Unit 1: It's History

Technological Eras and Their Occupations

Technology Timeline

• 1,000,000 B.C. Stone Age Fire and the development of early stone tools.
• 12,000 B.C.  Early oil lamps that burned fish and animal oil
• 3,500 B.C. Agricultural Age Writing (cuneiform and hieroglyphics)
• 3,000 B.C. Bronze Age  Tools made from metal; development of the wheel
• 1,200 B.C. Iron Age  Smelting of iron; development of the Greek alphabet
• 700 B.C.  Irrigation and sewers in Rome
• 221 B.C. Construction of the Great Wall of China
• 144 B.C. First high-level aqueduct in Rome; use of cement
• 100 B.C. Water Wheels
• A.D. 500 Sailing ships that could travel with and against the wind
• A.D. 1024 Chinese use first paper currency
• A.D. 1200  Windmills
• A.D. 1281 Chinese use gunpowder in war against Mongols
• A.D. 1400-1600 Age of exploration
• A.D. 1450  Gutenberg invents movable type
• A.D. 1600 Magnetism discovered by William Gilbert
• A.D. 1610 Galileo's telescope
• A.D. 1628 William Harvey discovers circulation of the blood
• A.D. 1700 Newton's Laws
• A.D. 1712 Newcomen's steam engine

• A.D. 1724 Fahrenheit thermometer invented
• A.D. 1752 Benjamin Franklin proves lightning is electricity
• A.D. 1760-1840 Industrial Age  Industrial Revolution in Britain
• A.D. 1769 James Watt's steam engine

• A.D. 1770 Hargreave's spinning jenny patented
• A.D. 1784 Wrought-iron process by Henry Cort    
• A.D. 1785 Cartwright's loom
• A.D. 1789 LaVoiser's theory of chemical combustion published
• A.D. 1793 Eli Whitney's cotton gin
• A.D. 1804  Jacquard's loom
• A.D. 1807 Robert Fulton's steamboat
• A.D. 1822  First textile mill in United States, Rhode Island
• A.D. 1829 The steam locomotive
• A.D. 1835 Bessemer process for making steel
• A.D. 1843 Morse begins telegraph line between Baltimore, Md, and Washington, DC
• A.D. 1876  Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
• A.D. 1885 First successful gasoline-driven car, by Carl Benz in Germany
• A.D. 1887 Daimler's internal combustion engine automobile
• A.D. 1888 First Kodak handheld camera
• A.D. 1893 Diesel engine invented by Rudolf Diesel
• A.D. 1901  Marconi sends first transatlantic radio signals
• A.D. 1903 Wright brother's airplane
• A.D. 1905 Albert Einstein proposes his theory of relativity
• A.D. 1908 Model T Ford built using mass production
• A.D. 1909  Beginning of the age of plastics
• A.D. 1915 SONAR invented
• A.D. 1923 Automatic traffic light patented by Garrett A. Morgan
• A.D. 1924 First round-the-world flight; Kleenex tissues
• A.D. 1925 First successful experiments with hydroponics
• A.D. 1926 First television demonstration; pop-up toaster
• A.D. 1928 Penicillin invented by Alexander Fleming
• A.D. 1929 Electroencephalograph (EEG); foam rubber
• A.D. 1931  Empire State Building in New York City
• A.D. 1934  The electron microscope
• A.D. 1935 RADAR developed; nylon patented; B-17 bomber produced by Boeing
• A.D. 1938 The ball-point pen is patented
• A.D. 1939 First jet aircraft flies in Germany Interactive Jet Engine
• A.D. 1942 First color snapshots
• A.D. 1944  First automatic digital computer, the Mark 1
• A.D. 1945  ENIAC computer built using 18,000 vacuum tubes
• A.D. 1947  Microwave oven; first Honda motorcycle; development of the transistor at Bell Laboratories
• A.D. 1950 Power steering; start of regular color TV broadcasts; first credit card (Diner's Club)
• A.D. 1952  Salk polio vaccine; 3-D movies
• A.D. 1954 Nuclear-powered submarine "Nautilus"; photocell developed
• A.D. 1955 Nuclear-powered electricity generation; fiber optics
• A.D. 1956  First desktop computer (Burroughs E-101)
• A.D. 1957 Sputnik
• A.D. 1958 Information Age First U.S. Satellite
• A.D. 1959  Russia sends unmanned spacecraft to the moon (Luna2);Xerox copier
• A.D. 1960 Lasers; light-emitting diodes (LEDs); weather satellites
• A.D. 1964 China tests nuclear bomb; IBM word processors
• A.D. 1965  First space walk
• A.D. 1966  Electronic fuel injection; Russians make successful soft landing on the moon (Luna 9)
• A.D. 1969 American manned moon landing; first Concorde SST flight
• A.D. 1971    Microprocessor developed by Intel; Mariner 9 orbits Mars
• A.D. 1972 CAT scan; photography from satellites (Landsat); videodiscs
• A.D. 1973 Genetic engineering
• A.D. 1974 Toronto Communications Tower (tallest building in the world) opens
• A.D. 1976 Birth of the Apple computer; electronic cameras
• A.D. 1977 Trans-Alaska pipeline system completed
• A.D. 1979 Skylab, the orbiting space station, falls back to Earth
• A.D. 1980 Solar-powered aircraft
• A.D. 1981 First launch of reusable space vehicle (space shuttle Columbia)
• A.D. 1982 Artificial heart
• A.D. 1984 Compact disc player
• A.D. 1986 DNA fingerprinting
• A.D. 1990 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope deployed by space shuttle Discovery
• Beyond 2000 How will you design the future?

Technology Systems Model