Smartphone Tech Charts

For millennials, iPhone technology is often something that is easy to take for granted. As the first generation of digital natives, many millennials have grown up with the Internet and smartphone technology and have normalized the technology in their minds, which is why this infographic helps lend some much-needed context.

This chart looks at the vast array of technological and scientific developments over the centuries and millennia that have, directly or indirectly, made iPhone technology possible. The infographic allows you to consider a specific iPhone feature -- such as WiFi, touchscreen, camera or LCD display -- before tracing back all the technological developments that made that feature possible.

The amount of information in this infographic is stunning. One of the oldest breakthroughs cited is the development and use of the zero in calculations by Indian mathematicians in 500 B.C. This made it possible for Britain's Ada Lovelace to create the world's first computer program in 1842, a breakthrough that made it possible for Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to create the Apple 1 single-board computer in 1976. The rest, as they say, is history!