Timeline of particle physics technology

1896 - Charles Wilson discovers that energetic particles produce droplet tracks in supersaturated gases.
1897-1901 - Discovery of the Townsend discharge by John Sealy Townsend.
1908 - Hans Geiger and Ernest Rutherford use the Townsend discharge principle to detect alpha particles.
1911 - Charles Wilson finishes a sophisticated cloud chamber.
1928 - Hans Geiger and Walther Muller invent the Geiger Muller tube, which is based upon the gas ionisation principle used by Geiger in 1908, but is a practical device that can also detect beta and gamma radiation. This is implicitly also the invention of the Geiger Muller counter.
1934 - Ernest Lawrence and Stan Livingston invent the cyclotron.
1945 - Edwin McMillan devises a synchrotron.
1952 - Donald Glaser develops the bubble chamber.
1968 - Georges Charpak and Roger Bouclier build the first multiwire proportional mode particle detection chamber.

This article does not cite any sources. (December 2009)