27 B.C.
According to Vitruvius, Roman surveyors used odometers, consisting of wooden carts fitted with a mechanism of toothed gears, to measure out all those famous roads that led back to Rome.
1st Century A.D.
The Alexandrian engineer Hero invents the ‘aeolipile’ or ‘Hero’s Engine’- an early steam-driven turbine.
A.D. 132
The Han Chinese polymath Zhang Heng invents a ‘seismoscope’ capable of detecting distant earthquakes and locating where they occurred.
9th Century
The Andalusian scientist- poet Abbas ibn Firnas was among the first to attain flight; in case, apparently by means of a kind of glider.
CA. 1232
Gunpowder rockets invented in Song Dynasty China.
1606
The Spaniard Jeronimo de Ayanz y Beaumont obtained a patent from the Spanish monarchy for a steam-driven water pump; subsequent incarnations and refinements by Savery, Newcomen, and Watt initiated the first Industrial Revolution.
1822
Charles Babbage designs his ‘difference engine’ which- while never quite completed- paves the way for future computing machines.
1860
Etinne Lenoir invents a commercially successful gas-fired internal combustion engine; ‘hippomobiles’ were subsequently designed to incorporate the new engine.
1903
First controlled and sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air flying vehicle, conducted by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk.
1931
The age of supercomputing is heralded by the installation of huge tabulating and calculating machines, manufactured by IBM at Columbia University.
1944
The German V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2) or ‘Vengeance’ weapon becomes the first long-range guided ballistic missile. It is the first manmade object to cross the boundary of space and sets the pattern for all space vehicles.
1951
Electricity first produced by a nuclear fission power plant at the Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 (EBR-1) in Arco, Idaho. Ushers in the ‘Atomic Age’ of more intensive human energy use.
