Technological advances

10 millons years ago

1 CE

First tools. Humans make the first tools from stone, wood, antlers and bones.

1-2 million years ago

2

Fire. Humans discover fire

3500 BC

3

Wheel. The credit of the wheel has been credited to the Elamites because the sculptures are the earliest to portray it.

600 BC

4

Static electricity. Thales of Miletus discovers static electricity.

500-900 BC

5

Hot air ballon. Nazca people on Peru are believed to have experimented with ballon flight.

250 BC

6

Lighthouse. Ancient Egyptians invented lighthouses, including the huge of Alexandria. It collapsed following a series of earthquakes between 956 and 1323.

200 BC

7

Magnetic compass. Chinese invent magnetic directions finders.

600

8

Windmill. Windmills are invented in the Middle East.

1206

9

Ancestor of modern toilet. Arabic engineer al-Jazzar invents a flushing hand-washing machine.

1450

10

Printer. Johannes Gutenberg pioneers the modern printing press, using rearrangeable metal letters called movable type

1590

11

Microscope. A Dutch spectacle maker named Zanssen made the first compound microscope.

1600

12

Thermometer. The individual floats rise or fall in proportion to their respective density and the density of the surrounding liquid as the temperature changes.

1609

12

Telescope. Galilieo Galilei built a practical telescope and made new asstronomical discoveries.

1650

13

Pendulum clock. Christian Huygens develops the pendulum clock using Galileo´s earlier discovery that a swinging pendulum can be used to keep time.

1769

14

Speech synthesizer. Speech synthesizer is the artificial production of human speech.

1800

15

Voltaic pile. The first battery.

1827

16

Photograph. First modern photograph taken by Joseph Niepce

1840

17

Fax machine. Scotsman Alexander Bain invented a primitive fax machine based on chemical technology.

1868

18

Typewriter. First modern typewriter with QWERTY keyboard.

1876

19

Telephone. Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, though the true ownership of the invention remains controversial even today.

1898

20

Radio Control. In 1898, at an exhibition at Madison Square Garden, Nikola Tesla demonstrated a small unmanned boat that used a cohered based radio control.

1903

21

Airplane. Wilbur and Orville Wright made four brief flights at Kitty Hawk with their first powered aircraft.

1908

22

Ford model T. The world´s fist truly affordable car.

1920s

23

Television. Philo Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images using his television system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife Pem.

1928

24

Electric refrigerator. The first refrigerator to see widespread use was the General Electric "Monitor-Top"

1939

25

Helicopter. Rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally- spinning rotors

1942

26

Nuclear reactor. Enrico Fermi builds the first nuclear chain reactor at the University of Chicago

1959

27

DAC-1. IBM and General Motors developed Design Augmented by Computers-1(DAC-1) the first computer-aided design (CAD) system.

1963

28

LED. Led lamps have lifespan many times longer than equivalent incandescent lamps, and are significantly more efficient than most flourescent lamps.

1973

29

Mobile phone. The first handheld cellphone, Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.

1976

30

Apple 1. One of the world´s first personal home computers

1983

31

CD. A new way to store music by the Sony and Philips corporations.

1989

32

World Wide Web. Information system where documents and web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators

2001

33

IPod.Apple revolutionizes music listening by unveiling its iPod MP3 music player.

2001

34

Vacuum Claning Robot. IRobot Corporation releases the first version of its Roomba vacuum cleaning robot

2007

34

IPhone. Apple introduced a touchscreen cellphone called the IPhone.

2010

35

3D TV. Most modern 3D television sets use an active shutter 3D system, and some are autostereoscopic without the need of glasses.

2013

36

Hyperloop. A giant, pneumatic tube transport system.

2015

37

Supercomputers. The world´s fastes computers are now a mere 30 times less powerfull than human brains

2016

38

Miniature Machines. Three nanotechnologists win the nobel price in chemistry for building miniature machines out of molecules.

2020

39

Quantum computer. Google claims to have achieved "quantum supermacy" -with a quantum computer that calculates faster than conventional one.