1892 - Ernest Franklin Hodgson develops a prefabricated system which he uses to market small structures such as chicken coops, dog houses, tool sheds, and a summer cottage. He later introduces larger structures such as a garage ("auto stable") and year-round housing.

1906 - Aladdin Readi-Cut Houses produces a kit house of numbered, precut pieces.

1908 - Sears Roebuck & Co. Houses by Mail program established. 100,000 units sold by its demise in 1940.

1919 - Le Corbusier writes “Mass Production Houses,” a treatise on the beauty of the “house machine.”

1921 - Buster Keaton stars in One Week, a film about a newlywed couple who builds their prefab house.

1923 - Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer develop “Building Blocks,” a standardized system of housing.

1929 - Buckminster Fuller introduces an early concept for the Dymaxion House—his round metal house—at Chicago’s Marshall Fields department store.

1931 - Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher debut the Aluminaire, the first lightweight steel and aluminum house in the U.S.

1932 - General Houses Corporation introduces a press-steel panel house for $3,000-$4,500. Also, American Houses, Inc. introduces the American Motohome, a simple, box-like, turnkey, steel-framed house.

1933 - George Fred Keck’s House of Tomorrow is toured by more than 750,000 visitors to the Chicago World’s Fair.

1935 - Wally Byam introduces his iconic, aluminum shell Airstream “Clipper,” a trailer easily towed by an automobile.

1936 - Frank Lloyd Wright proposes his Usonian House, a system of standardized details and modular dimensions. Although not technically a prefab house, more than 100 are built over the years.

1940 - Engineers Peter Dejongh and Otto Brandenberger design the Quonset Hut, a semi-cylindrical structure formed by a ribbed metal shell.

1942 - General Panel Corporation commissions Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann to design a panelized house.

1944 - The July issue of Arts and Architecture magazine, edited by John Entenza, creator of the Case Study House program, publishes the essay, “What is a House,” espousing the tenants of modern prefabrication.

1945 - Developer and builder William Levitt begins Levittown construction. His traditional stick-built, high-volume house assembly method rivals projected prefabricated housing volumes. By 1948 he was finishing 150 houses per week.

Lindal Cedar Homes established. Using a wooden post and beam system, Lindal offers a customizable and complete kit home package.

1947 - Industrial designer Henry Dreyfus and architect Edward Larrabee Barnes collaborate on the design of a prefab house for Vultex Aircraft Company consisting of paper core panels skinned in aluminum.

John Bemis, an MIT School of Architecture graduate, founds Acorn Structures, a prefabricated building system.

1948 - Carl Strandlund starts the Lustron Corporation, which sells about 2,500 of its all enameled-steel houses before closing in 1950.

1949 - Designers Charles and Ray Eames finish their famous one-off home in California, using industrially-produced component parts, as part of the Case Study House program.

Buckminster Fuller introduces his Wichita House, a lightweight, round, standardized aluminum structure. Only two are eventually built.

1950 - Jean Prouvé commissioned by the French government to create mass-produced housing. Twenty-five units are produced and installed in Meudon, France.

1953 - Carl Koch designs the Techbuilt House, a wooden frame structure and panelized system.

1954 - Australian architect Harry Seidler creates a prototype production house, a system of prefabricated columns, sections, and beams to allow for extreme flexibility in floor plans.

Marshfield Homes introduces the “Ten Wide,” a mobile home two-feet wider than industry convention.

1957 - Norman Cherner publishes Fabricating Houses from Component Parts, a do-it-yourself guide book.

1959 - William Berkes, a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and disciple of Walter Gropius founds Deck House, a prefabricated residential building system.

1967 - Buckminster Fuller designs the U.S. Pavillion at Montréal’s World Expo, a large geodesic dome.

Moshie Safdie’s Habitat Montréal is built for the World Expo. 158 concrete modules stacked atop each other contained 18 different versions.

1968 - Richard Rogers proposes his Zip-Up Enclosures, a series of standardized components that users could purchase to expand a living structure.

Paul Rudolph is commissioned by the Amalgamated Lithographers of America to create more than 4,000 prefabricated living units rising more than 65 floors. (unrealized)

1970 - The geodesic dome as a do-it-yourself phenomenon reflected in the publishing of Lloyd Kahn’s Domebook One and one year later Domebook 2, which sold more than 175,000 copies.

1971 - Paul Rudolf ‘s modular housing project Oriental Masonic Gardens completed in New Haven, Connecticut.

1972 - Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo is realized with living units that can be changed out over time.

1974 - Zvi Hecker’s Ramot Housing Complex in Jerusalem contains 720 polyhedric modules arranged in a beehive configuration.

1976 - U.S. Congress passes the National Mobile Home Construction and Safety Act to ensure the use of approved construction standards.

1980 - The National Mobile Home Construction and Safety Act is renamed the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Act reflecting the difference between truly mobile recreational vehicles and more permanently sited manufactured homes.

1985 - Deborah Burke creates the Single Wide and Double Wide, two modular house designs, for developer Harvey Gerber.

1993 - Mark and Peter Anderson develop their first balloon-frame panel house on Fox Island, Washington.

1995 - Shigeru Ban completes Furniture House in Japan, which uses factory-finished and site-installed floor-to-ceiling shelving as structural support for the roof.

Wes Jones uses standard shipping containers as the basis for his Technological Cabins series.

1996 - Mass-market retailer IKEA introduces its more traditional style Bo Klok house in Sweden.

Late 1996 1ST National Modular Builders network launched www.buildingsystemsnetwork.com

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