DavidTMiller’s Weblog

Timeline

Timelines are cool because they provide context for historical events.

Science and Technology Timeline (with a few other things thrown in)
Note: most of this came from Lucie-Smith, E., (1997). Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century

1880-1

  • First practical electric lights invented
  • Canned foodstuffs first appear on sale
  • Electric street lights installed in New York
  • Opening of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, London

1882-3

  • Thomas Edison designs first hydroelectric plant
  • First synthetic fiber produced

1884-5

  • First practical steam turbine engine
  • Design of the machine gun perfected
  • First single-cylinder automobile engine invented by Daimler

1886-7

  • French chemist Henri Moissan produces fluorine
  • Celluloid camera film invented

1888-9

  • George Eastman perfects “Kodak” box cameras
  • Pneumatic tires invented by Dunlop

1890-1

  • United States becomes the world’s leading industrial power
  • Beginning of wireless telegraphy
  • Thomas Edison unveils his “kinetograph” (the first cine camera)

1892-3

  • Viscose invented. Beginning of manufacture of rayon
  • First automatic telephone switchboard

1894-5

  • Auguste Lumière invents the cinematograph, enabling film projection of moving images
  • Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays
  • Guglielmo Marconi invents radio telegraphy

1896-7

  • Malaria bacillus discovered
  • William Ramsey discovers helium
  • Magnetic detection of electrical waves by Ernest Rutherford

1898-9

  • Dysentery bacillus discovered
  • Radium discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie
  • First magnetic sound recording
  • Ferdinand von Zeppelin produces his airship

1900

  • First Zeppelin flight
  • Human speech first transmitted by radio wave
  • Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
  • Paris holds World’s Fair

1901

  • Guglielmo Marconi sends first telegraphic radio message across Atlantic
  • First prototype motorcycles

1902

  • Aswan Dam inaugurated

1903

  • Wilbur and Orville Wright make first aeroplane flight
  • The Great Train Robbery, first narrative cinematic film and the longest to date (12mins)
  • Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel win the Nobel Prize for their research into radium

1904

  • First practical photoelectric cell
  • First ultraviolet lamps
  • First telegraphic transmission of photographs
  • Silicones discovered
  • Work begins on Panama Canal
  • Freud publishes The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

1905

  • Albert Einstein begins work on his Theory of Relativity

1906

  • First radio program with voices and music broadcast in United States

1907

  • Invention of slow-motion film by Auguste Musger
  • Louis Lumière invents color photography

1908

  • Invention of Bakelite (first modern plastic)
  • Henry Ford produces first Model-T car
  • London witnesses Suffragette demonstrations over right of women to vote
  • The term “cubism” coined by critic Louis Vauxcelles, reviewing a show of Braque landscapes

1909

  • Paul Ehrlich prepares Salvarsan for cure of syphilis
  • English aviator Henri Farman completes first 100-mile flight
  • Bleriot completes first flight across English Channel
  • Expedition led by Robert E. Peary reaches North Pole

1910

  • First crystal radio set transmission
  • Roger Fry coins the term “Postimpressionist”

1911

  • First practical electric self-starter for automobiles invented
  • Ernest Rutherford propounds his theory of atomic structure
  • Expedition led by Roald Amundsen reaches South Pole
  • Revolution in Central China, Chinese Republic proclaimed

1912

  • Kasimir Funk coins the word “vitamin”
  • Cellophane first manufactured
  • Titanic sinks on maiden voyage
  • Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque produce first collages

1913

  • First domestic refrigerator in Chicago
  • Henry Ford introduces assembly line method of production
  • First film roles for Charlie Chaplin
  • Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, and the first ready-mades
  • Armory Show in New York, introducing America to modern art

1914

  • First use of radium to treat cancer
  • Panama Canal is opened
  • World War I begins
  • First successful heart surgery (performed on a dog)

1915

  • Einstein publishes General Theory of Relativity
  • Ford Motor Company produces one millionth car
  • First Trans-Continental telephone call, New York to San Francisco

1916

  • Margaret Sanger establishes the first birth-control clinic
  • First British tanks fight in the Battle of the Somme
  • Dada created at the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich

1917

  • First recording of a jazz concert (United States)
  • 100-inch reflecting telescope used at Mount Wilson
  • United States declares war on Germany
  • October Revolution in Russia brings Bolsheviks to power

1918

  • First experiments with shortwave radio
  • MaxPlanck receives the Nobel prize for his theory of quantum mechanics
  • First airmail service in United State
  • Execution of the Tsar and his family at Ekaterinberg
  • Kasimir Malevich, White Square on White

1919

  • Observations of solar eclipse confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity
  • Bauhaus founded, Weimar, Germany

1920

  • Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorshach invents “Rorshach” ink-blot test
  • Thompson submachine gun patented
  • Structure of the Milky Way demonstrated for the first time through the use of photography
  • 19th amendment gives American women the right to vote