Timeline

• June 29, 2007 -- iPhone is released. World's most hyped consumer product.
• July 3, 2007 -- DVD Jon first cracks activation. People can use the apps on the phone without a subscription
• July 9, 2007 -- dev team releases jailbreak method. The first use of this is ringtones
• July 20, 2007 -- nightwatch ports a toolchain to the iPhone. The first apps are compiled. (but see "Revisions needed" note below)
• August 14, 2007 -- First phones are used with other carriers by means of a SIM hack
• August 21, 2007 -- Installer.app is released, first GUI apps are distributed
• August 23, 2007 -- geohot and team release hardware unlock method.
• September 10, 2007 -- IPSF releases first software unlock method for money.
• September 11, 2007 -- dev team releases iUnlock, first free software unlock
• November 2, 2007 -- jailbreakme is released, bringing jailbreaking to the mainstream iPhone user
• November 15, 2007 -- New bootloader comes out, new iPhones can't be unlocked.
• February 8, 2008 -- geohot releases software unlock for 4.6, Apple states 25% of phones were never activated with AT&T
• February 11, 2008 -- Zibri releases ZiPhone, the all in one unlock, activate, jailbreak solution.
• March 4, 2008 -- George Zhu (n000b) released iLiberty.
• April 3, 2008 -- Devteam releases PwnageTool 1.0, making use of the ramdisk exploit, to write to the kernel, to write to the NOR
• July 11, 2008 -- iPhone 3G is released
• July 19, 2008 -- Devteam releases PwnageTool 2.0, jailbreaking and unlocking the 2.0 software on the iPhone 2G and jailbreaking the 2.0 software on the iPhone 3G. This exploited DFU mode this time and it can only be fixed via a hardware revision

Revisions needed: Nighwatch didn't "port a toolchain". Also needed are references to iAsign, iNdependence, virgintool, sam+daeken bruteforce. Software 3.9 NORdump. TA_Mobile 4.6 NORdump. 4.6 GPIO block unlock.