Chronology of General Technology
| -7000 | Pottery is invented. |
| -700 | Invention of aqueducts. |
| -640 | Invention of coins. |
| -400 | Catapults are invented in Syracuse. |
| -150 | Hipparchus invents the astrolabe. |
| -100 | Glass-blowing is discovered in Syria. |
| 700 | Windmills are invented in Persia. |
| 1050 | Crossbows are invented in France. |
| 1249 | Roger Bacon states formulas for gunpowder. |
| 1346 | Cannon come into wide use. |
| 1480 | Martin Behaim introduces the nautical astrolabe. |
| 1480 | Leonardo da Vinci describes a workable parachute. |
| 1645 | Otto von Guericke builds the first vacuum pump. |
| 1731 | John Hadley invents the sextant. |
| 1800 | Alessandro Volta announces his invention of the electric battery. |
| 1823 | William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet. |
| 1840 | Justus von Liebig invents artificial fertilizer. |
| 1867 | Alfred Nobel patents dynamite. |
| 1880 | John Milne invents the seismograph. |
| 1885 | William Stanley invents the alternating current transformer. |
| 1903 | Konstantin Tsiolkovsky begins a series of papers discussing the use of rocketry to reach outer space, space suits, and colonization of the solar system. |
| 1917 | Paul Langevin develops a sonar echolocation system. |
| 1925 | Theodor Svedberg develops the ultra-centrifuge, thereby revolutionizing the determination of molecular weights. |
| 1935 | Robert Watson-Watt devises a microwave radar. |
| 1945 | First nuclear fission bomb exploded at the Trinity test site, about sixty miles northwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico. |
| 1952 | First thermonuclear fusion bomb exploded. |
| 1952 | Wernher von Braun discusses the technical details of a manned exploration of Mars in The Mars Project. |
| 1953 | Charles Townes makes the first maser. |
| 1954 | Construction of the first nuclear power reactor. |
| 1960 | Theodore Maiman makes the first laser. |