Tomorrow’s Tech Treepowered by Astra

File Formats & Standards · Recorded milestone

JPEG compression

Recorded year1992

Transform coding shrinks photos tenfold, making images on the web possible.

Explore this milestone on the interactive map

Built on

Information theoryRecorded · 1948requires
Fast Fourier transformRecorded · 1965enables
MicroprocessorRecorded · 1971requires
Personal computerRecorded · 1975requires

Led to

MPEG-1 digital videoRecorded · 1993enables
EXIF photo metadataRecorded · 1995enables
AI-compressed photosForecast · ~2030enables

Sources & evidence

Additional source

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.