Timeline of technology
Milestones from the first stone tools to modern networks. Filter by period or area, and follow any entry to its article. Where dates are disputed, the entry says so.
Showing 42 of 42 milestones
Milestones
- c. 2.6 million years ago
Chipped-stone tools
Sets of flakes and cores associated with the so-called Oldowan industry appear in East Africa. Even older finds are debated.
- From c. 10,000 BCE
Agriculture in several regions
Plants and animals were domesticated gradually and independently in different parts of the world, with no single starting date.
- c. 5th millennium BCE
Smelted copper
Evidence of copper smelting appears at sites in the Near East and Europe. Dates and origins remain debated.
- c. 3500 BCE
Earliest evidence of wheeled vehicles
Finds and depictions point to wheels on vehicles in Mesopotamia and Europe around this time. The exact origin is disputed.
- c. 3400–3200 BCE
Writing on clay tablets
Accounting tablets with numerical and pictographic signs appear in Mesopotamian cities. Other regions developed writing systems of their own.
- 3rd century BCE – 1st century CE
Ancient hydraulic and mechanical engineering
Pumps, cranes, aqueducts, and precision mechanisms show the reach of classical-antiquity engineering.
- 2nd century BCE – 2nd century CE
Paper in China
Archaeological fragments indicate paper before the improvement that tradition credits to Cai Lun, around 105 CE.
- 11th–13th centuries
The compass in navigation
Chinese records from the eleventh century and European ones from the twelfth and thirteenth describe the magnetic needle used for orientation.
- 1377
Book printed with metal type in Korea
The Jikji is the oldest known surviving book printed with movable metal type.
- c. 1450
Printing in Mainz
Johannes Gutenberg and collaborators develop a system of movable metal type, press, and ink suited to Europe. The 42-line Bible dates to about 1455.
- 1712
Newcomen's atmospheric engine
Thomas Newcomen installs a steam engine in England to drain mines. James Watt's improvements follow from the 1760s.
- 1761–1762
Harrison's marine timekeeper on trial
John Harrison's H4 watch is tested on a sea voyage as a way to determine longitude at sea.
- 1771
Cromford Mill
Richard Arkwright starts a water-powered spinning mill in England that became a model for other factories.
- 1800
Volta's pile
Alessandro Volta describes the pile, the first stable source of continuous electric current.
- 1831
Electromagnetic induction
Michael Faraday demonstrates induction, the basis of generators and motors. Joseph Henry observed similar phenomena independently.
- 1839
Daguerreotype announced
Louis Daguerre's process is presented publicly in France, following earlier experiments such as those of Nicéphore Niépce.
- 1837–1844
Electric telegraphs
Cooke and Wheatstone in Britain and Morse and Vail in the United States develop systems. The Washington–Baltimore line is demonstrated in 1844.
- 1866
A lasting transatlantic cable
After the 1858 attempt failed within weeks, the 1866 cable establishes stable telegraph communication between North America and Europe.
- 1876
Telephone patent
Alexander Graham Bell obtains a patent in the United States. Priority disputes involving Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci remain debated.
- 1877
Edison's phonograph
Thomas Edison presents a device that can record and play back sound. The 1857 phonautograph had only recorded sound visually.
- 1882
First urban electric grids
Stations such as Holborn Viaduct in London and Pearl Street in New York begin distributing electricity for lighting.
- 1895
Public film screenings
The Lumière brothers hold a paid screening in Paris on December 28, 1895. Other inventors demonstrated systems in the same years.
- 1901
Claimed transatlantic radio signal
Guglielmo Marconi announces reception of a signal between England and Newfoundland. The technical proof of the feat is debated.
- 1913
Moving assembly line
Ford adopts the moving assembly line at Highland Park, in the United States, cutting the production time of the Model T.
- 1920
Regular broadcasting in the United States
Station KDKA in Pittsburgh begins regular broadcasts in November 1920.
- 1936
Regular television service in London
The BBC begins a regular television service, one of the first in the world.
- 1946
ENIAC shown to the public
The electronic computer ENIAC, built at the University of Pennsylvania, is presented in February 1946.
- 1947
The transistor at Bell Labs
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain demonstrate the point-contact transistor. William Shockley soon proposes the junction transistor.
- 1956
Dartmouth workshop
Researchers gathered at Dartmouth popularize the term "artificial intelligence." Alan Turing had already published a paper on thinking machines in 1950.
- 1957
FORTRAN
IBM makes FORTRAN available, one of the first widely used high-level programming languages.
- 1958–1959
The integrated circuit
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments demonstrates an integrated circuit in 1958. Robert Noyce of Fairchild proposes a planar silicon version in 1959.
- 1961
Industrial robot on a production line
A Unimate robot is installed at a General Motors plant in the United States.
- 1969
First ARPANET nodes
Between October and December 1969, the first computers are linked by the ARPANET, a network funded by the United States government.
- 1973
Call on a portable phone prototype
Martin Cooper of Motorola places a call in April 1973 using a prototype portable cellular phone.
- 1977
Ready-to-use microcomputers
The Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 reach the market in 1977, aimed at homes and small businesses.
- 1981
The IBM PC
IBM launches the PC, whose relatively open architecture encourages clones and third-party software.
- 1983
TCP/IP on the ARPANET
On January 1, 1983, the ARPANET officially adopts the TCP/IP protocol suite.
- 1989–1991
The Web is born
Tim Berners-Lee proposes the system at CERN in 1989. The service becomes public in 1991.
- 1997
Deep Blue and Kasparov
IBM's Deep Blue computer wins a six-game match against world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
- 2007
Smartphones go mainstream
The iPhone is unveiled in January 2007 and Android reaches the market in 2008. Phones with Web access and apps become popular.
- 2012
Deep learning in image recognition
A deep neural network wins the ImageNet challenge by a wide margin and boosts interest in such methods.
- 2017
The Transformer architecture
Researchers present the Transformer architecture, the basis of many later language models.
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and entries that mention a debate reflect genuine disagreement among historians. The timeline is a navigation aid: the articles carry the full context.