5th century BC

• 500 - 200 BC: Toe stirrup, depicted in 2nd century Buddhist art, of the Sanchi and Bhaja Caves, of the Deccan Satavahana empire (modern-day India)^[201][202] although may have originated as early as 500 BC.^[203]
• 485 BC: Catapult by Ajatashatru in Magadha, India.^[204][205]
• 485 BC: Scythed chariot by Ajatashatru in Magadha, India.^[204][205]
• 5th century BC: Cast iron in Ancient China: Confirmed by archaeological evidence, the earliest cast iron is developed in China by the early 5th century BC during the Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC), the oldest specimens found in a tomb of Luhe County in Jiangsu province.^{[206][207][208]}
• 480 BC: Spiral stairs (Temple A) in Selinunte, Sicily (see also List of ancient spiral stairs)^[209][210]
• By 407 BC: Early descriptions of what may be a Wheelbarrow in Greece.^[211] First actual depiction of one (tomb mural) shows up in China in 118 AD.^[212]
• By 400 BC: Camera obscura described by Mo-tzu (or Mozi) in China.^[213]

4th century BC

Egyptian reed pens inside ivory and wooden palettes, the Louvre^[214]

• 4th century BC: Traction trebuchet in Ancient China.^[215]
• 4th century BC: Gears in Ancient China
• 4th century BC: Reed pens, utilising a split nib, were used to write with ink on Papyrus in Egypt.^[215]
• 4th century BC: Nailed Horseshoe, with 4 bronze shoes found in an Etruscan tomb.^[216]
• 375 BC – 350 BC: Animal-driven rotary mill in Carthage.^[217][218]
• By the late 4th century BC: Corporations in either the Maurya Empire of India^[219] or in Ancient Rome (Collegium).
• Late 4th century BC: Cheque in the Maurya Empire of India.^[220]
• Late 4th century BC: Potassium nitrate manufacturing and military use in the Seleucid Empire.^[221]
• Late 4th century BC: Formal systems by Pāṇini in India, possibly during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya.^[222]
• 4th to 3rd century BC: Zinc production in North-Western India during the Maurya Empire.^[223] The earliest known zinc mines and smelting sites are from Zawar, near Udaipur, in Rajasthan.^[224][225]

3rd century BC

An illustration depicting the papermaking process in Han Dynasty China.

• 3rd century BC: Analog computers in the Hellenistic world (see e.g. the Antikythera mechanism), possibly in Rhodes.^[226]
• By at least the 3rd century BC: Archimedes' screw was first used in the Nile river for irrigation purposes in Ancient Egypt^[227]
• Early 3rd century BC: Canal lock in Canal of the Pharaohs under Ptolemy II (283–246 BC) in Hellenistic Egypt^{[228][229][230]}
• 3rd century BC: Cam during the Hellenistic period, used in water-driven automata.^[231]
• By the 3rd century BC: Water wheel. The origin is unclear: Indian Pali texts dating to the 4th century BCE refer to the cakkavattaka, which later commentaries describe as arahatta-ghati-yanta (machine with wheel-pots attached). Helaine Selin suggests that the device existed in Persia before 350 BC.^[232] The clearest description of the water wheel and Liquid-driven escapement is provided by Philo of Byzantium (c. 280 – 220 BC) in the Hellenistic kingdoms.^[233]
• 3rd century BC: Gimbal described by Philo of Byzantium^[234]
• Late 3rd century BC: Dry dock under Ptolemy IV (221–205 BC) in Hellenistic Egypt^[235]
• 3rd century BC – 2nd century BC: Blast furnace in Ancient China: The earliest discovered blast furnaces in China date to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, although most sites are from the later Han dynasty.^[206][236]

The earliest fore-and-aft rigs, spritsails, appeared in the 2nd century BC in the Aegean Sea on small Greek craft.^[237] Here a spritsail used on a Roman merchant ship (3rd century AD).

2nd century BC

• 2nd century BC: Paper in Han dynasty China^{[nb 7]}
• 206 BC: Compass in Han dynasty China^[239]
• Early 2nd century BC: Astrolabe invented by Apollonius of Perga.

1st century BC

• 1st century BC: Segmental arch bridge (e.g. Pont-Saint-Martin or Ponte San Lorenzo) in Italy, Roman Republic^[240][241]
• 1st century BC: News bulletin during the reign of Julius Caesar.^[242] A paper form, i.e. the earliest newspaper, later appeared during the late Han dynasty in the form of the Dibao.^{[243][244][245]}
• 1st century BC: Arch dam (Glanum Dam) in Gallia Narbonensis, Roman Republic (see also List of Roman dams)^{[246][247][248][249][250]}
• Before 40 BC: Trip hammer in China^[251]
• 38 BC: An empty shell Glyph for zero, is found on a Maya numerals Stela, from Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas. Independently invented by Claudius Ptolemy, in the second century CE Egypt, and appearing in the calculations of the Almagest.
• 37 BC - 14 BC: Glass blowing developed in Jerusalem.^{[252][253][254]}
• Before 25 BC: Reverse overshot water wheel by Roman engineers in Rio Tinto, Spain^[255]
• 25 BC: Noodle in Lajia in China^[256]

1st century AD

• 1st century AD: The aeolipile, a simple steam turbine is recorded by Hero of Alexandria.^[257]
• 1st century AD: Vending machines invented by Hero of Alexandria.
• By the 1st century AD: The double-entry bookkeeping system in the Roman Empire.^[258]

2nd century

• 132: Seismometer and pendulum in Han dynasty China, built by Zhang Heng. It is a large metal urn-shaped instrument which employed either a suspended pendulum or inverted pendulum acting on inertia, like the ground tremors from earthquakes, to dislodge a metal ball by a lever trip device.^[259][260]
• 2nd century: Carding in India.^[261]

3rd century

Schematic of the Roman Hierapolis sawmill. Dated to the 3rd century AD, it is the earliest known machine to incorporate a crank and connecting rod mechanism.^{[262][263][264]}

• By at least the 3rd century: Crystallized sugar in India.^[265]
• Early 3rd century: Woodblock printing is invented in Han dynasty China at sometime before 220 AD. This made China become the world's first print culture.^[266]
• Late 3rd century – Early 4th century: Water turbine in the Roman Empire in modern-day Tunisia.^{[267][268][269]}

4th century

• 280 - 550: Chaturanga, a precursor of Chess was invented in India during the Gupta Empire.^{[270][271][272]}
• 4th century: Roman Dichroic glass, which displays one of two different colors depending on lighting conditions.
• 4th century: Mariner's compass in Tamil Southern India: the first mention of the use of a compass for navigational purposes is found in Tamil nautical texts as the macchayantra.^[273][274] However, the theoretical notion of magnets pointing North predates the device by several centuries.
• 4th century: Simple suspension bridge, independently invented in Pre-Columbian South America, and the Hindu Kush range, of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. With Han dynasty travelers noting bridges being constructed from 3 or more vines or 3 ropes.^[275] Later bridges constructed utilizing cables of iron chains appeared in Tibet.^[276][277]
• 4th century: Fishing reel in Ancient China: In literary records, the earliest evidence of the fishing reel comes from a 4th-century AD^[278] work entitled Lives of Famous Immortals.^[279]
• 347: Oil Wells and Borehole drilling in China. Such wells could reach depths of up to 240 m (790 ft).^[280]
• 4th century – 5th century: Paddle wheel boat (in De rebus bellicis) in Roman Empire^[281]

5th century

• 400: The construction of the Iron pillar of Delhi in Mathura by the Gupta Empire shows the development of rust-resistant ferrous metallurgy in Ancient India,^[282][283] although original texts do not survive to detail the specific processes invented in this period.
• 5th century: The horse collar as a fully developed collar harness is developed in Southern and Northern Dynasties China during the 5th century AD.^[284] The earliest depiction of it is a Dunhuang cave mural from the Chinese Northern Wei Dynasty, the painting dated to 477–499.^[285]
• 5th century - 6th century: Pointed arch bridge (Karamagara Bridge) in Cappadocia, Eastern Roman Empire^[286][287]

A Nepali Charkha in action

6th century

• By the 6th century: Incense clock in China.^[288][289]
• After 500: Charkha (spinning wheel/cotton gin) invented in India (probably during the Vakataka dynasty of Maharashtra, India), between 500 and 1000 A.D.^[290]
• 563: Pendentive dome (Hagia Sophia) in Constantinople, Eastern Roman Empire^[291]
• 577: Sulfur matches exist in China.
• 589: Toilet paper in Sui dynasty China, first mentioned by the official Yan Zhitui (531–591), with full evidence of continual use in subsequent dynasties.^[292][293]

7th century

• 619: Toothbrush in China during the Tang Dynasty^[294]
• 672: Greek fire in Constantinople, Byzantine Empire: Greek fire, an incendiary weapon likely based on petroleum or naphtha, is invented by Kallinikos, a Lebanese Greek refugee from Baalbek, as described by Theophanes.^[295] However, the historicity and exact chronology of this account is dubious,^[296] and it could be that Kallinikos merely introduced an improved version of an established weapon.^[297]
• 7th century: Banknote in Tang dynasty China: The banknote is first developed in China during the Tang and Song dynasties, starting in the 7th century. Its roots are in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), as merchants and wholesalers desire to avoid the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions.^{[298][299][300]}
• 7th century: Porcelain in Tang dynasty China: True porcelain is manufactured in northern China from roughly the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century, while true porcelain was not manufactured in southern China until about 300 years later, during the early 10th century.^[301]

8th century

9th century

A Mongol bomb thrown against a charging Japanese samurai during the Mongol invasions of Japan after founding the Yuan Dynasty, 1281.

• 9th century: Gunpowder in Tang dynasty China: Gunpowder is, according to prevailing academic consensus, discovered in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality.^[302] Evidence of gunpowder's first use in China comes from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (618–907).^[303] The earliest known recorded recipes for gunpowder are written by Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du, and Yang Weide in the Wujing Zongyao, a military manuscript compiled in 1044 during the Song Dynasty (960–1279).^{[304][305][306]}
• 9th century: Playing card in Tang Dynasty China^{[307][308][309][310][311]}
• 857 - 859: Degree-granting university in Morocco^[312]

10th century

• 10th century: Fire lance in Song dynasty China, developed in the 10th century with a tube of first bamboo and later on metal that shot a weak gunpowder blast of flame and shrapnel, its earliest depiction is a painting found at Dunhuang.^[313] Fire lance is the earliest firearm in the world and one of the earliest gunpowder weapons.^[314][315]
• 10th century: Fireworks in Song dynasty China: Fireworks first appear in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), in the early age of gunpowder. Fireworks could be purchased from market vendors; these were made of sticks of bamboo packed with gunpowder.^[316]
• 974: Fountain pen: invented at the request of al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah in Arab Egypt.^[317]

11th century

• 11th century: Early versions of the Bessemer process are developed in China.
• 11th century: Endless power-transmitting chain drive by Su Song for the development an astronomical clock (the Cosmic Engine)^[318]
• 1088: Movable type in Song dynasty China: The first record of a movable type system is in the Dream Pool Essays, which attributes the invention of the movable type to Bi Sheng.^{[319][320][321][322]}

12th century

• 12th century: Ismail al-Jazari invents the elephant clock .^[323]

13th century

• 13th century: Rocket for military and recreational uses date back to at least 13th-century China.^[324]
• 13th century: The earliest form of mechanical escapement, the verge escapement in Europe.^[325]
• 13th century: Buttons (combined with buttonholes) as a functional fastening for closing clothes appear first in Germany.^[326]
• 13th century: Explosive bomb in Jin dynasty Manchuria: Explosive bombs are used in 1221 by the Jin dynasty against a Song Dynasty city.^[327] The first accounts of bombs made of cast iron shells packed with explosive gunpowder are documented in the 13th century in China and are called "thunder-crash bombs",^[328] coined during a Jin dynasty naval battle in 1231.^[329]
• 13th century: Hand cannon in Yuan dynasty China: The earliest hand cannon dates to the 13th century based on archaeological evidence from a Heilongjiang excavation. There is also written evidence in the Yuanshi (1370) on Li Tang, an ethnic Jurchen commander under the Yuan Dynasty who in 1288 suppresses the rebellion of the Christian prince Nayan with his "gun-soldiers" or chongzu, this being the earliest known event where this phrase is used.^[330]
• 13th century - 14th century: Worm gear cotton gin in India.^[331]
• 1277: Land mine in Song dynasty China: Textual evidence suggests that the first use of a land mine in history is by a Song Dynasty brigadier general known as Lou Qianxia, who uses an 'enormous bomb' (huo pao) to kill Mongol soldiers invading Guangxi in 1277.^[332]
• 1286: Eyeglasses in Italy^[333]

14th century

• Early 14th century - Mid 14th century: Multistage rocket in Ming dynasty China described in Huolongjing by Jiao Yu.
• By at least 1326: Cannon in Ming dynasty China^[334]
• 14th century: Jacob's staff described by Levi ben Gerson
• 14th century: Naval mine in Ming dynasty China: Mentioned in the Huolongjing military manuscript written by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Bowen (1311–1375), describing naval mines used at sea or on rivers and lakes, made of wrought iron and enclosed in an ox bladder. A later model is documented in Song Yingxing's encyclopedia written in 1637.^[335]
• 14th century: Bidriware in the Bahmani Sultanate in India.^[336]

The 15th-century invention of the printing press with movable type by the German Johannes Gutenberg.^[337]

15th century

• Early 15th century: Coil spring in Europe^[338]
• 15th century: Mainspring in Europe^[338]
• 15th century: Rifle in Europe
• 1420s: Brace in Flandres, Holy Roman Empire^[339]
• 1439: Printing press in Mainz, Germany: The printing press is invented in the Holy Roman Empire by Johannes Gutenberg before 1440, based on existing screw presses. The first confirmed record of a press appeared in a 1439 lawsuit against Gutenberg.^[340]
• Mid 15th century: The Arquebus (also spelled Harquebus) is invented, possibly in Spain.^[341][342]
• 1480s: Mariner's astrolabe in Portuguese circumnavigation of Africa^[343]

16th century

• 16th century: Chintz or printed clothing in Golconda, India^[344]
• 16th century: Hookah by Irfan Shaikh, at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar I (1542–1605).

^[345][346]

• 1560: Floating Dry Dock in Venice, Venetian Republic^[347]
• 1569: Mercator Projection map created by Gerardus Mercator
• 1589: Stocking frame: Invented by William Lee.^[348]
• 1589-1590: Seamless globe was invented in Kashmir (then Mughal India) by Ali Kashmiri ibn Luqman.^[349][350]
• 1594: Backstaff: Invented by Captain John Davis.
• By at least 1597: Revolver: Invented by Hans Stopler.

1700s

• 1709: Bartolomeo Cristofori crafts the first piano.
• 1709: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the alcohol thermometer.

1710s

• 1712: Thomas Newcomen builds the first commercial steam engine to pump water out of mines.^[364] Newcomen's engine, unlike Thomas Savery's, uses a piston.

1730s

• 1730: Thomas Godfrey and John Hadley independently develop the octant
• 1733: John Kay enables one person to operate a loom with the flying shuttle^[365]
• 1738: Lewis Paul and John Wyatt invent the first mechanized cotton spinning machine.

1740s

• 1742: Benjamin Franklin invents the Franklin stove.
• 1745: Musschenbroek and Kleist independently develop the Leyden jar, an early form of capacitor.
• 1746: John Roebuck invents the lead chamber process.

1750s

• 1752: Benjamin Franklin invents the lightning rod.
• 1755: William Cullen invents the first artificial refrigeration machine.

1760s

• 1760: John Joseph Merlin invents the first Roller skates.^[366]
• 1764: James Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny.
• 1765: James Watt invents the improved steam engine utilizing a separate condenser.
• 1767: Joseph Priestley invents a method for the production of carbonated water.
• 1769: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot invents the first steam-powered vehicle capable of carrying passengers, an early car.

1770s

• 1770: Richard Salter invents the earliest known design for a weighing scale.
• 1774: John Wilkinson invents his boring machine, considered by some to be the first machine tool.
• 1775: Jesse Ramsden invents the modern screw-cutting lathe.
• 1776: John Wilkinson invents a mechanical air compressor that would become the prototype for all later mechanical compressors.
• 1778: Robert Barron invents the first lever tumbler lock.

1780s

• 1780: Hyder Ali of Mysore develops the first metal-cylinder rockets.^[367]
• 1783: Claude de Jouffroy builds the first steamboat.
• 1783: Joseph-Ralf and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier build the first manned hot air balloon.
• 1783: Louis-Sébastien Lenormand invents and uses the first modern parachute.
• 1785: Martinus van Marum is the first to use the electrolysis technique.
• 1786: Andrew Meikle invents the threshing machine.
• 1789: Edmund Cartwright invents the power loom.

1790s

• 1790: Thomas Saint invents the sewing machine.
• 1792: Claude Chappe invents the modern semaphore telegraph.
• 1793: Eli Whitney invents the modern cotton gin.
• 1795: Joseph Bramah invents the hydraulic press.
• 1796: Alois Senefelder invents the lithography printing technique.^[368]
• 1797: Samuel Bentham invents plywood.
• 1799: George Medhurst invents the first motorized air compressor.
• 1799: The first paper machine is invented by Louis-Nicolas Robert.

1800s

• 1800: Alessandro Volta invents the voltaic pile, an early form of battery in Italy, based on previous works by Luigi Galvani.
• 1802: Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp (exact date unclear; not practical as a light source until the invention of efficient electric generators).^[369]
• 1804: Friedrich Sertürner discovers morphine as the first active alkaloid extracted from the opium poppy plant.^[370]
• 1804: Joseph Marie Jacquard develops his automated Jacquard loom.^[371]
• 1804: Richard Trevithick invents the steam locomotive.^[372]
• 1804: Hanaoka Seishū creates tsūsensan, the first modern general anesthetic.^[373]
• 1807: Nicéphore Niépce invents an early internal combustion engine capable of doing useful work.
• 1807: François Isaac de Rivaz designs the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine fuelled by hydrogen.
• 1807: Robert Fulton expands water transportation and trade with the workable steamboat.

1810s

Karl von Drais on his original Laufmaschine, the earliest two-wheeler, or hobbyhorse, in 1819

• 1810: Nicolas Appert invents the canning process for food.
• 1810: Abraham-Louis Breguet creates the first wristwatch.^[374]
• 1811: Friedrich Koenig invents the first powered printing press, which was also the first to use a cylinder.
• 1812: William Reid Clanny pioneered the invention of the safety lamp which he improved in later years. Safety lamps based on Clanny's improved design were used until the adoption of electric lamps.
• 1814: James Fox invents the modern planing machine, though Matthew Murray of Leeds and Richard Roberts of Manchester have also been credited at times with its invention.
• 1816: René Laennec invents the first Stethoscope.^[375]
• 1816: Francis Ronalds builds the first working electric telegraph using electrostatic means.
• 1816: Robert Stirling invents the Stirling engine.^[376]
• 1817: Baron Karl von Drais invents the dandy horse, an early velocipede and precursor to the modern bicycle.
• 1818: Marc Isambard Brunel invents the tunnelling shield.

1820s

• 1822: Thomas Blanchard invents the pattern-tracing lathe (actually more like a shaper). The lathe can copy symmetrical shapes and is used for making gun stocks, and later, ax handles. The lathe's patent is in force for 42 years.^[377][378]
• 1822: Nicéphore Niépce invents Heliography, the first photographic process.
• 1822: Charles Babbage, considered the "father of the computer",^[379] begins building the first programmable mechanical computer.
• 1823: Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner invents the first lighter.
• 1824: Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse invents the bolt-action rifle.^[380]
• 1825: William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet.
• 1826: John Walker invents the friction match.^[381]
• 1826: James Sharp invents and goes on to manufacture the first practical gas stove.
• 1828: James Beaumont Neilson develops the hot blast process.
• 1828: Patrick Bell invents the reaping machine.
• 1828: Hungarian physicist Ányos Jedlik invents the first commutated rotary electromechanical machine with electromagnets.
• 1829: Louis Braille invents the Braille reading system for the blind.^[382]
• 1829: William Mann invents the compound air compressor.
• 1829: Henry Robinson Palmer is awarded a patent for corrugated galvanised iron.

1830s

• 1830: Edwin Budding invents the lawn mower.
• 1831: Michael Faraday invents a method of electromagnetic induction. It would be independently invented by Joseph Henry the following year.
• 1834: Moritz von Jacobi invents the first practical electric motor.
• 1835: Joseph Henry invents the electromechanical relay.
• 1837: Samuel Morse invents Morse code.
• 1838: Moritz von Jacobi invents electrotyping.
• 1839: William Otis invents the steam shovel.
• 1839: James Nasmyth invents the steam hammer.
• 1839: Edmond Becquerel invents a method for the photovoltaic effect, effectively producing the first solar cell.
• 1839: Charles Goodyear invents vulcanized rubber.^[383]
• 1839: Louis Daguerre invents daguerreotype photography.^[384]

1840s

• 1840: John Herschel invents the blueprint.^[385]
• 1841: Alexander Bain devises a printing telegraph.^[386]
• 1842: William Robert Grove invents the first fuel cell.
• 1842: John Bennet Lawes invents superphosphate, the first man-made fertilizer.
• 1844: Friedrich Gottlob Keller and, independently, Charles Fenerty come up with the wood pulp method of paper production.
• 1845: Isaac Charles Johnson invents modern Portland cement.
• 1846: Henri-Joseph Maus invents the tunnel boring machine.
• 1847: Ascanio Sobrero invents Nitroglycerin, the first explosive made that was stronger than black powder.
• 1848: Jonathan J. Couch invents the pneumatic drill.
• 1848: Linus Yale Sr. invents the first modern pin tumbler lock.
• 1849: Walter Hunt invents the first repeating rifle to use metallic cartridges (of his own design) and a spring-fed magazine.
• 1849: James B. Francis invents the Francis turbine.
• 1849: Walter Hunt invents the Safety pin.^[387]

1850s

• 1850: William Armstrong invents the hydraulic accumulator.
• 1851: George Jennings offers the first public flush toilets, accessible for a penny per visit, and in 1852 receives a UK patent for the single piece, free standing, earthenware, trap plumed, flushing, water-closet.^[388]
• 1852: Robert Bunsen is the first to use a chemical vapor deposition technique.
• 1852: Elisha Otis invents the safety brake elevator.^[389]
• 1852: Henri Giffard becomes the first person to make a manned, controlled and powered flight using a dirigible.
• 1853: François Coignet invents reinforced concrete.
• 1855: James Clerk Maxwell invents the first practical method for color photography, whether chemical or electronic.
• 1855: Henry Bessemer patents the Bessemer process for making steel, with improvements made by others over the following years.
• 1856: Alexander Parkes invents parkesine, also known as celluloid, the first man-made plastic.
• 1856: James Harrison produces the world's first practical ice making machine and refrigerator using the principle of vapour compression in Geelong, Australia.^[390]
• 1856: William Henry Perkin invents mauveine, the first synthetic dye.
• 1857: Heinrich Geissler invents the Geissler tube.
• 1857: The phonautograph, the earliest known device for recording sound is patented and invented by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville.
• 1859: Gaston Planté invents the lead acid battery, the first rechargeable battery.

1860s

• 1860: Joseph Swan produces carbon fibers.^[391]
• 1864: Louis Pasteur invents the pasteurization process.
• 1865: Carl Wilhelm Siemens and Pierre-Émile Martin invented the Siemens-Martin process for making steel.
• 1867: Alfred Nobel invents dynamite, the first safely manageable explosive stronger than black powder.
• 1867: Lucien B. Smith invents barbed wire, which Joseph F. Glidden will modify in 1874, leading to the taming of the West and the end of the cowboys.

1870s

• 1872: Polyvinyl chloride, more commonly known as vinyl, is synthesized by German chemist Eugen Baumann
• 1872: J.E.T. Woods and J. Clark invented stainless steel. Harry Brearley was the first to commercialize it.^[392]
• 1873: Frederick Ransome invents the rotary kiln.
• 1873: William Crookes, a chemist, invents the Crookes radiometer as the by-product of some chemical research.
• 1873: Zénobe Gramme invents the first commercial electrical generator, the Gramme machine.
• 1874: Gustave Trouvé invents the first metal detector.
• 1875: Fyodor Pirotsky invents the first electric tram near Saint Petersburg, Russia.
• 1876: Nicolaus August Otto invents the four-stroke cycle.
• 1876: Alexander Graham Bell has a patent granted for the telephone. However, other inventors before Bell had worked on the development of the telephone and the invention had several pioneers.^[393]
• 1877: Thomas Edison invents the first working phonograph.^[394]
• 1878: Henry Fleuss is granted a patent for the first practical rebreather.^[395]
• 1878: Lester Allan Pelton invents the Pelton wheel.
• 1879: Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison both patent a functional incandescent light bulb. Some two dozen inventors had experimented with electric incandescent lighting over the first three-quarters of the 19th century but never came up with a practical design.^[396] Swan's, which he had been working on since the 1860s, had a low resistance so was only suited for small installations. Edison designed a high-resistance bulb as part of a large-scale commercial electric lighting utility.^{[397][398][399]}

1880s

• 1881: Nikolay Benardos presents carbon arc welding, the first practical arc welding method.^[400]
• 1884: Hiram Maxim invents the recoil-operated Maxim gun, ushering in the age of semi- and fully automatic firearms.
• 1884: Paul Vieille invents Poudre B, the first smokeless powder for firearms.
• 1884: Sir Charles Parsons invents the modern steam turbine.
• 1884: Hungarian engineers Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri invent the closed core high efficiency transformer and the AC parallel power distribution.
• 1885: John Kemp Starley invents the modern safety bicycle.^[401][402]
• 1886: Carl Gassner invents the zinc–carbon battery, the first dry cell battery, making portable electronics practical.
• 1886: Charles Martin Hall and independently Paul Héroult invent the Hall–Héroult process for economically producing aluminum in 1886.
• 1886: Karl Benz invents the first petrol or gasoline powered auto-mobile (car).^[403]
• 1887: Carl Josef Bayer invents the Bayer process for the production of alumina.
• 1887: James Blyth invents the first wind turbine used for generating electricity.
• 1887: John Stewart MacArthur, working in collaboration with brothers Dr. Robert and Dr. William Forrest develops the process of gold cyanidation.
• 1888: John J. Loud invents the ballpoint pen.^[404]
• 1888: Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Dickson invents Kinetoscope.^[405]
• 1888: Heinrich Hertz publishes a conclusive proof of James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory in experiments that also demonstrate the existence of radio waves. The effects of electromagnetic waves had been observed by many people before this but no usable theory explaining them existed until Maxwell.
• 1888: The first practical pneumatic tire was made by Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop, the patent was from 1847 by Robert William Thomson

1890s

• 1890s: Frédéric Swarts invents the first chlorofluorocarbons to be applied as refrigerant.^[406]
• 1890: Robert Gair would invent the pre-cut cardboard box.^[407]
• 1891: Whitcomb Judson invents the zipper.
• 1892: Léon Bouly invents the cinematograph.
• 1892: Thomas Ahearn invents the electric oven.^[408]
• 1893: Rudolf Diesel invents the diesel engine (although Herbert Akroyd Stuart had experimented with compression ignition before Diesel).
• 1895: Guglielmo Marconi invents a system of wireless communication using radio waves.
• 1895: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen invented the first radiograph (xrays).
• 1898: Hans von Pechmann synthesizes polyethylene, now the most common plastic in the world.^[409]
• 1899: Waldemar Jungner invents the rechargeable nickel-cadmium battery (NiCd) as well as the nickel-iron electric storage battery (NiFe) and the rechargeable alkaline silver-cadmium battery (AgCd)

1900s

• 1900: The first Zeppelin is designed by Theodor Kober.
• 1901: The first motorized cleaner using suction, a powered "vacuum cleaner", is patented independently by Hubert Cecil Booth and David T. Kenney.^[410]
• 1903: The first successful gas turbine is invented by Ægidius Elling.
• 1903: Édouard Bénédictus invents laminated glass.
• 1903: First sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight achieved by an airplane flown at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina by Orville and Wilbur Wright. See Claims to the first powered flight.
• 1904: The Fleming valve, the first vacuum tube and diode, is invented by John Ambrose Fleming.
• 1907: The first free flight of a rotary-wing aircraft is carried out by Paul Cornu.
• 1907: Leo Baekeland invents bakelite, the first plastic made from synthetic components.
• 1907: The tuyères thermopropulsives^[411] after 1945 (Maurice Roy (fr)) known as the statoreacteur^[411][412] a combustion subsonique (the ramjet)^[413] – R. Lorin^{[414][415][416]}
• 1908: Cellophane is invented by Jacques E. Brandenberger.
• 1909: Fritz Haber invents the Haber process.
• 1909: The first instantaneous transmission of images, or television broadcast, is carried out by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier.

1910s

BERy articulated streetcar no. 2 in 1913. The Boston Elevated Railway was the world's first street railway system to use articulated streetcars.

• 1911: The cloud chamber, the first particle detector, is invented by Charles Thomson Rees Wilson.
• 1912: The first commercial slot cars or more accurately model electric racing cars operating under constant power were made by Lionel (USA) and appeared in their catalogues in 1912. They drew power from a toy train rail sunk in a trough that was connected to a battery.
• 1912: The first use of articulated trams by Boston Elevated Railway.
• 1913: The Bergius process is developed by Friedrich Bergius.
• 1913: The Kaplan turbine is invented by Viktor Kaplan.
• 1915: Harry Brearley invents a process to create Martensitic stainless steel, initially labelled Rustless Steel, later marketed as Staybrite, and AISI Type 420.^[417]
• 1915: The first operational military tanks are designed in Great Britain and France. They are used in battle from 1916 and 1917 respectively. The designers in Great Britain are Walter Wilson and William Tritton and in France, Eugène Brillié. (Although it is known that vehicles incorporating at least some of the features of the tank were designed in a number of countries from 1903 onward, none reached a practical form.)
• 1916: The Czochralski process, widely used for the production of single crystal silicon, is invented by Jan Czochralski.
• 1917: The crystal oscillator is invented by Alexander M. Nicholson using a crystal of Rochelle Salt although his priority was disputed by Walter Guyton Cady.

1920s

• 1925: The Fischer–Tropsch process is developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Kohlenforschung.
• 1926: The Yagi-Uda Antenna or simply Yagi Antenna is invented by Shintaro Uda of Tohoku Imperial University, assisted by his colleague Hidetsugu Yagi. The Yagi Antenna was widely used during World War II. After the war they saw extensive development as home television antennas.
• 1926: Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid fueled rocket.
• 1926: Harry Ferguson, patents the Three-point hitch equipment linkage system for tractors.^[418]
• 1926: John Logie Baird demonstrates the world's first live working television system.^{[419][420][421]}
• 1927: The quartz clock is invented by Warren Marrison and J.W. Horton at Bell Telephone Laboratories.^[422]
• 1928: Penicillin is first observed to exude antibiotic substances by Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming. Development of medicinal penicillin is attributed to a team of medics and scientists including Howard Walter Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley.
• 1928: Frank Whittle formally submitted his ideas for a turbo-jet engine. In October 1929, he developed his ideas further.^[423] On 16 January 1930, Whittle submitted his first patent (granted in 1932).^[424][425]
• 1928: Philo Farnsworth demonstrates the first practical electronic television to the press.
• 1929: The ball screw is invented by Rudolph G. Boehm.

1930s

• 1930: The Supersonic combusting ramjet — Frank Whittle.^[426]
• 1930: The Phase-contrast microscopy is invented by Frits Zernike.
• 1931: The electron microscope is invented by Ernst Ruska.
• 1933: FM radio is patented by inventor Edwin H. Armstrong.
• 1935: Nylon, the first fully synthetic fiber is produced by Wallace Carothers while working at DuPont.^[427]
• 1938: Z1, built by Konrad Zuse, is the first freely programmable computer in the world.
• 1938: Nuclear fission discovered in experiment by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. The German nuclear energy project was based on this research. The Tube Alloys project and, subsequently, the Manhattan Project and the Soviet atomic bomb project were influenced by this research.
• 1939: G. S. Yunyev or Naum Gurvich invented the electric current defibrillator

1940s

• 1940: Pu-239 isotope (isotope of plutonium)^[428][429] a form of matter existing with the capacity for use as a destructive element^[430] (because the isotope has an exponentially increasing^[428] spontaneous^[431] fissile decay^[432]) within nuclear devices — Glenn Seaborg.^[429]
• 1940: John Randall and Harry Boot would develop the high power, microwave generating, cavity magnetron, later applied to commercial Radar and Microwave oven appliances.^[433]
• 1941: Polyester is invented by John Rex Whinfield and James Dickson.^[434]
• 1942: The V-2 rocket, the world's first long range ballistic missile, developed by engineer Wernher von Braun.
• 1944: The non-infectious viral vaccine is perfected by Dr. Jonas Salk and Thomas Francis.^[435]
• 1945: The atomic bomb is developed by the Manhattan Project and swiftly deployed in August 1945 in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively ending World War II.
• 1945: Percy Spencer, while employed at Raytheon, would patent a magnetron based microwave oven.^[436]
• 1946: James Martin invents the ejector seat, inspired by the death of his friend and test pilot Captain Valentine Baker in an aeroplane crash in 1942.
• 1947: Holography is invented by Dennis Gabor.
• 1947: Floyd Farris and J.B. Clark (Stanolind Oil and Gas Corporation) invents hydraulic fracturing technology.^[437]
• 1947: The first transistor, a bipolar point-contact transistor, is invented by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain under the supervision of William Shockley at Bell Labs.
• 1948: The first atomic clock is developed at the National Bureau of Standards.
• 1948: Basic oxygen steelmaking is developed by Robert Durrer. The vast majority of steel manufactured in the world is produced using the basic oxygen furnace; in 2000, it accounted for 60% of global steel output.^[438]

1950s

• 1950: Bertie the Brain, debatably the first video game, is displayed to the public at the Canadian National Exhibition.
• 1950: The Toroidal chamber with axial magnetic fields (the Tokamak) is developed by Igor E. Tamm and Andrei D. Sakharov.^[439]
• 1952: The float glass process is developed by Alastair Pilkington.^[440]
• 1952: The first thermonuclear weapon is developed.
• 1953: The first video tape recorder, a helical scan recorder, is invented by Norikazu Sawazaki.
• 1954: Invention of the solar battery by Bell Telephone scientists, Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson capturing the Sun's power. First practical means of collecting energy from the Sun and turning it into a current of electricity.
• 1955: The hovercraft is patented by Christopher Cockerell.
• 1955: The intermodal container is developed by Malcom McLean.
• 1956: The hard disk drive is invented by IBM.^[441]
• 1957: The laser and optical amplifier are invented and named by Gordon Gould and Charles Townes. The laser and optical amplifier are foundational to powering the Internet.^[442]
• 1957: The first personal computer used by one person and controlled by a keyboard, the IBM 610, is invented in 1957 by IBM.
• 1957: The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, is launched.
• 1958 – 1959: The integrated circuit is independently invented by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.
• 1959: The MOSFET (MOS transistor) is invented by the Egyptian Mohamed Atalla and the Korean Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs. It is used in almost all modern electronic products. It was smaller, faster, more reliable and cheaper to manufacture than earlier bipolar transistors, leading to a revolution in computers, controls and communication.^{[443][444][445]}

1960s

The original 0 series Shinkansen train. Introduced in 1964, it reached a speed of 210 km/h (130 mph).

• 1960: The first functioning laser is invented by Theodore Maiman.
• 1963: The first electronic cigarette is created by Herbert A. Gilbert. Hon Lik is often credited with its invention as he developed the modern electronic cigarette and was the first to commercialize it.
• 1964: Shinkansen, the first high-speed rail commercial passenger service.
• 1965: Kevlar is invented by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont.
• 1969: ARPANET and the NPL network implement packet switching,^[446][447] drawing on the concepts and designs of Donald Davies,^[448][449] and Paul Baran.^[450]

1970s

• 1970s: Public-key cryptography is invented and developed by James H. Ellis, Clifford Cocks, Malcolm J. Williamson, Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, Ralph Merkle, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, Leonard Adleman, et al.
• 1970: The pocket calculator is invented.
• 1971: The first single-chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004, is invented. Its development was led by Federico Faggin, using his silicon-gate MOS technology. This led to the personal computer (PC) revolution.^[451]
• 1971: The first space station, Salyut 1 is launched.
• 1972: The first video game console, used primarily for playing video games on a TV, is the Magnavox Odyssey.^[452]
• 1973: The first fiber optic communication systems were developed by Optelecom.^[453]
• 1973: The first commercial graphical user interface is introduced in 1973 on the Xerox Alto. The modern GUI is later popularized by the Xerox Star and Apple Lisa.
• 1973: The first capacitive touchscreen is developed at CERN.
• 1974: The Transmission Control Program is proposed by Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn, building on the work of Louis Pouzin, creating the basis for the modern Internet.^[454][455]
• 1974: The lithium-ion battery is invented by M. Stanley Whittingham, and further developed in the 1980s and 1990s by John B. Goodenough, Rachid Yazami and Akira Yoshino. It has impacted modern consumer electronics and electric vehicles.^[456]
• 1977: Dr Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger invented a new DNA sequencing method for which they won the Nobel Prize.^[457]
• 1977: The first self-driving car that did not rely upon rails or wires under the road is designed by the Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory.^[458]
• 1978: The Global Positioning System (GPS) enters service. While not the first Satellite navigation system, it is the first to enter widespread civilian use.
• 1979: The first handheld game console with interchangeable game cartridges, the Microvision is released.
• 1979: Public dialup information, messaging and e-commerce services, were pioneered through CompuServe and RadioShack's MicroNET, and the UK's Post Office Telecommunications Prestel services.^[459][460]

1980s

• 1980: Flash memory (both NOR and NAND types) is invented by Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba. It is formally introduced to the public in 1984.
• 1981: The first reusable spacecraft, the Space Shuttle undergoes test flights ahead of full operation in 1982.
• 1981: Kane Kramer develops the credit card sized, IXI digital media player.^[461]
• 1982: A CD-ROM contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 Yellow Book standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data.^[462]
• 1982: Direct to home satellite television transmission, with the launch of Sky One service.^[463]
• 1982: The first laptop computer is launched, the 8/16-bit Epson HX-20.^[464]
• 1983: Stereolithography is invented by Chuck Hull.^[465]
• 1984: The first commercially available cell phone, the DynaTAC 8000X, is created by Motorola.
• 1984: DNA profiling is pioneered by Alec Jeffreys.^[466][467]
• 1989: Karlheinz Brandenburg would publish the audio compression algorithms that would be standardised as the: MPEG-1, layer 3 (mp3), and later the MPEG-2, layer 7 Advanced Audio Compression (AAC).^[468]
• 1989: The World Wide Web is invented by computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee.^[469][470]

1990s

• 1990: The Neo Geo AES becomes the first video game system to launch that used Memory Cards
• 1990: The first search engine invented was “Archie”, created by Alan Emtage a student at McGill University in Montreal
• 1991: The first commercial flash-based solid-state drive is launched by SunDisk.^[471]
• 1991: The first sim card is developed by Munich smart-card maker Giesecke & Devrient,
• 1993: IBM created the first mobile app with SIMON, it had 10 bulit-in apps from Email to Calendar
• 1994: IBM Simon, World's first smartphone is developed by IBM.
• 1994: First generation of Bluetooth is developed by Ericsson Mobile. A form of data communication on short distances between electronic devices.
• 1994: A Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device becomes the first mobile game
• 1995: DVD is an optical disc storage format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions.
• 1995: Match.com launches as the first dating site ever and is the number 1 most visited dating site in the US
• 1995: Waiter.com launches as the first online food ordering service
• 1996: Ciena deploys the first commercial wave division multiplexing system in partnership with Sprint. This created the massive capacity of the internet.^[472]
• 1996: Mobile web was first commercially offered in Finland on the Nokia 9000 Communicator phone and it was also the first phone with texting
• 1996: Bolt and Six Degrees (1997) both become the first social media sites
• 1997: The first weblog, a discussion or informational website, is created by Jorn Barger, later shortened to "blog" in 1999 by Peter Merholz.
• 1998: The first portable MP3 player is released by SaeHan Information Systems.
• 1999: The first digital video recorder (DVR), the TiVo, is launched by Xperi.
• 1999: NTT DoCoMo launches i-mode, the first integrated Online App store for mobile phones

2000s

• 2000: Sony develops the first prototypes for the Blu-ray optical disc format. The first prototype player was released in 2004.
• 2000: First documented placement of Geocaching, an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon.
• 2001: The Xbox Launches and is the first game console with internal storage
• 2004: First podcast, invented by Adam Curry and Dave Winer, is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet and it usually features one or more recurring hosts engaged in a discussion about a particular topic or current event.^{[473][474][475]}
• 2005: YouTube, the first popular video-streaming site, was founded
• 2007: Netflix debuted the first popular video-on-demand service
• 2007: The Bank of Scotland develops the worlds first banking app
• 2007: SoundCloud, the first on-demand service to focus on music is debuted
• 2007: First Kindle introduced by Amazon (company) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who instructed the company's employees to build the world's best e-reader before Amazon's competitors could. Amazon originally used the codename Fiona for the device. This hardware evolved from the original Kindle introduced in 2007 and the Kindle DX (with its larger 9.7" screen) introduced in 2009.^[476]
• 2008: Satoshi Nakamoto develops the first blockchain.^[477]
• 2009: The Zeebo is released becoming the first digital-only video game console

2010s

• 2010: The first solar sail based spacecraft, IKAROS.^[478]
• 2010: The first quantum machine^[479]
• 2010: The first synthetic organism, Mycoplasma laboratorium is created by the J. Craig Venter Institute.
• 2011: Twitch, launches as the first live-streaming service.
• 2011: HIV treatment as prevention (HPTN 052)^[480]
• 2012: Discovery of the Higgs boson^[481]
• 2013: Cancer immunotherapy^[482]
• 2014: The first known "NFT", Quantum,^[483] was created by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash in May 2014, that explicitly linked a non-fungible, tradable blockchain marker to a work of art, via on-chain metadata (enabled by Namecoin).^[484]
• 2015: CRISPR genome-editing method^[485]
• 2016: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory makes the first observation of gravitational waves, fulfilling Einstein's prediction^[486]
• 2018: Single cell sequencing^[487]
• 2019: IBM launches IBM Q System One, its first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use.

2020s

• 2020: The first RNA vaccine to be approved by public health medicines regulators is co-developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for COVID-19.
• 2022: Pfizer develops the world's first pill for COVID