| c. 1 million BC | Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia | Acheulian hand axes appear in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Typically 20–25 cm/8–10 in long, the entire surface is flaked to produce a diamond-shaped axe. Since the edges are formed by flaking from both sides they are sharper than the previous choppers and are used primarily as hunters' knives. Some of the earliest hand axes are used in Olduvai Gorge by Homo erectus. |
| c. 500000 BC | China | Homo erectus in China is the first regularly to use fire. |
| c. 200000 BC | world | Scrapers for working hides become common suggesting that Homo erectus begins to wear clothing. |
| c. 200000 BC | Africa | Tools made from wood and bone begin to be developed and used in Africa, near Lake Turkana in present-day Kenya. |
| c. 40000 BC | Europe | The Upper, or Late, Palaeolithic cultural period begins. It is characterized by complex and specialized tools and the emergence of regional stone tool industries such as Perigordian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian in Europe. An important new tool is the burin, or engraver, used to scrape grooves in bone; two parallel grooves are used to detach a sliver of bone to make a needle, awl (pin), or fish hook. Blade tools lacking a serrated edge, and small thin blades, are also made and are used to create long cutting edges when cemented into a piece of wood using resin. |
| c. 35000 BC | world | Homo sapiens produces advanced tools requiring assemblage of head and haft which provides more kinetic energy and allows large trees to be cut down. |
| c. 28000 BC | Europe | The earliest ceramics (small statues and beads) are made from local loess at the Pavlov Hills in what is now the Czech Republic. |
| c. 10000 BC | North America | Distinctive leaf-shaped arrowheads, as well as scrapers, knives, and blades, known as the Folsom cultural complex, begin to be made by hunting cultures on the Great Plains, North America. |
| c. 8000 BC–c. 2700 BC | Europe | The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age begins in western Europe. It is characterized by the use of microliths (very small stone tools mounted on a shaft), chipped stone tools, and bone, antler, and wooden tools. Important inventions include the barbed fish-hook, harpoon, woven basket, clay cooking pot, and the comb. Some examples of these tools have been found at Star Carr in Yorkshire, England. |
| c. 5500 BC | Persia | Copper is smelted in Persia, the first metal to be smelted. |
| c. 5000 BC | Egypt | The equal-arm balance is invented in Egypt. It consists of a beam supported by weighing pans hung from both ends. |
| c. 4400 BC | Egypt | The weaving loom is invented in Egypt. It consists of a frame that holds two sets of alternating parallel threads in place (the warp). By raising one set of threads it is possible to run a cross-thread (the weft) between them using a shuttle. |
| c. 4100 BC | Middle East, Egypt | The Chalcolithic (copper–stone) Age begins at the end of this millennium and continues for the first half of the next, affecting most of the ‘Fertile Crescent’, from the Nile valley through Palestine and Syria to the Tigris–Euphrates valley. Tools as well as ornaments are now made of copper as an alternative to stone. Copper beads are used by the Badarian culture of the Nile. |
| c. 3000 BC | Egypt, Crete | Candles made of tallow begin to be used in Egypt and Crete. |
| c. 2500 BC | Egypt | Metal mirrors, made of highly polished silver, gold, and bronze, are used in Egypt. |
| c. 1700 BC | Assyria | The doors in the palace of Khorsabad in Nineveh, Assyria, are sealed with a device consisting of a pin-tumbler, a large wooden bolt pierced by several holes, and several wooden pins positioned to drop into these holes and grip the bolt – the first lock. |
| c. 1450 BC | Egypt | A balance with a pointer indicating the weight is developed in Egypt. |
| c. 1400 BC | Egypt | The clepsydra (water clock), consisting of a vessel with a hole in the base and lines on the inside to indicate the passage of time, begins to be used in Egypt. It has the advantage over the sundial in that it can be used to tell the time at night. It may already have been in use in Babylon. |
| c. 1100 BC | China | The spinning wheel is invented in China, derived from the machines used to draw out silk from the silkworm. It subsequently spreads to India and reaches Europe about the 13th century AD. |
| c. 700 BC | Greece | Oil lamps appear in Greece, replacing torches. The Greeks also invent the fibula (safety-pin), although the idea is lost after the fall of the Roman Empire. |
| c. 375 BC | Greece | Greek scientist Archytas of Tarentum invents the screw. |
| c. 270 BC | Egypt, Ptolemaic Kingdom | Greek physicist and inventor Ctesibius of Alexandria lays the foundations for the development of modern pumps with his invention of a small pipe organ, the hydraulis, which is supplied with air by a piston pump. |
| c. 250 BC | Greece | Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes invents the Archimedes screw for removing water from the hold of a large ship. A similar device is already in use in Egypt for irrigation. |
| c. 200 BC | Europe, Asia | Eurasian horseriders invent the horseshoe. It reaches Rome by 100 BC. |
| 1280 | Italy | Alessandro della Spina and Salvino degli Armati of Florence, Italy, are traditionally credited with the invention of spectacles. Their first designs use convex lenses to correct long-sightedness. |
| 1288 | Middle East | The Jewish astronomer Jacob ben Makir ibn Tibbon writes a Hebrew treatise on the construction and use of an instrument called the quadrant. This is a considerably simpler device than the astrolabe for making astronomical measurements. |
| 1289 | Italy | The block printing of complete manuscript pages is introduced for the first time in Europe at Ravenna, Italy. |
| 1298 | Germany, Holy Roman Empire | A spinning wheel for manufacturing thread from fibre is first mentioned in Europe in the Drapers' Statutes of the German town of Speyer. It is introduced from India via the Middle East. |
| 1323 | France | The earliest reference to water-driven bellows used in an iron forge, at Briey, France, is recorded. |
| 1600 | Netherlands | Around this time, the compound microscope, which uses two lenses to magnify objects, is invented – probably by Hans Lippershey or Hans Jansen and his son Zacharias, both spectacle makers from Middelburg in the Netherlands. |
| 1770 | England | English designer Jesse Ramsden invents a screw-cutting lathe. |
| 1786 | USA | US inventor Ezekiel Reed invents a nail-making machine. |
| 1789 | USA | English-born US industrialist Samuel Slater memorizes the plans of Richard Arkwright's spinning machine and brings the technology to the USA. |
| 1807 | UK | English inventors Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier receive a patent for an improved version of Nicolas-Louis Robert's papermaking machine. Their new ‘Fourdrinier machine’ allows production of paper in continuous sheets. |
| 1812 | UK | The world's first steam threshing machine is powered by one of Richard Trevithick's high-pressure steam engines. |
| 1839 | UK | British engineer James Nasmyth designs the steam hammer; an important tool for forging heavy machinery. He patents it 24 November 1842. |
| 12 August 1851 | USA | US inventor Isaac Merrit Singer patents the first practical domestic sewing machine for general use, in Boston, Massachusetts. His design, which enables continuous and curved stitching, and allows any part of the material to be worked on, sets the pattern for all subsequent sewing machines. |
| 1874 | USA | US inventor Joseph Glidden designs a machine for making barbed wire. Inexpensive and easy to put up, it transforms the open range of the western USA into fenced pastureland. |
| 1885 | USA | The US firm Singer demonstrates the first electric sewing machine, at the Philadelphia Electric Exhibition. |
| 3 July 1886 | USA | The New York Tribune is the first newspaper to put into operation the linotype machine, an automatic typesetting machine invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1884. |
| 1896 | USA | US inventor Elmer Ambrose Sperry develops the gyrocompass, which always points to true north. It is first installed on the US battleship Delaware, in 1911, and later in torpedoes and aeroplanes. |
| 1929 | | US inventors Joseph Horton and Warren Marrison apply the oscillations of the quartz crystal to timekeeping. Because the crystals oscillate at 100,000 hertz, they greatly improve the accuracy of clocks, being out by about one second every ten years. |
| 3 June 1948 | USA | The 5-m/200-in Hale reflector telescope is opened at Mount Palomar Observatory, California; it remains the world's largest and most powerful telescope until 1974. |
| 1950 | USA | The first Xerox photocopying machine is produced by the Haloid Company (later to become the Xerox Corporation) in Rochester, New York. |
