Last year, I.D. Magazine created a brief history and timeline of TED.
Whether you’re familiar with TED or not, it’s a great way to explore just some of how the TED conference changed the face of invention:

Mid-1990s: The dot-com bubble balloons; venture-capital cash and lucrative stock options flow like cheap champagne.
1994: Entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, a regular TED fixture, founds Amazon.com.
1995: Journalist Louis Rossetto and publishing partner Jane Metcalfe receive seed money to launch their European publication, The Electric Word, in the U.S. under the new name of Wired.
1999: Chris Anderson launches Business 2.0; he credits the title to a conversation he had in a bathroom during a TED conference
2004: Feminist writer and activist Eve Ensler talks vaginas and describes her unhappy childhood
2005: Fourteen-year-old composer Jennifer Lin brings the TED audience to tears with a piano performance that redefines the meaning of “child prodigy.”
2006: Jeff Han demonstrates a multi-touch interface that lets you manipulate objects onscreen with your hands, an invention that foreshadows the iPhone
2008: TEDTalks receives its 50 millionth video view in June.
…

2010: TEDxTelAviv takes place, April 26. You can apply here.

Read the full article from I.D. Magazine