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8000 BCE
Our Ancestor's boat.
The first boats are believed to have been built by the prehistoric hominid species, Homoerectus. The oldest boat to be recovered archaeologically is the Pesse dugout canoe from Holland dated to approximately 8,000 B.C. -
Jan 1, 1577
Heron Alexandrinus's machine.
Heron Alexandrinus, otherwise known as the Hero of Alexandria, was a 1 st century Greek mathematician and engineer who is known as the first inventor of the steam engine.The machine consisted of a sphere positioned in such a way that it could rotate around its axis. Nozzles opposite each other would expel steam and both of the nozzles would generate a combined thrust resulting in torque, causing the sphere to spin around its axis. -
William Cullen's Refrigerator
William Cullen at the University of Glasgow demonstrated the first artificial refrigeration system in the year 1748. However, he never used his discovery for practical purposes. In the year 1805, US inventor Oliver Evans, designed the first refrigeration machine that didn't use liquid and instead used vapor to cool. -
Hamilton's Washing Machine
The earliest washing "machine" was the scrub board, or wash board, invented in 1797. American James King patented the first washing machine to use a drum in 1851 -- the drum made King's machine resemble a modern machine; however, it was still hand-powered. In 1858, Hamilton Smith patented the rotary washing machine. -
Karl Von Drais's Bike
n 1813, about 400 years after Fontana built his wheeled contraption, a German aristocrat and inventor named Karl von Drais began work on his own version of a Laufmaschine (running machine), a four-wheeled, human-powered vehicle. Then in 1817, Drais debuted a two-wheeled vehicle, known by many names throughout Europe, including Draisienne, dandy horse and hobby horse. -
Nicéphore Niépce's Camera
The first partially successful photograph of a camera image was made in approximately 1816 by Nicéphore Niépce, using a very small camera of his own making and a piece of paper coated with silver chloride, which darkened where it was exposed to light. -
Antonio Meucci's phone.
As with many innovations, the idea for the telephone came along far sooner than it was brought to reality. While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci (pictured at left) is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876. Bell began his research in 1874 and had financial backers who gave him the best business plan for bringing it to market. -
Thomas Edison's Light bulb
The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was not “invented” in the traditional sense in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison. In fact, some historians claim there were over 20 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Edison’s version. However, Edison is often credited with the invention. -
The First Computer made.
We could argue that the first computer was the abacus or its descendant, the slide rule, invented by William Oughtred in 1622. But the first computer resembling today's modern machines was the Analytical Engine, a device conceived and designed by British mathematician Charles Babbage between 1841 and 1883. -
Willis Carriers's Air Conditioning
Genius can strike anywhere. For Willis Carrier, it was a foggy Pittsburgh train platform in 1902. Carrier stared through the mist and realized that he could dry air by passing it through water to create fog. Doing so would make it possible to manufacture air with specific amounts of moisture in it. Within a year, he completed his invention to control humidity – the fundamental building block for modern air conditioning. -
The Wright Brother's Airplane
On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made four brief flights at Kitty Hawk with their first powered aircraft. The Wright brothers had invented the first successful airplane. The Wrights used this stopwatch to time the Kitty Hawk flights. -
Philo Farnsworth's Television.
Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927. The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a 21-year-old inventor who had lived in a house without electricity until he was 14. -
Percy's Microwave Oven
The microwave has evolved into one of the most popular household appliances in the world, but few people know that it was invented entirely by accident. In 1945, Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer, was working in a lab testing magnetrons, the high-powered vacuum tubes inside radars. One day while working near the magnetrons that produced microwaves, Spencer noticed a peanut butter candy bar in his pocket had begun to melt — shortly after, the microwave oven was born. -
Sony's PlayStation
The PlayStation is a video game console that was released by Sony Computer Entertainment, in Japan on December 3, 1994, and in North America on September 9, 1995. The PlayStation was the first of Sony Computer Entertainment's game. -
Microsofts Xbox.
The original Xbox was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, February 22, 2002, in Japan, and March 14, 2002, in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market.
