(last updated 12/18/2008)
65,000,000 BC The terrestrial reptile dinosaurs no longer roam earth
| 3,500,000 BC Approximate human origin | | |-- 300,000 BC Some evidence of counting (notches in animal bone) | | |-- 250,000 BC Oldest surviving wood tool | |-- 100,000 BC Neanderthal culture in Asia, Africa & Europe | Using fire for cooking, protection and warmth | Stone tools | Storage pits for food1 | | |--- 40,000 BC First people settle in Greece | Hunters and food gatherers2 | | |--- 35,000 BC Neanderthal culture disappearing | | Cro-Magnon culture developing | Sewing needles made from bone | | Migration of the first Americans across | the Bering Strait | |--- 20,000 BC Bow and arrow developed (by Cro-Magnon people) | Ice Age - In some areas the glacial ice was 2 miles thick! | |--- 10,000 BC End of last Ice Age | |--- 8,000 BC Earliest Domestication of animals | |--- 7,000 BC Agriculture begins in the Americas | Pottery in use | |---- 4000 BC Solid wheels used on carts | | People Along the Nile starting to build canals to | control flooding and provide irrigation | |---- 3500 BC Potter's wheel in use | Sumerians Develop cuneiform writing | Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing | |---- 3100 BC Rice domesticated in the region of the Yangtze River | | Egyptian civilization arose in Nile Valley | |---- 3000 BC Masonry dams in use | Mortise and tendon wood joints in use | | The population of the city of Uruk (located on the | Euphrates River), reaches 50,000.1 | | |---- 2900 BC Start of the Bronze Age in Greece2 | | |---- 2800 BC Plywood invented in Egypt | Carpentry at a mastery by most advanced civilizations | | |---- 2600 BC Pyramid of Gizeh built | | |---- 2000 BC Spoke wheels in use | | |---- 1800 BC Lever used (oars) | |---- 1500 BC Phoenicians develop an alphabet | | Farming common in Central America | |---- 1350 BC sundial | use of iron | water clocks | |---- 1200 BC Dorian invaders overtake the Mycenaean Greeks using | Iron weapons. The Mycenaeans used Bronze weapons.1 | | |---- 700 BC Invention of Aqueducts | |----c. 500 BC Pythagoras develops the concepts of geometry1 | | | |---- 476 BC Western Roman Empire Collapsed | |---- 400 BC Water wheel in use | Catapults invented | | |---- 399 BC Socrates executed | |---- 387 BC Plato starts Academy in Athens | |---- 350 BC The Chinese develop a printing press with | symbols carved on a wooden block | |---- 343 BC Aristotle (384-322 BC), a student of Plato, becomes tutor | of Alexander of Macedonia (Alexander the Great) | Aristotle correctly defined the shape of the surface of water as spherical. | He incorrectly thought the shape was the result of the center of the earth and universe coinciding. | |---- 323 BC The Greek Leader, Alexander the Great, dies | of a fever in Babylon at the age of 32 | |---- 332 BC City of Alexandria, Egypt founded | |---- 300 BC Euclid writes Elements, on Geometry1 | | | |---- 200 BC Archimedes (287-212 BC) | ( the birth of fluidstatics & earliest recorded writing in mechanics) | | Archimedes made statics (engineering mechanics) an Autonomous theoretical science3 | | He extensively studies the center of gravity of object and made many postulates as axioms | As an example: | Proposition IV. - If two magnitudes do not have the same centre of gravity, | the centre of gravity of the magnitude made up of these two magnitudes is the point situated | at the middle of the line which joins their centres of gravity.3 | | Archimedes developed: | the principle of buoyancy | the lever | the compound pulley | cranes & the water screw (pump) | | | The population of Alexandria is 200,000 | | |---- 30 BC End of the Hellenistic Age (the Greeks) |-------------------------------------------------------------------- |---- 50 AD Vitruvius writes ten volume compendium of | Roman engineering practice | | Buddhism introduced in China | |---- 105 Tsai Lun invents paper | |---- 400 Windmill in use in China | |---- 700 Chinese invent Porcelain | |---- 820 Algebra Invented | |---- 1242 Roger Bacon describes the preparation of gunpowder ( in use in China in 1000 AD) | |---- 1428 Painter, Masaccio (1401-1428) introduces perspective - a technique | that brought a three-dimensional look to painting | |---- 1450 The Chinese develop a printing press that uses | Movable wooden blocks | |---- 1454 Johannes Gutenburg invents a printing press | with movable metal type | |---- 1500 Birth of Engineering Science (start of Renaissance) | | |---- 1550 Simon Stevin (stuh-veen') (military and civil | engineer) develops the | parallelogram law for the addition of forces | | |---- 1588 First Engineering Handbook (mostly sketches) written | by Ramelli | |---- 1596 Birth of Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French scientist | and philosopher Descartes developed the Cartesian | Coordinate System. His name in Latin is Renatus Cartesius.4 | | |---- 1607 Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, | is established in southeast Virginia | |---- 1614 John Napier (Scottish mathematician) publishes his discovery of logarithms | |---- 1616 William Shakespeare died | |---- 1622 William Oughtred invents the slide rule | |---- 1637 The invention of ANALYTIC GEOMETRY by Rene | Descartes (see above) | | |---- 1638 Galileo's book, "Two New Sciences" published | This is believed to be the first book published in the | field of strength of materials! In it he states, | | "A small obelisk or column or other solid figure can | certainly be laid down or set up without danger of | breaking, while very large ones will go to pieces under | the slightest provocation, and that purely on account | of their own weight." | | Up to this point it was thought, by many builders, that a safe method | of building bigger buildings was to simply scale up the dimensions | of the structure's individual elements (wall, columns, beams etc.). | In other words, it was considered safe to make a wall twice as tall if | you made it twice as thick. Many buildings that were designed using | this method FAILED. | | It is now known that many elements of a structure CANNOT be scaled up | using a linear relationship!! | | The field of "Strength of Materials" is born! | | Today student engineers take a course in college | which they refer to as "Strengths". | |---- 1662 Robert Hooke - Theory of elasticity | |---- 1679 Hooke reveals the solution to his anagram "ceiiinosssttuu" - | "ut tensio, sic vis" - "as the extension, so the force" | All solid material must yield to resists force. | |---- 1687 Newton's Laws written | |---- 1709 First piano built | |---- 1752 Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) | Showed that lighting was a form of electricity | |---- 1757 Leonhard Euler derived the formula for | the buckling of a pinned-pinned column | |---- 1760 Mechanization of British industry began | |---- 1769 Watt's steam engineer built | |---- 1776 Americans declared independence | |---- 1793 Eli Whitney invents the Cotton gin | |---- 1795 Metric system adopted in France | |---- 1799 Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) Builds first battery | |---- 1807 Steam ship built by Robert Fulton | Slave trade abolished in British Empire | | A machine that made paper in a continuous roll was patented | by Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier | |---- 1814 First Steam locomotive built by George Stephenson | |---- 1820 Hans Oersted (1777-1851) discovered a link between | magnetism and electricity. | |---- 1826 Ampere's work in electrodynamics | |---- 1827 Ohm's Law | Beethoven died | |---- 1830 Regular passenger train servce began in England | |---- 1831 Faraday's electromagnetic induction device | |---- 1836 First telegraph (Samuel Morse) | Texas gained independence from Mexico | | |---- 1852 The American Society of Civil Engineers founded5 | | |---- 1856 Bessemer process for making steel developed | |---- 1863 Slavery abolished in the United States | |---- 1866 Alfred Nobel develops dynamite | |---- 1869 Suez Canal opened | |---- 1874 A U.S. Patent was granted to T.B. Rhodes for several | different forms of hollow concrete block.6 | | First large span (three-spans of 500 ft. ) | steel bridge - St. Louis Bridge over the Mississippi | River, Designed by James B. Eads | | |---- 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone | |---- 1879 Thomas Edison invents the light bulb | |---- 1883 The American Society of Mechanical Engineers founded | | | Completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by | John A. Roebling (Suspension - 1595 ft. span) | Spans the East River to link Brooklyn and Manhattan | |---- 1884 The American Institute of Electrical Engineers founded | | |---- 1885 William Stanley invents an | alternating current transformer | |---- 1895 The discovery of X-rays (Roentgen) | |---- 1902 Air Conditioning invented | |---- 1903 First powered air flight | |---- 1908 The American Institute of Chemical Engineers founded | | | | |---- 1912 Titanic sank | |---- 1914 Panama Canal opened | |---- 1915 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) published | The General Theory of Relativity | |---- 1919 First nonstop flight across Atlantic | |---- 1937 First jet engine built | |---- 1939 Radar developed by the British | |---- 1940 Penicillin developed | |---- 1950 World population 2.3 billion | |---- 1953 Mount Everest climbed for first time | |---- 1956 Oral polio vaccine developed | |---- 1957 Launching of Sputnik I | |---- 1968 Aswan High Dam in Egypt completed | |---- 1969 First man on the moon | |---- 1977 Apple Computer releases the Apple II computer | |---- 1978 World population 4.4 billion | |---- 1982 OPEC announced cut in oil production | Population in china reached 1 billion | |---- 1983 Robert Wolf writes the first Bridge Builder® analysis engine on a Wang Computer | |---- 1989 Bridge Builder® for the Apple II hits the market in A+ magazine | | | | | |
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