The timeline of historic inventions is a chronological list of particularly important or significant technological inventions and their inventors, where known.[lower-alpha 1]
This article needs additional citations for verification. (November 2023)
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, during which there many human-like species evolved including toward the end of this period, 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. 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.
During this period the Quaternary glaciation began (about 2.58 million years ago), and continues to today. It has been an ice age, with cycles of 40–100,000 years alternating between long, cold, more glaciated periods, and shorter warmer periods – interglacial episodes.
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[20][21][22]
170 kya – 83 kya:Clothing (among anatomically modern humans in Africa).[28] Some other evidence suggests that humans may have begun wearing clothing as far back as 100,000 to 500,000 years ago.[29]
164 kya – 47 kya: Heat treating of stone blades in South Africa.[30]
50 kya was long regarded as the beginning of behavioral modernity, which defined the Upper Paleolithic period. The upper Paleolithic lasted nearly 40,000 years, while research continues to push the beginnings of behavioral modernity earlier into the Middle Paleolithic. Behavioral modernity 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.[46][47]
47 kya: The oldest-known mines in the world are from Eswatini, and extracted hematite for the production of the red pigment ochre.[48][49]
32-28 kya:Rope and Cords for "hafting stone tools, weaving baskets, or sewing garments," according to Elis Kvavadze et al.[56][57]
31 kya:Amputation and surgery.[58]Medicine in a meaningful sense likely predates the human-chimpanzee split, as, for example, herbal medicine has been observed in other primates.[59]
28 kya:Ceramics (direct evidence) and weaving (impressions left in the ceramics) in Moravia[60][61] (Czech Republic) and Georgia. (The oldest piece of woven cloth found so far was in Çatalhöyük, Turkey and dated to about 9,000 years ago.[62])
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.[81]
Neolithic and Late Mesolithic
During the Neolithic period, lasting 8400 years, stone began to be used for construction, and remained a predominant hard material for toolmaking. Copper and arsenic bronze were developed towards the end of this period, and of course the use of many softer materials such as wood, bone, and fibers continued. Domestication spread both in the sense of how many species were domesticated, and how widespread the practice became.
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.[117]
3500 BC:Ploughing, on a site in Bubeneč, Czech Republic.[135] Evidence, c. 2800 BC, has also been found at Kalibangan, Indus Valley (modern-day India).[136]
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.1200 BC.
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.[146][147][148]
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.[149][150][151]
3000 BC: Devices functionally equivalent to dice, in the form of flat two-sided throwsticks, are seen in the Egyptian game of Senet.[152] 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.[153][154] Later, terracotta dice were used at the Indus Valley site of Mohenjo-daro (modern-day Pakistan).[155]
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.[163]
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.[186][187]
2000 BC:Water clock by at least the old Babylonian period (c. 2000 – c. 1600 BC),[188] but possibly earlier from Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley.[189]
The Late Bronze Age collapse occurs around 1200 BC,[203] 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.[lower-alpha 5]
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.[208]
688 BC: Waterproof concrete in use, by the Assyrians.[209] Later, the Romans developed concretes that could *set* underwater,[210] and used concrete extensively for construction from 300 BC to 476 AD.[211]
With the Greco-Roman trispastos ("three-pulley-crane"), the simplest ancient crane, a single man tripled the weight he could lift than with his muscular strength alone.[214]
6th century – 2nd century BC: Systematization of medicine and surgery in the Sushruta Samhita in Vedic Northern India.[218][219][220] Documented procedures to:
Perform cataract surgery (couching). Babylonian and Egyptian texts, a millennium before, depict and mention oculists, but not the procedure itself.[221]
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)[229][230] although may have originated as early as 500 BC.[231]
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.[234][235][236]
By 407 BC: Early descriptions of what may be a Wheelbarrow in Greece.[239] First actual depiction of one (tomb mural) shows up in China in 118 AD.[240]
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.[260] 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.[261]
3rd century BC:Gimbal described by Philo of Byzantium[262]
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.[234][264]
1st century BC: News bulletin during the reign of Julius Caesar.[270] A paper form, i.e. the earliest newspaper, later appeared during the late Han dynasty in the form of the Dibao.[271][272][273]
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.
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.[303][304] 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.[305] Later bridges constructed utilizing cables of iron chains appeared in Tibet.[306][307]
4th century:Fishing reel in Ancient China: In literary records, the earliest evidence of the fishing reel comes from a 4th-century AD[308] work entitled Lives of Famous Immortals.[309]
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,[312][313] although original texts do not survive to detail the specific processes invented in this period.
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.[331]
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.[342] Fire lance is the earliest firearm in the world and one of the earliest gunpowder weapons.[343][344]
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.[345]
13th century:Buttons (combined with buttonholes) as a functional fastening for closing clothes appear first in Germany.[355]
13th century:Explosive bomb in Jin dynasty Manchuria: Explosive bombs are used in 1221 by the Jin dynasty against a Song dynasty city.[356] 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",[357] coined during a Jin dynasty naval battle in 1231.[358]
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.[359]
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.[360][361] In China, the first sunglasses consisting of flat panes of smoky quartz are documented.[362][363]
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.[365]
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.[369]
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.
1712:Thomas Newcomen builds the first commercial steam engine to pump water out of mines.[396] Newcomen's engine, unlike Thomas Savery's, uses a piston.
1802:Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp (exact date unclear; not practical as a light source until the invention of efficient electric generators).[401]
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.[410][411]
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.[423]
1856:James Harrison produces the world's first practical ice making machine and refrigerator using the principle of vapour compression in Geelong, Australia.[425]
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.[428]
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.[431] 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.[432][433][434]
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.[444][445][446] The first modern disposable glove was invented by Ansell Rubber Co. Pty. Ltd. in 1965.[447][448][449]
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.
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.[465] On 16 January 1930, Whittle submitted his first patent (granted in 1932).[466]
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.[485]
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.[491][492][493]
1960s
The original 0 series Shinkansen train. Introduced in 1964, it reached a speed of 210km/h (130mph).
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.
1977: Dr Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger invented a new DNA sequencing method for which they won the Nobel Prize.[508]
1977: The first self-driving car that did not rely upon rails or wires under the road is designed by the Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory.[509]
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.[513]
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).[519]
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.[524][525][526]
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 world's 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.[527]
Dates for inventions are often controversial. Sometimes inventions are invented by several inventors around the same time, or may be invented in an impractical form many years before another inventor improves the invention into a more practical form. Where there is ambiguity, the date of the first known working version of the invention is used here.
Earthen pipes were later used in the Indus Valley c. 2700 BC for a city-scale urban drainage system,[124] and more durable copper drainage pipes appeared in Egypt, by the time of the construction of the Pyramid of Sahure at Abusir, c.2400 BCE.[125]
Shell, Terracotta, Copper, and Ivory rulers were in use by the Indus Valley civilisation in what today is Pakistan, and North West India, prior to 1500 BCE.[166]
A competing claim is from Lothal dockyard in India,[174][175][176][177][178] constructed at some point between 2400-2000 BC;[179] however, more precise dating does not exist.
The uncertainty in dating several Indian developments between 600 BC and 300 AD, due to the tradition that existed of editing existing documents (such as the Sushruta Samhita and Arthashastra) without specifically documenting the edit. Most such documents were canonized at the start of the Gupta empire (mid-3rd century AD).
A 10th century AD, Damascus steel blade, analysed under an electron microscope, contains nano-meter tubes in its metal alloy. Their presence has been suggested to be down to transition-metal impurities in the ores once used to produce Wootz Steel in South India.[217]
Although it is recorded that the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220) court eunuch Cai Lun (born c. 50–121 AD) invented the pulp papermaking process and established the use of new raw materials used in making paper, ancient padding and wrapping paper artifacts dating to the 2nd century BC have been found in China, the oldest example of pulp papermaking being a map from Fangmatan, Gansu.[266]
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