1.

Fire (400,000 BCE) The controlled use of fire was an invention in the early
Stone Age, with some of the earliest evidence dating back to hundreds of thousands
of years ago. Its not exactly certain when fire was first being used by humans, but
most research puts it somewhere between 200,000 and 600,000 years ago.
2. Language (100,000 BCE) True semantic, phonetic language was first being
used around 100,000 BCE, making it a lot easier to pass on how-to knowledge from
generation to generation and speeding the spread of innovation.
3. Trade and Specialization (17,000 BCE) In Chapter 2 of the book The
Rational Optimist, author Matt Ridley highlights just how important specialization
and trade has been to our advancement as humans. Matt gives the example of two
early humans Oz and Adam. Oz focuses on getting really good at catching fish and
Adam focuses on getting really good at making fish hooks, and then they trade as
needed for both to benefit. The first known instance of humans trading with other
humans comes from New Guinea around 17,000 BCE, where locals exchanged
obsidian, a black volcanic glass used to make hunting arrowheads, for other needed
goods. By 3,000 BCE, trade routes across Asia and the Middle East developed,
followed the domestication of the camel and the creation of the trade caravan.
Trading merchants, who purchased goods up front and held the inventory as they
transported it were, of course, the original entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs rearrange
land, labor, goods, and capital to enable the sum of the outputs to have high value
than the sum of the inputs.
4. Farming (15,000 BCE) Around 15,000 BCE (about 17,000 years ago), the
first animal domestication began taking place, and around 10,000 BCE, the first
domestication of plants. This step was critical for the advancement of the human
species. Instead of having to be a nomadic species that continually moved around
seeking new places to hunt and to gather, we could stay in one place. This allowed
us to start to form communities and cities (the basis for civilizations), which have
been critical in the development of human knowledge. Around 12,000 BCE, food
preservation began as civilizations in the Middle East extended the life of their foods
through drying them in the sun. With the ability keep food edible beyond the time
that it would naturally go bad, and store it for the future, time and energy were
made available to work on other things besides simply farming, hunting, and
gathering, enabling a great advance in our ability to specialize and trade. With
greater specialization and trade came a substantial increase in the variety of tools
and goods available.
5. The Ship (4000 BCE) Around 4,000 BCE, the ancient Egyptians were making
wooden sailboats and around 1200 BCE the Phoenicians and the Greeks began to
make even bigger sailing ships. The advent of the ship was a huge step forward
from humanity because it was one of the first forms of transport that enabled
commerce to begin happening between different parts of the world.

6. The Wheel (3400 BCE) The next significant step in the history of innovation
came with the creation of the wheel, sometime between 3300 and 3500 BCE We
know this thanks to the discovery in southern Poland of the earliest known depiction
of a wheeled vehicle on a clay pot.
7. Money (3000 BCE) The next critically important innovation that contributed
to the development of a strong human civilization was money. Around 3000 BCE,
the Sumerians were one of the first societies (if not the first) to begin using money
to help the ease of commerce and exchanging of goods, replacing the barter
system.
8. Iron, (3000 BCE) The whole science of metallurgy began around 4400 BCE
when human civilizations began to use copper and silver, and soon thereafter we
figured out how to merge copper and tin to form bronze. Around 3000 BCE we found
an even stronger substance called iron, which gave rise to a new age of human
history.
9. Written Language (2900 BCE) Although language had been around for tens
of thousands of years, the invention of written language was extremely important
because it made written records and numerical calculations possible. The first
recorded written language was Sumerian cuneiform, which started around 2900
BCE.
10. The Legal System (1780 BCE) In 1780 BCE, Hammurabi, the sixth king of
Babylon, was one of the first to write down a formalized code of laws. He created a
structure that enabled his people to understand what the societal norms were.
Other examples include the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Ten Commandments,
the Twelve Tables of Rome, and the Book of Leviticusearly legal systems that
enabled society to tackle dispute resolution at a lower cost and create an
understanding of what the norms are. These systems helped create amazing
advancement in our ability to conduct commerce in a frictionless environment.
11. The Alphabet (1050 BCE) The first true alphabet (containing vowels as
well as consonants) was created by the Phoenicians around 1050 BCE. Many
modern alphabets evolved from the Phoenician alphabet.
12. Steel (650 BCE) Steel is a compound, an alloy between iron and carbon,
and one of the strongest substances we know.The earliest known production of steel
is a piece of ironware excavated in Western Asia that is about 4,000 years old. The
Spartans used steel extensively around 650 BCE, as did the Chinese from 400 BCE,
and the Romans.
13. Water Power (200 BCE) The next great innovation, around 200 BCE, was
water powerfirst used in the Fertile Crescent area in the Middle East. This
breakthrough enabled enormous transformations in our ability as a species to

harness power, and water power continued to be used into the nineteenth century,
when water-powered mills were still common in England and New England.
14. Paper (105) Moving into the common era (CE) calendar, we saw the creation
of paper, which was first used by the Chinese in around the year 105. Around the
sixteenth century, wood pulp paper became more widely used, replacing rag paper.
With wood paper, knowledge could spread much more easily.
15. Movable Type (1040) Advancing about 900 years, we had the creation of
movable type. While many people think that movable type began in 1436 with
Gutenbergs printing press, it actually goes back to imperial China in year 1040.
Later, when Gutenberg invented his press, he was able to use special inks and tin,
lead, and antimony to mass-produce books and get content to the educated folks of
Europe in fifteenth century.
16. The Microscope (1592) The microscope was an extremely important
invention that has led to the more recent breakthroughs in the understanding of
nanotechnology and the understanding of atomic structure. Back in 1592, Dutch
spectacle makers Zacharias and Hans, a father and son team, discovered that
nearby objects appeared greatly enlarged when looking through a specially shaped
lens, creating the first known microscope.
17. Electricity (1600) Going forward to 1600, English scientist William Gilbert
coined the term electricity, which originated from the Greek word for amber. Later,
in 1752, Ben Franklin showed that lightning and the spark from amber were one and
the same substance: electricity.
18. The Telescope (1608) In 1608, Hans Lippershey created a convex lens and
concave eyepiece that enabled the creation of the telescope. The next year, Galileo
Galilei built on these early designs to create a much more powerful telescope that
enabled us to truly see the heavens and understand our place in the universe.
19. The Engine (1712) The steam engine was first invented by Thomas
Newcomen in 1712 building on the ideas on Denis Papin and Thomas Savery. Steam
power was tremendously important to the development of seafaring navigation and
to powering the machinery that drove the industrial revolution. The internal
combustion engine followed, first made commercially successful by Etienne Lenoir
in 1858.
20. The Light Bulb (1800) In 1800, Humphry Davy, an English scientist,
created the first light bulb. It was improved in 1879 by Thomas Edison, who
discovered that a certain type of carbon filament, when placed in bulb without
oxygen, could glow for 40 hours. Later on, Edison would create a bulb that could last
for over 1,500 hoursa tremendous advancement in our ability as a society to be
able to do things even after the sun has set.

21. The Telegraph (1809) In 1809, the first crude telegraph was invented in
Bavaria by Samuel Soemmering, and in 1828 the first telegraph in the United States
was invented by Harrison Dyer. It was, of course, Samuel Morse, creator of the
Morse code, who invented the telegraph communication system that ended up
succeeding commercially.
22. The Electromagnet (1825) In 1825, the electric magnet was discovered by
British inventor William Sturgeon. His first magnet was an iron horseshoe wrapped
with copper wire. When he passed an electric current through the wire, the 7 oz.
horseshoe became a magnet and current life nine pounds. Electromagnets went on
to be used in motors, generators, loudspeakers, hard drives, MRI machines, and
particle accelerators.
23. Petroleum (1859) In 1859, petroleum was discovered. The first natural gas
well was created in Ohio and the first oil well was created and the first oil refined in
Pennsylvania. Petroleum was one of the most efficient substances in terms of the
amount of energy that could be expended per ounce of liquid when burned. The
discovery of petroleum, of course, led to the gas-powered car half a century later as
well as a substantial increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
24. The Telephone (1860) In 1860, the telephone was invented by Johann
Philipp Reis. He was the first to produce a functioning electromagnetic device that
could transmit understandable sounds. Sixteen years later, Alexander Graham Bell
received the first patent for telephones and invented the first commercially
successful telephone.
25. The Vacuum Tube (1883) In 1883, Thomas Edison discovered that an
electrical current doesnt need a wire through which to moveit could actually
travel through gas or a vacuum. In 1893, ten years later, Lee De Forest invented the
Audion, which could control the flow of and amplify the currentan innovation that
became critically important to telecommunication later on in the twentieth century.
26. Semiconductors (1896) In 1896, the first semiconductors were discovered.
A semiconductor is simply material that has electrical conductivity due to flowing
electrons. Today, silicon serves as the main component for most commercially
produced semiconductors. Germanium, gallium, arsenide, and silicon carbide can
also be used but silicon is more common (which is the main reason that the area
between San Francisco and San Jose is called Silicon Valley.) Jagadish Chandra Bose
was the first to apply semiconductors for commercial purposes around 1896.
27. Penicillin (1896) - In 1896, the French medical student Ernest Duchesne
originally discovered the antibiotic properties of Penicillium, however his research
went mostly unnoticed. It took until 1928 for Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming to
re-discovered penicillin. Penicillin enabling doctors to fight bacterial infections, save
lives, and cure syphilis, gangrene and tuberculosis.

28. The Radio (1897) The next great invention was the radio. In 1897, Nikolai
Tesla applied for and received the first radio system patent after demonstrating it
the year before at the Worlds Fair. Radio took advantage of the amazing invisible
parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to transmit information through waves.
Today, we take it for granted that signals can travel invisibly through the air, but
130 years ago it was quite radical to demonstrate that there were things that we
could not see that were still real. In fact, the visible part of the electromagnetic
spectrum is only a very small fraction. From the studies of the electromagnetic
spectrum now know that there are gamma waves and x waves and radio and
television, which have revolutionized human communication globally.
29. The Electron (1897) That same year, 1897, J. Thomson discovered the
electron. An electron is a negatively charged subatomic particle and its the primary
carrier of electricity, which of course has revolutionized the world in the last 115
years.
30. Quantum Physics (1900) The history of quantum physics is quite
fascinating. It began with a number of discoveries going back all the way to 1838
with Michael Faradays discovery of cathode ray tube, and included 1887s
discovery by Heinrich Hertz of the photoelectric effect. But the real beginning of
quantum physics was arguably in 1900 with Max Plancks quantum hypothesis: that
any energy-radiating atomic system can be divided into individual energy elements.
Using that research in 1905, Albert Einstein theorized and later proved that light is
made up of individual quantum particles which were later termed photons by Gilbert
Lewis.
31. The Airplane, 1903 In 1903, we saw the invention of the airplane by the
Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, on the North Carolina coast with the first
successful flight of a manned machine occurring on December 17.
32. Television, 1926 The creation of television happened in 1926, but there
were many inventions that led up to it, including the discovery of the
photoconductivity of selenium in 1873 by Willoughby Smith and the 1884 invention
of the scanning disk by Paul Nipkow. It was John Logie Baird who created the first
televised moving images in 1926. Ten years later, the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) broadcast the first public television show.
33. The Transistor, 1947 1947 saw the creation of the transistor. A transistor is
a device thats used to amplify and switch electronic signals. Its extremely
important in the ability to exchange information over a distance. Once we could
amplify electronic signals we could have global telecommunications. In 1906, Lee
De Forest had developed the triode in a vacuum tube that could amplify signals,
which had helped overseas telephone calls be made for the first time, but it was in
1947 at AT&T that Bill Shankly and his team created the first semiconductor

transistor. Of course, it was Bill Shankly who later founded Shankly Semiconductor,
out of which Fairchild Semiconductor and later Intel were born.
34. DNA (1953) In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered DNA while
working at Cambridge University. The duo suggested that the correct model for DNA
structure was the double helix model and famously walked into a local pub and
exclaimed, We have found the secret of life.
35. The Integrated Circuit (1959)- In 1959, we saw the creation and discovery
of the integrated circuit. Integrated circuits allow engineers to fit a lot more
transistors, resistors, and capacitors in a smaller area. It was Jack Kilby of Texas
Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor, along with their teams,
who created the first integrated circuits in 1959. All computers eventually ended up
using integrated circuits, which later developed into microprocessors.
36. The Internet (1969) In 1969, we saw the creation of the early Internet,
called the ARPANET, which was built by the United States Department of Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (then called ARPA, today called DARPA) to
connect researchers at different locations. The ARPANET delivered its first message
on October 29, 1969 between UCLA and Stanford. The first message was simply the
word log in. The message crashed the network and only the first two letters, L and
O, made it through. By the end of 1969, four computers were connected to the
ARPANET. By the 1980s, the ARPANET had turned into a global network that was
used to send files and data from one computer to another. But it took until 1991 for
the creation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) by Tim Berners-Lee, which
enabled the creation of a web of hyperlink documents. The World Wide Web became
a communication tool that formed a constantly updating record of human
knowledge and expression. A year later, in 1992, researchers of the University of
Illinois developed a browser that created a user-friendly way to view the World Wide
Web. Initially called Mosaic, that first browser turned into the company and product
Netscape, which revolutionized the ability of individuals to access information
globally.
37. Microprocessors (1971) In 1971, Ted Hoff of Intel created the
microprocessor, which was an integrated circuit. It had all the functions of the
computer or a central processing unit (CPU) on it, in a tiny space. The first chip was
called the Intel 4004. It had 2300 transistors on it. It had as much power in one
single chip as the ENIAC supercomputer, a 30-ton computer built in 1946. The
microprocessor led to the miniaturization and the creation of the PC industry in the
late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, which enables us to have a supercomputer in our
pockets today, connected to the global Internetan amazingly important invention in
human history that happened only a little more than four decades ago.

38. The Mobile Phone (1973) In 1973, Motorola launched the first handheld
mobile phone. The first prototype weighed 2.5 pounds, offered 30 minutes of talk
time, and featured a battery that took ten hours to recharge.
39. The Smartphone (2007) On January 9, 2007, the iPhone launched, the first
widely available smartphone with multi-touch capabilities (the ability to detect two
fingers at once, enabling more complex user interactions such as pinch-to-zoom).
The lowly telephone had turned into a cloud-connected smartphone with built-in
GPS, compass, voice recorder, camera, maps, and web browser with an app store
that allowed the user to download from a selection of millions of specialty
applications. The multitouch smartphone paved the way for the tablet and the
coming convergence of the laptop/tablet/and smartphone and new hybrids such as
cloud-connected glasses and smartwatches. A world with smartphones with
sufficient processing power and memory to be used as full-featured computers
connected via docking stations to flexible frame monitors with hand gesture inputs
and a projected keypad was soon approaching.
40. The Quantum Computer (2011) The last step in our brief history of
innovation is the quantum computer. In 2011, the first quantum computer was
brought to market by D-wave. It was called the Dwave One. Quantum computers
use superposition and entanglement to solve some computing problems thousands
of times faster than traditional computers. In May 2013 Google announced it was
purchasing a D-wave Two quantum computer to be hosted at the Quantum Artificial
Research Lab at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA.
What will be next on this list of innovation list? Will you be part of a team that
creates of the most important innovations in human history?