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The World Wide Web was invented to help scientists share documents.
In March 1989 at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a system of linked documents. By 1991 the web was online, and in 1993 CERN put the software in the public domain.
Why it matters: Because it was given away freely, anyone could build on it — including you.
Information Management: A Proposal — Tim Berners-Lee (1989)
CERN
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Your phone holds billions of a device first built in 1947.
At Bell Labs in 1947, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley built the first transistor — a small switch that controls electric current without a vacuum tube.
Why it matters: Transistors made computers small, cheap and reliable; the three shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Nobel Prize in Physics 1956 — John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, William Shockley (1947)
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Before paper, people wrote on silk, bamboo or animal skin.
In 105 CE the Han court official Cai Lun reported a way of making paper from bark, hemp and old rags. Papermaking reached Samarkand and Baghdad by the 8th century.
Why it matters: Cheap paper made books, schools and record-keeping possible on a large scale.
Book of the Later Han — Cai Lun (105 CE)
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