| Timeline |
|---|
| c. 0050 CE | Hero of Alexandria invented crude steam engine 'aeolipile'. | |
| 0285 CE | Pappus of Alex, described 5 machines (cogwheel, lever, pulley, screw and wedge). | |
| 0595 CE | First authenticated record of decimal number system (0-9) appears in India | |
| 0868 CE | The Buddhist script 'The Diamond Sutra' becomes the world's first known woodblock-printed book on paper when it is produced in China, althogh the method was in use much earlier. | |
| 1280 CE | Eyeglasses are invented and later improved in the late medieval period. | |
| 1492 CE | Leonardo da Vinci drew a flying machine. | |
| 1495 CE | Leonardo da Vinci sketched a design of a parachute. | |
| c. 1500 CE | (Between 1500s) Holland and Saxony began to protect the rights of inventors to their creations. | |
| 1502 CE | In Germany, Peter Henlein of Nuremberg used iron parts and coiled springs to build a portable timepiece, the forerunner of the pocket watch. | |
| 1504 CE | Venetian ambassadors proposed to Turkey the construction of a Suez Canal. | |
| 1509 CE | Peter Henlein, Nuremberg inventor, invented the watch, nicknamed the Nuremberg egg. | |
| 1510 CE | The wheel-lock firearm was introduced in Nurnberg, Germany. | |
| 1510 CE | Leonardo da Vinci designed the horizontal water wheel that was the forerunner of the modern water turbine. | |
| 1515 CE | Leonardo Da Vinci makes progress in mechanics and aerodynamics and hydraulics. | |
| 1515 CE | The first nationalized French factories were set up in the manufacture of tapestries and arms. | |
| 1519 CE | A mass-production technique for casting brass objects was used in Italy. | |
| 1530 CE | Georgius Agricola, German mineralogist and scholar, published 'De Re Metallica', the first systematic book on mineralogy. | |
| 1530 CE | The carpenter's bench and vice first come into use. | |
| 1537 CE | Gerhardus Mercator, Flemish geographer, surveyed and drew a map of Flanders that was so accurate that Charles V made him his geographer. | |
| 1537 CE | Nicccolo Fontana founded the science of ballistics when he outlines the trajectory of a bullet. | |
| 1538 CE | The earliest reference to a diving bell was made at Toledo, Spain. | |
| 1539 CE | The first form of a flintlock was recorded in Sweden. | |
| 1551 CE | Girolamo Cardano completes studies of falling bodies. | |
| 1553 CE | Giambattista Benedetti proposed the equality of fall rates. | |
| 1556 CE | A German mineralogist described the hazards of mining, including occupational diseases such as 'difficulty in breathing and destruction of the lungs'. | |
| 1560 CE | Giovannin Battista della Porta founded the first scientific society in Naples. | |
| 1570 CE | George Owen wrote his 'History of Pembrokeshire', wherein he clearly set forth the orderly principle of geological stratigraphy; but the work was not published until 1796. | |
| c. 1570 CE | Christian Huygens built the first pendulum clock. | |
| 1581 CE | Galileo Galilei describes the constancy timekeeping property of the period of a pendulum. | |
| 1581 CE | Robert Norman discovers that the dip of compass shows that Earth is a magnet. | |
| 1581 CE | James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, was born. He stated the age of the Earth based on the bible. | |
| 1583 CE | Galileo discovered the parabolic nature of trajectories. | |
| 1585 CE | Giovanni Benedetti develops impetus theory which is better than Aristotle's physics. | |
| 1585 CE | Simon Stevin describes the law of equilibrium. | |
| 1585 CE | Bartholomew Newsam built the earliest surviving English spring-driven clocks. | |
| 1586 CE | Simon Stevin describes pressure in a column of liquid. | |
| 1586 CE | Simon Stevin verifies the equality of fall rates. | |
| 1589 CE | Galileo Galilei uses balls rolling on inclined planes to show that different weights fall with the same acceleration independent of mass. | |
| 1589 CE | William Lee, English clergyman, invented the stocking frame, the first knitting machine. | |
| 1589 CE | Sir John Harrington, Elizabethan poet, designed the first water closet and installed it at his country house near Bath. In 1596 he installed one at the palace of his godmother Queen Elizabeth I. | |
| 1590 CE | Zacharias Janssen invents the microscope. | |
| 1592 CE | Galileo Galilei builds a crude thermometer using the contraction of air to draw water up a tube. | |
| 1592 CE | Galileo Galilei suggests that the physical laws of the heavens are the same as those on Earth. | |
| 1593 CE | Johannes Kepler related planets to platonic solids. | |
| 1600 CE | Galileo Galilei made a study of sound and vibrating strings. | |
| 1600 CE | Rudolph II, King of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled from Prague and lured the astronomer, Tycho Brahe, from Denmark as well as his student Johannes Kepler. | |
| 1602 CE | Otto von Guericke (1602-1686), was born. He helped to overthrow the guesswork physics of Aristotle through experiments with air pressure. | |
| 1603 CE | Galileo invented the thermometer. | |
| 1604 CE | Galileo Galilei discovered that distance for falling object increases as square of time. | |
| 1604 CE | Johannes Kepler describes how the eye focuses light. | |
| 1608 CE | Prototype of modern reflecting telescope completed by Jan Lippershey offered to the Dutch government. | |
| 1609 CE | Johannes Kepler develops the notion of energy. | |
| 1609 CE | Lippershey and Janssen invent the compound microscope. | |
| 1611 CE | Johannes Kepler discovers a small angle refraction law. | |
| 1611 CE | Johannes Kepler discovers thin lens optics. | |
| 1611 CE | Johannes Kepler discovers total internal reflection. | |
| 1611 CE | Johannes Kepler outlined the principles of the astronomical telescope. | |
| 1611 CE | Marco de Dominis developed an explanation of how a rainbow is formed in 'De Radiis Visus et Lucis' . | |
| 1613 CE | Galileo Galilei outlined the principle of inertia. | |
| 1616 CE | Galileo was forbidden from continuing his scientific work by the Roman Catholic Church. | |
| 8 Mar 1618 CE | Johannes Kepler devised his Third Law of Planetary Motion. | |
| 15 May 1618 CE | Johannes Kepler discovers his harmonics law. | |
| 1619 CE | Johannes Kepler postulates a solar wind to explain the direction of comet tails. | |
| 1619 CE | Johannes Kepler states his third empirical law of planetary motion. | |
| 1620 CE | Francis Bacon published his 'Novum Organon'. He noted the striking fit of the opposing coastlines of South America and Western Africa on opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean. | |
| 1620 CE | Francis Bacon stated that heat is motion. | |
| 1620 CE | Francis Bacon's call for empirical method in scientific inquiry in his 'Novum Organum' prompted a new spirit of investigation that acknowledged the value of observation. | |
| 1620 CE | Jan Baptista van Helmont introduces the word 'gas'. | |
| 1620 CE | In England Dutch-born Cornelius Drebbel tested a submarine which cruised 15 feet under the Thames. | |
| 1621 CE | Willebrord Snell outlines the sine law of refraction now known as Snell's Law. | |
| 1624 CE | Galileo Galilei developed the theory of tides. | |
| 8 Jun 1625 CE | Giovanni Domenico Cassini, discoverer of four satellites of Saturn, was born in Italy. He was an astrologer and then became an astronomer and was known in France as Jean-Dominique Cassini. At the Paris observatory he discovered the wide gap in the rings of Saturn now called the Cassini division, as well as four of the planet's moons. | |
| 1626 CE | Godfried Wendilin verified Kepler's laws for moons of Jupiter. | |
| 1630 CE | Cabaeus describes attraction and repulsion of electric charges. | |
| 1632 CE | Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) develops Galilean relativity. | |
| 1632 CE | Galileo Galilei develops support for Copernicus' heliocentric theory. | |
| 1632 CE | John Ray invents the water thermometer. | |
| 1632 CE | Galileo's book 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems' was published with the full backing of the church censors. It was soon recognized to support Copernican theory and Galileo was put under house arrest for life. | |
| 13 Feb 1633 CE | Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition. | |
| 1633 CE | Rene Descartes wrote 'Le Monde' in which he upheld the theories of Copernicus but halted publication to prevent conflict with the Church. | |
