The  PESC  Engineering  Timeline


 65,000,000 BC     The terrestrial reptile dinosaurs no longer roam earth 

| 3,500,000 BC     Approximate human origin
|
|
|-- 300,000 BC     Some evidence of counting (notches in animal bone)
|
|
|-- 250,000 BC     Oldest surviving wood tool        
|
|-- 100,000 BC     Neanderthal culture in Asia, Africa & Europe
|                  Using fire for cooking, protection and warmth
|                  Stone tools
|                  Storage pits for food1   
|
|
|--- 40,000 BC     First people settle in Greece
|                  Hunters and food gatherers2  
|
|
|--- 35,000 BC     Neanderthal culture disappearing
|
|                  Cro-Magnon culture developing
|                  Sewing needles made from bone
|
|                  Migration of the first Americans across
|                  the Bering Strait
|
|--- 20,000 BC     Bow and arrow developed (by Cro-Magnon people)
|                  Ice Age - In some areas the glacial ice was 2 miles thick!
|
|--- 10,000 BC     End of last Ice Age
|
|---  8,000 BC     Earliest Domestication of animals
|
|---  7,000 BC     Agriculture begins in the Americas
|                  Pottery in use
|
|----  4000 BC     Solid wheels used on carts
|
|                  People Along the Nile starting to build canals to 
|                  control flooding and provide irrigation
|      
|----  3500 BC     Potter's wheel in use
|                  Sumerians Develop cuneiform writing
|                  Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing
|
|----  3100 BC     Rice domesticated in the region of the Yangtze River
|
|                  Egyptian civilization arose in Nile Valley
|
|----  3000 BC     Masonry dams in use                
|                  Mortise and tendon wood joints in use
|                  
|                  The population of the city of Uruk (located on the 
|                  Euphrates River), reaches 50,000.1  
|                 
|
|----  2900 BC     Start of the Bronze Age in Greece2  
|
|
|----  2800 BC     Plywood invented in Egypt
|                  Carpentry at a mastery by most advanced civilizations     
|
|
|----  2600 BC     Pyramid of Gizeh built
|
|
|----  2000 BC     Spoke wheels in use
|
|
|----  1800 BC     Lever used (oars)
|
|----  1500 BC     Phoenicians develop an alphabet
|
|                  Farming common in Central America
|
|----  1350 BC     sundial
|                  use of iron                
|                  water clocks
|
|----  1200 BC     Dorian invaders overtake the Mycenaean Greeks using
|                  Iron weapons.  The Mycenaeans used Bronze weapons.1  
| 
|
|----   700 BC     Invention of Aqueducts
|
|----c. 500 BC     Pythagoras develops the concepts of geometry1  
|   
|
|----   400 BC     Water wheel in use
|                  Catapults invented
|
|----   399 BC     Socrates executed
|
|----   387 BC     Plato starts Academy in Athens
|
|----   350 BC     The Chinese develop a printing press with
|                  symbols carved on a wooden block
|
|----   343 BC     Aristotle (384-322 BC), a student of Plato, becomes tutor
|                  of Alexander of Macedonia (Alexander the Great)
|                  Aristotle correctly defined the shape of the surface of water as spherical.
|                  He incorrectly thought the shape was the result of the center of the earth and universe coinciding. 
|
|----   323 BC     The Greek Leader, Alexander the Great, dies
|                  of a fever in Babylon at the age of 32 
|
|----   332 BC     City of Alexandria, Egypt founded
|
|----   300 BC     Euclid writes Elements, on Geometry1  
| 
|
|
|----   200 BC     Archimedes (287-212 BC)  
|                  ( the birth of fluidstatics & earliest recorded writing in mechanics)
|
|                  Archimedes made statics (engineering mechanics) an Autonomous theoretical science3  
|
|                   He extensively studies the center of gravity of object and made many postulates as axioms
|                   As an example:
|                       Proposition IV. - If two magnitudes do not have the same centre of gravity, 
|                       the centre of gravity of the magnitude made up of these two magnitudes is the point situated
|                       at the middle of the line which joins their centres of gravity.3  
|
|                  Archimedes developed:
|                     the principle of buoyancy
|                     the lever
|                     the compound pulley
|                     cranes & the water screw (pump)
|                      
|
|                  The population of Alexandria is 200,000
|
|
|----    30 BC     End of the Hellenistic Age (the Greeks)
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|----    50 AD     Vitruvius writes ten volume compendium of 
|                  Roman engineering practice
|
|                  Buddhism introduced in China
|
|----   105        Tsai Lun invents paper
|
|----   400        Windmill in use in China
|
|----   476        Western Roman Empire Collapsed
|
|----   700        Chinese invent Porcelain
|
|----   820        Algebra Invented 
|
|----  1242        Roger Bacon describes the preparation of gunpowder ( in use in China in 1000 AD)
|  
|----  1428        Painter, Masaccio (1401-1428) introduces perspective - a technique
|                  that brought a three-dimensional look to painting
|
|----  1450        The Chinese develop a printing press that uses
|                  Movable wooden blocks
|
|----  1454        Johannes Gutenburg invents a printing press
|                  with movable metal type
|
|----  1500        Birth of Engineering Science (start of Renaissance)
|
|
|----  1550        Simon Stevin (stuh-veen') (military and civil
|                  engineer) develops the
|                  parallelogram law for the addition of forces
|
|
|----  1588        First Engineering Handbook (mostly sketches) written
|                  by Ramelli
|
|----  1596        Birth of Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French scientist 
|                  and philosopher  Descartes developed the Cartesian
|                  Coordinate System. His name in Latin is Renatus Cartesius.4  
|
|
|----  1607        Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, 
|                  is established in southeast Virginia 
|
|----  1614        John Napier (Scottish mathematician) publishes his discovery of logarithms 
|
|----  1616        William Shakespeare died
|
|----  1622        William Oughtred invents the slide rule
|
|----  1637        The invention of ANALYTIC GEOMETRY by Rene
|                  Descartes (see above)
|
|
|----  1638        Galileo's book, "Two New Sciences" published
|                  This is believed to be the first book published in the 
|                  field of strength of materials!  In it he states,
|
|                   "A small obelisk or column or other solid figure can 
|                    certainly be laid down or set up without danger of
|                    breaking, while very large ones will go to pieces under
|                    the slightest provocation, and that purely on account
|                    of their own weight."
|                    
|                  Up to this point it was thought, by many builders, that a safe method
|                  of building bigger buildings was to simply scale up the dimensions 
|                  of the structure's individual elements (wall, columns, beams etc.).  
|                  In other words, it was considered safe to make a wall twice as tall if 
|                  you made it twice as thick.  Many buildings that were designed using 
|                  this method FAILED.
|                    
|                  It is now known that many elements of a structure CANNOT be scaled up 
|                  using a linear relationship!!                
|
|                  The field of "Strength of Materials" is born!    
|  
|                  Today student engineers take a course in college 
|                  which they refer to as "Strengths".            
|
|----  1662        Robert Hooke - Theory of elasticity 
|
|----  1679        Hooke reveals the solution to his anagram "ceiiinosssttuu" - 
|                  "ut tensio, sic vis" - "as the extension, so the force"
|                  All solid material must yield to resists force.
|
|----  1687        Newton's Laws written
|
|----  1709        First piano built
|
|----  1752        Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) 
|                  Showed that lighting was a form of electricity
|
|----  1757        Leonhard Euler derived the formula for 
|                  the buckling of a pinned-pinned column
|
|----  1760        Mechanization of British industry began
|
|----  1769        Watt's steam engineer built
|
|----  1776        Americans declared independence
|
|----  1793        Eli Whitney invents the Cotton gin
|
|----  1795        Metric system adopted in France
|
|----  1799        Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) Builds first battery
|
|----  1807        Steam ship built by Robert Fulton
|                  Slave trade abolished in British Empire
|                                
|                  A machine that made paper in a continuous roll was patented 
|                  by Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier
| 
|----  1814        First Steam locomotive built by George Stephenson
|
|----  1820        Hans Oersted (1777-1851) discovered a link between
|                  magnetism and electricity.
|
|----  1826        Ampere's work in electrodynamics
|
|----  1827        Ohm's Law
|                  Beethoven died
|
|----  1830        Regular passenger train servce began in England
|
|----  1831        Faraday's electromagnetic induction device
|
|----  1836        First telegraph (Samuel Morse)
|                  Texas gained independence from Mexico
|
|
|----  1852        The American Society of Civil Engineers founded5  
|
|
|----  1856        Bessemer process for making steel developed
|
|----  1863        Slavery abolished in the United States
|
|----  1866        Alfred Nobel develops dynamite
|
|----  1869        Suez Canal opened
|
|----  1874        A U.S. Patent was granted to T.B. Rhodes for several
|                  different forms of hollow concrete block.6
|
|                  First large span (three-spans of 500 ft. )
|                  steel bridge - St. Louis Bridge over the Mississippi
|                  River, Designed by James B. Eads 
|
|
|----  1876        Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
|
|----  1879        Thomas Edison invents the light bulb
|
|----  1883        The American Society of Mechanical Engineers founded
|
|
|                  Completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by
|                  John A. Roebling (Suspension - 1595 ft. span)
|                  Spans the East River to link Brooklyn and Manhattan
|
|----  1884        The American Institute of Electrical Engineers founded
|
|
|----  1885        William Stanley invents an 
|                  alternating current transformer
|
|----  1895        The discovery of X-rays (Roentgen)
|
|----  1902        Air Conditioning invented
|
|----  1903        First powered air flight
|
|----  1908        The American Institute of Chemical Engineers founded
|
|
|
|
|----  1912        Titanic sank
|
|----  1914        Panama Canal opened
|
|----  1915        Albert Einstein (1879-1955) published 
|                  The General Theory of Relativity
|
|----  1919        First nonstop flight across Atlantic
|
|----  1937        First jet engine built
|
|----  1939        Radar developed by the British
|
|----  1940        Penicillin developed
|
|----  1950        World population 2.3 billion
|
|----  1953        Mount Everest climbed for first time
|
|----  1956        Oral polio vaccine developed
|
|----  1957        Launching of Sputnik I
|
|----  1968        Aswan High Dam in Egypt completed
|
|----  1969        First man on the moon
|
|----  1977        Apple Computer releases the Apple II computer
|
|----  1978        World population 4.4 billion
|
|----  1982        OPEC announced cut in oil production
|                  Population in china reached 1 billion
|
|----  1983        Robert Wolf writes the first Bridge Builder® analysis engine on a Wang Computer
|                 
|----  1989        Bridge Builder® for the Apple II hits the market in A+ magazine       
|
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