Timeline of materials technology
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Timeline of materials technology
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Before Common Era
- 29,000–25,000 BCE - First ceramic appears
- 3rd millennium BC - Copper metallurgy is invented and copper is used for ornamentation
- 2nd millennium BC - Bronze is used for weapons and armour
- 1st millennium BC - Pewter beginning to be used in China and Egypt
- 16th century BC - The Hittites develop crude iron metallurgy
- 13th century BC - Invention of steel when iron and charcoal are combined properly
- 10th century BC - Glass production begins in Greece and Syria
- 50s BC - Glassblowing techniques flourish in Phoenicia
- 20s BC - Roman architect Vitruvius describes low-water-content method for mixing concrete
1st millennium
2nd millennium
- 1450s - Crystallo, a clear soda-based glass is invented by Angelo Barovier
- 1590 - Glass lenses are developed in the Netherlands and used for the first time in microscopes and telescopes
18th century
- 1738 - William Champion patents a process for the production of metallic zinc by distillation from calamine and charcoal
- 1740 - Benjamin Huntsman developed the crucible steel technique
- 1779 - Bry Higgins issued a patent for hydraulic cement (stucco) for use as an exterior plaster
- 1799 - Alessandro Volta makes a copper/zinc acid battery
19th century
- 1821 - Thomas Johann Seebeck invents the thermocouple
- 1824 - Patent issued to Joseph Aspin for portland cement
- 1825 - Hans Christian Ørsted produces metallic aluminium
- 1839 - Charles Goodyear invents vulcanized rubber
- 1839 - Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot invent silver-based photographic processes
- 1855 - Bessemer process for mass production of steel patented
- 1861 - James Clerk Maxwell demonstrates color photography
- 1883 - Charles Fritts makes the first solar cells using selenium wafers
20th century
- 1902 - August Verneuil develops a process for making synthetic rubies
- 1909 - Leo Baekeland presents the Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic
- 1911 - Superconductivity discovered
- 1912 - Harry Brearley invents stainless steel
- 1916 - Jan Czochralski invents a method for growing single crystals of metals
- 1924 - Corning Incorporated scientists invent Pyrex, a glass with a very low coefficient of thermal expansion
- 1931 - Julius Nieuwland develops the synthetic rubber called neoprene
- 1931 - Wallace Carothers develops nylon
- 1938 - Roy Plunkett discovers the process for making poly-tetrafluoroethylene, better known as teflon
- 1947 - First germanium transistor invented
- 1947 - First commercial application of a piezoelectric ceramic: barium titanate used as a phonograph needle
- 1951 - Individual atoms seen for the first time using the Field ion microscope
- 1953 - Karl Ziegler discovers metallic catalysts which greatly improve the strength of polyethylene polymers
- 1954 - 6% efficiency silicon solar cells made at Bell Laboratories
- 1959 - Pilkington Brothers patent the float glass process
- 1962 - SQUID superconducting quantum interference device invented
- 1968 - Liquid crystal display developed by RCA
- 1970 - Silica optical fibers grown by Corning Incorporated
- 1970 - invention of AOD refining (argon oxygen decarburization)
- 1980 - development of duplex stainless steels which resist oxidation in chlorides