The eunuch Ts'ai Lun either invents paper or presents a report on the new substance to the Chinese emperor

Roman socks, surviving in dry Egyptian tombs, are the earliest known examples of knitting

A document makes the first known reference to windmills, in use in Persia

Skilled Chinese paper-makers are captured by the Arabs - beginning the slow westward transmission of the technology of paper

The earliest surviving reference to the principle of the compass occurs in a Chinese manuscript

Su Sung, a Buddhist monk, develops in China the principle of the escapement in his tower clock worked by a water wheel

The Chinese develop a feature of great significance in the history of seafaring - a sternpost rudder which is an integral part of the ship

The first mention of a lens occurs in a manuscript by Roger Bacon, to be soon followed by the invention of spectacles

A great clock is completed in Padua, regulated mechanically by foliot and escapement

A clock, designed only to strike the hours, is installed in Salisbury cathedral and is still working today

The keyboard of the organ is adapted in Germany to strings, thus providing the harpsichord - first mentioned in a manuscript of this year

The oldest surviving spring mechanism (enabling clocks to become small and portable) is put to work

The first watches, made in Nuremberg, are spherical clocks about three inches in diameter, worn usually on a ribbon round the neck

The tinderbox provides a new way of making fire - with just flint, steel and tinder

An English clergyman, William Lee, develops the world's first industrial machinery, to knit stockings

Zacharias Janssen, a spectacle maker in the Dutch town of Middelburg, creates the first microscope

A lucky accident reveals the principle of the telescope to a spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey. In the Dutch town of Middelburg

Galileo improves on the Dutch telescope (and doubles his salary by presenting one to his employer)

Evangelista Torricelli, observing variations in a column of mercury, discovers the principle of the barometer

A German burgomaster, Otto von Guericke, devises an air pump capable of creating a vacuum

Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens constructs the first pendulum clock, on Christmas Day in the Hague

Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, now develops the hairspring - of great future importance in watches

The English clockmaker Thomas Tompion is the first to make successful use of the hairspring in pocket watches

Denis Papin, a French scientist working in England, demonstrates a pressure cooker fitted with a safety valve

A maker of harpsichords in Florence, Bartolomeo Cristofori, develops the piano ('soft') and forte ('loud') feature which leads to the piano