Flotte’s Outlines

Technology

Agriculture

Metal Working

Textiles and Pottery

Time-Keeping

Mechanics

Transportation

Communications

Electronics

Computers

Digitization

Home Applicances

Agriculture

· Prior to 11,000 BC all peoples were hunter-gatherers. The Agricultural Revolution is the transition from nomadic hunting and gathering societies to settled agrarian societies that occurred independently in at least four, possibly six, geographic areas

· Horticulture (gardening) is the critical intermediate step between hunting and gathering and agriculture. Passive gathering became active planting, tending and harvesting. As the garden reliably begins to produce a larger portion of the food supply, there is less wandering in pursuit of game, resulting in the settlement of villages around the garden plots. Horticultural villages usually move every few years when the garden soil is exhausted and fresh new plots are cleared.

· Large field crop agriculture occurs with the introduction of domestic animal power as well as metal working technologies. Agriculturalists can settle permanently in the prime agricultural lands of river valleys with their rich alluvial soils.

· 9000 The Fertile Crescent develops agriculture because of its: 1) Mediterranean climate. 2) Easily domesticated plants. 3) Most of the plants pollinate themselves.

o People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey—it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

· 6000 China develops a distinctive set of domestic plants and animals: rice, millet, chickens, geese, dogs and pigs. Chinese agriculture may have begun in two separate areas. Millet is native to the cooler, drier climate of the Huangho River in northern China while rice grows naturally in the warmer, wetter climate of the Yangtze River in southern China.

· 5400 Wine is produced in Mesopotamia

· 4000 The Ox-driven plow is developed in Mesopotamia to turn the earth, burying weeds and breaking up the seedbed.

· By 3,000 BC wheat had reached Ireland, Spain, Ethiopia and India. A millennium later it reached China: paddy rice was still thousands of years in the future.

· 2800 The sickle is used in Mesopotamia

· 2400 Irrigation and canals are used in Sumeria, leading to an increase in food production

· 2100 Beer is made in Mesopotamia

· 1000 Horse harnesses develop in China (not in Europe until 900s AD) allow horses to be used for labor. By not pressing on the animal's windpipe, it enabled the animal to drag greater weight—and faster than an ox.

· 300 Iron plowshares (moldboards) first used in China, not adopted in Europe until 800 AD.

· 700s A three-field system of crop rotation begins to be practiced in western Europe, which prevents the exhaustion of soil by leaving a third of the field fallow for a year and by planting crops that replenish soil nutrients

· 805 Tea is brewed in Japan

· 1025 Sugar extraction obtained from sugar cane by the Seljuk Persians

· 1283 Salting fish is used in the Netherlands to preserve them

· 1400s Rice appears in northern Italy

· 1500s Land is enclosed for sheep in England

· 1500s Tobacco, pineapples, tomatoes (1534), chocolate, peanuts, sunflowers, chili peppers and beans are introduced to Europe from the New World. Spain took sugarcane to Cuba (1523) and wheat to Mexico (1528).

· 1500s Various foods are passed from Asia to Europe including nutmeg (from China), obergine (eggplant, from India) and ice cream. Coffee reaches Europe after the Siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Empire. In England, sugar arrived in 1460; green peas in 1514.

· 1600s The potato, corn, and turkeys are introduced into Europe from the New World

· 1670 Champagne is developed in France by Dom Pérignon

· 1701 The Berkshire farmer Jethro Tull devised a simple seed drill based on organ pipes, which resulted in eight times as many grains harvested for every grain sown.

· 1796 The threshing machine was invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for the separation of grain from stalks and husks. It was greeted by riots.

· 1956 A sample of a barley variety called Maythorpe was irradiated at Britain's Atomic Energy Research Establishment in the first “mutation breeding”. The result was a strain with stiffer, shorter straw but the same early harvest and malting qualities, which would eventually reach the market as “Golden Promise”. Today scientists use thermal neutrons, X-rays, or ethyl methane sulphonate, a harsh carcinogenic chemical—anything that will damage DNA—to generate mutant cereals. Virtually every variety of wheat and barley you see growing in the field was produced by mutation breeding. No safety tests are done; nobody protests.

· 1983 Genetic modification (GM) was invented as a gentler, safer, more rational and more predictable alternative to mutation breeding. Instead of random mutations, scientists could now add the traits they wanted. In 2004 200m acres of GM crops were grown worldwide with good effects on yield (up), pesticide use (down), biodiversity (up) and cost (down). There has not been a single human health problem. Yet, far from being welcomed as a greener green revolution, genetic modification soon ran into fierce opposition from the environmental movement.

o Wheat, because of its unwieldy hexaploid genome, has largely missed out on the GM revolution, as maize and rice accelerate into world leadership. The first GM wheats have only recently been approved for use, their principal advantage to the farmer being so-called “no till” cultivation—the planting of seed directly into untilled soil saves fuel and topsoil.

Metal Working

· 6000 Copper is used in the Middle East. By 5000 it is used in the Balkans. The use of fire allowed stone to be replaced by metal. Metals were first extracted from ores over a domestic fire. Metal was easier to mold into required shapes and was stronger. It could also be used for glittering ornamentation.

· 4000BC Iron recovered from meteorites is used in Ancient Egypt and Sumer for the tips of spears and ornaments.

· 2000 Bronze first appears in Northern Europe where both tin and copper (of which bronze is an alloy) were available

· c. 3000-2000BC Smelted iron (distinguishable from meteoric iron by their lack of nickel) is used in Near East

· 1200-1000BC Iron tools and weapons displaced bronze ones throughout the Near East. Iron did not immediately replace bronze for several centuries because working iron required more fuel and labor, and the quality of early iron may have been inferior to bronze

· Most early processes in Europe and Africa involved smelting iron ore in a bloomery, a furnace where bellows were used to force air through a pile of iron ore and burning charcoal. This produces a spongy mass of iron called a bloom, which then has to be consolidated with a hammer. The carbon monoxide produced by the charcoal reduced the iron oxides to metallic iron, but the bloomery was not hot enough to melt the iron. Instead, the iron collected in the bottom of the furnace as a spongy mass, or bloom, whose pores were filled with ash and slag. The bloom then had to be reheated to soften the iron and melt the slag, and then repeatedly beaten and folded to force the molten slag out of it. The result of this time-consuming and laborious process was wrought iron, a malleable but fairly soft alloy containing little carbon.

· 500BC In China bloomeries began to be replaced by blast furnaces in which temperatures reach above 1300 °C. At this temperature, iron combines with 4.3% carbon, melts, and can be cast into molds, i.e. cast iron. The Chinese used soil containing iron phosphate, which reduced the melting temperature of iron. Cast iron did not reach Europe until the late medieval period (c. 1300).

· By 200AD Steel was being produced in southern India by the crucible technique in which wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in crucibles and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon.

· 1300 Rhinelanders are the first Europeans to cast iron. Cast iron will be used for cannonballs and, in 1543, English cannons.

· 1619 Dutch ironmasters, after examining the English iron ores, introduced the use of limestone as a flux in the blast furnace. This practice improved the separation of slag from the cast iron and improved the quality of Continental cast iron

· 1709 Abraham Darby began smelting iron using coke, a refined coal product, in place of charcoal at his ironworks at Coalbrookdale in England.

· 1855 Henry Bessemer solved the problem of mass-producing steel with the introduction of the Bessemer converter at his steelworks in Sheffield, England. In the Bessemer process, molten pig iron from the blast furnace was charged into a large crucible, and then air was blown through the molten iron from below, igniting the dissolved carbon from the coke. As the carbon burned off, the melting point of the mixture increased, but the heat from the burning carbon provided the extra energy needed to keep the mixture molten. After the carbon content in the melt had dropped to the desired level, the air draft was cut off: a typical Bessemer converter could convert a 25-ton batch of pig iron to steel in half an hour.

· Until these 19th century developments, steel was an expensive commodity and only used for a limited number of purposes where a particularly hard or flexible metal was needed, as in the cutting edges of tools and springs. The widespread availability of inexpensive steel powered the second industrial revolution. Steel replaced wrought iron for almost all purposes. Alloy steels only began to be made in the late 19th century. Stainless steel began to come into widespread use in the 1920s.

Textiles, Pottery, and Materials

· 7900 Pottery making is begun in China

· 6500 Weaving used in the Middle East

· 6200 Funeary objects produced in Samarra (modern Iraq)

· 5000 Scales and balances used in Egypt

· 5000 Musical instruments – pipes made of bone – are produced in Europe

· 4700 Pottery making in Mesopotamia

· 3600 Jade carving

· 3500 Woodworking practiced in Egypt

· 3200 Silk is used in China

· 3000 Glass is produced in the Middle East

· 3000 Candles are produced in Egypt and Crete

· 3000 Potter’s wheel is used in Mesopotamia

· 2600 Rope is made from hemp in China

· 1500 Glazed pottery made in China

· 100 Glass-blowing is used in Syria to make hollow glass vessels

· c. 300-600 Porcelain used in China (developed in Europe in 1700s)

· 553 Beginnings of European silk industry after Byzantine Emperor Justinian's missionaries smuggle silkworms out of China

· 900 Plaster is used in Arabia for pottery molds and setting broken bones

· 1200s The spinning wheel spreads from Asia to Europe

· 1225 Cotton manufacturing established in Spain.

· 1460 The Portuguese bring Japanese folding fans and silk screen printing to Europe

· 1839 Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization of rubber, strengething it and expanding its uses

· 1860s Alexander Parkes discovered cellulose-based plastics (celluloid).

· 1907 The first plastic based on a synthetic polymer, Bakelite, was made from phenol and formaldehyde by Leo Hendrik Baekeland

· 1935 Nylon, the first synthetic fiber, is developed

· 1930s A wide range of plastics are developed, which are used in World War II, then in consumer products in the 1950s

· See Plastics & Polymers

Time-Keeping

· The Solar Calendar was first used by the Sumerians.

· The Babylonians standardized the length of the hour to 1/24th of the length of the Solar Day. The week is another Babylonian invention. It is seven days because there were seven wanderers amongst the 'fixed stars' in the sky. These were the Sun, the Moon, and the five naked eye planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Indeed, the word planet means 'wanderer'. in English we have the Sun's Day (Sunday), the Moon's Day (Monday), Tiw's Day (Tuesday - Tiw is the Norse version of the god of war, Mars: in Spanish Tuesday is martes), Woden's Day (Wednesday - from Woden, the Norse version of Mercury - Miercoles in Spanish), Thor's Day (Thursday - Thor is the Norse king of the gods, like Jupiter - Jueves in Spanish - even in Hindi, Braspati is Jupiter and Braspativar is Thursday), Frigga's Day (from Frigga, the Norse Venus), Saturn's Day (Saturday). Around 580 BC when the Israelites were under Babylonian rule, they had to keep a seven day Week. Since their religion forbade them from worshipping the stars, they rewrote the Babylonian creation stories, replacing the many Babylonian gods with their single God. The creation was therefore said to have taken seven days.

· The word month is from the same root as moon and indeed that is where it comes from. The problem with the astronomical month is that there are two of them and both vary in length by significant amounts. If the Moon is followed against the starry background, it completes a revolution around the Earth in 27 days 7 hours 43 minutes and 11.5 seconds, on average. In fact, this period can vary by several hours because of the gravitational pull of the Sun and other planets. This is called the Sidereal Month. The period from Full Moon to Full Moon (or Half to Half, New to New, etc) is called the Synodic Month. It has a period of 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes and 3 seconds. The actual value can vary by as much as 13 hours from the above average.

· 3500BC Water clocks are used in Sumeria

· 3000BC The Egyptians develop gnomons, vertical sticks used as the first sundials. The Egyptians used these to divide the day into 12 hours for the daytime and 12 hours for the night. Because of the seasonal variation in daylength throughout the year, the length of the hours was variable.

· 1500BC Astronomy is used in Egypt, India, China. The length of the day, month and year is known.

· The Jewish calendar has its start point in 3761 BC. The Mayan calendar dates from 3300 BC. The Chinese calendar has its start point in 2698 BC. China recorded the earliest solar eclipse on 22 October 2137 BC.

· 312BC Chronology is begun in the Seleucid Empire in Persia where years are counted sequentially and not by ruler

· 45BC The Julian Calendar is used by the Roman Empire. The year was defined as 365.25 days. He divided the year into months (each with either 30 or 31 days alternating regularly) and invented the concept of a Leap Year. Each year had 365 days except Leap Years which had 366. Under the Romans the beginning of the year was moved from the Vernal Equinox to the beginning of January. The original 5th month (a 31 day month) was renamed July after Julius Caesar. Later, Augustus renamed the 6th month after himself (August) and increased its number of days to 31 to match July, leaving poor February with 28

· 535 In the year that was then known as "1288 years after the founding of Rome", a monk called Dionysus Exeguus decided to 'calculate when Jesus was born'. He studied the Bible and calculated that Jesus had been born 535 years earlier.

· 785 Charlemagne decided it was better to count the years from the birth of Christ rather the founding of Rome, a pagan city. Thus, the Roman Year 753 became 1 AD. AD comes from a Latin phrase, Anno Domini ("in the year of the Lord"). There was no Year Zero because Europeans did not know about it; the zero had been invented in India but had not yet reached Europe.

· Muslims use the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina as the start of their Lunar Calendar so the Muslim Year is 1425 (until the end of February 2005). Buddhists use the birth of the Buddha so the year in Buddhist countries like Thailand is 2534. The Jewish Year is 5764 (until September 2004). The Chinese Year is 4641 (until 1 February 2005). The Japanese Year is 2663. The Ethiopian Year is 1995. Under the old Roman calendar, the year is 2757 (until 14 January 2005).

· 850 Candle Clocks are used in England. They have marks on them which measure time as the wax burns away.

· 1275 Mechanical clocks are reinvented in Europe

· 1320 The Hourglass is used in Europe

· 1335 The first Public clock is erected in Milan (household clocks later in 1300s)

· 1350 Weight-driven clocks are used in Europe

· 1430 Spring-driven clocks are used in Europe

· 1500 Watches, portable spring driven clocks, invented by German locksmith named Peter Henlein (wrist watches do not appear until after WWI)

· 1582 Gregorian calendar: Pope Gregory XIII shortened October of 1582 by ten days & ruled that any year whose number ended with 00 must also be evenly divisible by 400 in order to have a 29-day February (not adopted by Britain and colonies until 1752)

· 1657 Huygens develops the pendulum clock

· 1670 The minute hand is added to clocks in England by William Clement

· 1674 Spring watches are built by Christian Huygens in the Netherlands

· 1675 Weight driven pendulum clocks invented by William Clement of England

Mechanics

· 550BC The screw is developed in Greece by Archytas

· 500BC A 7km railway is built at Corinth to move boats

· 300BC Steam power is used in Egypt for toys

· 250BC Archimedes invents the lever and Archimedes Screw for irrigation

· 250BC The piston is invented in Egypt by Ctesibius

· 150BC The screw press is used in Rome for making wine and olive oil

· Grain mills powered by waterwheels have existed since at least the first century BC. The Romans built a mill with 16 wheels and an output of over 40 horsepower near Arles in France. In the Middle Ages they were were used throughout Europe for a wide variety of mechanical tasks in addition to milling, from pressing oil to making wire.

· 100 Ball bearings are used in Rome used on turntables on decks of ships. They are re-invented by Philip Vaughan (Wales, 1794)

· Windmills were used by 900 in the Middle East, by 1000 in Europe. They were used for milling grain, working metal, sawing, crushing chalk, and by farms to pump water for livestock or household use

· 1078 Tidal Mill is used in Venice

· 1100s The flywheel is developed. The cam had been used at least since Carolingian times to drive hammers making mash

· 1233 Coal is mined in Newcastle, England. By 1306 Edward I objects to the noxious fumes from London's many coal-burning fires and tries (unsuccessfully) to ban its use by anyone except blacksmiths

· 1280 The spinning wheel, the first geared machine, is used in India

· 1328 Sawmill invented, spurs shipbuilding.

· 1600s Blast furnaces used to cast iron are spread through Europe

· 1635 The coal burning oven is invented in England

· 1663 Otto van Guernicke develops the air pump

· 1698 Savery Steam engine: Thomas Savery patented a pump with hand-operated valves to raise water from mines by suction produced by condensing steam.

· 1700 Coal replaces wood as the most commonly used fuel

· 1712 Newcomen Steam engine: Thomas Newcomen developed a more efficient steam engine with a piston separating the condensing steam from the water

· 1733 The Flying Shuttle enabled weavers to produce cloth more quickly

· 1769 James Watt greatly improved the Newcomen engine by adding a separate condenser to avoid heating and cooling the cylinder with each stroke. Watt then developed a new engine that rotated a shaft instead of providing the simple up-and-down motion of the pump, and he added many other improvements to produce a practical power plant

· 1769 Sir William Arkwright patents a spinning machine—an early step in the Industrial Revolution.

·

Winch/Capstan

Gears

1793 Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin

Pulley

Lever

Block and Tackle

Crane

· Transmission or gearbox is the gear and/or hydraulic system that transmits mechanical power from a prime mover (which can be an engine or electric motor), to some form of useful output device.

Combustion Engine

· The internal combustion engine is a heat engine in which the burning of a fuel occurs in a confined space called a combustion chamber, creating gases of high temperature and pressure, which are permitted to expand. The defining feature of an internal combustion engine is that work is performed by the expanding hot gases acting directly to cause movement, for example by acting on pistons or rotors.

· Internal combustion engines are most commonly used for mobile propulsion systems: automobiles, motorbikes, many boats, and in a wide variety of aircraft and locomotives.

· External combustion engines such as steam engines which use the combustion process to heat a separate working fluid, typically water or steam, which then in turn does work, for example by pressing on a steam actuated piston.

Timeline of motor and enginge technology (Wikipedia)

· 1698 Thomas Savery builds a steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines

· 1712 Thomas Newcomen builds a piston-and-cylinder steam-powered water pump for pumping water out of mines

· 1769 James Watt patents his first improved steam engine

· 1816 Robert Stirling invented his hot air Stirling engine

· 1821 Michael Faraday builds an electricity-powered motor

· 1877 Nikolaus Otto patents a four-stroke internal combustion engine

· 1888 Nikola Tesla patents the induction motor

· 1892 Rudolf Diesel patents the Diesel engine

· 1929 Felix Wankel patents the Wankel rotary engine

· 1937 Hans von Ohain builds a gas turbine

· 1960 Alternators replace generators on automobile engines

· 1980s Electronic fuel injection appears on gasoline automobile engines

· 1990s Hybrid vehicles that run on an internal combustion engine and an electric motor charged by the previous engine to retain pick power usage.

Transportation

· 4000BC Horses are domesticated in the Ukraine

· 3500BC The Wheel first appears in a Sumerian pictograph. For thousands of years it is confined to Eurasia and Africa. Allowed large scale movement of goods and material

· 1400BC The chariot is introduced into Egypt by the invading Hyksos

· 500BC The first highways are built in Persia

· 300BC Metal bits are used by the Celts to control horses

· 200BC Horseshoes are used in Rome. Horse collars and harnesses are used in China.

· 130BC The Silk Road linking Europe to China is used.

· 100BC The hinged rudder on boats is developed in China

· 1700s The road building method of Scotsman John McAdam – called macadam – using layers of sand and gravel for drainage is popularized. When tar is added to macadam it is called tarmac. Improvements in road building greatly speed travel.

Ships and Cartography

· 4000BC Sailing ships are used on the Nile

· 3500BC Oar-powered ships

· 1500BC The oar is used by the Phoenicians

· 1200BC Ships with keels are used by the Phoenicians

· 1200BC Navigation using the stars is developed by the Phoenicians

· 600BC Lighthouses, bonfires on towers, are used in the Mediterranean to guide ships

· 600BC The Phoenicians circumnavigate Africa

· 592BC Anchors are used in Greece

· 10 The magnetic compass using lodestone is developed in China

· 400 The astrolabe is used in Egypt for measurement of time and star positions

· c. 850 Arab scientists perfect the astrolabe, an instrument that facilitates the observation of celestial bodies

· c.850-1050 Compass used in China, although magnetic north was known and used as early as the third century A.D

· 1050 Astrolabes arrive in Europe from the East.

· 1180 Rudders first used on ships in Europe.

· c. 1190 Compass introduced in Europe

· 1260 Toll roads are built in England

· 1400 Binnacles are used in Europe for protecting and keeping level a ship's compass

· 1450 Three-mast ships appear in Europe

· Mid-1400s The canal-lock is developed. In the 1600s France builds a 142-mile canal from the Mediterranean to the Gironde River which runs to the Atlantic. By the 1700s England is laced with a network of canals, facilitating the Industrial Revolution.

· 1569 The Mercator Projection invented by Gerard Mercator in the Netherlands represents the globe as a flat map

· 1714 The British government offered the equivalent of about $12 million to answer how His Majesty's ships could calculate their longitude. Great scientists of the day attacked the problem, but it was solved by John Harrison, a self-taught watchmaker.

· 1757 The sextant is invented in England

· 1783 The first steam boat is made in France

· 1807 Robert Fulton builds the first steam ship. 1819 Steamship Savannah first to cross the Atlantic.

· 1835 The propeller is developed in England

Train/Locomotive

· 1769 The first steam wagon (the first steam-powered vehicle) is produced in France

· 1803 Steam-powered locomotive invented by Richard Trevithick and Oliver Evans, traveled on road

· 1814 George Stephenson builds first practical steam locomotive, which traveled on roads

· 1825 Stephenson designs the world's first practical railway locomotive, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which transported coal 8 miles in England

· 1827 The first railroad in North America—the Baltimore & Ohio—is chartered by Baltimore merchants.

· 1829 Stephenson designs the “Rocket”, the fastest and most practical railway locomotive.

· 1830 The first regularly scheduled steam-powered rail passenger service begins in England (using the Rocket) and in South Carolina

· 1879 Electric locomotive developed. 1925 Diesel locomotives used.

Gasoline-Combustion engine

· 1859 Jean-Joseph-Étienne Lenoir builds first practical internal-combustion engine

· 1859 The first oilwell is drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania

· 1876 Nikolaus Otto develops the 4-cycle gasoline engine

· 1892 Diesel engine patented

Automobile

· 1886 Pioneer manufacturers were Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz of Germany, as well as Americans Ramson Eli Olds and Alexander and James Packard. By 1898 there were 50 automobile-manufacturing companies in the United States. Ten years later there were 241companies

· 1888 J. B. Dunlop invents pneumatic tire

· 1908 Henry Ford started his assembly-line style of production and introduced the inexpensive Model T

Aircraft

· 1852 1^st dirigible. 1900 1^st zeppelin

· 1903 Orville Wright flies 120 feet in 12 seconds in the first airplane the Kitty Hawk

· 1919 First trans-Atlantic flight made by two Britons, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten-Brown. First international airline flights between London and Paris are begun

· 1924 First around-the-world flight made by US Army planes, taking 175 days.

· 1927 Charles Lindbergh flies The Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris, traveling 3600 miles in 33 and a half hours. Although 91 persons in 13 separate flights crossed the Atlantic before him, he flew directly between two great world cities and did it alone.

· 1928 First trans-Pacific flight.

· 1930 The jet engine is invented in England

· 1937 The German airship Hindenberg is destroyed by fire

· 1939 First trans-Atlantic mail and passenger flights

· 1968 Supersonic transport developed

Communications

· c. 100 Chinese T’sai Lun develops the first paper by drying pulp from old rags, bark, and hemp. Previously writing had been done on papyrus or parchment, which were expensive and labor-intensive. Paper makes communication and administration easier for the centralized Chinese government. Paper-use reaches Samarkand c. 750, Baghdad c. 800, and Europe (through Moorish Spain) in the 1200s.

· 600 A Postal Service is developed by the Ummayad Caliphs using mounted couriers and 930 stations

· c. 750 Block-printing of books is first practiced by Buddhist monks in China. 868 The Diamond Sutra becomes the world's first known printed book when it is produced in China.

· 1041 Moveable type developed by Pi-Cheng, a commoner, in China.

· 1100 Europe began using paper (via Moorish Spain) which had been invented in China in 100 AD

· 1396 Metal printing blocks made of bronze are used in Korea

· 1440 Printing press developed at Mainz, Germany by Johannes Gutenberg, German businessman. Prints 300 sheets per day. 1455 Gutenberg completes his first Bible.

· 1564 The lead pencil invented in England

· 1609 The first newspaper (The Relation) is printed in Strasbourg, Germany

· 1827 Photograph developed by Joseph-Nicephore Niepice (also 1839 by Daguerre, the daguerreotype, the first commercially successful form of photography.)

· 1837 Samuel F. B. Morse develops the telegraph. (also 1833 by Gauss and Weber)

· 1844 Samuel Morse, an art professor, develops the most successful form of telegraph based on its key and the Morse Code. Morse sent the telegraph message "What hath God wrought" (a Bible quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Supreme Court room in Washington, D.C. to his assistant in Baltimore, Maryland. Other forms of the telegraph had previously been invented in Germany.

· 1850 British engineers made a copper-wire telegraph cable, insulated it with gutta-percha (a rubberlike Malayan tree sap), and laid it across the English Channel.

· 1858 First trans-Atlantic telegraph cable completed. Cyrus Field, a retired paper-manufacturer, organizes the effort. He had a fifty-year monopoly charter from the British government. Queen Victoria sent a hundred-word message to President James Buchanan. Some of the royal words reached Washington that day; the rest came through on the 17th. Agonizingly slow and chronically unreliable, the cable went dead after three weeks. Engineers tried again, this time with the world’s largest ship, the Great Eastern. In 1865 she set out from England with a thickly insulated 2,800-mile cable that weighed 5,000 tons. They had almost finished laying it when the cable snapped. The next year they succeeded.

· 1876 First telephone transmission by Alexander Graham Bell in Ontario

· 1877 Phonograph invented by Thomas Edison

· 1888 George Eastman's box camera (the Kodak).

· 1894 Edison's kinetoscope given first public showing in New York City. 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumière premiere motion pictures (cinematograph) at a café in Paris.

· 1896 Marconi receives first wireless patent in Britain

· 1898 Typewriter invented by Christopher Latham Sholes

· 1901 First radio transmission: Guglielmo Marconi receives 3 dots of letter S from Cornwall to Newfoundland

· 1904 Color photography is invented by the Lumiere Brothers in France

· 1927 Television invented by Philo Farnsworth in San Francisco (1925 John Logie Baird, Scottish inventor, transmits human features by television)

· 1936 Magnetic recording (audio tapes) invented in the US

· 1940 The first official network television broadcast is put out by NBC.

· 1947 The mobile phone is developed in the US

· 1948 The long playing (LP) record is introduced, followed by the 45rpm record in 1949

· 1951 Color television is introduced

· 1953 The transistor radio is developed by Texas Instruments

· 1956 The first transatlantic telephone cable is laid

· 1958 Videotape and the Video Recorder are developed in the US

· 1962 Telstar communications satellite launched, first live TV, broadcasts between the US and Europe

· 1963 Audiotape cassettes are developed in the Netherlands

Information Revolution – 1990s

· Result of advances in: Computers/microchips, Compression technology (storage), Miniaturization, Digitization, Telecommunications, Satellites, Fiber Optics

· During the 1990s economic boom, many developing nations invested in laying fiber-optic lines, building satellite relay stations, and connecting to transoceanic cable—the high-capacity “backbone” elements of telephone networks that transport data.

· Wireless-fidelity networks (Wi-Fi) uses small, low-power antennas to carry voice and data communications between a backbone and businesses and households without laying a single wire, greatly reducing the cost of traversing the last mile. Laying land lines can cost up to $300 per foot. Wi-Fi hardware is fitted to existing structures for about $10,000 per base station—a reasonable sum, considering that one Wi-Fi station can provide access to thousands of residences within two miles and that the antennas that attach to customers' homes cost less than $100.

· Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) sends telephone calls over the Internet inexpensively by transforming people's voices into data “packets.” By chopping words and pauses into tiny packages that are routed through the least congested part of the Internet, computers make VoIP calls much cheaper. A phone call using VoIP costs less than half of a call made using traditional telephony

Electricity

· 1740s Cathode Ray tubes were investigated in the time of Benjamin Franklin. Electric discharges were passed through rarefied gases in a tube from which the air was gradually removed by a pump. The tube had two small metal plates inside a glass container. The plate connected to the negative side of the electricity supply was called the cathode, that to the positive side the anode. As the pressure was lowered, a spark which fattened into a purplish glowing, writhing snake appeared going from the cathode to the anode.

· 1790 Aloisio Galvani describes contact electricity

· 1790s Battery developed by Alessandro Volta, physics professor at the Royal School of Como, Italy. It was composed of a series of silver and zinc disks in pairs. Between each of these discs was a sheet of pasteboard wet with salt water. Electricity was produced when the top disk of silver was connected by a wire to the bottom disk of zinc. The problem with the voltaic cell was that it lost power rapidly once current was drawn from it. In 1836 British chemist John Daniell invented the “Daniell cell,” which supplied an even current during continuous operation

· 1811 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered the arc lamp, an electrical arc passing between two poles produces light

· 1823 The electromagnet is invented in England by William Sturgeon

· 1831 Michael Faraday’s Law of Electrical Induction. Faraday builds an electric dynamo.

· Faraday formulated the laws of electromagnetic induction and did the groundwork necessary to make dynamos, electric motors and transformers. It was Faraday who devised the laws of electrolysis and laid the foundation for the electroplating industry. Faraday has the international unit for capacitance named after him, the Farad, marking his distinguished work with dielectrics; and also a physical constant, the Faraday Constant. He developed the concept of magnetic and electrical fields, and also showed that the electrical phenomena exhibited by lightning, electric eels and voltaic cells are all related. The `Faraday dark space', observed with electrical discharges in gases (for example, as in fluorescent tubes), pays tribute to him, and the `Faraday effect' in magneto-optics was one of his triumphs later in his career.

· 1839 The fuel cell is invented in England by William Grove

· 1841 Arc lights were installed as public lighting along Place de la Concorde in Paris

· 1879 Light bulb invented simultaneously by Thomas Edison and Sir Joseph Wilson Swan

· 1882 In New York, Thomas Edison's Pearl Street power company begins to supply electricity for the city

· 1909 The tungsten filament is developed by William Coolidge of the US for long-lasting electric lights. Neon light is invented in 1910.

Batteries

Electric Motor

Electronics

· A vacuum tube is just that: a glass tube surrounding a vacuum. When electrical contacts are put on the ends, you can get a current to flow though that vacuum. Thomas Edison noticed this first in 1883. While fiddling with lightbulbs he saw that he could get current to jump from the hot filament to a metal plate at the bottom. What Edison discovered was that electrical current doesn't need a wire to move through, it can travel through a gas or a vacuum. The Edison effect, incidentally, is the only piece of scientific work Edison ever did.

· A diode, or "rectifier," is any device through which electricity can flow in only one direction. The first diodes were crystals used as rectifiers in home radio kits. A crystal diode is made of two different types of semiconductors right next to each other, allowing electron flow in only one direction. The crystal removed the high frequency radio carrier signal, allowing the part of the signal with the audio information to come through loud and clear. Getting that single directional flow was critical for radio sets which needed to turn alternating current into direct current and transistors need two such boundaries to work

· 1904 The vacuum diode, which utilized a vacuum tube instead of a crystal, is developed in England by John Fleming. Crystals were maddeningly inconsistent and mysterious. Vacuum tubes were simple, and they worked. Most scientists agreed tubes were the future for radio and telephones everywhere.

· 1906 The triode – the first amplifier (radio amplifier) – is developed in the US by Lee DeForest. Not only did it force current to move in a single direction, but it could be used to increase the current. De Forest put a metal grid in the middle of the vacuum tube. By using a small input current to change the voltage on the grid, De Forest could control the flow of a second, more powerful current, through the tube. The strength of two currents was not necessarily related -- a weak current might be applied to the tube's grid, but a much stronger current could come out the main electrodes of the tube. Turning weak currents into strong currents was crucial for a number of new technologies at that time. AT&T bought De Forest's patent and vastly improved the tube. It allowed the signal to be amplified regularly along the line, meaning that a telephone conversation could go on across any distance as long as there were amplifiers along the way. Bell Labs made use of it for its coast to coast phone system and vacuum tubes soon found their way into everything from hearing aids to radios to televisions.

· 1912 DeForest invents the telephone amplifier.

· 1930s Semiconductors are discovered. Atoms with empty spaces in the outermost electron bands are conductors. Atoms with a full outside track which is very close to the next empty track are semiconductors (these kinds of atoms can only conduct electricity when given outside energy to knock the electrons up to the next track). Atoms with a full outside track which is far from the next empty track are insulators. Atoms which, at the right temperature, can make electrons attract instead of repel each other are superconductors.

· That means that depending on what you do, semiconductors can transiently conduct more or less electricity. It's just that property that transistors exploit. Semiconductor crystals were used in radio and radar receivers because they could take in the high-frequency alternating signal of the radio wave and extract the low frequencies necessary for the headphones. Crystals which did this were known as rectifiers. During World War II, radio and radar were extremely important -- and therefore so were rectifiers. But rectifiers had a problem known as "burn out."  Sudden bursts of electricity in the wrong direction could destroy them.  So one of the tasks the US government gave scientists during the war was to produce better rectifiers

· No material known today superconducts except at very cold temperatures.  Scientists are discovering materials that do superconduct closer and closer to room temperature all the time, but  no one is quite sure how that happens. John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer did come up with a theory for how the very coldest superconductors work, known as the BCS theory.  In such materials, at low temperatures, the atoms vibrate in a way that forces the moving electrons closer together.  Normally electrons don't like to huddle so close, since they're all electrically negative and therefore repel each other.  But in superconductors, the electrons actually achieve almost an attraction for each other. The result is that as one electron moves, it pulls the next electron along right behind it.  Electrons slip from atom to atom more easily than they ever do normally.

· 1939 Russell Ohl accidentally discovers the silicon P-N junction. Ohl was examining a particular silion crystal with a crack down the middle of it, and how much current flowed through one side of the crack versus the other, when he noticed something peculiar. The amount of current changed light was shined on the crystal. With more research, what was going on became clear: the crystal had different levels of purity on either side of the crack. Due to the subtle traces of extra elements, one side had an excess of electrons, and the other side a deficit. Since opposites attract, the electrons from one side had rushed over to the other -- but they went only so far, creating a thin barrier of excess charges right at the crack. That barrier created a one way street -- electrons could now only travel in one direction across it. When Ohl shined light on the rod, energy from the light kicked sluggish electrons out of their resting places and gave them the boost they needed to travel around the crystal. But due to the barrier, there was only one way they could travel. All those electrons moving in a single direction became an electric current. Ohl's crystal was the ancestor of modern day solar cells, which take energy from the sun and convert it into electricity. But for Bell Labs on that day, it opened up the idea that crystals might be just the thing needed to replace vacuum tubes.

· 1940s The Purdue University Physics lab, led by Karl Lark-Horovitz, accidentally discovered that a crystal of germanium -- a semiconductor -- could withstand higher voltage than any current rectifier and that by mixing it with tin they could produce rectifiers that were ten times more resistant than was standard

· 1948 Bill Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain working at Bell Labs build the first transistor.

· A device composed of semiconductor material, they have two key properties: 1) they can amplify an electrical signal and 2) they can switch on and off, letting current through or blocking it as necessary. They have become the key ingredient of all digital circuits, including computers. Today's microprocessors contains tens of millions of microscopic transistors.

· Prior to the invention of transistors, digital circuits were composed of vacuum tubes, which had many disadvantages. They were much larger, required more energy, dissipated more heat, and were more prone to failures. It's safe to say that without the invention of transistors, computing as we know it today would not be possible.

· Brittain and Bardeen the point-contact transistor made from strips of gold foil on a plastic triangle, pushed down into contact with a slab of germanium. They would need two metal contacts within .002 inches of each other -- about the thickness of a sheet of paper. But the finest wires then were almost three times that width and couldn't provide the kind of precision they needed. Instead of bothering with tiny wires, Brattain attached a single strip of gold foil over the point of a plastic triangle. With a razor blade, he sliced through the gold right at the tip of the triangle. Voila: two gold contacts just a hair-width apart. The whole triangle was then held over a crystal of germanium on a spring, so that the contacts lightly touched the surface. The germanium itself sat on a metal plate attached to a voltage source. This contraption was the very first semiconductor amplifier, because when a bit of current came through one of the gold contacts, another even stronger current came out the other contact. Here's why it worked: Germanium is a semiconductor and, if properly treated, can either let lots of current through or let none through. This germanium had an excess of electrons, but when an electric signal traveled in through the gold foil, it injected holes (the opposite of electrons) into the surface. This created a thin layer along the top of the germanium with too few electrons. Semiconductors with too many electrons are known as N-type and semiconductors with too few electrons are known as P-type. The boundary between these two kinds of semiconductors is known as a P-N junction, and it's a crucial part of a transistor. In the presence of this junction, current can start to flow from one side to the other. In the case of Brattain's transistor, current flowed towards the second gold contact. Small current in through one contact changes the nature of the semiconductor so that a larger, separate current starts flowing across the germanium and out the second contact. A little current can alter the flow of a much bigger one, effectively amplifying it.

· 1949 Raytheon built the first commercially available point-contact transistor -- made out of germanium.

· 1951 The first junction transistor is built at Bell labs

·  Shockley conceived of a transistor that looked like a sandwich, with two layers of one type of semiconductor surrounding a second kind. This was a completely different setup which didn't have the shaky wires that made the point-contact transistors so hard to control. The layer in the middle of the sandwich had to be very thin and very pure. The outer layers had to be a semiconductor with either too many electrons (known as N-type) or too few (known as P-type), while the inner layer was the opposite.

· 1952 The first commercial device to make use of the transistor was a hearing aid. AT&T certainly helped this along, offering free transistor licenses to hearing aid companies. They did so to honor Alexander Graham Bell, who had devoted himself to helping those who were hard of hearing.

· 1954 The first transistor radio is sold by Texas Instruments. When it stops selling them in 1955, a Japanese company that would later be known as Sony enters the US market.

· 1955 The first transistorized computer is built

· 1954 The silicon transistor is developed by Gordon Teal at Texas Instruments. Germanium transistors worked but heat could stop the transistor from working. While working at Bell Labs in 1950, Teal began growing silicon crystals to see if they might work better. It catapulted TI from a small start-up electronics company into a major player as the first company to produce a truly consistent mass-produced transistor.

· 1960 Bell scientist John Atalla developed a new design based on Shockley's original field-effect theories. Instead of being a sandwich, MOSFETs have a channel of either N- or P- type semiconductor running through a ridge on top of the other type.  As a voltage is applied to this channel, it creates an electric field which acts like a faucet to turn on or off current through the rest of the transistor.  MOSFETs were not originally better than the junction transistor, but they are much easier to make on an integrated circuit or microprocessor, and so they soon became the preferred type of transistor.By the late 1960s, manufacturers converted from junction type integrated circuits to field effect devices. Today, most transistors are field-effect transistors. Most of today's transistors are "MOS-FETs", or Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors. They were developed mainly by Bell Labs, Fairchild Semiconductor, and hundreds of Silicon Valley, Japanese and other electronics companies. Field-effect transistors are so named because a weak electrical signal coming in through one electrode creates an electrical field through the rest of the transistor.  This field flips from positive to negative when the incoming signal does, and controls a second current traveling through the rest of the transistor. The field modulates the second current to mimic the first one -- but it can be substantially larger. On the bottom of the transistor is a U-shaped section (though it's flatter than a true "U") of N-type semiconductor with an excess of electrons.  In the center of the U is a section known as the "base" made of P-type (positively charged) semiconductor with too few electrons. Three electrodes are attached to the top of this semiconductor crystal: one to the middle positive section and one to each arm of the U. By applying a voltage to the electrodes on the U, current will flow through it. The side where the electrons come in is known as the source, and the side where the electrons come out is called the drain. If nothing else happens, current will flow from one side to the other.  Due to the way electrons behave at the junction between N- and P-type semiconductors, however, the current won't flow particularly close to the base.  It travels only through a thin channel down the middle of the U. There's also an electrode attached to the base, a wedge of P-type semiconductor in the middle, separated from the rest of the transistor by a thin layer of metal-oxide such as silicon dioxide (which plays the role of an insulator).  This electrode is called the "gate."  The weak electrical signal we'd like to amplify is fed through the gate.  If the charge coming through the gate is negative, it adds more electrons to the base.  Since electrons repel each other, the electrons in the U move as far away from the base as possible. This creates a depletion zone around the base – a whole area where electrons cannot travel.  The channel down the middle of the U through which current can flow becomes even thinner.  Add enough negative charge to the base and the channel will pinch off completely, stopping all current.  It's like stepping on a garden hose to stop the flow of water. (Earlier transistors controlled this depletion zone by making use of how electrons move when two semiconductor slabs are put next to each other, creating what is known as a P-N junction. In a MOS-FET, the P-N junction is replaced with metal-oxide, which turned out to be easier to mass produce in microchips.) Now imagine if the charge coming through the gate is positive.  The positive base attracts many electrons – suddenly the area around the base which used to be a no-man's-land opens up.  The channel for current through the U becomes larger than it was originally and much more electricity can flow through. Alternating charge on the base, therefore, changes how much current goes through the U. The incoming current can be used as a faucet to turn current on or off as it moves through the rest of the transistor. On the other hand, the transistor can be used in a more complex manner as well -- as an amplifier.  Current traveling through the U gets larger or smaller in perfect synch with the charge coming into the base, meaning it has the identical pattern as that original weak signal.  And, since the second current is connected to a different voltage supply, it can be made to be larger.  The current coming through the U is a perfect replica of the original, only amplified.  The transistor is used this way for stereo amplification in speakers and microphones, as well as to boost telephone signals as they travel around the world. Shockley watched as Silicon Valley grew but could not seem to enter The Promised Land he had envisioned. He never was able to make field effect transistors, while other companies designed, grew, and prospered.

· 1958 Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments completes the first integrated circuit (microchip), containing five components on a piece of germanium half an inch long. He built the first electronic circuit in which all of the components, both active and passive, were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. It had occurred to him that all parts of a circuit, not just the transistor, could be made out of silicon. At the time, nobody was making capacitors or resistors out of semiconductors.

· At the same time Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, then at Fairchild, were working on the same idea. Kilby's patent was first by five months, but Noyce's device, the "planar" IC, an integrated circuit with components connected by aluminum lines on a silicon-oxide surface layer on a plane of silicon, would dominate the market. After years of litigation, the two companies agreed to cross-license their devices. Ten years  later, Kilby had also helped build the first popular machine to make widespread use of the chip: the hand held calculator.

· The concept behind an integrated chip is relatively simple: an entire electrical circuit with numerous transistors, wires, and other electrical devices all built into a single square of silicon.  These chips are smaller than a centimeter-by-centimeter square, yet they can hold millions of transistors. The chip is built upwards, layer by layer. Each layer is made by putting masks with particular patterns over the silicon and then altering the qualities of the silicon -- or perhaps putting down metal or insulators -- in the exposed parts. The chip starts out as a thin wafer of P-type silicon.  This is then coated with a layer of silicon dioxide -- kind of a silicon rust, which doesn't conduct electricity. On top of this is placed a chemical called photoresist.  Flashing a pattern of light (like the grid of light and dark that's formed by a window screen) on the photoresist turns any parts exposed to the light hard.  The bits left in shadow stay soft. When an etching chemical is applied those soft parts, and the silicon dioxide underneath them, are removed. The hard photoresist is then dissolved, leaving a pattern of raised silicon dioxide along the surface.  Since the silicon dioxide doesn't conduct electricity, it keeps different parts of the final circuit separated from others. Following the same method, a pattern of polysilicon (which does conduct electricity and is part of the transistor) is added.  Then, again using projected photoresist masks, areas of the chip are doped to become N-type silicon, another crucial part of a transistor.  Lastly, metal leads are added to connect the various components on the chip. Since the chips are so small, hundreds are made on a single silicon wafer at once.  After all the patterns have been faithfully reproduced on to the chips, the wafer is sliced up into individual chips. Integrated circuits are used for a variety of devices, including microprocessors, audio and video equipment, and automobiles. Integrated circuits are often classified by the number of transistors and other electronic components they contain

· 1960 The LASER is invented in the US by Theodore Maiman

· 1962 LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are developed

· 1966 Fiber optics are developed in England by Charles Keo and George Hockham

· 1967 Handheld calculators, the first product to utilize integrated circuits, are produced by Texas Instruments

· 1969 Charged coupled devices are invented – to capture images

· 1970 Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) are developed in England

· 1973 Barcodes are developed

· 1986 High-temperature superconductor developed

· 2000 The molecular transistor is developed. In 2001 a nano-transistor is developed

Computers

· 1834 Charles Babbage invents “analytical engine,” precursor of computer.

· 1945 ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) designed at the University of Pennsylvania at the behest of the U.S. military. Used until 1955 for military, nuclear, and weather research. ENIAC filled an entire room. ENIAC was made of 17, 000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, and 10,000 capacitors and could add 5,000 numbers in a single second which was a thousand times faster than the mechanical calculators in use. ENIAC couldn't store any programming commands in its memory.  It could only do one kind of program at a time, and to change the program meant completely rewiring it.  Sometimes it could take a team of scientists two days to reprogram the machine.

· 1947 Three scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories develop the transistor

· 1947 Alan Turing develops the concept of Artificial Intelligence

· 1948 The computer is developed in England by Freddie Williams’ team

· 1954 A Robot is developed in the US by George Devol Jr.

· 1955 The first transistorized computer is completed, the TX-O (Transistorized Experimental computer), at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (or TRADIC at Bell Labs). The machine was a mere three cubic feet, a mind-boggling size when compared with the 1000 square feet ENIAC hogged. It contained almost 800 point-contact transistors and 10,000 germanium crystal rectifiers.  It could perform a million logical operations every second, still not quite as fast as the vacuum tube computers of the day, but pretty close.  And best of all, it operated on less than 100 watts of power. IBM introduces the first hard drive.

· 1956 Lured by officials at Stanford University Bill Shockley moves to Palo Alto, CA to found Shockley Semiconductor. Shockley's was the first semiconductor lab to settle in the area, but it wasn't long before the region had earned a new name: Silicon Valley. In 1957 eight of his employees would leave to form Fairchild semiconductor.

· 1958 Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments completes the first integrated circuit (microchip), containing five components on a piece of germanium half an inch long. He built the first electronic circuit in which all of the components, both active and passive, were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. It had occurred to him that all parts of a circuit, not just the transistor, could be made out of silicon. At the time, nobody was making capacitors or resistors out of semiconductors.

· At the same time Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, then at Fairchild, were working on the same idea. Kilby's patent was first by five months, but Noyce's device, the "planar" IC, an integrated circuit with components connected by aluminum lines on a silicon-oxide surface layer on a plane of silicon, would dominate the market. After years of litigation, the two companies agreed to cross-license their devices. Ten years  later, Kilby had also helped build the first popular machine to make widespread use of the chip: the hand held calculator.

· The concept behind an integrated chip is relatively simple: an entire electrical circuit with numerous transistors, wires, and other electrical devices all built into a single square of silicon.  These chips are smaller than a centimeter-by-centimeter square, yet they can hold millions of transistors. The chip is built upwards, layer by layer. Each layer is made by putting masks with particular patterns over the silicon and then altering the qualities of the silicon -- or perhaps putting down metal or insulators -- in the exposed parts. The chip starts out as a thin wafer of P-type silicon.  This is then coated with a layer of silicon dioxide -- kind of a silicon rust, which doesn't conduct electricity. On top of this is placed a chemical called photoresist.  Flashing a pattern of light (like the grid of light and dark that's formed by a window screen) on the photoresist turns any parts exposed to the light hard.  The bits left in shadow stay soft. When an etching chemical is applied those soft parts, and the silicon dioxide underneath them, are removed. The hard photoresist is then dissolved, leaving a pattern of raised silicon dioxide along the surface.  Since the silicon dioxide doesn't conduct electricity, it keeps different parts of the final circuit separated from others. Following the same method, a pattern of polysilicon (which does conduct electricity and is part of the transistor) is added.  Then, again using projected photoresist masks, areas of the chip are doped to become N-type silicon, another crucial part of a transistor.  Lastly, metal leads are added to connect the various components on the chip. Since the chips are so small, hundreds are made on a single silicon wafer at once.  After all the patterns have been faithfully reproduced on to the chips, the wafer is sliced up into individual chips. Integrated circuits are used for a variety of devices, including microprocessors, audio and video equipment, and automobiles. Integrated circuits are often classified by the number of transistors and other electronic components they contain

· 1958 The computer modem (modular/demodulator) is invented

· 1960 Digital Equipment introduces the first minicomputer, the PDP-1, for $120,000. It is the first commercial computer equipped with a keyboard and monitor

· 1964 BASIC programming language developed at Dartmouth College. The American Standard Association adopts ASCII standard code for data transfer

· 1964 The computer mouse is invented

· 1965 Gordon Moore, head of research and development for Fairchild Semiconductor, predicts that transistor density on integrated circuits would double every 12 months for the next ten years. This prediction is revised in 1975 to doubling every 18 months, and becomes known as Moore's Law.

· 1965 Hypertext is developed

· 1968 Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore leave Fairchild to found Intel Corporation. Intel begins as a memory chip producer, but will soon switch to the new field of microprocessors.

· 1969 Honeywell releases the H316 "Kitchen Computer", the first home computer, at $10,600 in the Neiman-Marcus catalog. IBM builds SCAMP, one of the world's first personal computers. Advanced Micro Devices is founded by Jerry Sanders and seven others from Fairchild Semiconductor.

· 1970 Bell Labs develops Unix which will become the dominant operating system of high end microcomputers, or workstations

· 1971 Intel markets the 4004, the first microprocessor. Niklaus Wirth invents the Pascal programming language

· The integrated chip greatly improved the use for transistors, but it could only do what it was originally programmed to do.  It couldn't change programs, and it certainly couldn't remember anything.  One young scientist at Intel, Ted Hoff, thought he could make something better. Instead of a circuit, this chip was to be an entire mini-computer unto itself. It was 1/8" by 1/16" with 2300 transistors etched into the silicon and as powerful as ENIAC

· 1971 The floppy disc is developed

· 1974 MITS completes the first prototype Altair 8800 microcomputer.

· 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Micro-Soft

· 1976 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs finish work on the Apple I computer and incorporate the Apple Computer Company

· 1980s IBM adopted the industry hardware standard for PCs (as opposed to Commodore, Apple, Wang, etc). Allowed software writers to write for multiple computer manufacturers. IBM becomes the PC standard and Windows the standard operating system

· 1980s Compaq used newer and faster Intel chips with standard components, and released new computers around world (instead of phasing in in US first as IBM did) to become the dominant PC maker

· When Java emerged in the mid-1990s, it was seen as a potential antidote to Microsoft's hegemony and programmers shift from traditional programming languages C and C+ to Java. Using Java, software programmers and Web site developers could write a program once and run it on a wide variety of computer operating systems. Java failed to make a dent in Microsoft's desktop Windows monopoly, but it became a powerful force in the world of server computers, used for running large corporate applications and Web sites.

· Developers are creating a new generation of Internet-based applications with LAMP and and Microsoft's .NET technology rather than with Java. LAMP is tied to open-source software packages, including the Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database, and a collection of so-called scripting languages that all start with the letter P -- Perl, Python, and PHP. Hence the acronym LAMP.

Internet

· 1969 ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online, connecting four major U.S. universities, provides a communications network linking the country in the event that a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.

· 1972 Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass. computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.

· 1983 Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) becomes the standard for communicating over the Internet.

· 1990 Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet, which eventually is called the World Wide Web. US Congress approval of Internet commerce.

· 1994 Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser.

· 1995 CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy start providing dial-up Internet access. Sun Microsystems releases the Internet programming language called Java.

· 1999 Most connected countries (highest bandwidth): Taiwan, US, Britain, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Singapore, Costa Rica, India, Japan, Korea, China. The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million

· The Internet's 13 root servers guide traffic to the massive databases that contain addresses for the top-level domains, such as .com, .net, .edu, and the country code domains like .uk and .jp. Whoever controls what goes into the root servers has the final authority about what new top-level domains are added or deleted. The Bush administration doesn't particularly care for .xxx, for instance, and could conceivably move to block its addition even if the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approves it. Not all the root servers, named A through M, are in the United States. The M server is operated by the WIDE Project in Tokyo, and the K server is managed by Amsterdam-based RIPE. The F, I and J servers point to many addresses around the world through the anycast protocol, yielding a total of 80 locations in 34 countries. Some national governments could continue to follow the U.S. lead while others would switch their root servers to point to the U.N. list of top-level domains. Eventually, different top-level domains could be added, and the Internet would bifurcate

Neural Networks

· A biological neural network is an interconnected group of biological neurons.

· Artificial neural networks, which are constituted of artificial neurons.

o An artificial neural network (ANN) or commonly just neural network (NN) is an interconnected group of artificial neurons that uses a mathematical model for information processing based on a connectionist approach to computation. In most cases an ANN is an adaptive system that changes its structure based on external or internal information that flows through the network.

o In modern software implementations the approach inspired by biology has less been abandoned for a more practical approach based on statistics and signal processing. In some of these systems neural networks are used as components in larger systems that combine both adaptive and non-adaptive elements. These adaptive systems are more suitable for real-world problem solving, but have far less to do with the traditional artificial intelligence connectionist models. What they do however have in common is the principle of non-linear, distributed, parallel and local processing and adaptation.

· 1943 Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch publish A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity

· Norbert Weiner coins the term “cybernetics” to describe the study of feedback processes. He was a pioneer in the study of stochastic processes (random processes) and noise processes. Wiener did much valuable work in defense systems for the United States, particularly during World War II and the Cold War.

o Cybernetics is the study of communication and control, typically involving regulatory feedback, in living organisms, in machines and organizations and their combinations, for example, in sociotechnical systems, computer controlled machines such as automata and robots.

Digitization

· A digital system is one that uses discrete numbers, especially binary numbers – 1 and 0, or non-numeric symbols such as letters or icons, for input, processing, transmission, storage, or display, especially in computing or electronics, rather than a continuous spectrum of values (an analog system).

• The Morse Code and Braille are examples of digital systems

· The digital revolution transformed technology that previously was analog into a binary representation of ones and zeros. By doing this, it became possible to make multiple generation copies that were identical to the original. In digital communications, for example, repeating hardware was able to amplify the digital signal and pass it on with no loss of information in the signal.

· 1965 The first optical disc is made in the US by James Russell

· 1980 First compact disc released by Sony & Phillips in Japan (US in 1983)

· 1995 DVD format standardized

Home Appliances

· Middle Ages: Dinner at an English feudal lord’s table consisted of eating with wooden or earthenware cups and spoons (until pewter is used in the 1400s). Knives are worn to the table by each diner in a sheath on their belt. Forks are not introduced until the late 1500s, and are not standard until the 1750s. Wine was drunk from a common cup. Food was seved on pieces of bread, later on wooden plates. The lord sat in the middle, with the salt bowl on his left, important guests on the right “above the salt’.

· 1834 Refrigeration is developed in England

· 1846 Sewing machine patented by Elias Howe

· 1902 Carrier invents Air Conditioning

· 1913 Home Refrigeration

· 1946 The microwave oven is invented in the US

· 621 Chess is played in India

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Revised: 11/19/06