C. 2500 BCE: Sumerian abacus -- c. 700 BC: Scytale -- c. 150: Antikythera mechanism -- c. 60: Programmable robot -- c. 850: "On Deciphering Cryptographic Messages" -- c. 1470: Cipher disk -- 1613: ...

Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which ones are uniquely human? Language has been a top candidate at least since Aristotle, who wrote that humanity was “the animal that has language.” ...