 Type 1A supernova redshifts provide a measure of the scale factor back to near the earliest galaxies. The cosmic microwave background provides the scale factor for the surface of last scattering. We can tie scale factor and time together, given the vacuum energy, radiation, baryonic and cold dark matter contents of the Universe. So we can say, with a fair degree of accuracy, that decoupling started around 250,000 years into the expansion, and the surface of last scattering occurred around 370,000 years into the expansion. But how did we get to the cosmic microwave background? Where did the matter come from? And how did a fractal landscape form? To address these questions we need to go beyond the surface of last scattering. Back to the time when atomic nuclei formed, called nucleosynthesis, kicked off by neutrino decoupling, and back further still to the time when quarks and protons were created from radiation, called baryogenesis. It is in this time frame that cosmologists propose that a super rapid increase in the size of the Universe happened, called inflation. In these earliest times, the Universe was radiation dominated, and we have a fairly simple relationship between time, scale factor, temperature and energy that we can use as we cover each of these key areas.