Technology Milestones
37artifacts
Technology Milestones — 01 Control of Fire
Era / approximate date: Lower Paleolithic / early Acheulean context, approximately 1 million years ago
Technology Milestones — 02 Stone Tools
Era / approximate date: Early Stone Age / Lower Paleolithic, beginning around 2.6 million years ago
Technology Milestones — 03 Agriculture
Era / approximate date: Approximately 10,000-8,000 BCE
Technology Milestones — 04 The Wheel
Era / approximate date: Late Neolithic to early Bronze Age, approximately 3500-3200 BCE
Technology Milestones — 05 Writing
Era / approximate date: Ancient Uruk / southern Mesopotamia, approximately 3300-3200 BCE
Technology Milestones — 06 Bronze Metallurgy
Era / approximate date: Early Bronze Age through Late Bronze Age, approximately 3000-1200 BCE
Technology Milestones — 07 Iron Working
Era / approximate date: Late Bronze Age to early Iron Age, approximately 1300-1200 BCE
Technology Milestones — 08 Roman Concrete
Era / approximate date: Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, approximately 150 BCE-100 CE
Technology Milestones — 09 Paper
Era / approximate date: Eastern Han dynasty China, approximately 105 CE
Technology Milestones — 10 Gunpowder
Era / approximate date: Tang-to-Song dynasty China, approximately 9th-11th century CE
Technology Milestones — 11 Printing Press
Era / approximate date: Mainz, Germany, approximately 1450-1455 CE
Technology Milestones — 12 Mechanical Clock
Era / approximate date: Late 13th to 14th century Europe, approximately 1280-1390 CE
Technology Milestones — 13 Optics
Era / approximate date: Early modern Europe, approximately 1590-1670 CE
Technology Milestones — 14 Steam Engine
Era / approximate date: Britain during the early Industrial Revolution, approximately 1712-1788 CE
Technology Milestones — 15 Vaccination
Era / approximate date: Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England, approximately 1796
Technology Milestones — 16 Photography
Era / approximate date: France and England, approximately 1826-1839 CE
Technology Milestones — 17 Telegraph
Era / approximate date: United States and Britain, approximately 1830s-1840s CE
Technology Milestones — 18 Electricity
Era / approximate date: Europe and North America, approximately 1831-1880 CE
Technology Milestones — 19 Telephone
Era / approximate date: Boston, Massachusetts, 1876
Technology Milestones — 20 Light Bulb
Era / approximate date: Menlo Park, New Jersey, approximately 1879-1880 CE
Technology Milestones — 21 Internal Combustion Engine
Era / approximate date: Germany, 1876-1888
Technology Milestones — 22 Powered Flight
Era / approximate date: Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17, 1903
Technology Milestones — 23 Radio
Era / approximate date: wireless experiments from the 1890s through early commercial broadcasting around 1920, especially Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Technology Milestones — 24 Television
Era / approximate date: Late 1920s to mid-1930s, with key developments in London, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and early broadcast studios
Technology Milestones — 25 Antibiotics
Era / approximate date: London, 1928; Oxford and wartime mass-production work, early 1940s
Technology Milestones — 26 Nuclear Energy
Era / approximate date: December 2, 1942, University of Chicago, Stagg Field squash court, Chicago, Illinois, United States
Technology Milestones — 27 Transistor
Era / approximate date: Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, December 1947
Technology Milestones — 28 First Computer
Era / approximate date: 1943-1946, University of Pennsylvania Moore School, Philadelphia, with ENIAC publicly announced in February 1946.
Technology Milestones — 29 Spaceflight
Era / approximate date: Space Race era, 1957-1969
Technology Milestones — 30 Microprocessor
Era / approximate date: 1971, semiconductor labs and calculator engineering work in California and Japan
Technology Milestones — 31 Internet
Era / approximate date: ARPANET and packet-switching research in the late 1960s; TCP/IP work in the 1970s; ARPANET TCP/IP transition in 1983; NSFNET and commercial expansion through the 1980s-1990s.
Technology Milestones — 32 World Wide Web
Era / approximate date: CERN, 1989-1994; proposal in 1989, working web tools by 1990, public availability in 1991, royalty-free/public-domain release in 1993, and W3C founding in 1994.
Technology Milestones — 33 Mobile Phone
Era / approximate date: Early handheld cellular era, 1973-1984, with first public handheld cellular call in 1973 and first commercial portable cellular phone approval in 1983.
Technology Milestones — 34 GPS
Era / approximate date: U.S. NAVSTAR development from the 1970s, first satellite in 1978, global operational service in the 1990s, and major civilian-accuracy shift in 2000.
Technology Milestones — 35 Smartphone
Era / approximate date: Late 2000s to early 2010s; global consumer mobile computing, centered on the 2007 iPhone launch, 2008 app-store model, Android competition, and early-2010s adoption surge
Technology Milestones — 36 Social Media
Era / approximate date: Early 2000s through late 2000s, global web and mobile internet
Technology Milestones — 37 Artificial Intelligence
Era / approximate date: Contemporary computing era, especially 2012-2026