Physical objects
- Ishango bone Upper Palaeolithic maker, Ishango region · 20000 BCE
- Clay accounting tokens Neolithic Fertile Crescent peoples · 8000 BCE
- Pebble voting Athenian democratic practice · 500 BCE
- Parapegma Meton of Athens with Euctemon · 432 BCE
- Antikythera mechanism Unknown Greek workshop · 150-100 BCE
- Astrolabe Nastulus (earliest dated instrument); Hellenistic theoretical origin · 927-928 (earliest dated survivor)
- Exchequer tally stick and chequerboard Exchequer of Henry I, England · 1100-1179
- Wampum belt Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations · 1142-1700s
- Khipu (quipu) Inca administrators · c.1400-1532
- Runic calendar staff (primstav) Norwegian folk-craft tradition; maker unknown · 1457
- Apian volvelle Petrus Apianus · 1540
- Lakota winter count Lakota keepers · 18th-19th c.
- Orrery John Rowley, on George Graham's mechanism · 1712-1713
- Adams solid geometry models George Adams · 1750
- Pin map Valentine Seaman (earliest claimed dot map); pin practice later · 1797
- Itamat (Yakama time ball) Yakama and Plateau peoples · 1800s
- Kupe tally bundle Torres Strait Islanders · 1800s
- Lukasa memory board Luba (Congo) court historians · 19th-20th c.
- Stereoscope Charles Wheatstone · 1833
- Olivier string models Theodore Olivier · 1839-1853
- Great Exhibition gold obelisk Great Exhibition displays, Crystal Palace · 1851
- Tide-predicting machine William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) · 1872
- Maxwell thermodynamic surface model James Clerk Maxwell, after James Thomson · 1874
- Thurston glyptic model Robert Henry Thurston · 1875
- Mathematical plaster model Felix Klein's Goettingen school; models by Adolf Weiler and others · 1880
- Message stick Aboriginal Australian peoples, many language groups · pre-contact; documented from 1880s
- Ammassalik wooden coastal maps Kunit, Ammassalik Inuit maker · 1885
- Polynesian genealogical instrument Marquesas Islands makers · 1890
- Marshall Islands stick chart Marshallese navigators · pre-1900
- Crum Brown mathematical surface Alexander Crum Brown · 1900
- Bead map American sales and statistical practice; described by Brinton and Karsten · 1914-1923
- Slotted interlocking-card surface model E. S. Farwell (data), via the American Machinist; described by Willard C. Brinton · by 1914
- Stick (tree) map American sales practice; described by Karsten · 1923
- Volumetric chart (solid model) Statistical model-making practice; described by Karsten · 1923
- Dowding system plotting table Hugh Dowding with Henry Tizard and Patrick Blackett · 1940
- Swingometer Peter Milne; refined by David Butler and Robert McKenzie · 1959
- Forest of rods protein model John Cowdery Kendrew · 1960
- Nanosecond wire Grace Brewster Murray Hopper · 1968