Brief History of Technology

A Brief History A Brief History of Modern Technology 1705 First effective steam engine (Thomas Newcomen) 1768 Nicholas Joseph Cugnot builds a self propelled “steam wagon” 1769 James Watt improves significantly upon Newcomen’s steam engine 1774 First mass-produced calculator (Philipp Matthäus Hahn) 1775 First submarine (David Bushnell) 1780 Invention of the copying press (James Watt) 1785 The mechanical loom is invented (Edmund Cartwright) 1793 Telegraph (Claude Chappe) 1800 First battery (Alessandro Volta) 1804 First steam locomotive (Richard Trevithick) 1810 Printing press (Frederick Koenig) 1821 Electric motor (Michael Faraday) 1825 First public railway line in England 1827 First water turbine and patent for the first ship’s propeller (Josef Ressel) 1854 Invention of the incandescent light bulb (Heinrich Goebel) 1859 The gas engine is developed (Etienne Lenoir) 1861 First functioning telephone (Johann Philipp Reis) 1875 Invention of the refrigerator (Carl von Linde) 1876 Patent application for a telephone (Alexander Graham Bell) - Four-stroke cycle engine (Nicolaus August Otto) 1877 Invention of the phonograph (Thomas Alva Edison) 1879 First electric locomotive (Werner von Siemens) 1881 Power supply with high frequency alternating current (George Westinghouse) 1883 Development of the steam turbine (Carl de Laval) 1886 First automobile (Karl Benz) 1895 Discovery of x-rays (Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen) - Invention of the cinematograph (Auguste and Louis Jean Lumière) 1896 Discovery of radioactivity (Antoine Henri Becquerel) 1897 Invention of the cathode ray tube (Karl Ferdinand Braun) - Diesel builds the diesel engine 1903 First successful powered flight (Orville and Wilbur Wright) 1913 Assembly line for car manufacture (Henry Ford) 1930 First gas turbine for airplanes 1931 First electron microscope (Ernst Ruska) 1938 The uranium atom is split (Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann) 1941 "Z3", the first functioning computer (Konrad Zuse) 1948 Transistor (William B. Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain) 1954 First nuclear power station in Obninsk near Moscow 1955 Fibre optics (Narinder Singh Kapany, London) 1957 First earth satellite "Sputnik 1" is launched (USSR) 1961 First human in space and first orbit of the earth (Yuri Gagarin, USSR) 1964 Integrated circuit (Jack Kilby for Texas Instruments) 1969 First manned moon landing ("Apollo 11", USA) 1970 Development of the microprocessor (Intel) - First pocket calculator 1977 Apple II, the first complete computer 1979 Compact Disc (CD) for storing audio data digitally (Sony & Philips) 1981 First personal computer by IBM 1992 First book on CD-ROM (the Bible) 1993 Advent of the "World Wide Web"