Having evolved to an erect, thinking and talking ape over millions of years of evolution, Man has found ways of evolving at an even faster rate by extending his faculties by means of technology. Ironically, the technology evolved following the same rules as the evolution of species, but much faster and more profound. Having given humanity the means to live longer, eat more and to live more comfortably in any place on the globe, human populations have risen above sustainable levels. At the same time, technology is causing lasting damage to the environment, which may ultimately destroy human civilisation. Is this the predictable path that intelligence takes? The predictable fate which has overcome all intelligent civilisations everywhere else in the universe, before they could seed themselves to other planets? Will humans be able to control themselves by the very intelligence that is threatening to destroy them?

Previous civilisations have risen and fallen, yet humanity has survived. But these were localised events. Present civilisation on the other hand, ranges world-wide, causing world-wide problems like the ozone hole, global warming, global pollution, weather changes and so on. It has exploited the minerals and energies found world-wide and changed the world environment profoundly. So this one is not a local event, and it could well be the last one.

Here is a schematic overview of the development of intelligence, be it on this planet or anywhere else:

• -2 million years: among all creatures, it must be an animal (which moves), which can develop intelligence. It cannot be a grazer because grazers spend too much time eating on all four feet. It cannot be a predator because they are higher up the food pyramid, needing large territories, living singly or in very small groups, and having too much armament in claws and jaws. It must be an omnivore, capable of switching diets (plants&fruits, animals, insects) and living in a multitude of environments. It must rely on experience rather than instinct, so its children are born helplessly and have a long childhood. Eventually this creature must develop dexterity, so it is not a walking type, but a tree-living type. Being able to live in groups, it develops group skills such as politics, altruism and communication. By leaving the trees and by walking upright, its dextrous hands are freed to become handy. It develops primitive tools from sticks and stones. Learning is mostly by imitation.
• -1 million years: the omnivorous and opportunistic life style allows humanoids to live in groups, finding food easily. They develop further social skills, resulting in language. It harnesses fire by finding a way to carry it along. Later it finds ways to make fire. Fire for cooking allows it to eat a much larger range of food, enabling larger group densities.
• -100,000 years: language develops and extensive survival skills can be transferred from elders to children. Learning is done by imitation, assisted by language. History is taught. Hunting is done in groups, furthering social skills. Language develops further. Humans will defend large territories. Within their patches, they will promote plants and animals useful to them, while eradicating those hindering them. Finding food becomes easier and their groups become larger. Consensus behaviour (religion) becomes an important survival instinct. Tribes develop. Habitat destruction begins.
• -50,000: hunting with weapons has become an important source of protein. Language is complete. Drawing, painting, singing, weaving, clothing, develop fully and also ceremonial rituals. Humans are now fully capable of spreading all over the world, often necessitated by their growth in numbers. Important plants and animals are reared at home and spread as tribes migrate. Tribes settle down in fishing villages along the coast. They live in semi-permanent housing. Shifting agriculture allows human population to grow tenfold. Slavery develops, since human labour is the only form of energy. Food storage is carried in living stock. New diseases come from human wastes. Wars are waged for extended territories.
• -10,000: development of settled agriculture by ploughing, weed control and irrigation. Tribes can grow sufficiently large to establish villages and to maintain a bureaucracy and professional warriors. Houses become permanent. Capital develops and a social hierarchy. Tenfold increase in population. Division of labour: guilds and professionals develop. Organised religion.
• -5,000: extensive domestication of cattle, beasts of burden and crops. Horses and camels twice as energy efficient as oxen. Invention of the wheel, projectiles, metals. Trade develops. Growing contact with domesticated animals introduces new human diseases.
• -3,000: extensive ceremonial buildings, temples, bridges, roads, iron and other metals. Nations develop, replacing or unifying tribes. Land trade. Schools. Nations wage war to one another.
• -2,000: reliable agriculture, crop rotation, philosophy, beginning of written science. Ships and coastal trade. Money. Accumulation of capital. Building canals, aqueducts, roads, cities. Hydro and wind power. Soil nutrients no longer return to their origins, the land, but are wasted by cities. Water pollution, soil erosion and degradation set in. Major communicable diseases erupt in densely populated areas.
• -1,000: scientific method, experimentation, medical knowledge begins. Extensive trade and accumulation of capital.
• -500: invention of book printing. Rapid spread and storage of knowledge. World explorations, world trade, world exploitation. Spread of biologically invasive species and aquatic exchanges by ships and canals. Rapid growth of technology: ships, transport, steel, other metals, etc. Medical technology to prolong life: hygiene, surgery. Universities. Colonisation of other nations. Slavery. The Arts can now blossom in times of prosperity and peace.
• -200: use of fossil fuel for engines, industry, building, transport, war. With fossil fuel, bigger projects could be done, and more transported, including fuel, minerals and fertilisers. Public schools for everyone, leading to mass literacy. Hygiene and sanitation. Separating drinking water from waste water. Sewers. Populations surge. Democracy as preferred form of government, opening the way to scrutiny and public access to information. Mining releases poisons, that were once stable underground. Soil erosion. End of the slave trade and slavery.
• -100: Extensive progress in science and technology. Mass production. Immunisation and vaccination. Cars. Air pollution over cities. Sewage treatment with bacteria. Longer lives. Understanding of genetics leads to vastly improved crops. Beasts of burden disappear from cities.
• -50: Air planes. Invention of the computer to extend the mind. Space technology. Birth control. Artificial fertilisers. Crops selected for their response to fertiliser. Sewage treatment plants. Massive accumulation of capital creates a capital speculation economy. Development of global markets & global corporations. Free movement of capital moves dirty  labour-intensive industries to poor nations.
• 0: civilisation peaks. Overpopulation and overexploitation of our environment. Maximal production by mechanised farming with fertilisers. Genetic engineering. Serious environmental degradation. Some very large cities, stretching the limits of urban metabolism. Populations increasing at maximal rates.
• +50: A new era which won't resemble anything in the past. Civilisation reaches an unsustainable level of complexity and vulnerability? Limits of biosphere reached? Limits of cities reached? Ecological collapses? Massive species extinctions? End of fossil fuel? Energy-based systems collapse, and with it stored knowledge or access to it? Agricultural land fatigues and produces less? Anarchy rules? Civilisation collapses? End of the nation-state?

Warm and cool periods In considering the history of mankind, often the most important influence, that of temperature, is overlooked. Having come out of an ice age, only 12 millennia ago, the growth of civilisations was possible only by increasing temperatures. The world of 18 millennia ago was very poor and very barren. Only some 6 millennia ago the planet warmed sufficiently to sustain growing populations, but even then some remarkable fluctuations in temperature occurred, all with similar results: during the warm periods, societies flourished while during the cold periods they suffered disease and famine. The above chart was made by climatologists Cliff Harris and Randy Mann. Click on the image for a larger version and relate this to what follows below.

Philosophers often refer to the three major transitions of mankind, the developments that changed society profoundly. After three beneficial transitions, they are now seeing the fourth as troublesome:

1. epidemiological revolution, medical knowledge, immunisation, hygiene, sanitation give longer and better lives: reduced death rates, increased birth rates (fertility), longer life spans, lower disease risks. It has doubled the human life span but also introduced new diseases of old age.
2. green revolution, giving more food: fertilisation, irrigation, pest control, mechanisation and improved crops gave more and better food, and has allowed populations to grow fourfold in the twentieth century, also introducing unknown degrees of famine and suffering and inequality. It has changed the way of life of tribes, previously living in harmony with nature. It started the depopulation of the land and the overpopulation of cities.
3. technological revolution, giving more material wealth and comfort: industrialisation, mass production, mining and transport caused new health risks due to changed lifestyles, like smoking-induced, obesity-induced and pollution-indused diseases. It also led to distribution problems, the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, but average world incomes quadrupled. The global economy increased twentyfold. Tractor power displaced more people from the country to the cities.
4. sustainability revolution, preventing further health risks due to an overload of the biosphere: humanity is facing increased risk of epidemics due to population densities (tuberculosis, cholera, typhus), spread of new diseases due to mobility (AIDS, Ebola, Dengue, Marburg, rinderpest, foot-and-mouth, mad-cow), spread of old diseases due to temperature change and irrigation (malaria, yellow fever), multiple-drug resistant (MDR) diseases, collapse of civility (poverty wars, dictatorships), deaths from wars and disasters, death and disease due to massive resettlement (fleeing war, crop failures, drought), irreversible loss of species, and so on.

Read the history of mankind below in this light, and be amazed at how much it accelerated in the most recent fifty years.

Colours show the advances in building, agriculture/food, technology/war/science/medical, information/learning, energy&distribution. Important discoveries are bolded. Note that discoveries were often made in different places of the world at different times. Use the Edit/search in page option of your browser to search for specific events.
 

Also read:
Diamond, Jared: Guns, germs and steel, the fate of human societies. 1997. W W Norton & Co.
Hellemans, A and B Bunch: The timetables of science, a chronology of the most important people and events in the history of science. 1988. Simon & Schuster.
McNeill, J R: Something new under the sun, an environmental history of the twentieth-century world.2000. WW Norton & Co.
Asimov, Isaac: Asimov's chronology of science & discovery. 1990. Grafton Books
Harpur, Patrick (ed): The timetable of technology, a record of our century's achievements. 1982. Marshall Editions London.
The Goat Island Sustainability Transition: a call for action by twelve concerned scientists. (4 pages)
-- Seafriends home -- Revised: 20010922,20011003,20011014,20020904,20170617,

• epoch
• civilisation or period
• year and discovery
• Paleolithic Man
• stone age: 2,400,000BC - 35,000BC
• 2,400,000BC: hominids in Africa manufacture stone tools.
• 750,000BC ancient hearths in France show that Homo erectus used fire. Beginning of wholesale habitat destruction by fire.
• 90,000BC: Homo sapiens
• 79,000BC: stone lamps with wicks are in use.
• 45,000BC: Early humans reach Australia
• modern Man: 35,000BC - present
• ±40,000BC: speech and song?
• 35,000BC: Homo sapiens sapiens?
• ±25,000BC: Humans play first music, using wind and percussion instruments.
• 20,000BC: first boomerang in Poland; sewing needle; bow and arrow in Spain, notching bones to count.
• 15,000BC: Retreat of terrestrial ice sheets from last ice age, completed. Lascaux cave paintings show that early humans could draw and paint.
• 13,000BC: end of the last ice age, which began 2 million years ago. (The Antarctic ice sheet was formed 38 million years ago and is still there.) Humans reach North America over Bering Strait. Within 2000 years they reach south America and have exterminated most large mammals, without domesticating any.
• 13,000BC: spear thrower and harpoon invented.
• Agriculture: 12,000BC - present
• 12,000BC: farming?
• 10,000BC: houses of brick and mortar in Jericho
• 8000BC: Floodwater agriculture in the Nile valley. Human population estimated between 2 and 20 million.
• 6000BC-2000BC?: ocean waters rising by 100m after last ice age.
• continued at Bronze Age below.
• Civilisations of Asia, China, Indochina: 8000BC - present . The Chinese attitude towards nature was different from other civilisations, in that they never separated matter from the sacred world, and did not have the conviction that people dominated nature. They were not interested in developing scientific method or theories, relying instead on practical and empirical data. Science could therefore not develop to the extent it did in Western Europe. Because of its religious character, science was less pronounced in India, hindered by Buddhist philosophy, which insists on rebirth of matter and creatures.
• 8000BC: rice in Indochina; floodwater agriculture in SW Asia.
• 7000BC: the pig and water buffalo domesticated in eastern Asia and China
• 6500BC: Modern-type domesticated bread wheat and lentils in SW Asia.
• 4000BC: Zebu cattle domesticated in Thailand;
• 3000BC: elephants domesticated in India; cotton cultivated in India.
• 2700BC: silkworm culture in China.
• 2000BC: Padi culture of rice. Wooden plough.
• 1500BC: distillation of liquor.
• 1400BC: China invents multiple cropping in a year.
• 1350BC: decimal numerals used in China.
• 1200BC: China casts bronze
• 1000BC: The compass used in China
• 876BC: India invents the number zero (0); Natural gas from wells is used in China.
• 600BC: whale oil lamps with asbestos wicks in China.
• 540BC: Indians develop a geometry based on stretching ropes.
• 500BC: Steel is made in India. Chinese farming is very advanced with hoeing weeds, planting crops in rows and fertilising. (Europe follows 2300 years later, 1800AD)
• 310BC: The Chinese invent a double-acting bellows, blowing air uninterruptedly. The chest harness for horses invented. Lodestone used for compasses.
• 260BC-100BC: the Great Wall is built in China
• 230BC: China develops the federal bureaucratic system that runs China for the next 2000 years.
• 200BC: The Chinese develop a malleable form of cast iron.
• 110BC: the chinese invent the collar harness for horses, the most efficient harness to this day. The West follows a thousand years later. Chinese invent the crank handle for turning wheels. The Chinese invent negative numbers.
• 50BC: the Ayurveda details medical treatise in India.
• 20BC: the Chinese invent the belt drive, and methods for drilling deep wells.
• 1AD: the Chinese build suspension bridges of cast iron, strong enough for vehicles. Wheelbarrow invented. Water-powered bellows for making steel.
• 70-1327: the 950km Grand Canal of China, built in many stages over a millennium. The chain pump for raising water from rivers or lakes. A grain winnow operated by wind. The powder of dried Chrysanthemum flowers (Pyrethrum) used to kill insects.   Around this time, also paper was invented, first for packing but later for writing.
• 115: China's Zhang Heng scientist and inventor develops a grid to locate positions on a map. Around this time he also invents the seismograph for recording earthquakes.
• 190: the Chinese invent the whippletree mechanism which allows two oxen to pull one cart. Stirrups for horses. They also invent the decimal system for representing all numbers. Invention of porcelain.
• 270: first use of compass in China, pointing south. Around this time, using coal instead of wood for making cast iron. The compass was not used for navigation until after 1000.
• 400: chinese invent steel and forging.
• 540: a wind-driven land vehicle. Matches invented. Paper used as toilet paper.
• 868: woodblock printing in China, discovered 100 years earlier. Printed newspapers. Gunpowder invented.
• 969: rockets used for warfare.
• 810: use of paper bank drafts, forerunner of paper money, 80 years later.
• 1000: extensively burning coal for fuel. Spinning wheel invented. Movable type book printing invented.
• 1107: the Chinese invent multicolor printing, mainly to make paper money harder to counterfeit. Maps printed.
• 1180: a 213m long bridge across the Yung-ting River (Marco Polo Bridge). Invent bombs that produce shrapnel.
• 1403: the chinese issue a 22,937 volume encyclopedia in three copies.
• 1644: Li Zi-Cheng overthrows the Ming dynasty, but the Manchus take over China.
• 1800: jute is cultivated in India.
• 1855: the third pandemic of bubonic plague begins in China.
• Civilisations of Middle America: Peruvian and Chilean Incas, Central American Mayas and Mexican Aztecs.
• 8000BC: potatoes and beans cultivated in Peru; pumpkins in Middle America
• 6000BC: Farming based on corn, squash, beans and peppers in the Tehuacan Valley, Mexico. Chinchorro Indians produce mummies.
• 5000BC: the Llama and Alpaca domesticated in Peru
• 2400BC: peanuts domesticated in tropical Americas. Pottery.
• 1000BC: the city of Machu Pichu in the Peruvian Andes, from the first Inca
• 800BC: The Olmec build byramids (Mexico).
• 300BC: the turkey is domesticated in Mexico.
• 1290AD: cable bridges across deep canyons in the Andes
• 1325: Aztecs found Mexico City (Tenochtitlan)
• bronze age 7000BC - 1400BC; bronze was the main metal, until iron was used by the Hittites, 1400BC. Extensive use of iron started around 1000BC; forging it around 1400AD. Bronze consists of 90% copper and 10% tin, and can easily be cast. It is not oxidised easily, and makes lasting, strong, objects of any form.

The stone age is sometimes split in old stone age to 8000BC, new stone age (with agriculture) 8000-3000BC, Bronze age 3000-2000BC, Iron age 2000BC-500AD when the middle ages begin.
• Europe:
• 4500BC?: stones are used to construct buildings in Guernsey, England.
• 2900BC: Stone Henge in England
• 2200BC: further extensions to Stone Henge with 80 bluestones.
• 350BC: Celtic chiefs build fortified Maiden Castle in Dorsset, Britain.
• 100BC: water-powered mills for grinding corn (Yugoslavia, Albania)
• 510AD: the abacus used for counting, although already for 1000 years in use in Greece and Rome
• continued at the Middle Ages in Europe, below.
• Middle East, Asia Minor, Persia
• ±6000BC: writing?
• 7000BC: Domesticated cattle in Anatolia (Turkey)
• 6000BC: Einkorn wheat cultivation starts, leading to the world's most important food source.
• 6500BC: Irrigation in use in Mesopotamia.
• 3000BC: Donkeys and mules domesticated in (Israel); camels in (Iran)
• 2500BC: The Yak is domesticated in Tibet.
• 2000BC: Alfalfa cultivated in Iran. Wheels with spokes invented.
• 1000BC: Phoenicians terraced the land to prevent erosion.
• 850BC: First arched bridge built in Smyrna, Turkey.
• 700BC: Money (coins) invented in Turkey. Babylon becomes the largest city on Earth, with an area of 100km2.
• 200BC: Philon uses bronze springs in catapults.
• 600AD: earliest known wind mills using a vertical shaft, to grind grain.
• Egyptian civilisation 3500BC? - 525BC. ends with Persian conquest (General Cambyses, emperor Darius)
• 5000BC: Egyptian calendar of 365 days, 12 months of 30 days and 5 festival days.
• ±3500BC: Menes becomes first Pharaoh, uniting Upper and Lower Egypt.
• 3200BC: Egyptians use hieroglyphs for writing, and develop their number system, but requiring new symbols as numbers grow larger. Using papyrus to write on. alphabet?
• 3200BC: Sailing ships used in Egypt.
•  The Egyptians and Babylonians make extensive use of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin.
• 2900BC: Great Pyramid of Giza is built.
• 2000BC: Contraceptives used in Egypt; Geometry well known.
• 1700BC: Phoenicians (on the Algerian coast) writing with a 22 letter alphabet.
• 1600BC: Start of the New Kingdom. Medical knowledge includes surgery, prescriptions, fasting, massage and hypnosis.
• 1500BC: Light two-wheeled carts for warfare.
• 1400BC: Inventon of glass, also in Mesopotamia.
• 1300BC: Moses leads the Hebrews from Egypt.
• 1250BC: Egyptions build a canal to link the Nile with the Red Sea.
• 1000BC: Phoenicians terrace agricultural land to prevent erosion.
• 950BC: Darius I builds another such canal, effectively connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
• Sumerian civilisation: 5000BC - 2300BC by Sumerians; 2300 - 1600BC by Akkadians; 1600BC -  by Kasserites
•  ±5000BC: The plough? & the wheel? Sailing ships.
• 4000BC: Wine and domesticated grapes in Turkestan; Beer in Mesopotamia; Olives in Crete; Fired bricks invented in Mesopotamia.
• 3500BC: Pictograms with 2000 signs used for writing in sumeria. Egyptians and Sumerians smelt silver and gold. Potters wheel introduced in Mesopotamia. Wheeled vehicles in Mesopotamia.
• 3000BC: In Mesopotamia the Sumerians are familiar with domes, columns, arches and vaults.
• 2500BC: Units for length, weight (shekel and mina) and volume standardised.
• 2400BC: Maps for land taxation. Sexagesimal system (base-60) for position indication.
• 2000BC: Mathematics, solving quadratic equations.
• 1900BC: Mathematics: Pythagorean theorem, multiplication tables, geometry
• Aegean (Minoan) civilisation: 3500BC - 1640BC: In Crete, named after King Minos; destroyed by volcanic eruption. Capital city of Knossos had plumbing and palaces. Minoans wrote in Minoan Script.
• 1640BC volcano Santorini (Thera) explodes, destroying the Minoan civilisation
• Greek civilisation: 1150BC - 529AD. Started by Mycenaean warriors from the North; ended by the Byzantine emperor Justinian.
• 1000BC: Modern Greek alphabet.
• 776BC: First Olympiad
• 600BC: Tradition of science and natural philosopy begins, with advances in astronomy, physics and the life sciences. Major improvements in mathematics, architecture, technology, mechanics, navigation, health. Aqueducts, canals and water tunnels for irrigation and drinking water. Agricultural crop rotation as a soil conservation measure.
• 570BC: Xenophanes finds fossil sea shells on tops of mountains, and concludes that the surface of the Earth is in motion.
• 550BC: Phoenicians travel by ship around Africa.
• 530BC: Technology invents tools like the bubble level, locks and keys, carpenter's square and the lathe (in Samos). Extensive ore smelting and forming.
• 500BC: Pythagoras discovers that Earth is a sphere. World maps develop.
• 461BC: The age of Pericles begins, a period of peace and prosperity. Many Greek philosphers flourish.
• 430BC: The great plague strikes Athens.
• 410BC: Invention of the catapult and quadrireme  (four rows of rowers) warships. It gives advantage in sea wars, and conquering sea-bordering nations.
• 350BC: Aristotle classifies 500 animals into 8 classes. Discovers that space is always filled with matter.
• 336BC: Start of the reign of Alexander the Great, who spreads Greek culture from Egypt to India.
• 300BC: The Greek discover the functions of animal and human organs. Euclid geometry proves helpful for building. Dicaerchus constructs a world map on a sphere, correctly marking meridians and equator.
• 240BC: Eratosthenes calculates the circumference of Earth at 46,000 km; also the prime numbers.
• 200BC: Gears invented for the ox-powered waterwheel. Accurate water clock invented.
• 80BC: Greek engineers invent differential gears.
• 40BC: Alexandria has the largest library on Earth.
• 10BC: Herod the Great builds the first open sea port.
• 40AD: De materia medica describes the medical properties of ±600 plants and ±1000 drugs.
• 180: Galen compiles all medical knowledge in one systematic treatment.
• 380: The library at Alexandria is destroyed
• Assyrians: 1350BC -
• Roman civilisation: 350BC - 470AD, A large empire, extending from Europe to Britain and down into Africa, but short-lived. It was ended by German invaders after Rome having been sacked first, in 455 by vandals. The Romans perfected infrastructure, bureaucracy and transport (goods, people and information).
• 320BC: the Via Appia along the Italian peninsula built. The Aqua Appia, an aqueduct to bring water to Rome from 16km away.
• 170BC: Paved roads
• 100BC: Romans discover possolana concrete from volcanic ash.
• 100AD: Peak of Roman civilisation. Spreading agricultural irrigation practices to their conquered lands.
• 122AD: Romans in Britain build Hadrian's Wall to protect Britain from northern tribes.
• 455AD: Roman civilisation ends.
• 0AD: Human population estimated at 200-300 million. By this time, almost all the productive land around the Mediterranean Sea had eroded into badlands.
• iron age 1000BC -. Already 4000BC, iron was known from meteorites, and campfires lit over iron ore soils. By 1000BC most civilisations had mastered the art of iron making.
• Islamic/ Arab culture: 700-1300. Intensive commercial activity brought this culture in contact with many others, which contributed to Arab thinking. Centres of learning were established and 'houses of wisdom', and all known knowledge was compiled and preserved. Under Arab influence, the Spanish cityof Cordoba became the richest and largest cityin europe, with a library of 400,000 volumes.
• 840: Suleiman travels to China.
• middle ages in Europe
• early middle ages 530-1452: the decline of science, suppressed by the might of the Catholic Church, and adherence to the old ideas of Greek philosophers.
• 541: A serious bubonic plague rages over Europe and the Middle East.
• 600: Windmills becoming used on a large scale. Waterwheels used to drive industrial processes.
• 800: Blast furnaces for making cast iron in Scandinavia.
• 1000: Vikings reach North America. Europe has many waterwheel-drive wheels. In England one per 400 people. The iron plough share invented in Europe.
• 1100: Italians learn to distill wine to make brandy.
• 1277: The Pope issues a condemnation of many scientific ideas.
• 1140: Norman king Roger II decrees that only licensed physicians can practise medicine.
• 1189: First paper mill in Herault, France. Magnetic compass introduced in the West.
• 1250: The goose feather quill is used for writing.
• 1260: Roger Bacon starts the new tradition of science by experiment, also William Ockham (Ockham's razor:"When several explanations are offered, the simplest must be taken"). Spinning wheel in Europe.
• 1310: Mechanical clocks with escapements. China still uses water to power its clocks.
• 1340: A small cannon firing arrows.
• 1340-1349 (1346-1352?): The Black Death plague epidemic kills 25 million people, one third of its population. During the next 80 years, it recurs frequently, killing 3/4 of Europe's population.
• 1370: The steel crossbow invented. Rockets used for war. Cast iron becomes generally available.
• 1400: Coffee introduced. Holland uses windmills for pumping water and reclaiming land. Alchemism, believing that one metal could be turned into another, ends. Fossils are considered the remains of prehistoric organisms. The Dutch use driftnets for fishing.
• 1430: Drive belts are being used in industry.
• 1440: Johann Gutenberg (1398) and Lauren Janszoon Koster invent bookprinting with movable type. Spectacles for the nearsighted. Gutenberg prints the bible in 1454, 42 lines per page.
• Human population estimated at 400-500 million.
• The renaissance and the scientific revolution 1453 - 1659, starts with the invention of book printing, the fall of Constantinople, and ends gradually as science takes flight. It was a time of renewing knowledge about the Greek classics and Arabian mathematics. Explorations to distant countries discovered new plants, animals and minerals. Painting and architecture bloomed. The world was opened by navigation and commerce and the further discovery of knowledge. "Science is the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effect of all things possible." Francis Bacon, 1603. But the Church fought back. Surgery and medicine made huge strides forward.
• 1453: The Turks capture Constantinople, forcing many Greek-speaking scholars to escape to the West, bringing with them clasical Greek manuscripts and the ability to translate them into Latin.
• 1473. Michelangelo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The firsst edition of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine is printed in Milan. Leonardo da Vinci makes scientific discoveries like the parachute, flying machine, clock with pendulum, roller bearings, musket, helicopter.
• 1493: Pope Alexander VI draws a line on a map that gives Spain all the undiscovered lands to the west of the line and Portugal those to the east. Later the line was altered to give Brazil to Portugal. Tobacco and smoking introduced to Europe.
• 1498: Vasco Da Gama reaches India via the Cape of Good Hope, rounding Africa. Columbus discovers America. Capsicum peppers circle the world in 50 years, being accepted world-wide in all continents.
• 1502: First spring-driven pocket watch by Peter Henlein. Raw sugar is refined a year later.
• 1507: Maps show America, discovered by Columbus and first explored by Americus Vespuchus (1497-1504).
• 1514: Plus + and minus - signs in mathematical notations. Machiavelli's Il Principe (The Prince) presents a study on how to rule and stay in power, laying the basics for politics.
• 1517: Girolamo Fracastoro explains fossils as the remains of actual organisms. Biology starts to recognise the kinship between fish, reptiles and mammals.
• 1519: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan starts the voyage around the world, which is completed in 1521 by Juan Sebastian del Cano after Magellan was killed by natives.
• 1520: A smallpox epidemic demoralises the Aztecs, allowing Hernando Cortez to destroy them and take over the Aztec empire. A few years later, smallpox would kill Huayna Capac, the Inca ruler. Muskets and guns are used extensively. Muskets also devastate wildlife through hunting.
• 1535-45: diving bells for underwater work are invented. Science of ballistics. Metal smelting, glass making. Nicholas Copernicus publishes his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, in which he describes the revolution of the celestial bodies. Andreas Vesalius publishes De humani corporis fabrica (On the structure of the human body), showing the true structure of the human body. Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia is the first major compendium on world geography.
• 1551: Invention of the theodolite for surveying by Leonard Digges. The way blood circulates in the body, discovered.
• 1572: Complex numbers for solving differential equations. Mercator introduces his map projection. Knowledge about minerals, where to find them and how to process them, accumulates rapidly. Also chemistry makes strides forward.
• 1589: Knitting machine invented by Rev William Lee. 1592: Galileo's Della Scienza meccanica (On the mechanical sciences).
• 1603: Coke, a charcoal-like fuel produced by heating coal discovered. Coke would allow engineers to reach higher temperatures and to use carbon chemically in industrial processes.
• 1609: Galileo builds the first telescope, which would introduce many new astronomical discoveries. Rainbow explained. 1610: Galileo extends hydrostatics, Archimedes' discovery of floating objects. Nature of logarithms discovered. 1617: Trigonometric triangulation. The knowledge of optics increases.
• 1627: Extinction of the Aurochs, wild ancestor of domestic cattle. Perhaps heralding the beginning of the age of extinctions.
• 1637: Renee Descartes argues for the correct use of deductive reasoning in science, from metaphysical (philosophical) principles. 1643: Torricelli makes the first barometer. Pascal invents a machine that can add and subtract.
• 1650: Experiments with vacuum. 1659: Christaan Huyghens invents the chronometer for use at sea. This instrument would be critical for determining the longitudinal positions of ships. Huyghens also invented the microscope which would trigger the science of microbiology.
• The Newtonian Epoch 1660-1734. this period starts with the foundation of the Royal Society (for science). The period is largely dominated by the ideas of scientist Isaac Newton and many others. Scientific academies followed in other countries. The scientific method was formulated for analysis and synthesis. It requires theories to be formulated from observations; these are then tested and used to predict other phenomena. Observation and experimentation became the pillars of science. This separated physics from metaphysics (philosopy) and made scientists look for new things rather than the past achievements of old masters. Many mathematical innovations by scientists like Newton, Leibniz, Euler, Bernouilli, Fourier.
• 1660s - 1662: Boyle defines the gas laws of volume and pressure. England is producing 2 million tons of coal a year, over 80% of all world coal. 1665: cells and the nervous system described. Robert Hooke publishes his microscopic discoveries in Micrographia. The great plague in london kills over 75,000 people. mathematical calculus (Newton).
• 1670s- 1673: Anton van Leeuwenhoek makes microscopic discoveries like protozoa. Experiments with electicity. 1676: Robert Hooke invents the universal joint, used in all moving vehicles. 1678 wave theory of light described by Huyghens. Clocks are equipped with hands to show minutes. Newton's binomial algorithm and complex numbers. Accurate clocks.
• 1687: Newton establishes the three fundamental laws of motion in his Principia. Motion of celestial bodies explained by gravity.
• 1690: Denis Papin is the first to use steam pressure to move a piston, building the first steam engine in 1698; the high pressure steam pump in 1707. 1694: male and female sex organs on plants identified and described. 1696: Marquis Antoine discovers differential calculus.
• 1701: Jethro Tull invents the machine drill for planting seeds. 1703: First western seismograph (the Chinese did it first). 1708: Hard-paste porcelain discovered. 1709: Coke used for iron smelting. Jacob Christoph Le Blon invents three-colour printing.
• 1713: Emanuel Timoni describes the Turkish practice of inoculating young children with smallpox to prevent more serious cases of the disease when they get older; laying the basis for inoculation.
• 1722: Renee de Reaumur describes the making of steel from iron. Jacob Leupold describes the theory of mechanical engineering and making machines. 1728: advances in dental treatment. 1729: Bernard Forest de Belidor in La science des ingenieurs lays down construction rules for engineers.
• 1730: Renee de Reaumur constructs an alcohol thermometer with a scale from 0-80 from freezing to boiling. Discovery of bacteria.
• 1731: Jethro Tull in Horse-hoeing husbandry advocates the use of manure, pulverising the soil, growing crops in rows and hoeing to remove weeds.
• Human population estimated at 700 million.
• The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution 1735-1819. In the enlightenment, rationalism won over God or faith. Due to Newton's success in science, other faculties followed suit, embracing the scientific method. Knowledge was to come from experiment (empiricism) and reason (rationalism). Chemistry could make no real progress because it was dominated by the incorrect 'phlogiston' theory, but towards the end of this period, John Dalton made real progress. The industrial revolution was driven by the invention of the steam engine and the use of coal as fuel. Cottage industries made room for factories. A new class, the capitalists emerged, who used capital, labour and machines to create more capital. The use of fossil fuel to replace labour, enabled them to acquire capital at an exponential rate, creating many millionaires in the process. It also spurred the prospecting for minerals, needed by the industrial processes. Guns and improved traps started to eradicate wildlife. As people travelled to far away lands, they brought with them invading species such as rats, goats and sheep, which caused major damage to native wildlife.
• 1735: John Harrison made an accurate chronometer for navigation and proved its worth for determining longitude. This greatly improved the safety and accuracy of shipping. Natural rubber discovered. Euler describes mechanics in terms of differential equations.
• 1738: Bernouilli explains the behaviour of liquids and objects in liquids. 1741: Steller's sea cow is discovered living off the coast of Kamchatka Peninsula. Within 27 years it has been hunted to extinction. 1742: Anders Celsius invents the Celsius scale for temperature.
• 1750: Advances in electricity and magnetism. Benjamin Franklin describes electricity as a kind of fluid and distinguishes between positive and negative charges. Carolus Linnaeus works on classifying plants, inventing the binnary nomenclature classification system. The flying shuttle finds acceptance in cotton weaving, and so does the spinning jenny, both invented decades earlier. 1754: The first steel rolling mill in England. Etienne Bonnet realises that knowledge reaches humans only through the senses. First woman with a degree of medical doctor (Germany). The beginning of quantitative chemistry would herald a new age for chemistry.
• 1760: Euler invents the phi function, which in the computer age would be used for 'open key' encryption. Optical instruments developed, free from aberration. Conversion of cast iron into malleable iron by the action of pit fire and artificial blast, in Scotland.
• 1765: James Watt (Scotland) builds an efficient steam engine in which the condenser is separated from the cylinder so that steam acts on the piston directly, resulting in a power source six times more effective than the earlier invented Newcomen engine. This machine is rapidly accepted as the driving force for industry.
• 1768-1771: Captain James Cook leaves England to observe the planet Venus transit the sun on the 3rd June 1769, from Tahiti. It led to the discovery of New Zealand in 1769, where he raised the British flag. On board were botanist Joseph Banks, the Swedish naturalist Daniel Carl Solander and Charles Green, astronomer. He also discovers that there is no 'balancing continent', except Australia.
• 1771: John Hunter lays the foundations of dental anatomy and pathology. 1772 Johan Elert Bode discovers that the distances of the planets to the sun are proportional to the series: 0, 3 ,6, 12, 24, 48, 96 (Bode's Law). 1775: Invention of the dipping-needle compass. Pierre-Simon Girard invents the water turbine. Equipment for boring cylinders and cannons improved. 1777: David Bushnell invents the torpedo. 1778: John Wilkinson invents the turning lathe. 1779: Oxygen discovered by Lavoisier, which would lead to more rapid chemical discoveries.
• 1782: James Watt patents a double-acting steam engine and converts the piston motion to a rotary motion. First steam-engine powered paddleboat. 1783 Thomas Bell develops cylinder printing for fabrics. Hot air and hydrogen balloons invented. 1784 Benjamin Franklin introduces bifocal eyeglasses. Henry Shrapnel invents the shrapnel shell, which spreads pieces of steel around at explosion, designed to kill people. 1787: Fredrich Krupp establishes a steel plant at Essen, Germany. John Wilkinson builds the first iron barge, which would change the face of shipping.
• 1789: The USA introduces its first patent law. The first steam-driven cotton mill in Manchester. James Watt invents the governor, a centrifugal device that controls the rotational speed of steam engines. Many factories become powered by steam after these inventions. Abraham Bennett invents a simple electric induction machine, which would lead to electricity generators.
• 1790: Bloodletting as a treatment for disease denounced by Marshall Basford. 1791: the metric system of units is proposed in France. It would become the world standard of measures in 1875. 1792: coalgas lighting invented. 1793: parachute jump from a balloon.
• 1795: Physician Sir Gilbert Blane introduces lime juice to prevent scurvy during sea voyages. Preservation of food by bottling or canning, heating and sealing, invented by Francois Appert, in response to a prize offered by Napoleon. It would enable armies to foray far away from home, and assist shipping and trade.
• 1796: Edward Jenner uses cowpox to vaccinate against smallpox, but the Royal Society rejects his technique. 1797: Engineer Henry Maudslay (England) perfects the slide bed for lathes, permitting the lathe operator to operate the lathe without holding the metal cutting tools in his hands. It led to precision tooling. 1798: Henry Cavendish measures the mass of Earth indirectly from the attraction between two known masses. 1798: the first four-person submarine (earlier attempts date a century back). Mathematicians Gauss, Wessel, Lagrange, develop complex numbers.
• 1799: Napoleon's soldiers uncover the Rosetta Stone in Egypt, which became the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Joseph-Louis Proust finds new rules for chemical reactions.
• 1800: William Herschel discovers infrared radiation. Johann Ritter discovers ultraviolet radiation. Thomas Young describes the wave theory of light. Alessandro Volta invents the electric battery. John Dalton formulates the law of partial pressures within gases, and proposes that atoms must exist. Evolution of species becomes discussed (Jean-Baptiste Lamarck) but several mechanisms for evolution are in vogue. It was also assumed that 'The Creator would not admit extinctions'. James Finney builds the first suspension bridge. John C Stevens builds a propeller-driven steamboat, which would herald the era of steamships.
• 1804: A D Thaer introduces the concept of crop rotation. Nicolas Appert opens the world's first canning factory, also inventing the meat stock cube. Richard Trevithick invents the steam locomotive, running on iron rails. It would herald the age of the train. 1805: Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents the punched-card operated loom. The punched card would later be used as an input-output medium for computers.
• 1805: Georges Cuvier establishes the science of comparative anatomy, and in 1812 comparative vertebrate paleontology. Austrian pathologist Karl Rokitansky describes the symptoms of many diseases, based on dissecting over 30,000 cadavers. Proteins and amino acids discovered as building blocks for animal tissues. Also discovery of the three sugars in plant juices: glucose, fructose and sucrose. Science of geology established. Thomas Young introduces the concept of energy. Coal-gas is used extensively to pipe energy to homes in cities. 1808: Humphrey Davy discovers the electric arc light, which will be used in cinemas.
• 1810: Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier presents his mathematical series, which would later revolutionise radio transmission and communication. Fourier analysis is an important scientific tool today. Amedeo Avogadro does many discoveries on gases and molecules. Pierre-Simon Laplace establishes probability theory, only to be used 75 years later!. William Hyde invents the camera lucida for projecting an image on a flat surface, in order to draw it. 1813: Augustin de Candolle publishes a 21-volume plant encyclopedia. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck produces a similar encyclopedia on invertebrate animals. Frederick Scott Archer uses negatives for making photographic prints. William Smith identifies rock strata on the basis of fossils, allowing comparisons between places in the world which are far apart. Carl Reinhold uses a thermometer for diagnosing fevers.
• 1815: Scotsman John Loudon McAdam uses crushed rock to pave roads. A century later, the concrete-slab roads would be named after him. This greatly enhanced road traffic. The first steam-powered warship is built in the USA. William Prout discovers that the chemical elements weigh a multiple of that of hydrogen. 1818: Augustin Fresnel demonstrates that light is a transverse wave, rather than a longitudinal wave. The stethoscope is used for listening to murmurs originating from inside the body.
• Human population estimated at 1 billion. Economic growth starts to outrun population growth.
• The nineteenth century, the age of science 1820-1894: the understanding of electricity and magnetism takes off, resulting in its practical use in motors, light and communication. The nineteenth century ends with the discovery of electrons, and the use of plastics. During this period, all sciences made great strides forward, also since the occupation of scientist became a paid profession. Scientists started to travel to national and international conferences. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte saw the benefits of science and supported it wholeheartedly. Science and technology started in the USA. Darwin's theory of evolution attracted much criticism but became widely accepted towards the end of the century. Major advances are also made in anthropology and archaeology, with the discoveries of ancient Egyptian, Maya and Peruvian civilisations. The discovery of photography and spectrography greatly spurred Astronomy. Biology made major strides with Darwin's theory of evolution, heredity, cell biology and the work of Louis Pasteur. Chemistry received a proper foundation and organic chemistry emerged, and the age ended with the first plastics. Earth sciences, physics, mathematics, medicine and technology all made great strides. War technology benefited from the discovery of nitrocellulose (guncotton) and nitroglycerine (dynamite).
• 1820: Hans Christian Oersted discovers electromagnetism, opening the way for electricity generation, transmission and electric motors. Many other scientists are involved: Dominique-Francois Arago, Andre-Marie Ampere, Michael Faraday, etc. Guano is being used as natural fertiliser. 1821: Electric motor invented by Faraday, but Joseph Henry describes a practical electric motor in 1831. Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier shows that any continuous function can be composed as the sum of sine and cosine curves.
• 1825: Candles made from fatty acids rather than from tallow. Aluminium discovered by Oersted, but it remains the most expensive element on earth. First steam engine for both passengers and freight. George Simon Ohm defines electric circuit analysis.
• 1830: Charles Lyell discovers that earth must be hundreds of millions of years old. 1831: Charles Darwin starts his famous world voyage aboard the Beagle. James Clark Ross reaches the magnetic North Pole. 1832: Charles Babbage conceives of the first computer, the Analytical Engine, driven by external instructions, but the device was too complicated to work. 1833: Karl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber build an electric telegraph operating over 2km, improved by Joseph Henry in 1835, and Samuel Morse in 1837-1846. Electrolysis used to make aluminium. Amalgam is used as a filling for teeth. Revolver firearm.
• 1835: Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis describes the Coriolis effect, caused by Earth's rotation. 1836: the combine harvester introduced in the US. 1838: Faraday discovers phosphorescence in vacuum. 1839: Louis Jacques Daguerre makes silver photographs on a copper plate (daguerrotypes). Fuel cell invented by William Robert Grove, but these would not be used until late in the 21st century. William Talbot Dosetshire invents photographic paper for making negatives.
• 1841: standard screw thread invented. 1842: First use of ether in surgery for anaesthesia. John Lawes applies sulfuric acid to phosphate rock and makes superphosphate artificial fertiliser. 1843: first tunnel under the Thames river. 1844: discovery that all cells in an organism originate from divisions by the egg cell.
• 1845: Robert William Thomson invents the rubber tyre. Guncotton discovered. 1846: the lock-stitch sewing machine. Use of chloroform in surgery. 1847: George Boole invents symbolic logic, later used in logic circuits and computers. 1847: doctors start washing their hands to prevent transmission of diseases, and sterilise their equipment. 1847: James Prescott Joule and Mayer discover the law of conservation of energy and that various forms of energy are related.
• 1848: The revolution in France restores the republic. 1849: Hippolyte Fizeau measures the speed of light. Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) and Sadi Carnot form the thermodynamics theory of heat, one of the most important physical laws. Carnot was intrigued why British steam engines were more effective than the French, and used thermodynamics to explain how heat engines work.
• 1850: End of the Western slave trade. Lord Kelvin proposes the absolute temperature scale to -273 degrees Celsius, at which point molecules stop moving. London and Paris build sewer systems, but sewage plants have to wait till 1915.
• 1851: The Great International Exhibition in London, showcase for technology and industry. 1852: The origin of spermatozoa explained. First steam-powered dirigible (balloon). Steelmaking improved. 1855: invention of the mercury vacuum pump, opening the way to produce cathode ray tubes, and leading to the discovery of the electron. Aluminium becomes cheaper to make. 1856 Henry Bessemer invents the Bessemer process for producing inexpensive steel from pig iron, by blasting air through the melt to remove impurities like carbon.
• 1857: Gregor Johann Mendel experiments with peas to discover laws of heredity (1860,1865). The positions of nearly 500,000 stars are known and catalogued. 1859: Charles Darwin On the origin of species. Edwin Laurentine Drake drills the world's first oil well in Titusville USA, through deep rock. He invented drill bits to do so. Kirchhoff and Bunsen explain the chemical nature of spectral lines. Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir develops the first internal combustion engine which works on coal gas.
• 1859-1869: the Suez Canal is dug by Ferdinand de Lesseps. It allowed marine species to migrate between seas that were once separated. 1860: The Frenchman Lenoir builds the first car with internal combustion engine. 1862: new telescopes with refracting lenses. Eye glasses correcting astigmatism. The beginning of iron-clad warships. Louis Pasteur discovers microorganisms as the source of decay of food and wine. 1864: Agricultural chemist George Washington develops techniques for regenerating the fertility of land by growing sweet potatoes and peanuts. James Clerk Maxwell publishes a mathematical theory for electric and magnetic fields, based on Michael Faraday's concept of a field. It proves to be a unifying theory with considerable importance.
• 1865: Joseph Lister introduces phenol as a disinfectant in surgery, reducing surgical death rate from 45% to 15%. 1866: Beginning of the science of ecology. Telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. Torpedo invented.
• 1867: Karl Marx writes Das Kapital, the theory that society evolves as a result of conflict between classes. Dating from tree rings. First commercially practical generator for alternating current. George Westinghouse (USA) invents the air brake for trains, solving a major problem, allowing all wheels to brake with equal strength.
• 1868: Robert Scott reaches the North Pole. First skeletons of modern humans, 35,000 year old in the Cro Magnon caves, France. Discovery of helium from a spectral line in sunlight. Beginning of acoustic engineering. Harpoon cannon with explosives for whaling, which would start global whaling.
• 1869 Dmitri Mendelev and Julius Lothar Meyer publish the Periodic Table of Elements, with 63 of the 90 naturally occurring elements, putting chemistry on a firm basis. First commercially practical generator for direct current. First trans-USA railway completed.
• 1870: railroad tunnel through the Alps. 1872: Roald Engelbregt Amundsen reaches the SouthPole. Ferdinand Cohn classifies bacteria into genera and species. Charles Darwin argues that human emotions stem from the behaviour of animals. Start of the first major oceanographic expedition on the Challenger. First US national park, Yellowstone. 1873: beginning of psychology. 1874: DDT insecticide discovered. George Stoney estimates the charge of the electron.
• 1875: The official kilogram, a bar of platinum, becomes the official standard for weight. Medical knowledge discovers enzymes and their functions. Liquid helium made by cooling air. First practical refrigerator, running on liquid ammonia gas. Birth of the science of bacteriology. Louis Pasteur discovers that some bacteria kill others, which would lead to the discovery of antibiotics. First glider with arched wings. Nikolaus August Otto develops the four-stroke internal combustion engine. 1878: discovery that microbes convert ammonium compounds into nitrites and nitrates, which can be absorbed by plants. Invention of rayon fibre made from cellulose. Physiologist Paul Bert discovers caisson disease (the bends) in divers, caused by nitrogen gas, and its cure of gradual decompression. First commercial telephone exchange. Discovery of saccharin, a sugar substitute made from tar. Louis Pasteur discovers immunity to cholera by a weakened cholera virus, paving the way to immunisation by vaccination, an effective cure against the major communicable diseases of the time: cholera, tuberculosis, tetanus, diphteria, rabies. Before that, he persuaded French army surgeons to sterilise their equipment and patients wounds. First electric railway demonstration in Berlin. Thomas Edison (USA) and Joseph Swann (England) invent the carbon-thread incandescent electric bulb.
• 1880: The cause of malaria discovered. Chlorination of drinking water. Piezo-electricity discovered, which would lead to precise crystal oscillators, grammophone pickups, etc. London's first electric generation station. 1881: Vector analysis discovered, a major contribution to science. The science of aerodynamics begins, leading to the design of aircraft. First electric streetcar in Berlin. First colour photograph. The motion picture camera is used to study motion in people and animals. Invention of the self-regulating electrical generator. 1882: use of photography to map stars. Discovery of chromosomes. Edison patents a three-wire system for transporting electrical power, which is still in use today. The Maxim machine gun invented. 1883: The quagga, a close relative of the zebra, dies out. The volcanic island of Krakatoa explodes, killing 40,000. Synthesis of antipyrene, a pain killer. Cocaine was already in use. Daimler develops a high speed internal combustion engine for a boat; two years later for a motor cycle and in 1887 for a car. Manganese steel, a super hard steel discovered. 1884: Greenwich becomes the prime meridian. Otto Wallach systematically isolates terpenes from essential oils, laying the basis for the perfume industry. The Linotype typesetting machine invented, and the roll film and fountain pen.
• 1885: Sigmund Freud develops his theories of psychoanalysis. James Dewar invents the thermos flask or Dewar flask for retaining heat. William Stanley invents the electric transformer. Britain starts the largest irrigation project on the Indus River in India's Punjab, the size of  Greece (14 million ha). It leads to salinisation problems in 1960. 1886: Hermann Hellrigel discovers that legumes fix nitrogen from the air for growth. Later it is proved that this is done by bacteria in their roots. Alfred Bernard Nobel discovers a non-smoking nitroglycerine explosive, called ballistite. Sound recording on wax discs (Bell) differing from the phonograph rolls of Edison. Charles Hall makes aluminium from alumina ore using electric power, heralding the way for cheap aluminium. Electric welding invented. 1887: Vito Volterra founds functional analysis, which would become the mainstay for engineering, later expanded by Henry Lebesgue. Einstein discovers that the speed of light is constant and that light has both particle and wave properties. Discovery of haploid sex cells with half the number of chromosomes. Contact lenses invented and celluloid photographic film. 1888: Fridtjof Nansen crosses Greenland by land. Radio waves detected by Heinrich Hertz. Invention of the adding machine, air-filled rubber tyres (Dunlop), a commercial roll-film camera (Eastman). 1889: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov shows that stomach juices can be conditioned to the sounding of a bell. James Dewar invents cordite, a smokeless gunpowder. Francis Galton formulates the statistics for correlation  and the standard error. First hydrolake and electric hydro power generator. Eiffel tower 303m. Only 550 live bison remain in the USA, out of millions living there before.
• 1890: Oliver Heaviside invents the operational calculus, highly important to technology. Paul Ehrlich establishes the field of immunology, also discovering passive and active immunity. Sterilised rubber gloves used during surgery. Hollerith develops a punched-card machine for counting the census. First aircraft to fly under its own power. 1891: Stock exchange collapse in the UK, followed by a deep economic depression (1891-1893). Carborundum (silicon carbide) discovered. Nikola Tesla invents high frequency high voltage electricity, which produces spectacular auroras, believed by many to have supernatural properties. 1892: Tobacco mosaic disease identified as caused by a virus, too small to be seen under a microscope. Fingerprints used for identification. Viscose rayon discovered. India inoculated against cholera, reducing death rate by 70%. First open heart surgery. The Millionaire four function mechanical calculator. Diesel engine invented. Homo erectus fossils found in Java (Java Man). The double life cycle of mosses and ferns discovered. Baden-Powell uses kites to lift human beings into the air. Marconi builds the first radio transmitter and receiver, which will ring a bell at 10m distance. Gasoline-powered tractors.
• Human population estimated at 1.6 billion.
• First half of the twentieth century 1895-1945. The discovery of X-rays, radioactivity, subatomic particles, relativity and quantum theory had a profound effect on many disciplines of science, marking the beginning and ending of a remarkable period in which the major foundations for all sciences were laid. The end of this period is marked by the world war, the atom bomb in 1945, and the invention of computers. The number of scientists grew profusely, influencing society. Industries founded their own research laboratories. After European scientists fled Hitler Germany, the USA became the leading country of science. Germany on the other hand, focused on research for the military, resulting in its supremacy at war. The politics of the first decades of this century were inspired by laissez-faire capitalism, leading to the Great Depression of the thirties. Experimental biology made major strides, leading to the new discipline of biochemistry. The understanding of electricity and electrons opened a new branch of technology: electronics, which changed society profoundly in almost every way.
• 1895: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky publishes the first scientific papers on space flight. Chromosomes identified as the carriers of heredity. Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen discovers X-rays. First manned glider able to gain height. 1896: Svante Arrhenius discovers that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere determines the global temperature and theorises that ice ages occurred because of reduced atmospheric CO2. Charles Guillaume discovers Invar, a nickel-steel alloy which does not expand nor shrink with temperature. It proves to be of major benefit. First diagnostic X-ray photograph. Herman Hollerith founds the Tabulating machine Company, which later becomes IBM. First steam-driven flying machine flies 1.2km. 1897: The jet stream discovered. Turbine powered steamships prove to be superior over conventional steamships. Casein plastics discovered. 1898: thermite discovered, a mix of aluminium powder and iron, that burns at high temperature, leaving iron behind. it is used for welding. Discovery of foot-and-mouth disease virus. A vaccine against typhoid fever.
• 1900: Gregor Mendel's work on heredity rediscovered. Emil Wiechert invents the inverted pendulum seismograph, still in use today. Electricity in metals explained. Invention of the nickel-alkaline accumulator. Gamma rays discovered. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin flies his first dirigible (navigable balloon). 1901: Artificial insemination used in agriculture (Russia), after it was invented in 1785. Inventions: electric typewriter, motorbicycle, vacuum cleaner, crystal radio detector, safety razor, mercury vapour arc lamp, motor-driven airplane (Whitehead). 1902: Mount Pelee on Martinique erupts, killing 38,000. Heaviside predicts the ionosphere to reflect radio waves, and Kennelly confirms this. Four human blood groups discovered. Rutherford and Soddy explain radioactivity and its associated rays. Inventions: lightbulbs with osmium filaments, the spark plug, the airconditioner, high voltage ignition for internal combustion engines, electric hearing aid, the drum brake. 1903: A method for producing nitric acid from atmospheric nitrogen. A method for making artificial silk (Viscose). Proposal to use X-rays to treat cancer. First successful airplane launched by Wilbur and Orville Wright, flew for 59 seconds. 1904 Panama Canal started. Stanley Hall argues that the child, in its development, recapitulates the life history of the race. Inventions: ultraviolet lamps, flat disc phonograph, photoelectric cell, vacuum tube (diode), offset printing.
• 1904-1905: Japan fights Russia with an army vaccinated against infectious diseases, for the first time claiming more deaths from battle than from disease. Antarctic whaling started. Invention of hydrogenation of fatty acids, allowing whale oil to be turned into margarine and soap. Whale glycerin is used to make nitroglycerine dynamite.
• 1905: Zoological classification. The structure of DNA is being unravelled. Female mammals have two X chromosomes; males one X and one Y. Hormones being studied. Adolf von Bayer has discovered many organic dyes. Discovery of cellophane and chlorophyll. Development of the intelligence test. Direct blood transfusion. Einstein submits his paper on the theory of relativity and the famous relationship between mass and energy. Inventions: safety glass, German submarine, Cottrell dust remover, directional radio antenna, dial telephone, first airplane factory in France. 1906: A mysterious explosion near Tunguska in Siberia, the cause of which has never been identified. Frederick Hopkins discovers essential food substances, the vitamins. The great San Fransisco earthquake kills 700. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. Inventions: tungsten filament lightbulb, freeze-drying, music and voice transmission by radio waves. 1907: Discovery that stress can affect the physical functioning of the body. Uranium used for dating rocks. John Scott Haldane develops the diver decompression tables. Inventions: radio amplifier, paint spray gun, first helicopter flies for 20 seconds, amplifier vacuum triode. Louis Lumiere invents colour photography. 1908: 1.5m Hale reflecting telescope at Mt Wilson. Fritz Haber develops the process for making cheap ammonia from nitrogen gas, which would lead to the agricultural revolution with artificial fertilisers. It would also give the Germans an inexhaustable suply of explosives. Student test for probability in experimental data. Sulfanilamide discovered, but its bacteria-killing properties would not be known until 1936. Inventions: first tractor with moving treads, rock drilling bit for oil drilling, gyroscopic compass, cellophane, Geiger counter, Orville Wright flies for one hour, Model T Ford. 1909: Robert Peary and Matthew Hensen reach the North Pole. Andrija Mohorovic discovers the earth's boundary between crust and mantle. Invention: the electric toaster, bakelite insulating plastic which solidifies on heating (replaces wood, ivory, hard rubber), Louis Bleriot flies across the English Channel in 37 minutes, hydrofoil ship.
• 1910: Paul Ehrlich introduces Salvarsan (an arsenic compound) as a cure for syphillis, the forerunner of chemotherapy. Discovery that some animal cancers are caused by viruses. Tincture of iodine used for disinfecting wounds. Inventions: electric washing machines, rayon stockings for women, neon street lights. Eugene Fly takes off in an airplane from the deck of a ship, showing that aircraft carriers are possible. Charles Proteus warns about air pollution from burning coal, and water pollution from sewage discharges. Less than 1 million motor vehicles worldwide.
• 1910-1920: Mexican revolution, developing the Mexican oil fields. By 1919 Mexico is second-largest oil producer until Venezuela takes over in 1928. The era of cheap oil begins.
• 1911: Roald Amundsen reaches the south Pole. Genes are being mapped on chromosomes. Thermal cracking of oil for refining petroleum. William Hill develops the first gastroscope. Superconductivity discovered in mercury. Owen Richardson explains the Edison Effect, whereby electrons boil out of a heated cathode. This would later give rise to electron tubes and the science of electronics. Ernest Rutherford presents his theory of the atom. Frederick Soddy discovers more about isotopes and radiation. Inventions: escalators, self-starter for automobiles, stainless steel, gyrocompass.
• 1912: The Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage, killing 1500. Robert Falcon Scott dies in Antarctica after reaching the South Pole, and finding that Amundsen had beaten him by a month. Alfred Lothar Wegener proposes the theory of continental drift and the super continent of Pangea. It will take another 60 years before being accepted. Inventions: gas regulator, heating pad which becomes the electric blanket.
• 1913: Theory of stellar evolution. Muscle cells use oxygen after a contraction has finished. Friedrich Karl Bergius discovers how to make gasoline from coal, by hydrogenation at high pressure. This would later power Hitler's war machine. Niels Bohr describes atoms and electrons in detail. Inventions: radio transmitter with vacuum tubes, mammography for breast cancer, Igor Sikorski flies a multi-engined plane.
• 1914: The assassination of Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo (Yugoslavia) precipitates World War I. The role of ATP (adenine triphosphate) discovered as the energy molecule in cells. Beno Gutenberg discovers the boundary between Earth's mantle and core at 3000km depth. Ernest Rutherford discovers the proton. The Passenger Pigeon, only 50 years earlier living in billions, dies out. Inventions: a sewage plant operating on bacteria, red and green traffic lights, the brassiere, experimental rockets, teletypewriter.
• 1915: formal opening of the Panama Canal. Inventions: the radio tube oscillator, Pyrex heat-resistant glass, transatlantic and transcontinental radiotelephone, aircraft with machine guns able to fire through the propellers, semiconductor germanium diode, tractor trailer, sonar for detecting ice bergs.
• 1916: discovery of cobalt-tungsten steel magnetic alloys. Inventions: windshield wipers, washing machine.
• 1917: beginning of the Russian revolution as communists assume control of government. Black holes predicted from Einstein's equations. Freezing as a way of preserving foods. it will change agriculture and trade, and eventually permeate every household. Power chain saw, would become popular after World War 2, allowing men to cut trees up to 100x faster.
• 1918: World War 1 ends when the Germans surrender. The mass spectrograph becomes an important scientific tool. Inventions: radio crystal oscillator, electric beater for foods, superheterodyne radio receiver allowing for precision tuning and low noise reception, high speed hydrofoil boat (Bell). 1918-1919 a world influenza pandemic kills over 30 million people, about as many as WW1 and 2 combined. Double-cross hybrid maize.
• 1919: Eccles & Jordan discover the flipflop circuit, the basic element for computer information storage.
• 1920: Walter Nernst completes the theory of thermodynamics. Existence of the neutron proposed. Inventions: tommy gun, a submachine gun. Working farm animals require 25% of crop production in USA. Creosote oil preserves timber, requiring less replacement.
• 1921: Alexander fleming discovers bacteriocidal properties of mucus. Thomas Midgley invents tetraethyl lead to prevent knocking in gasoline engines, making high compression and more efficient engines possible. In 1930 he would invent Freon (a CFC), earning him the reputation of making the largest impact on the atmosphere. A tuberculosis vaccine.
• 1922: Benito Mussolini takes power in Italy. Discovery of vitamin-D in cod liver oil. Sonar for measuring the depth of the oceans.
• 1923: Theodor Svedberg develops the ultracentrifuge, which becomes an essential tool in biochemistry. Inventions: photoelectric cell, autogiro, continuous hot-strip rolling of steel which requires precise machine control. A diphtheria vaccine.
• 1924: Australopithecus identified from a fossilised skull. Galaxies are distant Milky Ways. Willem Einthoven invented the electrocardiograph. Inventions: spiral bound books, celluwipes tissues, self-winding watch, photographic radio transmission (forerunner of faximile), iconoscope (forerunner of TV).
• 1925: Ronald Aymler Fisher publishes Statistical Methods for Research Workers, which becomes a standard work on statistics for science. Karl Bosch invents a method for producing hydrogen. Experiments begin in colliding atoms to study their composition. Half-integer quantum numbers for electron spin. Inventions: the analogue computer for solving differential equations. First whaling factory ship with rear ramp, 'seagoing slaughterhouse'.
• 1926: Erwin Schroedinger discovery that X-rays cause genetic mutations. Inventions: talking movies, pop-up toaster, liquid fuel rocket reaches 56m height.
• 1927: Big flooding of the Mississippi River, evacuating half a million and killing hundreds. Georges Lemaitre proposes the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe. Rudolf Geiger founds the study of microclimatology. Inventions: the iron lung, pentode vacuum tube, negative feedback in amplifiers, thus reducing distortion.
• 1928: Richard Evelyn Byrd establishes a camp on Antarctica and begins an extensive program of exploration. Invention of the Diels-Alder reaction for combining atoms into molecules, useful for synthetic rubber and plastics. Adolf Windaus studies cholesterol. Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin, which will be used clinically in World War II.
• 1929: New York sharemarket crash (Black Thursday) starts the Great Depression (1929-1939), but the entire 1920s after World War 1 were times of economic turmoil. Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky proposes that red shift of distant galaxies is caused by photon 'fatigue', by which photons lose potential energy, a theory which is not generally accepted. M Matuyama shows that rocks of different strata have their magnetic fields changed, even reversed. This technique would later prove plate tectonics and the magnetic pole reversals. Hans Berger develops the electro encephalogram (EEG). Detection of cosmic rays. Inventions: FM radio, Empire State Building construction (1929-1931), foam rubber (Dunlop), quartz crystal clock, Wankel engine.
• 1930: Andrew Ellicott Douglas establishes the use of tree rings for dating (dendrochronology), discovered in 1863. Arne Wilhelm Tiselius invents electrophoresis for separating proteins with electric currents. Inventions: polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Freon as a gas for refrigerators, frozen foods being marketed, sliced bread, tape recorder, jet engine. 50 million motor vehicles worldwide.
• 1931: Experiments by Karl Janski led to the founding of radioastronomy. Inventions: neoprene, the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River spanning 1066m. Last sturgeon fish caught in the river Rhine.
• 1932: Gerhard Domagk discovers the sulfa drug Prontosil, hailed as a wonder drug, which he tried on his own daughter in 1935. In 1936 it is discovered that Prontosil breaks down to Sulfanilamide, the active ingredient (see the discovery of sulfanilamides in 1908). The second sulfa drug, sulfapyridine will be discovered in 1937. Neutron and positron discovered. Neutrons change Bohr's view of the atomic nucleus. Auguste Piccard enters the stratosphere by balloon. Publication of Thomas Hunt Morgan's The scientific basis of evolution. Inventions: television receiver with a cathode ray tube (CRT).
• 1933: Adolph Hitler rises to power by being appointed chancellor of Germany. The Tasmanian Wolf dies out in a zoo. Discovery of deuterium and heavy water, and tritium. Ernst Ruska builds the first electron microscope, able to magnify 12,000 times. Van de Graaf develops a static electricity generator capable of producing 7 million volts. Clarence Zener explains the quantum tunnelling effect and the breakdown of insulators. The Zener diode is named after him. Inventions: artificial vitamin C (ascorbic acid), high-intensity mercury vapour lamps.
• 1934: X-ray diffraction photography to determine the nature of proteins. Isolation of progesterone, a female hormone. Arnold Beckman invents the pH meter for measuring acidity and alkalinity. Jesse Beams develops an ultracentrifuge that works in vacuum. William Beebe descends to 1001m below the ocean's surface in the tethered Bathysphere. Inventions: the first streamlined car (Chrysler Airflow), Wernher von Braun develops a liquid-fuel rocket that achieves a height of 2.4 km.
• 1935: Sydney Chapman determines the lunar air tide, the effect of the moon's gravity on the atmosphere. Charles Francis Richter develops a scale for measuring the strength of earthquakes. Discovery of the last essential amino acid, threonine. Testosterone, a male hormone isolated. The four-step Krebs cycle discovered, by which animals and plants produce energy (respirate). Isotope separation by centrifuge, which would become important for making nuclear weapons. Inventions: bioflavin vitamine B2, vitamin K, the beer can, nylon, first radar.
• 1936: DNA is isolated in its pure state. Artificial heart in use during cardiac surgery. Development of the field-emission microscope which makes individual atoms visible on a fluorescent screen. Inventions: synthesised vitamin B1, fluorescent lighting, paperback books (Penguin), regular public TV transmissions, Colorado River Boulder Dam, German engineer Heinrich Focke develops the first practical helicopter. A digital computer using relays.
• 1937: Japan invades China. Discovery of RNA in tobacco mosaic virus. William Cumming Rose discovers the 10 essential amino acids (out of 20), essential to rats, and 8 essential to humans (have to be part of our diet). A V Kazakov explains the origins of phosphate rocks related to ocean upwellings causing abundant sea life. The magnetic resonance method discovered for studying the atomic nucleus. Inventions: vitamin A, sulfapyridine, antihistamine, vaccine against yellow fever,
• 1938: Nuclear fusion, the energy source of the Sun, explained. Claude Elwood Shannon lays the basis of the mathematical theory of information. 1024 genes of the Drosophila fruit fly mapped. First living Coelacanth caught. G S Callendar detects increases in CO2 due to human activities. Total artificial hip replacement using stainless steel. Otto Hahn splits the uranium atom, opening the possibility for nuclear energy and bombs. Inventions: teflon, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), radio altimeter, ballpoint pen, Nylon goes on sale, Porsche introduces the Volkswagen Beetle, Perlon synthetic fibre. To stop Japanese advance in the Sino-Japanese war, Chinese Nationalists destroy the dykes in the Yellow river, drowning several hundred thousand people, flooding 11 cities, 4000 villages and destroying millions of hectares of cropland.
• 1939: German and soviet forces begin occupying Poland, starting World War II. Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt, which will lead to the US developing an atomic bomb. Several scientists make progress on the fission of uranium and the possibility of a chain reaction. DNA and RNA are always present in bacteria. Inventions: polythene (ICI), DDT insecticide, sulfathiazole (3rd sulfa drug), electric knife, the complex number calculator, regular commercial flights across the Atlantic Ocean (PanAm), precooked frozen foods, first Sikorski mass-produced helicopter, fully automatic transmission, electron microscopes 50 times more powerful than light microscopes.
• 1940: Use of C14 for carbon dating, the most useful of radioactive tracers.  Rhesus factor in blood discovered. Development of the gas-diffusion method to enrich uranium. The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge leads engineers to consider aerodynamic stability in bridges and buildings. Inventions: biotin/vitamin H, penicillin, freeze drying for food preservation, colour TV broadcasts. St.Louis USA first to adopt smoke abatement policies for cleaner air. Most industries would follow after 1966.
• 1941: Japanese attack on Pearl harbour. One gene one enzyme hypothesis. Inventions: aerosol spray for insecticides, terylene or dacron,
• 1942: Solar radio emission detected. First radio maps of the universe. First images of a virus. Louis Fieser develops napalm, jellied petroleum, which burns viciously while sticking to victims. Enrico Fermi's team creates the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry invent the Anatoff-Berry Computer (ABC), which works with capacitor storage on a rotating drum. It could berform operations with 8-digit decimal numbers (16 bits). This is now recognised as the first binary digital computer. Inventions: LORAN Long Range Air Navigation system along the US Atlantic seaboard.
• 1943: The proton synchrotron proposed for accelerating atomic particles.  Inventions: silicones (Dow Corning), kidney dialysis machine, antibiotic streptomycin effective against gram-negative bacteria, first operational nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge, Jacques Yves Cousteau underwater lung, continuous casting of steel, first vacuum tube computer (Colossus) used for cracking German encryption. Washington DC builds its first sewage plant.
• 1944: German forces begin operating V1 flying bombs, and V2 rocket-propelled bombs. Radio waves at 21.1cm predicted from interstellar hydrogen. Discovered that DNA is the hereditary material for almost all living organisms. Paper chromatography discovered as a tool to identify biochemical compounds. The theory of games and economic behaviour discovered. Aureomycin, the first tetracycline extracted from soil organisms. Inventions: the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator with vacuum tubes and punched papertape for programming, made by IBM, but is not very reliable.
• 1945: Germany surrenders to the Allies. Hiroshima bombed with a uranium-based nuclear fission bomb. Nagasaki bombed with a plutonium-based fission bomb. Japan surrenders. Salvador Luria shows that bacterial mutations are closely related to those of their predators, viral bacteriophages. It would open the path to genetic engineering. The synchrocyclotron particle accelerator proposed. Inventions: herbicide 2,4-D, fluoridation of water supplies, ENIAC computer (Electronic Numerical Integrator and computer), the first all-purpose stored-program electronic computer. It had 18,000 vacuum tubes and worked with decimal numbers. A vaccine against influenza.
• Human population estimated at 2.5 billion. 75 million motor vehicles.
• The age of reconstruction. 1946-1959. The world war vastly accelerated scientific discoveries. Many scientists and their laboratories were conscripted for war research, results of which remained classified for many years, some even today. As many countries rebuilt themselves, the progress in technology was used, causing a period of prosperity and rapid economic growth. In pure science as well, the unexpected continued to occur. Few scientists in the brief optimistic period between the end of the World War and the start of the Cold War would have predicted that before the end of the century our evolutionary history would be revealed in the test tube instead of in fossils; people would walk on the moon; the beginnings of the universe would be explained; the secrets of heredity would be unravelled; the discarded theory of continental drift would resurface as the most vital part of earth sciences; many famous conjectures in mathematics would be resolved; the elementary particles would almost make sense; and solid-state devices would replace vacuum tubes in most applications. As the cost of science soared, nations would pool together and scientists would work together in interdisciplinary teams of specialists. Initially optimistic about the benefits of science, some people become critical about scientists' apparent immorality, leading to armaments, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, industrial and agricultural chemicals, bacterial and insect resistance to biocides, genetic experiments and genetic engineering.
• 1946: The first meeting of the United Nations (UN). International Whaling Commission established. Genetic material from two viruses can combine to make a new virus. Discovery that carbondioxide can cause water vapour to condense in the atmosphere. First synchro-cyclotron at Berkeley. High pressure physics. Computer research becomes a new discipline. Inventions: First Soviet nuclear reactor, ENIAC computer,
• 1947: Synthesis of ADP and ATP, used by cells to convert energy. Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) to explain new subatomic particles. Discovery that radiation is produced when charged particles change path. Discovery of  the muon, pion, meson nuclear particles. Inventions: tubeless tyre (Goodyear).
• 1948: 5m Hale reflecting telesope at Mt Palomar USA. The Big Bang theory gains credibility. Protons and neutrons in the nucleus occupy shells, like the electrons outside. Effect of DDT on insects understood. Norbert Wiener develops the mathematical theory of feedback systems and automation. Inventions: cortisone against inflammations, atomic clock, the computer term 'bug', Velcro, long-playing record, polaroid camera, the cinematograph of Louis Lumiere, the transistor,
• 1949: The German state is split into East and West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is created. A rocket testing ground is created at Cape Canaveral, the place in the USA closest to the equator. A 2-stage V2 rocket reaches 400km height. F M Burnett proposes that immune response is not inborn, but develops as a person grows. Derek Barton will discover that the shape of molecules is important to their properties. Structure of penicillin calculated. Claude Shannon publishes his work on information theory, and symbolic logic, which would herald the way to communication, error detection and correcting codes and provide a basis for many scientific disciplines. Inventions: X-rays in medical diagnosis, EDSAC computer, BINAC computer.
• 1950: Troops from North Korea invade South Korea, starting the Korean War. Jan hendrik Oort discovers the Oort cloud of comet material. Inventions: embryo transplants for cattle, cyclamate artificial sweetener, Diners Card, commercial colour TV in the USA, Baltic Sea and Black Sea eutrophied and smelly. Nile Perch released in Lake Victoria, would extinguish over 200 endemic cichlid species within 40 years.
• 1951: Computers used in astronomical calculations and mapping the Milky Way. Alpha-helix structure of proteins discovered. Nikolaas Tinbergen publishes The study of instinct, an important study of animal behaviour. Nikolay Vavilov in The origin, variation, immunity, and breeding of cultivated plants finds the evolutionary basis of immunity in various strains of wheat. Synthesis of the steroids cortisone and cholesterol. Erwin W Mueller develops the field ion microscope.  Walter Henry Zinn USA develops an experimental breeder reactor. Inventions: 3-D motion pictures, power steering (Chrysler), the zebra street crossing, first commercial computer UNIVAC1.
• 1952: Joseph Stalin dies in the USSR. A Polio epidemic in the USA affects 47,000. Hodgkin and Huxley explain how nerves work. Rapid Eye Movement in sleep detected. Douglas Bevis develops amniocentesis, a method of examining the genetic heritage of a fetus while still in the womb. Jean Dausset discovers that repeated blood transfusions cause antibodies to be formed. James Alfred van Allen invents the rockoon, a rocket launched from a balloon, to study the physics of the upper atmosphere. First nuclear accident causes the core of a nuclear reactor to explode. Inventions: First sex-change operation, a killed-virus vaccine against polio (vaccination started in 1954). Later a live-virus vaccine would be used, developed by Albert Sabin. Development of the H-bomb, based on nuclear fusion. Antabuse, a drug preventing alcoholics from drinking; the heart-lung machine, the universal reaction blood test, UNIVAC computer used in election prediction, transistor hearing aid, pocket transistor radio. 4000 people die of a London fog.
• 1953: Elizabeth II crowned Queen of the UK. Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mount Everest. Flooding of Holland when sea dykes are breached in a rare storm with high tides, killing 1500. Super clusters of galaxies discovered. Radio emissions from the Crab nebula explained as synchrotron radiation (caused by charged particles changing course). Alfred C Kinsey produces a landmark study of the sex practices of US women. It reveals that half have sex before marriage, a quarter are unfaithful and a quarter have had homosexual relationships. Second Coelacanth discovered. Watson & Cricks unravel the double helix structure of DNA. Tars from tobacco smoke cause cancers in mice. Structure of insulin protein. Inventions: phase-contrast microscope, radial tyres (Pirelli), the MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) with ammonia gas, for amplifying weak microwaves from the universe and in communication.
• 1954: France's occupation of Indochina ends. Humans have 46 instead of 48 chromosomes. Fossils of bacteria and blue-green algae discovered in Canada. Chlorpromazine (Thorazine) introduced for the treatment for mental disorders. CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) founded in Geneva. Liquid hydrogen bubble chamber for detecting nuclear particles. Inventions: Soviet Union first nuclear reactor for peacetime use, TV dinners in USA, Nautilus atomic powered submarine, photovoltaic cell produces electric power from sunlight. A vaccine against polio. First international accord against dumping oil at sea.
• 1955: Formation of the Warsaw Pact against NATO. 76.2m radio telescope dish at Jodrell Bank, England. Radio interferometry to join radiotelescopes into more accurate observers. Various forms of RNA discovered. Vitamin D. The field ion microscope pictures individual atoms. Inventions: domestic deep freezers, artificial diamonds for industrial use, hovercraft, optical fibres. Over 100 million motor vehicles worldwide.
• 1956: Hungarian uprising against Soviet domination. Israeli, British and French forces invade Egypt to prevent nationalisation of the Suez canal (the Suez Crisis) but had to retreat. Hydrogen bomb test in Bikini Island. William Clouser Boyd identifies all 13 human races by their blood groups. Human Growth Hormone isolated. Mid-Oceanic Ridges discovered. Inventions: birth coltrol pills, electric watch (Lip), transatlantic telephone cable, FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) computer language, LISP (LISt Program) computer language, MANIAC1 chess computer. London proclaims the Clean Air Act. Minamata disease (Japan) due to pollution from methyl-mercury. Soviet planners begin to divert the water flowing to the Aral Sea for cotton cultivation. By 1960 this land-locked sea shrinks by 60 million cubic km per year, leading to its death by 1990 and extinction of 20 endemic fish species.
• 1957: The Common Market (EEC/ EEG) established in Europe. Sputnik 1 and 2 artificial satellites launched by the USSR. G E Hutchinson reasons that an ecological niche may exist both in space and behaviour of an organism. Discovery of interferon, a natural substance produced by the human body to fight viruses. Albert Sabin develops a live polio vaccine. Tunnelling in semiconductors. Discovery that the highly poisonous Dioxin may contaminate herbicides. Inventions: 2,4,5-T herbicide, high speed painless dental drill,
• 1958: Solar 'wind' detected. Earth is slightly pear shaped with a 15m bulge in the Southern Hemisphere. Enzymes correspond to genes. Discovery of an all-female lizard species. The brain's hypothalamus identified as a centre for the production of hormones. James Van Allen discovers the Earth's radiation belts named after him. Inventions: bifocal contact lenses, ultrasound to examine unborn children, first nuclear electric power station in the USA, a chess program on an IBM704 computer, cyclotron for particle acceleration. USA starts building its Interstate Highways.
• 1959: The Antarctic Treaty keeps Antarctica free from military activity and exploration (later, in 1988 it would be amended to allow for exploration). Radar contact made with the sun. The soviets launch Lunik1 but instead of orbiting the moon, it orbits around the sun. Lunik2 hits the moon. Lunik3 passes the moon, taking the first photographs of its far side. G E Hutchinson defines more principles of ecology. Inventions: the THI (Temperature Humidity Index) as a measure of discomfort, XEROX photo copier,  the St Lawrence Seaway is opened, connecting the St Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, first artificial diamond (De Beers), COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) computer language.
• 1960: Project OZMA starts the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI= Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Dolphins use echo sound for locating objects. Jacques Piccard descends to 10,900m, the bottom of the Challenger Deep, in his Trieste bathyscaphe. LASER (Light Emission by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).  Inventions: Astroturf plastic grass, ruby laser, Echo passive communications satellite. During the 1960s more than one large dam will be completed every year.
•  1961: Discovery of Homo habilis (Handy Man). USSR tries a Venus probe but loses contact. Yuri Gagarin (USSR) becomes the first human astronaut, orbiting Earth 1.8 hours in Vostok1. Alan B Shepard (USA) becomes second astronaut in space in a 15 minute sub-orbital flight. Soviet cosmonaut G Titov orbits Earth 17 times in 25.6 hours. Further progress with various forms of RNA. Transfer-RNA builds one amino acid at a time, starting at one end, to produce a given protein. Murray Gell-Mann develops a theory to unite new subatomic particles. A core is drilled in the ocean floor at 3.5km depth, leading the way to conclusive proof of continental drift theory. Birth of chaos theory. Frank L Horsfall announces that all forms of cancer result from changes in the DNA of cells. Inventions: IUD Intrauterine Device for birth control.
• 1962: Cuban missile crisis caused by USSR installing guided missiles in Cuba. Radar contact with the planet Mercury. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring alarms the public of the dangers of the release of chemicals in nature. Linus Pauling suggests that changes in genetic material over time may hold the key to how one species relates to another. X-ray emission detected other than from the sun. Astronaut Scott Carpenter completes three orbits of Earth. Inventions: lasers used in eye surgery, first industrial robot, nuclear powered ship Savannah, Telstar communications satellite, a vaccine against measles.
• 1963: President John F Kennedy assassinated. Satellite to study X-rays from space. Inventions: Syncom2 first geosynchronous communications satellite, friction welding, audiocassette (Philips), tunnelling semiconductor diodes for amplification of high frequency signals. High-yielding dwarf wheat.
• 1964: Completion of the Aswan Dam on the river Nile, causing profound ecological changes. Start of Vietnam War. US spaceprobe Ranger7 takes close-range photographs of the moon. Start of the green revolution with new strains of rice with double yield. Birth of sociobiology as a controversial offshoot of ecology. Inventions: the Verrazano Bridge opens in New York, containerships.
• 1965: the great 14 hour power blackout in New York. Cosmic MASERs discovered, interstellar gas producing coherent microwave radiation by stimulation with light. Venus turns in the opposite direction to all other planets, but only just so: a venus day is 247 earth days. A day on Mercury is 56 earth days. Radio wave remnants of the Big Bang found. Many space excursions with manned and unmanned satellites. Variable genes discovered to explain the many forms of antigen. Artificial pheromones (sex hormones in insects) synthesised. Chloroplasts in algae have their own DNA. A self-reproducing virus synthesised. Monkeys reared in total isolation show great emotional impairment for the rest of their lives. Inventions: a vaccine against measles, soft contact lenses, estrogen 'replacement' therapy, continuously tunable laser, BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) computer language is particularly suitable for interactive programming and easy to learn.
• 1966: Surveyor1 soft-lands on the moon. Aflatoxins from the mould Aspergillus flavus, growing on peanuts (and elsewhere) cause liver damage and cancer. Inventions: ESSA1 weather satellite, live-virus vaccine for rubella (German measles), fuel injection for automobile engines.
• 1967: Discovery of Aegyptopithecus, a 30 million year old primate in the hominid line of Man. A ground test of an Apollo spacecraft kills 3 astronauts. A Soviet cosmonaut is killed during an emergency reentry. Data from classified US Navy navigation satellites made available to the public. Surveyor3 soft lands on the moon. Soviet space probe Venera4 parachutes down into Venus' atmosphere, discovering its density and that it consists mostly of carbondioxide. Soviet union bans lead from fuel. 10,000 year old frozen arctic lupine seeds prove still viable and germinate. Clomiphene used to increase fertility, also increases multiple births. Mammography for breast cancer. First human heart transplant. Coronary bypass operation. Inventions: keyboards for computer data input, overseas direct dialling, food irradiation for conserving it, antibiotics in animal food may leave traces in meat, computer with parallel processors, Dolby noise reduction in sound. Extensive use of antibiotics leads to drug resistant strains of bacilla and bacteria.
• 1968: Uprising in Czechoslovakia. First Apollo mission lasting 260 hours. Astronauts orbit the moon and return. Lake Erie is so polluted that it is essentially dead. Most enzymes and codons found, that take part in replication of DNA.  Glomar Challenger ocean core drilling ship goes into operation for the next 15 years. Amino acids from life discovered in 3 billion year old rock. People move back to Bikini Atoll, after radioactive contamination from H-bomb tests in 1956, has subsided (They'll move out again in 1978). Tooth decay caused by streptococcal bacteria. Inventions: regular hovercraft service across the English Channel, first supertankers, luxury liner Queen Elizabeth2 launched, first supersonic airliner Tupolev TY144 looks similar to Concorde.
• 1969: First humans on the moon, with Apollo 11 and 12. Inventions: scanning electron microscope, bubble memory devices for computers.
• 1970: China and Japan launch artificial satellites. Apollo 13 is aborted because of equipment failure. Human Growth Hormone synthesised. (Re-)discovery that viruses can cause cancer. Inventions: carbon dioxide lasers, the Boeing 747 jumbo jet, floppy disk for computers,
• 1971: UN launched its Man and the Biosphere programme. Completion of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, creating Lake Nasser, 150km3 water, over two years of Nile flow storage. It would later cause major ecological disaster. Apollo14 brings back 44kg of moon rocks. Apollo15 lands a vehicle on the moon, the Lunar Rover. Soviet space probe Mars3 lands on Mars. First water-cooled nuclear power station (Canada). Inventions: holography with lasers, produces 3-D images, first microprocessor (Intel), pocket calculator (Texas Instruments) weighs 1.1kg, Computer language PASCAL.
• 1972: Foundation of UN Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered in Nairobi. First earth resources satellite Landsat 1. Soviet Venera8 soft lands on venus. Apollo16 lands on the moon as fifth crew. US space probe Pioneer 10 launched. It will eventually leave the solar system. Use of DDT restricted. Fermilab accelerates particles to 400GeV. Inventions: Computerised Axial Tomography (CAT scanner), diamond-bladed scalpel,
• 1973: The America-Vietnam war ends. US Bombers left 20,000,000 bomb craters. Completion of the New York Trade Centre buildings, 110 storeys tall; destroyed by suicide bombers in 2001. The UK joins the Common Market. OPEC raises oil prices and enforces oil embargoes to selected countries, which leads to the first Oil Shock. Skylab missions start to obtain medical data from people in space. A calf produced from a frozen embryo. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) scanner used for medical diagnosis. Inventions: barcoded product labels, the push-through tab on drink cans,
• 1974: 'Lucy' sekeleton discovered of Australopithecus afarensis. A halt called to Genetic Engineering until implications are better understood, but research continues. F Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina warn that CFCs can damage the ozone layer. Inventions: programmable pocket calculator,
• 1975: End of the South Vietnam War. The Milky Way galaxy moves at 500km/s. First pictures from the surface of Venus by Soviet Venera 9 and 10. Discovery of endorphins, morphine-like substances produced by the body. Inventions: LCD displays, personal computer (Altair8800) with 256 bytes memory.
• 1976: More understanding of the high variety of antibodies produced by very few genes. Inventions: inkjet printer (IBM), the supersonic Concorde starts passenger services, which would end in 2000 after a tragic mishap at Paris.
• 1977: A 40,000 year old frozen baby mammoth recovered. Most neurons contain several different neurotransmitters, not just one. Deep-sea ocean vents surrounded by specialised communities discovered. Discovery of AIDS. Incinerator wastes may be contaminated by dioxins which can cause cancer. The smallpox virus is declared extinct (Somalia), but officially 3 years later. Inventions: public-key encription codes, Apple2 personal computer, fibre-optics trialled for communication.
• 1978: The complete genetic structure of a virus. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) banned as spray propellants. Bikini Atoll islanders moved off the island after their return in 1968. It was discovered that radioactive Cesium-137, caused by H-bomb tests, had entered the food chain. Inventions: the first human test tube baby conceived outside the body,
• 1979: End of Egyptian-Israeli war. A human-powered aircraft, the Gossamer Albatross, crosses the English Channel. The nuclear reactor Unit2 of Three Mile Island undergoes a partial meltdown of its reactor core. Inventions: VISICALC computer 'language' first spreadsheet, ADA computer language for the US armed services.
• 1980: Mount St Helens erupts, killing 61. Walter and Luis Alvarez discover the metal iridium in the Cretacious-Tertiary (KT) layer, speculating that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a large meteorite. The VLA Very Large Array radiotelescope in Socorro USA, begins operation. Soundwaves used to break kidney stones. Inventions: hepatitis B vaccine, scanning tunnelling microscope,
• 1981: The space shuttle Columbia. The Chinese clone a carp fish. Gene transfer from one animal to another. Primates with large testes for their body size, are promiscuous. The element Boron is important for bone development and sex hormones. Inventions: Solar One, the largest solar-powered electricity station generates 10MW of electricity, the IBM Personal Computer with DOS operating system.
• 1982: The Mexican volcano El Chichon erupts, sending dust and gases into the stratosphere, where they remain for 3 years. First deployment of a satellite from the space shuttle Columbia. Human insulin produced by bacteria. First artificial human heart. Inventions: compact-disc players,
• 1983: The second space shuttle Challenger starts service. Aspartame approved for use as a sweetener in soft drinks. Immuno-suppressant cyclosporine for organ transplants. Inventions: a solar cell with 9.5% efficiency, Apple's LISA operating system introduces the mouse and pull-down menus. IBM PC-XT with freely imitable architecture. Moratorium on whaling; in 80 years the whale biomass reduced from 43 to 6 million tons.
• 1984: First un-looted Maya tomb from 500BC discovered. An unbroken tree-ring chronology based on Irish oak trees, dating back 7272 years. Alec Jeffreys discovers the technique of genetic fingerprinting. First cloned sheep. Inventions: optical disks for computer storage, the one megabit RAM, IBM's PC AT
• 1985: Mud torrents from erupting volcano Nevada del Ruiz kills 21,000. The hole in the ozone layer detected. Construction begins on the Keck, world's largest telescope at Mauna Kea Hawaii, with a mirror of 10m. Nuclear X-ray laser test underground proves successful. Over 500 million motor vehicles world-wide. UNEP Vienna Convention on ozone depletion.
• 1986: The soviets launch Mir, a permanently manned space station. The space shuttle Challenger blows up 73 seconds after launch, killing 6 astronauts and a teacher. A 35 million year old frog found, preserved as a fossil in amber resin. Superconductivity now detected at up to 30 degrees above absolute zero. Chernobyl nuclear reactor No4 near Kiev, explodes and releases radioactivity, killing 12 and forcing mass evacuations of all families within 30km. Inventions: a hepatitis B vaccine, the 32 bit chip 80386, the two-pilot airplane Voyager flies around the world in 9 days without refuelling. Muammar al-Qaddaffi of Libya completes the 'manmade river', drawing water from desert aquifers (40 days by camel) to the coast, supplying 80% of fresh water. Accidental introduction (by ballast water) of the zebra mussel from the Black Sea to the Great Lakes (US/Canada), becoming a real nuisance, together with over 100 other alien species. A comb jellyfish travelled the other way, destroying the Black Sea fisheries.

1987: Japan bans lead from gasoline. The Clovis people believed to be the first Americans at about 9,500BC. Human growth hormone works also in fish. The last wild California condor is trapped for a captive breeding programme. The last dusky seaside sparrow, previously found all over Florida, died in captivity, as its saltmarsh habitat also disappeared.The Brundtland Report urges for economic restraint and sustainable development. A single gene on the Y chromosome is responsible for maleness. Implanting cells from a person's adrenal gland into the brain can cure or alleviate Parkinson's disease. Inventions: Apple Macintosh, super computers, IBM PS/2 computer. 2000 people die from smog in Athens Greece. Montreal Protocol to lower CFCs by 70-100%.
• 1988: The 1959 Antarctic Treaty is modified to allow for mining minerals and drilling for oil. 92,000 year old Homo sapiens fossils found in Israel. First US patent issued for a genetically modified mouse. Chemists estimate a total of 10 milllion recorded compounds, increasing with 400,000 each year. The number of new book titles increases by 800,000 each year. The world had about 10,000 languages but many of these are disappearing.
• 1989: Start of the building of the Three Gorges Dam in China, damming the YangTze River.
• 1990: First Earth Day. Human populaton 5.3 billion. Energy use increased 80-fold since 1800. Energy use averages 20 'energy slaves' per human being, but in the USA alone, about 100. Over 700 million motor vehicles  worldwide. Irrigated land ruined as fast as engineers can irrigate new land. Over 25,000 antibiotics exist. 500 million people fly from one country to another and back every year. Humans account for 0.1% of total biomass and 5% of animal biomass, almost equal to cattle. CO2 emission grew 17x this century. Large cities like Mexico City generate over 10,000 tons of garbage each day. In USA, Europe and Japan, roads occupy 5-10% of all land. Cars kill 400,000 people every year.
• 1991: End of the Cold War. Non-communists gain control over most East-Block nations. The American weapons complex involves some 3,000 sites with 10,000 war heads. Nuclear waste cleanup may take 75 years. USSR has 45,000 warheads and unknown waste dumps. Most nuclear waste dumped at sea. In the Gulf War, the Irakis ignite huge oil fires that darken the sky and spilled oil into the fragile Persian Gulf. European Union and monetary system established.
• 1992: First UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Fist salmon caught in the River Rhine, after its massive cleanup effort lasting forty years. Tests for detecting HIV (AIDS) become widely available.
• 1993: USA ends the plans for the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI).
• 1994:
• 1995:
• 1996: Adoption of the nuclear test ban treaty.
• 1997: Mars Pathfinder puts a roving vehicle on Mars, which sends images and does experiments.
• 1998: 30 million people infected with AIDS.
• 1999:
• 2000: Human population 6.0 billion.
• 2001: Anti-pollution laws for the Baltic Sea. World Trade Centre towers in New York destroyed by terrorist suicide bombers.
• 2002: