The Premechanical Period The Mechanical Period

(3000 BCE – 1450) (1450-1840)

Humans started communicating with one

another using words and pictograms The machines driven by mechanical
curved in rocks. They started to write means such as a steam and gears
symbols as substitutes for pictures to dominated information processing
depict ideas, objects, and animals. and calculation.
Human realized that stone tablets are Charles Babbage invented the
too heavy and bulky. paper was finally Analytical Engine, which is
produced from the papyrus plant, storing considered the first programmable
information was revolutionized, mechanical computer. This earned
eventually giving birth to books, humans him as the “Father of Computers”
started using the numerical system. They
started to optimize and invent devices
and techniques in counting. The “Abacus”
was throw most popular device created
come from China.

The Electromechanical Period The Electronic Period

(1840-1940) (1940…)
coded in sounds of dots, spaces, and dashes The four main events found in this period
over wired ( and eventually wireless) media. are the late vacuum tubes period, the
The telephone was later invented, enabling transistors period, the integrated circuits,
voice transmission over long distances. and the computer processors period.
Human started to control electricity using Electronic Numerical Period Integrator and
vacuum tubes in devices that eventually led Computer (ENIAC) The transistor was
to the development of today’s electronic invented in 1947, The first full transistor
gadgets. The telegraph is considered the fist was developed in 1957 and was faster than
electrical communications device. First vacuum computers and was faster than
invented by William Cooke and Sir Charles vacuum computers. integrated in a chip or a
Wheatstone, the first working models used single package, limiting the distances
five magnetic needles that could be pointed between components, resulting in a faster
around sets of letters and numbers by using operating speed.
electric current. Machines were mechanical The fast-paced development and innovation
in nature but were run by electricity. The in personal computing paved the way for the
machines used in gears, levers, vacuum tubes, birth of different user applications that
relays, and wires for processing and introduced ease and comfort for the users.
calculations
 History of Technology Timeline

3.3 million years

Sharp flakes of stone used as knives and larger unshaped stones used as hammers and anvils have been
uncovered at Lake Turkana in Kenya. The tools were made 3.3 million years ago and thus were likely used by
an ancestor such as Australopithecus.
1 million years ago: Fire
20,000 to 15,000 years ago: Neolithic Revolution
During the Neolithic Period several key technologies arose together. Clay was used for pottery and bricks.
Clothing began to be made of woven fabrics. The wheel was also likely invented at this time.
6000 BCE: Irrigation
The first irrigation systems arose roughly simultaneously in the civilizations of the Tigris-Euphrates river
valley in Mesopotamia and the Nile River valley in Egypt. Since irrigation requires an extensive amount of
work, it shows a high level of social organization.
4000 BCE: Sailing
The first sailing ships were used on the Nile River. these ships also had oars for navigation.
1200 BCE: Iron
About this time, the production of iron became widespread as that metal supplanted bronze. Iron was much
more abundant than copper and tin, and thus put metal tools into more hands than ever before.
850 CE: Gunpowder
Alchemists in China invented gunpowder as a result of their search for life-extending elixirs. It was used to
propel rockets attached to arrows. The knowledge of gunpowder spread to Europe in the 13th century.
950: Windmill
Nearly 5,000 years after the first sailing ships, the wind was first used to operate a mill. The first windmills
were in Persia.
1044: Compass
It describes how soldiers found their way by using a fish-shaped piece of magnetized iron floating in a bowl
of water when the sky was too cloudy to see the stars.
1250–1300: Mechanical clock
Hourglass and water clocks had been around for centuries, but the first mechanical clocks began to appear in
Europe toward the end of the 13th century and were used in cathedrals to mark the time when services
would be held.
1455: Printing
Johannes Gutenberg completed the printing of the Bible, which was the first book printed in the West using
movable type. Gutenberg’s printing press led to an information explosion in Europe.
1765: Steam engine
James Watt improved the Newcomen steam engine by adding a condenser that turned the steam back into
liquid water. The steam engine became one of the most important inventions of the Industrial Revolution.
1804: Railways
English engineer Richard Trevithick improved James Watt’s steam engine and used it for transport. He built
the first railway locomotive at an ironworks in Wales.
 1807: Steamboat
Robert Fulton put the steam engine on water. Sailing ships took four days.
1826/27: Photography
In the early 1820s, Nicéphore Niépce became interested in using a light-sensitive solution to make copies
of lithographs onto glass, zinc, and finally a pewter plate. In 1826 or 1827, he made an eight-hour-long
exposure of the courtyard of his house, the first known photograph.
1831: Reaper
For thousands of years, harvesting crops was very labour-intensive. That changed with Cyrus McCormick’s
invention of the mechanical reaper. The earliest reaper had some mechanical problems, but later versions
spread throughout the world.
1844: Telegraph
Samuel Morse was a successful painter who became interested in the possibility of an electric telegraph in
the 1830s. He patented a prototype in 1837. In 1844 he sent the first message over the first long-
distance telegraph line, which stretched between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. The message: “What
hath God wrought.”
1876: Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call, on March 10, 1876, when he asked his assistant Tom
Watson to come to him: “Mr Watson—come here—I want to see you.”
1876: Internal-combustion engine
German engineer Nikolaus Otto This type of engine would later be used to power automobiles.
1879: Electric light
American inventor Thomas Edison got a carbon-filament light bulb to burn for 13½ hours. in 1882 the
Edison Electric Illuminating Company opened the first power plant.
1885: Automobile
Karl Benz used a one-cylinder engine to power the first modern automobile, a three-wheeled car that he
drove around a track.
1901: Radio
Guglielmo Marconi had been experimenting with radio since 1894 and was sending transmissions over longer
and longer distances. In 1901 his reported transmission of the Morse code letter S across the Atlantic
from Cornwall to Newfoundland excited the world.
1903: Airplane
Orville Wright made the first airplane flight, of 120 feet, Wilbur flew 852 feet.
1926: Rocketry
1890s, Robert Goddard was inspired by H.G. Wells’s he achieved the first test flight of a liquid-fueled
rocket, from his aunt’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket flew 12.5 meters (41 feet) in the air.
1927: Television
Early television used a mechanical disk to scan an image. Philo T. Farnsworth became convinced that a
mechanical system would not be able to scan and assemble images multiple times a second. Only an
electronic system would do that. In 1922 the 16-year-old Farnsworth worked out a plan for such a system,
but it wasn’t until 1927 that he made the first electronic television transmission, a horizontal line.
1937: Computer
John Atanasoff designed the first electronic digital computer. It would use binary numbers (base 2, in
which all numbers are expressed with the digits 0 and 1), and its data would be stored in capacitors. In
1939 he and his student Clifford Berry began building the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC).
 1942: Nuclear power
Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb, On December 2 underneath the football stands at
the University of Chicago, a team of physicists led by Enrico Fermi used uranium to produce the first
self-sustaining chain reaction.
1947: Transistor
On December 23 Bell Labs engineers John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley gave the
first public demonstration of the transistor,
1957: Spaceflight
The Soviet Union surprised the world on October 4, when it launched the first artificial satellite,
Sputnik 1, a small 83.6-kg (184.3-pound) metal sphere.
1974: Personal computer
The first computers that emerged after World War II were gigantic, computers became both smaller
and more powerful. Finally, they became small enough for home use. The first such personal computer
was the Altair, which was soon supplanted in 1977 by the Apple II, the TRS-80, and the Commodore
PET.
1974: Internet
Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn produced the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).
TCP/IP became the basis for how data is transmitted over the Internet.
2012: CRISPR
American biochemist Jennifer Doudna and French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier developed
CRISPR-Cas9, a method for editing genes—that is, making changes to DNA sequences. Gene editing has
the potential to treat many diseases but also opens up the ethical gray area of creating designer
humans.
2017: Artificial intelligence
The team behind the AlphaGo artificial intelligence program announced that it had become the world’s
best go player.

Time Period | Technological Advancements |

|------------------|-------------------------------------------------------|
| Ancient Times | The invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire
|
| 15th Century | The printing press |
| 18th Century | The Industrial Revolution, steam engine |
| 19th Century | Telegraph, telephone, electricity, light bulb |
| 20th Century | Automobiles, airplanes, radio, television, computers
|
| Late 20th Century| Internet, smartphones, digital revolution |
| 21st Century | Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, IoT |