---
title: "History of technology"
chunk: 9/10
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_technology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:28.072474+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Mass production brought automobiles and other high-tech goods to the masses of consumers. Military research and development sped advances including electronic computing and jet engines. Radio and telephony greatly improved and expanded their reach to larger user populations. However, near-universal access would not be possible until mobile phones became affordable to residents of the developing world in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Energy and engine technology improvements included nuclear power, developed after the Manhattan Project, which heralded the new Atomic Age. Rocket development led to long range missiles and the first space age that lasted from the 1950s with the launch of Sputnik to the mid-1980s.
Electrification spread rapidly in the 20th century. At the beginning of the century, electric power was, for the most part, only available to wealthy people in a few major cities. By 2019, an estimated 87 percent of the world's population had access to electricity.
Birth control also became widespread during the 20th century. Electron microscopes were very powerful by the late 1970s, and genetic theory and knowledge were expanding, leading to developments in genetic engineering.
The first "test tube baby" Louise Brown was born in 1978, which led to the first successful gestational surrogacy pregnancy in 1985 and the first pregnancy by ICSI in 1991, which is the implanting of a single sperm into an egg. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis was first performed in late 1989 and led to successful births in July 1990. These procedures have become relatively common.
Computers were connected by means of local area, telecom and fiber optic networks, powered by the optical amplifier that ushered in the Information Age. This optical networking technology exploded the capacity of the Internet beginning in 1996 with the launch of the first high-capacity wave division multiplexing (WDM) system by Ciena Corp. WDM, as the common basis for telecom backbone networks, increased transmission capacity by orders of magnitude, thus enabling the mass commercialization and popularization of the Internet and its widespread impact on culture, economics, business, and society.
The commercial availability of the first portable cell phone in 1981 and the first pocket-sized phone in 1985, both developed by Comvik in Sweden, coupled with the first transmission of data over a cellular network by Vodafone (formerly Racal-Millicom) in 1992, were the breakthroughs that led directly to the form and function of smartphones today. By 2014, the global total of mobile-cellular subscriptions had nearly reached parity with the world's human population and the Supreme Court of the United States of America has ruled that a mobile phone was a private part of a person. Providing consumers with wireless access to each other and to the Internet, the mobile phone stimulated one of the most important technology revolutions in human history.
The Human Genome Project sequenced and identified all three billion chemical units in human DNA to find the genetic roots of disease and develop treatments. The project became feasible due to two technical advances in the late 1970s: gene mapping using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) markers and DNA sequencing. Sequencing was invented by Frederick Sanger and, separately, by Dr. Walter Gilbert. Gilbert also conceived of the Human Genome Project on May 27, 1985, and first publicly advocated it at the first International Conference on Genes and Computers in August 1985. The U.S. Federal Government sponsored the Human Genome Project, which began on October 1, 1990, and was declared complete in 2003.
The massive data analysis resources necessary for running transatlantic research programs such as the Human Genome Project and the Large Electron–Positron Collider led to a necessity for distributed communications, causing Internet protocols to be more widely adopted by researchers and also creating a justification for Tim Berners-Lee to create the World Wide Web.
Vaccination spread rapidly to the developing world from the 1980s onward due to many successful humanitarian initiatives, greatly reducing childhood mortality in many poor countries with limited medical resources.
The US National Academy of Engineering, by expert vote, established the following ranking of the most important technological developments of the 20th century:

=== 21st century ===

In the early 21st century, research is ongoing into quantum computers, gene therapy (introduced 1990), 3D printing (introduced 1981), nanotechnology (introduced 1985), bioengineering/biotechnology, nuclear technology, advanced materials (e.g., graphene), the scramjet and drones (along with railguns and high-energy laser beams for military uses), superconductivity, the memristor, and green technologies such as alternative fuels (e.g., fuel cells, self-driving electric and plug-in hybrid cars), augmented reality devices and wearable electronics, artificial intelligence, and more efficient and powerful LEDs, solar cells, integrated circuits, wireless power devices, engines, and batteries.
Large Hadron Collider, the largest single machine ever built, was constructed between 1998 and 2008. The understanding of particle physics is expected to expand with better instruments including larger particle accelerators such as the LHC and better neutrino detectors. Dark matter is sought via underground detectors and observatories like LIGO have started to detect gravitational waves.
Genetic engineering technology continues to improve, and the importance of epigenetics on development and inheritance has also become increasingly recognized.
New spaceflight technology and spacecraft are also being developed, like the Boeing's Orion and SpaceX's Dragon 2. New, more capable space telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched to orbit in December, 2021, and the Extremely Large Telescope, have been designed. The International Space Station was completed in the 2000s, and NASA and ESA plan a human mission to Mars in the 2030s. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) is an electro-magnetic thruster for spacecraft propulsion and is expected to be tested in 2015.
The Breakthrough Initiatives project plans to send the first ever spacecraft to visit another star, which will consist of numerous super-light chips driven by Electric propulsion in the 2030s, and receive images of the Proxima Centauri system, along with, possibly, the potentially habitable planet Proxima Centauri b, by midcentury.
2004 saw the first crewed commercial spaceflight when Mike Melvill crossed the boundary of space on June 21, 2004.

== By type ==