I
nventions don't generally happen by accident or in a random order: science and technology progress in a very logical way, with each new discovery leading on from the last. You can see that in our mini chronology of invention, below. It's not a complete history of everything; it's simply another way to explore the 450 or so detailed articles on our website.
Not all of our articles are listed in the timeline; you can find a more complete list in our A-Z index.
| Date | Invention or discovery | Articles on Explain that stuff |
|---|---|---|
| Prehistory | ||
4–5 billion years ago
|
Sun starts to produce energy.
| |
| 10 million years ago. | Humans make the first tools from stone, wood, antlers, and bones. | Tools and machines |
1–2 million years ago
|
Humans discover fire.
| |
| 25,000– 50,000 BCE | Humans first wear clothes. | Biomimetic clothing |
| 10,000 BCE | Earliest boats are constructed. | Ships and boats |
| 8000– 9000 BCE | Beginnings of human settlements and agriculture. | Biofuels Water |
| 6000– 7000 BCE | Hand-made bricks first used for construction in the Middle East. | Brick (ceramics) |
| Ancient times | ||
| 4000 BCE | Iron used for the first time in decorative ornaments. | Iron and steel |
| 3500– 5000 BCE | Glass is made by people for the first time. | Glass |
| 3500 BCE | Humans invent the wheel. | Tools and machines Wheels and axles |
| 3000 BCE | First written languages are developed by the Sumerian people of southern Mesopotamia (part of modern Iraq). | Digital pens Typewriters |
| ~2500 BCE | Ancient Egyptians produce papyrus, a crude early version of paper. | Paper |
| 3000– 600BCE | Bronze Age: Widespread use of copper and its important alloy bronze. | Copper Alloys Metals |
| 2000 BCE | Water-raising and irrigation devices like the shaduf (shadoof), invented by the Ancient Egyptians, introduce the idea of lifting things using counterweights. | Elevators Tools and machines Water |
| c1700 BCE | Semites of the Mediterranean develop the alphabet. | Digital pens |
| 1000 BCE | Iron Age begins: iron is widely used for making tools and weapons in many parts of the world. | Iron and steel |
~250 BCE
|
Ancient Egyptians invent lighthouses, including the huge Lighthouse of Alexandria.
| |
600 BCE
|
Thales of Miletus discovers static electricity.
| |
| c.150– 100 BCE | Gear-driven, precision clockwork machines (such as the Antikythera mechanism) are in existence. | Clockwork |
| c.50 BCE | Roman engineer Vitruvius perfects the modern, vertical water wheel. | Turbines |
62 CE
|
Hero of Alexandria, a Greek scientist, pioneers steam power.
| |
105 CE
|
Ts'ai Lun makes the first paper in China.
| |
| 27 BCE–395 CE | Romans develop the first, basic concrete called pozzolana. | Steel and concrete |
| Middle Ages | ||
| ~600 CE | Windmills are invented in the Middle East. | Wind turbines |
| 700–900 CE | Chinese invent gunpowder and fireworks. | Bullets Fireworks |
| 800–1300 CE | Thanks to inventors such as the Banū Mūsā brothers and al-Jazari, the Islamic "Golden Age" sees the development of a wide range of technologies, including ingenious clocks and feedback mechanisms that are the ancestors of modern automated factory machines. | Clockwork Cams and cranks Robots |
| 1000 CE ?? | Chinese develop eyeglasses by fixing lenses to frames that fit onto people's faces. | Lenses |
| 1206 | Arabic engineer al-Jazari invents a flushing hand-washing machine, one of the ancestors of the modern toilet. | Toilets |
| 1450 | Johannes Gutenberg pioneers the modern printing press, using rearrangeable metal letters called movable type. | Printing |
| 1470s | The first parachute is sketched on paper by an unknown inventor. | Parachutes |
| 16th century | ||
| 1530s | Gerardus Mercator helps to revolutionize navigation with better mapmaking. | Satellite navigation |
| 1590 | A Dutch spectacle maker named Zacharias Janssen makes the first compound microscope. | Microscopes Electron microscopes |
| 1596 | Sir John Harington describes one of the first modern flush toilets. | Toilets |
| 17th century | ||
| ~1600 | Galileo Galilei designs a basic thermometer. | Thermometer |
| 1600 | William Gilbert publishes his great book De Magnete describing how Earth behaves like a giant magnet. It's the beginning of the scientific study of magnetism. | Magnetism |
| 1609 | Galileo Galilei builds a practical telescope and makes new astronomical discoveries. | Space telescopes |
| mid-17th century | Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke independently develop microscopes. | Microscopes Electron microscopes |
| 1643 | Galileo's pupil Evangelista Torricelli builds the first mercury barometer for measuring air pressure. | Barometers |
| 1650s | Christiaan Huygens develops the pendulum clock (using Galileo's earlier discovery that a swinging pendulum can be used to keep time). | Pendulum clocks |
| 1687 | Isaac Newton formulates his three laws of motion. | Motion |
| 1700s | Bartolomeo Cristofori invents the piano. | Pianos |
| 18th century | ||
| 1701 | English farmer Jethro Tull begins the mechanization of agriculture by inventing the horse-drawn seed drill. | Tractors |
| 1703 | Gottfried Leibniz pioneers the binary number system now used in virtually all computers. | How computers work History of computers |
1712
|
Thomas Newcomen builds the first practical (but stationary) steam engine.
| |
| 1700s | Christiaan Huygens conceives the internal combustion engine, but never actually builds one. | Car engines |
| 1737 | William Champion develops a commercially viable process for extracting zinc on a large scale. | Zinc |
| 1757 | John Campbell invents the sextant, an improved navigational device that enables sailors to measure latitude. | Satellite navigation |
| 1730s– 1770s | John Harrison develops reliable chronometers (seafaring clocks) that allow sailors to measure longitude accurately for the first time. | Quartz clocks and watches Satellite navigation |
| 1751 | Axel Cronstedt isolates nickel. | Nickel |
| 1756 | Axel Cronstedt notices steam when he boils a rock—and discovers zeolites. | Zeolites |
| 1769 | Wolfgang von Kempelen develops a mechanical speaking machine: the world's first speech synthesizer. | Speech synthesizers |
| 1770s | Abraham Darby III builds a pioneering iron bridge at a place now called Ironbridge in England. | Bridges |
| ~1780 | Josiah Wedgwood (or Thomas Massey) invents the pyrometer. | Pyrometers |
| 1783 | French Brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier make the first practical hot-air balloon. | Hot-air balloons |
| 1791 | Reverend William Gregor, a British clergyman and amateur geologist, discovers a mysterious mineral that he calls menachite. Four years later, Martin Klaproth gives it its modern name, titanium. | Titanium |
| 19th century | ||
| 1800 | Italian Alessandro Volta makes the first battery (known as a Voltaic pile). | Electricity Batteries |
| 1801 | Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents the automated cloth-weaving loom. The punched cards it uses to store patterns help to inspire programmable computers. | History of computers |
| 1803 | Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier develop the papermaking machine. | Paper |
| 1806 | Humphry Davy develops electrolysis into an important chemical technique and uses it to identify a number of new elements. | Electrolyzers |
| 1807 | Humphry Davy develops the electric arc lamp. | Xenon lamps |
| 1814 | George Stephenson builds the first practical steam locomotive. | Steam engines |
| 1816 | Robert Stirling invents the efficient Stirling engine. | Stirling engines |
| 1820s– 1830s | Michael Faraday builds primitive electric generators and motors. | Electricity generators Electric motors Hub motors |
| 1827 | Joseph Niepce makes the first modern photograph. | Photography Digital cameras |
| 1830s | William Sturgeon develops the first practical electric motor. | Electric motors Hub motors |
| 1830s | Louis Daguerre invents a practical method of taking pin-sharp photographs called Daguerreotypes. | Digital cameras Photography |
| 1830s | William Henry Fox Talbot develops a way of making and printing photographs using reverse images called negatives. | Digital cameras Photography |
| 1830s– 1840s | Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke, in England, and Samuel Morse, in the United States, develop the electric telegraph (a forerunner of the telephone). | Telephones |
| 1836 | Englishman Francis Petit-Smith and Swedish-American John Ericsson independently develop propellers with blades for ships. | Propellers |
| 1839 | Charles Goodyear finally perfects a durable form of rubber (vulcanized rubber) after many years of unsuccessful experimenting. | Rubber |
| 1840s | Scottish physicist James Prescott Joule outlines the theory of the conservation of energy. | Energy Great physics experiments |
| 1840s | Scotsman Alexander Bain invents a primitive fax machine based on chemical technology. | Fax machines |
| 1849 | James Francis invents a water turbine now used in many of the world's hydropower plants. | Turbines Water |
| 1850s | Henry Bessemer pioneers a new method of making steel in large quantities. | Iron and steel |
| 1850s | Louis Pasteur develops pasteurization: a way of preserving food by heating it to kill off bacteria. | Pasteurization |
| 1850s | Italian Giovanni Caselli develops a mechanical fax machine called the pantelegraph. | Fax machines |
| 1860s | Frenchman Étienne Lenoir and German Nikolaus Otto pioneer the internal combustion engine. | Car engines Cars, history of |
| 1860s | James Clerk Maxwell figures out that radio waves must exist and sets out basic laws of electromagnetism. | Radio |
| 1860s | Fire extinguishers are invented. | Fire extinguisher |
| 1861 | Elisha Graves Otis invents the elevator with built-in safety brake. | Elevators |
| 1867 | Joseph Monier invents reinforced concrete. | Reinforced concrete |
| 1868 | Christopher Latham Sholes invents the modern typewriter and QWERTY keyboard. | Typewriters |
| 1876 | Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone, though the true ownership of the invention remains controversial even today. | Telephones |
| 1870s | Thomas Edison develops the phonograph, the first practical method of recording and playing back sound on metal foil. | CD players MP3 players |
| 1870s | Lester Pelton invents a useful new kind of water turbine known as a Pelton wheel. | Turbines |
| 1877 | Thomas Edison invents his sound-recording machine or phonograph—a forerunner of the record player and CD player. | Record players Sound |
| 1877 | Edward Very invents the flare gun (Very pistol) for sending distress flares at sea. | Flares |
| 1880 | Thomas Edison patents the modern incandescent electric lamp. | Incandescent lamps |
| 1880 | Pierre and Paul-Jacques Curie discover the piezoelectric effect. | Piezoelectricity |
| 1880s | Thomas Edison opens the world's first power plants. | Power plants |
| 1880s | Charles Chamberland invents the autoclave (steam sterilizing machine). | Autoclaves |
| 1880s | Charles and Julia Hall and Paul Heroult independently develop an affordable way of making aluminum. | Aluminum |
| 1880s | Carrie Everson invents new ways of mining silver, gold, and copper. | Copper Gold Silver |
| 1881 | Jacques d'Arsonval suggests heat energy could be extracted from the oceans. | OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) |
| 1883 | George Eastman invents plastic photographic film. | Digital cameras Plastics |
| 1884 | Charles Parsons develops the steam turbine. | Steam turbines Turbines |
| 1885 | Karl Benz builds a gasoline-engined car. | Car engines |
| 1886 | Josephine Cochran invents the dishwasher. | Dishwashers |
| 1888 | Friedrich Reinitzer discovers liquid crystals. | LCD screens and displays |
| 1888 | John Boyd Dunlop patents air-filled (pneumatic) tires. | Pneumatics |
| 1888 | Nikola Tesla patents the alternating current (AC) electric induction motor and, in opposition to Thomas Edison, becomes a staunch advocate of AC power. | Electricity Electric motors Induction motors Power plants |
| 1899 | Everett F. Morse invents the optical pyrometer for measuring temperatures at a safe distance. | Pyrometers |
| 1890s | French brothers Joseph and Louis Lumiere invent movie projectors and open the first movie theater. | Camcorders Projection TV |
| 1890s | German engineer Rudolf Diesel develops his diesel engine—a more efficient internal combustion engine without a sparking plug. | Diesel engines |
| 1894 | Physicist Sir Oliver Lodge sends the first ever message by radio wave in Oxford, England. | Radio |
| 1895 | German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X rays. | X rays |
| 1895 | American Ogden Bolton, Jr. invents the electric bicycle. | Electric bikes |
| 20th century | ||
| 1901 | Guglielmo Marconi sends radio-wave signals across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Canada | Radio |
| 1901 | The first electric vacuum cleaner is developed. | Vacuum cleaners |
| 1903 | Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright build the first engine-powered airplane. | Airplanes Jet engines |
| 1905 | Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effect. | Photoelectric cells |
| 1905 | Samuel J. Bens invents the chainsaw. | Chainsaws |
| 1906 | Willis Carrier pioneers the air conditioner. | Air conditioners |
| 1906 | Mikhail Tswett discovers chromatography. | Chromatography |
| 1907 | Leo Baekeland develops Bakelite, the first popular synthetic plastic. | Plastics |
| 1907 | Alva Fisher invents the electric clothes washer. | Clothes washer |
| 1906-8 | Frederick Gardner Cottrell develops the electrostatic smoke precipitator (smokestack pollution scrubber). | Air pollution Electrostatic smoke precipitators |
| 1908 | American industrialist and engineer Henry Ford launches the Ford Model T, the world's first truly affordable car. | Car engines Cars, history of |
| 1909 | German chemists Fritz Haber and Zygmunt Klemensiewicz develop the glass electrode, enabling very precise measurements of acidity. | pH meters |
| 1912 | American chemist Gilbert Lewis describes the basic chemistry that leads to practical, lithium-ion rechargeable batteries (though they don't appear in a practical, commercial form until the 1990s). | Lithium-ion batteries |
| 1912 | Hans Geiger develops the Geiger counter, a detector for radioactivity. | Geiger counters |
| 1919 | Francis Aston pioneers the mass spectrometer and uses it to discover many isotopes. | Mass spectrometers |
| 1920s | John Logie Baird develops mechanical television. | Television LCD TV |
| 1920s | Philo T. Farnsworth invents modern electronic television. | Television LCD TV |
| 1920s | Robert H. Goddard develops the principle of the modern, liquid-fueled space rocket. | Bullets Space rockets |
| 1920s | German engineer Gustav Tauschek and American Paul Handel independently develop primitive optical character recognition (OCR) scanning systems. | OCR |
| 1920s | Albert W. Hull invents the magnetron, a device that can generate microwaves from electricity. | Magnetrons Microwave ovens |
| 1921 | Karel Capek and his brother coin the word "robot" in a play about artificial humans. | Robots |
| 1921 | John Larson develops the polygraph ("lie detector") machine. | Polygraphs |
| 1928 | Thomas Midgley, Jr. invents coolant chemicals for air conditioners and refrigerators. | Air conditioners Refrigerators |
| 1928 | The electric refrigerator is invented. | Refrigerators |
| 1930s | Peter Goldmark pioneers color television. | Television LCD TV |
| 1930s | Laszlo and Georg Biro pioneer the modern ballpoint pen. | Digital pens |
| 1930s | Maria Telkes creates the first solar-powered house. | Passive solar Solar cells |
| 1930s | Wallace Carothers develops neoprene (synthetic rubber used in wetsuits) and nylon, the first popular synthetic clothing material. | Kevlar Nomex Nylon Wetsuits |
| 1930s | Robert Watson Watt oversees the development of radar. | Radar |
| 1930s | Arnold Beckman develops the electronic pH meter. | pH meters |
| 1931 | Harold E. Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp for high-speed photography. | Xenon lamps |
| 1932 | Arne Olander discovers the shape memory effect in a gold-cadmium alloy. | Shape memory alloys |
| 1936 | W.B. Elwood invents the magnetic reed switch. | Reed switches |
| 1938 | Chester Carlson invents the principle of photocopying (xerography). | Photocopiers |
| 1938 | Roy Plunkett accidentally invents a nonstick plastic coating called Teflon. | Gore-Tex Nonstick pans |
| 1939 | Igor Sikorsky builds the first truly practical helicopter. | Helicopters |
| 1940s | English physicists John Randall and Harry Boot develop a compact magnetron for use in airplane radar navigation systems. | Magnetrons Radar |
| 1942 | Enrico Fermi builds the first nuclear chain reactor at the University of Chicago. | Nuclear power |
| 1945 | US government scientist Vannevar Bush proposes a kind of desk-sized memory store called Memex, which has some of the features later incorporated into electronic books and the World Wide Web (WWW). | Electronic books World Wide Web |
| 1947 | John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the transistor, which allows electronic equipment to made much smaller and leads to the modern computer revolution. | Amplifiers Electronics History of computers Transistors |
| 1949 | Bernard Silver and N. Joseph Woodland patent barcodes—striped patterns that are initially developed for marking products in grocery stores. | Barcodes and barcode scanners |
| 1950s | Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow invent the maser (microwave laser). Gordon Gould coins the word "laser" and builds the first optical laser in 1958. | Lasers |
| 1950s | Stanford Ovshinksy develops various technologies that make renewable energy more practical, including practical solar cells and improved rechargeable batteries. | Batteries Electric bicycles Electric cars Solar cells |
| 1950s | European bus companies experiment with using flywheels as regenerative brakes | Flywheels |
| 1950s | Percy Spencer accidentally discovers how to cook with microwaves, inadvertently inventing the microwave oven. | Microwave ovens |
| 1954 | Indian physicist Narinder Kapany pioneers fiber optics. | Fiber optics Endoscopes |
| 1956 | First commercial nuclear power is produced at Calder Hall, Cumbria, England. | Nuclear power plants |
| 1957 | Soviet Union (Russia and her allies) launch the Sputnik space satellite. | Satellites |
| 1957 | Lawrence Curtiss, Basil Hirschowitz, and Wilbur Peters build the first fiber-optic gastroscope. | Endoscopes |
| 1958 | Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, working independently, develop the integrated circuit. | History of computers integrated circuits Transistors |
| 1959 | IBM and General Motors develop Design Augmented by Computers-1 (DAC-1), the first computer-aided design (CAD) system. | Computer graphics |
| 1960s | Joseph-Armand Bombardier perfects his Ski-Doo® snowmobile. | Snowmobiles |
| 1960 | Theodore Maiman invents the ruby laser. | Lasers |
| 1962 | William Armistead and S. Donald Stookey of Corning Glass Works invent light-sensitive (photochromic) glass. | Photochromic lenses |
| 1963 | Ivan Sutherland develops Sketchpad, one of the first computer-aided design programs. | Computer graphics |
| 1964 | IBM helps to pioneer e-commerce with an airline ticket reservation system called SABRE. | E-commerce |
| 1965 | Frank Pantridge develops the portable defibrillator for treating cardiac arrest patients. | Defibrillators |
| 1966 | Stephanie Kwolek patents a super-strong plastic called Kevlar. | Kevlar |
| 1967 | Japanese company Noritake invents the vacuum fluorescent display (VFD). | Vacuum fluorescent displays |
| 1968 | Alfred Y. Cho and John R. Arthur, Jr invent a precise way of making single crystals called molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). | Molecular beam epitaxy |
| 1969 | World's first solar power station opened in France. | Solar cells Energy |
| 1969 | Long before computers become portable, Alan Kay imagines building an electronic book, which he nicknames the Dynabook. | Electronic books |
| 1969 | Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith invent the CCD (charge-coupled device): the light-sensitive chip used in digital cameras, webcams, and other modern optical equipment. | CCDs Digital cameras |
| 1969 | Astronauts walk on the Moon. | Space rockets |
| 1960s | Douglas Engelbart develops the computer mouse. | Computer mouse |
| 1960s | James Russell invents compact discs. | CD players |
| 1971 | Electronic ink is pioneered by Nick Sheridon at Xerox PARC. | Electronic ink and paper |
| 1971 | Ted Hoff builds the first single-chip computer or microprocessor. | History of computers |
| 1973 | Martin Cooper develops the first handheld cellphone (mobile phone). | Cellphones |
| 1973 | Robert Metcalfe figures out a simple way of linking computers together that he names Ethernet. Most computers hooked up to the Internet now use it. | Computer networks Internet |
| 1974 | First grocery-store purchase of an item coded with a barcode. | Barcodes and barcode scanners |
| 1975 | Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invent public-key cryptography. | Encryption |
| 1975 | Pico Electronics develops X-10 home automation system. | Smart homes |
| 1976 | Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs launch the Apple I: one of the world's first personal home computers | History of computers |
| 1970s– 1980s | James Dyson invents the bagless, cyclonic vacuum cleaner. | Vacuum cleaners |
| 1970s– 1980s | Scientists including Charles Bennett, Paul Benioff, Richard Feynman, and David Deutsch sketch out how quantum computers might work. | Quantum computers |
| 1980s | Japanese electrical pioneer Akio Morita develops the Sony Walkman, the first truly portable player for recorded music. | CD players MP3 players |
| 1981 | Stung by Apple's success, IBM releases its own affordable personal computer (PC). | History of computers |
| 1981 | The Space Shuttle makes its maiden voyage. | Space Shuttle |
| 1981 | Patricia Bath develops laser eye surgery for removing cataracts. | Lasers |
| 1981– 1982 | Alexei Ekimov and Louis E. Brus (independently) discover quantum dots. | Quantum dots |
| 1983 | Compact discs (CDs) are launched as a new way to store music by the Sony and Philips corporations. | CD players |
| 1987 | Larry Hornbeck, working at Texas Instruments, develops DLP® projection—now used in many projection TV systems. | DLP® projectors |
| 1989 | Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web. | Internet World Wide Web |
| 1990 | German watchmaking company Junghans introduces the MEGA 1, believed to be the world's first radio-controlled wristwatch. | Radio-controlled clocks Quartz clocks and watches |
| 1991 | Linus Torvalds creates the first version of Linux, a collaboratively written computer operating system. | Computers Linux |
| 1994 | American-born mathematician John Daugman perfects the mathematics that make iris scanning systems possible. | Iris scans |
| 1994 | Israeli computer scientists Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty invent VoIP for sending telephone calls over the Internet. | VoIP |
| 1995 | Broadcast.com becomes one of the world's first online radio stations. | Streaming media |
| 1995 | Pierre Omidyar launches the eBay auction website. | E-commerce |
| 1996 | WRAL-HD broadcasts the first high-definition television (HDTV) signal in the United States. | HDTV |
| 1997 | Electronics companies agree to make Wi-Fi a worldwide standard for wireless Internet. | Wireless Internet |
| 21st century | ||
| 2001 | Apple revolutionizes music listening by unveiling its iPod MP3 music player. | MP3 players |
| 2001 | Richard Palmer develops energy-absorbing D3O plastic. | Energy-absorbing materials |
| 2001 | The Wikipedia online encyclopedia is founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales. | Electronic books |
| 2001 | Bram Cohen develops BitTorrent file-sharing. | BitTorrent Internet |
| 2001 | Scott White, Nancy Sottos, and colleagues develop self-healing materials. | Self-healing materials |
| 2002 | iRobot Corporation releases the first version of its Roomba® vacuum cleaning robot. | Roomba Robots |
| 2004 | Electronic voting plays a major part in a controversial US Presidential Election. | Touchscreens |
| 2004 | Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov discover graphene. | Graphene |
| 2005 | A pioneering low-cost laptop for developing countries called OLPC is announced by MIT computing pioneer Nicholas Negroponte. | Computers |
| 2007 | Amazon.com launches its Kindle electronic book (e-book) reader. | Electronic books |
| 2007 | Apple introduces a touchscreen cellphone called the iPhone. | Cellphones Touchscreens |
| 2010 | Apple releases its touchscreen tablet computer, the iPad. | Computers Touchscreens |
| 2010 | 3D TV starts to become more widely available. | 3D Television Television |
| 2013 | Elon Musk announces "hyperloop"—a giant, pneumatic tube transport system. | Pneumatics Pneumatic transport tube |
| 2015 | Supercomputers (the world's fastest computers) are now a mere 30 times less powerful than human brains. | Supercomputers |
| 2016 | Three nanotechnologists win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for building miniature machines out of molecules. | Nanotechnology |
| 2017 | Quantum computing shows signs of becoming a practical technology. | Quantum computers |
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