Ages of Growth

Renaissance, 1434–1603 (wind)

• Black Death
• Republic of Florence
• Contenance angloise
• Movable type in Europe
• Caravel
• Age of Discovery
• Elizabethan era

Dutch Golden Age, 1600–1672 (wind & peat)

• Cheap energy sources
• Dutch East India Company
• Sweelinck
• Tulip mania
• Dutch Golden Age painting
• Retrenchment
• Rampjaar

First Industrial Revolution, 1775–1914 (coal)

• Industrial Revolution - metallurgy
• The Wealth of Nations
• Declaration of Independence
• Boulton and Watt
• Slave Trade Act 1807
• Slavery Abolition Act 1833
• Dandy
• Victorian era
• BASF
• World War I

Second Industrial Revolution, 1870–1929 (oil)

• Standard Oil
• Crude oil prices since 1861
• Gilded Age
• Art Deco
• Roaring Twenties
• Black Tuesday
• Great Depression

Postwar Era, 1945–1974 (oil)

• Hiroshima bombing
• U.S. birth rates
• The Beatles
• Star Trek
• List of Apollo missions
• Xerox Alto
• 1973 oil crisis
• Progressive rock - late '70s decline

Computer Age, 1984–2008 (oil)

• Early 1980s recession
• Crude oil prices since 1861
• Macintosh
• Transformers
• Phish
• NES
• Fall of the Berlin Wall
• Lexus
• Dissolution of the USSR
• History of the World Wide Web
• Great Recession

Methane Age?, ?–?

• Shale gas
• Methane clathrate

Fission Age?, 1942–?

• CP-1
• EBR-I
• USS Nautilus
• Project Rover
• NERVA
• Electricity in France