1901
The Wright Brothers in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, fly the first airplane,
a biplane glider. In 1903, they make the first successful pilot
controlled flight in a powered biplane, Flyer.
Full article: 1903
- Man's First Flight
Albert Einstein
proposes the
special theory of relativity
uniting space and time
in one mathematical description.
Full
article: Special Theory of Relativity, 1905
1911
Norway's Roald Amundsen
and party are the first people
to reach the South Pole.
Full article: Amundsen Reaches South Pole, 1911
1928
Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming (in illustration) discovers that a mold
on one of his culture plates produces a bacteria killing substance. Only in
1938 do pathologist Howard Florey and biochemist Ernst Chain isolate penicillin
and prove its disease-fighting properties.
1932
John Cockcroft (in photograph)
and Ernest Walton
use the first particle
accelerator to "split the atom"
1935
Radar is demonstrated by
British scientists
led by Robert Watson-Watt
1938
Otto Hahn splits the
uranium nucleus
1942
Enrico Fermi presides
over the
first controlled nuclear
chain reaction in a uranium pile
at a tennis court at the University of Chicago.
1946
J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly of the University of Pennsylvania invent
the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first all-purpose,
all-electronic digital computer.
Full article: Computers
Go Commercial, 1946
1948
The transistor is invented by William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen
at Bell Labs, New Jersey.
Related article: Transistor Introduced, 1948
1953
Francis Crick and
James Watson
decipher the
structure of DNA.
Related article: DNA Structure Determined, 1953
1956
The first large-scale oral contraceptive tests take place at the request of
the Planned Parenthood organisation. The first commercially available pill
enters the market in 1960.
1961
First manned space flight
Related article: 1961 - First man in Space
Related article: 1969 - First
man on the Moon
1969:
The U.S. Department of Defence establishes the Arpanet data network. This
leads to the creation of the Internet in the early 1980s and the World Wide
Web in the early 1990s.
Related article: The Internet, 1990s
1978:
Louise Brown, the world's first "test-tube baby" is born, thanks to in
vitro fertilisation, researched by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards
in Britain.
1990: The Human Genome Project begins to analyse the structure and arrangement of all human genes. The first map of the human genome is produced in Franc in 1992.
1997: U.S. Mars probe Pathfinder establishes the composition of the Planet's rocks.
1997: Dolly the sheep is cloned by a team of Scottish embryologists.