| c. 1200 | Central America | By this period, the Aztec and Maya peoples of Central America are manufacturing and using rubber, for example to make balls for use in games and sports. |
| 1370 | Germany, Holy Roman Empire | The earliest iron needles are manufactured, at Nuremberg, Germany, with a closed hook on the end; needles with eyes are manufactured in the Netherlands about 1400. |
| c. 1770 | UK | English inventor Richard Arkwright tries his cotton spinning machinery at a mill in Nottingham. The following year he goes into full-scale production in a new water-powered mill at Cromford, Derbyshire, and builds houses for the workers, creating the first factory town. |
| 1779 | England | English inventor Samuel Crompton devises the spinning mule, a cross between a spinning jenny and a water-frame spinning machine. It makes possible the large-scale manufacture of thread. |
| 1794 | USA | US inventor Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, which separates the cotton seeds from the fibre, facilitating the production of short staple cotton, which can be grown throughout the southeastern USA. Over the next decade, US cotton production will soar from £140,000 to £35 million. |
| 1797 | England | English bone china is developed by English pottery manufacturer Josiah Spode. |
| 1878 | UK | German-born British inventor Charles William Siemens invents the electric arc furnace, the first to use electricity to make steel. |
| 1961 | USA | US inventor George Devol and US businessman Joseph Engelberger develop the first true robot, a programmable manipulator called ‘Programmed Article Transfer’. Installed at General Motors by their company Unimation, it is used to unload parts from a die-casting operation. |
| 1979 | USA | The Ideal Toy Co. in New York City begins manufacturing the Rubik cube, invented by a Hungarian lecturer in architectural design Professor Erno Rubik. |
| 1982 | USA | US firm Applied Biosystems markets an automated gene sequencer that can sequence 18,000 DNA bases a day, compared with a few hundred a year by hand in the 1970s. |
