Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Modern Inventions

20th century

1900s

·       1900: The first Zeppelin is designed by Theodor Kober.
·       1901: The first motorized cleaner using suction, a powered "vacuum cleaner", is patented independently by British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth and American inventor David T. Kenney.
·       1903: The first successful gas turbine is invented by Ægidius Elling.
·       1903: Édouard Bénédictus invents laminated glass.
·       1903: First manually controlled, fixed wing, motorized aircraft flies at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina by Orville and Wilbur Wright. See Claims to the first powered flight.
·       1904: The Fleming valve, the first vacuum tube and diode, is invented by John Ambrose Fleming.
·       1907: The first free flight of a rotary-wing aircraft is carried out by Paul Cornu.
·       1907: Leo Baekeland invents bakelite.
·       1908: Cellophane is invented by Jacques E. Brandenberger.
·       1909: Fritz Haber invents the Haber process.
·       1909: The first instantaneous transmission of images, or television broadcast, is carried out by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier.

1910s

·       1911: The cloud chamber, the first particle detector, is invented by Charles Thomson Rees Wilson.
·       1913: The Bergius process is developed by Friedrich Bergius.
·       1913: The Kaplan turbine is invented by Viktor Kaplan.
·       1915: The tank is invented by Ernest Swinton, although the British Royal Commission on Awards recognized a South Australian named Lance de Mole who had submitted a proposal to the British War Office, for a 'chain-rail vehicle which could be easily steered and carry heavy loads over rough ground and trenches' complete with extensive drawings in 1912. Additionally, an Austrian by the name of Günther Burstyn designed a tank in 1911 and a Captain Levavasseur of the French army proposed a design in 1903.
·       1916: The Czochralski process, widely used for the production of single crystal silicon, is invented by Jan Czochralski.
·       1917: The crystal oscillator is invented by Alexander M. Nicholson using a crystal of Rochelle Salt although his priority was disputed by Walter Guyton Cady

1920s

·       1925: The Fischer–Tropsch process is developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Kohlenforschung.
·       1926: The Yagi-Uda Antenna or simply Yagi Antenna is invented by Shintaro Uda of Tohoku Imperial University, Japan, assisted by his colleague Hidetsugu Yagi. The Yagi Antenna was widely used by the US, British, and Germans during World War II. After the war they saw extensive development as home television antennas.
·       1927: The quartz clock is invented by Warren Marrison and J.W. Horton at Bell Telephone Laboratories.
·       1928: Penicillin is first observed to exude antibiotic substances by Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming. Development of medicinal penicillin is attributed to a team of medics and scientists including Howard Walter FloreyErnst Chain and Norman Heatley.
·       1928: Frank Whittle formally submitted his ideas for a turbo-jet engine. In October 1929, he developed his ideas further. On 16 January 1930 in England, Whittle submitted his first patent (granted in 1932).

1930s

·       1930: The Phase-contrast microscopy is invented by Frits Zernike.
·       1931: The electron microscope is invented by Ernst Ruska.
·       1933: FM radio is patented by inventor Edwin H. Armstrong.
·       1935: Nylon, the first fully synthetic fiber is produced by Wallace Carothers while working at DuPont.
·       1938: Z1 built by Konrad Zuse is the first freely programmable computer in the world.
·       1938, December: Nuclear fission discovered in experiment by Otto Hahn (Nazi Germany), coined by Lise Meitner (fled to Sweden from Nazi-occupied Austria) and Fritz Strassman (Sweden). The Manhattan Project, and consequently the Soviet atomic bomb project were begun based on this research, as well as the German nuclear energy project, although the latter one declined as its physicists were drafted into Germany's war effort.
·       1939: G. S. Yunyev or Naum Gurvich invented the electric current defibrillator

1940s

·       1941: Polyester is invented by British scientists John Whinfield and James Dickson.
·       1942: The V-2 rocket, the world's first long range ballistic missile, developed in Nazi Germany during World War II.
·       July 1945: The atomic bomb is first successfully developed by the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada as a part of the Manhattan Project and swiftly deployed in August 1945 in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively causing the end of World War II.
·       1946: Sir James Martin invents the ejector seat, inspired by the death of his friend and test pilot Captain Valentine Baker in an airplane crash in 1942.
·       1947: Holography is invented by Dennis Gabor.
·       December 1947: The transistor, used in almost all modern electronic products is invented in December 1947 by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain under the supervision of William Shockley. Subsequent transistors became steadily smaller, faster, more reliable, and cheaper to manufacture, leading to a revolution in computers, controls, and communication.
·       1947: Floyd Farris and J.B. Clark (Stanolind Oil and Gas Corporation) invents hydraulic fracturing technology.[246]
·       1948: The first atomic clock is developed at the United States's National Bureau of Standards.
·       1948: Basic oxygen steelmaking is developed by Robert Durrer. The vast majority of steel manufactured in the world is produced using the basic oxygen furnace; in 2000, it accounted for 60% of global steel output.

1950s

·       1952: The float glass process is developed by Alastair Pilkington.
·       December 20, 1951: First use of nuclear power to produce electricity for households in Arco, Idaho
·       1952: The first thermonuclear weapon is developed by the United States of America.
·       1953: The first video tape recorder, a helical scan recorder, is invented by Norikazu Sawazaki.
·       1954: Invention of Solar Battery by Bell Telephone scientists, Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chapin and Gerald Pearson capturing the sun's power. First practical means of collecting energy from the sun and turning it into a current of electricity.
·       1955: The hovercraft is patented by Christopher Cockerell.
·       1955: The intermodal container is developed by Malcom McLean.
·       1956: The hard disk drive is invented by IBM.
·       1957: The first PC used by one person and controlled by a keyboard, the IBM 610 is invented in 1957 by IBM.
·       1957: The first artificial satelliteSputnik 1, is built and launched by the Soviet Union.
·       1958–59: Independent invention of the integrated circuit by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.

1960s

·       1960: The first functioning laser is invented by Theodore Maiman.
·       1963: The first electronic cigarette is created by Herbert A. Gilbert. Hon Lik is often credited with its invention as he developed the modern electronic cigarette and was the first to commercialize it.
·       1965: Kevlar is invented by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont.
·       1969: ARPANET first deployed via UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and The University of Utah.

1970s

·       1970: The pocket calculator is invented in Japan.
·       1971: Email is invented by Ray Tomlinson.
·       1971: The first commercially available microprocessor, the Intel 4004 is invented.
·       1972: The first video game console, used primarily for playing video games on a TV, is the Magnavox Odyssey.
·       1973: The first commercial graphical user interface is introduced in 1973 on the Xerox Alto. The modern GUI is later popularized by the Xerox Star and Apple Lisa.
·       1973: The first capacitive touchscreen is developed at CERN.
·       1975: Altair 8800 is the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution.
·       1973–75: The Internet protocol suite is developed by Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ARPANET, creating the basis for the modern Internet.

1980s

·       1980: Flash memory (both NOR and NAND types) is invented in Japan by Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba. It is formally introduced to the public in 1984.
·       1982: A CD-ROM contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 Yellow Book standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data.
·       1984: The first commercially available cell phone, the DynaTAC 8000X, is created by Motorola.

1990s

·       1990: The World Wide Web is first introduced to the public by English engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
·       1993: Mosaic, the first popular web browser is introduced
·       1995: DVD is an optical disc storage format, invented and developed by PhilipsSonyToshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions.


Comments
This is the period when ordinary people in developed countries were able to take advantage of the inventions that now impact their daily lives. From the 1920s to the 1950s, we developed water treatment and anti-biotics. We made advances in composite materials, electronics and manufacturing processes.  

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader