29
/
en
AIzaSyAYiBZKx7MnpbEhh9jyipgxe19OcubqV5w
April 1, 2024
Create
Public Timelines
Library
FAQ
For education
Cabinet
For educational institutions
For teachers
For students/pupils
Download
Export
Duplicate
Embed
Edit
644 views
0
0
20th Century
Created by
Rafelle Marie Timog Allego
⟶ Updated 10 Feb 2018 ⟶
List of edits
Timelines by
Rafelle Marie Timog Allego
:
10 Feb 2018
0
0
448
Ancient Times
10 Feb 2018
0
0
443
19th Century
10 Feb 2018
0
0
379
Prehistory
10 Feb 2018
0
0
375
17th Century
10 Feb 2018
0
0
373
18th Century
10 Feb 2018
0
0
373
Middle Ages to 16th Century
10 Feb 2018
0
0
361
21st Century
Comments
Events
American industrialist and engineer Henry Ford launches the Ford Model T, the world's first truly affordable car
German chemists Fritz Haber and Zygmunt Klemensiewicz develop the glass electrode, very precise measurements of acidity.
American chemist Gilbert Lewis describes the basic chemistry that leads to practical, lithium-ion rechargeable batteries (though they don't appear in a practical, commercial form until the 1990s).
Hans Greiger develops the Greiger counter, a detector for radioactivity
Francis Aston pioneers the mass spectrometer and uses it to discover many isotopes
John Logie Baird develops mechanical television
Philo T. Farnsworth invents modern electronic television
Robert H. Goddard develops the principle of the modern, liquid-fueled space rocket
German engineer Gustav Tauschek and American Paul Handel independently develop primitive optical character recognition (OCR) scanning system
Albert W. Hull invents the magnetron, a device that can generate microwaves from electricity
Karel Capek and his brother coin the word "robot" in a play about artificial humans
John Larson develops the polygraph ("lie detector") machine
Thomas Midgley, Jr. invents coolant chemicals for air conditioners and refrigerators
The electric refrigerator is invented
Peter Goldmark pioneers colour television
Laszlo and Georg Biro pioneer the modern ballpoint pen
Maria Telkes creates the first solar-powered house
Wallace Carothers develops neoprene (synthetic rubber used in wetsuits) and nylon, the first popular synthetic clothing material
Robert Watson Watt oversees the development of radar
Arnold Beckman develops the electronic pH meter
Harold E. Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp for high-speed photography
Arne Olander discovers the shape memory effect in a gold-cadmium alloy
W. B. Elwood invents the magnetic reed switch
Roy Plunkett accidentally invents a nonstick plastic coating called Teflon
Igor Sikorsky builds the first truly practical helicopter
English physicists John Randall and Harry Boot develop a compact magnetron for use in aeroplane radar navigation systems
Enrico Fermi builds the first nuclear chain reactor at the University of Chicago
US government scientist Vannevar Bush proposes a kind of desk-sized memory store called Memex, which has some of the features later incorporated into electronic books and the World Wide Web (WWW)
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the transistor, which allows electronic equipment to be made much smaller and leads to the modern computer revolution
Bernard Silver and N. Joseph Woodland patent barcodes—striped patterns that are initially developed for marking products in grocery stores
Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow invent the maser (microwave laser). Gordon Gould coins the word "laser" and builds the first optical laser in 1958
Stanford Ovshinksy develops various technologies that make renewable energy more practical, including practical solar cells and improved rechargeable batteries
European bus companies experiment with using flywheels as regenerative brakes
Percy Spencer accidentally discovers how to cook with microwaves, inadvertently inventing the microwave oven
Indian physicist Narinder Kapany pioneers fiber optics
First commercial nuclear power is produced at Calder Hall, Cumbria, England
Soviet Union (Russia and her allies) launch the Sputnik space satellite
Lawrence Curtiss, Basil Hirschowitz, and Wilbur Peters build the first fiber-optic gastroscope
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, working independently, develop the integrated circuit
IBM and General Motors develop Design Augmented by Computers-1 (DAC-1), the first computer-aided design (CAD) system
Joseph-Armand Bombardier perfects his SkiDoo snowmobile
Theodore Maiman invents the ruby laser
William Armistead and S. Donald Stookey of Corning Glass Works invent light-sensitive (photochromic) glass
Ivan Sutherland develops Sketchpad, one of the first computer-aided design programs
IBM helps to pioneer e-commerce with an airline ticket reservation system called SABRE
Frank Pantridge develops the portable defibrillator for treating cardiac arrest patients
Stephanie Kwolek patents a super-strong plastic called Kevlar
Japanese company Noritake invents the vacuum fluorescent display (VFD)
Alfred Y. Cho and John R. Arthur, Jr invent a precise way of making single crystals called molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)
World's first solar power station opened in France
Long before computers become portable, Alan Kay imagines building an electronic book, which he nicknames the Dynabook
Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith invent the CCD (charge-coupled device): the light-sensitive chip used in digital cameras, webcams, and other modern optical equipment
Astronauts walk on the Moon
Douglas Engelbart develops the computer mouse
James Russell invents compact discs
Electronic ink is pioneered by Nick Sheridon at Xerox PARC
Ted Hoff builds the first single-chip computer or microprocessor
Martin Cooper develops the first handheld cellphone (mobile phone)
Robert Metcalfe figures out a simple way of linking computers together that he names Ethernet. Most computers hooked up to the Internet now use it
First grocery-store purchase of an item coded with a barcode
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invent public-key cryptography
Pico Electronics develops X-10 home automation system
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs launch the Apple I: one of the world's first personal home computers
Japanese electrical pioneer Akio Morita develops the Sony Walkman, the first truly portable player for recorded music
Stung by Apple's success, IBM releases its own affordable personal computer (PC)
The Space Shuttle makes its maiden voyage
Patricia Bath develops laser eye surgery for removing cataracts
Compact discs (CDs) are launched as a new way to store music by the Sony and Philips corporations
Larry Hornbeck, working at Texas Instruments, develops DLP® projection — now used in many projection TV system
Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web
German watchmaking company Junghans introduces the MEGA 1, believed to be the world's first radio-controlled wristwatch
Linus Torvalds creates the first version of Linux, a collaboratively written computer operating system
American-born mathematician John Daugman perfects the mathematics that make iris scanning systems possible
Israeli computer scientists Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty invent VoIP for sending telephone calls over the Internet
Broadcast.com becomes one of the world's first online radio stations
Pierre Omidyar launches the eBay auction website
WRAL-HD broadcasts the first high-definition television (HDTV) signal in the United States
Electronics companies agree to make Wi-Fi a worldwide standard for wireless Internet
Guglielmo Marconi sens radio-wave signals across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Canada
The first electric vacuum cleaner is developed
Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright build the first engine-powered airplane
Albert Einstein explains photoelectric effect
Samuel J. Bens invents the chainsaw
Willis Carrier pioneers the air conditioner
Mikhail Tswett discovers chromatography
Leo Baekeland develops Bakelite, the first popular synthetic plastic
Alva Fisher invents the eletric clothes washer
Periods
Frederick Gardner Cottrel develops the electrostatic smoke precipitator (smokestakc pollution scrubber)
James Dyson invents the bagless, cyclonic vacuum cleaner
Scientists including Charles Bennett, Paul Benioff, Richard Feynman, and David Deutsch sketch out how quantum computers might work
Alexei Ekimov and Louis E. Brus (independently) discover quantum dots