Human Tech Tree

Information

Electronics & Computing

52 points from the earliest roots to the research frontier: 42 researched, 5 current research, 3 unsolved and 2 that become possible once they are solved. State of knowledge: October 2026.

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Antiquity3000 BC – 500 AD

  • Abacus & Counting Aids~2500 BCResearchedCounting boards with stones or beads make numbers tangible: the first step toward calculating with tools.

Middle Ages & Renaissance500 – 1700

  • Mechanical Calculator1642ResearchedPascal and Leibniz build gear-driven machines that add, subtract and (Leibniz) multiply: arithmetic without thinking.

Industrial Age1700 – 1900

  • Analytical Engine & Punch Cards1837ResearchedBabbage designs a freely programmable calculator with memory and an arithmetic unit; Ada Lovelace writes the first program for it.

Machine Age1900 – 1945

  • Vacuum Tube (Triode)1906ResearchedLee de Forest’s triode amplifies and switches electrical signals with no moving parts: the basis of radio, radar and the first computers.
  • Radar1935ResearchedRadio echoes reveal aircraft far beyond sight: Watson-Watt's team shows it in 1935 and Britain's Chain Home network follows.
  • Turing Machine1936ResearchedAlan Turing shows mathematically what a computing machine can compute at all, and what it never can.
  • Cavity Magnetron1940ResearchedRandall and Boot's magnetron (Birmingham, 1940) makes powerful microwaves in a small tube and allows compact centimetre radar.
  • Programmable Computer1941ResearchedKonrad Zuse’s Z3 (1941) is the first working, freely programmable digital computer; tube machines like ENIAC follow.
  • Colossus Codebreaking Computer1943ResearchedTommy Flowers' Colossus (1943-44) uses about 1,500 vacuum tubes to break the German Lorenz teleprinter cipher at Bletchley Park.

Atomic & Space Age1945 – 1990

  • Microwave Oven1945ResearchedPercy Spencer at Raytheon notices a melted chocolate bar near a magnetron in 1945; the Radarange (1947) becomes the kitchen microwave.
  • Stored-Program Architecture1945ResearchedVon Neumann's 1945 EDVAC report describes a computer that keeps program and data in the same memory; it is the layout of almost every computer.
  • Transistor1947ResearchedBell Labs replaces the tube with a tiny semiconductor switch: small, frugal, cheap and the building block of all modern electronics.
  • Photolithography for Chips1955ResearchedLight-sensitive resist and a mask let engineers print tiny transistor patterns onto silicon; Bell Labs adapts it in 1955.
  • Hard Disk Drive1956ResearchedIBM's RAMAC (1956) stores five million characters on spinning magnetic disks with random access; disks become cheap bulk storage.
  • Programming Languages1957ResearchedFORTRAN (1957), LISP (1958) and later Unix and C make computers programmable without machine code: software becomes an industry.
  • Integrated Circuit1958-1959ResearchedJack Kilby and Robert Noyce put many transistors on one piece of semiconductor: the start of the chip industry.
  • MOSFET and CMOS chips1959ResearchedAtalla and Kahng's field-effect transistor (1959) and CMOS logic (1963) became the switch inside nearly every chip.
  • Planar Process1959ResearchedJean Hoerni's planar process (1959) keeps the oxide layer on the wafer as a shield and builds transistors layer by layer, from one side.
  • Light-Emitting Diode (LED)1962ResearchedNick Holonyak's red LED (1962) lights up a semiconductor junction; the blue LED of the 1990s completes white LED lighting.
  • Semiconductor Laser Diode1962ResearchedSeveral labs make semiconductor lasers in 1962; by 1970 they run continuously at room temperature, small enough for fibre links.
  • Moore's Law1965ResearchedGordon Moore observes that the number of transistors per chip doubles regularly: the metronome of the computer industry.
  • DRAM main memory1966ResearchedRobert Dennard's one-transistor memory cell (1966) put cheap, dense working memory on a chip; Intel sold the first DRAM in 1970.
  • Mouse and graphical interface1968ResearchedEngelbart's 1968 demo showed mouse, windows and hypertext; Xerox PARC and Apple turned it into the desktop everyone uses.
  • CCD image sensor1969ResearchedBoyle and Smith's charge-coupled device (1969) turned light into digital images and became the eye of telescopes and cameras.
  • Unix & the C Language1969ResearchedThompson and Ritchie at Bell Labs write Unix (1969) and rewrite it in C (1973): a portable operating system.
  • Relational Database1970ResearchedEdgar Codd's relational model (1970) stores data in simple tables that can be queried freely, the basis of SQL databases.
  • Liquid-Crystal Display1971ResearchedTwisted-nematic liquid crystals (Schadt and Helfrich, 1971) switch light with tiny voltages, giving flat, low-power displays.
  • Microprocessor1971ResearchedIntel’s 4004 puts a complete processor on one chip: computers become small and cheap enough for everyone.
  • Projection Aligner (Micralign)1973ResearchedPerkin-Elmer's Micralign (1973) projects the mask onto the wafer without touching it, so masks last and chip yields rise.
  • Wafer Stepper~1978ResearchedA stepper (GCA, about 1978) shrinks the mask image through a reduction lens and exposes the wafer field by field, reaching about one micron.
  • Personal Computer1981ResearchedFrom the hobbyist Altair (1975) through the Apple II (1977) to the IBM PC (1981): the computer moves into offices and homes.
  • DUV Excimer-Laser Lithography1982ResearchedKanti Jain at IBM shows in 1982 that an excimer laser can print chips in deep ultraviolet light; 248 nm and 193 nm tools carry chips from the 1990s…
  • Flash memory1984ResearchedFujio Masuoka's flash memory (announced 1984) keeps data without power; it fills phones, cameras and solid-state drives.
  • EUV Lithography Proof of Concept1986-1997ResearchedNTT's Kinoshita shows EUV imaging with multilayer mirrors in 1986, and in 1997 Intel and US national labs form the EUV LLC to build a machine.
  • Foundry Model (TSMC)1987ResearchedTSMC, founded in Taiwan on 21 February 1987, makes chips only for others, so fabless firms design without building fabs; it holds about 70% of the…

Digital Age1990 – 2015

  • Open Source & Linux1991ResearchedLinus Torvalds releases a free Unix-like kernel in 1991; with the GNU tools it shows that software written openly over the internet can win.
  • Quantum Algorithms (Shor)1994ResearchedPeter Shor shows that a quantum computer could factor large numbers quickly, turning quantum computer building into a global project.
  • Graphics Processor (GPU)1999ResearchedChips built for video games perform thousands of operations at once, and later become the engine of the AI boom.
  • Immersion Lithography2003ResearchedA film of ultrapure water between lens and wafer (proposed 2001-02, first scanner shown by ASML in 2003) raises the numerical aperture beyond 1.
  • Tin-Plasma EUV Light Source2009ResearchedA CO2 laser hits falling tin droplets 50,000 times a second; the plasma emits 13.5 nm light. Cymer delivers the first integrated source in 2009.

Present2015 – Oct 2026

  • EUV Lithography2019ResearchedLight of 13.5 nm wavelength, generated from tin plasma, exposes chip structures; only ASML can build the machines.
  • First Quantum Processors2019ResearchedSuperconducting chips with dozens to over a thousand qubits are built; Google’s Sycamore (2019) is the first claimed “quantum supremacy”.
  • Exascale Supercomputers2022Current researchFrontier passed one quintillion operations a second in May 2022; by June 2026 five systems are exascale, led by China's LineShine at 2.2 exaflops.
  • Quantum Error Correction2024Current researchGoogle shows in late 2024 that more qubits reduce errors instead of adding them; 2026 brings records with dozens of logical qubits.
  • 2 nm Chips & High-NA EUV2025Current researchGate-all-around 2 nm chips are in volume production since late 2025; High-NA EUV, the next lithography step, starts with Intel’s 14A (risk…
  • AI Accelerators & Data Centers2026Current researchAI data centers grow from megawatts to gigawatts: about 30 GW of AI capacity worldwide, with single sites above 1 GW under construction.
  • Photonic & Neuromorphic Chips2026Current researchLight instead of copper between chips (co-packaged optics) starts shipping in 2026; brain-like chips remain a research niche.

Research Frontier · Todayunsolved as of Oct 2026

  • Computing Beyond SiliconopenUnsolvedWhen silicon transistors stop shrinking: which materials and principles carry the next generation of computers?
  • Fault-Tolerant Quantum ComputeropenUnsolvedA quantum computer with hundreds to thousands of error-free logical qubits that solves tasks classical computers cannot.
  • The Computing Energy WallopenUnsolvedDemand for computing grows faster than chips get efficient: scaling runs into energy, heat and grid limits.

If Solvedbecomes possible

  • Quantum Computers for Chemistry2030s?If solvedFault-tolerant quantum computers simulate molecules and materials exactly: catalysts, batteries and drugs are designed on the computer.
  • Post-Silicon Computers2040s?If solvedComputers built on new materials and principles that need a fraction of today’s energy for the same work.