Sorry, we don't allow throughout history questions. These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory.

Btw, you may be interested in the old BBC television series Connections, which was entirely about tracking back some of the origins of modern devices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29