Historical Tech Tree
historicaltechtree.com
Historical Tech Tree
1–10 of 132 posts
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#2Cool concept. I’d love a vertical version for mobile.
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#3This site is an absolute gem. Thank you.
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#4Discussed once (and I do mean once):
Historical Tech Tree - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44104243 - May 2025 (1 comment)
Edit: oops!
The Universal Tech Tree - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44161607 - June 2025 (65 comments)
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#5Beautiful! I wonder if Jimmy Maher's heard about this; he wanted something like it for The Analog Antiquarian back ages ago before he kicked that off, as a way of reflecting the span of history in the structure of the index/TOC, but we never could figure out really how to get it to go anywhere we liked. It's a surprisingly tricky problem, and this is an impressive realization!
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#6Does anyone know which technology on this tree has the most descendents?
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#7And a related page, in the other direction: https://www.futuretimeline.net/
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#8This is cool, but I think the execution is off because there's so much empty space. I think it would work better if the nodes were much smaller and closer together so you can see more of the graph in one screen.
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#9No fire, and no knot. Hmmm...
Re: Historical Tech Tree
#10It's interesting that prior to the industrial revolution there are still some periods where it seems like innovations arrived relatively fast, and others where it was comparatively slow. E.g. a lot more entries are in the 500 BCE - 200 BCE period than the 200 - 500 range.