Chrono-Shift

Science & technology history timeline

Discoveries and inventions that changed how we live, from the first tools to the internet.

234 events, oldest first.

Timeline of Science & technology history

  1. 240 BC

    Halley's Comet is first recorded

    Chinese astronomers recorded it, and it has been seen on every return since.

  2. 1054

    Astronomers record the Crab Nebula supernova

    It was bright enough to be seen in daylight for 23 days.

  3. 1202

    Fibonacci introduces Arabic numerals to Europe

    His book Liber Abaci also contains the famous Fibonacci sequence.

  4. 1473

    Nicolaus Copernicus is born

    He was born in Toruń, in present-day Poland.

  5. c. 1495

    Leonardo da Vinci designs a robot knight

    Engineers built a working version from his notes in 2002.

  6. 1543

    Copernicus publishes his Sun-centred universe

    Legend says he was handed the first printed copy on his deathbed.

  7. 1543

    Vesalius publishes his anatomy of the human body

    His detailed drawings corrected errors that had stood since Roman times.

  8. 1564

    Galileo Galilei is born

    He was born in the same year as Shakespeare, and three days before Michelangelo died.

  9. 1572

    Tycho Brahe sees a new star

    Tycho lost part of his nose in a duel and wore a metal replacement.

  10. 1604

    Kepler sees a supernova

    It is the most recent supernova in our galaxy seen with the naked eye.

  11. 1608

    The telescope is invented in the Netherlands

    Hans Lipperhey applied for a patent on it, but was refused.

  12. 1609

    Kepler publishes his first laws of planetary motion

    Kepler showed that planets move in ellipses, not perfect circles.

  13. 1610

    Galileo discovers Jupiter's moons

    He named them after his patrons, the Medici family.

  14. 1628

    William Harvey describes the circulation of blood

    He worked out that the heart pumps more blood in an hour than the body contains.

  15. 1633

    Galileo is tried by the Inquisition

    He spent his last nine years under house arrest.

  16. 1639

    Jeremiah Horrocks observes a transit of Venus

    He was the first person known to have predicted and watched one.

  17. 1642

    Isaac Newton is born

    He was born in the same year that Galileo died.

  18. 1660

    The Royal Society is founded

    Its motto, 'Nullius in verba', means 'take nobody's word for it'.

  19. 1665

    Robert Hooke names 'cells' in Micrographia

    He named them after the small rooms that monks lived in.

  20. 1669

    Phosphorus is discovered

    Hennig Brand found it by boiling down huge quantities of urine.

  21. 1675

    Cassini finds a gap in Saturn's rings

    The gap, the Cassini Division, still bears his name.

  22. 1675

    The Royal Observatory at Greenwich is founded

    It was set up to help sailors work out their longitude at sea.

  23. 1676

    Van Leeuwenhoek first observes bacteria

    He was a cloth merchant who ground his own microscope lenses.

  24. 1687

    Isaac Newton publishes his laws of motion

    Harvard had already been teaching for half a century when Newton's Principia came out.

  25. 1709

    Abraham Darby smelts iron with coke

    His Coalbrookdale furnace helped kick-start the Industrial Revolution.

  26. 1712

    Newcomen builds his steam engine

    It was used to pump water out of mines.

  27. 1717

    Lady Mary Wortley Montagu learns of inoculation

    She saw smallpox inoculation in Istanbul and championed it in Britain.

  28. 1723

    The first fire extinguisher is patented

    Ambrose Godfrey's device used a small charge of gunpowder to scatter fire-fighting liquid.

  29. 1724

    Fahrenheit proposes his temperature scale

    He set 0 as the coldest temperature he could make with ice, water and salt.

  30. 1730

    John Harrison begins his sea clocks

    His later H4 watch helped solve the problem of finding longitude at sea.

  31. 1735

    Linnaeus publishes Systema Naturae

    It began the system of classifying living things that scientists still build on.

  32. 1742

    Anders Celsius proposes his temperature scale

    His original scale was upside down: water boiled at 0 and froze at 100.

  33. 1745

    The Leyden jar stores electricity

    Early experimenters used it to give each other shocks for entertainment.

  34. 1752

    Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment

    He showed lightning was electricity, and went on to invent the lightning rod.

  35. 1758

    Halley's Comet returns as predicted

    Edmond Halley had died 16 years earlier.

  36. 1764

    Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny

    It let one worker spin several threads at once.

  37. 1766

    Henry Cavendish discovers hydrogen

    He called it 'inflammable air'.

  38. 1769

    James Watt patents his improved steam engine

    The unit of power, the watt, is named after him.

  39. 1771

    Arkwright opens his cotton mill at Cromford

    It is often called the world's first modern factory.

  40. 1774

    Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen

    Priestley also invented fizzy soda water.

  41. 1781

    The Iron Bridge opens in Shropshire

    It was the world's first major bridge made of cast iron.

  42. 1781

    William Herschel discovers Uranus

    Herschel wanted to name it 'George's Star' after King George III.

  43. 1783

    Lavoisier shows water is made of two gases

    He also gave hydrogen its name.

  44. 1795

    France passes its first metric-system law

    The metre was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.

  45. 1796

    Edward Jenner tests the first vaccine

    The word 'vaccine' comes from vacca, Latin for cow, after the cowpox Jenner used.

  46. 1798

    Henry Cavendish weighs the Earth

    He worked out Earth's density using a delicate torsion balance in a shed.

  47. 1800

    Volta invents the electric battery

    Alessandro Volta's name gives us the word 'volt'.

  48. 1801

    Ceres, the first asteroid, is discovered

    It was spotted on the first night of the 19th century.

  49. 1807

    The first passenger railway service begins

    The Swansea and Mumbles Railway's first passengers rode in a horse-drawn carriage.

  50. 1816

    René Laennec invents the stethoscope

    Laennec rolled paper into a tube rather than press his ear to a patient's chest.

  51. 1817

    Karl Drais invents the 'running machine'

    The ancestor of the bicycle had no pedals; riders pushed along with their feet.

  52. 1821

    Faraday builds the first electric motor

    Michael Faraday had little schooling and started out as a bookbinder's apprentice.

  53. 1822

    Babbage begins his Difference Engine

    A full Difference Engine No. 2 was finally built from his plans in 1991 - and it worked.

  54. 1823

    The first lighter is invented

    German chemist Johann Döbereiner's lamp made a flame from hydrogen and a platinum catalyst.

  55. 1825

    The Erie Canal opens

    It helped make New York City America's busiest port.

  56. 1825

    The first public steam railway opens

    The Stockton and Darlington Railway's opening train carried coal, flour and hundreds of passengers.

  57. 1826

    The friction match is invented

    English chemist John Walker found it by accident when a chemical-coated stick caught fire as he scraped it.

  58. 1827

    Georg Ohm publishes Ohm's law

    His work was dismissed at first, before becoming a foundation of electronics.

  59. 1829

    Stephenson's Rocket wins the Rainhill Trials

    It reached about 30 mph, astonishing the crowds.

  60. 1830

    Edwin Budding invents the lawnmower

    He based it on a machine for trimming cloth.

  61. 1839

    Robert Cornelius takes the first selfie

    For the first photographic self-portrait, he had to sit still for several minutes.

  62. 1839

    The daguerreotype photograph is announced

    A Daguerre street scene caught the first person ever photographed: a man having his boots polished.

  63. 1842

    Christian Doppler describes the Doppler effect

    It was later tested with trumpeters playing on a moving train.

  64. 1843

    Ada Lovelace publishes the first computer program

    She wrote it for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, which was never built.

  65. 1843

    The fax machine is patented

    Scottish inventor Alexander Bain patented it more than 30 years before the telephone.

  66. 1843

    The earliest surviving photo of a US president is taken

    John Quincy Adams sat for it after leaving office; an 1841 image of William Henry Harrison is lost.

  67. 1844

    Morse sends his first long-distance telegraph

    The message 'What hath God wrought' travelled from Washington to Baltimore.

  68. 1845

    The rubber band is patented

    Stephen Perry's patent used vulcanised rubber.

  69. 1846

    Anaesthesia is first demonstrated in public

    The Boston operating theatre where it happened is now known as the Ether Dome.

  70. 1846

    Neptune is discovered

    It was found by maths first: Urbain Le Verrier calculated where astronomers should look.

  71. 1849

    The safety pin is patented

    Walter Hunt is said to have invented it in a few hours to pay off a $15 debt, then sold the patent for $400.

  72. 1851

    Isaac Singer patents his sewing machine

    Singer's company pioneered selling machines on instalment plans.

  73. 1854

    John Snow traces cholera to a water pump

    He had the handle of the Broad Street pump removed.

  74. 1858

    Gray's Anatomy is first published

    Henry Gray died of smallpox just three years later, aged 34.

  75. 1858

    The first transatlantic telegraph message

    Queen Victoria's 98-word greeting to President Buchanan took about 16 hours to send.

  76. 1858

    Wallace sends Darwin his theory of evolution

    It pushed Darwin to finally publish his own ideas.

  77. 1859

    Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species

    Booksellers took up the whole first printing of 1,250 copies on the day it came out.

  78. 1860

    The oldest known recording of a voice is made

    A phonautograph caught someone singing 'Au clair de la lune' 17 years before Edison's phonograph.

  79. 1863

    The London Underground opens

    The world's first underground railway opened while Lincoln was president, using steam locomotives.

  80. 1865

    James Clerk Maxwell unifies electricity and magnetism

    His equations showed that light is an electromagnetic wave.

  81. 1866

    Gregor Mendel publishes his pea experiments

    His work on heredity was ignored for 34 years before being rediscovered.

  82. 1867

    Joseph Lister introduces antiseptic surgery

    He used carbolic acid, and Listerine mouthwash was later named after him.

  83. 1868

    Helium is discovered in the Sun

    It was detected in sunlight 27 years before it was found on Earth.

  84. 1868

    The first traffic light is installed in London

    The gas-lit signal outside Parliament predated the motor car, and it exploded a few weeks later.

  85. 1868

    The QWERTY typewriter is patented

    The QWERTY layout was designed partly to stop the typebars jamming.

  86. 1869

    Mendeleev publishes his periodic table

    He left gaps for undiscovered elements and correctly predicted their properties.

  87. 1869

    The Suez Canal opens

    Ships could finally sail between Europe and Asia without going all the way around Africa.

  88. 1872

    Japan's first railway opens

    British engineers helped build the line between Tokyo and Yokohama.

  89. 1874

    Barbed wire is patented

    Joseph Glidden's design helped fence off the open range of the American West.

  90. 1876

    Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

    Bell's lawyer filed his patent on the same day as a rival claim by Elisha Gray.

  91. 1877

    Edison demonstrates his phonograph

    The first words he recorded were 'Mary had a little lamb'.

  92. 1878

    Muybridge photographs a galloping horse

    His photos proved a galloping horse has all four hooves off the ground at once.

  93. 1879

    Edison tests a long-lasting light bulb

    His later carbonised bamboo filaments could burn for over 1,200 hours.

  94. 1880

    Cologne Cathedral is completed

    Work began in 1248, so the cathedral took over six centuries to finish.

  95. 1882

    Construction of the Sagrada Família begins

    Gaudí worked on it for over 40 years, and it is still being finished today.

  96. 1882

    Edison's Pearl Street power station opens

    On its first day it lit about 400 lamps for around 80 customers in Manhattan.

  97. 1883

    The Brooklyn Bridge opens

    P. T. Barnum later led 21 elephants across it to prove it was safe.

  98. 1885

    Pasteur first uses his rabies vaccine

    His patient, nine-year-old Joseph Meister, survived and later worked at the Pasteur Institute.

  99. 1886

    A new process makes aluminium cheap

    Napoleon III had served his most honoured guests on aluminium plates, then worth more than gold.

  100. 1886

    Josephine Cochrane patents the dishwasher

    She was a wealthy socialite fed up with servants chipping her china.

  101. 1886

    Karl Benz patents the motor car

    Two years later, Bertha Benz secretly drove it 106 km to her mother's house to prove it worked.

  102. 1887

    Émile Berliner invents the gramophone record

    His flat discs were far easier to mass-produce than Edison's cylinders.

  103. 1887

    Heinrich Hertz detects radio waves

    Asked what use they had, Hertz reportedly said, 'Nothing, I guess.'

  104. 1888

    The Kodak camera goes on sale

    Its slogan was 'You press the button, we do the rest'.

  105. 1888

    The oldest surviving film is shot

    Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene lasts about two seconds.

  106. 1889

    The Eiffel Tower is completed

    It was built for the 1889 World's Fair and was meant to stand for only 20 years.

  107. 1890

    Florence Nightingale's voice is recorded

    Her short wax-cylinder message can still be heard today.

  108. 1890

    The Forth Bridge opens

    Repainting it seemed so endless that it became a byword for a never-ending task.

  109. 1892

    James Dewar invents the vacuum flask

    He invented it for keeping chemicals cold in the lab, not tea hot.

  110. 1893

    The first Ferris wheel turns in Chicago

    It was built to rival the Eiffel Tower at the World's Columbian Exposition.

  111. 1894

    Tower Bridge opens

    It is often mistaken for London Bridge, which is the next bridge upstream.

  112. 1895

    X-rays are discovered

    Wilhelm Röntgen's first X-ray image showed his wife's hand, wedding ring and all.

  113. 1896

    Marconi patents his radio system

    Italian officials showed little interest, so he patented it in Britain.

  114. 1898

    London's first escalator opens at Harrods

    Nervous customers were offered brandy or smelling salts at the top.

  115. 1898

    Marie and Pierre Curie discover radium

    Marie Curie's notebooks are still so radioactive they are kept in lead-lined boxes.

  116. 1900

    The Paris Metro opens

    Its Art Nouveau entrances were designed by Hector Guimard.

  117. 1901

    Hubert Booth's vacuum cleaner is patented

    His horse-drawn machine parked outside and fed its hoses in through the windows.

  118. 1901

    Karl Landsteiner discovers blood groups

    His discovery made blood transfusions far safer.

  119. 1903

    Britain introduces car number plates

    London's first plate, A 1, went to Earl Russell for his Napier car.

  120. 1903

    Marie Curie wins her first Nobel Prize

    She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

  121. 1903

    The Wright brothers' first powered flight

    Orville Wright lived until 1948 - after a jet had already broken the sound barrier.

  122. 1904

    Gillette's safety razor is patented

    King C. Gillette's real money came from selling the disposable blades.

  123. 1904

    The New York subway opens

    About 150,000 people rode it on its first evening.

  124. 1905

    Albert Einstein publishes special relativity

    He was working as a clerk at the Swiss patent office at the time.

  125. 1906

    The first radio broadcast of music

    Reginald Fessenden played 'O Holy Night' on the violin to ships at sea.

  126. 1908

    The first Model T Ford is built

    Ford's moving assembly line later cut its build time from about 12 hours to 90 minutes.

  127. 1910

    Neon lighting is first shown in Paris

    Georges Claude displayed the first neon lamps at the Paris Motor Show.

  128. 1911

    Rutherford discovers the atomic nucleus

    He compared the result to a shell bouncing back off tissue paper.

  129. 1912

    Alfred Wegener proposes continental drift

    He was widely ridiculed, and plate tectonics wasn't accepted until the 1960s.

  130. 1914

    The first scheduled airline flight

    The 23-minute hop across Tampa Bay carried one paying passenger.

  131. 1914

    The Panama Canal opens

    It saved ships sailing from New York to San Francisco a voyage of nearly 8,000 miles.

  132. 1915

    Einstein publishes general relativity

    It predicted that gravity bends light.

  133. 1915

    The first coast-to-coast phone call in the US

    Bell repeated 'Mr Watson, come here', and Watson replied it would take him a week.

  134. 1916

    Daylight saving time is introduced

    Germany introduced it first, to save coal during the First World War.

  135. 1919

    An eclipse confirms Einstein's relativity

    Arthur Eddington's measurements made Einstein world-famous overnight.

  136. 1920

    The first commercial radio station goes on air

    KDKA in Pittsburgh began by broadcasting US presidential election results.

  137. 1921

    The pop-up toaster is patented

    Charles Strite invented it after being served burnt toast in a factory canteen.

  138. 1922

    Insulin is first used to treat diabetes

    The first patient, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson, made a dramatic recovery.

  139. 1928

    Penicillin is discovered

    Alexander Fleming noticed mould killing bacteria on a dish left out while he was on holiday.

  140. 1929

    Edwin Hubble shows the universe is expanding

    Einstein later visited Hubble at Mount Wilson Observatory.

  141. 1930

    Pluto is discovered

    Its name was suggested by Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford.

  142. 1930

    The first flight attendant takes to the air

    Ellen Church was a registered nurse.

  143. 1931

    The Empire State Building opens

    It was built in just 410 days.

  144. 1932

    The neutron is discovered

    James Chadwick won the Nobel Prize for it just three years later.

  145. 1935

    The first parking meter is installed

    It was installed in Oklahoma City.

  146. 1936

    Alan Turing describes a universal computer

    He imagined a universal machine years before any real computer existed.

  147. 1937

    Technetium, the first artificial element, is made

    Its name comes from the Greek word for 'artificial'.

  148. 1937

    The Golden Gate Bridge opens

    Its famous 'International Orange' colour was inspired by the primer used on the steel.

  149. 1938

    Nuclear fission is discovered

    Lise Meitner helped explain it but was left out of the Nobel Prize.

  150. 1938

    László Bíró patents his ballpoint pen

    The Hungarian journalist got the idea from the fast-drying ink used to print newspapers.

  151. 1942

    The first nuclear reactor goes critical

    Chicago Pile-1 was built in a squash court under the stands of a football stadium.

  152. 1947

    A moth becomes the first computer 'bug'

    Grace Hopper's team found it in a relay and taped it into their logbook.

  153. 1947

    The transistor is invented

    A single smartphone chip today contains billions of them.

  154. 1948

    The vinyl LP is introduced

    Columbia's long-playing record held over 20 minutes of music per side.

  155. 1951

    Britain's first zebra crossing

    Crossings were already marked by amber 'Belisha beacons', named after a transport minister; they only began flashing in 1952.

  156. 1952

    The first jet airliner enters service

    The de Havilland Comet halved journey times on some routes.

  157. 1953

    Watson and Crick reveal DNA's double helix

    Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, 'Photo 51', was crucial to the discovery.

  158. 1954

    The first non-stick pan is made

    A French engineer's wife persuaded him to coat her pans with Teflon.

  159. 1954

    The first successful kidney transplant

    It was between identical twins in Boston.

  160. 1955

    The polio vaccine is declared safe

    Jonas Salk never patented it, asking: 'Could you patent the sun?'

  161. 1955

    Velcro is patented

    George de Mestral was inspired by burrs that stuck to his dog's fur on a walk in the Alps.

  162. 1957

    Bubble Wrap is invented

    It was first intended to be a textured wallpaper.

  163. 1958

    Britain's first motorway opens

    The Preston bypass was just 8 miles long.

  164. 1958

    The first implantable pacemaker is fitted

    Its first patient went on to outlive the device's inventor.

  165. 1958

    The integrated circuit is invented

    Jack Kilby built the first one while most of his colleagues were away on summer holiday.

  166. 1958

    Tokyo Tower opens

    It was inspired by the Eiffel Tower but painted orange and white for air safety.

  167. 1960

    The contraceptive pill is approved in the US

    Within five years, millions of American women were using it.

  168. 1960

    The first laser is built

    Early sceptics called it 'a solution looking for a problem'.

  169. 1962

    Telstar relays the first live transatlantic TV

    An instrumental named after it, by the Tornados, topped the US charts.

  170. 1963

    The compact cassette is introduced

    Philips let other manufacturers use the design for free, helping it spread worldwide.

  171. 1964

    Japan's first bullet train runs

    The line opened just nine days before the Tokyo Olympics.

  172. 1965

    Gordon Moore makes his famous prediction

    Moore's law predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would keep doubling.

  173. 1967

    The first human heart transplant

    Christiaan Barnard performed it in Cape Town; the patient lived for 18 days.

  174. 1968

    The computer mouse is first demonstrated

    The first mouse had a casing carved from wood.

  175. 1969

    The first ARPANET message is sent

    The network crashed after the first two letters, 'LO', of the word 'LOGIN'.

  176. 1970

    Egypt's Aswan High Dam is completed

    The temples of Abu Simbel were cut into blocks and moved to save them from its reservoir.

  177. 1970

    The jumbo jet enters passenger service

    The Boeing 747's famous hump was designed so it could easily be converted into a cargo plane.

  178. 1971

    Intel's first microprocessor is released

    The Intel 4004 was designed for a calculator made by Japanese company Busicom.

  179. 1971

    The first email is sent between networked computers

    Ray Tomlinson chose the @ sign and later said the test message was something like QWERTYUIOP.

  180. 1972

    The first leap second is added

    Leap seconds keep atomic clocks in step with Earth's slightly irregular spin.

  181. 1973

    The first handheld mobile phone call

    Motorola's Martin Cooper made it on a New York street - and called a rival engineer at Bell Labs.

  182. 1975

    Microsoft is founded

    Bill Gates and Paul Allen's first product was a BASIC language for the Altair computer.

  183. 1976

    Concorde enters passenger service

    It flew London to New York in about three and a half hours, at twice the speed of sound.

  184. 1976

    The CN Tower is completed

    It was the world's tallest freestanding structure for over 30 years.

  185. 1977

    The first MRI scan of a human body

    The first full-body scanner was named 'Indomitable'.

  186. 1978

    The first GPS satellite is launched

    GPS was originally built for the US military.

  187. 1978

    The first IVF baby is born

    Louise Brown was born in Oldham, England.

  188. 1978

    The first spam email is sent

    It advertised DEC computers to a few hundred ARPANET users.

  189. 1980

    Post-it Notes go on sale

    Their weak glue was an accidental discovery by a 3M scientist trying to make a super-strong adhesive.

  190. 1980

    Smallpox is declared eradicated

    It remains the only human disease ever wiped out worldwide.

  191. 1981

    The IBM Personal Computer is launched

    It ran an operating system Microsoft had bought from another firm for about $50,000.

  192. 1982

    CDs go on sale for the first time

    The first CD album released commercially was Billy Joel's 52nd Street.

  193. 1982

    Elk Cloner, an early computer virus, spreads

    It was written by a 15-year-old as a prank and spread on Apple II floppy disks.

  194. 1982

    The smiley :-) is proposed

    Scott Fahlman suggested it to mark jokes on a university message board.

  195. 1984

    The Apple Macintosh goes on sale

    It was launched with a famous Super Bowl advert directed by Ridley Scott.

  196. 1988

    The first internet worm spreads

    The Morris worm, written by a graduate student, slowed thousands of computers to a crawl.

  197. 1991

    A webcam is set up to watch a coffee pot

    Cambridge scientists used it to check whether the pot was empty before walking over.

  198. 1991

    The first Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded

    They honour research that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.

  199. 1991

    The World Wide Web goes public

    The first website explained what the web was and how to use it.

  200. 1992

    The first text message is sent

    It read 'Merry Christmas' and was sent from a computer to a phone.

  201. 1994

    Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hits Jupiter

    It was the first collision of two solar system bodies ever observed.

  202. 1994

    The Channel Tunnel opens

    Its undersea section is the longest of any tunnel in the world.

  203. 1994

    The first smartphone, IBM Simon, goes on sale

    It had a touchscreen and apps 13 years before the iPhone.

  204. 1995

    The first item is sold on eBay

    It was a broken laser pointer, bought by a collector of broken laser pointers.

  205. 1995

    The first planet around a Sun-like star is found

    Its discoverers won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019.

  206. 1995

    Windows 95 is released

    Microsoft paid to use the Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up' in its launch adverts.

  207. 1996

    Dolly the sheep is born

    The first mammal cloned from an adult cell was named after Dolly Parton.

  208. 1997

    IBM's Deep Blue beats Garry Kasparov at chess

    Kasparov had beaten an earlier version of the machine the year before.

  209. 1998

    Cattle are cloned for the first time

    Japanese scientists cloned eight calves from a single cow.

  210. 1998

    Google is founded

    Its original name was BackRub.

  211. 1999

    Napster launches

    The file-sharing service was created by a college student and shut down within about two years.

  212. 2000

    The Millennium Bug passes

    Billions were spent fixing Y2K, and very few systems failed.

  213. 2001

    The iPod is released

    Its slogan promised '1,000 songs in your pocket'.

  214. 2001

    Wikipedia launches

    Its predecessor, Nupedia, managed only a couple of dozen finished articles.

  215. 2003

    Skype launches

    Its name grew out of 'sky peer-to-peer'.

  216. 2003

    The Human Genome Project is completed

    It took 13 years and cost about $3 billion.

  217. 2004

    Shanghai's maglev train enters service

    It reaches 431 km/h on its run to the airport.

  218. 2006

    Pluto is reclassified as a dwarf planet

    Pluto was officially a planet for just 76 years.

  219. 2007

    The first iPhone is released

    Steve Jobs unveiled it in January 2007 and it went on sale that June.

  220. 2008

    Apple's App Store opens

    It launched with about 500 apps.

  221. 2008

    Spotify launches

    It was founded in Sweden, where music piracy was rife.

  222. 2008

    The Large Hadron Collider is switched on

    It broke down nine days later, and repairs took more than a year.

  223. 2009

    The first Bitcoin block is mined

    Its creator, known only as Satoshi Nakamoto, has never been identified.

  224. 2010

    The Burj Khalifa opens

    At 828 metres, it is more than twice the height of the Empire State Building.

  225. 2012

    CRISPR gene editing is described

    Its discoverers won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.

  226. 2012

    The Higgs boson is discovered

    Peter Higgs had predicted it nearly 50 years earlier.

  227. 2012

    The Shard opens in London

    At about 310 metres, it is the tallest building in the UK.

  228. 2012

    The Tokyo Skytree opens

    At 634 metres, it is the world's tallest tower.

  229. 2015

    Gravitational waves are detected for the first time

    They came from two black holes that collided about 1.3 billion years ago.

  230. 2016

    Oganesson, the heaviest element, gets its name

    It is element 118, and only a handful of its atoms have ever been made.

  231. 2017

    'Oumuamua visits from another star system

    It was the first known object to pass through our solar system from interstellar space.

  232. 2019

    The first image of a black hole is revealed

    Radio telescopes around the world were combined into one Earth-sized virtual telescope.

  233. 2020

    The first mRNA vaccine is approved

    It was developed in less than a year.

  234. 2022

    ChatGPT is released

    It reached an estimated 100 million users in about two months.

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