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science > timeline > 16th - 21st centuries
aeronautics, astronomy, banking, computing, genetics, medicine, technology, transport
breakthroughs, discoveries, inventions, milestones worldwide
Invention and technology timelines
16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries
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https://www.thoughtco.com/inventions-4133303
2023
Nuclear fusion as an energy source - Will it work?
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/04/
2022
Fusion science
For the first time ever in a laboratory, researchers were able to generate more energy from fusion reactions than they used to start the process.
The total gain was around 150%.
(...)
Researchers say that fusion energy could one day provide clean, safe electricity without greenhouse gas emissions.
But even with this announcement, independent scientists believe that dream remains many decades away.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/
2020
Medicine
new strain of coronavirus > SARS-CoV-2 virus
COVID-19 disease / outbreak / pandemic
research
The scientific race
to understand Covid-19
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/22/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/may/20/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/apr/06/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/03/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/
2019
Space
Astronomers Capture First Ever Image of a Black Hole
The first image image of a black hole, taken by the Event Horizon Telescope and released to the world last April.
“The image of a black hole actually contains a nested series of rings,” said Michael Johnson of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Photograph: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
Infinite Visions Were Hiding in the First Black Hole Image’s Rings Scientists proposed a technique that would allow us to see more of the unseeable. NYT March 28, 2020 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/
2018
USA
Space
The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, was launched in 2018 as part of NASA’s Earth Observing System.
It replaced a satellite that had provided data from 2003 to 2009.
ICESat-2 uses a laser altimeter, which fires pulses of photons split into six beams toward the Earth’s surface 300 miles below.
Of the trillions of photons in each pulse, only a handful of reflected ones are detected back at the satellite.
Extremely precise measurement of these photons’ travel times provides surface elevation data that is accurate to within a few inches.
“It’s not like any instrument that we’ve had in space before,” said another of the authors, Alex S. Gardner, a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The resolution is so high that it can detect rifts and other small features of the ice surface, he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/
2017
USA
genetics
Scientists edit DNA in human embryos for the first time
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/18/
2016
USA
genetics
baby with 3 genetic parents
Last fall, the New York-based reproductive endocrinologist John Zhang made headlines when he reported the birth of the world's first "three-parent" baby — a healthy boy carrying the blended DNA of the birth mother, her husband and an unrelated female donor.
The technique, called mitochondrial replacement therapy, allowed the 36-year-old mother to bypass a defect in her own genome that had led, twice before, to children born with Leigh syndrome, a devastating neurological disorder that typically culminates in death before age 3.
While heralded in many circles as a breakthrough, the news triggered numerous ethical and scientific questions, many of which remained unanswered at the time.
Last week, Zhang and his colleagues at the New Hope Fertility Center provided some answers — and raised yet more concerns.
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/08/
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/08/
2016
physics
Scientists Blast Antimatter Atoms With A Laser For The First Time
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/19/
2016
astronomy
galaxy known as GN-z11 is the farthest galaxy ever seen from Earth, at 13.4 billion years in the past
Hubble Team Breaks Cosmic Distance Record Video NASA 3 March 2016
This animation shows the location of galaxy GN-z11, which is the farthest galaxy ever seen.
The video begins by locating the Big Dipper, then showing the constellation Ursa Major.
It then zooms into the GOODS North field of galaxies, and ends with a Hubble image of the young galaxy.
GN-z11 is shown as it existed 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only three percent of its present age.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQdQx3V1HY
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/04/
2015
genetics
CRISPR
Biologist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty - CRISPR Video WIRED 24 May 2017
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sweN8d4_MUg
CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is the basis for a revolutionary genome-editing technology that allows researchers to make very precise modifications to DNA.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/06/05/
https://www.npr.org/tags/419142387/crispr
2014
Nobel Prize in Medicine is Awarded for Discovery of Brain’s ‘Inner GPS’
A British-American scientist and a pair of Norwegian researchers were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for discovering “an inner GPS, in the brain,” that makes navigation possible for virtually all creatures.
(...)
The three scientists’ discoveries “have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries — how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment,” the institute said in a news release.
(...)
The positioning system in the brain that they discovered helps us know where we are, find our way from place to place and store the information for the next time, said Goran K. Hansson, secretary of the Karolinska’s Nobel Committee, in announcing the laureates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/
2014
USA
Computing
IBM Develops a New Chip That Functions Like a Brain
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/
2014
the home of tomorrow / the home of the future
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/technology/
2013
aeronautics
solar-powered plane
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/04/
2010s
3-D printing
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/08/11/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/
2010s
transportation
hydrogen cars / hydrogen-powered cars
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/02/
2010s
transportation
driverless cars / autonomous cars
https://www.npr.org/tags/169643848/driverless-cars
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/10/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/03/04/
2008
physics
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle collider and the largest machine in the world.
It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries.
It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.
Its first data-taking period lasted from March 2010 to early 2013 at an energy of 3.5 to 4 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam (7 to 8 TeV total), about four times the previous world record for a collider and accelerator.
Afterwards, the accelerator was taken offline and upgraded over the course of two years.
It was restarted in early 2015 for its second research run, reaching 6.5 TeV per beam (13 TeV total, the present world record).
At the end of 2018, it entered a second two-year shutdown period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/21/
2008
Computing > HECToR
the UK's fastest machine
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/02/
2006
Health
Britain's first beating heart transplant
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/jun/05/
2003
Genetics
Human code fully cracked
Cambridge scientists in global consortium spell out the 3bn letters of the genome, 50 years on model of DNA
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/apr/14/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/apr/14/
1992
Internet
the first ever webpage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/30/
1990s-2000s
genetics
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project is an international research effort to decode the human genome, the complete genetic instructions for a human being. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/her_gen.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/her_gen.html
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/jun/26/
1992
USA
smartphone
In 1992, IBM revealed a revolutionary device that had more capabilities than its preceding cell phones.
This prototype smartphone was known as the Simon Personal Communicator, but it wouldn’t see its way to consumers until 1994.
The device had many of the modern elements we attribute to current smartphones and mobile devices.
Highlights included: Fax Notes and Calendar Apps and other widgets that would become widespread decades later
into the market, it wasn’t exactly the smoothest starting point for a mobile device.
You could say it was ahead of its time, and most consumers didn't jump on board. - 4 May 2020 https://www.textrequest.com/blog/history-evolution-smartphone/
https://www.textrequest.com/blog/
late 1980s
asymmetric digital subscriber line
DSL Internet Technology
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/
1970s-1980s
computing
The early days of home computing – in pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gallery/2020/apr/11/
1984
USA
Computing
Apple's Mac
Apple's original Mac computer was released in January 1984.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/02/
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/24/
1981
USA
Computing
IBM PC 5150 computer
released September 1981
The IBM Personal Computer ("PC") was not as powerful as many of the other personal computers it was competing against at the time of its release.
The simplest configuration has only 16K on-board RAM and uses an audio cassette to load and save data - the floppy drive was optional, and a hard drive was not supported.
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/aug/06/
1980
lithium-ion battery
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/22/
1978
Medicine
revolutionary scientific advance in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
test tube babies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/12/
1977
USA
Computing
Apple II is unveiled, the first personal computer in a plastic case with color graphics
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/06/
late 1970s
Variola eradicated
An ancient disease in existence for thousands of years, smallpox was feared throughout the world.
Killing a third of those it infected, in the 20th Century alone an estimated 300 million people died from the disease.
Those who were infected but survived were often left badly scarred.
A global vaccination programme, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), was carried out to wipe out the disease and by the 1970s cases were rare. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-45101091 - 10 August 2018
Smallpox was a devastating disease.
On average, 3 out of every 10 people who got it died.
Those who survived were usually left with scars, which were sometimes severe. https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox https://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/en/ https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-45101091 - 10 August 2018
1970s
vaccine for rubella
German measles / rubella causes only a mild illness in children, with a rash and sometimes a fever.
But when pregnant women catch rubella, their babies can develop serious birth defects, like heart problems, blindness and learning disabilities.
The virus can also trigger miscarriages early in a pregnancy.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/04/30/
In the 1964-1965 rubella pandemic, an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in the United States were exposed to rubella in pregnancy, resulting in miscarriages, stillbirths, and 20,000 babies born with congenital rubella syndrome, which caused blindness, deafness, brain and heart damage.
At the height of the pandemic, an estimated 1 out of every 100 babies born in Philadelphia was afflicted.
A vaccine for rubella was introduced in the 1970s, so parents no longer have to live in fear.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/04/30/
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/01/30/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/04/30/
1973
USA
Computing
Alto personal computer
The Xerox Alto is the first computer designed from its inception to support an operating system based on a graphical user interface (GUI), later using the desktop metaphor.
The first machines were introduced on 1 March 1973, a decade before mass-market GUI machines became available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/
1973
USA
Digital photography
First digital camera - created by Steven Sasson in 1973.
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/
10.30pm on 29 October 1969
Internet
First internet message
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/29/
July 20, 1969
USA, Moon
Apollo 11 Lunar Landing
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/
1968
Space
Apollo 8 mission to the Moon: the first human journey to another world
Christmas Eve, 1968.
As one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history drew to a close, millions around the world were watching and listening as the Apollo 8 astronauts - Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders - became the first humans to orbit another world.
As their command module floated above the lunar surface, the astronauts beamed back images of the moon and Earth and took turns reading from the book of Genesis, closing with a wish for everyone "on the good Earth." http://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/apollo_8.html#.U-hsw2NDxyo
1968
Computing
computer mouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/
1966
Medicine
first birth through in vitro fertilization in the United States
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/03/04/79308763.html
1964
When in 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories detected radio waves emitted by celestial objects, they discovered that the universe began in a fiery Big Bang.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/
1963
Space > Skylab America's first space station
Skylab was conceived in 1963, when the Office of Manned Space Flight began to study options for programs to follow Apollo. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/skylab/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/us/
1963
Medicine
Measles vaccine
In 1963, when the vaccine first came into existence, measles virus infected about three million people a year in the United States, hospitalized 48,000 and killed 500.
By the turn of the 21st century, however, measles infections had been virtually eliminated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/
late 1950s - early 1960s
Medicine
Pacemaker
Earl E. Bakken, Pacemaker Inventor and Medtronic Founder (1924-2018)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/
1958
USA
Banking
Credit card
Until 1958, no one had been able to successfully establish a revolving credit financial system in which a card issued by a third-party bank was being generally accepted by a large number of merchants, as opposed to merchant-issued revolving cards accepted by only a few merchants.
There had been a dozen attempts by small American banks, but none of them were able to last very long.
In September 1958, Bank of America launched the BankAmericard in Fresno, California, which would become the first successful recognizably modern credit card.
This card succeeded where others failed by breaking the chicken-and-egg cycle in which consumers did not want to use a card that few merchants would accept and merchants did not want to accept a card that few consumers used.
Bank of America chose Fresno because 45% of its residents used the bank, and by sending a card to 60,000 Fresno residents at once, the bank was able to convince merchants to accept the card.
It was eventually licensed to other banks around the United States and then around the world, and in 1976, all BankAmericard licensees united themselves under the common brand Visa.
In 1966, the ancestor of MasterCard was born when a group of banks established Master Charge to compete with BankAmericard;
it received a significant boost when Citibank merged its own Everything Card, launched in 1967, into Master Charge in 1969. - 4 May 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card
1956
Medicine
Heart surgery
Wilson Greatbatch (1919-2013) Pacemaker inventor
(Wilson Greatbatch) was best known for his pacemaker breakthrough, an example of Pasteur’s observation that “chance favors the prepared mind.”
Mr. Greatbatch’s crucial insight came in 1956, when he was an assistant professor in electrical engineering at the University of Buffalo.
While building a heart rhythm recording device for the Chronic Disease Research Institute there, he reached into a box of parts for a resistor to complete the circuitry.
The one he pulled out was the wrong size, and when he installed it, the circuit it produced emitted intermittent electrical pulses.
Mr. Greatbatch immediately associated the timing and rhythm of the pulses with a human heartbeat, he wrote in a memoir, “The Making of the Pacemaker,” published in 2000.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/
1955
Medicine
Polio vaccine
American scientists announced they had discovered an effective vaccine against polio in April 1955.
It would save millions of children from disability and death.
The doctor who led the research was Jonas Salk. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01wtd0b
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01wtd0b Anglonautes > Vocapedia Health > Viruses > Polio
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/22/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/
1954
birth of fiber optics
transmitting light through flexible glass fibers
In 1954 (Harold Hopkins and Narinder S. Kapany) announced a breakthrough in the journal Nature, demonstrating how to bundle thousands of impossibly thin glass fibers together and then connect them end to end.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/
biology, genetrics > discovery of DNA 1953
1952
Jonas Salk (1914-1955) produces polio vaccine
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm52sa.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bmsalk.html
1951
UK
Computing
The Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer in its sales literature, and thus sometimes called the Manchester Ferranti, was produced by British electrical engineering firm Ferranti Ltd.
Among the world's first commercially available general-purpose digital computers, it was the tidied up and commercialised version of the Manchester Mark I.
The first machine was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti_Mark_1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti_Mark_1
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/
1950s
Computing
Alan Turing's Pilot Ace computer
Built in the 1950s and one of the Science Museum's 20th century icons, The Pilot Ace "automatic computing engine" was the world's first general purpose computer – and for a while was the fastest computer in the world.
We now take the ability to carry out a range of tasks on our computers for granted, but it all started with the principles developed by mathematician Alan Turing in the 1930s and his design for the Ace. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2013/apr/12/alan-turing-pilot-ace-computer-video
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/20/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2013/apr/12/
http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2011/dec/19/1
1954
Medicine
The first successful kidney transplant was conducted in 1954
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/
1953
maser USA
by stimulated emission of radiation, (...) it would lead to the building of the first laser, which amplified light waves instead of microwaves and became essential to the birth of a new technological age.
Lasers have found a wide range of practical applications from long-distance telephone calls to eye surgery, from missile guidance systems to the checkout counter at the supermarket.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/
Rosalind Elsie Franklin UK 1920-1958
In 1951 the young British scientist began one of the key scientific investigations of the century.
Rosalind Franklin produced an x-ray photograph that helped show the structure of DNA, the molecule that holds the genetic code that underpins all life.
The discovery was integral to the transformation of modern medicine and has been described as one of the greatest scientific achievements ever. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04r7h7k - Mon. 6 February 2017
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04r7h7k - Mon. 6 February 2017
1948
transistor
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/
1943
Computing
construction of the ENIAC machine at the University of Pennsylvania
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/26/
1941
Germany
World War 2
Lorenz teleprinter
The Lorenz SZ40, SZ42a and SZ42b were German rotor stream cipher machines used by the German Army during World War II.
They were developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin.
The model name SZ was derived from Schlüssel-Zusatz, meaning cipher attachment.
The instruments implemented a Vernam stream cipher.
British cryptanalysts, who referred to encrypted German teleprinter traffic as Fish, dubbed the machine and its traffic Tunny (meaning tunafish) and deduced its logical structure three years before they saw such a machine.
The SZ machines were in-line attachments to standard teleprinters.
An experimental link using SZ40 machines was started in June 1941.
The enhanced SZ42 machines were brought into substantial use from mid-1942 onwards for high-level communications between the German High Command in Wünsdorf close to Berlin, and Army Commands throughout occupied Europe.
The more advanced SZ42A came into routine use in February 1943 and the SZ42B in June 1944. - 8 May 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_cipher
More complex than the famous the Lorenz cipher could be broken only thanks to the mathematician who deduced the architecture of a Lorenz machine without ever having seen one.
Solving the problem also led to the creation of Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer, which Tommy Flowers a Post Office engineer, invented to work out the wheel positions on the Lorenz encryption machine and reduce the time taken to decrypt messages from weeks to hours.
The decoding of the top-secret Lorenz messages is credited with shortening the war and saving countless lives.
“It was the highest possible level of security used by the German high command,”
(...)
It was thanks to the breakthroughs by Tutte and Flowers that allied commanders could be certain Hitler’s high command had bought their bluff that the D-Day invasion force would be landing at Calais, rather than on the beaches of Normandy.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/29/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/29/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/29/
The Flying Scotsman
Britain's most iconic steam engine
The Flying Scotsman — the first train to reach 100 miles per hour, back in 1934 — was pulled out of service in 1963.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/08/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/08/
Alexander Fleming UK 1881-1955
1927
television
Philo Farnsworth demonstrates the first television for potential investors by broadcasting the image of a dollar sign.
Farnsworth receives backing and applies for a patent, but ongoing patent battles with RCA will prevent Farnsworth from earning his share of the million-dollar industry his invention will create.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
1927
London-New York transatlantic wireless telephone service
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1927/jan/08/
1926
France
tetanus bacteria and diptheria bacteria
vaccines
Diphtheria is a highly contagious and potentially fatal infection that can affect the nose and throat, and sometimes the skin. - April 30, 2020. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/diphtheria/
Tetanus is a serious but rare condition caused by bacteria getting into a wound. - April 30, 2020. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/tetanus/
"Vaccines" against diphtheria and tetanus, comparable as prophylactics with Jenner's vaccine against smallpox, have been discovered at the Pasteur Institute here by a French chemist, M. G. Ramon.
They are harmless, do not cause the slightest reaction, and confer an immunity even more lasting than that of calf-lymph against small-pox.
It is suggested that all infants over twelve months' old should henceforth go through a second vaccination for diphtheria, and that all soldiers on active service should be vaccinated against tetanus, as they are now against typhus. - Wednesday 27 January 1926
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/jan/27/
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/jan/27/
Italy
Guglielmo Marconi 1874-1937
wireless pioneer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1702037.stm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi
1920
UK
Marconi
the first live radio broadcast, from Chelmsford
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/essex/hi/people_and_places/history/
USA
Thomas Alva Edison 1847-1931
Edison invented or refined devices that made a profound impact on how people lived.
The most famous of his inventions was the incandescent light bulb (1878), which would revolutionize indoor lighting and forever separate light from fire.
He also developed the phonograph (1877), the central power station (1881), the motion-picture studio (1892) and system for making and showing motion pictures (1893), and alkaline storage batteries (1901).
Edison improved upon the original designs of the stock ticker, the telegraph, and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.
He was one of the first to explore X-rays, and in 1875, he announced his observation of "etheric force" -- radio waves -- although his claim would be rejected by the scientific community. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/edison_lo.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/edison_lo.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/key-figures-eastmans-life/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/
http://www.npr.org/2016/08/13/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/05/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89148959 - March 27, 2008
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3602592 - January 29, 1999
1916
general relativity
In 1916, Albert Einstein discovered a mathematical way to explain gravity.
He called it his general theory of relativity.
It relied on a set of coordinates that described space and time together, known as the space-time continuum.
Matter and energy warp the space-time continuum like heavy weight on a mattress.
The warping creates the force of gravity.
Gravitational waves are ripples in the space-time continuum (instead of an ordinary mattress, think of a waterbed).
It isn't all esoteric mathematics.
General relativity tells us how gravity affects time, which must be taken into account by your satnav to tell you accurately where you are.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/17/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/11/25/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/24/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/17/
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1955/apr/19/
1910s
Germany
ammonia process
The ammonia process – which uses nitrogen from the atmosphere as its key ingredient – was invented by German chemist to solve a problem that faced farmers across the globe.
By the early 20th century they were running out of natural fertilisers for their crops.
The Haber plant at Ludwigshafen, run by the chemical giant BASF, transformed that grim picture exactly 100 years ago – by churning out ammonia in industrial quantities for the first time, triggering a green revolution.
Several billion people are alive today only because Haber found a way to turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia fertiliser.
"Bread from air," ran the slogan that advertised his work at the time.
But there is another, far darker side to the history of the Haber process.
By providing Germany with an industrial source of ammonia, the country was able to extend its fight in the first world war by more than a year, it is estimated.
Britain's sea blockade would have ensured Germany quickly ran out of natural fertilisers for its crops.
In addition, Germany would also have run out of nitrogen compounds, such as saltpetre, for its explosives.
The Haber process met both demands.
Trains, bursting with Haber-based explosives and scrawled with "Death to the French", were soon chugging to the front, lengthening the war and Europe's suffering.
(...)
Bald and absurdly Teutonic in demeanour, Haber was an ardent German nationalist.
He was happy his invention was used to make explosives and was a fervent advocate of gas weapons.
As a result, on 22 April 1915 at Ypres, 400 tons of chlorine gas were released under his direction and sent sweeping in clouds over Allied troops.
It was the world's first major chemical weapons attack.
Around 6,000 men died.
Haber later claimed asphyxiation was no worse than blowing a soldier's leg off and letting him bleed to death, but many others disagreed, including his wife, Clara, herself a chemist.
A week after the Ypres attack, she took Haber's service revolver and shot herself, dying in the arms of Hermann, their only son.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/03/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/03/
Thomas Parker UK 1843-1915
English electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist.
He patented improvements in lead-acid batteries and dynamos, and was a pioneer of manufacturing equipment that powered electric tramways and electric lighting.
He invented the smokeless fuel Coalite.
He formed the first company to distribute electricity over a wide area.
He was described by Lord Kelvin as "the Edison of Europe". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Parker_(inventor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Parker_(inventor)
1914
photography
The Ur-Leica
The original Leica prototype of 1914 is considered as revolutionary a technological development as the advent of the mobile phone.
Compact and lightweight – a mere 400g – and using 35mm cinematic film, it was small enough to fit into a coat pocket, and rapidly became essential not only to professional photographers but also amateurs, thereby bringing photography into everyday life.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/jul/13/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/jul/13/
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/24/
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/aug/24/
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jan/31/
Oskar Barnack Germany 1879-1936
inventor of the Leica camera
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/24/
1912
RMS Titanic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/titanic_01.shtml https://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-titanic
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/03/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1912/apr/16/
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch Germany 1843-1910
German physician and microbiologist
As one of the main founders of modern bacteriology, he identified the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax and also gave experimental support for the concept of infectious disease, which included experiments on humans and other animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch
1918
Cars
Ford Model T
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/telephone/
1900s
USA
Airplanes
from the early experiments with gliders in the 1890s, to the famous first powered flight by the Wright brothers in December 1903
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/
1903
Airplanes
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/telephone/
December 17, 1903
USA
Airplanes
make the world's first sustained, powered, and controlled flight in a heavier-than-air flying machine, thereby realizing one of mankind's oldest and most persistent aspirations -- human flight. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/wb-home.html - broken URL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers
1900 - 1930s Germany Zeppelins
Graf Zeppelin landing in Friedrichshafen, Germany, 1933.
Photograph: The Print Collector/Getty Images
When Airplanes and Zeppelins Competed to Conquer the Skies NYT April 28, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/
in July 1900 — three years before the Wright brothers would fly — Zeppelin soared for almost 18 minutes over Germany in a 420-foot airship filled with nearly 400,000 cubic feet of hydrogen.
He quickly built other, better models.
By 1908, Germans routinely turned their heads to the sky, shouting, “Zeppelin kommt!,” and even when the count crashed and crashed badly, people loved him.
(...)
Without question, at this point the airship — not the airplane — was the future, and many experts still believed that after Zeppelin’s death (of natural causes) in 1917.
Eckener — Zeppelin’s disciple, “as German as one can be,” and the true protagonist in this narrative — would reel off a string of successes to prove it.
Zeppelins, not airplanes, were the first to offer passenger flights in Europe and the first to transport passengers across the Atlantic Ocean, connecting to both North and South America.
And the bullet-shaped ships were always intriguing to the military.
Even the Americans briefly commissioned airships in hopes of winning the heavens — all of which is recounted in “Empires of the Sky” with mounting tension, building to the climax of the Hindenburg.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/
1895
Germany
X-rays
in 1895, physicist (1845-1923) becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible.
Röntgen’s discovery occurred accidentally in his Wurzburg, Germany, lab, where he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen.
He dubbed the rays that caused this glow X-rays because of their unknown nature.
X-rays are electromagnetic energy waves that act similarly to light rays, but at wavelengths approximately 1,000 times shorter than those of light.
Röntgen holed up in his lab and conducted a series of experiments to better understand his discovery.
He learned that X-rays penetrate human flesh but not higher-density substances such as bone or lead and that they can be photographed. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-scientist-discovers-x-rays
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2010/oct/26/
1888
Kodak Camera
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/telephone/
1877
Thomas Edison > phonograph
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/
1876
telephone
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/
Alexander Graham Bell UK 1847-1922
On March 10, 1876, Professor Alexander Graham Bell stood in a Boston boarding house holding a receiving device connected to a series of wires that ran into an adjacent room.
There, his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, waited patiently, clutching another receiver to his ear.
Bell spoke into his end of the contraption, and Watson heard his voice in the receiver: “Mr. Watson! Come here! I want—!”
Watson dashed into the adjoining room gasping: “I heard you! I heard you!”
From that experiment using just a few feet of wire would grow an industry that would transform the world.
Through the likes of the American Bell Telephone Company and its successor, AT&T (known colloquially as Ma Bell), what was once Bell’s “toy” became a communications goliath made up of billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure carrying tens of millions of calls every day.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/
1870s
Printing
Typewriters
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for writing characters similar to those produced by a printer's movable type.
Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on the paper, by means of a ribbon with dried ink struck against the paper by a type element similar to the sorts used in movable type letterpress printing.
On some typewriters, a separate type element (called a typebar) corresponds to each key; others use a single type element (such as a typeball or disc) with a different portion of it used for each character.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the term typewriter was also applied to a person who used a typing machine.
The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874, but did not become common in offices until after the mid-1880s.
The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence.
It was widely used by professional writers, in offices, and for business correspondence in private homes. - 4 May 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter
July 1, 1862
USA
Trains > First transcontinental railroad
Pacific Railway Act signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 1, 1862.
This act provided Federal government support for the building of the first transcontinental railroad, which was completed on May 10, 1869. https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/pacificrail.html
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/pacificrail.html
recording sound
19th century
France
phonautographe
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville est un inventeur français né en 1817 à Paris où il est mort en 1879.
Typographe et correcteur d'épreuves, il apprit la sténographie et, critiquant toutes les méthodes existantes, rechercha un moyen mécanique d'enregistrer la parole.
Il inventa le phonautographe, traçant sur le papier des courbes représentant les ondes sonores ;
mais on ne pouvait pas extraire de ces tracés un texte, comme il l'avait espéré, ni écouter le son.
En 2008, une équipe utilisant l'image d'un de ses enregistrements, réalisé le 9 avril 1860, a pu entendre une voix chantant Au clair de la lune.
C'est la plus ancienne trace du son d’une voix humaine qui ait été préservée, de dix-sept ans antérieure au phonographe d’Edison. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard-L%C3%A9on_Scott_de_Martinville
https://fr.wikipedia.org/
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/22/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
1857
recording sound
In 1857, Scott patented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph — a device with a big funnel for catching sound and a needle attached to parchment that caught the vibrations and tracked them on soot-coated glass.
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/22/
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/22/
photography
France
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) and the Invention of Photography
daguerreotype
Each daguerreotype is a remarkably detailed, one-of-a-kind photographic image on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper, sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a large box camera, developed in mercury fumes, and stabilized (or fixed) with salt water or "hypo" (sodium thiosulphate).
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/bradynote.html http://www.niepce.com/pagus/pagus-inv.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/05/
1851
photography
wet collodion photographic process
Invented in 1851, the wet collodion photographic process produced a glass negative and a beautifully detailed print.
Preferred for the quality of the prints and the ease with which they could be reproduced, the new method thrived from the 1850s until about 1880.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiAhPIUno1o
1851
Photography
Wet-plate
Wet-plate was first detailed by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851, less than three decades after the dawn of photography, and was known ominously as the "black art", partly on account of the potential perils - death from cyanide explosions and blinding from silver among them.
While Brady's revelatory civil war images documented the faces and realities of conflict, Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge produced stunning images of Yosemite National Park by lugging mammoth wet-plate cameras high into the mountains, and Julia Margaret Cameron created ethereal shots which promoted photography as an art form.
Production died swiftly, however, as the insatiable desire for photographic innovation saw the emergence of dry-plate technology and collodion emulsion, followed by handheld cameras and film.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography-blog/2013/jul/22/
19th century
Photography
Glass Plate Negatives: A Brief History
Glass plate negatives comprise two formats: collodion wet plate negatives and gelatin dry plate negatives.
Both types have a light sensitive emulsion with a binder thinly layered on one side of a glass plate.
Frederick Scott Archer, a British inventor and photographer, made the first collodion wet plate negative in 1851.
In order to prepare a negative, a photographer coated a clean sheet of glass with collodion, a liquid with ingredients that included cellulose nitrate and ether.
Then the plate was quickly put into a silver nitrate bath in order to sensitize it to light and placed in the camera, where the negative was exposed.
The photographer had to develop it very quickly after exposure.
Because it was necessary to prepare, expose and develop a negative while it was still wet, this process of making photographs was complicated, inconvenient, and not very portable.
Richard Leach Maddox, a British physician and photographer, produced the first practical dry glass plate negative in 1871.
In his much more convenient process, the glass plate was coated with gelatin and sensitized with silver salts.
The negative did not need to be developed immediately after exposure.
Maddox's method was so well-received that dry plates replaced wet.
Within ten years they were produced in factories and became widely available, especially for amateur photographers.
One no longer had to be skilled in mixing potentially dangerous chemicals and could store undeveloped images for long periods of time.
Gelatin dry plate negatives were widely used into the 1920s.
By then gelatin sliver paper negatives and celluloid roll film had become popular. http://archives.syr.edu/exhibits/glassplate_about.html - broken URL
http://archives.syr.edu/exhibits/glassplate_about.html - broken URL
https://library.syr.edu/scrc/collections/archives/index.php
19th century
UK, USA
Telegraphs
The first commercial telegraph was by Cooke and Wheatstone following their English patent of 10 June 1837.
It was demonstrated on the London and Birmingham Railway in July of the same year.
In July 1839, a five-needle, five-wire system was installed to provide signalling over a record distance of 21 km on a section of the Great Western Railway between London Paddington station and West Drayton.
However, in trying to get railway companies to take up his telegraph more widely for railway signalling,
Cooke was rejected several times in favour of the more familiar, but shorter range, steam-powered pneumatic signalling.
Even when his telegraph was taken up, it was considered experimental and the company backed out of a plan to finance extending the telegraph line out to Slough.
However, this led to a breakthrough for the electric telegraph, as up to this point the Great Western had insisted on exclusive use and refused Cooke permission to open public telegraph offices.
Cooke extended the line at his own expense and agreed that the railway could have free use of it in exchange for the right
to open it up to the public. electrical systems required multiple wires (Ronalds' system was an exception), but the system developed in the United States by Morse and Vail was a single-wire system.
This was the system that first used the soon-to-become-ubiquitous Morse code.
By 1844, the Morse system connected Baltimore to Washington, and by 1861 the west coast of the continent was connected to the east coast.
The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, in a series of improvements, also ended up with a one-wire system, but still using their own code and needle displays.
The electric telegraph quickly became a means of more general communication.
The Morse system was officially adopted as the standard for continental European telegraphy in 1851 with a revised code, which later became the basis of International Morse Code.
However, Great Britain and the British Empire continued to use the Cooke and Wheatstone system, in some places as late as the 1930s.
Likewise, the United States continued to use American Morse code internally, requiring translation operators skilled in both codes for international messages. - 2 May 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy
18th century
1796
medicine
smallpox vaccine
Edward Jenner UK 1749-1823
The history of smallpox holds a unique place in medicine.
It was one of the deadliest diseases known to humans, and to date (2016) the only human disease to have been eradicated by vaccination.
The smallpox vaccine, introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796, was the first successful vaccine to be developed.
He observed that milkmaids who previously had caught cowpox did not catch smallpox and showed that inoculated vaccinia protected against inoculated variola virus.
The global eradication effort initially used a strategy of mass vaccination campaigns to achieve 80% vaccine coverage in each country, and thereafter by case-finding, followed by ring vaccination of all known and possible contacts to seal off the outbreak from the rest of the population.
In 1961 the bifurcated needle was developed as a more efficient and cost effective alternative, and was the primary instrument used during the eradication campaign from 1966 to 1977.
The bifurcated needle vaccination required only one-fourth the amount of vaccine needed with previous methods and was simpler to perform. - December 2017 https://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/vaccines/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox https://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/en/ https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/04/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/09/19/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/02/17/
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/25/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/us/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/02/17/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/02/01/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/12/08/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/07/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/05/09/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/05/01/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/05/24/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/05/16/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/world/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/jun/23/
George Stephenson UK 1781-1848
George Stephenson was an engineer.
He built steam locomotives for the first railways.
Sometimes people call him 'the Father of the Railway'.
(...)
George Stephenson was born in 1781.
At this time Britain was starting to change from a land of farms and small villages to a land of factories and big cities.
We call this change the Industrial Revolution.
By the time George Stephenson died in 1848, its new railways and factories had made Britain the richest country in the world. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/george_stephenson/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/george_stephenson/
1830
UK
rail-road
Liverpool and Manchester railway
Stephenson's locomotive engine, the Rocket
http://www.theguardian.com/news/1830/jan/02/
First Public Railways
George Stephenson built the world's first public railways:
the Stockton and Darlington railway in 1825 and the Liverpool-Manchester railway in 1830.
Stephenson was the chief engineer for several of the railways.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-railroad-1992457
1827
France
The first photograph 1827
Nicéphore Niépce 1765-1833
https://www.telerama.fr/scenes/
1807
steam boat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat
1820s
steam train
Thirty years after James Watt invented the steam engine, the first railway engine was constructed.
It was originally used for pulling coal for short distances.
In 1829 there was a competition to build something more useful.
The winner was George Stephenson's Rocket, which could pull passenger trains at 50km per hour.
The UK became the centre of the train-building industry, sending engines all over the world.
Before the development of the steam-train, it took 12 days to travel between Edinburgh and London on horseback.
The Flying Scotsman took just 8 hours to travel the same distance.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/steam-engines/10911.html - broken URL
steam engine > James Watt 1736-1819
James Watt's Improved Steam Engine Powers the Industrial Revolution - 1769
https://www.thoughtco.com/industrial-revolution-in-pictures-1991940
James Watt was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, renowned for his improvements in steam engine technology.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/watt_james.shtml
Industrial revolution in Britain
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Britain experienced change in all aspects of life, as a result of the Industrial Revolution.
Scientific advances and technological innovations brought growth in agricultural and industrial production, economic expansion and changes in living conditions, while at the same time there was a new sense of national identity and civic pride.
The most dramatic changes were witnessed in rural areas, where the provincial landscape often became urban and industrialized following advances in agriculture, industry and shipping.
Wealth accumulated in the regions and there was soon a need for country banking.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/online_research_catalogues/
1609
Italy
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaulti de Galilei 1564-1642
When Galileo turned his telescope toward Jupiter in 1609, he observed moons orbiting the giant planet, a discovery that destroyed the Aristotelian notion that everything in heaven orbited the Earth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/
hygiene
soapmaking
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/
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