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Modern-life firsts

Order by the year each first happened. You place all 44 cards on one timeline, one at a time. You start with three lives, and ten right in a row wins a lost one back.

Modern-life firsts
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Order by the year each first happened. Drag or tap it onto the line
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44
Cards
3
Lives per run
release years and dates
Ordered by
Cards only
Card reveal

How to play the modern-life firsts timeline game

Each card is a first that everyday life now takes for granted: the first photo, stamp, traffic light, credit card, cash machine, email, text, web page and tweet. Under the name you will see where it happened or who did it, and you sort the cards by the year of that first. One card starts on the line, year showing. Choose a gap for each new card. If you are right, the year appears; if not, the card still lands in its true place and you lose one of three lives.

The early cards are about streets, shops and post, and the later ones move onto screens and phones. Digital firsts come in a rush, often only a year or two apart, so think about which tool had to exist before the next one could. Many of these firsts happened long before the thing went mainstream, which is why a gadget you remember getting as a novelty may have had its debut much earlier.

Want a longer game? On the deck tree you can tick this deck alongside any other one measured in release years and dates, and they shuffle into a single timeline together.

What's in the deck

Here are 28 of the 44 cards you might be dealt, with 16 more in the deck. Their values stay hidden until you place them.

  • First photograph Nicéphore Niépce, France
  • First selfie Robert Cornelius, Philadelphia
  • First Christmas card Henry Cole, London
  • First underground railway Metropolitan Railway, London
  • First telephone directory New Haven, Connecticut
  • First cash register James Ritty, Dayton
  • First nickelodeon Pittsburgh
  • First self-service grocery store Piggly Wiggly, Memphis
  • First commercial radio broadcast KDKA, Pittsburgh
  • First drive-in movie theater Camden County, New Jersey
  • First parking meter Oklahoma City
  • First TV commercial Bulova, New York
  • First credit card Diners Club, New York
  • First enclosed shopping mall Southdale Center, Edina
  • First 911 call Haleyville, Alabama
  • First email between computers Ray Tomlinson
  • First barcode scan Marsh Supermarket, Troy, Ohio
  • First spam email Gary Thuerk, DEC
  • First .com domain Symbolics
  • First GIF CompuServe
  • First webcam Trojan Room coffee pot, Cambridge
  • First photo on the web Les Horribles Cernettes, CERN
  • First secure online purchase A Sting CD on NetMarket
  • First QR code Denso Wave, Japan
  • First item sold on eBay A broken laser pointer
  • First Google Doodle Burning Man
  • First YouTube video Me at the zoo
  • First hashtag Chris Messina, Twitter

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