Timelines
One page per field, tracing what accumulated between a discovery in basic research and the moment the technology was actually used. A slower shelf than the regular posts — these get added to over time.
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Nuclear Fusion Timeline, 1920–2040: From Eddington to ITER
It took roughly a century to get from the conjecture that the Sun shines by fusing hydrogen to private companies signing power purchase agreements. This timeline sorts what accumulated in between into four kinds: theory, discovery, engineering milestone, and deployment.
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Automobile Timeline, 1769–2040: From Steam to Electric Cars
The car's power source converged on petrol once, and is now splitting apart again. The first vehicle to move under its own power ran on steam; the first to pass 100 km/h ran on batteries. This timeline sorts what accumulated over 250 years into four kinds: theory, discovery, engineering milestone, and deployment.
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Semiconductor Timeline, 1847–2035: From Boolean Logic to EUV
Semiconductor timelines usually begin with the transistor in 1947. But a transistor could be used for arithmetic only because, a decade earlier, it had been shown mathematically that opening and closing a switch in a circuit is itself a logical operation. This timeline runs the mathematics that guarantees computation along the top of the axis and the devices that carry it along the bottom — 43 entries, from Boole turning logic into algebra in 1847 to wiring at a width of a few dozen atoms today.
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Space Exploration Timeline, 1609–2030: From Kepler's Laws to Artemis
Space-exploration timelines usually begin with Sputnik in 1957. But why a satellite does not fall down had been explained by Newton in 1687; what was missing was any way to throw something that fast. This timeline runs the theory of orbits and rockets, and what was learned only by going, along the top of the axis, and what actually flew along the bottom — 42 entries, from Kepler turning planetary orbits into formulas in 1609 to a spacecraft due at Europa in 2030.
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AI Timeline, 1676–2024: From the Chain Rule to ChatGPT
Timelines of artificial intelligence usually begin with the Dartmouth workshop of 1956. But the parts of the calculation today's AI uses to learn — measure the error, then step downhill a little at a time — were in place before any computer existed: the chain rule in 1676, least squares in 1805, gradient descent in 1847. What was missing was enough computing power and data to run them. This timeline puts the ideas that came from mathematics, neuroscience and physics along the top of the axis, and the things that actually ran along the bottom — 51 entries, from Leibniz in 1676 to the Nobel Prizes awarded for neural-network research in 2024.