Index
Since the dawn of our species, humans have used the resources available on the Earth to survive and prosper. Our dexterous hands and our ability to think logically have enabled us to become the top predators and to use the Earth's resources to build great civilizations.
Inventions for Survival
Our species, Homo Sapiens, originated approximately 160 million years ago, in a world filled with wild animals and other hominids, such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Today, we are the only extant hominids due to our adaptability and the use of tools and inventions.
Stone tools and projectiles
There is evidence that Homo habilis and Home erectus used stone
tools to butcher animals approximately 1.8 to 1.6 million years ago.
Modern humans used stone tools through the Neolithic Era, from about 10,200 BC
to about 4,500 BC when the use of metals became common.
Controlled fires
Hominids routinely used controlled fires 300,000 years ago, long before
modern humans appeared. Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) coexisted and interbred
with modern humans in Europe approximately 35,000 years ago.
Neanderthals routinely used controlled fires for cooking and for heating
during the ice ages. Modern humans arose in an environment where
fire and stone tools were already common.
Metal smelting
Gold and copper were known to the ancient humans because they occur as native minerals.
Metal smelting was probably discovered by accident when an ore of copper, such as malachite,
was placed in a charcoal fire for a long time. Metal smelting was common by 9,000 years ago.
Metal alloys, such as bronze were introduced 5,300 years ago, and
the iron age started approximately 3,300 years ago.
Farming and domestication of animals
Humans changed from hunter-gatherers to farmers and ranchers approximately
10,000 years ago when they learned
to raise crops and care for domesticated animals.
Farming required the people to stay in one place, and this gave rise to villages
and cities. Humans learned to divert streams to irrigate their crops.
Manufacturing
Steam engine
Windmills and waterwheels were used since antiquity to pump water and mill grains.
The steam engine, developed during the 18th century, provided a source of power that
could be placed in any industrial park where fuel and water could be conveyed.
The first steam engine, developed in 1698 by Thomas Savery, was used to draw water from
flooded mines using steam pressure. In 1712, Thomas Newcomen developed a steam engine
that filled a cylinder with steam and then condensed it to create a partial vacuum that
moved a piston within the cylinder. James Watt improved the design of the Newcomen engine
from 1763 to 1775 by using a separate condenser and by changing the reciprocal motion to
a rotary motion. Watt's engine became the major power source for the
Industrial Revolution.
Electric Power
Power generating stations started being built in the late 19th century to provide
electricity for the light bulbs that were commercialized by Thomas Edison.
In November 1879, Edison filed a patent for an electric lamp with a carbon filament
that improved on electric lights invented previously.
In 1868 a hydro electric power station was designed and built by Lord Armstrong
to provide electricity for his state at Cragside, England.
In 1882, the Edison Electric Light Station, was built in London. It used a
Babcock & Wilcox boiler to power a 125-horsepower steam engine that drove a 27-ton generator.
Electricity is the major source of power used in homes today, although fossil fuels,
such as natural gas, are still used for heating and cooking.
Cotton Gin
Textiles made of animal and vegetable fibers were made by humans
since prehistoric times. To make an article of clothing it was necessary to
shear an animal, wash the wool and then spin it
into threads that could be knit or woven in a loom.
Vegetable fibers, such as cotton, were used to make cloth as far back as 4500 BC.
Eli Whitney's cotton gin, patented in 1794, revolutionized the production of cotton
by greatly speeding up the separation of the seeds from the cotton fibers.
The cotton gin reduced the cost of clothing.
Jacquard Loom
Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a programmable power loom in 1801.
The loom simplified the manufacture of textiles with complex patterns
by using a set of punched cards, each of which corresponded to one row of the design.
The cards were chained together into a continuous sequence to repeat the design.
The Jacquard Loom was one of the first programmable machines in which the program
was specified by the sequence of the cards and the position of the holes in each card.
The idea of punched cards was used later to program some of the early electronic computers.
Communication
Writing
Before the invention of writing, knowledge was passed through oral traditions,
including poems and songs. Writing made it possible to record knowledge for
a wide audience and for future generations.
Writing developed approximately 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt.
Writing originally consisted of symbols to represent objects.
By 3,000 years ago, writing had evolved to include phonetic elements.
Early phonetic writing did not have symbols for numbers. The numbers were
represented by letters, as is the case of Roman numbers.
Printing press
The first known movable-type printing system appeared in China around 1040 AD.
The printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440 simplified the
the publication of books. One key component of Gutenberg's printing process was a
rapid molding method for creating metal movable type.
The Gutenberg press introduced an era of mass communication
and improved literacy
that permanently altered the structure of society during the European Renaissance.
Telegraph
The telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication by transmitting electrical signals
over a wire. The first practical telegraph was built by Samuel Morse.
His system used a voltaic battery for the first demonstration in 1837
linking the Supreme Court chamber of the Capitol building in Washington and the railroad
station in Baltimore. The first transcontinental telegraph between California and the
Eastern United States was completed in 1861.
Telephone
Many individuals who worked with electromagnets contributed to the invention of the
telephone. An early voice communicating device was invented around 1854 by Antonio Meucci.
Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone on January 30, 1877, but Bell's patent was only
allowed because Meucci had not paid the $10 fee to maintain the caveat for his invention
with the U.S. Patent Office.
Radio
Many inventors tried to develop systems for wireless communication without success.
Between 1886 and 1889 Heinrich Hertz conducted a series of experiments that
proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell in 1865.
In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi was able to send and receive his first radio signal
using a design derived from Hertz.
Marconi's system for wireless communications was soon used for ships and
for establishing the first transatlantic radio service.
Computers
Manual calculating devices, such as the abacus, were used since antiquity.
Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer, originated the concept of a
programmable computer in the early 19th century.
Early digital computers used electromechanical switches to perform the calculations.
In 1942, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed
and tested the first automatic electronic digital computer.
Computers were large and expensive even after the invention of the transistor in 1947.
The introduction of personal computers by IBM in 1981 had a big social impact.
Internet
The modern Internet started when ARPANET adopted the TCP/IP protocol on January 1, 1983
and started connecting several networks. In 1990, computer scientist
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and the HTML language to
program web pages. The Netscape web browser, which displayed web pages, appeared in 1994.
That same year Yahoo! was launched to provide an index for the large number of web pages
that were then in existence. Google began in January 1996 and soon became the leading
search engine because of its better retrieval capability.
Smartphones
Smartphones are hand-held devices with a wide variety of functions.
They can be used as wireless telephones, but also as music players, cameras, video recorders,
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to aid navigation,
to play games, to access the Internet and to display web pages.
The first smartphone, called Simon, was marketed by IBM in 1992.
Several operating systems for smartphones were introduced between 2000 and 2010.
Today, smartphones are used in many households and they have had a great social impact.
Smartphones have been blamed for accidents caused by distracted driving and they
link innumerable people in global communities
through social media sites such as facebook and twitter.
Transportation
Horses
The domestication of horses was one of the great achievements of humans 10,000 years ago.
Horses made it easier to manage cattle, and the domestication of dogs made it easier to manage sheep.
Horses remained the principal form of personal transportation by land until the early part of the
20th century.
Railroads
Various types of rail systems were developed starting in the mid-16th century.
One of the first public railways was the Lake Lock Railroad, which opened in 1798
near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England.
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a 1,912-mile (3,077 km) contiguous railroad line
constructed between 1863 and 1869.
The coast-to-coast railroad revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West.
Automobiles
The first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation was built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1769. Internal combustion engines with various types of fuels were developed
during the next hundred years.
The Model T Ford with a gasoline engine was produced between 1908 to 1927 and
it was one of the most popular cars of the early 20th century due to its low cost
and ease of operation.
Airplane
Humans have always wanted to fly. Greek mythology mentions the story of Icarus, who fell to the
sea when his wings made of feathers and wax melted because he flew too close to the Sun.
In the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci designed machines that were supposed to fly
by flapping wings or by rotating like a corkscrew.
The era of aviation started on December 17, 1903 when Wilbur and Orville Wright
made four controlled flights at Kitty Hawk in a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft.
Today, we can fly half-way around the world in less than 24 hours.
Rockets
Rockets were first developed to deliver bombs at long distances. The first successful
flights were the V-2 rockets used by Germany against England during World War II.
Rockets were modified for human flight, and Apollo 11 was the first spaceflight
that landed humans on the Moon on 20 July 1969.
All the planets of the solar system have been explored by space probes
launched by rockets.
Housing and Shelter
Humans have always needed to find shelter from the sun, rain, snow or stormy weather. Early humans took advantage of existing caves, but they soon learned to make homes from palm fronds, adobe, wood or stone.
Modern homes have many conveniences, such as electrical lighting, running hot and cold water, air conditioning, carpeting, flush toilets and kitchens with gas stoves and refrigerators. The average household has so many conveniences that we tend to forget about them, but we would be very uncomfortable without a soft bed, a bath or shower, mirrors, fluffy towels, tables, chairs, ceramic dishes, a sofa, a television, metal cutlery and a variety of pots, pans and kitchen utensils.
Science
Astronomy and mathematics were two important disciplines for early civilizations. The Egyptians, the Mayas and other Latin American cultures built pyramids and observatories aligned with the Sun. Astronomy was important because it was used to plan the planting of the crops. Mathematics was important for counting sheep or bushels of grain.
Scientific advances are usually made by enhancing our perception through instrumentation or by creating and refining hypotheses that fit observed phenomena (The scientific method).
The Telescope
The telescope was invented by a Dutch eyeglass maker named Hans Lippershey in 1608.
On January 7th, 1610 the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei used a telescope
to observe Jupiter and he recorded the position of three tiny stars around the planet.
On successive days, he saw different alignments of the tiny stars
and realized that these tiny stars were satellites of Jupiter.
These observations gave support to the Copernican heliocentric model
of the solar system. Bigger and better telescopes have enabled us to
learn much about our solar system and the universe.
The Microscope
In the 1590s, Zacharias Jansen invented the first compound microscope by fitting
two lenses within a sliding tube.
In the 17th century, Anton van Leeuwenhoek made single-lens microscopes
that could magnify objects by 270 times.
Van Leeuwenhoek was the first person to describe bacteria, yeast plants,
microbial life in a drop of water, and the circulation of blood corpuscles in capillaries.
Robert Hooke published the first work of microscopic studies, Micrographia, in 1665.
Chemistry
The Greeks believed that there were four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
The science of chemistry originated from the efforts of alchemists to create
the philosopher's stone, which allegedly was capable of turning inexpensive metals into gold.
Chemistry started to emerge as distinct from the pseudoscience of alchemy through the
work of Robert Boyle (1627–91) and Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94).
John Dalton's atomic theory (1808) brought a new perspective to the structure of matter
when the relative weights to the atoms of chemical elements were determined.
Classification of the elements based on their properties led to the creation of a
periodic table with which Dmitri Mendeleev (1869) was able to predict the existence
of elements that had not been discovered yet.
Atomic energy
Some chemical elements are unstable and emit radiation.
In 1898, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre announced the existence of two radioactive
elements: polonium and radium.
Further research on radioactivity led to the discovery of the self-sustaining fission reaction
that occurs in nuclear reactors and bombs.
The first application of this knowledge culminated in the explosion of atomic bombs over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II.
Nuclear power has the potential of generating electricity without producing
greenhouse gases. However, people worry about the safety of nuclear power
due to accidents like the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor
in the Ukraine and radioactive leakage from the Fukoshima power plant in Japan as a result of
a tsunami. Land contaminated by radioactive will be uninhabitable for thousands of years.
Artificial Intelligence
The creation of a computer that can think like a human will be man's greatest
accomplishment. A machine endowed with artificial intelligence (AI) would be able
to solve many problems and learn new concepts and strategies along the way.
Artificial Intelligence is in its infancy at the beginning of the 21st century, but because a lot of
human knowledge is stored on the World Wide Web, it is only a matter of time
before machines will be better at many things than average humans.
Some people fear the social changes that could result from AI.
