Timeline of materials technology
- 3rd millennium BC – Copper metallurgy is invented and copper is used for ornamentation
- 2nd millennium BC – Bronze is used for weapons and armor
- 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.
- 700s – Porcelain is invented in China
- 1450s – Crystallo, a clear soda-based glass is invented by Angelo Barovier
- 1590 – Glass lenses are developed in Netherlands and used for the first time in microscopes and telescopes.
- 1738 – William Champion patents a process for the production of metallic zinc by distillation from calamine and charcoal.
- 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
- 1821 – Thomas Johann Seebeck invents the thermocouple
- 1824 – Patent issued to Joseph Aspin for portland cement.
- 1825 – Hans Christian Orsted produces metallic aluminum
- 1839 – Charles Goodyear invents vulcanized rubber
- 1839 – Jacques 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
- 1902 – August Verneuil develops a process for making synthetic rubies.
- 1909 – Leo Baekeland presents the Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic
- 1911 – Superconductivity discovered.
- 1916 – Jan Czochralski invents a method for growing single crystals of metals.
- 1924 – Corning scientists invent Pyrex, a glass with a very low thermal expansion coefficient.
- 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 phonoigraph 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
