Timeline of materials technology
Timeline of materials technology
BC
- 29,000–25,000 BC - 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
- 200s - Steel making widely used in Han Dynasty China
- 700s - Porcelain is invented in Tang Dynasty China
2nd millennium
- 1448 - Johann Gutenberg develops type metal alloy
- 1450s - Cristallo, a clear soda-based glass is invented by Angelo Barovier
- 1540 - Vannoccio Biringuccio publishes first systematic book on metallurgy
- 1556 - Georg Agricola's influential book on metallurgy
- 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 waffles.
20th century
- 1902 - Auguste Verneuil develops the Verneuil process for making synthetic rubies
- 1909 - Leo Baekeland presents the Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic
- 1911 - Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers Superconductivity
- 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 (see also: E.K. Bolton, Wallace Carothers)
- 1931 - Wallace Carothers develops nylon
- 1938 - Roy Plunkett discovers the process for making poly-tetrafluoroethylene, better known as Teflon
- 1939 - Robert W. Cahn confirmed the existence of dislocations (line defects whose movement under stress allows metals to deform plastically), explaining the discrepancy between the very high predicted resistance to plasticity of perfect metal crystals, compared to the much smaller measured values of actual pure metal crystals.
- 1947 - First germanium point-contact 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
- 1954 - invention of AOD refining (Argon Oxygen Decarburization)
- 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
- 1980 - development of duplex stainless steels which resist oxidation in chlorides