Timeline of material advances

Prehistoric to 0 CE

~8000 BCE - Earliest Form of Metallugry

Old Worl Neolithic peoples decorate copper by hammering

~5000 BCE - Discovery of Ability to Extract Liquid Copper from Malachite and Azurite

First example of extractive metallurgy

~3500 BCE - Smelting of Iron by Egyptians

Iron is the most dominant metallurgical material

~3000 BCE - Combination of Tin Ore and Copper Ore to Produce Bronze

Discovered in area of modern Syria and Turkey

~2200 BCE - Invention of Glass in Iran

A great nonmetallic engineering material

~1500 BCE - Lost-Wax Casting

Developed by Metal Workers in Near East

~1500 BCE Porcelain

Crafted by Potters in China

~200 BCE - Iron Casting

Introduced in China

~100 BCE - Glass Blowing

Likely Developed by Phoenicians

0 CE - 999 CE

400 - Seven Meter High Iron Pillar Forged

Created in Dehli, India

1000 CE - 1499 CE

1450 - Lead-Tin-Antimony Alloy to Cast in Copper Alloy Molds

Devised by Johannes Gutenberg

Used in printing press

1700 CE - 1799 CE

1709 - Replacement of Charcoal by Coke in Blast Furnace in Process of Iron Smelting

Discovered by Abraham Darby I

1775 - Invention of Modern Concrete

Introduced by John Smeaton

1800 CE - 1899 CE

1805 - Electroplating

Invented by Luigi Brugnatelli

1807 - Foundation of Electrometallurgy and Electrochemistry

Process of electrolysis developed by Sir Humphry Davy

Developed to separate element metals from salts

1822 - Theory of Stress and Strain

Presented by Augustin Cauchy

1827 - Isolation of Elemental Aluminum

Accomplished by Friedrich Wohler

1844 - Vulcanization of Rubber

Process invented by Charles Goodyear

1856 - Bottom-Blown Acid Process to Melt Low-Carbon Iron

Patented by Bessemer

1863 - Light Microscopy to Study Microstucture of Steel

Used by Henry Clifton Sorby

1864 - Periodic Table of Elements

Introduced by Mendeleev

1867 - Dynamite

Patented by Alfred Nobel

1876 - Basis of Understanding Modern Thermodynamics and Physical Chemistry

"On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances" published by J. Willar Gibbs

1886 - Electrolytic Reduction of Alumina into Aluminum

Discovered by Charles Martin Hall and Paul Heroult

1890 - Examination of Microstructure of Hard Steel Alloy

Adolf Martens finds banded regions of variously oriented microcrystals

1896 - Discovery of Radioactivity

Found by Pierre and Marie Curie

1898 - Development of Phase Diagram of Iron and Carbon

Creating by William Roberts-Austen

1900 CE - 1949 CE

1904 - Alloying Composition of Stainless Steel

Developed by Leon Guillet

1909 - Bakelite

Synthesized by Leo Baekeland

Bakelite is a thermosetting hard plastic

1911 - Superconductivity

Discovered by Kammerlingh Omnes

Found when studying pure metals at low temperatures

1912 - Diffraction of X-Rays by Crystals

Discovered by Max von Laue

1913 - Publication of the Bohr Model of Atomic Structure

Theory that properties determined by number of electrons in orbits around nucleus

1920 - Statement Regarding Structure of Polymers

Work Published by Hermann Staudinger

Polymer Consists of Long Chains of Short Repeating Molecular Units

1920 - Fracture Mechanics

Publication by A.A. Griffith of "The Phenomenon of Rupture and Flow of Solids"

Problem of fracture in context of energy balance

1925 - Basis of Quantum Mechanics

Matrix mechanics developed by Werner Heisenberg

Wave mechanics and the non-relativistic Schrodinger equation of atoms invented by Erwin Schrodinger

1926 - "Superalloy"

Process Patented by Paul Merica

Created by adding small amounts of aluminum to Ni-Cr alloy

1927 - Light-Emitting Diode

Paper published by Oleg Losev

1933 - Transmission Electron Microscope

Built by Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska

1934 - Theory of Dislocations to Explain Plastic Deformation of Ductile Materials

Proposed by Egon Orowan, Michael Polyani, and G.I. Taylor

1935 - Polymer Nylon

Wallace Hume Carothers, Julian Hill are among researches who patented the process

1939 - Split Nucleus of Uranium Atom

Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman bombard nucleus of uranium atom by bombarding with neutrons

1939 - Discovery of P- and N-Type Regions in Silicon

Found by Russel Ohl, George Southworth, Jack Scaff, and Henry Theuerer

1946 - Metamaterials

The term "metamaterials" was coined in 1999 by Rodger M. Walser of the University of Texas at Austin, and he defined metamaterials as "macroscopic composites having a manmade, three-dimensional, periodic cellular architecture designed to produce an optimized combination, not available in nature, of two or more responses to specific excitation."

The first metamaterial was developed by W.E. Kock in 1946. He created the metal-lens antennas.

1948 - Transistor

Fundamental component of all modern electronics

Invented by John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Schockley

1950 CE - 1959 CE

1958 - Carbon Fibers

Dr. Roger Bacon created the first high performance carbon fibers at the Parma Technical Center outside of Cleveland, OH

1958 - "Microchip"

Created by Jack Kilby

Integration of Capacitors, Resistors, Diodes, and Transistors in Germanium

1959 - Introduction of the concepts of nanotechnology

Presentation by Richard Feynman of "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom"

1960 CE - 1969 CE

1962 - Laser Diode

The first to demonstrate coherent light emission from a semiconductor diode (the first laser diode), is widely acknowledged to have been Robert N. Hall and his team at the General Electric research center in 1962.

1965 - Commercial Scanning Electron Microscope

Introduced by Cambridge Instruments

1970 CE - 1979 CE

1976 - Lithium Ion Batteries

Paper published by M.S. Whittingham: "Electrical Energy Storage and Intercalation Chemistry"

1980 CE - 1989 CE

1981 - Scanning Probe Microscopes

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is a new branch of microscopy that forms images of surfaces using a physical probe that scans the specimen.

1988 - Giant Magnetoresistive Effect

GMR was independently discovered in Fe/Cr/Fe trilayers by a research team led by Peter Grünberg of the Jülich Research Centre (DE), who owns the patent, and in Fe/Cr multilayers by the group of Albert Fert of the University of Paris-Sud (FR), who first saw the large effect in multilayers that led to its naming, and first correctly explained the underlying physics.

1990 CE - 1999 CE

1991 - Discovery of Nanotubes

Found by Sumio Iijima

2000 CE - Present

2001 National Nanotechnology Initiative

A United States federal initiative of nanoscale science and technology

Source

"Top 10 Advances In Materials Science Over Last 50 Years" Science Daily. December 19, 2007

"The Greatest Moments in Materials Science and Engineering" JOM