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Timeline of materials technology

Timeline of materials technology

3rd millennium BC - Copper metallurgy is invented and copper is used for ornamentation
2nd millennium BC - Bronze is used for weapons and armor
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.
700s - Porcelain is invented in China
1450s - Crystallo[?], a clear soda-based glass is invented by Angelo Barovier[?]
1590 - Glass lenses are developed in Netherlands and used for the first time in microscopes and telescopes.
1738 - William Champion[?] patents a process for the production of metallic zinc by distillation from calamine and charcoal.
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
1821 - Thomas Johann Seebeck[?] invents the thermocouple
1824 - Patent issued to Joseph Aspin[?] for portland cement.
1825 - Hans Christian Orsted produces metallic aluminum
1839 - Charles Goodyear[?] invents vulcanized rubber
1839 - Jacques 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
1902 - August Verneuil[?] develops a process for making synthetic rubies.
1909 - Leo Baekeland presents the Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic
1911 - Superconductivity discovered.
1916 - Jan Czochralski[?] invents a method for growing single crystals of metals.
1924 - Corning scientists invent Pyrex[?], a glass with a very low thermal expansion coefficient.
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 phonoigraph 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

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