1950–1960

• 1950 – First External Cardiac Pacemaker
• 1951 – Manufacture of Transistors
• 1951 – Experimental Breeder Reactor I
• 1946–1953 – Monochrome-Compatible Electronic Color Television
• 1954 - HVDC Gotland, the first fully commercial static plant for high-voltage direct current transmission
• 1955 – WEIZAC Computer
• 1956 – RAMAC
• 1956 – Ampex Videotape Recorder
• 1956 – The First Submarine Transatlantic Telephone Cable System
• 1957–1958 – First Wearable Cardiac Pacemaker
• 1958 – First Semiconductor Integrated Circuit by Jack Kilby
• 1959 – Semiconductor planar process by Jean Hoerni and silicon integrated circuit by Robert Noyce
• 1959 – MOSFET, also known as the MOS transistor, by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs
• 1959 – Commercialization and industrialization of photovoltaic cells by Sharp Corporation

  1960–1970

• 1960–1984 – IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
• 1961–1964 – First Optical Fiber Laser and Amplifier
• 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 – Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
• 1962 – First Transatlantic Transmission of a Television Signal via Satellite
• 1962 – First Transatlantic Television Signal via Satellite
• 1962 – :fr:Centre de télécommunication spatiale de Pleumeur-Bodou|First Transatlantic Reception of a Television Signal via Satellite
• 1962 – Alouette-ISIS Satellite Program
• 1962–1967 – Pioneering Work on the Quartz Electronic Wristwatch
• 1963 – NAIC/Arecibo Radiotelescope
• 1963 – :ja:KDDI茨城衛星通信センター|First Transpacific Reception of a Television Signal via Satellite
• 1963 – Taum Sauk Pumped-Storage Electric Power Plant
• 1963 – ASCII
• 1964 – Mount Fuji Radar System
• 1964 – Tokaido Shinkansen
• 1964 – High-definition television
• 1964 – TPC-1 Transpacific Cable System
• 1964–1973 – Pioneering Work on Electronic Calculators by Sharp Corporation
• 1965 – First 735 kV AC Transmission System
• 1965 – Dadda multiplier
• 1965–1971 – Railroad Ticketing Examining System
• 1966 – Interactive Video Games
• 1966 – Shakey, the first mobile robot to be able to reason about its own actions
• 1966 – First online search system Dialog, originally developed in Lockheed Martin, now owned by ProQuest
• 1967 – First Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry
• 1968 – Liquid Crystal Display by George H. Heilmeier
• 1968 – CERN Experimental Instrumentation
• 1969 – Birth of the Internet
• 1969 – Inception of the ARPANET
• 1950–1969 – Electronic Technology for Space Rocket Launches
• 1969 – Electronic Quartz Wristwatch

  1970–present

• 1970 - SPICE Circuit Simulation Program
• 1971–1978 – :jp:JW-10|The First Word Processor for the Japanese Language
• 1972 – Nelson River HVDC Transmission System
• 1972 – Development of the HP-35, the First Handheld Scientific Calculator
• 1974 – Birth of CP/M Operating System
• 1975 – Gapless Metal Oxide Surge Arrester for electric power systems
• 1975 – Line Spectrum Pair for high-compression speech coding
• 1976 – Development of VHS, a World Standard for Home Video Recording
• 1976 – Introduction of the Apple I Computer
• 1977 – Introduction of the Apple II Computer
• 1977 – Lempel–Ziv Data Compression Algorithm
• 1977 – Vapor-phase Axial Deposition Method for Mass Production of High-quality Optical Fiber
• 1978 – Digital Image from Synthetic Aperture Radar
• 1978 – Speak & Spell, the First Use of a Digital Signal Processing IC for Speech Generation
• 1979 – Compact Disc Audio Player
• 1979 – 20-inch Diameter Photomultiplier Tubes
• 1980 – International Standardization of Group 3 Facsimile
• 1980 – RISC Microprocessor
• 1981 – 16-Bit Monolithic Digital-to-Analog Converter for Digital Audio
• 1981 – Map-Based Automotive Navigation System
• 1984 – First Direct-broadcast satellite Service
• 1984 – The MU radar
• 1985 – Toshiba T1100, for Contribution to the Development of Laptop PCs
• 1985 – Emergency Warning Code Signal Broadcasting System
• 1987 – High Temperature Superconductor
• 1987 – SPARC RISC Architecture
• 1988 – Sharp 14-Inch Thin Film Transistor Liquid-Crystal Display for TV
• 1988 – Solid State High Voltage DC Converter Station
• 1988 – Trans-Atlantic Telephone Fiber-optic Submarine Cable, TAT-8
• 1988 – Virginia Smith High-Voltage Direct-Current Converter Station
• 1989 – Development of CDMA for Cellular Communications

  Special citations

• 1856–1943 – Nikola Tesla, Electrical Pioneer
• 1979 – Computer History Museum