Tomorrow’s Tech Treepowered by Astra

Mathematics & Algorithms · Recorded milestone

Shor's factoring algorithm

Recorded year1994

Peter Shor at Bell Labs shows a quantum computer could factor huge numbers fast, threatening RSA encryption and starting the race to build one.

Explore this milestone on the interactive map

Built on

Led to

Sources & evidence

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.