We all know about ships but have we ever wondered what it's origin is??.
A brief history of ships and boats.
Prehistory and ancient times
~10,000BCE: First boats include rafts, skin, hide and bark boats, kayaks, and dugouts.
~5000BCE–3000BCE: Mesopotamian sailors invent sails.
~3000BCE: Ancient Egyptians make the first boats from wooden planks.
~2500BCE: Minoans and Mycenaeans become the first great ocean navigators, exploring the Mediterranean sea.
~1500BCE–27BCE: Greeks build giant warships, including biremes and triremes.
27BCE–400CE: Romans build galleys, the ancient ancestors of modern warships, with innovations including a raised bridge.
~300BCE: Archimedes (287–212BCE) figures out the science of floatation.
200CE: Lateen sails are being widely used in the Mediterranean (though they are believed to have been invented somewhat earlier in the Arab world).
Middle Ages
300: Vikings invent clinker building.
1200: The central rudder starts to replace the "steerboard."
1400–1600: Most large ships are wooden-built and sail powered, and include cogs, carracks, galleys, and galleons.
1620: Cornelis Drebble builds the first submarine from wood.
15th century: Great voyages by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), Vasco da Gama (1460–1524), Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521), and others pioneer ocean exploration and circumnavigation.
The great age of shipping
Photo: The USS Constitution, nicknamed "Old Ironsides," is a classic, three-masted frigate (warship) dating from 1797. Long since retired from military duty, it's now a fascinating museum in Boston. Photo by Kathryn E. Macdonald courtesy of US Navy.
1777: First iron-hulled boat is built (in England).
1783: Marquis d'Abbans (1751–1832) builds the first steamboat.
19th century: Regular "packet shipping" services are established, sailing to timetables. Fast clipper ships set sailing records.
1807: Robert Fulton (1765–1815) sets a record for traveling from New York City to Albany with a steamboat called Clermont.
1819: Steamboat SS Savannah crosses the Atlantic in a record 29 days.
1836: Modern propellers are invented (independently) by Francis Pettit Smith (1808–1874) and John Ericsson (1803–1889).
1837: Great Western, a giant steam-powered ship called built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859) becomes the first iron boat to cross the Atlantic.
1850s: English shipbuilder John Jordan makes probably the first composite ship by adding wooden-plank cladding over an iron framework.
1870-1898: John Holland designs and builds the first practical, engine-powered submarine, but struggles to convince the US Navy of its potential.
1877: English inventor John Thornycroft patents an early form of the hovercraft based on a floating lily pad.
1884: Sir Charles Parsons invents a highly efficient steam engine called the steam turbine. In 1897, he develops a steam-turbine-powered motor launch called Turbinia.
1886: German auto pioneer Gottlieb Daimler uses a gasoline engine to power a boat.
1886: Gluckauf, one of the first ocean-going tankers, is built and launched in Britain.
1880: Retired Swedish naval officer Charles G. Lundborg invents SWATH (small waterplane area twin hull) boats that ride high above the waves on two submerged hulls.
Modern ships
~1900s: Wealthy people enjoy the romantic, luxurious age of ocean travel onboard liners such as the Mauretania, Lusitania, and Aquitania.
1906: Enrico Forlanini invents the hydrofoil. Telephone pioneer Alexander Graham Bell also plays a part in its development.
1912: A "practically unsinkable" luxury liner called Titanic secures a place in history as the most famous ocean catastrophe of all time when it hits an iceberg and sinks, killing over 1500 people.
1930s: Germans develop the snorkel, a breathing tube that allows diesel engines in submarines to operate underwater, reducing the risk of detection.
1943: Marine gas turbine engines are used for the first time.
1955: US Navy launches first nuclear-powered submarine, US
1956: Ideal X, the first container ship, is launched from Newark, NJ.
1959: Christopher Cockerell's hovercraft makes its maiden voyage.
1960: Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh of the US Navy dive to around 11km (6 miles) in the deepest part of the oceans, the Mariana Trench, in Trieste, a super-reinforced diving vessel (bathyscaphe).
1962: Scripps Institution's FLIP ship is first used to study the movement of ocean waves.
1964: A deep-diving scientific submersible called Alvin is developed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and begins exploring the ocean to depths of almost 5km (3 miles).
1978: Scientific exploration vessel JOIDES Resolution is launched, allowing scientists to explore the seabed in more detail than ever before.
1992: US Navy scraps the last of its giant battleships, USS Missouri.
1993: US Navy launches an experimental, radar-invisible stealth boat called the Sea Shadow, based on a SWATH design. In 2011, the Navy announces it intends to scrap the vessel.
2012: The German-built MS Tûranor PlanetSolar becomes the first vehicle powered by photovoltaic solar cells to circumnavigate the world.
SOURCE:- www.explainthatstuff.com
