2,000,000 Stones shaped by man for use as tools
1,000,000 Fire captured and used by man
100,000 Food cookery
80,000 Fire used to harden spears
25,000 Annealing of stones for chipping
15,000 Beginning of pottery making by firing clay
8000 Agriculture in Near East; clay bricks and pots being made;hot working of copper
7000 Agriculture starts in Mexico
5300 Mining (turquoise) in Sinai
4000 Mediterranean seafaring under way; by this time copper hadalready been reduced from ores by smelting and glazes for potteryhad been developed
3500 Rise of cities in the Tigris-Euphrates delta and Indus andNile valleys; smelting of copper ore in the Middle East, wheelprobably originated about this time; start of Sumerian hydrauliccivilization; tin and iron had been reduced from ores by smeltingand bronze was being made.
3000 Glass beads appear in Egypt; asphalt being mined by theSumerians; irrigation in Egypt; sailboats appear on the easternMediterranean
2700 Spoked wheel appears; traction plow already developed
2680 Great Pyramid of Khufu built, representing a high degree oforganization of available power as well as ingenious mechanics oftransport and construction
2600 Construction of Lake Moeris in Egypt, a reservoir created bya dam twenty-seven miles long
2500 Wine press in use in Egypt; glassmaking flourishes there;walls of Jericho waterproofed with asphalt
2400 First canal for ships, at Elephantine in Egypt
2280 Rice irrigation in China; meteoric iron wrought in southwestAsia
1950 Nile-Red Sea canal built
1900 Oxen being used for plowing Egypt; silver, lead smelting
1550 Lever appears in Egyptian well sweep, also in India
1500 Water clocks being used by Egyptians; plowing in Denmark;silver mining at Laurium (Greece)
1400 Salt mining in the eastern Alps; Armenians discover how tomake steel facing on wrought- iron tools
1350 First implements made from smelted iron, in Palestine
1000 Assyrians using battering rams mounted on wheeled fightingtowers; steel being made
875 Cavalry introduced into Assyrian army; horses previously usedonly as draft animals
700 First mention of the pulley; chain of pots used to raisewater
690 533-m tunnel driven near Jerusalem
600 Thales, a Greek philosopher, produces static electricity byrubbing amber (electra in Greek)
400 Catapult and mechanical crossbow (ballista) invented atSyracuse and used against Carthage; oil well completed on anisland in Ionian Sea and the oil used in lamps
396 1,800-m tunnel outlet to Lake Albano driven
312 Appian Way constructed, representative of Roman roadbuilding
285 The Pharos constructed at Alexandria; a lighthouse in which amirror projected the light of fire for thirty miles
220 Great Wall of China begun
215 Archimedes' catapult used against the Romans
180 Quern or revolving mill invented; turned by slaves orasses
170 Invention of paper in China
150 Force pump appears
50 Screw press introduced
27 Vitruvian waterwheel introduced, the first known instance ofthe transmission of power through gearing
41 5,640-m tunnel driven to drain Lake Velinus
45 Rhine and Meuse connected with a twenty-three-mile canal forRoman ships
80 Antikythera Machine, a clockwork mechanism with about 20gears, constructed.180 Heavy plow in use in Rhaetia (Modern Austria andSwitzerland)
250 Gunpowder in use in China, and water mills introducedthere
367 Successful sea invasion of Britain by Irish, Saxons, andPicts; by this time Germans are using the heavy, wheeled, mortar-board plow and industry in the Rhineland includes manufacture ofcloth, arms, clothing, glassware, jewelry, earthware, brass andpewter
400 Irish pirates are established in Wales and Cornwall; a bitlater Britons colonize Brittany and Galicia; and Saxon Piratessettle in France; the wind-driven prayer mill in use in CentralAsia
520 Angles migrate to England
529 St. Benedict founds Monte Cassino; the Benedictine Order,which is to become a powerful force in western Christianity,adopts manual labor as virtuous action
597 St. Augustine, a Benedictine monk, arrives in England,bringing Benedictine life and Christianity to Angle-SaxonEngland; in 601 he becomes the first Archbishop of Canterbury
600 Water mills in use in France and Switzerland; the 1,000-kmImperial Canal to connect the Huangho and Yangtze-Kiangstarted
600 Stirrup invented in China; Arabs develop the windmill; dikesbuilt in Holland
673 Saracen fleet besieging Constantinople is destroyed Greekfire; invented by an Egyptian architect
712 Paper being made in Samarkand, beginning a long migrationthrough the Moslem world to northwest Europe where it was tobecome the artifact of communication in the development of anindustrial civilization
716 St. Boniface, a Benedictine, goes to Germany from England,founds monasteries at Reichenau (724), Burbach (728), Fulda(744); abbeys and country estates become centers of industry andexamples of material progress
730 The stirrup reaches western Europe
732 High water mark of the Moslem Empire; defeat of Saracensbetween Poitiers and Tours by Charles Martel; the stern post-rudder had been invented, increasing the sailing ability of thenorthern seafarers
762 Grain watermill known in England
787 Vikings attack Dorchester, start of the Viking domination ofthe North Atlantic region
793 Paper being made in Baghdad; Vikings attack Northumbria
865-878 Great Danish invasion of Britain
884 Vikings control Scheldt-Meuse region and, at various times,most of Rhine valley
885 700 shiploads of Viking freebooters land at the mouth of theSeine and advance to Paris where they are twice (886, 889) boughtoff
900 Paper being made in Egypt
911 Vikings unsuccessfully attack Chartres, are granted Normandyas a fief
911-985 England's economy develops rapidly, as had Germany'sduring the period of the Viking menace. Ireland makes greatcommercial progress because Viking commercial traders settlingalong the coast make Dublin, Limerick and other centers richbefore the year 1000
950 Hand crossbow developed
955 Otto I trounces the Hungarians at Lechfeld, uniting Germany,whose economic life surges
985 Discovery of North America by the Vikings
1000 Successful oil wells drilled by the Burmese
1004 The trebuchet appears in China--a missile-thrower of greatforce, operated by one hundred men or more
1005 Eilmer, an Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monk, flies a glider forsix hundred feet from a tower of Malmesbury Abbey
1003 Wells drilled in China for natural gas, which flows throughbamboo pipes to be used perhaps in porcelain manufacture
1043 Canute's Viking maritime empire collapses; it includedAnglo-Saxon England, Norway and Denmark, and represented a lastgreat outburst of aggressive energy by identifiable Vikings;thereafter, the Viking energy appears as Norman energy and muchlater is melded into the social energy of the British Empire
1066 Norman conquest of England; shoulder-bearing harness forhorses, as well as iron horseshoes with nails, being perfected onthe continent. Now industry moves from the abbeys and countryestates to the towns under the influence of merchant guilds andbecause of energy economics (water mills and water transport)
1086 The Domesday Book lists 5,624 water mills south of the Trentand the Severn rivers
in England
1088 University of Bologna founded, the first of the westernuniversities which, although most were founded by the Church,were to uncloister learning and lead to greater dissemination ofknowledge outside the priesthood
1095-1099 The First Crusade; the Crusades, of which there wereten, if one counts the tragic Children's Crusade, reflected agrowing energy surplus (as did the universities) in westernEurope, not yet channeled into national militaryestablishments
1098 Cistercian order, following the Benedictine Rule, founded asa reaction to the material success of the Benedictines
1100 Paper being made in Morocco
1105 First windmill in Europe (France)
1118 Cannon used by Moors
1130 Foundations of Oxford University being laid as an assemblyof learned monks and teachers; Cambridge may have even earlierbeginnings
1150 Cistercians introduce use of city garbage and sewer water asfertilizer near Milan; both Benedictines and Cistercians drainswamps and lakes in Germany, France, the Low Countries, andItaly
1150 Paper being made in Spain
1185 Windmill reported in Yorkshire
1191 Paper being made in southern France
1195 Magnetic compass appears in Europe
1202 Coal being mined at Liege, Belgium, and imported into Brugesfrom England
1226 Coal being mined in northeast England and transported toLondon for heating
1232 Chinese use rockets against the Tartars, invent hot-airballoons
1258 Rockets appear at Cologne
1267-1268 Roger Bacon's Opera, which reflect his interest innatural sciences and his belief in accurate observation andcontrolled experiment as the guides to knowledge of the physicalworld; one of Bacon's interesting conclusions was that air couldsupport a craft in the same manner that water supports boats
1269 Peter of Maricourt writes a treatise on magnetism
1273 Coal smoke in London provokes complaints from the gentry
1276 Paper being made in Italy
1300 Post windmills reach the Low Countries; mechanical clocksprobably in use in England and France
1306 Edward I makes it capital offense to burn coal in London
1335 Mechanical clock erected in a tower in Milan; also one inGlastonbury Abbey
1337 Longbow introduced; start of the Hundred Years War betweenEngland and France
1345 Division of hours and minutes into sixties (Germany);without linear time, the Industrial Revolution would not havebeen possible
1346 Battle of Crecy; gunpowder first used in Europe in battle,but longbows won the day
1389 First German paper mill built near Nuremberg
1420 Velocipede invented; likewise the bit and brace
1430 Turret windmill invented
1438 Invention of printing from movable type, by Coster inHolland and Gutenberg in Germany; invention of a wind turbine
1472-1519 Leonardo da Vinci makes the following devices:centrifugal pump, dredge for canal building, breech-loadingcannon, rifled firearms, universal joint, rope-and-belt drive,link chains, bevel gears, spiral gears, parachute, standardizedmass-production house, and an airscrew or propeller
1474 Wine forced from one cask to another by compressed air, atNuremberg; first known instance of the use of compressed air totransport materials
1477 Watches invented at Nuremberg
1488 Bartolemeu Dias sails around the Cape of Good Hope,inaugurating an age of discovery powered by wind against sail
1503 Explosive mines first used
1530 Foot-driven spinning wheel invented
1539 Death of Vanuccio Biringuccio; his Pirotechnica is publishedin 1540 (Venice), a manual of the methods of using fire inmetallurgy
1555 Agricola (Georg Bauer) dies; his De Re Metallica ispublished in 1556, a manual of geology, mining and metallurgy
1582 Gregorian calendar revision
1588 Defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English fleet
1600 Timber and fuel wood scarcity in England
1613 Gunpowder first used in mine blasting
1619 First use of coke instead of charcoal in a blast furnace
1624 Experimental submarine travels two miles in test betweenWestminster and Greenwich; first patent law protecting inventions(England)
1625 Francis Bacon in his Essays states that progress depends onthe application of knowledge of the physical world to man's needsand desires
1640 Oil well completed in Italy; kerosine from the oil laterused for lighting
1654 Air pump invented by Von Guericke, who also devised theMagdeburg hemispheres, which when the air had been exhausted fromwithin them, could be pulled apart only by two opposing eight-horse teams
1668 Wallis and Huygens: law of conservation of momentum: m1v1 =m2v2
1680 Differential calculus invented by Leibniz; gas engine usinggunpowder designed by Huygens, but never built
1682 Law of gravitation announced by Isaac Newton; four yearslater his Principia is published, setting forth the laws ofmotion as well as gravitation
1688 First distillation of gas from goal
1690 Huygens; wave theory of light and radiant heat
1694 Oil produced in England by retorting oil shale and cannelcoal
1698 First successful steam water pump built by Thomas Savery
1705 Thomas Newcomen builds his "atmospheric" steam engine
1709 Abraham Darby manufactures coke from coal, suitable forlarge-scale use in blast furnace
1711 Sewing machine invented by De Cames
1716 Wooden railway first covered with iron
1733 Flying shuttle invented
1745 Pieter van Musschenbrock invents Leyden jar for storingelectrical charges
1747 Benjamin Franklin deduces the existence of positive andnegative electric charges; two years later, invents the lightningrod
1767 Spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves; Philadelphiastreets lighted by whale-oil lamps
1769 James Watt's main patent on condensing steam engine; three-wheeled steam carriage invented and built by Nicholas Cugnot inParis
1772 Robert Boyle: heat is a molecular motion
1776 Reverberatory furnace invented by Cranege brothers; AnInquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, byAdam Smith, is published, a book to become the philosophicalfoundation of the growth state and of laissez faire economy
1778 Modern water closet invented by Bramah
1782 Double-acting steam engine patented by James Watt
1783 First flight by man: ascension at Paris of balloon lifted byheated air
1784 Glass lamp chimney introduced by Argand
1785 First steam spinning mill; screw propeller invented byBramah
1787 Iron boat built by Wilkinson, screw propeller steamboatbuilt by John Fitch and operated on the Delaware River
1788 Threshing machine invented; paddle-wheel steamboat operatedin Scotland
1790 First steam-heated factory. House of Commons still heated bycharcoal braziers
1792 Coal-gas lighting invented by William Murdock inCornwall
1793 Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, shows that work isconvertible into heat and vice versa; cotton gin is invented byEli Whitney
1794 Ecole polytechnique, the world's first modern engineeringschool, founded; the Marquis de Condorcet dies in prison, wherehe wrote a book of supreme optimism about the progress of thehuman race, titled Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Humanmind
1795 Count Rumford invents the Rumford stove, a close-toppedrange that economizes on fuel; also devises an economical,wholesome diet for the poor
1796 Lithography invented; hydraulic press invented by Bramah
1797 Greatly improved lathes invented by Maudslay
1798 T. R. Malthus publishes An Essay on the Principle ofPopulation, as pessimistic in its conclusions as Condorcet's workwas optimistic
1800 Galvanic cell demonstrated by Volta
1801 Public railroad with horsepower, Wandsworth to Croydon;steamboat Charlotte Dundas built by Symington; three-wheeledsteam-driven passenger car built by Richard Trevithick, Cornishmining engineer
1802 Richard Trevithick builds first successful steamlocomotive
1803 First factory illumination by coal-gas lighting, in JamesWatt's foundry; streets of Genoa and Parma lighted by kerosinefrom an oil well at Modena
1805 Twin-screw propeller developed by Stephens
1806 Nicholas Appert opens a food-canning factory near Paris andin 1810 publishes The Art of Preserving
1807 Fulton's Clermont goes up the Hudson; abolition of the slavetrade in the British dominions; first patent for a gas-drivenautomobile
1813 London Bridge lighted by gas
1814 Steam printing press invented by Koenig
1815 Commercial oil-shale retorting started in New Brunswick
1819 Atlantic first crossed by a steam-powered vessel, theSavannah
1820 Incandescent lamp invented by de la Rue; streets of Praguelighted by kerosine
1821 Lighting by coal-gas successfully introduced into America atBaltimore; houses in Fredonia, New York, heated with naturalgas
1824 Sadi Carnot writes Reflections on the Motive Power ofFire
1825 Erie Canal opened; Stockton and Darlington Railwaycompleted, first public steam-powered railway
1827 Steam automobile invented by Hancock; high-pressure steamboiler (1,400 psi) built by Perkins
1829 Successful oil well drilled in Kentucky
1830 Steam coaches in use on English roads, but forced off in thefollowing year by restrictive legislation; South CarolinaRailroad opens, the first in America.
1831 Michael Faraday generates electrical current by magneticinduction, joseph Henry invents the electric motor, and McCormickinvents the reaper
1833 Slavery abolished in British colonies; magnetic telegraphinvented by Gauss and Weber; laws of electrolysis announced byFaraday
1834 Practical liquid refrigerating machine built by Perkins
1835 Electric telegraph invented by Samuel Morse; electricautomobile invented by Davenport
1838 First steam-driven crossings of the Atlantic Ocean, by theSirius (eighteen days) and the Great Western (sixteen days), bothwest-bound and both paddle-wheelers; first electric telegraphline installed, England
1840 Robert Davidson builds electric car that goes four miles perhour
1842 Julius Robert Mayer declares that heat and work areequivalent
1844 First public telegraph line in the United States completed;carbon-arc lamp invented by Poucault; practical woodpulp paperinvented by Keller
1845 J. R. Mayer formulates the principle of conservation ofenergy; modern high-speed sewing machine invented by Howe;pneumatic tire invented by Thomson; first crossing of Atlantic bya screw-driven steamship, the Great Britain, designed by IsambardKindom Bruncl, famed British engineer
1850 James Young starts to produce "coal oil" (kerosine) fromcoal
1852 First successful airship flies over Paris
1855 Bessemer steel process invented; 800-hp water turbineinstalled at Paris
1856 Open-hearth furnace invented by Sir William Siemens; railwaysleeping car patented by G. M. Pullman
1857 First Atlantic cable laid; oil discovered in Romania andOntario
1858 An English lighthouse is illuminated by electric-arclight
1859 Discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania by Drake
1860 Etienne Lenoir builds the first practical internal-combustion engine, fueled by illuminating gas
1861 Machine gun invented by Gatling; Russian serfs emancipated;Western Union establishes New York to San Francisco telegraphservice
1863 United States Emancipation Proclamation, declaring free allslaves in rebel territory; the first Bessemer steel plant
1864 Theory of light and electricity published by Clerk-Maxwell
1867 Dynamite invented by Nobel; gas engine built by Otto andLangen; two-wheeled bicycle by Michaux; refrigerated railroad carintroduced
1869 Transcontinental railway across the United States opened
1870 Electric steel furnace invented by Siemens; firstcommercially practical generator built by Gramme
1873 Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism published;ammonia-compression refrigerator built by Linde; first workabletypewriter produced by Remington; first cable cars in SanFrancisco
1875 A building in France is illuminated by electricity; standardtime is adopted by railroads in the United States
1876 The telephone is invented by A. G. bell; N. A. Otto's four-cycle engine, the first to use initial compression is built
1878 Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia lighted by electricity(carbon-arc lamps)
1879 Streets of cleveland lighted by electricity (carbon-arclamps)
1880 First successful incandescent electric light
1881 First steam-electric central-power stations; HolbornViaduct, London, and Pearl Street, New York City, designed byThomas Edison; first hydroelectric power plants; Godalming,England, and Niagara Falls.
1882 Steam turbine invented by de Laval
1883 High-speed gasoline engine developed by Gottlieb Daimler;elevated electric railroad opened in Chicago
1884 Linotype machine invented by Mergenthaler; first steel frameskyscraper built (Chicago); first large-scale use of natural gas,in Pittsburgh
1885 First electric street railway, in Baltimore; standard timeadopted internationally; three-wheeled car propelled by internalcombustion engine built by Karl Benz
1886 Electrolytic process for producing aluminum discovered byCharles Hall; Welsbach mantle invented, tripling the output ofkerosine lamps and gas burners
1887 Hertz discovers electromagnetic waves; large-scale use ofrefrigerator cars begins on American railroads; electric cabs inuse in Brighton, England
1892 Duryea "horseless carriage," an internal-combustionautomobile, introduced in the United States; first electricpassenger elevator
1894 Rudolf Diesel's engine built; first commercial Europeanfour-wheeled car driven by internal-combustion engine, thePanhard, introduced in France, using the Daimler engine
1895 Roentgen discovers X-rays; Paris-Bordeaux automobile race inwhich the first four finishers were powered by Daimler engines;first automobile race in the United States, at Chicago, won by aDuryea car
1896 Marconi invents radio-telegraph (wireless), Becquereldiscovers radioactivity, and Henry Ford builds his first car
1897 First turbine-propelled steamship, designed by Sir CharlesParsons, launched
1900 Quantum theory proposed by Planck; hydroelectric plantconstructed at Niagara Falls
1901 Spindletop (Texas) oil gusher blows in
1902 Radial aircraft engine developed by Manly; Hamburg-AmerikaLine adopts fuel oil in place of coal on its liners
1903 At Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers try the first man-liftingengine-powered airplane; Pacific cable between San Francisco andChina completed; Elwood Haynes builds first rotary-valve gasengine; Great Britain begins to converts its navy to oil
1905 Einstein publishes, as a mathematical development of hisspecial theory of relativity, his mass energy equation E=mc2
1911 First transcontinental flight by biplane, across Americanfrom New York to Long Beach
1912 Offshore oil wells drilled in Southern California
1913 Tungsten-filament lamp invented by Coolidge; Henry Fordintroduces the assembly line in automobile making
1991 Ernest Rutherford disintegrates nitrogen atoms by alphabombardment
1921 First commercial radio broadcasting station (KDKA) in theUnited States opened in Pittsburgh
1921 Diesel-electric locomotives introduced, but use does notbecome widespread until after World War II
1926 First successful liquid-fuel rocket built and launched by R.H. Goddard
1927 Solo nonstop flight from New York to Paris by CharlesLindberg; first public television broadcast (England)
1930 Frank Whittle patents the basic design for the turbojetengine
1932 Largest hydroelectric plant in the world opened agDnepropetrovsk; East Texas oil field discovered
1934 First scheduled transoceanic aviation service forpassengers, San Francisco to Manila (the first transatlanticpassenger service did not start until 1939)
1936 Hoover (Boulder) Dam completed
1939 First flight entirely by rocket power made by Fritz vonOpel; first flight of jet-powered airplane
1941 Grand Coulee Dam completed; wind turbogenerator built inVermont
1942 First controlled fission of uranium (nuclear chain reaction)produces 200 watts
1943 Uranium-graphite atomic pile produces 1,000 kilowatts, Oak
Ridge, Tennessee
1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1947 First modern offshore oil well drilled off Louisiana
1952 First regular jet air passenger service, London toJohannesburg; first hydrogen bomb exploded; four thousand personsdie in London from smog during air-inversion event
1953 Four hundred die in smog incident in New York City
1954 Rotary internal-combustion engine developed by Felix Wankel;first nuclear-powered submarine launched
1956 Full-scale nuclear power station begins operation(England)
1957 First man-made orbiting earth satellite, Sputnik I,launched; first commercial nuclear power plant in United Statesis opened
1958 Commercial passenger flights by jet aircraft areinaugurated
1959 Liquefied natural gas is shipped in cryogenic tanker fromLake Charles, Louisiana, to London
1960 First geothermal power plant in United States is placed inoperation
1967 Air Quality Act becomes law in the United States
1968 Supersonic transport plane, the Soviet TU-144 is tested;hydrofoil gunboat is delivered to U.S. Navy
1969 Santa Barbara oil spill occurs; the National EnvironmentalPolicy Act is passed by the Congress; man lands on the moon;maiden flight of the Boeing 747 takes place
1970 Production of crude oil in the United States reaches itsprobably all-time peak
1972 Massive grain sale by the United States to the SovietUnion
1973 Embargo of crude oil shipments to the United States andNetherlands is imposed by Arab members of the Organization of OilExporting Countries (OPEC)
1974 The Soviet Union becomes the world's largest producer andrefiner of crude oil; an American planetary probe reaches thevicinity of Jupiter, approximately 400 million miles from Earth;the price of crude oil on the world market rises to four timesits level two years earlier; per capita real income in the UnitedStates falls more than 5 percent.
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Created 27 Dec 1996
Last Update 20 May 1997