On the timeline
The Edit
The tools that
remade the world
The milestones of technology, from the printing press to the microchip and the network: the inventions, the breakthroughs and the people who built the tools we live with.
Moments that moved it
- c.1450Print
Gutenberg's press
In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg brought movable metal type and the press together; his Bible was printed in the mid-1450s.
- 1876Voice
The telephone
Alexander Graham Bell received his telephone patent in March 1876, days before the first successful call to his assistant, Thomas Watson.
- 1947December
The transistor
At Bell Labs, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain demonstrated the first transistor, building on work with William Shockley. The three shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- 1958–59The chip
The integrated circuit
Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor arrived independently at circuits built on a single piece of semiconductor.
- 1969October 29
ARPANET's first message
A message sent from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute crashed after two letters, "LO". The network behind it grew into the internet.
- 1989CERN
The World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee proposed an information system for CERN in March 1989; by the end of 1990 the first web server and browser were running.
- Next
The next stop
Every tool on this line was once the newest thing in the room. The timeline keeps going.
The full timeline →
The eras
The mechanical age
The press, the steam engine and the factory.
1830–1940The electric age
The telegraph, the telephone, the light bulb and radio.
1940–1990The electronic age
The computer, the transistor and the microchip.
1969–NowThe networked age
The internet, the web and the computer in every pocket.
Version History
Every week, one invention and the people behind it: where it came from, what it replaced and what it changed. The history of technology, one release at a time.
With Marcus and June. New episodes weekly.
