Krat-TechMini Wikipedia
Mini Wikipedia
236 articles on how technology was born and changed. 225 of them sit on a timeline from the wheel to today. Pick an era or search below.
Recommended
- 2009The human body radiates lightThe human body really does glow, just very faintly. In 2009 Japanese scientists photographed people in…
- 1888Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla was the inventor thanks to whom our sockets carry alternating current. His induction motor powers…
- 1905Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a physicist who changed the way we understand light, time and energy in 1905. His…
- 2026GTA 6Grand Theft Auto VI is the most anticipated game of the decade. After two delays it launches on 19 November…
- 2003Cosmic rays flip bits in computersParticles from space occasionally fly through a chip and change a one into a zero in memory, or the other way…
- 2015Rainbow Six SiegeRainbow Six Siege is a tactical shooter from Ubisoft in which five attackers fight five defenders inside…
The evolution of technology
Pick an era to see its milestones.
Age of AI2017 – today
Transformers, ChatGPT, foldable phones and GTA 6. Software learned to talk.
- 2017PUBG and FortniteGames
- 2017Nintendo SwitchGames
- 2017The first Six InvitationalGames
- 2017Transformer: “Attention Is All You Need”Software & AI
- 2018Kingdom Come: DeliveranceGames
- 2018Real-time ray tracing (RTX)Games
- 2018VAR video referee debuts at a World CupSport
- 2019Quantum supremacy (Google Sycamore)Computers
- 2019Samsung Galaxy FoldPhones
- 2019The first Starlink satellitesInternet
- 2020Cyberpunk 2077Games
- 2020Valorant from Riot GamesGames
- 2021AirCar flies from Nitra to BratislavaSlovakia
- 2022ChatGPTSoftware & AI
- 2022Elden RingGames
- 2022Stable Diffusion and MidjourneySoftware & AI
- 2022Steam DeckGames
- 2023LLaMA and llama.cpp: AI at homeSoftware & AI
- 2023The Sphere in Las Vegas opens with a U2 concertCuriosities
- 2024Valve's DeadlockGames
- 2025AI agents and MCPSoftware & AI
- 2026GTA 6Games
- 2026iPhone Duo, the first foldable iPhonePhones
- 2026Ranked 3.0 in SiegeGames
- 2026Siege Year 11: Snake, Casino, NoorGames
All articles
Computers and hardware
From the Analytical Engine through the transistor and microprocessor to quantum computers and home servers.
- AMD1969AMD is Intel's eternal rival. It was founded in 1969 and for a long time was “the other” company, but with its Ryzen…
- Apple1976Apple was founded on 1 April 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. From a garage in California it grew…
- Apple Macintosh1984The Macintosh from January 1984 was the first successful computer for ordinary people with a graphical interface and a…
- ARM and Apple Silicon1985ARM is an architecture of power-efficient processors created in 1985 at British firm Acorn. It powers almost every phone…
- Bliss, the Windows XP wallpaper2001The green hill under a blue sky from Windows XP is probably the most viewed photograph in history. Charles O'Rear took…
- Commodore 641982According to Guinness World Records, the Commodore 64 from 1982 is the best-selling single computer model in history. It…
- ENIAC1945ENIAC was one of the first general-purpose electronic computers. It weighed about 27 tonnes, had almost 18,000 vacuum…
- Flash memory and SSDs1984Flash memory keeps data without power and has no moving parts. Fujio Masuoka invented it at Toshiba in 1984. Today it is…
- Floppy disks, CD and DVD1971The floppy disk was born at IBM in 1971 and was the main way to move data around until the 1990s. It was followed by CD,…
- How to build a PCBuilding a computer is no harder than assembling IKEA furniture; you just need to know how the parts fit together. Here…
- Intel1968Intel was founded in July 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, two of the fathers of the semiconductor industry. The…
- Linux1991Linux is an operating system kernel written in 1991 by Finnish student Linus Torvalds “as a hobby”. Today it runs most…
- Microsoft1975Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in April 1975 to write software for the first personal computers.…
- Microsoft Windows1985Windows is the most widely used operating system for personal computers. It started in 1985 as a graphical layer on top…
- Monitors and displays1897Screens have gone from heavy cathode-ray tubes, invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897, through flat LCDs to OLED,…
- Moore's law1965Moore's law is Gordon Moore's 1965 observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles regularly. It is not a…
- NAS and the home server (homelab)A NAS is a small computer with disks that plugs into the home network and acts as shared storage. Today it also runs…
- NVIDIA1993NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem at a table in a Denny's restaurant. From…
- Quantum computers2019A quantum computer calculates with qubits that can be in a combination of 0 and 1 at once. For some tasks it could be…
- RAM (memory)1970RAM is a computer's fast working memory that only remembers while powered. The first commercial DRAM chip came out in…
- Raspberry Pi2012The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized computer costing a few tens of euros. It was created in 2012 to teach children…
- Supercomputers1964A supercomputer is the most powerful computer of its time. The first was the CDC 6600 by Seymour Cray from 1964. Today's…
- The Analytical Engine and Ada Lovelace1837In 1837 Charles Babbage designed the Analytical Engine, a steam-powered mechanical computer with memory and a program on…
- The computer mouse1968The mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart and his team and shown to the world in December 1968 at the legendary…
- The graphics card (GPU)1999A graphics card computes the image for the monitor. Because it can do huge numbers of simple calculations at once, it…
- The hard disk drive (HDD)1956A hard disk stores data on spinning magnetic platters. The first, the IBM 350 from 1956, was the size of two fridges and…
- The IBM PC1981The IBM Personal Computer from August 1981 set what most computers would look like for decades. It was built from…
- The integrated circuit (chip)1958The integrated circuit put multiple components on one piece of semiconductor. Jack Kilby demonstrated it in 1958 and…
- The Intel 4004 microprocessor1971The Intel 4004 from November 1971 was the first commercial microprocessor, a computer's entire processing unit on one…
- The keyboard: from typewriter to mechanical switches1868The key layout we use today comes from Christopher Sholes's typewriter, patented in 1868. The computer keyboard…
- The laptop1981The first commercially successful portable computer, the Osborne 1 from 1981, weighed around 11 kilograms and had a…
- The transistor1947A transistor is a tiny semiconductor switch and amplifier. It was invented at Bell Labs in December 1947 and is probably…
- The Year 2000 problem (Y2K)2000Old programs stored the year with just two digits to save memory. After 1999 would come the year 00, and computers would…
- USB and USB-C1996USB unified the way keyboards, mice, printers and drives are connected. The first version from 1996 ran at 12 Mb/s. The…
- Virtualisation and Docker2013Virtualisation lets one physical computer run several separate systems. In 2013 Docker popularised a lighter form,…
- ZX Spectrum, Didaktik and PMD 851982The ZX Spectrum was a cheap British home computer from 1982 on which a generation of programmers and game developers…
Phones and gadgets
From the first call on a Motorola “brick” to the foldable iPhone and watches that track your heart rate.
- Android2008Android is the most widely used operating system in the world. Google bought it in 2005 as a small start-up, and the…
- Bluetooth1999Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that connects headphones, watches, keyboards and even cars to your phone.…
- Emoji1999The first set of 176 emoji was designed by Shigetaka Kurita for the Japanese operator NTT Docomo in 1999. They measured…
- Foldable phones2019Foldable phones have a flexible screen that folds. The 2019 Samsung Galaxy Fold showed it could be done, though the…
- iPhone2007Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on 9 January 2007 as “an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator” in one. A large…
- iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo2026At its September 2026 “Surprise and shine” event Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and its first foldable…
- Mobile networks from 1G to 5G1991Mobile networks evolved in generations. The first was analogue, the second brought digital GSM and SMS, the third and…
- NFC and mobile payments2014NFC is a technology for communication over a few centimetres. It lets you pay with a card, phone or watch by holding it…
- Nokia 33102000The Nokia 3310 from 2000 is a legend: indestructible, with a battery that lasted a week and the game Snake. About 126…
- Samsung and Galaxy2010Samsung started out in 1938 as a shop selling fish and vegetables in Korea. Today it is the world's largest maker of…
- Smartwatches2015Smartwatches show phone notifications and measure movement, heart rate and sleep. Pebble raised record money on…
- SMS1992The first SMS was sent on 3 December 1992 by engineer Neil Papworth from a computer to a colleague's phone at Vodafone.…
- Tablets and the iPad2010Companies had been trying tablets since the 1990s, but success only came with the iPad in April 2010. A large…
- The camera in your phone2000The first mass-produced camera phone, the Sharp J-SH04, came out in Japan in 2000 and took 0.1-megapixel photos. Today…
- The first mobile phone1973The first call from a handheld mobile phone was made by Martin Cooper of Motorola on 3 April 1973 on a New York street.…
- The lithium-ion battery1991The lithium-ion battery is a light and powerful rechargeable cell that powers phones, laptops and electric cars. Sony…
- The touchscreen1965The first capacitive touchscreen was described by British engineer E. A. Johnson in 1965 for air traffic control. It…
- Wireless charging2008Wireless charging transfers energy by electromagnetic induction between two coils. Nikola Tesla dreamed of transmitting…
Internet and networks
How computers learned to talk: ARPANET, the web, Wi-Fi, the cloud and Starlink satellites.
- ARPANET1969ARPANET was a computer network of the US Department of Defense and the forerunner of the internet. The first message…
- Bitcoin and blockchain2009Bitcoin is a digital currency without a central bank. Its principle was described in 2008 by the anonymous Satoshi…
- Chat and messengers1996Real-time typing over the internet began with IRC channels in 1988. The mass boom came in 1996 with ICQ and its iconic…
- Cloud computing2006Cloud computing means renting computing power and storage over the internet instead of buying your own servers. Amazon…
- Cloudflare and CDNs2010Cloudflare is a company that sits in front of millions of websites, speeding them up and protecting them from attacks.…
- DNS1983DNS is the phone book of the internet. It translates names like krat-tech.com into numeric IP addresses. Paul…
- Email1971In 1971 Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers on ARPANET and chose the @ sign to separate the user…
- Encryption and HTTPS1976Public-key encryption lets two people who have never met agree on a secret key over a network others can listen to.…
- Ethernet1973Ethernet is the way computers connect by cable in a local network. Bob Metcalfe described it at Xerox PARC in May 1973,…
- Google and search engines1998Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in September 1998 in a garage in California. Their PageRank algorithm…
- Online shops1995In 1995 Amazon began selling books over the internet, and eBay was founded too. Shopping online has become a matter of…
- Optical fibre1970Optical fibre carries data as light in a thin glass strand. Charles Kao calculated in 1966 that it could work over long…
- Rickroll2007A Rickroll is an internet prank: you click on an interesting link, and instead Rick Astley's music video for the 1987…
- Social networks2004Social networks connect people online and have become a main source of news and entertainment. Facebook started at…
- Starlink2019Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet. Thousands of satellites in low orbit bring fast internet where no cable…
- TCP/IP1983TCP/IP is the common language of the internet. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn designed it in 1974, and on 1 January 1983 the…
- The modem and dial-up internet1962A modem turns data into sound so it can travel over a telephone line. The whistling and hissing when connecting to the…
- The Trojan Room coffee pot: the first webcam1991The world's first webcam watched a coffee pot. In 1991 scientists at the University of Cambridge pointed a camera at the…
- The web browser1993The browser is your window onto the web. Mosaic in 1993 was the first popular browser to show images inline with text,…
- The World Wide Web1991The web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN near Geneva. He wrote the proposal in 1989, the first page went online…
- VPN and Tailscale1996A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel over the internet so a remote device behaves as if it were on your home or office…
- Webcam1994A webcam, often also written as web camera, is a small camera that sends video to a computer and on across the internet.…
- Wi-Fi1997Wi-Fi is the wireless network that connects phones, laptops and TVs to the internet. The first IEEE 802.11 standard came…
- Wikipedia2001Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched it on 15 January 2001.…
- YouTube and streaming2005YouTube was founded in 2005, and its first video “Me at the zoo” lasted 19 seconds. A year later Google bought it for…
Software and artificial intelligence
From the Turing test and the first programming languages to language models and AI agents.
- AI agents2025An AI agent is a language model that does not just answer but also acts: it searches the web, runs programs, writes…
- Alan Turing and the Turing test1950In 1950 the British mathematician Alan Turing asked “Can machines think?” and proposed a test: if a person in a written…
- AlphaGo2016In March 2016 DeepMind's AlphaGo program beat go master Lee Sedol 4:1. Go has more possible positions than there are…
- ChatGPT and language models2022OpenAI's ChatGPT was released on 30 November 2022 and within two months had an estimated 100 million users. It showed…
- Copy and paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V)1974Copying and pasting text was popularised by computer scientist Larry Tesler at Xerox PARC in 1974 and 1975. The…
- Deep Blue beats Kasparov1997On 11 May 1997 the IBM computer Deep Blue beat the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. It…
- Deep learning and neural networks2012Neural networks are programs inspired by the brain that learn from examples instead of fixed rules. The idea is decades…
- ELIZA, the first chatbot1966ELIZA, from 1966, was the first chatbot. Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT programmed it to imitate a psychotherapist who simply…
- Generative AI: images and video2022Generative AI creates images, video and music from a text description. In 2022 DALL·E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion…
- Local AI on your own computer2023Language models do not have to run only in the cloud. Since 2023, when Meta released the LLaMA model and the llama.cpp…
- Machine translation1954In 1954 IBM and Georgetown University demonstrated a computer that translated 60 sentences from Russian into English.…
- Open source1983Open source is software with published source code that anyone can read, modify and share. The movement was started by…
- Programming languages1957A programming language is the way people write instructions for a computer. FORTRAN from 1957 was the first widely used…
- Robots1961The word robot comes from Czech. Karel Čapek used it in his 1920 play R.U.R., but it was invented by his brother Josef.…
- Self-driving cars2004In the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, not a single driverless car reached the finish. A year later five cars completed the…
- Transformer2017The transformer is a type of neural network introduced in 2017 by eight Google researchers in the paper “Attention Is…
- Unix1969Unix was created by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in 1969. Its ideas, such as small tools that each do…
- Voice assistants2011Siri on the iPhone 4S in October 2011 made voice assistants popular. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant followed. With…
Games and gaming
Pong, PlayStation, Counter-Strike, Rainbow Six Siege, Deadlock, GTA 6 and everything in between.
- Atari 26001977The Atari 2600 brought video games into living rooms. Games were swapped using cartridges, which was a crucial idea at…
- Battle royale: PUBG, Fortnite, Warzone2017Battle royale is a genre in which dozens of players drop onto an island, hunt for weapons and a shrinking circle pushes…
- Call of Duty2003Call of Duty is a series of war shooters that began in 2003 with World War II. With Modern Warfare in 2007 it became the…
- Counter-Strike and CS21999Counter-Strike started in 1999 as a fan-made mod for Half-Life. Terrorists against counter-terrorists, a bomb and money…
- Cyberpunk 20772020Cyberpunk 2077 from the makers of The Witcher came out in December 2020 as one of the most anticipated games in history.…
- Deadlock2024Deadlock is a Valve game that combines a MOBA with a third-person action shooter. It has been in an invite-only playtest…
- Doom1993Doom by id Software, released in December 1993, defined the first-person shooter. It spread as shareware, could be…
- Elden Ring2022Elden Ring, from the Japanese studio FromSoftware in 2022, brought the tough combat of “souls” games into a huge open…
- Esports1972Esports means competitive video gaming at a professional level. It started with a student tournament at Stanford in…
- Game Boy1989The Game Boy was small, tough and its batteries lasted a very long time. Thanks to Tetris and later Pokémon it became…
- Game engines1998A game engine is the foundation a game stands on: it draws graphics, calculates physics, plays sound and manages the…
- GTA 62026Grand Theft Auto VI is the most anticipated game of the decade. After two delays it launches on 19 November 2026 on…
- Half-Life1998Half-Life was Valve's first game. It told its story while you played, without cutscenes, and its engine became the base…
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance2018Kingdom Come: Deliverance by the Prague studio Warhorse is a realistic medieval RPG set in Bohemia in 1403. No dragons…
- Konami Code1986↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A. The Konami Code is the most famous cheat in gaming history. Programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto added it…
- Mafia2002Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven from 2002 was made by the Brno studio Illusion Softworks. The story of taxi driver Tommy…
- Metal Gear Solid1998Metal Gear Solid by Hideo Kojima, from 1998, popularised the stealth genre, in which it is better to sneak past an enemy…
- Minecraft2009Minecraft is a game about blocks in which you can build anything. It started as one Swedish programmer's project and…
- MOBA: DotA, League of Legends, Dota 22003MOBA is a genre in which two teams of heroes try to destroy the enemy base along three lanes. It was born as a fan-made…
- NES and Nintendo1983The Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom in Japan) rescued video games after the 1983 crash. It brought Super Mario,…
- Nintendo Switch and Switch 22017The Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console: you play it on a TV, and when you lift it from the dock you carry on in your…
- Pac-Man1980Pac-Man by the Japanese company Namco came out in 1980 and became the first video game character known all over the…
- PlayStation1994Sony's PlayStation grew out of a failed partnership with Nintendo and in 1994 turned consoles into entertainment for…
- Pokémon1996Pokémon began in 1996 as a Game Boy game about collecting and training monsters. Satoshi Tajiri's idea grew into the…
- Pong and the birth of video games1972Pong is a simple electronic table tennis game released by Atari in 1972. It was not the very first video game, but it…
- Rainbow Six Siege2015Rainbow Six Siege is a tactical shooter from Ubisoft in which five attackers fight five defenders inside destructible…
- Rainbow Six Siege esports and the Six Invitational2017The Six Invitational is the world championship of Rainbow Six Siege. The winner lifts a hammer-shaped trophy, and it is…
- Rainbow Six Siege: mapsMaps in Rainbow Six Siege are buildings with four possible objective sites, soft walls, hatches and windows. If you know…
- Rainbow Six Siege: operatorsOperators are the characters of Rainbow Six Siege, each with their own weapons and one unique gadget. A good team fits…
- Rainbow Six Siege: Ranked 3.02026Ranked 3.0 is Rainbow Six Siege's ranked system since June 2026. It removed hidden MMR, so the rank you see is exactly…
- Rainbow Six Siege: tips for beginnersRainbow Six Siege is frustrating at first: you die to one bullet from a spot you never saw. These ten tips will help you…
- Rainbow Six Siege: Year 11 (2026)2026Year 11 brought Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid to Rainbow Six Siege, a new Calypso Casino map, Ranked 3.0 and, in…
- Ray tracing and DLSS2018Ray tracing calculates how rays of light bounce around a scene and produces realistic reflections and shadows. Films…
- Roblox2006Roblox is not a single game but a platform on which players create games for others. It launched in 2006, and in 2025 it…
- Steam2003Steam started in 2003 as a hated update tool for Counter-Strike. Today it is the largest PC games store, with tens of…
- Steam Deck and gaming handhelds2022The Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC from Valve. It runs Linux and, thanks to the Proton layer, plays thousands of…
- Tetris1984Tetris was programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in June 1984 in Moscow on a Soviet Elektronika 60 computer. The falling blocks…
- The Grand Theft Auto series1997Grand Theft Auto began in 1997 as a top-down game by Scottish studio DMA Design. GTA III became the template for…
- The Rainbow Six series1998Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six from 1998 created the tactical shooter genre. One bullet could kill, and every route of the…
- The Sims2000The Sims, from 2000, is a life simulation in which you look after virtual people, build them houses and manage their…
- The Witcher2007The Witcher series by the Polish studio CD Projekt RED is based on Andrzej Sapkowski's books about the monster hunter…
- Twitch2011Twitch is a platform for live streaming games that split off from Justin.tv in 2011. Amazon bought it in 2014 for almost…
- Valorant2020Valorant is a tactical shooter from Riot Games that combines Counter-Strike's precise gunplay with hero abilities. It…
- Virtual reality2016Virtual reality puts you in a digital world through a headset that tracks your head movements. The dream from the 1960s…
- World of Warcraft2004Blizzard's World of Warcraft from 2004 is the most successful online role-playing game (MMORPG). Millions of people…
- Xbox2001Xbox was Microsoft's first console. With Halo and the Xbox Live service it became a serious rival to Sony in 2001 and…
Security and smart home
Alarms, cameras, passwords, backups, VoIP and the smart home.
- Access control systems1994An access control system replaces keys with cards, tags, codes or a fingerprint. You can set exactly who may enter where…
- Alarm systems1853The first patent for an electric burglar alarm was granted to Augustus Russell Pope in Boston in 1853. Today's alarms…
- Backups and the 3-2-1 ruleA backup is a copy of your data that you can restore from when something goes wrong. The gold standard is the 3-2-1…
- Camera systems (CCTV)1942The first closed-circuit television system (CCTV) was built by Siemens in 1942 to watch rocket launches. Today's IP…
- Cybersecurity1988Cybersecurity protects computers, networks and data from attacks. The first big alarm came with the Morris worm in 1988,…
- Firewall1988A firewall is the guard at the edge of a network. It decides which connections may go in and out. The first packet…
- Jablotron1990Jablotron is a Czech company from Jablonec nad Nisou that makes security systems. It was founded in 1990, and its alarms…
- Passwords, two-factor authentication and passkeys1961Computer passwords were first used around 1961 in the CTSS system at MIT. Just a year later a student printed them out…
- PoE: power over the network cable2003PoE (Power over Ethernet) carries both data and power over a single network cable. A camera, Wi-Fi access point or IP…
- Smart home and Home Assistant1975A smart home controls lights, heating, blinds or sockets automatically or from your phone. The first system, X10,…
- Structured cabling1991Structured cabling is a properly designed network of cables in a building: from the sockets in each room to a single…
- UPS: uninterruptible power supplyA UPS is a battery backup power supply that keeps a computer, NAS or router running during a power cut and gives them…
- VLANs and network segmentation1998A VLAN splits one physical network into several separate virtual networks. The IEEE 802.1Q standard came out in 1998. At…
- VoIP: calling over the internet1995VoIP carries voice over the internet instead of traditional telephone lines. The first commercial program for internet…
Great inventions
The printing press, the steam engine, the telephone, radio, the aeroplane, spaceflight and more.
- 3D printing1984A 3D printer builds objects layer by layer from a digital model. Chuck Hull invented stereolithography in 1984, and…
- Aeroplane1903On 17 December 1903 the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright took off at Kitty Hawk in their powered aeroplane, the Flyer.…
- Battery and electricity1800In 1800 Alessandro Volta stacked zinc and copper discs on top of each other, separated by pieces of cloth soaked in salt…
- Drones2013For a long time drones were a military technology. In 2013 the Chinese company DJI launched the Phantom, an easy-to-fly…
- Electric cars2008Electric cars existed before petrol cars, but lost out because their batteries were too weak. The comeback came with the…
- Electric motor1834An electric motor turns electricity into motion. Michael Faraday demonstrated the principle in 1821. Ányos Jedlik, a…
- GPS1978GPS is a satellite navigation system developed by the US military. The first satellite was launched in 1978, and since…
- Lift1852Hoisting devices were already known to the ancient Romans. The real revolution was Elisha Otis's safety brake of 1852,…
- Mechanical calculator1642In 1642, at the age of 19, Blaise Pascal built a mechanical calculator to help his father with tax calculations. The…
- Mechanical clock1300Mechanical clocks with an escapement appeared in Europe around 1300 on the towers of churches and town halls. Christiaan…
- Nuclear power1954The first nuclear power station connected to the grid started operating in 1954 in Obninsk in the Soviet Union. Slovakia…
- Photography1839In 1839 Louis Daguerre presented the daguerreotype, the first practical photographic process. The road leads from slow…
- Printing press1440Around 1440 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg combined movable metal type, a press and oil-based ink into a working printing…
- Radio1895In 1895 Guglielmo Marconi began sending signals without wires, and in 1901 he bridged the Atlantic. Nikola Tesla,…
- Spaceflight1957On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite of the Earth. Four years later…
- Steam engine1769A steam engine turns heat from coal into motion. Thomas Newcomen built the first practical one in 1712 to pump water out…
- Telephone1876Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone on 7 March 1876, and three days later he spoke the first…
- Telescope1608In 1608 the Dutch lens maker Hans Lipperhey applied for a patent on the telescope. A year later Galileo Galilei pointed…
- Television1926In January 1926 in London, John Logie Baird demonstrated the transmission of moving pictures with a mechanical…
- The car1886On 29 January 1886 Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen, the first practical car with an internal combustion engine. Two…
- The light bulb and electrification1879In 1879 Thomas Edison demonstrated a light bulb with a carbon filament that glowed for dozens of hours. He was neither…
- The telegraph and Morse code1844The electric telegraph was the first way to send a message over a long distance almost instantly. On 24 May 1844 Samuel…
- The wheel3500 BCThe wheel is one of the oldest technical inventions. The potter's wheel and the first wheeled carts appear around 3500…
- Writing3200 BCWriting is a technology for storing information outside human memory. Around 3200 BC the Sumerians began pressing…
- X-rays1895On 8 November 1895 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered invisible rays that pass through the human body. The first X-ray…
People behind technology
The people without whom there would be no electricity, radio, cameras, computers or internet: Einstein, Tesla, Faraday, Turing, Berners-Lee and more.
- Ada Lovelace1843Ada Lovelace was a mathematician who in 1843 described a method for Babbage's Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli…
- Alan Turing1936Alan Turing was a British mathematician who in 1936 described a theoretical machine that underlies every computer today.…
- Albert Einstein1905Albert Einstein was a physicist who changed the way we understand light, time and energy in 1905. His explanation of the…
- Claude Shannon1948Claude Shannon is the father of information theory. In 1948 he showed how to measure information in bits and how much…
- Grace Hopper1952Grace Hopper was a mathematician and a US Navy admiral who championed the idea that computers could be programmed with…
- Hedy Lamarr1942Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood star and an inventor at the same time. In 1942, together with the composer George Antheil,…
- Heinrich Hertz1887Heinrich Hertz was the first person to produce and detect the radio waves that Maxwell had predicted. The unit of…
- James Clerk Maxwell1865James Clerk Maxwell united electricity, magnetism and light into a single theory. His 1865 equations implied that…
- John von Neumann1945John von Neumann was a mathematician born in Budapest who in 1945 described how a computer should be organised: both the…
- Michael Faraday1831Michael Faraday was a self-taught man from a poor family who discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831. It is what…
- Nikola Tesla1888Nikola Tesla was the inventor thanks to whom our sockets carry alternating current. His induction motor powers…
- Steven Sasson and the first digital camera1975Steven Sasson was a young Kodak engineer who built the first digital camera in 1975. It weighed 3.6 kg, took…
- Thomas Alva Edison1877Thomas Alva Edison turned inventing into an industry. His laboratory at Menlo Park churned out ideas like a factory,…
- Tim Berners-Lee1989Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who in 1989, at the CERN laboratory, proposed the World Wide Web. He…
- Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn1974Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn are regarded as the fathers of the internet. In 1974 they designed the TCP/IP protocol, which…
- Vladimir Zworykin1923Vladimir Zworykin was an engineer of Russian origin who developed the iconoscope in the USA, one of the first usable…
Science and curiosities
Surprising physics and technology around us: people who glow, cosmic rays in your computer, the speed of light on the internet, Voyager 1 and concert tech.
- Cosmic rays flip bits in computers2003Particles from space occasionally fly through a chip and change a one into a zero in memory, or the other way round. In…
- Technology at concerts2023A big concert today is a technical operation. Speakers hung in rows aim sound precisely at the audience, singers hear…
- The human body radiates light2009The human body really does glow, just very faintly. In 2009 Japanese scientists photographed people in complete darkness…
- The speed of light and ping1676Light is the fastest thing we know, but for the internet it isn't infinitely fast. Even through an ideal optical fibre,…
- Voyager 1: the farthest machine from Earth1977Voyager 1 launched in 1977 and is still sending data back to Earth today. It's the most distant object humans have ever…
- WITCH, the oldest working computer1951The Harwell Dekatron, also known as WITCH, is the oldest original digital computer still working today. It was built in…
Technology at home
The fridge, washing machine, microwave, espresso and even sliced bread. Tech we no longer notice.
- Air conditioning and the heat pump1902Modern air conditioning was born in 1902, when Willis Carrier designed a system that controlled the temperature and…
- Bread and sliced bread1928Bread is one of humanity's oldest technologies: the oldest flatbread remains ever found are about 14,400 years old. On 7…
- Espresso and the coffee machine1884Angelo Moriondo received the first patent for a steam-powered coffee machine in Turin in 1884. Espresso with a golden…
- LED lighting1962Nick Holonyak presented the first light-emitting diode with visible red light in 1962. White LED light, however,…
- Microwave oven1947The engineer Percy Spencer was working on radar in 1945 when he noticed that a chocolate bar had melted in his pocket.…
- Refrigerator1913The first electric refrigerator for households, the DOMELRE, went on sale in Chicago in 1913. Fridges only became…
- Robot vacuum cleaner2002A robot vacuum cleaner moves around your home and vacuums on its own. The first commercial one was the Electrolux…
- The dishwasher1886The first practical dishwasher was patented by Josephine Cochrane in 1886. Supposedly because her servants kept breaking…
- The tin can1810Canning was invented by the Frenchman Nicolas Appert, who in 1810 received a reward from Napoleon's government for a way…
- The vacuum cleaner1901The first motorised vacuum cleaner was built by Hubert Cecil Booth in London in 1901. It was so big that it was pulled…
- The zip1913The zip is a small technical marvel on every jacket. The first “clasp locker” for shoes was patented by Whitcomb Judson…
- Washing machine1908The Thor, the first electric washing machine sold in series, came onto the US market in 1908. Washing, which until then…
Slovak inventors and tech
Kempelen, Petzval, Murgaš, Banič, Bahýľ and Slovak companies known worldwide.
- Aurel Stodola1903Aurel Stodola from Liptovský Mikuláš was a professor at the Polytechnic in Zurich and the founder of the theory of steam…
- ESET1987ESET is a Bratislava company and one of the best-known antivirus makers in the world. It began in 1987, when Miroslav…
- Ján Andrej Segner1750Ján Andrej Segner, a native of Bratislava, invented Segner's wheel around 1750, the first water reaction turbine. Water…
- Ján Bahýľ1905Ján Bahýľ from Zvolenská Slatina was a military technician and inventor who worked on flying machines. According to…
- Jozef Karol Hell and mining technology1749In 1749 Jozef Karol Hell from Štiavnické Bane built a water-column machine for pumping water out of deep mines. Driven…
- Jozef Maximilián Petzval1840In 1840 Jozef Maximilián Petzval from Spišská Belá calculated a portrait lens that was about 20 times brighter than the…
- Jozef Murgaš1904Jozef Murgaš from Tajov was a Catholic priest, painter and inventor. In Wilkes-Barre in the USA he developed a “tone…
- Slido2012Slido is an app for questions and polls during presentations and conferences, created by a team in Bratislava in 2012.…
- Slovak flying cars2021Slovak designer Štefan Klein has been working on flying cars for decades. In June 2021 his AirCar flew from Nitra…
- Slovak technology companies and startupsSlovakia is not just car factories. Companies whose products are used by millions of people were founded here: ESET…
- Štefan Banič and the parachute1914Štefan Banič, a native of the village of Neštich near Smolenice, worked as a labourer in the USA. In 1914 he received an…
- The Mining Academy in Banská Štiavnica1762In 1762 Maria Theresa founded a school of mining engineering in Banská Štiavnica, which became the Mining Academy. It is…
- The Slovak games scene2003Slovakia has a lively game development scene. Bratislava's Cauldron released the action game Chaser on its own engine in…
- Wolfgang Kempelen and the chess automaton1770Wolfgang Kempelen, a native of Bratislava, presented the “chess-playing Turk” at the court of Maria Theresa in 1770, an…
Sport and tennis
Tennis, its technology and athletes we admire: Cibulková, Hantuchová, Mečíř.
- Daniela HantuchováDaniela Hantuchová from Poprad was world number five and is one of the best mixed doubles players in history. She won…
- Dominika CibulkováDominika Cibulková from Bratislava is the most successful Slovak woman tennis player in singles. In 2016 she won the WTA…
- Miloslav MečířMiloslav Mečíř from Bojnice is the Olympic tennis champion from Seoul 1988. He was nicknamed the “Big Cat” for his…
- Technology in football2018Football long relied on nothing but the referee's eyes. Today goal-line technology checks the goal, the VAR video…
- Technology in tennis2006Tennis has changed thanks to technology. Wooden rackets gave way to graphite, balls turned yellow for television, and…
- Tennis1874Modern tennis was patented by British Major Walter Clopton Wingfield in February 1874 under the name Sphairistikè. Three…
Mechanical age
up to 1829. The wheel, writing, clocks, the printing press and the steam engine. Technology powered by hand, water and steam.
- The wheel3500 BCThe wheel is one of the oldest technical inventions. The potter's wheel and the first wheeled carts appear around 3500…Inventions
- Writing3200 BCWriting is a technology for storing information outside human memory. Around 3200 BC the Sumerians began pressing…Inventions
- Mechanical clock1300Mechanical clocks with an escapement appeared in Europe around 1300 on the towers of churches and town halls. Christiaan…Inventions
- Printing press1440Around 1440 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg combined movable metal type, a press and oil-based ink into a working printing…Inventions
- Telescope1608In 1608 the Dutch lens maker Hans Lipperhey applied for a patent on the telescope. A year later Galileo Galilei pointed…Inventions
- Mechanical calculator1642In 1642, at the age of 19, Blaise Pascal built a mechanical calculator to help his father with tax calculations. The…Inventions
- The speed of light and ping1676Light is the fastest thing we know, but for the internet it isn't infinitely fast. Even through an ideal optical fibre,…Curiosities
- Jozef Karol Hell and mining technology1749In 1749 Jozef Karol Hell from Štiavnické Bane built a water-column machine for pumping water out of deep mines. Driven…Slovakia
- Ján Andrej Segner1750Ján Andrej Segner, a native of Bratislava, invented Segner's wheel around 1750, the first water reaction turbine. Water…Slovakia
- The Mining Academy in Banská Štiavnica1762In 1762 Maria Theresa founded a school of mining engineering in Banská Štiavnica, which became the Mining Academy. It is…Slovakia
- Steam engine1769A steam engine turns heat from coal into motion. Thomas Newcomen built the first practical one in 1712 to pump water out…Inventions
- Wolfgang Kempelen and the chess automaton1770Wolfgang Kempelen, a native of Bratislava, presented the “chess-playing Turk” at the court of Maria Theresa in 1770, an…Slovakia
- Battery and electricity1800In 1800 Alessandro Volta stacked zinc and copper discs on top of each other, separated by pieces of cloth soaked in salt…Inventions
- The tin can1810Canning was invented by the Frenchman Nicolas Appert, who in 1810 received a reward from Napoleon's government for a way…Home
Age of electricity
1830 – 1944. The telegraph, telephone, light bulb, radio and aeroplane. The world got connected by wire and air.
- Michael Faraday1831Michael Faraday was a self-taught man from a poor family who discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831. It is what…People
- Electric motor1834An electric motor turns electricity into motion. Michael Faraday demonstrated the principle in 1821. Ányos Jedlik, a…Inventions
- The Analytical Engine and Ada Lovelace1837In 1837 Charles Babbage designed the Analytical Engine, a steam-powered mechanical computer with memory and a program on…Computers
- Photography1839In 1839 Louis Daguerre presented the daguerreotype, the first practical photographic process. The road leads from slow…Inventions
- Jozef Maximilián Petzval1840In 1840 Jozef Maximilián Petzval from Spišská Belá calculated a portrait lens that was about 20 times brighter than the…Slovakia
- Ada Lovelace1843Ada Lovelace was a mathematician who in 1843 described a method for Babbage's Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli…People
- The telegraph and Morse code1844The electric telegraph was the first way to send a message over a long distance almost instantly. On 24 May 1844 Samuel…Inventions
- Lift1852Hoisting devices were already known to the ancient Romans. The real revolution was Elisha Otis's safety brake of 1852,…Inventions
- Alarm systems1853The first patent for an electric burglar alarm was granted to Augustus Russell Pope in Boston in 1853. Today's alarms…Security
- James Clerk Maxwell1865James Clerk Maxwell united electricity, magnetism and light into a single theory. His 1865 equations implied that…People
- The keyboard: from typewriter to mechanical switches1868The key layout we use today comes from Christopher Sholes's typewriter, patented in 1868. The computer keyboard…Computers
- Tennis1874Modern tennis was patented by British Major Walter Clopton Wingfield in February 1874 under the name Sphairistikè. Three…Sport
- Telephone1876Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone on 7 March 1876, and three days later he spoke the first…Inventions
- Thomas Alva Edison1877Thomas Alva Edison turned inventing into an industry. His laboratory at Menlo Park churned out ideas like a factory,…People
- The light bulb and electrification1879In 1879 Thomas Edison demonstrated a light bulb with a carbon filament that glowed for dozens of hours. He was neither…Inventions
- Espresso and the coffee machine1884Angelo Moriondo received the first patent for a steam-powered coffee machine in Turin in 1884. Espresso with a golden…Home
- The car1886On 29 January 1886 Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen, the first practical car with an internal combustion engine. Two…Inventions
- The dishwasher1886The first practical dishwasher was patented by Josephine Cochrane in 1886. Supposedly because her servants kept breaking…Home
- Heinrich Hertz1887Heinrich Hertz was the first person to produce and detect the radio waves that Maxwell had predicted. The unit of…People
- Nikola Tesla1888Nikola Tesla was the inventor thanks to whom our sockets carry alternating current. His induction motor powers…People
- Radio1895In 1895 Guglielmo Marconi began sending signals without wires, and in 1901 he bridged the Atlantic. Nikola Tesla,…Inventions
- X-rays1895On 8 November 1895 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered invisible rays that pass through the human body. The first X-ray…Inventions
- Monitors and displays1897Screens have gone from heavy cathode-ray tubes, invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897, through flat LCDs to OLED,…Computers
- The vacuum cleaner1901The first motorised vacuum cleaner was built by Hubert Cecil Booth in London in 1901. It was so big that it was pulled…Home
- Air conditioning and the heat pump1902Modern air conditioning was born in 1902, when Willis Carrier designed a system that controlled the temperature and…Home
- Aurel Stodola1903Aurel Stodola from Liptovský Mikuláš was a professor at the Polytechnic in Zurich and the founder of the theory of steam…Slovakia
- Aeroplane1903On 17 December 1903 the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright took off at Kitty Hawk in their powered aeroplane, the Flyer.…Inventions
- Jozef Murgaš1904Jozef Murgaš from Tajov was a Catholic priest, painter and inventor. In Wilkes-Barre in the USA he developed a “tone…Slovakia
- Albert Einstein1905Albert Einstein was a physicist who changed the way we understand light, time and energy in 1905. His explanation of the…People
- Ján Bahýľ1905Ján Bahýľ from Zvolenská Slatina was a military technician and inventor who worked on flying machines. According to…Slovakia
- Washing machine1908The Thor, the first electric washing machine sold in series, came onto the US market in 1908. Washing, which until then…Home
- Refrigerator1913The first electric refrigerator for households, the DOMELRE, went on sale in Chicago in 1913. Fridges only became…Home
- The zip1913The zip is a small technical marvel on every jacket. The first “clasp locker” for shoes was patented by Whitcomb Judson…Home
- Štefan Banič and the parachute1914Štefan Banič, a native of the village of Neštich near Smolenice, worked as a labourer in the USA. In 1914 he received an…Slovakia
- Vladimir Zworykin1923Vladimir Zworykin was an engineer of Russian origin who developed the iconoscope in the USA, one of the first usable…People
- Television1926In January 1926 in London, John Logie Baird demonstrated the transmission of moving pictures with a mechanical…Inventions
- Bread and sliced bread1928Bread is one of humanity's oldest technologies: the oldest flatbread remains ever found are about 14,400 years old. On 7…Home
- Alan Turing1936Alan Turing was a British mathematician who in 1936 described a theoretical machine that underlies every computer today.…People
- Hedy Lamarr1942Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood star and an inventor at the same time. In 1942, together with the composer George Antheil,…People
- Camera systems (CCTV)1942The first closed-circuit television system (CCTV) was built by Siemens in 1942 to watch rocket launches. Today's IP…Security
Valves and transistors
1945 – 1970. ENIAC, the transistor and the integrated circuit. Computers filled entire rooms.
- ENIAC1945ENIAC was one of the first general-purpose electronic computers. It weighed about 27 tonnes, had almost 18,000 vacuum…Computers
- John von Neumann1945John von Neumann was a mathematician born in Budapest who in 1945 described how a computer should be organised: both the…People
- Microwave oven1947The engineer Percy Spencer was working on radar in 1945 when he noticed that a chocolate bar had melted in his pocket.…Home
- The transistor1947A transistor is a tiny semiconductor switch and amplifier. It was invented at Bell Labs in December 1947 and is probably…Computers
- Claude Shannon1948Claude Shannon is the father of information theory. In 1948 he showed how to measure information in bits and how much…People
- Alan Turing and the Turing test1950In 1950 the British mathematician Alan Turing asked “Can machines think?” and proposed a test: if a person in a written…Software & AI
- WITCH, the oldest working computer1951The Harwell Dekatron, also known as WITCH, is the oldest original digital computer still working today. It was built in…Curiosities
- Grace Hopper1952Grace Hopper was a mathematician and a US Navy admiral who championed the idea that computers could be programmed with…People
- Nuclear power1954The first nuclear power station connected to the grid started operating in 1954 in Obninsk in the Soviet Union. Slovakia…Inventions
- Machine translation1954In 1954 IBM and Georgetown University demonstrated a computer that translated 60 sentences from Russian into English.…Software & AI
- The hard disk drive (HDD)1956A hard disk stores data on spinning magnetic platters. The first, the IBM 350 from 1956, was the size of two fridges and…Computers
- Programming languages1957A programming language is the way people write instructions for a computer. FORTRAN from 1957 was the first widely used…Software & AI
- Spaceflight1957On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite of the Earth. Four years later…Inventions
- The integrated circuit (chip)1958The integrated circuit put multiple components on one piece of semiconductor. Jack Kilby demonstrated it in 1958 and…Computers
- Passwords, two-factor authentication and passkeys1961Computer passwords were first used around 1961 in the CTSS system at MIT. Just a year later a student printed them out…Security
- Robots1961The word robot comes from Czech. Karel Čapek used it in his 1920 play R.U.R., but it was invented by his brother Josef.…Software & AI
- LED lighting1962Nick Holonyak presented the first light-emitting diode with visible red light in 1962. White LED light, however,…Home
- The modem and dial-up internet1962A modem turns data into sound so it can travel over a telephone line. The whistling and hissing when connecting to the…Internet
- Supercomputers1964A supercomputer is the most powerful computer of its time. The first was the CDC 6600 by Seymour Cray from 1964. Today's…Computers
- The touchscreen1965The first capacitive touchscreen was described by British engineer E. A. Johnson in 1965 for air traffic control. It…Phones
- Moore's law1965Moore's law is Gordon Moore's 1965 observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles regularly. It is not a…Computers
- ELIZA, the first chatbot1966ELIZA, from 1966, was the first chatbot. Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT programmed it to imitate a psychotherapist who simply…Software & AI
- Intel1968Intel was founded in July 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, two of the fathers of the semiconductor industry. The…Computers
- The computer mouse1968The mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart and his team and shown to the world in December 1968 at the legendary…Computers
- AMD1969AMD is Intel's eternal rival. It was founded in 1969 and for a long time was “the other” company, but with its Ryzen…Computers
- ARPANET1969ARPANET was a computer network of the US Department of Defense and the forerunner of the internet. The first message…Internet
- Unix1969Unix was created by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in 1969. Its ideas, such as small tools that each do…Software & AI
- RAM (memory)1970RAM is a computer's fast working memory that only remembers while powered. The first commercial DRAM chip came out in…Computers
- Optical fibre1970Optical fibre carries data as light in a thin glass strand. Charles Kao calculated in 1966 that it could work over long…Internet
Microchip and the PC
1971 – 1990. The microprocessor, IBM PC, ZX Spectrum and the first consoles. The computer moved onto the desk.
- Floppy disks, CD and DVD1971The floppy disk was born at IBM in 1971 and was the main way to move data around until the 1990s. It was followed by CD,…Computers
- Email1971In 1971 Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers on ARPANET and chose the @ sign to separate the user…Internet
- The Intel 4004 microprocessor1971The Intel 4004 from November 1971 was the first commercial microprocessor, a computer's entire processing unit on one…Computers
- Esports1972Esports means competitive video gaming at a professional level. It started with a student tournament at Stanford in…Games
- Pong and the birth of video games1972Pong is a simple electronic table tennis game released by Atari in 1972. It was not the very first video game, but it…Games
- Ethernet1973Ethernet is the way computers connect by cable in a local network. Bob Metcalfe described it at Xerox PARC in May 1973,…Internet
- The first mobile phone1973The first call from a handheld mobile phone was made by Martin Cooper of Motorola on 3 April 1973 on a New York street.…Phones
- Copy and paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V)1974Copying and pasting text was popularised by computer scientist Larry Tesler at Xerox PARC in 1974 and 1975. The…Software & AI
- Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn1974Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn are regarded as the fathers of the internet. In 1974 they designed the TCP/IP protocol, which…People
- Microsoft1975Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in April 1975 to write software for the first personal computers.…Computers
- Smart home and Home Assistant1975A smart home controls lights, heating, blinds or sockets automatically or from your phone. The first system, X10,…Security
- Steven Sasson and the first digital camera1975Steven Sasson was a young Kodak engineer who built the first digital camera in 1975. It weighed 3.6 kg, took…People
- Apple1976Apple was founded on 1 April 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. From a garage in California it grew…Computers
- Encryption and HTTPS1976Public-key encryption lets two people who have never met agree on a secret key over a network others can listen to.…Internet
- Atari 26001977The Atari 2600 brought video games into living rooms. Games were swapped using cartridges, which was a crucial idea at…Games
- Voyager 1: the farthest machine from Earth1977Voyager 1 launched in 1977 and is still sending data back to Earth today. It's the most distant object humans have ever…Curiosities
- GPS1978GPS is a satellite navigation system developed by the US military. The first satellite was launched in 1978, and since…Inventions
- Pac-Man1980Pac-Man by the Japanese company Namco came out in 1980 and became the first video game character known all over the…Games
- The IBM PC1981The IBM Personal Computer from August 1981 set what most computers would look like for decades. It was built from…Computers
- The laptop1981The first commercially successful portable computer, the Osborne 1 from 1981, weighed around 11 kilograms and had a…Computers
- Commodore 641982According to Guinness World Records, the Commodore 64 from 1982 is the best-selling single computer model in history. It…Computers
- ZX Spectrum, Didaktik and PMD 851982The ZX Spectrum was a cheap British home computer from 1982 on which a generation of programmers and game developers…Computers
- DNS1983DNS is the phone book of the internet. It translates names like krat-tech.com into numeric IP addresses. Paul…Internet
- NES and Nintendo1983The Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom in Japan) rescued video games after the 1983 crash. It brought Super Mario,…Games
- Open source1983Open source is software with published source code that anyone can read, modify and share. The movement was started by…Software & AI
- TCP/IP1983TCP/IP is the common language of the internet. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn designed it in 1974, and on 1 January 1983 the…Internet
- 3D printing1984A 3D printer builds objects layer by layer from a digital model. Chuck Hull invented stereolithography in 1984, and…Inventions
- Flash memory and SSDs1984Flash memory keeps data without power and has no moving parts. Fujio Masuoka invented it at Toshiba in 1984. Today it is…Computers
- Apple Macintosh1984The Macintosh from January 1984 was the first successful computer for ordinary people with a graphical interface and a…Computers
- Tetris1984Tetris was programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in June 1984 in Moscow on a Soviet Elektronika 60 computer. The falling blocks…Games
- ARM and Apple Silicon1985ARM is an architecture of power-efficient processors created in 1985 at British firm Acorn. It powers almost every phone…Computers
- Microsoft Windows1985Windows is the most widely used operating system for personal computers. It started in 1985 as a graphical layer on top…Computers
- Konami Code1986↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A. The Konami Code is the most famous cheat in gaming history. Programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto added it…Games
- ESET1987ESET is a Bratislava company and one of the best-known antivirus makers in the world. It began in 1987, when Miroslav…Slovakia
- Firewall1988A firewall is the guard at the edge of a network. It decides which connections may go in and out. The first packet…Security
- Cybersecurity1988Cybersecurity protects computers, networks and data from attacks. The first big alarm came with the Morris worm in 1988,…Security
- Game Boy1989The Game Boy was small, tough and its batteries lasted a very long time. Thanks to Tetris and later Pokémon it became…Games
- Tim Berners-Lee1989Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who in 1989, at the CERN laboratory, proposed the World Wide Web. He…People
- Jablotron1990Jablotron is a Czech company from Jablonec nad Nisou that makes security systems. It was founded in 1990, and its alarms…Security
The internet
1991 – 2006. The web, email for everyone, Wi-Fi, Google and online games. The world went online.
- The lithium-ion battery1991The lithium-ion battery is a light and powerful rechargeable cell that powers phones, laptops and electric cars. Sony…Phones
- Linux1991Linux is an operating system kernel written in 1991 by Finnish student Linus Torvalds “as a hobby”. Today it runs most…Computers
- Mobile networks from 1G to 5G1991Mobile networks evolved in generations. The first was analogue, the second brought digital GSM and SMS, the third and…Phones
- Structured cabling1991Structured cabling is a properly designed network of cables in a building: from the sockets in each room to a single…Security
- The Trojan Room coffee pot: the first webcam1991The world's first webcam watched a coffee pot. In 1991 scientists at the University of Cambridge pointed a camera at the…Internet
- The World Wide Web1991The web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN near Geneva. He wrote the proposal in 1989, the first page went online…Internet
- SMS1992The first SMS was sent on 3 December 1992 by engineer Neil Papworth from a computer to a colleague's phone at Vodafone.…Phones
- Doom1993Doom by id Software, released in December 1993, defined the first-person shooter. It spread as shareware, could be…Games
- NVIDIA1993NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem at a table in a Denny's restaurant. From…Computers
- The web browser1993The browser is your window onto the web. Mosaic in 1993 was the first popular browser to show images inline with text,…Internet
- PlayStation1994Sony's PlayStation grew out of a failed partnership with Nintendo and in 1994 turned consoles into entertainment for…Games
- Access control systems1994An access control system replaces keys with cards, tags, codes or a fingerprint. You can set exactly who may enter where…Security
- Webcam1994A webcam, often also written as web camera, is a small camera that sends video to a computer and on across the internet.…Internet
- Online shops1995In 1995 Amazon began selling books over the internet, and eBay was founded too. Shopping online has become a matter of…Internet
- VoIP: calling over the internet1995VoIP carries voice over the internet instead of traditional telephone lines. The first commercial program for internet…Security
- Chat and messengers1996Real-time typing over the internet began with IRC channels in 1988. The mass boom came in 1996 with ICQ and its iconic…Internet
- Pokémon1996Pokémon began in 1996 as a Game Boy game about collecting and training monsters. Satoshi Tajiri's idea grew into the…Games
- USB and USB-C1996USB unified the way keyboards, mice, printers and drives are connected. The first version from 1996 ran at 12 Mb/s. The…Computers
- VPN and Tailscale1996A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel over the internet so a remote device behaves as if it were on your home or office…Internet
- Deep Blue beats Kasparov1997On 11 May 1997 the IBM computer Deep Blue beat the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. It…Software & AI
- The Grand Theft Auto series1997Grand Theft Auto began in 1997 as a top-down game by Scottish studio DMA Design. GTA III became the template for…Games
- Wi-Fi1997Wi-Fi is the wireless network that connects phones, laptops and TVs to the internet. The first IEEE 802.11 standard came…Internet
- Google and search engines1998Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in September 1998 in a garage in California. Their PageRank algorithm…Internet
- Half-Life1998Half-Life was Valve's first game. It told its story while you played, without cutscenes, and its engine became the base…Games
- Game engines1998A game engine is the foundation a game stands on: it draws graphics, calculates physics, plays sound and manages the…Games
- Metal Gear Solid1998Metal Gear Solid by Hideo Kojima, from 1998, popularised the stealth genre, in which it is better to sneak past an enemy…Games
- The Rainbow Six series1998Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six from 1998 created the tactical shooter genre. One bullet could kill, and every route of the…Games
- VLANs and network segmentation1998A VLAN splits one physical network into several separate virtual networks. The IEEE 802.1Q standard came out in 1998. At…Security
- Bluetooth1999Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that connects headphones, watches, keyboards and even cars to your phone.…Phones
- Counter-Strike and CS21999Counter-Strike started in 1999 as a fan-made mod for Half-Life. Terrorists against counter-terrorists, a bomb and money…Games
- Emoji1999The first set of 176 emoji was designed by Shigetaka Kurita for the Japanese operator NTT Docomo in 1999. They measured…Phones
- The graphics card (GPU)1999A graphics card computes the image for the monitor. Because it can do huge numbers of simple calculations at once, it…Computers
- The camera in your phone2000The first mass-produced camera phone, the Sharp J-SH04, came out in Japan in 2000 and took 0.1-megapixel photos. Today…Phones
- Nokia 33102000The Nokia 3310 from 2000 is a legend: indestructible, with a battery that lasted a week and the game Snake. About 126…Phones
- The Year 2000 problem (Y2K)2000Old programs stored the year with just two digits to save memory. After 1999 would come the year 00, and computers would…Computers
- The Sims2000The Sims, from 2000, is a life simulation in which you look after virtual people, build them houses and manage their…Games
- Bliss, the Windows XP wallpaper2001The green hill under a blue sky from Windows XP is probably the most viewed photograph in history. Charles O'Rear took…Computers
- Wikipedia2001Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched it on 15 January 2001.…Internet
- Xbox2001Xbox was Microsoft's first console. With Halo and the Xbox Live service it became a serious rival to Sony in 2001 and…Games
- Mafia2002Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven from 2002 was made by the Brno studio Illusion Softworks. The story of taxi driver Tommy…Games
- Robot vacuum cleaner2002A robot vacuum cleaner moves around your home and vacuums on its own. The first commercial one was the Electrolux…Home
- Call of Duty2003Call of Duty is a series of war shooters that began in 2003 with World War II. With Modern Warfare in 2007 it became the…Games
- Cosmic rays flip bits in computers2003Particles from space occasionally fly through a chip and change a one into a zero in memory, or the other way round. In…Curiosities
- MOBA: DotA, League of Legends, Dota 22003MOBA is a genre in which two teams of heroes try to destroy the enemy base along three lanes. It was born as a fan-made…Games
- PoE: power over the network cable2003PoE (Power over Ethernet) carries both data and power over a single network cable. A camera, Wi-Fi access point or IP…Security
- The Slovak games scene2003Slovakia has a lively game development scene. Bratislava's Cauldron released the action game Chaser on its own engine in…Slovakia
- Steam2003Steam started in 2003 as a hated update tool for Counter-Strike. Today it is the largest PC games store, with tens of…Games
- Self-driving cars2004In the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, not a single driverless car reached the finish. A year later five cars completed the…Software & AI
- Social networks2004Social networks connect people online and have become a main source of news and entertainment. Facebook started at…Internet
- World of Warcraft2004Blizzard's World of Warcraft from 2004 is the most successful online role-playing game (MMORPG). Millions of people…Games
- YouTube and streaming2005YouTube was founded in 2005, and its first video “Me at the zoo” lasted 19 seconds. A year later Google bought it for…Internet
- Cloud computing2006Cloud computing means renting computing power and storage over the internet instead of buying your own servers. Amazon…Internet
- Roblox2006Roblox is not a single game but a platform on which players create games for others. It launched in 2006, and in 2025 it…Games
- Technology in tennis2006Tennis has changed thanks to technology. Wooden rackets gave way to graphite, balls turned yellow for television, and…Sport
Smartphones and the cloud
2007 – 2016. iPhone, Android, apps and the cloud. The internet fit into a pocket.
- iPhone2007Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on 9 January 2007 as “an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator” in one. A large…Phones
- Rickroll2007A Rickroll is an internet prank: you click on an interesting link, and instead Rick Astley's music video for the 1987…Internet
- The Witcher2007The Witcher series by the Polish studio CD Projekt RED is based on Andrzej Sapkowski's books about the monster hunter…Games
- Android2008Android is the most widely used operating system in the world. Google bought it in 2005 as a small start-up, and the…Phones
- Wireless charging2008Wireless charging transfers energy by electromagnetic induction between two coils. Nikola Tesla dreamed of transmitting…Phones
- Electric cars2008Electric cars existed before petrol cars, but lost out because their batteries were too weak. The comeback came with the…Inventions
- Bitcoin and blockchain2009Bitcoin is a digital currency without a central bank. Its principle was described in 2008 by the anonymous Satoshi…Internet
- The human body radiates light2009The human body really does glow, just very faintly. In 2009 Japanese scientists photographed people in complete darkness…Curiosities
- Minecraft2009Minecraft is a game about blocks in which you can build anything. It started as one Swedish programmer's project and…Games
- Cloudflare and CDNs2010Cloudflare is a company that sits in front of millions of websites, speeding them up and protecting them from attacks.…Internet
- Samsung and Galaxy2010Samsung started out in 1938 as a shop selling fish and vegetables in Korea. Today it is the world's largest maker of…Phones
- Tablets and the iPad2010Companies had been trying tablets since the 1990s, but success only came with the iPad in April 2010. A large…Phones
- Voice assistants2011Siri on the iPhone 4S in October 2011 made voice assistants popular. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant followed. With…Software & AI
- Twitch2011Twitch is a platform for live streaming games that split off from Justin.tv in 2011. Amazon bought it in 2014 for almost…Games
- Deep learning and neural networks2012Neural networks are programs inspired by the brain that learn from examples instead of fixed rules. The idea is decades…Software & AI
- Raspberry Pi2012The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized computer costing a few tens of euros. It was created in 2012 to teach children…Computers
- Slido2012Slido is an app for questions and polls during presentations and conferences, created by a team in Bratislava in 2012.…Slovakia
- Drones2013For a long time drones were a military technology. In 2013 the Chinese company DJI launched the Phantom, an easy-to-fly…Inventions
- Virtualisation and Docker2013Virtualisation lets one physical computer run several separate systems. In 2013 Docker popularised a lighter form,…Computers
- NFC and mobile payments2014NFC is a technology for communication over a few centimetres. It lets you pay with a card, phone or watch by holding it…Phones
- Rainbow Six Siege2015Rainbow Six Siege is a tactical shooter from Ubisoft in which five attackers fight five defenders inside destructible…Games
- Smartwatches2015Smartwatches show phone notifications and measure movement, heart rate and sleep. Pebble raised record money on…Phones
- AlphaGo2016In March 2016 DeepMind's AlphaGo program beat go master Lee Sedol 4:1. Go has more possible positions than there are…Software & AI
- Virtual reality2016Virtual reality puts you in a digital world through a headset that tracks your head movements. The dream from the 1960s…Games
Age of AI
2017 – today. Transformers, ChatGPT, foldable phones and GTA 6. Software learned to talk.
- Battle royale: PUBG, Fortnite, Warzone2017Battle royale is a genre in which dozens of players drop onto an island, hunt for weapons and a shrinking circle pushes…Games
- Nintendo Switch and Switch 22017The Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console: you play it on a TV, and when you lift it from the dock you carry on in your…Games
- Rainbow Six Siege esports and the Six Invitational2017The Six Invitational is the world championship of Rainbow Six Siege. The winner lifts a hammer-shaped trophy, and it is…Games
- Transformer2017The transformer is a type of neural network introduced in 2017 by eight Google researchers in the paper “Attention Is…Software & AI
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance2018Kingdom Come: Deliverance by the Prague studio Warhorse is a realistic medieval RPG set in Bohemia in 1403. No dragons…Games
- Ray tracing and DLSS2018Ray tracing calculates how rays of light bounce around a scene and produces realistic reflections and shadows. Films…Games
- Technology in football2018Football long relied on nothing but the referee's eyes. Today goal-line technology checks the goal, the VAR video…Sport
- Quantum computers2019A quantum computer calculates with qubits that can be in a combination of 0 and 1 at once. For some tasks it could be…Computers
- Foldable phones2019Foldable phones have a flexible screen that folds. The 2019 Samsung Galaxy Fold showed it could be done, though the…Phones
- Starlink2019Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet. Thousands of satellites in low orbit bring fast internet where no cable…Internet
- Cyberpunk 20772020Cyberpunk 2077 from the makers of The Witcher came out in December 2020 as one of the most anticipated games in history.…Games
- Valorant2020Valorant is a tactical shooter from Riot Games that combines Counter-Strike's precise gunplay with hero abilities. It…Games
- Slovak flying cars2021Slovak designer Štefan Klein has been working on flying cars for decades. In June 2021 his AirCar flew from Nitra…Slovakia
- ChatGPT and language models2022OpenAI's ChatGPT was released on 30 November 2022 and within two months had an estimated 100 million users. It showed…Software & AI
- Elden Ring2022Elden Ring, from the Japanese studio FromSoftware in 2022, brought the tough combat of “souls” games into a huge open…Games
- Generative AI: images and video2022Generative AI creates images, video and music from a text description. In 2022 DALL·E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion…Software & AI
- Steam Deck and gaming handhelds2022The Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC from Valve. It runs Linux and, thanks to the Proton layer, plays thousands of…Games
- Local AI on your own computer2023Language models do not have to run only in the cloud. Since 2023, when Meta released the LLaMA model and the llama.cpp…Software & AI
- Technology at concerts2023A big concert today is a technical operation. Speakers hung in rows aim sound precisely at the audience, singers hear…Curiosities
- Deadlock2024Deadlock is a Valve game that combines a MOBA with a third-person action shooter. It has been in an invite-only playtest…Games
- AI agents2025An AI agent is a language model that does not just answer but also acts: it searches the web, runs programs, writes…Software & AI
- GTA 62026Grand Theft Auto VI is the most anticipated game of the decade. After two delays it launches on 19 November 2026 on…Games
- iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo2026At its September 2026 “Surprise and shine” event Apple introduced the iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and its first foldable…Phones
- Rainbow Six Siege: Ranked 3.02026Ranked 3.0 is Rainbow Six Siege's ranked system since June 2026. It removed hidden MMR, so the rank you see is exactly…Games
- Rainbow Six Siege: Year 11 (2026)2026Year 11 brought Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid to Rainbow Six Siege, a new Calypso Casino map, Ranked 3.0 and, in…Games
Guides and overviews
- NAS and the home server (homelab)A NAS is a small computer with disks that plugs into the home network and acts as shared storage. Today it also runs…Computers
- How to build a PCBuilding a computer is no harder than assembling IKEA furniture; you just need to know how the parts fit together. Here…Computers
- Rainbow Six Siege: operatorsOperators are the characters of Rainbow Six Siege, each with their own weapons and one unique gadget. A good team fits…Games
- Rainbow Six Siege: mapsMaps in Rainbow Six Siege are buildings with four possible objective sites, soft walls, hatches and windows. If you know…Games
- Rainbow Six Siege: tips for beginnersRainbow Six Siege is frustrating at first: you die to one bullet from a spot you never saw. These ten tips will help you…Games
- UPS: uninterruptible power supplyA UPS is a battery backup power supply that keeps a computer, NAS or router running during a power cut and gives them…Security
- Backups and the 3-2-1 ruleA backup is a copy of your data that you can restore from when something goes wrong. The gold standard is the 3-2-1…Security
- Slovak technology companies and startupsSlovakia is not just car factories. Companies whose products are used by millions of people were founded here: ESET…Slovakia
- Dominika CibulkováDominika Cibulková from Bratislava is the most successful Slovak woman tennis player in singles. In 2016 she won the WTA…Sport
- Daniela HantuchováDaniela Hantuchová from Poprad was world number five and is one of the best mixed doubles players in history. She won…Sport
- Miloslav MečířMiloslav Mečíř from Bojnice is the Olympic tennis champion from Seoul 1988. He was nicknamed the “Big Cat” for his…Sport
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Happening now
Fresh news from tech and gaming. Updated 6 October 2026. All news →
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19 Nov 2026
GTA 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S
On 5 October Rockstar shared new images and story details about Lucia and Jason in LOVE magazine. A PC version has not been announced yet.
Release in – days
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23 Oct 2026
iPhone Duo goes on sale
The first foldable iPhone, with a 7.6″ inner display and the A20 Pro chip. Pre-orders from 16 October, from $1,999 in the US.
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28–30 Sep 2026
A new wave of AI models
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5, OpenAI GPT-6.1 Sol and Google Gemini 4 Argon. For now, Argon is only available to selected cybersecurity partners.
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22 Sep 2026
Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6
New chips for flagship Android phones. The Extreme version runs a 30-billion-parameter AI model right on the phone and records 8K video at 60 fps.
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Late 2026
Voyager 1 to reach one light-day from Earth
Humanity’s most distant probe will be so far away that its signal takes a whole day to reach us. Launched in 1977, it is still transmitting.
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1 Sep 2026
Rainbow Six Siege: Operation Split Fire
Egyptian defender Noor and his Horus Lance, the first direct counter to shields. Plus 3v3 in Arcade and a Legend Division for the best players.
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2026
RAM has never been this expensive
Manufacturers moved capacity to memory for AI. 32 GB of DDR5 costs roughly four times what it did a year ago.