An Infographic on the History of the Modem

Once upon a time, transferring just a few kilobytes of data between computers in different locations was considered near science fiction fantasy, or at least a cutting edge military computer science experiment. As our technology has evolved, the transfer of data has underpinned the backbone of our society.

Let’s not forget then that those little boxes we call modems, routers and switches were all born from a need to connect teletype machines together, transferring information at a stunningly slow 25 bits per second. At that rate, this post might take as long as 12 days to completely download.

In their quest to fully appreciate the invention of the modem, our friends at Broadband Choices prepared this spiffy infographic on the history of the modem.

Click the infographic to view the full size version

Charting the history of the internet 1MB at a time, infographic by BroadbandChoices.