The future
has a history.

The World timeline and Timeline // Decoded, merged: what had to exist before the next thing could, and the dated, sourced record of the frontier since the first powered flight. Fly it again ↑

Life, then a hand

Era 1 · 4 billion years ago – 300,000 years ago

1. 4 billion years agoFirst cells

   A body that copies itself. Without this there is no plant, animal, or person. · Earth

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2. 2 billion years agoCells with a nucleus

   Cells that can specialize. Plants, fungi, and animals all come from this split. · Earth

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3. 500 million years agoAnimals

   Bodies that move. Later, hands. · Oceans, then land

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4. 3.3 million years agoStone tools

   A cutting edge. Every later blade starts here. · Africa

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5. 1 million years agoControlled fire

   Heat on demand. Cooking, pottery, and metal all need this. · Africa and Eurasia

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6. 300,000 years agoModern humans

   The only branch that turns one tool into the next on purpose. · Africa

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Towns, writing and metal

Era 2 · 10,000 BCE – about 1000 CE

1. 10,000 BCEFarming

   Stored food and towns. Without towns there is no spare labor for writing or workshops. · Fertile Crescent

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2. 3500 BCEWheel and writing

   Heavy loads move. A record outlives the speaker. The press, much later, has something to print. · Mesopotamia

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3. 3000 BCEBronze

   Copper plus tin. The first metal harder than stone for real tools. · Egypt and Sumer

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4. 1200 BCEIron

   Strong metal that is common. Engines, rails, and robot arms are impossible without it. · Anatolia, then everywhere

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5. 100 CEPaper

   A cheap surface. The printing press is useless without it. · China

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6. 800sCompass, gunpowder, algebra

   Navigation without the sun, chemistry of fire, and equations later machines will solve. · China and Baghdad

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The machine age

Era 3 · 1440 – 1799

1. 1440Printing press

   Reusable metal type. Knowledge stops being copied by hand, so the next inventor can read the last one. · Germany

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2. 1492Ocean crossing

   One connected market. Ideas and materials start moving between continents. · Atlantic

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3. 1610Telescope and microscope

   Seeing past the eye. Later chips and germs both depend on lenses. · Italy and the Netherlands

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4. 1687Newton’s laws

   Motion you can calculate. Engines and rockets are designed from this. · England

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5. 1776Watt’s steam engine

   Fuel does muscle’s job. Factories and trains sit on this. · Britain

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Steam, current and the message

Era 4 · 1800 – 1902

1. 1800Battery

   Stored electricity. Without a steady current there is no circuit. · Italy

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2. 1825Public railway

   Steam that moves people and freight, not just a pump in a mine. · Britain

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3. 1831Generator and motor

   Motion becomes current, and current becomes motion. Every robot motor is this. · Britain

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4. 1837Telegraph

   A message faster than a horse. The telephone and the internet are the same job, richer. · United States and Britain

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5. 1859Oil well

   Dense fuel. Cars and planes do not happen on wood and coal alone. · United States

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6. 1876Telephone

   A voice on a wire. · United States

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7. 1879Power station and bulb

   Electricity in buildings, not a steam shaft down the factory. · United States

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8. 1886Car

   A personal engine. It needs oil, steel, and the motor. · Germany

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9. 1901Radio

   A message with no wire. Phones and satellites are this without the spark gap. · Italy, Britain, Germany

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Before orbit

Era 5 · 1903 – 1956

1. 1903Airplane

   Controlled powered flight. It needs the engine from the car era. · United States

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2. Dec 17, 1903The Wright Flyer flies at Kitty Hawk

   Twelve seconds and 120 feet on the first flight of the day; four flights by the afternoon.

   Source: airandspace.si.edu ↗
3. Mar 16, 1926Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket

   Gasoline and liquid oxygen, 2.5 seconds of flight from a field in Auburn, Massachusetts.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
4. 1928Penicillin

   Infection becomes treatable. Not a machine, but a reason later populations live long enough to age. · Britain

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5. 1936The universal machine

   On paper: one machine can run any instructions. Computers are this idea in switches. · Britain

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6. 1936Turing describes a universal computing machine

   "On Computable Numbers" defines what any computer can and cannot compute.

   Source: cs.virginia.edu ↗
7. Jun 20, 1944An A-4 (V-2) crosses the edge of space

   Test flight MW 18014 reaches 176 km — the first human-made object in space.

   Source: en.wikipedia.org ↗
8. 1945Fission, used in war

   Energy from the atom. A side branch, not the path to the chip. · United States

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9. Feb 14, 1946ENIAC is unveiled

   Eighteen thousand vacuum tubes, programmed by rewiring, one thousand times faster than the machines before it.

   Source: seas.upenn.edu ↗
10. Dec 23, 1947The transistor works at Bell Labs

    Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley's point-contact transistor replaces the vacuum tube. · United States, Bell Labs

    Read the story →Source: nokia.com ↗
11. Apr 25, 1954The first practical silicon solar cell

    Bell Labs demonstrates a 6 percent efficient silicon cell — the ancestor of every panel on every roof.

    Source: aps.org ↗
12. Summer, 1956The Dartmouth workshop names "artificial intelligence"

    McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester and Shannon propose that every feature of intelligence can be described precisely enough to simulate.

    Source: home.dartmouth.edu ↗

The space race

Era 6 · 1957 – 1972

1. Oct 4, 1957Sputnik 1 orbits Earth

   A 58 cm sphere beeping at 20 and 40 MHz; the Space Age begins. · USSR

   Read the story →Source: nasa.gov ↗
2. Sep 12, 1958Kilby demonstrates the integrated circuit

   One germanium slice carrying a whole oscillator at Texas Instruments. · United States

   Read the story →Source: ti.com ↗
3. 1961Unimate goes to work at General Motors

   The first industrial robot lifts hot die-castings on a line in New Jersey.

   Source: robotics.org ↗
4. Apr 12, 1961Gagarin becomes the first person in space

   One orbit in Vostok 1, 108 minutes.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
5. Jul 10, 1962Telstar 1 relays live television across the Atlantic

   The first active communications satellite.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
6. Apr 19, 1965Moore writes down his law

   Transistor counts on a chip double roughly every year, later revised to two.

   Source: intel.com ↗
7. Nov 9, 1967Saturn V flies for the first time (Apollo 4)

   Thirty-four meganewtons of thrust from five F-1 engines.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
8. 1969Moon landing and the first internet nodes

   A computer steers a machine. Other computers start sending packets to each other. · United States

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9. Jul 20, 1969Apollo 11 lands on the Moon

   Armstrong and Aldrin spend 21 hours on the surface.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
10. Oct 29, 1969The first ARPANET message

    "LO" — the link from UCLA to Stanford drops before the G of LOGIN.

    Source: cs.ucla.edu ↗
11. Nov 15, 1971Intel 4004 — the first commercial microprocessor

    2,300 transistors; a computer on one chip. · United States

    Read the story →Source: intel.com ↗
12. Dec 14, 1972Apollo 17 — the last crew on the Moon

    Cernan and Schmitt leave the final footprints of the programme.

    Source: nasa.gov ↗

Silicon

Era 7 · 1973 – 1990

1. May 14, 1973Skylab — America's first space station

   Three crews live aboard for a combined 171 days.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
2. Jul 20, 1976Viking 1 lands on Mars

   The first successful landing on Mars sends pictures home for six years.

   Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
3. Aug 20, 1977Voyager 2, then Voyager 1, leave Earth

   Both are still returning data from interstellar space.

   Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
4. Apr 12, 1981STS-1: Columbia opens the Shuttle era

   The first reusable orbital spacecraft flies with a crew on its first launch.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
5. Aug 12, 1981The IBM Personal Computer

   A 4.77 MHz 8088 and an open architecture set the standard for a generation. · United States

   Read the story →Source: ibm.com ↗
6. Feb 20, 1986Mir's core module launches

   The first modular space station is occupied for most of 15 years.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
7. Mar, 1989Berners-Lee proposes the World Wide Web

   "Information Management: A Proposal" at CERN — "vague but exciting", wrote his boss. · CERN, then the world

   Read the story →Source: home.cern ↗
8. 1990 – 2003Human genome

   DNA read as data. Medicine starts to look like software. · Worldwide

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9. Apr 24, 1990Hubble reaches orbit

   Thirty-five years and more than 1.6 million observations later, it is still working.

   Source: science.nasa.gov ↗

The networked world

Era 8 · 1991 – 2010

1. Aug 25, 1991Linux is announced

   "Just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu" — Linus Torvalds.

   Source: cs.cmu.edu ↗
2. May 11, 1997Deep Blue defeats Kasparov

   The first computer to beat a reigning world champion in a match.

   Source: ibm.com ↗
3. Jul 4, 1997Sojourner rolls onto Mars

   Pathfinder's 10.6 kg rover is the first wheeled vehicle on another planet.

   Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
4. Nov 20, 1998Zarya — the first module of the ISS

   Continuously crewed since November 2000.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
5. Oct 31, 2000Honda unveils ASIMO

   A 1.2 m humanoid that walks, climbs stairs and later runs.

   Source: global.honda ↗
6. Jan, 2004Spirit and Opportunity land

   Ninety-day missions that lasted six and fifteen years.

   Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
7. Jun 29, 2007The iPhone goes on sale

   A computer, a camera and a radio in a pocket — and the start of the app economy. · United States, then everywhere

   Read the story →Source: apple.com ↗
8. Sep 28, 2008Falcon 1 reaches orbit

   The first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to orbit, on its fourth try.

   Source: spacex.com ↗
9. Jun 4, 2010Falcon 9 flies for the first time

   The vehicle that will carry most of the world's mass to orbit a decade later.

   Source: spacex.com ↗
10. Dec 8, 2010Dragon is the first commercial spacecraft recovered from orbit

    Two orbits, a splashdown in the Pacific.

    Source: nasa.gov ↗

Reuse and learning machines

Era 9 · 2011 – 2022

1. Aug 6, 2012Curiosity lands by sky crane

   A one-tonne rover lowered on cables from a hovering stage.

   Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
2. Sep, 2012AlexNet wins ImageNet

   A deep convolutional network cuts the error rate nearly in half; the deep-learning era starts. · Worldwide research

   Read the story →Source: papers.nips.cc ↗
3. Nov 23, 2015New Shepard lands its booster

   The first rocket to reach space and land vertically.

   Source: blueorigin.com ↗
4. Dec 21, 2015Falcon 9 lands an orbital-class booster

   Eleven satellites to orbit and the first stage back at Cape Canaveral, nine minutes later.

   Source: spacex.com ↗
5. Mar, 2016AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol 4–1

   Move 37 — a play no human would make — becomes the symbol of machine intuition.

   Source: deepmind.google ↗
6. Jun 12, 2017"Attention Is All You Need"

   The Transformer architecture behind every large language model since. · Published research

   Read the story →Source: arxiv.org ↗
7. Feb 6, 2018Falcon Heavy's first flight

   Twenty-seven engines, two boosters landing side by side.

   Source: spacex.com ↗
8. May 23, 2019The first 60 Starlink satellites

   One launch; the constellation now numbers in the thousands.

   Source: starlink.com ↗
9. 2020mRNA vaccines

   Genetic instructions used as a medicine. A real merge of biology and information, limited to one job. · Worldwide

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10. May 30, 2020Crew Dragon Demo-2 flies astronauts

    The first crewed orbital launch from the United States since 2011, on a commercial vehicle.

    Source: nasa.gov ↗
11. Apr 19, 2021Ingenuity flies on Mars

    The first powered, controlled flight on another planet — 39 seconds, 3 metres up.

    Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
12. Dec 25, 2021The James Webb Space Telescope launches

    A 6.5 m mirror unfolds on the way to L2, 1.5 million km from Earth.

    Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
13. Nov 16, 2022Artemis I

    SLS flies for the first time and Orion loops the Moon uncrewed.

    Source: nasa.gov ↗
14. Nov 30, 2022ChatGPT is released

    A research preview reaches a hundred million users in two months. · Worldwide

    Read the story →Source: openai.com ↗
15. Dec 5, 2022Fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility

    3.15 MJ out from 2.05 MJ of laser light in — more energy out than in, for the first time.

    Source: llnl.gov ↗

The frontier now

Era 10 · 2023 – 2026

1. Apr 20, 2023Starship's first integrated flight

   The most powerful rocket ever flown lifts off from Starbase and is terminated four minutes later.

   Source: spacex.com ↗
2. Aug 23, 2023Chandrayaan-3 lands near the lunar south pole

   India becomes the fourth nation to soft-land on the Moon.

   Source: isro.gov.in ↗
3. Feb 22, 2024Odysseus — the first commercial Moon landing

   Intuitive Machines' lander delivers NASA payloads under CLPS.

   Source: nasa.gov ↗
4. Apr 17, 2024The all-electric Atlas

   Boston Dynamics retires hydraulic Atlas and unveils an electric humanoid built for factory work.

   Source: bostondynamics.com ↗
5. Oct 13, 2024Super Heavy is caught by the launch tower

   Flight 5: the booster returns to the pad and is caught by the "chopstick" arms.

   Source: spacex.com ↗
6. Oct 14, 2024Europa Clipper launches

   On its way to study an ocean beneath Europa's ice; arrival 2030.

   Source: science.nasa.gov ↗
7. 2025Factory robots

   About 5.1 million arms running. One repeated job each. The contribution is a motor, a sensor, and a chip. · Mostly Asia, then the world

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8. 2025Humanoid robots

   About 7,000 sold. Still pilots. Reliability, safety, battery time, and a business case are unsolved. · More than half the makers in China

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9. Jan 16, 2025New Glenn reaches orbit on its first flight

   Blue Origin's heavy-lift vehicle enters service.

   Source: blueorigin.com ↗
10. Mar 2, 2025Blue Ghost lands on the Moon

    Firefly's lander operates a full lunar day for NASA.

    Source: fireflyspace.com ↗
11. Dec 31, 2025329 orbital launch attempts — a record year

    More than half of them Falcon 9; see the live launch board for this year's count.

    Source: launches.html ↗
12. 2026Starship Flight 14 and the road to Mars 2028

    As tracked on the Musk desk: every 2026 build, promised versus delivered.

    Source: musk.html ↗
13. 2026The Table: six CEOs sign the SI accord

    Reported Sept 29 on The Table — the CEOs' desk.

    Source: ceos.html ↗
14. 2026Humanoids leave the lab

    Optimus, Figure, Atlas and the Chinese makers in pilot production — the Robots desk keeps the count.

    Source: robots.html ↗

The step with no year

Era 11 · not invented yet

1. No yearBody and machine merge

   Not invented. It would need the chip, the language model, a battery that lasts, and a body that does not fall. The last two are not done. · Not on the calendar

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Timeline // Decoded — the classic view World timeline — the classic view