The timeline of historic inventions is a chronological list of particularly important or significant technological inventions and their inventors, where known.
The dates listed in this section refer to the earliest evidence of an invention found and dated by archaeologists (or in a few cases, suggested by indirect evidence). Dates are often approximate and change as more research is done, reported and seen. Older examples of any given technology are often found. The locations listed are for the site where the earliest solid evidence has been found, but especially for the earlier inventions, there is little certainty how close that may be to where the invention took place.
Lower Paleolithic
The Lower Paleolithic period lasted over 3 million years, and corresponds to the human genus prior to the emergence of Homo sapiens. The original divergence between humans and chimpanzees occurred 13 (Mya), however interbreeding continued until as recently as 4 Ma, with the first species clearly belonging to the human (and not chimpanzee) lineage being Australopithecus anamensis. This time period is characterized as an ice age with regular periodic warmer periods – interglacial episodes. Some species are controversial among paleoanthropologists, who disagree whether they are species on their own or not. Here Homo ergaster is included under Homo erectus, while Homo rhodesiensis is included under Homo heidelbergensis.
The dawn of Homo sapiens around 300 kya coincides with the start of the Middle Paleolithic period. Towards the middle of this 250,000-year period, humans begin to migrate out of Africa, and the later part of the period shows the beginning of long-distance trade, religious rites and other behavior associated with Behavioral modernity.
320 kya: The trade and long-distance transportation of resources (e.g. obsidian), use of pigments, and possible making of projectile points in Kenya
200 kya:Glue in Central Italy by Neanderthals. More complicated compound adhesives developed by Homo sapiens have been found from c. 70 kya Sibudu, South Africa and have been regarded as a sign of cognitive advancement.
170 kya - 83 kya:Clothing (among anatomically modern humans in Africa). Some other evidence suggests that humans may have begun wearing clothing as far back as 100,000 to 500,000 years ago.
164 kya - 47 kya: Heat treating of stone blades in South Africa.
50 ka has been regarded by some as the beginning of behavioral modernity, defining the Upper Paleolithic period, which lasted nearly 40,000 years (though some research dates the beginning of behavioral modernity earlier to the Middle Paleolithic). This is characterized by the widespread observation of religious rites, artistic expression and the appearance of tools made for purely intellectual or artistic pursuits.
49 kya – 30 kya:Ground stone tools – fragments of an axe in Australia date to 49–45 ka, more appear in Japan closer to 30 ka, and elsewhere closer to the Neolithic.
47 kya: The oldest-known mines in the world are from Eswatini, and extracted hematite for the production of the red pigment ochre.
45 kya – 9 kya: Earliest evidence of shoes, suggested by changes in foot bone morphology in China by Tianyuan Man. The earliest physical shoes found so far are bark sandals dated to 10 to 9 kya in Fort Rock Cave, United States.
The end of the Last Glacial Period ("ice age") and the beginning of the Holocene around 11.7 ka coincide with the Agricultural Revolution, marking the beginning of the agricultural era, which persisted there until the industrial revolution.
Neolithic and Late Mesolithic
During the Neolithic period, lasting 8400 years, stone remained the predominant material for toolmaking, although copper and arsenic bronze were developed towards the end of this period.
4650 BC: Copper-tin bronze found at the Pločnik (Serbia) site, and belonging to the Vinča culture, believed to be produced from smelting a natural tin baring copper ore, Stannite.
The beginning of bronze-smelting coincides with the emergence of the first cities and of writing in the Ancient Near East and the Indus Valley. The Bronze Age starting in Eurasia in the 4th millennia BC and ended, in Eurasia, c.1300 BC.
3300 BC: The first documented swords. They have been found in Arslantepe, Turkey, are made from arsenical bronze, and are about 60 cm (24 in) long. Some of them are inlaid with silver.
3250 BC: One of the earliest known confirmed hats was worn by a man (nicknamed Ötzi) whose body (including his hat) was found frozen in a mountain between Austria and Italy. He was found wearing a bearskin cap with a chin strap, made of several hides stitched together, essentially resembling a Russian fur hat without the flaps.
3200 BC: Dry Latrines in the city of Uruk, Iraq, with later dry squat Toilets, that added raised fired brick foot platforms, and pedestal toilets, all over clay pipe constructed drains.
3000 BC: Devices functionally equivalent to dice, in the form of flat two-sided throwsticks, are seen in the Egyptian game of Senet. Perhaps the oldest known dice, resembling modern ones, were excavated as part of a backgammon-like game set at the Burnt City, an archeological site in south-eastern Iran, estimated to be from between 2800 and 2500 BC. Later, terracotta dice were used at the Indus Valley site of Mohenjo-daro (modern-day Pakistan).
3000 BC - 2800 BC:Prosthesis first documented in the Ancient Near East, in ancient Egypt and Iran, specifically for an eye prosthetics, the eye found in Iran was likely made of bitumen paste that was covered with a thin layer of gold.
2200 BC:Protractor, Phase IV, Lothal, Indus Valley (modern-day India), a Xancus shell cylinder with sawn grooves, at right angles, in its top and bottom surfaces, has been proposed as an angle marking tool.
2000 BC:Water clock by at least the old Babylonian period (c. 2000 – c. 1600 BC), but possibly earlier from Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley.
1400 BC - 1200 BC:Concrete in Tiryns (Mycenaean Greece). Waterproof concrete was later developed by the Assyrians in 688 BC, and the Romans developed concretes that could set underwater. The Romans later used concrete extensively for construction from 300 BC to 476 AD.
The Late Bronze Age collapse occurs around 1300-1175 BC , extinguishing most Bronze-Age Near Eastern cultures, and significantly weakening the rest. This is coincident with the complete collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation. This event is followed by the beginning of the Iron Age. We define the Iron Age as ending in 510 BC for the purposes of this article, even though the typical definition is region-dependent (e.g. 510 BC in Greece, 322 BC in India, 200 BC in China), thus being an 800-year period.
7th century BC: The royal Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh had 30,000 clay tablets, in several languages, organized according to shape and separated by content. The first recorded example of a library catalog.
Late 6th century BC:Crank motion (rotary quern) in Carthage or 5th century BC CeltiberianSpain Later during the Roman empire, a mechanism appeared that incorporated a connecting rod.
Before 5th century BC:Loan deeds in Upanishadic India.
500 - 200 BC:Toe stirrup, depicted in 2nd century Buddhist art, of the Sanchi and Bhaja Caves, of the Deccan Satavahana empire (modern-day India) although may have originated as early as 500 BC.
5th century BC:Cast iron in Ancient China: Confirmed by archaeological evidence, the earliest cast iron is developed in China by the early 5th century BC during the Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC), the oldest specimens found in a tomb of Luhe County in Jiangsu province.
By at least the 3rd century BC:Archimedes' screw, one of the earliest hydraulic machines, was first used in the Nile river for irrigation purposes in Ancient Egypt
By the 3rd century BC:Water wheel. The origin is unclear: Indian Pali texts dating to the 4th century BCE refer to the cakkavattaka, which later commentaries describe as arahatta-ghati-yanta (machine with wheel-pots attached). Helaine Selin suggests that the device existed in Persia before 350 BC. The clearest description of the water wheel and Liquid-driven escapement is provided by Philo of Byzantium (c. 280 – 220 BC) in the Hellenistic kingdoms.
3rd century BC:Gimbal described by Philo of Byzantium
3rd century BC – 2nd century BC:Blast furnace in Ancient China: The earliest discovered blast furnaces in China date to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, although most sites are from the later Han dynasty.
1st century BC: News bulletin during the reign of Julius Caesar. A paper form, i.e. the earliest newspaper, later appeared during the late Han dynasty in the form of the Dibao.
38 BC: An empty shell Glyph for zero, is found on a Maya numerals Stela, from Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas. Independently invented by Claudius Ptolemy, in the second century CE Egypt, and appearing in the calculations of the Almagest.
1st century AD: The aeolipile, a simple steam turbine is recorded by Hero of Alexandria.
1st century AD: The first use of respiratory protective equipment is documented by Pliny the Elder (c. 23 AD–79) using animal bladder skins to protect workers in Roman mines from red lead oxide dust.
4th century: Roman Dichroic glass, which displays one of two different colors depending on lighting conditions.
4th century:Mariner's compass in Tamil Southern India: the first mention of the use of a compass for navigational purposes is found in Tamil nautical texts as the macchayantra. However, the theoretical notion of magnets pointing North predates the device by several centuries.
4th century:Simple suspension bridge, independently invented in Pre-Columbian South America, and the Hindu Kush range, of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. With Han dynasty travelers noting bridges being constructed from 3 or more vines or 3 ropes. Later bridges constructed utilizing cables of iron chains appeared in Tibet.
4th century:Fishing reel in Ancient China: In literary records, the earliest evidence of the fishing reel comes from a 4th-century AD work entitled Lives of Famous Immortals.
347:Oil Wells and Borehole drilling in China. Such wells could reach depths of up to 240 m (790 ft).
400: The construction of the Iron pillar of Delhi in Mathura by the Gupta Empire shows the development of rust-resistant ferrous metallurgy in Ancient India, although original texts do not survive to detail the specific processes invented in this period.
589:Toilet paper in Sui dynastyChina, first mentioned by the official Yan Zhitui (531–591), with full evidence of continual use in subsequent dynasties.
672:Greek fire in Constantinople, Byzantine Empire: Greek fire, an incendiary weapon likely based on petroleum or naphtha, is invented by Kallinikos, a Lebanese Greek refugee from Baalbek, as described by Theophanes. However, the historicity and exact chronology of this account is dubious, and it could be that Kallinikos merely introduced an improved version of an established weapon.
7th century:Porcelain in Tang dynastyChina: True porcelain is manufactured in northern China from roughly the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century, while true porcelain was not manufactured in southern China until about 300 years later, during the early 10th century.
8th century
9th century
9th century:Gunpowder in Tang dynastyChina: Gunpowder is, according to prevailing academic consensus, discovered in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality. Evidence of gunpowder's first use in China comes from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (618–907). The earliest known recorded recipes for gunpowder are written by Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du, and Yang Weide in the Wujing Zongyao, a military manuscript compiled in 1044 during the Song Dynasty (960–1279).
10th century:Fire lance in Song dynastyChina, developed in the 10th century with a tube of first bamboo and later on metal that shot a weak gunpowder blast of flame and shrapnel, its earliest depiction is a painting found at Dunhuang. Fire lance is the earliest firearm in the world and one of the earliest gunpowder weapons.
10th century:Fireworks in Song dynastyChina: Fireworks first appear in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), in the early age of gunpowder. Fireworks could be purchased from market vendors; these were made of sticks of bamboo packed with gunpowder.
13th century:Buttons (combined with buttonholes) as a functional fastening for closing clothes appear first in Germany.
13th century:Explosive bomb in Jin dynasty Manchuria: Explosive bombs are used in 1221 by the Jin dynasty against a Song Dynasty city. The first accounts of bombs made of cast iron shells packed with explosive gunpowder are documented in the 13th century in China and are called "thunder-crash bombs", coined during a Jin dynasty naval battle in 1231.
13th century:Hand cannon in Yuan dynasty China: The earliest hand cannon dates to the 13th century based on archaeological evidence from a Heilongjiang excavation. There is also written evidence in the Yuanshi (1370) on Li Tang, an ethnic Jurchen commander under the Yuan Dynasty who in 1288 suppresses the rebellion of the Christian prince Nayan with his "gun-soldiers" or chongzu, this being the earliest known event where this phrase is used.
13th century: Earliest documented snow goggles, a type of sunglasses, made of flattened walrus or caribou ivory are used by the Inuit peoples in the arctic regions of North America. In China, the first sunglasses consisting of flat panes of smoky quartz are documented.
1277:Land mine in Song dynastyChina: Textual evidence suggests that the first use of a land mine in history is by a Song Dynasty brigadier general known as Lou Qianxia, who uses an 'enormous bomb' (huo pao) to kill Mongol soldiers invading Guangxi in 1277.
14th century:Naval mine in Ming dynastyChina: Mentioned in the Huolongjing military manuscript written by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Bowen (1311–1375), describing naval mines used at sea or on rivers and lakes, made of wrought iron and enclosed in an ox bladder. A later model is documented in Song Yingxing's encyclopedia written in 1637.
1608:Telescope: Patent applied for by Hans Lippershey. Actual inventor unknown since it seemed to already be a common item being offered by the spectacle makers in the Netherlands with Jacob Metius also applying for patent and the son of Zacharias Janssen making a claim 47 years later that his father invented it.
1812:William Reid Clanny pioneered the invention of the safety lamp which he improved in later years. Safety lamps based on Clanny's improved design were used until the adoption of electric lamps.
1822:Thomas Blanchard invents the pattern-tracing lathe (actually more like a shaper). The lathe can copy symmetrical shapes and is used for making gun stocks, and later, ax handles.
1851:George Jennings offers the first public flush toilets, accessible for a penny per visit, and in 1852 receives a UK patent for the single piece, free standing, earthenware, trap plumed, flushing, water-closet.
1856:James Harrison produces the world's first practical ice making machine and refrigerator using the principle of vapour compression in Geelong, Australia.
1876:Alexander Graham Bell has a patent granted for the telephone. However, other inventors before Bell had worked on the development of the telephone and the invention had several pioneers.
1879:Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison both patent a functional incandescent light bulb. Some two dozen inventors had experimented with electric incandescent lighting over the first three-quarters of the 19th century but never came up with a practical design. Swan's, which he had been working on since the 1860s, had a low resistance so was only suited for small installations. Edison designed a high-resistance bulb as part of a large-scale commercial electric lighting utility.
1884: Hungarian engineers Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri invent the closed core high efficiency transformer and the AC parallel power distribution.
1888:Heinrich Hertz publishes a conclusive proof of James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory in experiments that also demonstrate the existence of radio waves. The effects of electromagnetic waves had been observed by many people before this but no usable theory explaining them existed until Maxwell.
1893:William Stewart Halsted, invents the rubber glove for his wife Caroline Hampton as he noticed her hands were affected on the daily surgeries she had performed and in order to prevent medical staff from developing dermatitis from surgical chemicals. The first modern disposable glove was invented by Ansell Rubber Co. Pty. Ltd. in 1965.
1895:Guglielmo Marconi invents a system of wireless communication using radio waves.
1912: The first commercial slot cars or more accurately model electric racing cars operating under constant power were made by Lionel (USA) and appeared in their catalogues in 1912. They drew power from a toy train rail sunk in a trough that was connected to a battery.
1915: The first operational military tanks are designed in Great Britain and France. They are used in battle from 1916 and 1917 respectively. The designers in Great Britain are Walter Wilson and William Tritton and in France, Eugène Brillié. (Although it is known that vehicles incorporating at least some of the features of the tank were designed in a number of countries from 1903 onward, none reached a practical form.)
1928:Frank Whittle formally submitted his ideas for a turbo-jet engine. In October 1929, he developed his ideas further. On 16 January 1930, Whittle submitted his first patent (granted in 1932).
1940:Pu-239 isotope (isotope of plutonium) a form of matter existing with the capacity for use as a destructive element (because the isotope has an exponentially increasing spontaneous fissile decay) within nuclear devices — Glenn Seaborg.
1945:Willard Libby began his work on radiocarbon dating. He published his paper in 1946, a second paper in Science in 1947. Libby and James Arnold succeeded with the radiocarbon dating theory after results were published in Science in December 1949.
1948:Basic oxygen steelmaking is developed by Robert Durrer. The vast majority of steel manufactured in the world is produced using the basic oxygen furnace; in 2000, it accounted for 60% of global steel output.
1953: The first video tape recorder, a helical scan recorder, is invented by Norikazu Sawazaki.
1954: Invention of the solar battery by Bell Telephone scientists, Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson capturing the Sun's power. First practical means of collecting energy from the Sun and turning it into a current of electricity.
1959: The MOSFET (MOS transistor) is invented by the Egyptian Mohamed Atalla and the Korean Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs. It is used in almost all modern electronic products. It was smaller, faster, more reliable and cheaper to manufacture than earlier bipolar transistors, leading to a revolution in computers, controls and communication.
1963: The first electronic cigarette is created by Herbert A. Gilbert. Hon Lik is often credited with its invention as he developed the modern electronic cigarette and was the first to commercialize it.
1982: A CD-ROM contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 Yellow Book standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data.
1989:Karlheinz Brandenburg would publish the audio compression algorithms that would be standardised as the: MPEG-1, layer 3 (mp3), and later the MPEG-2, layer 7 Advanced Audio Compression (AAC).
1996:Ciena deploys the first commercial wave division multiplexing system in partnership with Sprint. This created the massive capacity of the internet.
1996: Mobile web was first commercially offered in Finland on the Nokia 9000 Communicator phone and it was also the first phone with texting
1996:Bolt and Six Degrees (1997) both become the first social media sites
1997: The first weblog, a discussion or informational website, is created by Jorn Barger, later shortened to "blog" in 1999 by Peter Merholz.
1998: The first portable MP3 player is released by SaeHan Information Systems.
2000:Sony develops the first prototypes for the Blu-ray optical disc format. The first prototype player was released in 2004.
2000: First documented placement of Geocaching, an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon.
2001: The Xbox Launches and is the first game console with internal storage
2004: First podcast, invented by Adam Curry and Dave Winer, is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet and it usually features one or more recurring hosts engaged in a discussion about a particular topic or current event.
2005:YouTube, the first popular video-streaming site, was founded
2007:Netflix debuted the first popular video-on-demand service
2007: The Bank of Scotland develops the worlds first banking app
2007:SoundCloud, the first on-demand service to focus on music is debuted
2007: First Kindle introduced by Amazon (company) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who instructed the company's employees to build the world's best e-reader before Amazon's competitors could. Amazon originally used the codename Fiona for the device. This hardware evolved from the original Kindle introduced in 2007 and the Kindle DX (with its larger 9.7" screen) introduced in 2009.
2014: The first known "NFT", Quantum, was created by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash in May 2014, that explicitly linked a non-fungible, tradable blockchain marker to a work of art, via on-chain metadata (enabled by Namecoin).
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