20 most important tech inventions of the past 100 years

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New Gallery 2018/10/27A century moves fastPicture life in 1918: World War I was in its closing months, a Ford Model T cost $500, and home radio units were just coming into being. Now just 100 years later we live in a digital age. The technology we enjoy today would be largely impossible if not for these 20 inventions. Image: State Library of Queenslandoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681918: Artificial fertilizer revolutionizes agricultureGerman chemist Fritz Haber invented a method of pulling nitrogen out of the air to create ammonia, for which he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1918. The Haber method, as it is now known, was initially used to create explosives and chemical weapons during World War I, but by the end of the war it became the main method of creating artificial fertilizer. Image: Find a Graveoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681923: The modern refrigeratorWhile refrigeration had been around for quite some time, and home refrigeration began in 1913, it wasn't until 1923 that modern self-contained refrigerators became reality. Frigidaire's first self-contained refrigerator and home refrigeration didn't really take off until the invention of the artificial refrigerant Freon, which made cheaper and safer fridges possible into the 1930s. Image: Amazonoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1000height 7491924: Wireless faxingThe ability to send images and text over wire had been around for some time before Richard H. Ranger invented the photoradiogram, which was able to transmit an image of President Calvin Coolidge from New York to London-wirelessly-in 1924. The wireless fax started a business communication revolution, allowing for the transmission of higher-quality images faster than ever before. Image: Afax.comoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681926: RocketryThe age of modern rocketry--that is, liquid-propelled rockets--began in 1926 with Robert H. Goddard's first successful rocket flight. Goddard's rocket made many inventions possible, including space travel (though that would take several decades). Image: NASAoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681927: Electronic televisionThe first electronic television was invented by Philo T. Farnsworth in 1927, when he was only 21 years old. Electronics company RCA offered to buy Farnsworth's electronic TV patent for $100,000, but he refused, kicking off a lengthy legal battle that ended with RCA paying royalties to Farnsworth to use some of his patented components in its mass-market television sets. Image: University of Utahoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681928: PenicillinBritish chemist and biologist Sir Alexander Fleming is responsible for the development of antibiotics in September 1928 after spending August with his family, and he found that a culture of staphylococci bacteria had been killed by mold that had contaminated the sample. That mold was part of the penicillium family, from which Fleming termed it penicillin. Image: National Library of Scotlandoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681930: The jet engineTwo engineers developed the modern jet engine, which uses the expulsion of fluid to create thrust, almost simultaneously. The first, proposed by Frank Whittle in 1928, later became the engine behind the UK's Gloster Meteor aircraft. In 1930, the first patent for a jet engine was submitted. Image: US Air Forceoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681935: RadarModern radar technology first came into being in 1935, thanks to the work of Scottish engineer Robert Watson-Watt. His experiments involved using radio signal to detect aircraft, and tests starting in 1935 led to the development of project Chain Home, a line of radar installations that warned the UK of incoming German aircraft. Image: Royal Air Force Museumoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681938: The modern farming combineThreshers, harvesters, and other crop reaping machines had been around for some time, but they required several things that slowed them down: A team of horses to pull them, or a second tractor to propel them. That changed when crop harvesting was revolutionized with the 1938 invention of the Massey-Harris No. 20 self-propelled combine harvester. Image: Massey Fergusonoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681940s: Color TVWhile the first mechanical color television was created in 1928, it wasn't until the 1940s that commercially viable color TV technology came into being. RCA later invented the world's first fully electronic color system, which the FCC adopted in 1953. It wasn't until the 1960s that color broadcasts became widespread. Image: Research Gateoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681941: The first Turing-complete computerTuring completeness was a fundamental step in computing technology, and in 1941 German engineer Konrad Zuse built the first electronic computer to be fully Turing complete. Zuse's Z3 was used during World War II to solve wing flutter problems in German military aircraft. It was destroyed in an allied bombing raid in 1943; the Z3 pictured above is a reproduction. Image: Nick Heath/TechRepublicoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681947: The first semiconducting transistorWhile working at Bell Labs in 1947, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain created the first transistor when their experiments found that a germanium crystal touched by two gold crystals created a signal which amplified the input power to create a signal with a greater output. Image: US Navyoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681956: The first hard drivePrior to 1956 computers had no practical way to store data outside of punch cards and paper printouts. That changed when IBM invented the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit. The IBM 350 was massive: 60" wide, 68" high, and 29" deep. It contained 50 disks 24" in diameter, and was capable of storing a stunning 5 million six-bit characters, or approximately 3.75 megabytes. Image: IBMoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681963: Photography gets easierDigital cameras make it easier than ever to take good pictures without photography training, but in the 1960s point-and-shoot photography was just coming into being. Kodak's Instamatic was the first cheap, easy-to-use, and consumer-friendly camera to be widely available, and from 1963 to 1970 over 50 million were sold. Image: Kodakoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681969: Packet-switching networksThe Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, also called ARPANET, was built in 1969 to serve as a network for Department of Defense computers. Prior to the invention of packet switching, networked computers behaved much like two telephones involved in a phone call: They had a dedicated line that connected them electronically. Image: University of Luganooriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681973: Internet Protocol SuiteARPANET was the very first network to use the Internet Protocol Suite, commonly known as TCP/IP. While it may have been invented in 1973, it would take until 1982 for the US military to adopt it as the standard for all of its computer networks. TCP/IP was responsible for the rapid growth of ARPANET and the eventual growth of the modern internet. Image: New York Universityoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681974: The first personal computerAn Altair 8800 kit cost $439 USD in 1974, or about $1,996 USD in 2018. Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) only expected sales of around 800 units, but in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics flooded the company with orders. By August 1975 MITS had sold over 5,000 Altairs, and the home computing age had officially begun. Image: The Smithsonian Institutionoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681979: A new age in portable musicSony cofounder Masaru Ibuka can be thanked for the drive to create the Walkman cassette tape player--he used to bring a bulk tape player on business trips to listen to music and requested that Sony executive deputy president Norio Ohga develop a small playback-only cassette deck. Thus the Walkman was born, and portable music became a part of life. Image: Sonyoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681983: Telephones go cellular1983 saw the birth of the world's first commercially available cellular telephone: The Motorola DynaTAC. This brick of a cell phone was 13" tall, weighed nearly two pounds, stored 30 phone numbers, offered 30 minutes of talk time, and took a whopping 10 hours to fully charge. It was also expensive: $3,995 USD in 1983, or approximately $9,800 today. Image: Motorolaoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 7681994: The first smartphoneYou'll be forgiven for not knowing of the existence of this 1994 proto-smartphone: It only sold for six months and moved a measly 50,000 units. It was also roughly on par with the price of a modern flagship device: Its sole carrier, Bellsouth Cellular, offered it for $890 USD ($1,516 in 2018) with a two-year contract, or $1,099 ($1,872 in 2018) without a contract. Image: Microsoftoriginaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1024height 768What will the future hold?From the agricultural revolutions to the modern smartphone, the world has changed a lot in the past 100 years, and there's no telling how it will change in the next 100. New technology trends can already be seen emerging in 2018, but do those items merit inclusion in the most important tech of the past 100 years? We may just have to wait until 2118 to find out.focallength 115flash 16cameramake Canonheight 533fnumber 11exposuretime 0.008orientation 1camerasoftware Pixelmator 3.7originaldate 6/29/2015 12:40:16 AMwidth 800cameramodel Canon EOS 5D Mark II

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20 most important tech inventions of the past 100 years

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20 most important tech inventions of the past 100 years

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