Timeline of materials technology

Before Common Era

• 29,000–25,000 BCE - First ceramic appears
• 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

1st millennium

• 700s - Porcelain is invented in China

2nd millennium

• 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

18th century

• 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

19th century

• 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

20th century

• 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 coefficient of thermal expansion
• 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

3rd millennium

21st century