Technology on the Timeline
Inventions, gadgets, and the digital age. Here’s a taste of the Technology pack — 141 verified moments and counting.
Think you can put these in order?
That’s Whensly — a new daily puzzle of real moments on the timeline.
Play today’s puzzle — free on the App Store- 1908🚙 The first Ford Model T rolls off the line, the affordable car that puts middle-class families on the road.
- 1952🛫 The de Havilland Comet enters service as the world's first commercial jet airliner, flying London to Johannesburg.
- 1958❤️ Surgeons implant the first internal pacemaker in patient Arne Larsson to keep his failing heart beating.
- 1967🏧 The world's first ATM is unveiled at a Barclays branch in Enfield, dispensing cash for paper vouchers.
- 1969🌐 Charley Kline sends the first message over ARPANET from UCLA to Stanford before the system crashes.
- 1969✈️ The Anglo-French Concorde makes its maiden flight from Toulouse, beginning the era of supersonic passenger jets.
- 1973📞 Motorola's Martin Cooper stands on a New York sidewalk and places the first call from a handheld cellular phone.
- 1975📼 Sony begins selling the Betamax videocassette recorder in Japan, letting families record television at home.
- 1977💻 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs demonstrate the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire, drawing big crowds.
- 1978🛰️ The first GPS satellite launches, beginning the system that pinpoints location anywhere on Earth.
- 1980👾 Namco releases the Pac-Man arcade game in Japan, sending a yellow dot-muncher fleeing four colorful ghosts.
- 1982🙂 Scott Fahlman proposes the sideways smiley on a Carnegie Mellon message board, inventing the emoticon.
- 1982💻 Sinclair unveils the ZX Spectrum in London, the affordable color home computer that ignites British gaming.
- 1983🎮 Nintendo releases the Family Computer, or Famicom, in Japan, the cartridge console later sold abroad as the NES.
- 1985🎮 Nintendo test-launches the Nintendo Entertainment System in New York City, reviving the American home console market.
- 1985🪟 Microsoft ships Windows, its first graphical shell running atop MS-DOS with overlapping menus and a mouse.
- 1987⚔️ Square releases the first Final Fantasy on the Famicom in Japan, launching its landmark role-playing series.
- 1989🎮 Nintendo launches the handheld Game Boy in Japan, selling out its first run within two weeks.
- 1990🖌️ Adobe ships Photoshop, the image-editing software that becomes the standard tool for digital photo manipulation.
- 1991🐧 Linus Torvalds posts a message announcing his free operating system, calling it just a hobby.
- 1993✍️ Apple's Newton MessagePad goes on sale, an early handheld organizer with handwriting recognition.
- 1994📱 BellSouth begins selling the touchscreen IBM Simon Personal Communicator, regarded as the first true smartphone.
- 1994🧭 Netscape Communications releases Netscape Navigator, the browser that quickly comes to dominate the early commercial web.
- 1995📈 Netscape's stock soars on its first trading day, the IPO that ignites the dot-com boom.
- 1996🕹️ Nintendo launches the Nintendo 64 in Japan, its 3D console debuting with Super Mario 64.
- 1997🤖 NASA's Mars Pathfinder lands and deploys Sojourner, the first wheeled rover to roam another planet.
- 1998🔫 Valve releases Half-Life, the story-driven first-person shooter starring scientist Gordon Freeman at Black Mesa.
- 1998🖥️ Steve Jobs unveils the translucent Bondi Blue iMac, the all-in-one computer that revives Apple.
- 1999📟 Research In Motion releases the BlackBerry 850, a two-way email pager with a signature QWERTY thumb keyboard.
- 2001📚 Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launch Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit.
- 2001🍎 Apple releases Mac OS X, its Unix-based operating system with the Aqua interface, at retail.
- 2002🤖 iRobot introduces the Roomba, the first widely sold robotic vacuum that cleans floors on its own.
- 2003💻 Skype releases its first public software, letting people make free voice calls over the internet.
- 2004📧 Gmail debuts from Google, a free webmail service offering a then-astonishing gigabyte of storage.
- 2004📱 Motorola unveils the ultra-thin RAZR V3 flip phone in Chicago, a metal-clad fashion sensation.
- 2005👽 Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian launch Reddit, the link-sharing community calling itself the internet's front page.
- 2006🐦 Jack Dorsey posts the first tweet, just setting up my twttr, on the new microblogging service.
- 2007📱 The original Apple iPhone goes on sale in the United States as customers line up outside stores overnight.
- 2008🛍️ Apple opens the App Store, letting iPhone owners download third-party apps for the first time.
- 2009🪙 Satoshi Nakamoto mines Bitcoin's genesis block, embedding a newspaper headline and launching the first cryptocurrency blockchain.
Think you can put these in order?
That’s Whensly — a new daily puzzle of real moments on the timeline.
Play today’s puzzle — free on the App Store