Timeline of materials technology

Before Common Era

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

1450s - Crystallo, a clear soda-based glass is invented by Angelo Barovier
1590 - Glass lenses are developed in the 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
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

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 wafers

1902 - August Verneuil develops a process for making synthetic rubies
1909 - Leo Baekeland presents the Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic
1911 - Superconductivity discovered
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 volumetric 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 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
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
1970 - invention of AOD refining (argon oxygen decarburization)
1980 - development of duplex stainless steels which resist oxidation in chlorides


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