Hitory

Ancient Era

Period: 6001 BCE to 1000 BCE

From the first stirrings of life beneath water... to the great beasts of the Stone Age... to man taking his first upright steps, you have come far. Now begins your greatest quest: from this early cradle of civilization on towards the stars.

Irrigation

6000 BCE

Irrigation has been a central feature of agriculture for over 5000 years, and forms the basis for the economy and culture of many civilizations throughout history. Perennial irrigation was first practiced in Mesopotamia with water flowing through small channels connecting to a river or a small lake. In Egypt, several pharaohs during the Twelfth Dynasty used oases to store water for irrigation during the dry season. Ancient Nubians devised a waterwheel device to bring water to their fields.

Sailing

5000 BCE

Since rowing a ship is a lot of work, men developed sails to let the wind push it along. Sailing gave humans a quicker, easier way to travel than over land, and has been used for trade, transport, fishing and warfare since the first mast was raised. The oldest representation of a ship under sail was found on a painted disc in Kuwait, dating to between 5500 and 5000 BC. Tomb paintings c. 3200 BC show reed boats under sail on the Nile.

Bronze Working

4500 BCE

The earliest bronze artifacts – actually, arsenic bronze, alloys of metallic arsenic rather than tin – found by archaeologists in Iranian tombs date back to the fifth millennium BC. Tin-bronze was eventually found to be superior to arsenic-bronze ... and the fumes of the alloying process didn't kill the bronze worker, so that was a plus. The oldest (c. 4500 BC) tin-bronze items have been found in a Vinca site in Serbia, and other early examples include odd bits found in China and Mesopotamia.

Animal Husbandry

4000 BCE

The domestication of animals and the selective breeding of some to accentuate certain traits appears to have occurred around the same time as the development of agriculture. The dog is thought to be the earliest domesticated animal, probably to assist in hunting game and protect the camp.Evidence suggests that dogs were first tamed and bred in China – in fact, geneticists believe that about 95% of the breeds today are descended from just a few common Chinese ancestors.

Mining

4000 BCE

If it can't be found laying about, dig it up. That's the basic premise behind mining, one of civilization's earliest and most pragmatic technologies. The Neolithics mined flint in England and France about 4000 BC; the ancient Egyptians mined malachite at Maadi between 2600 and 2500 BC, using the hard stone for ornamentation and pottery. These were generally open pit mines, or shallow shafts such as the Athenian silver mines at Laurium, where over 20 thousand slaves labored.

Construction

4000 BCE

When the architects and engineers get done mucking about, the contractors take over. Once there was agriculture and a reason to stay in one place, the first huts were constructed by the people who would live in them. As cities grew during the Bronze Age, professional construction workers – just bricklayers and carpenters at first – arose. This new class of skilled workers, including lots of slaves, literally laid the foundations for civilization.

Horseback Riding

4000 BCE

There is archaeological evidence that around 4000 BC humans had used bits on their horses in the basins of the Dnieper and Don rivers; skeletons of horses found in the region shows signs that the horses chomped on bits. Thus, horseback riding. It is thought that the Scythians of the steppes may well have been the first to develop the stirrup and the saddle, although the historical argument is as yet unconvincing.

Writing

3400 BCE

Writing is a technology that – like a few others – quite literally changed the course of civilization. The ability to set things down so as to remember them unaltered beyond a single lifetime meant that every aspect of the human condition, every social structural and cultural more, altered significantly. Writing allowed civilization to become organized – organized religion, organized government, organized economy, organized war, organized science. And literature.

Metal Casting

3200 BCE

Metal casting is the process by which a craftsman can make multiple, identical metal objects by pouring molten metal into a mold. The oldest such yet found is a copper frog cast in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC. The first production of cast iron was in China between 800 and 700 BC; using sand mold casting, the Chinese were making cast iron plowshares by 233 BC. Cast iron was also handy for making a lot of arrowheads, spearheads and cannonballs, as the Chinese soon discovered.

Engineering

2611 BCE

Engineering is the science (or perhaps “art,” if engineers themselves are involved in the discussion) of using science to design things: buildings, roads and bridges, machines, and other materially useful things. The term is somewhat vague – consider for example, software “engineering.” Originally the term referred only to creating “engines” of war; the Romans applied it to all sorts of public works, since their legions were building roads.

Masonry

2600 BCE

The ancient Egyptians mastered the art of masonry as early as the fourth millennium BC, constructing temples, palaces, pyramids and other edifices from limestone, sandstone, granite and basalt found in the hills of the Nile River. The Assyrians of the Fertile Crescent lacked easy access to stone but possessed rich deposits of clay, which they sun-dried into bricks. The Harappa city in now-Pakistan was built around 2600 BC with bricks and gypsum mortar

Shipbuilding

2500 BCE

Shipbuilding is, of course, the building of ships. Shipwrights follow a profession that traces its roots back to an age before recorded history. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans sailed to Borneo from Asia 120 thousand years ago aboard constructed ships; and later to New Guinea and Australia some 50 thousand years ago. In the fourth millennium BC, the Egyptians were constructing boat hulls from planks of wood, using treenails to hold them together and pitch to make them watertight.

Sanitation

2500 BCE

A clean water supply and sanitation has been rather important for the rise of civilization, since without such folk tend to fall prey to disease and death. Especially when crowded together in urban centers. The earliest signs of city sanitation have been found in the ruins of the Harappan settlements Mohenjo-daro and Rakhigarhi in the Indus Valley c. 2500 BC. There groups of homes obtained water from a common well, and wastewater was emptied into covered drains which lined the streets.

Currency

2000 BCE

Currency, where something relatively worthless in itself represents some amount of actual value, has been the bane of civilization since around 2000 BC, when a form of receipt was used to show ownership of stored grain in temples in Sumer. The Egyptians soon adopted the practice for their own grain warehouses, so that individuals could claim a portion they had “banked” therein. Then small bits of rare metals, a lot easier to keep track of than written receipts.

Banking

2000 BCE

Although there had been “banks” before – Hammurabi even set down laws governing banking in his famous Code – mostly these were private individuals that made loans, with various unsavory methods to insure repayment. With the fall of Rome in the West and the fall of money lending, Banks did not reappear in Europe until the Middle Ages, rediscovered by rulers looking for ways to fund their bloody and expensive Crusades.

Mass Production

1800 BCE

Until the Industrial Revolution, the idea of “mass production” was limited to pottery (molds), Chinese crossbows with interchangeable parts, and assembly line production of books. But in the Renaissance, Venice began mass-producing ships to maintain their grip on the Mediterranean in their famed Arsenal, using prefabricated parts and assembly lines that would not be matched for output for three centuries.

archery

1766 BCE

Archery is the method by which a person uses the spring power stored in a bent stick to shoot a slender pointed projectile a great distance at rapid speed. A very useful technology, whether employed against game animals or against other human beings. Now it's considered just recreation.

Education

1600 BCE

Humans learn things, and civilization results. Obviously education has been around as long as mankind has. Through most of history, it was an informal affair, parents teaching their children the skills they needed to know to survive and be productive (household chores and hunting expeditions dodging barbarians so forth). As a tribe expanded and grew more prosperous, village elders and priests might educate the children while the healthy adults gathered food, built stuff and made war.

Cartography

1600 BCE

There is a fair amount of scholarly debate about how long the “science” of making maps has been around, since there's a fair amount of debate about what constitutes a map. The oldest “map” to have been discovered is a depiction of what may be local terrain features about Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, dated to the 7th millennium BC. But the first ink splatters that are definitely a map is the “House of the Admiral” wall painting dating to the Minoan civilization c. 1600 BC. Around the 4th Century BC.

Wheel

1200 BCE

The invention of the wheel comes in the late Neolithic Age, and along with the advance of several other technologies kicks off the Bronze Age. Archaeological evidence for wheeled vehicles appears in the fourth millennia BC, more or less at the same time in Mesopotamia, the Caucasus and Central Europe (obviously, an idea whose time had come). In China the wheel was certainly in existence by 1200 BC, when Chinese chariots appeared.

Castles

1066 BCE

Great piles of stone – some still intact (more or less) – dominate the varied landscapes of Europe, castles dating back to the early 10th Century AD when feudal lords sought to insure their power and influence. Some were little more than cold, dirty square stone boxes; others were fairy structures with tall towers, crenelated parapets and flying buttresses. But rather than the romantic visions of noble knights, damsels in distress.

Military Engineering

1000 BCE

Loosely defined as “the art and practice of designing and building military works and maintaining lines of military transport and communications,” military engineering dates back to the Roman legions, which each had a small, specialized corps devoted to overseeing the building of fortifications and roads. They were also the ones to build the catapults, battering rams and siege towers when needed to stamp out some unruly town.

Classical Era

Period: 1000 BCE to 500

Iron Working

600 BCE

While the use of iron has been dated back to 4000 BC, the Hittites were the first to extract the ore, smelt it and fashion weapons – thus setting off the Iron Age around 1200 BC. In Asia, iron working developed at about the same time; iron Chinese artifacts have been unearthed dating back to around 600 BC. From those two places, using iron for weapons and tools spread quickly across the globe, except in the Americas where the natives continued to hit each other with rocks.

Mathematics

600 BCE

The term “mathematics” is derived from the Greek mathema, meaning “knowledge, study, or learning.” Appropriate, given that it is the science of science, focused on quantity, measurement, structure, logic and change. Mathematics, according to some, is also the art of art, focused on space, shape, relationship, perspective, and fractals. Not to mention mathematics relationship to music.

Electricity

600 BCE

Mankind has known electricity existed since the first bunch of Neanderthals got blasted by a lightning bolt; in fact, for millennia afterwards, electricity in this form was associated with angry gods. Egyptian texts dating from c. 2750 BC record people getting shocks from electric eels. Around 600 BC Thales of Miletus observed that static electricity could be generated by rubbing rods of amber with cat's fur (but didn't investigate what the cats thought of this).

Economics

350 BCE

Economics is the understanding of “the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.” This understanding was a lot easier in olden times when things were distributed via barter (“I have a daughter and you have some goats; let’s trade."), but even in the early stages of coinage and mercantile trade notions of production and profits was pretty straightforward. Ancient writers such as Fan Li of China c. 517 BC, Chanakya of India c. 350 BC, and Aristotle of Greece c.

Stirrups

322 BCE

Along with writing, gunpowder and pre-sliced bread, the stirrup is considered one of the basic inventions needed to spread civilization ... at least by some historians. Like all great innovations, it seems such a simple idea. Humans had domesticated the horse around 4500 BC, but where to put one's feet and how to stay on when the horse began running? The saddle, invented around 800 BC, took care of the latter problem. But adding two pieces of leather with a loop.

Machinery

3 BCE

When humans began to develop tasks that they or their animals could not (or would not) do, they invented machines. From those first simple machines – the lever, pulley and screw – that Archimedes went on about, a machine civilization has evolved on Earth. Later Greek thinkers added the wedge and the wheel/axle to the list of the five simple machines (these form the basis for every other machine that aids physical work).understanding of dynamics.

Medieval Era

Period: 500 to 1350

Gunpowder

1239

The invention of gunpowder is usually attributed to Chinese alchemists during the Tang dynasty, one of the “Four Great Inventions of China.” The earliest written record of it – a formula composed of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate dating to the later Song dynasty – was supposed to be an elixir for immortality ... it was anything but. But the Chinese did discover that it burned explosively and the resultant gases expanded rapidly when exposed to heat; so it was useful for making fireworks.

Renaissance Era

Period: 1350 to 1725

Printing

1400

No technology since writing so impacted civilization as did movable-type printing. Woodblock printing had been used for decades in China, India and Europe. The pecia system developed in the early 13th Century at Italian universities gave booksellers a method for producing multiple copies of a book in a relatively short time. But books remained expensive, and possessions only for the educated elite.

Square Rigging

1519

The first two-mast square-rigged ships appeared in the Mediterranean in the mid-14th Century AD, replacing the triangular-rigged lanteen sailing ships that had been used for the previous thousand years. Perpendicular square sails had been used on sailing ships in Northern Europe before (on cogs and longships), and the design was adopted by the Crusaders for their transports, giving more speed and maneuverability so they could get to the Holy Land quicker. In short order.

Rifling

1520

Rifling is merely the cutting of helical grooves into the inner part of a gun barrel so as to induce spin in a ball or bullet which serves to gyroscopically stabilized the projectile, giving it greater accuracy and range. In short, all this means is that it took a skilled marksman to hit anything specific with a smoothbore musket, but any fool with a steady hand has a fair chance of success firing a rifle at a target.

Steam Power

1551

When heated to boiling, water produces steam. Even barbarians knew this. But harnessing that steam wasn't thought of until Taqi al-Din Muhammed ibn Ma’ruf described a hypothetical steam turbine for turning a spit in 1551. The move towards a workable steam engine gets started a century later when Edward Somerset published a collection on his inventions including a steam pump, a working model of which he built in Raglan Castle. But he died before he could put it to use in mining as he'd planned.

Ballistics

1638

The mechanics of throwing things have been known for quite awhile; primitive cultures are quite adept at throwing things. The science of those mechanics is known as “ballistics.” The first ballistic weapons were sticks, stones and spears. Then bows get invented around 10 thousand years ago; then gunpowder and the study of the mechanics of launching things gets rather complicated.

Industrial Era

Period: 1725 to 1890

Industrialization

1760

Not many “technologies” (or, in this case a convergence of several technologies) give a label to a revolution and to an era. Industrialization is viewed by scholars as the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one, which was historically accompanied by widespread social and economic upheaval. It is driven by the invention of new machinery and discovery of new power sources.

Flight

1783

Leonardo da Vinci's visions of flight are well-known, of course, but he certainly wasn't the first. From the earliest times there have been legends of men strapping on wings or other devices and attempting to fly, usually by jumping off something tall. In the Middle Ages, for instance, Armen Firman strapped wings with vulture feathers to himself and jumped off a tower in Cordoba during 852 AD. In China, man-carrying kites were the method of choice.

Chemistry

1789

As astronomy evolved from astrology, chemistry evolved from another pseudoscience: alchemy. Alchemy spans four millennia and three continents; never underestimate mankind's ability to believe in the irrational. The roots of Western alchemy can be traced to Hellenic Egypt, where Zosimos of Panopolis claimed that the ancient priests had discovered a way to transmute metals from one to another. However, the method and the mix of elements that could bring this about had been lost.

Computers

1822

If one thinks of a computer as a device simply to aid computation, then these have been around for millennia. An abacus, used as early as 2400 BC, is just such as device. (For that matter, so is counting using fingers, but that’s far too simple for modern civilization.) A mechanical astrolabe with a calendar calculator was devised by Abi Bakr in Persia in 1235 AD. The slide rule was invented around 1620.

Astronomy

1838

Significant advances in astronomy have usually come with the introduction of new technology; it helps to be able to see things larger, farther away or in other spectrums when studying infinity. Better and better telescopes allowed William Herschel to create a detailed catalogue of nebulae and clusters, and to “discover” the planet Uranus in 1781. The German Friedrich Bessel managed to measure the distance to a star (61 Cygni) in 1838 for the first time.

steel

1855

Modern steelmaking got its start in 1855 AD, when Henry Bessemer perfected his process using pig iron as the basis to make “mild” (or “low-carbon”) steel in quantity fairly cheaply, a century after Benjamin Huntsman had established the first steelworks in Sheffield, England – a refinement but not much improvement over the old “crucible” method.

Combustion

1860

Although there were internal combustion engines described by engineers before the 19th Century – for instance, a piston-and-cylinder gas-fired engine by Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir in 1860 AD – until industrial-level drilling for petroleum and methods for refining it into gasoline, they really weren't much more than a curiosity. And a smelly and noisy one to boot. Even when Siegfried Marcus put a mobile gas-driven engine on a handcart in 1870 Vienna, the potential went unrecognized.

Petroleum Refining

1860

Petroleum refining developed in parallel with the chemical revolution of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, starting with the drilling of the first oil wells in the United States around 1860. The increased volume in crude oil's availability led to experiments in improving its qualities, starting with simple distillation rigs, and increasing in complexity and sophistication. It quickly became possible to produce higher-quality, rather than relying on whale oil or distilled animal fats.

Replaceable Parts

1870

Evidence for the use of interchangeable parts can be traced back to the warships of Carthage during the First Punic War, when standardized parts made repairs to their galleys relatively quick. During the Warring States period, the Qin dynasty employed mass-produced crossbows with interchangeable parts to pummel its rivals. So it was throughout the ages, until Eli Terry finally mass made something not a weapon on his production line in America in 1814 AD – a pillar-and-scroll clock.

Offworld Missions

1889

If human beings are to settle away from planet Earth, it will be necessary to develop competencies for life isolated from the main planet—simple matters like “growing food” and “finding enough water” and “not having to run home for spare parts.” Approaches for sustained life away from Earth are still in the theoretical stages in the early Twenty-First Century.

Modern Era

Period: 1890 to 1945

Telecommunications

1894

Telegraph and telephone communications were carried by wire, much too slow for the modern day. And even though they made the world smaller and changed the landscape of business, war, and politics, scientists and inventors were soon searching for “wireless” telecommunications, the process of sending electronic signals through the atmosphere to special receivers. In 1894 Guglielmo Marconi built the first commercially viable wireless telegraph, soon termed “radio."

Radio

1900

The idea of “wireless” communication begins with experiments in wireless telegraphy – sending impulses through the ground, water and even steel railroad tracks – in the 1830s. In 1888 AD, Heinrich Hertz proved conclusively that electromagnetic waves could be transmitted through the air; his publications set off a mad scramble among inventors and crackpots to produce these Hertzian waves.

Rocketry

1914

Until the Second World War, rockets remained relatively short-range, inaccurate, clumsy weapons ... or were used for making pretty fireworks (not that military rockets don't make pretty explosions). In 1792, iron-cased rockets were used by Tipu Sultan defending Mysore against the avaricious British East India Company. The British, sensing a good thing, developed the solid-fuel Congreve Rocket for use against the French, Americans and other unpleasant sorts. In 1914.

Lasers

1928

The term “laser” is an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation,” which pretty much describes what it happens to be. The theory dates back to a paper by Albert Einstein in 1917 which offered a derivation of Planck's Law concerning stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. In 1928, the atomic physicist Rudolf Ladenburg confirmed the phenomena of stimulated emission and negative absorption.

Composites

1930

A composite is any material made from two or more materials with significantly differing physical or chemical properties; composites are distinct from alloys or chemical compounds (in which the components do not retain their original properties).

Nuclear Fission

1938

Mushroom clouds and boundless energy; utopia or annihilation. The technology of nuclear fission carries the promise of both, or neither. In physics and chemistry, nuclear fission is the decay – natural or not – whereby the nucleus of an atom breaks down into lighter nuclei, spinning off neutrons and photons, thus releasing significant amounts of energy. If a chain reaction can be started, whereby these free neutrons and photons cause other nuclei around them to split.

Predictive Systems

1940

Artificial Intelligence systems can create sophisticated models of behavior, with good predictive power for future behavior. This is becoming widely exploited in commercial domains (as anyone who carefully observes the Internet advertisements served up them can tell you) but it is also being used in other areas as well. Medical and health professionals are interested in increased efficacy of targeted preventative programs. Law enforcement is interested in being able to anticipate crime.

Plastics

1941

Synthetic or semi-synthetic organic polymers derived (generally) from petrochemicals of high molecular mass that are incredibly durable, malleable, lightweight and now pervasive in modern civilization. Plastic. It comes in many forms, some tougher, some more flexible, some with a greater or lesser tolerance to heat. Plastic can be molded, pressed, or extruded into virtually any shape desired.

Synthetic Materials

1941

Once chemistry took hold of civilization, scientists started searching for ways to improve upon naturally occurring animal and plant products. First up, synthetic fibers pioneered by Joseph Swan in the early 1880s; his fiber was made from tree bark, intended as a longer-lasting filament for light bulbs but somewhat better as a textile. Next the Frenchman Hilaire de Chardonnet invented artificial silk, which was displayed to great acclaim at the 1889 Paris Exhibition.

Robotics

1942

In 1942 AD, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov proposed three “laws of robotics.” In 1948 the American mathematician Norbert Wiener formulated the “principles of cybernetics” as the basis for practical robotics. And in 1961 the first programmable robot – “Unimate” – was constructed to lift and stack hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine.

Advanced Flight

1944

The first flight of a jet aircraft was made by the Italian Caproni Campini N.1 prototype in August 1940. The Germans had kept their own work, the Messerschmitt Me-262, under wraps. Although successfully test flown as early as 1941, mass production didn't start until mid-1944 when several Luftwaffe jet squadrons took to the skies against the Allied bombers. The first jet fighter to see combat, its appearance was too late to affect the war significantly, but Me-262s did shot down 542 enemy planes.

Atomic Era

Period: 1945 to 1995

Nuclear Fusion

1946

In contrast to nuclear fission – where energy is generated by the division of a nucleus – nuclear fusion occurs when two or more atomic nuclei slam together hard enough to fuse, which also releases photons in quantity. Fusion reactions power the stars of the universe, giving off lots of light and heat.

Cybernetics

1948

The term "cybernetics" is taken from the ancient Greek term to describe the skill of a ship's helmsman, and was re-invigorated in 1948 by American mathematician Nobert Weiner, who used it as a term for the study and practice of controlling complex systems, particularly with regard to human sensory input and locomotor function. One of the earliest projects of scientists in the cybernetic program was interest in developing more effective artificial limbs.

Advanced Power Cells

1954

The first true solid-state device for generating electricity was created by the Italian inventor Alessandro Volta in 1800. There have been countless refinements to Volta's electrochemical cell design since then, and with the digital revolution the development of battery technology has undergone ever-greater investment and interest. A live electronic device is capable of marvels. One without a working battery is an expensive hindrance. Increases in capacity, working voltage.

Satellites

1957

“Beep … beep … beep.” So it began. Sputnik, with an onboard radio signal transmitter, was launched in October 1957 AD by Soviet Russia. Orbiting overhead, the artificial satellite (as opposed to natural satellites like the Moon) Sputnik served notice to the humans huddled on the surface that the world had dramatically changed ... for better or not remained to be determined. Sputnik 2 was launched in November, with the first living creature in space aboard, a dog named Laika.

Stealth Technology

1957

The ability to creep around unseen and unleash havoc is the fantasy of every five-year-old; modern scientists are close to making it reality. Modern stealth technology is a combination of multiple military projects and experimental science expanded beyond what humans can see, trying to both hide and detect objects by radar, acoustics, thermal readings, or other less readily visible methods. Low observable technology, as stealth tech is also known.

Smart Materials

1960

Materials are usually selected for use on the basis of a single quality. A brick, for instance, should not be flexible if it is to be a good basis for construction. Smart materials are materials which can assume different properties on command, in response to different situations. An analogy would be a brick that is solid when used as a building material, but which could be flat and flexible for easy storage and portability otherwise.

Nanotechnology

1985

Tiny machines inside animals and humans snipping, slicing, splicing, melding or mutating cells. Tiny machines creating new materials on the molecular level. Or tiny machines making more tiny machines. Whatever use it may be put to, nanotechnology is just beyond the edge of science fiction.

Information Era

Period: 1995 to 2020

Advanced AI

2019

n the ensuing decades since the Turing Test was proposed, artificial intelligence has become more widespread and more robust in terms of its capabilities, particularly in the analysis of large data sets. An AI in these cases often “studies” a problem through developing and testing hypotheses about underlying patterns in the data, matching them against the data, and creating iteratively refined models with considerable explanatory power.

Future Era

Period: 2020 to 2050