Technology has been a great achievement of humanity. It has given us an unimaginable control over nature. From the creation of the lightbulb to the development of intercontinental nuclear energy, technology has always played a crucial role in shaping our world. It represents our ability to utilize the resources around us to create convenience and comfort in our lives.
‘Wheel,’ for example, one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind, managed to change the course of humanity. Previously used to lift heavy objects, it was soon used for irrigating crops in the agricultural sector. Indeed, it was also used for transport service sometimes after its discovery. The history of mankind keeps evolving due to these revolutionary inventions. Fire too was able to push the way of man to move forward. However, even the most crucial inventions throughout humanity go unnoticed: currency is one of those inventions which is not talked about much but is the backbone for trade and balance in civilization.
Simple trinkets and handy tools like the compass were also indispensable instruments at the time, invented first in China during the 11th or 12th century. Since technology was still in its infancy, there were no options of looking up google maps on phones. Due to this, whether one got lost or returned to dinner on the table well on time depended on a simple compass.
Evidence suggests that as early as 700 B.C., people in ancient Egypt noticed that they could look through crystals to improve vision. The earliest official addition to the magnifying glass was by Franciscan friar and Oxford University scholar Roger Bacon in 1268. 200 years later in Germany, at around 1440, the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, which ushered the printing revolution.
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While the pendulum clock had already been invented in 17th century, a clock that could withstand the vagaries of the sea, humidity, and air temperature remained an elusive dream. This led John Harrison to develop an accurate Marine Chronometer for this very purpose. The marine chronometer wasn’t the only invention in the 18th century. In 1712, after ten years of conducting experiments with steam pumps, Thomas Newcomen invented the first ever steam engine, useful for the global trade of goods. With this the modern era of technology began.
The first modern computer was invented by Charles Babbage in the early 18th century. But it was only in 1991 that it became possible to use it for commercial purposes. Before this, the ENIAC was the first general purpose computer invented in 1945. Only after 38 years, the internet was invented on January 1, 1983, through which the global networking of computers was achieved.
Furthermore, the ability for humans to fly has captured the imagination of inventors for centuries, with the first human-powered flight taking place in 1783 when Joseph-Michael and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier took to the skies in a hot air balloon. In 1853 British engineer George Cayley designed the first glider to successfully take flight, but it wasn’t until 1903 that Orville and Wilbur Wright's plane became the first airplane to have a successful voyage. It not only took off from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina using its own power, but it also flew and landed without destruction.
Similarly nuclear energy was first discovered in the 1930s by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, who found that overwhelming atoms with neutrons could split them, generating huge amounts of energy. He went on to develop the first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. This successful experiment led to the development of several nuclear plants in the 1950s, with Idaho launching the first nuclear plant in 1951.
Not all inventions, however, need to be mechanical or related to energy. The medical world has a plethora of inventions of its own. It's one of the most famous discovery stories in history. In 1928, the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming noticed a bacteria-filled Petri dish in his laboratory with its lid accidentally open. The sample had become contaminated with mold, and wherever the mold was, bacterias were dead. That antibiotic mold turned out to be the fungus Penicillium. Over the next two decades, chemists purified it and developed the drug penicillin, which fights a huge number of bacterial infections in humans.
The earliest rudimentary vaccination is thought to date back to the 10th century in China, when people inoculated small scratches in the skin with small doses of smallpox to provide protection against the disease. But in 1796, English physician Edward Jenner discovered that milkmaids rarely caught or died of smallpox because they were previously infected by the cowpox virus, also called Vaccinia. So, he used cowpox to develop a smallpox vaccine. After this discovery, cures for a plethora of diseases were found using a similar approach.
Like many famous inventions, the X-ray was discovered by accident. In 1895, German engineer and physicist Wilhelm Conrad was undertaking a two-month study of radiation. In an experiment testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass, he noticed that the radiation was able to pass through screens of considerable thickness, leaving a shadow of solid objects. He soon discovered that X-rays could pass through human tissues to show a clear picture of the skeleton and organs. A year later, a group of physicians took the earliest X-rays on patients. These observations led to the development of radiology as we know it today and has played instrumental roles in making medical sciences leap forward.
Now is the era for artificial Intelligence as a reality. In 1950 Alan Turing published his seminal work, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, and the term “artificial intelligence” was expressed by John McCarthy. McCarthy also developed the popular programming language, which is used in AI research.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence by machines, especially computer systems. AI has since then evolved into various states, through Chat-GPT as a personal helper in essays, equations and various techniques in research to self-generating pictures and videos from AI. Although the height for expansion is reached for now, this is only the tip of the iceberg, who knows what else is to be discovered next! Mysteries lie and our curiosity for expansion will keep technology flourishing.
