-
- 1900 - Research Labs - Steinmetz's
labs for General Electric in Schenectady
- 1901 - Victrola - UK's Francis Barraud's
Gramophone record player
- 1905 - Relativity - Einstein's special
relativity, general relativity in 1915
- 1907 - Bakelite - Leo Baekeland in
Belgium
- 1907 - Triode - Lee De Forest and Edwin
Armstrong
- 1908 - Model T - Henry Ford's car,
17 million sold by 1927
- 1910 - Synthetic Rubber - Bayer's synthesized
rubber
- 1911 - Taylorism - Frederick Taylor's
studies of industry
- 1913 - Assembly Line - Henry Ford's
Model T plant
- 1913 - Oil Refining - William Burton's
thermal cracking technique
- 1913 - Zipper - Sweden's Gideon Sundback
Hookless 2 improved zipper
- 1913 - Xray Tube - Roentgen's 1895
tube commercialized by GE's Coolidge
- 1914 - Panama Canal - $352 million
over 10 years, reduced travel 8000 miles
- 1920s - Refrigerator
- 1920 - Radio Broadcasting - Harding-Cox
elections aired by KDKA Pittsburgh
- 1925 - Frozen Food - Clarence Birdseye
starts selling frozen fish
- 1927 - Movies with sound - "The
Jazz Singer" with Al Jolson
- 1928 - Penicillin - Scotland's Alexander
Fleming
- 1930s - Radar
- 1930 - Particle Accelerator - Ernest
O Lawrence
- 1930 - Tape - 3M's Dick Drew's Scotch
tape
- 1934 - Nylon - Wallace Carothers at
DuPont
- 1936 - Hoover Dam - 3,250,000 blocks
of concrete
- 1937 - Jet Engine - Germany 1939, England
1941
- 1939 - Movies with color - "Gone
with the Wind" and"Wizard of Oz"
- 1939 - Television - Commercial TV unveiled
at New York's World Fair
- 1942 - Xerox - Chester Carlson's patent
commercialized by Xerox
- 1942 - Chemotherapy -
- 1944 - V2 Rocket - Wernher von Braun's
rockets fired on London
- 1945 - Microwave Oven - Raytheon's
Radarange
- 1945 - Atom bomb - 16 Jul 1945 detonation
at Los Alamos
- 1952 - Hydrogen bomb - November 1st
detonation of "Mike"
- 1946 - ENIAC - early computer at University
of Pennsylvania
- 1947 - Transistor - Walter Brattain,
John Bardeen, William Schockly at Bell
- 1947 - Offshore Drilling - Kerr-McGee's
drillings off Louisiana
- 1947 - Polaroid - Edwin Land's instant
photography and camera
- 1950s - Pesticides
- 1953 - DNA Double Helix - UK's Crick,
Watson and Franklin
- 1954 - Solar Cells - developed at Bell
Laboratories
- 1955 - Polio Vaccine - Jonas Salk's
injected vaccine - Albert Sabin's oral
- 1955 - Birth Control Pill - Gregory
Pincus and John Rock
- 1956 - Interstate Highway system -
Eisenhower inspired by Reichsautobahnen
- 1956 - Transatlantic Communication
Cables - TAT-1in 1956
- 1957 - Satellites - Sputnik, with Telstar
I launched in 1962
- 1959 - Robot Manufacturing
- 1960 - Laser - Theodore Maiman
- 1967 - Microchip - with Intel's microprocessor
chip in 1971
- 1967 - Heart Transplant - South Africa's
Christiaan Barnard
- 1969 - Moon - 20 Jul 1969 moon landing
- 1970s - Supercomputers
- 1970s - Windmills - for renewable power
generation
- 1970s - Video Games - Nintendo and Sony
- 1970 - Fiber Optic Cable - researchers
at Corning
- 1973 - Genetic Engineering - Stanford's
Cohen and Berkeley's Boyer splicing
- 1975 - VCR - JVC's VHS outmarketed
Sony's Betamax
- 1978 - In Vitro Fertilization - UK's
Patrick Steptoe delivers Louise Brown
- 1979 - Walkman - Sony's portable entertainment,
followed by Discman
- 1979 - Three Mile Island - nuclear
power plant reactor accident
- 1980s - Electric Car
- 1980s - Personal Computers - IBM's 1981
PC, Microsoft's DOS
- 1980s - Genetically Modified Crops
- 1981 - Stealth Bomber - Lockheed's
F-117A
- 1983 - Cellular Telephones
- 1990s - Internet
- 1990s - World Wide Web
- 1996 - Chunnel - Dover, England to
Calais, France under Channel tunnel
- 1997 - Mars - 1997 NASA Pathfinder
mission's Sojourner rover
- 1997 - Thinking Machines - IBM's Deep
Blue beats chess champion Kasparov
- 1997 - Cloning - Ian Wilmut clones
Dolly, a sheep
-
-
- Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) was left
out, the xerox machine of the genetic engineering world. I wouldn't have
included the Internet as a 1990s discovery (save that for the World Wide
Web), but rather a 1980s evolution of videotex. Relativity is cited, but
not quantum mechanics (though two QM applications, lasers and transistors
are cited). I would have included Lisp as the first non-trivial programming
language, and the spreadsheet as business software tool for the masses.
I would have included a few more plastics, like polyvinyl chloride PVC.
I probably wouldn't have included the 1997 Thinking Machine, as the victory
was interesting when it happened but too inevitable. I would have included
the facsimile machine, and online financial exchange systems. I would
have included radiocarbon dating for freeing archeology from religion.
_____
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- Greg Aharonian
- Internet Patent News Service
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