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Timeline of historic inventions

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This is a list of inventions, listed in chronological order.

Significant inventions not assigned

Significant modern inventions, arranged in chronological order

Note: Dates for inventions are often controversial. Inventions are often invented by several inventors around the same time, or may be invented in an impractical form many years before another inventor improves the invention into a practical form. Where there is ambiguity, the date of the first practical, fielded, version of the invention should be used here.

7th millennium BC


4th millennium BC: picto-linguistic writing


early 3rd millennium BC

35th century BC

32nd century BC: Egyptian hieroglyphics


31st century BC


23rd century BC


22nd century BC

21st century BC: Cretan writing

19th century BC


18th century BC: Linear A - Hagia Triada

16th century BC: Phonetic spelling developed by Phoenicians

15th century BC: Linear B - mainland Greece or Knossus

10th century BC: Rustproof Iron - India

7th century BC: Coinage, Discovery of irrational numbers

460s BC : First atomic theory - Democritus

410s BC: heliocentric solar system with spherical Sun ,Moon, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn - Philolaus

400s BC:Catapults in Syracuse

350s BC: rotation of Earth -Hereclides

225s BC: measurement of Circumference of the Earth - Eratosthenes

220s BC

150s BC: Astrolabe - Hipparchus

100s BC: Glass-blowing in Syria


1st century

2nd century

3rd century

4th century

5th century

6th century

7th century

8th century

9th century

10th century

  • Gunpowder (in China: used mostly for fireworks, some ref says 8th century?)

11th century

12th century

13th century

14th century

15th century

16th century

17th century

18th century


19th century

1800s

1810s

1820s

1830s

1840s

1850s

1860s

1870s

1880s

1890s

20th century

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s


21st century

  • put significant 21st century inventions here

See also

Other Technology Timelines

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