DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

ANGELES CITY SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL

ELECTRONICS 10
HANDOUT 1-1

Name: __________________________________________________________ Date: _________________

Section: _______________________________________Teacher: _________________________________

THE CHRONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNOLOGY

Every age is defined by its technology. The stories of Dickens would not have been possible without
the steam engine and the industrial revolution it brought about. For that matter, neither would the stories of
people like Vanderbilt or Carnegie. And what would the 20th century have been like without the internal
combustion engine and electricity?
Yet we often miss the fact that stories drive technology as well. Steve Jobs, quite famously but not
uniquely, believed that the humanities and technology are deeply intertwined and the power of story has a lot
to do with it. Technology, after all, doesn’t live in a vacuum but co-evolves with mankind.
Technology, when properly understood, is far more than the product of algorithms, microscopes, test
tubes and other apparatus, but the revealing of truths in the service of human life. And so, the endeavor can
only reach its highest level with humans—and their stories—at its center.
-Greg Satell

17th Century
1600 - Galileo Galilei designs a basic thermometer
- William Gilbert publishes his great book De Magnete describing how Earth behaves like
a giant magnet.
1609 - Galileo Galilei builds a practical telescope and makes new astronomical discoveries
1650s - Christiaan Huygens develops the pendulum clock
1687 - Isaac Newton formulates his three laws of motion.
1700s - Bartolomeo Cristofori invents the piano.

18th Century
1703 - Gottfried Leibniz pioneers the binary number system now used in virtually all computers.
1712 - Thomas Newcomen builds the first practical (but stationary) steam engine.
1757 - John Campbell invents the sextant, an improved navigational device that enables
sailors to measure latitude.
1769 - Wolfgang von Kempelen develops a mechanical speaking machine: the world's first
speech synthesizer.
1783 - French Brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier make the
first practical hot-air balloon.
19th Century
1800 - Italian Alessandro Volta makes the first battery
1801 - Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents the automated cloth-weaving loom. The punched cards
it uses to store patterns help to inspire programmable computers.
1807 - Humphry Davy develops the electric arc lamp
1814 - George Stephenson builds the first practical steam locomotive.
1816 - Robert Stirling invents the efficient Stirling engine.
1820s– 1830s - Michael Faraday builds primitive electric generators and motors.
1830s - William Sturgeon develops the first practical electric motor.
1849 - James Francis invents a water turbine now used in many of the world's hydropower
plants.
1860s - James Clerk Maxwell figures out that radio waves must exist and sets out basic laws of
electromagnetism.
1876 - Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone, though the true ownership of the
invention remains controversial even today.
1870s - Thomas Edison develops the phonograph, the first practical method of recording and
playing back sound on metal foil.
1880 - Pierre and Paul-Jacques Curie discover the piezoelectric effect.
1888 - Nikola Tesla patents the alternating current (AC) electric induction motor and, in
opposition to Thomas Edison, becomes a staunch advocate of AC power.
1895 - German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X rays.

20th Century
1903 - Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright build the first engine-powered airplane.
1906 - Willis Carrier pioneers the air conditioner.
1906 - Mikhail Tswett discovers chromatography.
1908 - American industrialist and engineer Henry Ford launches the Ford Model T, the world's
first truly affordable car.
1920s - Philo T. Farnsworth invents modern electronic television.
1921 - Karel Capek and his brother coin the word "robot" in a play about artificial humans.
1928 - The electric refrigerator is invented.
1930s - Maria Telkes creates the first solar-powered house.
1938 - Chester Carlson invents the principle of photocopying (xerography).
1950s - Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow invent the maser (microwave laser). Gordon
Gould coins the word "laser" and builds the first optical laser in 1958.
1954 - Indian physicist Narinder Kapany pioneers fiber optics.
1958 - Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, working independently, develop the integrated circuit.
1976 - Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs launch the Apple I: one of the world's first personal
home computers

21st Century
2001 - Scott White, Nancy Sottos, and colleagues develop self-healing materials.
2004 - Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov discover graphene
2007 - Apple introduces a touchscreen cellphone called iPhone
2010 - Apple releases its touch screen tablet computer iPad
2013 - Elon Musk announces “Hyperloop” – A giant, pneumatic tube transport system
- Three nanotechnologists ( Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard
2016 Feringa) win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for building miniature machines out of
molecules