Technology Timeline

  • Camera Obscura

    Camera Obscura
    A darkened box with a convex lens or aperture for projecting the image of an external object on to a screen inside, a forerunner of the modern camera.
  • Piano

    Bartolomeo Cristofori Invents the Piano
  • The Fire Extinguisher

    French C. Hopffer patents the fire extinguisher.
  • The Lightning Rod

    Benjamin Franklin invents the Lightning Rod.
  • Typewriter

    Typewriter
    The modern typewriter was created by Christopher L. Shole in 1873. His Sholes & Glidden Type Writer introduced consumers to the QWERTY keyboard.
  • First Telephone

    First Telephone
    Graham Bell invented the first telephone in 1874.
  • First Lightbulb

    First Lightbulb
    Edison filed a patent for an electric lamp with a carbon filament. And there are two rods in a lightbulb that electricity goes through and creates light.
  • Solar Cells

    Solar Cells
    The first practical photovoltaic cell was publicly demonstrated on 25 April 1954 at Bell Laboratories. The inventors were Daryl Chapin, Calvin Souther Fuller and Gerald Pearson. Solar cells gained prominence with their incorporation onto the 1958 Vanguard I satellite.
  • Telstar 1, first satelite for communications purposes

    Telstar 1, first satelite for communications purposes
    Telstar is the name of various communications satellites. The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical.
  • Magnavox Odyssey

    The Magnavox Odyssey was the first ever home videogame system
  • First Computer ENIAC

    First Computer ENIAC
    The First computer the ENIAC was capable of being reprogrammed to solve "a large class of numerical problems." ENIAC was the first electronic general-purpose computer.
  • 9100A First Personal Computer

    9100A First Personal Computer
    Microcomputers started to be mass marketed in 1977 and the name “Personal Computer” appeared six years later when Hewlett Packard announced its 9100A personal computer.
  • The Internet's Creation!

    The Internet's Creation!
    The internet was made in 1983 by Vint Cerf and Robert E. Kahn. It was "The network of networks"