Our country is rich in talented scientists and inventors, whose work has made a huge contribution not only to the development of their own country, but also has become the property of world science and culture. Many of the brilliant scientists, whose inventions are used by the whole world, are unfairly forgotten or even unknown in their homeland.
We invite you to get acquainted with the best inventions and the most significant scientists, engineers and discoverers from Russia who deserve recognition.
01. VCR
Alexander PonyatovThe first working prototype and production model of the VCR was developed by the American company AMPEX, which was founded in 1944 by a Russian emigrant, Kazan engineer Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov.
The company name Ampex is an acronym formed from the first letters of the creator’s name and the word “experimental” - Alexander M. Poniatoff EXperimental.
At the beginning of its journey, the company was engaged in the production and development of sound recording equipment, but in the first half of the 50s it reoriented itself to the development of video recording devices and media for them.
At that time, there was already experience in recording images from a television screen, but recording devices required an incredibly large amount of tape. AMPEX invented a way to record images perpendicular to tape using rotating head units. The invention received quick recognition, and already in November 1956, a news broadcast was broadcast on the CBS television channel, which was recorded on Alexander Ponyatov’s VCR.
In 1960, the company and its founder received an Oscar for their invention, which made enormous contributions to the film and television industries.
The name of Alexander Ponyatov was little known to the general public in the USSR, however, in the USA, after the death of the engineer in 1982, the American Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, noting his outstanding contribution to the development of television technology, established the “Gold Medal named after. Poniatoff" (SMPTE Poniatoff Gold Medal), awarded for achievements in the field of magnetic recording of electrical signals.
Being and living far from his homeland, Alexander Ponyatov never ceased to miss his native land, how else can one explain the massive planting of birch trees at the main entrance of all AMPEX company offices. Alexander Matveevich personally ordered this.
02. Tetris
Alexey Pajitnov with his son About 30 years ago in the Soviet Union, a certain puzzle called “Pentamino” was very popular. Its essence was to construct figures on lined fields. The popularity of the puzzle reached such a level that special collections with problems were created and published, where some of the pages were devoted to solving problems from previous issues of the collections.
This game, from a mathematical point of view, was an excellent test for a computer system. In this regard, Alexey Pajitnov, a researcher at the USSR Academy of Sciences, developed a computer program similar to a puzzle for his “Electronics 60”. There was not enough capacity to create the classic version of the puzzle, where the field consisted of 5 cubes, so the field was reduced to 4 cells and a system for falling pieces was created. This is how one of the most popular computer games in the world appeared - Tetris.
Despite the modern development of technology, Tetris is still very popular, and other games for smartphones and computers are being developed based on it.
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03. Galvanoplasty
Moritz Hermann Jacobi is a German and Russian physicist and inventor. In Russian style - Boris Semenovich Jacobi. Plastic products that have a thin metal coating have entered our lives so long ago that we no longer notice the difference. There are also metal products that are coated with thin layers of other metals, and exact metal replicas of products with a non-metallic base.
This opportunity arose thanks to the brilliant physicist Boris Jacobi, who invented the “galvanoplasty” method. The electroforming method involves depositing metals onto molds to produce perfect copies of the original objects.
This method is widely used in many manufacturing areas around the world and is extremely popular due to its simplicity and high cost-effectiveness.
Boris Semenovich Jacobi became famous not only for the discovery of galvanoplasty. He also built the first electric motor, a telegraph machine that printed letters.
Until the summer of 2017, the grave of the great scientist Boris Semenovich Jacobi looked like this, despite the fact that it is under state protection!
The grave of Boris Semyonovich Jacobi Restoration was planned by an initiative group from St. Petersburg, but there is still no exact information about the work carried out.
04. Electric cars
The end of the 19th century was characterized by a huge increase in popularity for electric transport and vehicles without internal combustion engines. In those days, every self-respecting engineer developed and designed an electric car. The cities were small in size, so a range of several tens of kilometers on a single charge was quite enough for comfortable use of cars.
One of the enthusiasts was Ippolit Romanov, who created several decent electric vehicle models, which for a variety of reasons were not commercially successful.
The first Russian electric car and its creator - Russian engineer-inventor - Ippolit Vladimirovich Romanov Moreover, he designed an electric multi-passenger vehicle that was capable of carrying 17 passengers and developed a city route map. This project was supposed to become the progenitor of modern trams, but it was not destined to come to fruition due to the lack of the required number of investors.
However, Ippolit Romanov is considered one of the first inventors of electric vehicles, which are currently extremely popular, and the first inventor of the progenitor of the modern tram.
05. Electric arc welding
Nikolai Nikolaevich Benardos is a Russian engineer, inventor of electric arc welding, spot and seam resistance welding. An electric arc welding method that relies on the physical action of an electric arc that is created between an electrode and pieces of metal. This method was patented in 1888 by Nikolai Benardos, a native of Novorossiysk Greeks.
The invention of this method made it possible to significantly reduce the cost of various types of installation work, as well as increase the speed of their implementation and the level of reliability. After its invention, the method spread extremely quickly throughout the world and, in less than 50 years, took a leading position in many areas where fastening metal structures is necessary.
Despite hundreds of his inventions, including electric arc welding, the inventor did not gain fame and died in 1905 alone and in poverty.
06. Helicopter
The first person in the world to design and build a helicopter was Russian engineer Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky. The first production models, called R-4, were created in 1942.
Igor Sikorsky In addition, Igor Sikorsky was one of the first inventors and testers of multi-engine aircraft, which at that time were considered too dangerous and uncontrollable.
In 1913, Sikorsky managed to lift into the air a four-engine Russian Knight aircraft, and in 1914 he set a record for flight duration, covering the distance between St. Petersburg and Kiev on an aircraft of this type.
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07. Color photographs
Self-portrait of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky. January 1, 1912, Library of Congress The first color printing was invented at the end of the 19th century, however, photographs of that time were distinguished by a colossal shift in spectra, which made the quality of the images far from ideal.
The domestic photographer spent a long time studying the technology of color photography; he paid special attention to the chemical component of the process. Thanks to painstaking work in 1905, he managed to invent and patent a unique substance to increase the sensitivity of a photographic plate. This chemical reagent significantly improved the quality of color photographs and stimulated the development of color photography throughout the world.
- Article
Humanity could not exist without constant progress, the discovery and implementation of new technologies, inventions and discoveries. Today, many of them are already outdated and are no longer needed, while others, like a wheel, still serve.
The whirlpool of time swallowed many discoveries, and some were recognized and implemented only after tens and hundreds of years. Numerous questions have been asked to find out which inventions of mankind are the most significant.
One thing is clear - there is no consensus. Nevertheless, a universal ten of the greatest discoveries in human history was compiled.
Surprisingly, it turned out that the achievements of modern science have not shaken the significance of some basic discoveries for most people. Most inventions are so old that it is impossible to accurately name their author.
Fire. It's hard to challenge first place. People discovered the beneficial properties of fire quite a long time ago. With its help it was possible to warm up and illuminate, change the taste properties of food. Initially, man dealt with “wild” fire arising from fires or volcanic eruptions. Fear gave way to curiosity, and the flame migrated into the cave. Over time, man learned to make fire himself; it became his constant companion, the basis of the economy, and protection from animals. As a result, many subsequent discoveries became possible only thanks to fire - ceramics, metallurgy, steam engines, etc. The path to making fire on their own was long - for years people kept home fires in their caves until they learned how to make it using friction. Two sticks of dry wood were taken, one of which had a hole. The first one was placed on the ground and pressed. The second one was inserted into the hole and began to be quickly rotated between the palms. The wood heated up and ignited. Of course, such a process required a certain skill. With the development of mankind, other ways of producing open fire arose.
Wheel. The Cart is closely related to this discovery. Scientists believe that the prototype of the wheel was the rollers that were placed under stones and tree trunks during transportation. Probably, then someone observant noticed the properties of rotating bodies. So, if the log-roller in the center was thinner than at the edges, then it moved more evenly, without deviating to the sides. People noticed this, and a device appeared, now called a stingray. Over time, the design changed; all that remained of the solid log were two rollers at the ends connected by an axis. Later, they generally began to be made separately, fastening them together only later. And so the wheel was discovered, which immediately began to be used in the first carts. Over the next centuries and millennia, people worked hard to improve this important invention. At first, solid wheels were rigidly connected to the axle, rotating with it. But at the turn the heavy cart could break. And the wheels themselves were imperfect; they were originally made from a single piece of wood. This led to the fact that the first carts were rather slow and clumsy, and they were harnessed to strong but leisurely oxen. A major step in evolution was the invention of the wheel with a hub mounted on a fixed axle. To reduce the weight of the wheel itself, they came up with the idea of cutting cuts in it, strengthening it with transverse braces for rigidity. In the Stone Age, it was impossible to create a better option. But with the advent of metals in human life, wheels received metal rims and spokes, they were able to rotate tens of times faster and were no longer afraid of stones and wear. Fleet-footed horses began to be harnessed to the cart, and the speed increased noticeably. As a result, the wheel became a discovery that gave perhaps the most powerful impetus to the development of all technology.
Writing. Few would deny the significance of this invention for the entire development of mankind. Where would the development of our civilization go if at a certain stage we had not learned to record the necessary information with certain symbols? This made it possible to save it and transmit it. It is obvious that without writing our society in its current form simply would not exist. The first forms of symbols for transmitting information arose about 6 thousand years ago. Before this, people used more primitive signals - smoke, branches... Later, more complex methods of data transmission arose, for example, the Incas used knots for this. Laces of different colors were tied into various knots and attached to a stick. The addressee deciphered the message. This kind of writing was also practiced in China and Mongolia. However, writing itself appeared only with the invention of graphic symbols. Pictographic letters were first adopted. On them, in the form of a drawing, people schematically depicted phenomena, events, objects. Pictography was widespread back in the Stone Age, and it did not require much learning. But this type of writing was not suitable for conveying complex thoughts or abstract concepts. Over time, symbols began to be introduced into pictograms to denote certain concepts. Thus, crossed hands symbolized exchange. Gradually, primitive pictograms became clearer and more defined, and writing became ideographic. Its highest form was hieroglyphic writing. First it originated in Ancient Egypt, then spread to the Far East - Japan, China. Such symbols already made it possible to reflect any thoughts, even the most complex ones. But for an outsider it was very difficult to understand the secret, and for someone who wanted to learn to read and write, it was necessary to learn several thousand characters. As a result, only a few could master this skill. And only 4 thousand years ago the ancient Phoenicians came up with an alphabet of letters and sounds, which became a model for many other peoples. The Phoenicians began to use 22 consonant letters, each of which denoted a different sound. The new writing made it possible to convey any word graphically, and learning to write became much easier. Now it has become the property of the entire society, this fact contributed to the rapid spread of the alphabet throughout the world. It is believed that 80% of the alphabets common today have Phoenician roots. The last significant changes to the Phoenician letters were made by the Greeks - they began to denote not only consonants, but also vowel sounds with letters. The Greek alphabet, in turn, formed the basis of most European ones.
Paper. This invention is closely related to the previous one. The inventors of paper were the Chinese. It's hard to call this an accident. Since ancient times, China has been famous not only for its love of books, but also for its complex system of bureaucratic management with constant reports. That is why there was a special need for inexpensive and compact writing material. Before the advent of paper, people wrote here on silk and bamboo tablets. However, these materials were poorly suited - silk was expensive, and bamboo was heavy and bulky. They say that some works required a whole cart to transport them. The invention of paper came from the processing of silk cocoons. The women boiled them, and then, spreading them out on a mat, ground them until smooth. The water was filtered from it to obtain silk wool. After this treatment, a thin fibrous layer remained on the mats, which, after drying, turned into paper suitable for writing. Later, they began to use rejected cocoons for its targeted preparation. This paper was called cotton paper and was quite expensive. Over time, the question arose - is it possible to make paper not only from silk? Or any fibrous raw material, preferably of plant origin, is suitable for these purposes. The story goes that in 105, a certain official, Cai Lun, was able to create a new type of paper from old fishing nets. Its quality was comparable to silk, and the price was much lower. This discovery became important both for the country and for the entire civilization. People received high-quality and accessible writing material, an equivalent replacement for which has never been found. The following centuries brought several important improvements to papermaking technology, and the process itself began to develop rapidly. In the 4th century, paper finally replaced bamboo planks; it soon became known that production was possible from cheap plant materials - tree bark, bamboo and reed. This was especially important, because bamboo grows in huge quantities in China. Production secrets were kept in the strictest confidence for several centuries. But in 751, some Chinese, during a clash with the Arabs, were captured by them. So the secret became known to the Arabs, who for five centuries profitably sold paper to Europe. In 1154, paper production was established in Italy, and soon the skill was mastered in Germany and England. In subsequent centuries, paper became widespread, conquering ever new areas of application. Its significance is so great that our era is even sometimes called the “paper era.”
Gunpowder and firearms. This European discovery played a huge role in the history of mankind. Many people knew how to make an explosive mixture; Europeans were the last of the civilized peoples who learned how to do it. But it was they who were able to derive practical benefit from this discovery. The first consequences of the invention of gunpowder were the development of firearms and a revolution in military affairs. Social changes followed - invincible knights in armor retreated before the fire of cannons and rifles. Feudal society received a strong blow from which it could no longer recover. As a result, powerful centralized states emerged. Gunpowder itself was invented in China many centuries before its appearance in Europe. An important component of the powder was saltpeter, which in some areas of the country was generally found in its native form, resembling snow. Setting fire to a mixture of saltpeter and coal, the Chinese began to observe small outbreaks. At the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries, the properties of saltpeter were first described by the Chinese physician Tao Hung-ching. Since then, this substance has also been used as a component of some medications. The appearance of the first sample of gunpowder is attributed to the alchemist Sun Sy-miao, who prepared a mixture of sulfur and saltpeter, adding pieces of locust wood to them. When heated, a strong flash of flame occurred, which was recorded by the scientist in his treatise “Dan Jing”. The composition of gunpowder was further improved by his colleagues, who experimentally established three main components - potassium nitrate, sulfur and coal. The medieval Chinese could not scientifically explain the effects of the explosion, but soon adapted to use gunpowder for military purposes. However, this did not have a revolutionary effect. The fact is that the mixture was prepared from unrefined components, which only gave an incendiary effect. Only in the 12th-13th centuries did the Chinese create weapons that resembled firearms, and the rocket and firecracker were also invented. Soon the Mongols and Arabs learned the secret, and from them the Europeans. The secondary discovery of gunpowder is attributed to the monk Berthold Schwartz, who began to grind a crushed mixture of saltpeter, coal and sulfur in a mortar. The explosion singed the tester's beard, but the idea came into his head that such energy could be used to throw stones. At first, the gunpowder was floury, and it was inconvenient to use, since the powder stuck to the walls of the barrels. After this, they noticed that it was much more convenient to use gunpowder in lumps and grains. This also produced more gases when ignited.
Communication means - telephone, telegraph, radio, Internet and others. Even 150 years ago, the only way to exchange information between Europe and England, America and the colonies was only by steamship mail. People learned about what was happening in other countries with a delay of weeks and even months. So, news from Europe to America took at least 2 weeks. That is why the advent of the telegraph radically solved this problem. As a result, a technical innovation appeared in all corners of the planet, allowing news from one hemisphere to reach the other in a matter of hours and minutes. During the day, interested parties received business and political news and stock market reports. The telegraph made it possible to transmit written messages over distances. But soon the inventors thought about a new means of communication that could transmit the sounds of a human voice or music over any distance. The first experiments on this issue were carried out in 1837 by the American physicist Page. His simple but clear experiments proved that it was in principle possible to transmit sound using electricity. A series of subsequent experiments, discoveries and implementations led to the appearance in our lives today of the telephone, television, the Internet and other modern means of communication, which have turned the life of society upside down.
Automobile. Like some of the greatest inventions before it, the automobile not only influenced its era, but also spawned a new one. This discovery is not limited to the transport sector alone. The automobile shaped modern industry, spawned new industries, and reshaped manufacturing itself. It has become massive and continuous. Even the planet has changed - now it is surrounded by millions of kilometers of roads, and the ecology has deteriorated. And even human psychology has become different. Today, the influence of the car is so multifaceted that it is present in all spheres of human life. There were many glorious pages in the history of the invention, but the most interesting one dates back to the first years of its existence. In general, the speed with which the car has reached its maturity cannot fail to impress. In just a quarter of a century, an unreliable toy has turned into a massive and popular vehicle. There are now about a billion cars in the world. The main features of a modern car were formed 100 years ago. The predecessor of the gasoline car was the steam car. Back in 1769, the Frenchman Cunu created a steam cart that could transport up to 3 tons of cargo, moving, however, at a speed of up to 4 km/h. The machine was clumsy, and working with the boiler was difficult and dangerous. But the idea of moving by steam captivated followers. In 1803, Trivaitik built the first steam car in England, which could carry up to 10 passengers and accelerate to 15 km/h. London onlookers were delighted! The automobile in the modern sense appeared only with the discovery of the internal combustion engine. In 1864, a vehicle by the Austrian Marcus was born, which was driven by a gasoline engine. But the glory of the official inventors of the car went to two Germans - Daimler and Benz. The latter was the owner of a factory producing two-stroke gas engines. There were enough funds for leisure and the development of their own cars. In 1891, the owner of a rubber products factory, Edouard Michelin, invented a removable pneumatic tire for a bicycle, and 4 years later tires began to be produced for cars. In the same 1895, the tires were tested during racing, although they were constantly punctured, but it became clear that they give cars a smooth ride, making the ride more comfortable.
Electric lamp. And this invention appeared in our lives recently, at the end of the 19th century. First, lighting appeared on city streets, and then it entered residential buildings. Today it is difficult to imagine the life of a civilized person without electric light. This discovery had enormous consequences. Electricity revolutionized the energy sector, forcing industry to change significantly. In the 19th century, two types of light bulbs became widespread - arc and incandescent lamps. The first to appear were arc lamps, the glow of which was based on a phenomenon called a voltaic arc. If you connect two wires connected to a strong current and then move them apart, a glow will appear between their ends. This phenomenon was first observed by the Russian scientist Vasily Petrov in 1803, and the Englishman Devi described such an effect only in 1810. The use of a voltaic arc as a source of illumination was described by both scientists. However, arc lamps had an inconvenience - as the electrodes burned out, they had to be constantly moved towards each other. Exceeding the distance between them entailed a flickering of light. In 1844, the Frenchman Foucault developed the first arc lamp in which the length of the arc could be adjusted manually. Just 4 years later, this invention was used to illuminate one of the squares in Paris. In 1876, the Russian engineer Yablochkov improved the design - the electrodes, replaced by coals, were already located parallel to each other, and the distance between the ends always remained the same. In 1879, the American inventor Edison set about improving the design. He came to the conclusion that for a light bulb to glow for a long time and brightly, a suitable material for the filament was needed, as well as creating a rarefied space around it. Edison carried out a lot of experiments on a grand scale; it is estimated that at least 6 thousand different compounds were tested. The research cost the American 100 thousand dollars. Edison gradually began to use metals for thread, eventually settling on charred bamboo fibers. As a result, in the presence of 3 thousand spectators, the inventor publicly demonstrated the electric light bulbs he had developed, illuminating not only his house, but also several neighboring streets. Edison's light bulb was the first to have a long life and be suitable for mass production.
Antibiotics. This place is devoted to wonderful medicines, in particular penicillin. Antibiotics became one of the main discoveries of the last century, revolutionizing medicine. Today, not everyone realizes how much they owe to such medicinal drugs. Many will be surprised to learn that even 80 years ago, tens of thousands of people died from dysentery, pneumonia was a deadly disease, sepsis threatened the death of almost all surgical patients, typhus was dangerous and difficult to cure, and pneumonic plague sounded like a death sentence. But all these terrible diseases, like others that were previously incurable (tuberculosis), were defeated by antibiotics. The drugs had a significant impact on military medicine. Previously, most of the soldiers died not from bullets at all, but from festering wounds. After all, millions of cocci bacteria penetrated there, causing pus, sepsis, and gangrene. The most that the surgeon could do was amputate the affected part of the body. It turned out that it is possible to fight dangerous microorganisms with the help of their own brothers. Some of them, in the process of their life activity, release substances that can destroy other microbes. This idea appeared back in the 19th century. Louis Pasteur discovered that anthrax bacilli are killed by certain other microbes. Over time, experiments and discoveries gave the world penicillin. For seasoned field surgeons, this medicine became a true miracle. The most hopeless patients got back on their feet, having overcome blood poisoning or pneumonia. The discovery and creation of penicillin is considered one of the most significant discoveries in the history of all medicine, giving a huge impetus to its development.
Sail and ship. The sail arose in human life a long time ago, when there was a desire to go to sea and build boats for this. The first sail was an ordinary animal skin. The sailor had to hold it with his hands and constantly orient it relative to the wind. It is unknown when people came up with the idea of using masts and yards, but already on the most ancient images of ships from the time of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut, various devices for working with sails and rigging are visible. Thus, it is clear that the sail originated in prehistoric times. It is believed that the first large sailing ships appeared in Egypt, and the Nile became the first navigable river. Every year the mighty river overflowed, cutting off cities and regions from each other. So the Egyptians had to master shipping. At that time, ships played a much larger role in the economic life of the country than carts on wheels. One of the first types of ships is the barque, which is more than 7 thousand years old. Its models have come to us from temples. Since there was little wood in Egypt for the construction of the first ships, papyrus was used for these purposes. Its features determined the design and shape of the ships. They were a crescent-shaped boat, knitted from bundles of papyrus, with the bow and stern curved upward. The hull of the vessel, for strength, was tied together with cables. Over time, trade with the Phoenicians gave the country Lebanese cedar, and the tree became firmly established in shipbuilding. Compositions from 5 thousand years ago give reason to believe. That then the Egyptians used a straight sail mounted on a two-legged mast. It was possible to sail only downwind, and if there was a crosswind, the mast was quickly removed. About 4,600 years ago, the single-legged mast began to be used, which is still used today. It became easier for the ship to walk, it gained the ability to maneuver. However, at that time the rectangular sail was very unreliable, and moreover, it could only be used with a tailwind. So it turned out that the main engine of the ship at that time was the muscular power of the rowers. Then the maximum speed of the ships of the pharaohs was 12 km/h. Merchant ships traveled mainly along the coast, without going far out to sea. The next step in the development of ships was made by the Phoenicians, who initially had excellent building materials. 5 thousand years ago, with the beginning of the development of maritime trade, the Phoenicians began to build ships. Moreover, their sea vessels initially had design features from boats. Stiffening ribs, covered with boards on top, were installed on the single shafts. The Phoenicians may have been inspired to think about such a design by animal skeletons. In fact, this is how the first frames appeared, which are still used today. It was the Phoenicians who created the first keel ship. At first, two trunks connected at an angle acted as the keel. This gave the ships more stability, becoming the basis for the future development of shipbuilding and determining the appearance of all future ships.
The history of mankind is closely connected with constant progress, development of technology, new discoveries and inventions. Some technologies are outdated and become history, others, such as the wheel or sail, are still in use today. Countless discoveries were lost in the whirlpool of time, others, not appreciated by their contemporaries, waited for recognition and implementation for tens and hundreds of years.
Editorial Samogo.Net conducted her own research designed to answer the question of which inventions are considered the most significant by our contemporaries.
Processing and analysis of the results of online surveys showed that there is simply no consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, we managed to form an overall unique rating of the greatest inventions and discoveries in human history. As it turned out, despite the fact that science has long moved forward, basic discoveries remain the most significant in the minds of our contemporaries.
First place undoubtedly took Fire
People early discovered the beneficial properties of fire - its ability to illuminate and warm, to change plant and animal food for the better.
The “wild fire” that broke out during forest fires or volcanic eruptions was terrible for man, but by bringing fire into his cave, man “tamed” it and “put” it into his service. From that time on, fire became a constant companion of man and the basis of his economy. In ancient times, it was an indispensable source of heat, light, a means of cooking, and a hunting tool.
However, further cultural achievements (ceramics, metallurgy, steelmaking, steam engines, etc.) are due to the complex use of fire.
For many millennia, people used “home fire”, maintaining it year after year in their caves, before they learned to produce it themselves using friction. This discovery probably happened by accident, after our ancestors learned to drill wood. During this operation, the wood was heated and, under favorable conditions, ignition could occur. Having paid attention to this, people began to widely use friction to make fire.
The simplest method was to take two sticks of dry wood, and make a hole in one of them. The first stick was placed on the ground and pressed with the knee. The second one was inserted into the hole, and then they began to quickly and quickly rotate it between the palms. At the same time, it was necessary to press hard on the stick. The inconvenience of this method was that the palms gradually slid down. Every now and then I had to lift them up and continue rotating again. Although, with certain dexterity, this can be done quickly, nevertheless, due to constant stops, the process was greatly delayed. It is much easier to make fire by friction, working together. In this case, one person held the horizontal stick and pressed on top of the vertical one, and the second quickly rotated it between his palms. Later, they began to clasp the vertical stick with a strap, moving it to the right and left to speed up the movement, and for convenience, they began to put a bone cap on the upper end. Thus, the entire device for making fire began to consist of four parts: two sticks (fixed and rotating), a strap and an upper cap. In this way, it was possible to make fire alone, if you pressed the lower stick with your knee to the ground and the cap with your teeth.
And only later, with the development of mankind, other methods of producing open fire became available.
Second place in the responses of the online community they ranked Wheel and Cart
It is believed that its prototype may have been rollers that were placed under heavy tree trunks, boats and stones when dragging them from place to place. Perhaps the first observations of the properties of rotating bodies were made at the same time. For example, if for some reason the log roller was thinner in the center than at the edges, it moved more evenly under the load and did not skid to the side. Noticing this, people began to deliberately burn the rollers in such a way that the middle part became thinner, while the sides remained unchanged. Thus, a device was obtained, which is now called a “ramp.” In the course of further improvements in this direction, only two rollers at its ends remained from a solid log, and an axis appeared between them. Later they began to be made separately and then rigidly fastened together. Thus the wheel in the proper sense of the word was discovered and the first cart appeared.
In subsequent centuries, many generations of craftsmen worked to improve this invention. Initially, solid wheels were rigidly attached to the axle and rotated with it. When traveling on a flat road, such carts were quite suitable for use. When turning, when the wheels must rotate at different speeds, this connection creates great inconvenience, since a heavily loaded cart can easily break or tip over. The wheels themselves were still very imperfect. They were made from a single piece of wood. Therefore, the carts were heavy and clumsy. They moved slowly, and were usually harnessed to slow but powerful oxen.
One of the oldest carts of the described design was found during excavations in Mohenjo-Daro. A major step forward in the development of transportation technology was the invention of a wheel with a hub mounted on a fixed axle. In this case, the wheels rotated independently of each other. And so that the wheel rubs against the axle less, they began to lubricate it with grease or tar.
To reduce the weight of the wheel, cutouts were cut out in it, and for rigidity they were reinforced with transverse braces. It was impossible to come up with anything better in the Stone Age. But after the discovery of metals, wheels with a metal rim and spokes began to be made. Such a wheel could rotate tens of times faster and was not afraid of hitting rocks. By harnessing fleet-footed horses to a cart, man significantly increased the speed of his movement. It is perhaps difficult to find another discovery that would give such a powerful impetus to the development of technology.
Third place rightfully occupied Writing
There is no need to talk about how great the invention of writing was in the history of mankind. It is impossible to even imagine what path the development of civilization could have taken if, at a certain stage of their development, people had not learned to record the information they needed with the help of certain symbols and thus transmit and store it. It is obvious that human society in the form in which it exists today simply could not have appeared.
The first forms of writing in the form of specially inscribed characters appeared about 4 thousand years BC. But long before this, there were various ways of transmitting and storing information: with the help of branches folded in a certain way, arrows, smoke from fires and similar signals. From these primitive warning systems, more complex methods of recording information later emerged. For example, the ancient Incas invented an original “writing” system using knots. For this purpose, wool laces of different colors were used. They were tied with various knots and attached to a stick. In this form, the “letter” was sent to the addressee. There is an opinion that the Incas used such “knot writing” to record their laws, write down chronicles and poems. “Knot writing” was also noted among other peoples - it was used in ancient China and Mongolia.
However, writing in the proper sense of the word appeared only after people invented special graphic signs to record and transmit information. The oldest type of writing is considered pictographic. A pictogram is a schematic drawing that directly depicts the things, events, and phenomena in question. It is assumed that pictography was widespread among various peoples during the last stage of the Stone Age. This letter is very visual, and therefore does not require special study. It is quite suitable for transmitting small messages and for recording simple stories. But when the need arose to convey some complex abstract thought or concept, the limited capabilities of the pictogram were immediately felt, which was completely unsuited to recording what could not be depicted in pictures (for example, such concepts as vigor, courage, vigilance, good sleep, heavenly azure, etc.). Therefore, already at an early stage in the history of writing, the number of pictograms began to include special conventional icons that denote certain concepts (for example, the sign of crossed hands symbolized exchange). Such icons are called ideograms. Ideographic writing also arose from pictographic writing, and one can quite clearly imagine how this happened: each pictorial sign of a pictogram began to become increasingly isolated from others and associated with a specific word or concept, denoting it. Gradually, this process developed so much that primitive pictograms lost their former clarity, but gained clarity and definiteness. This process took a long time, perhaps several thousand years.
The highest form of ideogram was hieroglyphic writing. It first appeared in Ancient Egypt. Later, hieroglyphic writing became widespread in the Far East - in China, Japan and Korea. With the help of ideograms it was possible to reflect any, even the most complex and abstract thought. However, for those not privy to the secrets of the hieroglyphs, the meaning of what was written was completely incomprehensible. Anyone who wanted to learn to write had to memorize several thousand symbols. In reality, this took several years of constant exercise. Therefore, in ancient times, few people knew how to write and read.
Only at the end of 2 thousand BC. The ancient Phoenicians invented a letter-sound alphabet, which served as a model for the alphabets of many other peoples. The Phoenician alphabet consisted of 22 consonant letters, each of which represented a different sound. The invention of this alphabet was a big step forward for humanity. With the help of the new letter it was easy to convey any word graphically, without resorting to ideograms. It was very easy to learn. The art of writing has ceased to be the privilege of the enlightened. It became the property of the entire society, or at least a large part of it. This was one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the Phoenician alphabet throughout the world. It is believed that four-fifths of all currently known alphabets arose from Phoenician.
Thus, from a variety of Phoenician writing (Punic) Libyan developed. The Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek writing came directly from Phoenician. In turn, on the basis of the Aramaic script, Arabic, Nabataean, Syriac, Persian and other scripts developed. The Greeks made the last important improvement to the Phoenician alphabet - they began to denote not only consonants, but also vowel sounds with letters. The Greek alphabet formed the basis of most European alphabets: Latin (from which French, German, English, Italian, Spanish and other alphabets in turn originated), Coptic, Armenian, Georgian and Slavic (Serbian, Russian, Bulgarian, etc.).
Fourth place, takes after writing Paper
Its creators were the Chinese. And this is no coincidence. Firstly, China, already in ancient times, was famous for its book wisdom and complex system of bureaucratic management, which required constant reporting from officials. Therefore, there has always been a need for inexpensive and compact writing material. Before the invention of paper, people in China wrote either on bamboo tablets or on silk.
But silk was always very expensive, and bamboo was very bulky and heavy. (An average of 30 hieroglyphs were placed on one tablet. It is easy to imagine how much space such a bamboo “book” must have taken up. It is no coincidence that they write that a whole cart was required to transport some works.) Secondly, only the Chinese knew the secret of production for a long time silk, and papermaking developed from one technical operation of processing silk cocoons. This operation consisted of the following. Women engaged in sericulture boiled silkworm cocoons, then, laying them out on a mat, dipped them into water and ground them until a homogeneous mass was formed. When the mass was taken out and the water was filtered out, silk wool was obtained. However, after such mechanical and thermal treatment, a thin fibrous layer remained on the mats, which, after drying, turned into a sheet of very thin paper suitable for writing. Later, workers began to use rejected silkworm cocoons for purposeful paper production. At the same time, they repeated the process that was already familiar to them: they boiled the cocoons, washed and crushed them to obtain paper pulp, and finally dried the resulting sheets. Such paper was called “cotton paper” and was quite expensive, since the raw material itself was expensive.
Naturally, in the end the question arose: can paper be made only from silk, or can any fibrous raw material, including plant origin, be suitable for preparing paper pulp? In 105, a certain Cai Lun, an important official at the court of the Han emperor, prepared a new type of paper from old fishing nets. It was not as good as silk, but was much cheaper. This important discovery had enormous consequences not only for China, but also for the whole world - for the first time in history, people received first-class and accessible writing material, for which there is no equivalent replacement to this day. The name of Tsai Lun is therefore rightfully included among the names of the greatest inventors in the history of mankind. In subsequent centuries, several important improvements were made to the papermaking process, allowing it to develop rapidly.
In the 4th century, paper completely replaced bamboo tablets from use. New experiments have shown that paper can be made from cheap plant materials: tree bark, reed and bamboo. The latter was especially important since bamboo grows in huge quantities in China. The bamboo was split into thin splinters, soaked in lime, and the resulting mass was then boiled for several days. The strained grounds were kept in special pits, thoroughly ground with special beaters and diluted with water until a sticky, mushy mass was formed. This mass was scooped out using a special form - a bamboo sieve mounted on a stretcher. A thin layer of mass along with the mold was placed under the press. Then the form was pulled out and only a sheet of paper remained under the press. The compressed sheets were removed from the sieve, piled, dried, smoothed and cut to size.
Over time, the Chinese have achieved the highest art in paper making. For several centuries, they, as usual, carefully kept the secrets of paper production. But in 751, during a clash with the Arabs in the foothills of the Tien Shan, several Chinese masters were captured. From them the Arabs learned to make paper themselves and for five centuries sold it very profitably to Europe. Europeans were the last of the civilized peoples who learned to make their own paper. The Spaniards were the first to adopt this art from the Arabs. In 1154, paper production was established in Italy, in 1228 in Germany, and in 1309 in England. In subsequent centuries, paper became widespread throughout the world, gradually conquering more and more new areas of application. Its significance in our lives is so great that, according to the famous French bibliographer A. Sim, our era can rightfully be called the “paper era.”
Fifth place occupied Gunpowder and Firearms
The invention of gunpowder and its spread in Europe had enormous consequences for the subsequent history of mankind. Although the Europeans were the last of the civilized peoples to learn how to make this explosive mixture, they were the ones who were able to derive the greatest practical benefit from its discovery. The rapid development of firearms and a revolution in military affairs were the first consequences of the spread of gunpowder. This, in turn, entailed profound social changes: armor-clad knights and their impregnable castles were powerless against the fire of cannons and arquebuses. Feudal society was dealt such a blow from which it could no longer recover. In a short time, many European powers overcame feudal fragmentation and became powerful centralized states.
There are few inventions in the history of technology that would lead to such grandiose and far-reaching changes. Before gunpowder became known in the West, it already had a long history in the East, and it was invented by the Chinese. The most important component of gunpowder is saltpeter. In some areas of China it was found in its native form and looked like flakes of snow dusting the ground. Later it was discovered that saltpeter is formed in areas rich in alkalis and decaying (nitrogen-delivering) substances. When lighting a fire, the Chinese could observe the flashes that occurred when saltpeter and coal burned.
The properties of saltpeter were first described by the Chinese physician Tao Hung-ching, who lived at the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries. Since that time, it has been used as a component of some medicines. Alchemists often used it when conducting experiments. In the 7th century, one of them, Sun Sy-miao, prepared a mixture of sulfur and saltpeter, adding to them several shares of locust tree. While heating this mixture in a crucible, he suddenly received a powerful flash of flame. He described this experience in his treatise Dan Jing. It is believed that Sun Si-miao prepared one of the first samples of gunpowder, which, however, did not yet have a strong explosive effect.
Subsequently, the composition of gunpowder was improved by other alchemists, who experimentally established its three main components: coal, sulfur and potassium nitrate. The medieval Chinese could not scientifically explain what kind of explosive reaction occurs when gunpowder is ignited, but they very soon learned to use it for military purposes. True, in their lives gunpowder did not have the revolutionary influence that it later had on European society. This is explained by the fact that for a long time the craftsmen prepared the powder mixture from unrefined components. Meanwhile, unrefined saltpeter and sulfur containing foreign impurities did not give a strong explosive effect. For several centuries, gunpowder was used exclusively as an incendiary agent. Later, when its quality improved, gunpowder began to be used as an explosive in the manufacture of land mines, hand grenades and explosive packages.
But even after this, for a long time they did not think of using the power of the gases generated during the combustion of gunpowder to throw bullets and cannonballs. Only in the 12th-13th centuries did the Chinese begin to use weapons that were very vaguely reminiscent of firearms, but they invented firecrackers and rockets. The Arabs and Mongols learned the secret of gunpowder from the Chinese. In the first third of the 13th century, the Arabs achieved great skill in pyrotechnics. They used saltpeter in many compounds, mixing it with sulfur and coal, adding other components to them and setting up fireworks of amazing beauty. From the Arabs, the composition of the powder mixture became known to European alchemists. One of them, Mark the Greek, already in 1220 wrote down in his treatise a recipe for gunpowder: 6 parts of saltpeter to 1 part of sulfur and 1 part of coal. Later, Roger Bacon wrote quite accurately about the composition of gunpowder.
However, another hundred years passed before this recipe ceased to be a secret. This secondary discovery of gunpowder is associated with the name of another alchemist, the Feiburg monk Berthold Schwartz. One day he began to pound a crushed mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and coal in a mortar, which resulted in an explosion that singed Berthold's beard. This or other experience gave Berthold the idea of using the power of powder gases to throw stones. He is believed to have made one of the first artillery pieces in Europe.
Gunpowder was originally a fine flour-like powder. It was not convenient to use, since when loading guns and arquebuses, the powder pulp stuck to the walls of the barrel. Finally, they noticed that gunpowder in the form of lumps was much more convenient - it was easy to charge and, when ignited, produced more gases (2 pounds of gunpowder in lumps gave a greater effect than 3 pounds in pulp).
In the first quarter of the 15th century, for convenience, they began to use grain gunpowder, which was obtained by rolling the powder pulp (with alcohol and other impurities) into a dough, which was then passed through a sieve. To prevent the grains from grinding during transportation, they learned to polish them. To do this, they were placed in a special drum, when spun, the grains hit and rubbed against each other and became compacted. After processing, their surface became smooth and shiny.
Sixth place ranked in the polls : telegraph, telephone, Internet, radio and other types of modern communications
Until the middle of the 19th century, the only means of communication between the European continent and England, between America and Europe, between Europe and the colonies was steamship mail. Incidents and events in other countries were learned about with a delay of weeks, and sometimes even months. For example, news from Europe to America was delivered in two weeks, and this was not the longest time. Therefore, the creation of the telegraph met the most urgent needs of mankind.
After this technical novelty appeared in all corners of the world and telegraph lines encircled the globe, it took only hours, and sometimes minutes, for the news to travel along electrical wires from one hemisphere to the other. Political and stock market reports, personal and business messages could be delivered to interested parties on the same day. Thus, the telegraph should be considered one of the most important inventions in the history of civilization, because with it the human mind achieved the greatest victory over distance.
With the invention of the telegraph, the problem of transmitting messages over long distances was solved. However, the telegraph could only send written dispatches. Meanwhile, many inventors dreamed of a more advanced and communicative method of communication, with the help of which it would be possible to transmit the live sound of human speech or music over any distance. The first experiments in this direction were undertaken in 1837 by the American physicist Page. The essence of Page's experiments was very simple. He assembled an electrical circuit that included a tuning fork, an electromagnet, and galvanic elements. During its vibrations, the tuning fork quickly opened and closed the circuit. This intermittent current was transmitted to an electromagnet, which just as quickly attracted and released a thin steel rod. As a result of these vibrations, the rod produced a singing sound, similar to that produced by a tuning fork. Thus, Page showed that it is in principle possible to transmit sound using electric current, it is only necessary to create more advanced transmitting and receiving devices.
And later, as a result of long searches, discoveries and inventions, the mobile phone, television, Internet and other means of communication of mankind appeared, without which it is impossible to imagine our modern life.
Seventh place ranked in the top 10 according to survey results Automobile
The automobile is one of those greatest inventions that, like the wheel, gunpowder or electric current, had a colossal influence not only on the era that gave birth to them, but also on all subsequent times. Its multi-faceted impact extends far beyond the transport sector. The automobile shaped modern industry, gave birth to new industries, and despotically restructured production itself, giving it a mass, serial, and in-line character for the first time. It transformed the appearance of the planet, which was surrounded by millions of kilometers of highways, put pressure on the environment and even changed human psychology. The influence of the car is now so multifaceted that it is felt in all spheres of human life. It has become, as it were, a visible and visual embodiment of technological progress in general, with all its advantages and disadvantages.
There have been many amazing pages in the history of the car, but perhaps the most striking of them dates back to the first years of its existence. One cannot help but be amazed by the speed with which this invention has gone from inception to maturity. It only took a quarter of a century for the car to turn from a capricious and still unreliable toy into the most popular and widespread vehicle. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, it was identical in its main features to a modern car.
The immediate predecessor of the gasoline car was the steam car. The first practical steam car is considered to be a steam cart built by the Frenchman Cugnot in 1769. Carrying up to 3 tons of cargo, it moved at a speed of only 2-4 km/h. She also had other shortcomings. The heavy car had very poor steering control and constantly ran into the walls of houses and fences, causing destruction and suffering considerable damage. The two horsepower that its engine developed were difficult to achieve. Despite the large volume of the boiler, the pressure dropped quickly. Every quarter of an hour, to maintain pressure, we had to stop and light the firebox. One of the trips ended in a boiler explosion. Fortunately, Cugno himself remained alive.
Cugno's followers were luckier. In 1803, Trivaitik, already known to us, built the first steam car in Great Britain. The car had huge rear wheels about 2.5 m in diameter. A boiler was attached between the wheels and the rear of the frame, which was served by a fireman standing on the back. The steam car was equipped with a single horizontal cylinder. From the piston rod, through the connecting rod and crank mechanism, the drive gear rotated, which was meshed with another gear mounted on the axis of the rear wheels. The axle of these wheels was hinged to the frame and turned using a long lever by the driver sitting on a high beam. The body was suspended on high C-shaped springs. With 8-10 passengers, the car reached speeds of up to 15 km/h, which, undoubtedly, was a very good achievement for that time. The appearance of this amazing car on the streets of London attracted a lot of onlookers who did not hide their delight.
The car in the modern sense of the word appeared only after the creation of a compact and economical internal combustion engine, which made a real revolution in transport technology.
The first gasoline-powered car was built in 1864 by the Austrian inventor Siegfried Marcus. Fascinated by pyrotechnics, Marcus once set fire to a mixture of gasoline vapor and air with an electric spark. Amazed by the force of the ensuing explosion, he decided to create an engine in which this effect could be used. In the end, he managed to build a two-stroke gasoline engine with electric ignition, which he installed on an ordinary cart. In 1875, Marcus created a more advanced car.
The official fame of the inventors of the car belongs to two German engineers - Benz and Daimler. Benz designed two-stroke gas engines and owned a small factory for their production. The engines were in good demand, and the Benz business flourished. He had enough money and leisure for other developments. Benz's dream was to create a self-propelled carriage powered by an internal combustion engine. Benz's own engine, like Otto's four-stroke engine, was not suitable for this, since they had a low speed (about 120 rpm). When the speed dropped slightly, they stalled. Benz understood that a car equipped with such an engine would stop at every bump. What was needed was a high-speed engine with a good ignition system and an apparatus for forming a combustible mixture.
Cars were rapidly improving Back in 1891, Edouard Michelin, owner of a rubber products factory in Clermont-Ferrand, invented a removable pneumatic tire for a bicycle (a Dunlop tube was poured into the tire and glued to the rim). In 1895, production of removable pneumatic tires for cars began. These tires were first tested in the same year at the Paris - Bordeaux - Paris race. The Peugeot equipped with them barely made it to Rouen, and then was forced to retire from the race, as the tires were continuously punctured. Nevertheless, specialists and car enthusiasts were amazed at the smooth running of the car and the comfort of driving it. From that time on, pneumatic tires gradually came into use, and all cars began to be equipped with them. The winner of these races was again Levassor. When he stopped the car at the finish line and stepped onto the ground, he said: “It was crazy. I was doing 30 kilometers per hour!” Now at the finish site there is a monument in honor of this significant victory.
Eighth place - Light bulb
In the last decades of the 19th century, electric lighting entered the life of many European cities. Having first appeared on the streets and squares, it very soon penetrated into every house, into every apartment and became an integral part of the life of every civilized person. This was one of the most important events in the history of technology, which had enormous and varied consequences. The rapid development of electric lighting led to mass electrification, a revolution in the energy sector and major shifts in industry. However, all this might not have happened if, through the efforts of many inventors, such a common and familiar device as the light bulb had not been created. Among the greatest discoveries of human history, it undoubtedly holds one of the most honorable places.
In the 19th century, two types of electric lamps became widespread: incandescent and arc lamps. Arc lights appeared a little earlier. Their glow is based on such an interesting phenomenon as a voltaic arc. If you take two wires, connect them to a sufficiently strong current source, connect them, and then move them apart a few millimeters, then between the ends of the conductors something like a flame with a bright light will form. The phenomenon will be more beautiful and brighter if, instead of metal wires, you take two sharpened carbon rods. When the voltage between them is high enough, a light of blinding intensity is formed.
The phenomenon of a voltaic arc was first observed in 1803 by the Russian scientist Vasily Petrov. In 1810, the same discovery was made by the English physicist Devi. Both of them produced a voltaic arc using a large battery of cells between the ends of charcoal rods. Both of them wrote that the voltaic arc can be used for lighting purposes. But first it was necessary to find a more suitable material for the electrodes, since charcoal rods burned out in a few minutes and were of little use for practical use. Arc lamps also had another inconvenience - as the electrodes burned out, it was necessary to constantly move them towards each other. As soon as the distance between them exceeded a certain permissible minimum, the light of the lamp became uneven, it began to flicker and went out.
The first arc lamp with manual adjustment of the arc length was designed in 1844 by the French physicist Foucault. He replaced charcoal with sticks of hard coke. In 1848, he first used an arc lamp to illuminate one of the Parisian squares. It was a short and very expensive experiment, since the source of electricity was a powerful battery. Then various devices were invented, controlled by a clock mechanism, which automatically moved the electrodes as they burned.
It is clear that from the point of view of practical use, it was desirable to have a lamp that was not complicated by additional mechanisms. But was it possible to do without them? It turned out that yes. If you place two coals not opposite each other, but in parallel, so that an arc can form only between their two ends, then with this device the distance between the ends of the coals always remains unchanged. The design of such a lamp seems very simple, but its creation required great ingenuity. It was invented in 1876 by the Russian electrical engineer Yablochkov, who worked in Paris in the workshop of academician Breguet.
In 1879, the famous American inventor Edison took up the task of improving the light bulb. He understood: in order for the light bulb to shine brightly and for a long time and have an even, unblinking light, it is necessary, firstly, to find a suitable material for the filament, and, secondly, to learn how to create a very rarefied space in the cylinder. Many experiments were carried out with various materials, which were carried out on a scale characteristic of Edison. It is estimated that his assistants tested at least 6,000 different substances and compounds, and over 100 thousand dollars were spent on experiments. First, Edison replaced the brittle paper charcoal with a stronger one made from coal, then he began to experiment with various metals and finally settled on a thread of charred bamboo fibers. That same year, in the presence of three thousand people, Edison publicly demonstrated his electric light bulbs, illuminating his home, laboratory, and several surrounding streets with them. It was the first long-life light bulb suitable for mass production.
penultimate, ninth place in our top 10 occupy Antibiotics, and in particular - penicillin
Antibiotics are one of the most remarkable inventions of the 20th century in the field of medicine. Modern people are not always aware of how much they owe to these medicinal drugs. Humanity in general very quickly gets used to the amazing achievements of its science, and sometimes it takes some effort to imagine life as it was, for example, before the invention of television, radio or steam locomotive. Just as quickly, a huge family of various antibiotics entered our lives, the first of which was penicillin.
Today it seems surprising to us that back in the 30s of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people died annually from dysentery, that pneumonia in many cases was fatal, that sepsis was a real scourge of all surgical patients, who died in large numbers from blood poisoning, that typhus was considered a most dangerous and intractable disease, and pneumonic plague inevitably led the patient to death. All these terrible diseases (and many others that were previously incurable, such as tuberculosis) were defeated by antibiotics.
Even more striking is the impact of these drugs on military medicine. It’s hard to believe, but in previous wars, most soldiers died not from bullets and shrapnel, but from purulent infections caused by wounds. It is known that in the space around us there are myriads of microscopic organisms, microbes, among which there are many dangerous pathogens.
Under normal conditions, our skin prevents them from penetrating into the body. But during the wound, dirt entered the open wounds along with millions of putrefactive bacteria (cocci). They began to multiply with colossal speed, penetrated deep into the tissues, and after a few hours no surgeon could save the person: the wound festered, the temperature rose, sepsis or gangrene began. The person died not so much from the wound itself, but from wound complications. Medicine was powerless against them. In the best case, the doctor managed to amputate the affected organ and thereby stopped the spread of the disease.
To combat wound complications, it was necessary to learn to paralyze the microbes that cause these complications, to learn to neutralize the cocci that got into the wound. But how to achieve this? It turned out that you can fight microorganisms directly with their help, since some microorganisms, in the course of their life activity, release substances that can destroy other microorganisms. The idea of using microbes to fight germs dates back to the 19th century. Thus, Louis Pasteur discovered that anthrax bacilli are killed by the action of certain other microbes. But it is clear that resolving this problem required enormous work.
Over time, after a series of experiments and discoveries, penicillin was created. Penicillin seemed like a real miracle to seasoned field surgeons. He cured even the most seriously ill patients who were already suffering from blood poisoning or pneumonia. The creation of penicillin turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine and gave a huge impetus to its further development.
And lastly, tenth place ranked in survey results Sail and ship
It is believed that the prototype of the sail appeared in ancient times, when people just started building boats and ventured out to sea. In the beginning, simply stretched animal skin served as a sail. The person standing in the boat had to hold and orient it relative to the wind with both hands. It is unknown when people came up with the idea of strengthening the sail with the help of a mast and yards, but already on the oldest images of the ships of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut that have come down to us, one can see wooden masts and yards, as well as stays (cables that keep the mast from falling back), halyards (lifting gear and lowering sails) and other rigging.
Consequently, the appearance of a sailing ship must be attributed to prehistoric times.
There is much evidence that the first large sailing ships appeared in Egypt, and the Nile was the first high-water river on which river navigation began to develop. Every year from July to November, the mighty river overflowed its banks, flooding the entire country with its waters. Villages and cities found themselves cut off from each other like islands. Therefore, ships were a vital necessity for the Egyptians. They played a much greater role in the economic life of the country and in communication between people than wheeled carts.
One of the earliest types of Egyptian ships, which appeared about 5 thousand years BC, was the barque. It is known to modern scientists from several models installed in ancient temples. Since Egypt is very poor in timber, papyrus was widely used for the construction of the first ships. The features of this material determined the design and shape of ancient Egyptian ships. It was a sickle-shaped boat, knitted from bundles of papyrus, with bow and stern curved upward. To give the ship strength, the hull was tightened with cables. Later, when regular trade with the Phoenicians was established and large quantities of Lebanese cedar began to arrive in Egypt, the tree began to be widely used in shipbuilding.
An idea of what types of ships were built then is given by the wall reliefs of the necropolis near Saqqara, dating back to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. These compositions realistically depict the individual stages of the construction of a plank ship. The hulls of ships, which had neither a keel (in ancient times it was a beam lying at the base of the ship’s bottom) nor frames (transverse curved beams that ensured the strength of the sides and bottom), were assembled from simple dies and caulked with papyrus. The hull was strengthened by means of ropes that covered the ship along the perimeter of the upper plating belt. Such ships hardly had good seaworthiness. However, they were quite suitable for river navigation. The straight sail used by the Egyptians allowed them to sail only with the wind. The rigging was attached to a two-legged mast, both legs of which were installed perpendicular to the centerline of the ship. At the top they were tightly tied. The step (socket) for the mast was a beam device in the ship's hull. In the working position, this mast was held by stays - thick cables running from the stern and bow, and it was supported by legs towards the sides. The rectangular sail was attached to two yards. When there was a side wind, the mast was hastily removed.
Later, around 2600 BC, the two-legged mast was replaced by the one-legged one that is still in use today. The single-legged mast made sailing easier and gave the ship the ability to maneuver for the first time. However, the rectangular sail was an unreliable means that could only be used with a fair wind.
The main engine of the ship remained the muscular power of the rowers. Apparently, the Egyptians were responsible for an important improvement in the oar - the invention of rowlocks. They did not yet exist in the Old Kingdom, but then they began to attach the oar using rope loops. This immediately made it possible to increase the stroke force and speed of the vessel. It is known that selected rowers on the ships of the pharaohs made 26 strokes per minute, which allowed them to reach a speed of 12 km/h. Such ships were steered using two steering oars located at the stern. Later they began to be attached to a beam on the deck, by rotating which it was possible to select the desired direction (this principle of steering a ship by turning the rudder blade remains unchanged to this day). The ancient Egyptians were not good sailors. They did not dare to go out to the open sea with their ships. However, along the coast, their trading ships made long journeys. Thus, in the temple of Queen Hatshepsut there is an inscription reporting on the sea voyage carried out by the Egyptians around 1490 BC. to the mysterious land of incense Punt, located in the region of modern Somalia.
The next step in the development of shipbuilding was taken by the Phoenicians. Unlike the Egyptians, the Phoenicians had an abundance of excellent building materials for their ships. Their country stretched in a narrow strip along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Vast cedar forests grew here almost right next to the shore. Already in ancient times, the Phoenicians learned to make high-quality dugout single-shaft boats from their trunks and boldly went to sea with them.
At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, when maritime trade began to develop, the Phoenicians began to build ships. A sea vessel is significantly different from a boat; its construction requires its own design solutions. The most important discoveries along this path, which determined the entire subsequent history of shipbuilding, belonged to the Phoenicians. Perhaps the skeletons of animals gave them the idea to install stiffening ribs on single-tree poles, which were covered with boards on top. Thus, for the first time in the history of shipbuilding, frames were used, which are still widely used.
In the same way, the Phoenicians were the first to build a keel ship (initially, two trunks connected at an angle served as the keel). The keel immediately gave the hull stability and made it possible to establish longitudinal and transverse connections. Sheathing boards were attached to them. All these innovations were the decisive basis for the rapid development of shipbuilding and determined the appearance of all subsequent ships.
Other inventions in various fields of science were also recalled, such as chemistry, physics, medicine, education and others.
After all, as we said earlier, this is not surprising. After all, any discovery or invention is another step into the future, which improves our lives, and often prolongs it. And if not every, then very, very many discoveries deserve to be called great and extremely necessary in our lives.
Alexander Ozerov, based on the book by Ryzhkov K.V. "One Hundred Great Inventions"
The greatest discoveries and inventions of mankind © 2011
Of course, a lot of time passed between these events, and civilization took a lot of steps on the path of knowledge. What inventions have had the greatest impact on the life of mankind?
We will try to answer this question in this material, which presents ten of the most significant discoveries and inventions. Each of them led to a qualitative leap in people’s living standards, and most importantly, expanded the horizons of civilization and gave it the opportunity to develop further. Our rating is built on a chronological basis and covers the last two millennia.
Yes, yes, the most ordinary windmill, or rather its mass introduction, radically changed the life of mankind. The ancient Egyptians were the first to use wind power to grind cereals. In the lower reaches of the Nile, archaeologists have discovered stone millstones dating back to the 2nd century BC. Scientists have been able to establish that they are the remains of the oldest windmills known to science. However, mills truly changed the life of mankind, namely Europe, in the 11th-12th centuries. It was then that these mechanisms became widespread and made it possible to sharply increase the energy saturation of European civilization. Many historians directly connect this fact with the rise of Europe over the rest of the world. With the help of mills, they not only ground grain, but also drained swamps, and in England they ensured the operation of manufactories. The Netherlands generally owe their existence to mills, since with their help they managed to conquer vast territories from the sea, where Holland is now located. Despite their apparent archaic nature, the mills continue to operate today in the form of wind power generators.
This explosive substance was invented in China, presumably in the 9th century, but possibly in the 8th century. In any case, the oldest Chinese manuscript, which contains a recipe for gunpowder, dates back to 880 AD. Interestingly, the word gunpowder, written in hieroglyphs, means “Fire of Medicine.” This is due to the fact that its inventors were Taoist monks who were looking for the elixir of immortality and accidentally made an explosive. Already at the beginning of the twelfth century, the Chinese actively used gunpowder in military operations; in the thirteenth century, the Arabs mastered its secret, and a little later the Europeans. In those days, people only knew how to make black powder, and only at the end of the 19th century in France was pyroxylin smokeless gunpowder invented. It radically changed the way of fighting, becoming the basis for firearms and artillery. At the same time, gunpowder made it possible to improve not only killing weapons, but also to create the first rocket engines. Gunpowder fundamentally changed mining, giving a powerful boost to the mining and chemical industries around the world.
Mass printing originated in China. The first printed text known to science is a woodcut copy of the Diamond Sutra, published in the Middle Kingdom in the middle of the 9th century, just think - four hundred thousand copies! In the 11th century, the Chinese master Bi Shen designed a full-fledged printing house with typeface. This printing method turned out to be so successful that it was used until the end of the 20th century, of course, in modified versions. In Europe, typesetting printing houses appeared in the 15th century thanks to the famous German pioneer Johannes Gutenberg. Book printing came to Russia about a century later, and Peter the Great introduced it on a large scale. The importance of this technology cannot be overestimated. If in the early Middle Ages knowledge was passed on by word of mouth, from master to student, then thanks to books, mass education in universities and academies using textbooks became possible. This led to an explosive growth in the level of education, primarily in Europe, which allowed this continent to make a technological leap.
The compass in its modern form of a magnetized needle first appeared in China in the 11th century. A century later, the device showing the cardinal directions began to be actively used by the Arabs, and from them the invention came to Europe. In the 14th century, this mechanism was already widely used among Italian and then Portuguese sailors. The device served as the most important prerequisite for the beginning of the era of great geographical discoveries. Without a compass, it is absolutely impossible to imagine Columbus's discovery of America, Vasco da Gama would hardly have circumnavigated Africa, and Magellan's circumnavigation of the world would have looked like a fantasy. The compass, or rather, the navigation that developed thanks to it, connected previously disparate centers of human civilization and allowed people to take a giant step towards unification. In an economic sense, it was the compass that paved maritime trade routes between countries and continents. It is noteworthy that, despite the development of satellite navigation these days, the compass continues to be the most important instrument for sailors, travelers and just tourists.
The concept of electricity existed in Ancient Greece, but this phenomenon was fully described only in 1600 by the English physicist William Gilbert. This date is considered to be the year when electricity was described from the perspective of modern science. From theoretical research to the first practical results, two whole centuries passed - only in 1800, the Italian Alessandro Volta created the first galvanic cell, or simply a battery, which weighed almost a hundredweight in those days! The first power plant serving the population appeared in Germany only at the end of the 19th century, and around the same time the electric light bulb of a design close to the modern one became widespread. Today, almost the entire civilization relies on electricity. Without it, humanity would not have achieved even a tenth of modern successes, if only due to the lack of means of instant communication powered by electricity. We would not have refrigerators, telephones, televisions, and rooms and streets would be illuminated by gas or gasoline lamps. Needless to say, the prospect is gloomy.
The date of creation of the first steam engine is considered to be 1690, in which the French master Denis Papin introduced a full-fledged steam engine. This happened in the German city of Marburg, so Germany can be considered the place of invention. The first steam engine, although working, was largely a demonstration model. Truly functional mechanisms appeared only at the beginning of the 18th century, and since then their victorious march across the planet began. They were used in mines, water pumping stations, factories and, of course, in transport - classic steam locomotives traveled on railways until the mid-20th century. The use of steam energy gave a colossal impetus to the development of mankind's productive forces and produced the first scientific and technological revolution. It was steam that allowed civilization to move to the industrial phase of development and qualitatively change life on the planet. Today, steam plants continue to be widely used in many areas. For example, they are a key element in the design of nuclear power plants, in which fissile uranium heats water in a steam boiler and subsequently converts this energy into electricity.
Radio communication was invented relatively recently - in 1885. It was then that the American engineer Thomas Edison received a patent for a “Method of Transmitting Electrical Signals,” and three years later there was a documented exchange of radio messages between a train stuck in snowdrifts and the control center. In those days, information was transmitted in Morse code, and the first voice transceivers appeared in 1906. The explosive growth of radio communications began in the 1920s, when hundreds of broadcast stations opened around the world and radio became a key mass communication medium. Nowadays, radio communications continue to develop rapidly, as mobile operators are mastering more and more new frequencies for transmitting not only voice signals, but also data over the Internet. If our rating were built not on a chronological basis, but on the criteria of the importance of inventions for humanity, then most likely, radio communications should be placed in the well-deserved first place.
The antibiotic properties of Penicillinum mold were discovered by the English scientist Alexander Fleming in 1928, quite by accident. The biologist discovered that staphylococcal colonies do not survive in the vicinity of ordinary green mold, which forms on stale bread. A year later, the researcher made a sensational report at the University of London, and the topic of antibiotics began to be developed around the world. During and immediately after World War II, dozens of drugs were identified that made treatment for once-deadly diseases available. Plague, cholera, smallpox, colds, venereal and other infectious diseases, which previously devastated entire countries, have become quite easily curable with antibiotics since the mid-20th century. Largely due to this, the planet's population exploded. In just 70 years it has increased from 2 to 7.5 billion people. Thus, the fact that we simply live and watch this video is a considerable merit of antibiotics.
And in second place in our rating is a semiconductor, or in simple terms, a transistor. This electronic component was first introduced in 1947 by the American scientist Walter Brattain and revolutionized radio engineering. If previously all amplification and trigger elements of electronic circuits were made on bulky, fragile and energy-consuming radio tubes, then thanks to the transistor it was possible to achieve impressive miniaturization. For example, the main processor of a modern computer contains billions of transistors. Can you imagine a similar number of vacuum tubes and the volume they would occupy? Meanwhile, 4-5 billion transistors fit into a chip measuring 5 by 5 cm, which allows modern industry to produce powerful but portable laptops, smartphones, satellite navigators and other electronics. Thus, it was the invention of transistors that produced the scientific and technological revolution of the second half of the twentieth century, thanks to which we all live in the information age and use smart electronics, without which it is impossible to imagine our present life.
The year of its birth of the World Wide Web is considered to be 1969, when the exchange of digital data was established between the computers of four California universities from different cities. Since they all used computers from the APRA family, the network was originally called Apranet. Within three years, a protocol for sending email was developed and implemented, and in 1973, European users from England and Norway joined the Apranet via a transatlantic cable. In the early 1980s, the TCP IP data transfer protocol was developed, through which the World Wide Web operates to this day. Today, the Internet has become commonplace and its services are used daily by billions of people around the world. This invention, or rather information technology development, has radically changed the life of mankind. Now people have access to instant communication with friends, family or business partners, no matter where they are on Earth. On the Internet, people meet, get an education, work and watch videos on the YouTube video hosting site. The Internet is developing dynamically and who knows to what heights it will grow in a decade!
1918 - Mass spectrometer
University of Chicago professor Arthur Dempster (1886-1950) revolutionized chemical analysis with an instrument that, within minutes, measures the weight of isotopes and detects the chemicals present. The Toronto inventor also discovered uranium-235, a fissile type of heavy metal atom. Later, the scientist participated in the Manhattan Project.
1921 - Tetraethyl lead
The efficiency of carburetor engines directly depends on the compression ratio, but increasing the compression ratio causes misfires -<детонацию>, and this in turn has a harmful effect on the operation of the engine. Thomas Midgley (1889-1944), a laboratory employee in Dayton (Ohio), spent 5 years researching fuel additives that stop detonation. This additive was lead, which was used until recently, until new alternatives gradually replaced this pollutant. Another invention of T. Midgley was freon, a fire-resistant cooler, which has now been replaced by new types of coolers.
1923 - Business management
Alfred P. Sloan (1875-1966), long before Stephen Cowie and Tom Peters, pioneered modern corporate governance. This helped him save the corporation<Дженерал Моторс>from collapse and make it the most powerful in the world. He also applied a type of management with an independent board of directors, executive and financial committees - a balance of power that is now a thing of the past. He empowered business units that had proven financial performance to make decisions, a style that became widespread.
1923 - Multi-plane camera
Walt Disney (1901-1966) and Madame Roy's brother turned a small animation studio into a huge entertainment, from the adventures of Mickey the mouse to live-action films (<Фантазия>, <Золушка>, <Питер Пэн>). Disney's greatest contribution to cinema is considered to be the multi-plane camera. Whereas in the traditional method of animation the cells were located on top of each other, giving little depth to the image, the multi-plane camera placed each cell on a separate level and, thus, the elements of the scene could move independently, closer to reality.
1924 - Mutual fund
L. Sherman Adams, Charles H. Leroyd and Ashton L. Carr founded the Massachusetts Investors Trust, which became the first worldwide unrestricted investment fund with a capital of $50 thousand. Within 5 years, using brokerage channels to access the stock market, the fund increased its assets to $14 million Today, the volume of investments in mutual funds is $6.1 trillion.
1924 - Freezing food
Before Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956), cooking and cryogenics had nothing in common. After leaving college, Birdseye worked as a natural scientist for the American government. In Labrador, his attention was drawn to the method of freezing, which was used by the aborigines to preserve the taste of fresh fish. Experimenting with other foods, Birdseye perfected the freezing process and opened a frozen seafood company in New York in 1924. By 1934, Birdseye's frozen meats and vegetables were filling grocery store refrigerators across the country.
1925 - Bell Telephone Laboratories
Theodore Newton Vail (1845-1920), who retired after his second term as president of ATT, merged the technical departments of ATT and Western Electric. The research results were<обречены>for success: 6 Nobel Prizes and other awards. His name is associated with such achievements as the transistor, the push-button telephone, digital signaling and switching, optical communications and the digital signal processor. Today, Bell Labs has been reduced to a division of Lucent Technologies.
1926 - Rocket engine
Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882-1945) - Clark University physicist. Inspired by H.G. Wells<Война миров>, he devoted much of his professional life to developing mathematical theories of rocket fuel and theorizing that a rocket engine could produce enough thrust to propel it into space. Goddard applied his theories to the launch of the first rocket, which took place in 1926 in a field near Auburn (Massachusetts). The rocket, which looked like a 3-meter projectile with a liquid-fuel engine in the nose, rose only 12 m. This short flight was the first giant step in rocket science.
1927 - Television
At the age of 15, Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906-1971) presented his chemistry teacher with a project for electronic transmission of images over long distances. Four years later, he developed a cathode ray tube for imaging - a vacuum tube in which phosphorus glowed under the influence of electrons. In 1927, he was the first to transmit an electronic image - a horizontal line. In later life, Farnsworth worked on rocket control systems and nuclear fusion control, but his first invention remained his most significant.
1928 – Penicillin.
After serving in field hospitals for years. During the First World War, Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) persistently but unsuccessfully tried to find a means to combat infections that caused more casualties than weapons. One day, while cleaning out his cluttered laboratory and sorting out old medical glassware, he discovered that mold had killed the staph bacteria. In 1945, he became a Nobel laureate for the discovery of penicillin.
1929 - Synthetic rubber
Belgian Julius Nieuland (1878-1936), a graduate of the Catholic University of Notre Dame, was fond of clothing and artificial fabrics. In 1929, he discovered that acetylene could polymerize into an elastic substance. Two years later, DuPont, which funded the research, advertised the resulting material as neoprene. Synthetic rubber is still used today in cable insulation, diving suits, and refrigerator sealing.
1930 - Jet engine
Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996), while still a cadet at the Royal Air Force War College, wrote a dissertation that radically changed the future of aircraft manufacturing. He predicted that propeller engines would be replaced by the aircraft engine, using a system of turbines and compressed air to ignite atomized fuel. Whittle patented his work in 1930, but it took another 10 years to get a turbine-powered aircraft into the air. In 1941, during a test flight, the first jet aircraft reached a speed of 595 km/h, which far exceeded the capabilities of a propeller-powered aircraft.
1933 - Frequency modulation
Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890-1954) - creator of modern radio. By 1913, he had found a way to amplify radio signals with a feedback loop. During World War I, he improved reception and tuning of signals using a superheterodyne circuit that converted high-frequency signals to intermediate-frequency signals. His main idea was that data should be transmitted using radio signals that vary in frequency rather than amplitude (AM). This idea made it possible to get rid of most of the interference characteristic of AM radio transmissions. Those who invested heavily in the development of amplitude modulation tried to stop Armstrong, but ultimately victory went to frequency modulation.
1933 – Drywall.
One of the smartest ideas in construction after brick, which was unveiled in 1933, is the plaster blank. This made it possible to reduce the huge costs of interior finishing work. The blank, which is a mixture of recycled paper and a cheap mineral - gypsum, has a low cost. As experts say, this is the dirt between two layers of garbage, for which money is paid. Product invented by U.S. Gypsum (<Гипс>), today many are produced, but the name remains the same - Sheetrock (drywall).
1934 - Investment appraisal
For most of history, investing has been about emotional choices.<куда инвестировать>. Benjamin Graham (1894-1976) and David Dodd (1895-1988), professors at Columbia University, during<большого краха>published a book<Анализ финансовой деятельности компаний>, which became the first rational basis for valuing the stock and bond markets. This work acts as a kind of bible for investors. Warren Buffett is Graham and Dodd's most famous student.
1934 – Nylon.
Due to staff shortages during the First World War, Wallis Hume Carozes (1896-1937), a student at Tarkio College, was assigned to head the chemistry department. He later achieved a professorship at Harvard and then worked at a research center<Дюпон>. There he created the first synthetic fiber. Karozes failed to see the success of nylon, which not only became a replacement for silk stockings, but also found widespread industrial use. In April 1937, in a state of depression, he committed suicide.
1937 - Blood Bank
Bernard Fantouche (1874-1940), captivated by the idea<запасов крови>similar to those provided for wounded soldiers during World War I, created the first blood bank at Cook County Hospital in Chicago.
1937 - Pulse code modulation
Alec H. Reeves (1902-1971), engineer at International Telephone & Telegraph, ushered in the era of digital communications. Reeves developed a communications device that converted audio signals into electronic pulses, transmitted them over regular telephone lines, and then converted the pulses back into an analog signal at the receiving location.
1938 – Xerography.
Chester Floyd Carlson (1906-1968), a New York patent lawyer, was overwhelmed with the work of copying patent applications. In 1934, he began developing a device that could transfer an image from an illuminated photographic plate to a blank sheet of paper. After 4 years he succeeded. In 1946, he made a deal with the Haloid Co., which produced the first commercial copy machine.
1939 - Automatic transmission (AT)
Earl Thompson, owner of an old Fierce-Arrow with a noisy transmission, spent 30 years studying ways to smooth out gear shifts. As a result of his work, Hydra-Matic appeared - the first automatic control system. As soon as Oldsmobile used automatic transmission in its cars in 1940, it immediately received 25 thousand orders. Automatic transmissions were also used by American troops - they were installed in light tanks during the Second World War.
1939 - Helicopter
The practical implementation of Igor Sikorsky's (1889-1972) obsession with vertical flight caused changes in the way warfare, rescue and travel were conducted. Sikorsky, a Russian by birth, fled to the United States to escape the Bolsheviks and the revolution. There he founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corp. (now a division of United Technologies), where he developed the amphibious aircraft and the amphibious aircraft, both types of aircraft that pioneered air travel in South America. In 1931, he patented a helicopter design: a main rotary engine at the top and a vertical rotary engine in the tail, which provided unique maneuverability to the device - a great achievement of the project. In September 1939, he built the first VS-300 helicopter.
In 1935, Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973), a physicist from Scotland, was accepted into the government physics laboratory, where he developed the first radar technologies. Using a shortwave radio device, he determined how electromagnetic waves should be reflected from distant objects so that they could then be amplified and analyzed by a signal processing device. As a result, the first radar station (RLS) appeared, and with it all modern navigation systems.
1942 - Electronic computer
John W. Atanasoff (1903-1995), a physicist at Iowa State College, sketched the idea for the first computer on a napkin immediately after<вечера с виски и прогулки на автомобиле со скоростью 160км/ч>. The work resulted in such important and still used ideas as regenerative storage, binary arithmetic, and the addition of certain logic gates to create an electronic adding device. He completed his 300-kilogram table-sized device in 1942. Despite the fact that his ideas had already been applied to the ENIAC series computer, Atanasoff was recognized only after a patent hearing in 1973.
1945 - Nuclear energy.
In 4 days in August 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, killing more than 200 thousand people. Nuclear explosions marked the end of World War II and the beginning of the nuclear age. In 1957, the world's first nuclear reactor was launched in the Shippingport (Pennsylvania) area, which supplied electricity to Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas. But hopes for a complete transition of the United States to nuclear power supply were destined to be dashed due to the accident in the Three Mile Island area in 1979.
1947 - Cell Phone
D.H. Ring, a Bell Labs employee, dreamed of creating a mobile communications system using low-power transmitters located in designated service areas. However, the decision of the US Federal Communications Commission to limit the number of radio frequencies for mobile communications delayed the development of the idea. The decision of the federal commission remained without revision until 1968.
1947 - Microwave oven
Percy L. Spencer (1894-1970), an engineer at Raytheon, brought the kitchen into the space age. In 1945, while standing near the operating magnetron tube, the main component of short-wave radars, Spencer noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket began to melt. He conducted an experiment with corn kernels, which he placed on a pipe, and made a discovery. In 1947, the world's first microwave oven, the Radarange, appeared.
1947 - Snapshot.
Through his work on light polarization, Edwin Herbert Land (1909-1991) was able to reduce glare in glassware, lamps, and military safety glasses. After working with non-polarizing filters, Land invented a camera that developed photographs in seconds.
1947 - Transistor
John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain worked under the direction of William R. Shockley at Bell Labs. They noticed that when electrical signals were applied to the contacts of a germanium crystal, the output signal power was higher than the input power. All three received the Nobel Prize for their achievements in physics in 1956.
1947 - Tupperware
Earl Silas Tupper (1907-1983) began developing his commercial talent at the age of 10, when he delivered family-made products to homes. In 1938 he left the company<Дюпон>, where he served as an engineer, and founded Tupper Plastics Co. Tupper developed a method for producing rigid, defatted plastic from black polyethylene slag by refining it. This is how plastic products (Tupperware) appeared: plastic dishes, bowls and cups with sealed, waterproof lids. But his real achievement was the multi-level distribution organization he created from a growing army of housewives.
1948 - Long playing record (LP)
Peter Carl Goldmark (1906-1977) loved music. However, the cellist and pianist from Budapest did not like the short playing time of 78 rpm records. By slowing the record speed down to 33 1/3 rpm and using softer vinyl instead of shellac, Goldmark was able to increase the number of spiral grooves and double the playback time. The long-playing record, or LP, became something of a catalyst for the music industry, as it made it possible to record classical works in their entirety.
1949 - Magnetic core storage device
An Wang (1920-1990), physicist, born in Shanghai. He worked at the Harvard University Computing Laboratory, where he developed<устройство управления передачей импульсов>, the first way to store information on a computer without using large magnetic drums.
His real major breakthrough was the use of electricity to control the polarity of thousands of tiny ring-shaped ferrite magnets. Jay Forrester, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, modified magnetic core memory, after which it served as the basis for high-speed computer memory until it was replaced by microprocessors. Wang sold a memory patent to IBM for $400,000. He created his own company, Wang Laboratories, which was the first to produce desktop calculators and mini-computers. Wang Laboratories was actively developing, but after Wang's death it ceased to exist.
1952 - Thorazine (chlorpromazine)
Henri Laboriat (1914-1995), a French-born surgeon, spent many years searching for a way to reduce the suffering of patients after anesthesia. He found a solution: patients were given chlorpromazine (brand name Thorazine) before surgery. He also convinced the son-in-law of one of his colleagues, a psychiatrist, to use this remedy to treat mentally ill patients. As a result, patients who had only walked for a long time were able to communicate with people. The drug blocks dopamine (dopamine), which causes schizophrenia, and patients can live outside the psychiatric hospital. The US Food and Drug Administration approved this drug in 1952.
1954 - FORTRAN programming language
John W. Backus (1924) led a team of engineers at IBM that developed the first high-level programming language. By replacing abstract assembly language with English words and familiar algebraic symbols, Fortran emerged, which became the language of the physical sciences and is the basis of almost every programming language.
1954 - Vaccine against polio.
In 1952, Jonas Salk (1914-1995) and Albert Sabin (1906-1993) worked hard on a vaccine against polio, a virus that causes inflammation of nerve cells in the spinal cord and can cause paralysis, muscle wasting, and death. That same year, 52,000 Americans became infected with polio, of whom about 3,000 died. Salk, an expert on influenza diseases, used his acquaintance with D. Basil O'Connor, president of the National Trust, to create an antiviral vaccine by introducing a virus into the body in sufficient quantities to produce antibodies. Salk tested the effect of the vaccine on himself and members of his family and in March 1953 announced the results on the radio<Си-Би-эС>. A year later, vaccination of the population began, as a result, cases of paralytic outcome from polio fell from 13.9 per 100 thousand in 1954 to 0.5 in 1961. Salk became a hero. He later participated in the work on a vaccine against HIV infection.
Sabin considered oral vaccination more effective. In 1957, field trials of the vaccine were carried out. In June 1961, the American Medical Association approved the Sabin vaccine. From 1962 to 1964, more than 100 million Americans were vaccinated, and by the mid-1960s, the easy-to-use Sabin vaccine became the main vaccine. The disease was eradicated.
1955 - Fast Food
Ray Kroc (1902-1984), despite his thriving milkshake machine business, realized that he could make more money by making hamburgers. In 1955, he opened the first diner<Макдоналдс>in Des Plaines (Illinois). The Golden Arches changed the American landscape and turned restaurants into thriving businesses like Kemmons Wilson's hotels. Kroc became a national figure by making money out of nothing.
1956 - Container transportation
Malcolm McLean (1913-2001), a trucking magnate, was dissatisfied with the pace of shipping across the country and abroad. Changing the design of the truck trailer in the manner of a railway car and a ship's hold made it possible to speed up the loading procedure. The first container cargo ship left New Jersey in 1956, launching a new industry that set a precedent for FedEx.
1956 – Disk drive.
Reynold B. Johnson, an IBM employee, developed the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Reader). The device consisted of 50 rotating magnetic disks with a diameter of 60 cm, which were located one above the other. The read-write mechanism moved between the disks, providing faster access to data than magnetic tape. After the device's capabilities were demonstrated at the World Fair in Brussels in 1958, magnetic tape media was abandoned.
1956 - Optical fiber.
Once, when Narinder Kapani was still living in India, a teacher told him that light can only travel when reflected in a straight line. Kapani took this statement as a challenge. In 1956, he experimentally derived the term<волоконная оптика>: A bundle of flexible glass rods coated with reflective material transmitted an image from one end to the other without distortion and with minimal loss of light. Later to<оптическим волноводам>the laser beam was also carried. However, the development of high-speed fiber optic communications took several decades.
1956 - Ampex VRX-1000.
Charles Paulson Ginsburg (1920-1992) began working for Ampex in 1952. Video recording devices of that time operated at an excessively high speed - 6 m/s, so the consumption of video tape was very high. In his Ampex VRX-1000 device, Ginsburg used recording heads that rotated at high speed, which significantly reduced the speed of the tape mechanism. Ginsburg's invention redefined the future of analog audio and video recorders.
1958 - Implantable electronic pacemaker.
Wilson Greatbatch (1919) accidentally installed the wrong resistor in a heart rate monitor. He noticed that the device's pulse signal began to imitate a heartbeat. After making design changes to the device, he assembled 50 electronic cardiac stimulators in his shed behind his house. Ultimately, the device was tested on dogs and humans.
1958 – Laser.
Three people claim to have each invented the laser, a device for amplifying light through stimulated emission of radiation. However, the patent for the invention belongs to Gordon Good. In the early days, the intense light beam was used to cut and drill metals and other materials. In 1964, Kumar Patel, an employee of Bell Labs, invented the dioxide laser, with which surgeons were able to perform highly complex operations using a photon beam instead of scalpels.
1959 - Triple anchor seat belt.
Nils Bohlin (1920-2002), a Swedish engineer, came to the post of head of the safety department of the Volvo automobile company from Saab Aircraft, where he took part in the work on the pilot ejection device. 14 years before the invention of air bags, he came up with the idea that using a seat belt to hold the upper and lower body of a seated person in place would reduce the number of injuries among drivers and passengers. But it didn't just end with the device: Bohlin had to spend years convincing both car manufacturers and the government to make the seat belt part of standard equipment in cars. According to representatives of the US Department of Transportation, seat belts save the lives of 12 thousand Americans every year.
1959 - Integrated circuit
Robert Noyce (1927-1990), an electrical engineer at Fairchild, and Jack S. Kilby (1923), an electrical engineer at Texas Instruments, are equally credited with creating the major invention of the information technology age. Without knowing each other, they solved the problem of minimizing the discrete elements of a computer circuit board and transferring them to a wafer of silicon (Noyce) and germanium (Kilby). This significantly increased the performance of the computer and at the same time reduced its cost. The two companies eventually agreed to share the patents, but Fairchild was the first to mass produce the chips. The integrated circuit remains the key achievement of the electronics era.
1962 - Telstar 1 satellite.
Thanks to this invention, we can call our cousin/brother in Vilnius, who in turn can watch the US Cup championship in American football. The first commercial communications satellite was designed by John R. Pierce (1910-2002) at Bell Labs. It took $3.5 million to put the satellite into orbit. The device was used to transmit television signals from Europe to the USA and transatlantic telephone communications. Pierce left Bell Labs in 1971 for Stanford University, where he taught and wrote science fiction novels under the name J. J. Capling. He introduced the term<транзистор>, but few people know about this.
1962 – Modem.
Without this device, the Internet is impossible. The device was developed in the 1950s and was intended to improve the quality of data transmission in the US northern air defense system. Using a modem, computers could communicate with each other, and the data was converted into analog signals that were transmitted over telephone lines. AT&T's first commercial modem, the Bell 103, appeared 40 years ago and transmitted data at 300 bps. Modern modems transmit data at speeds of a million bits per second.
1964 - Family of mainframe computers.
IBM's System/360 line of computers included a number of commercial computer models that all used a single programming language. Thus, clients who were promoted in the company only needed to take the software with them. Gene M. Amdahl, the creator of the System/360 line, left IBM in 1970 with the idea of creating a competitive computer model.
1968 - Mouse
At a computer conference in San Francisco, Stanford Research Institute scientist Douglas Engelbart impressed a packed audience with his presentation of a prototype Windows program, teleconferencing, and a wooden device he called a mouse. Two decades later, Engelbart's invention has become a common PC accessory.
1969 – ATM.
For years, bankers have been talking about automated cash machines. Donald Wetzel, a former minor league baseball player and sales executive from IBM, was given credit to develop the first working model of an ATM. The vice president of product planning for Docutel, then a manufacturer of automated baggage handling equipment, installed the first ATM ATM at a Chemical Bank branch on Long Island, New York. The first ATMs operated in autonomous mode. Today, about 1.1 million ATMs are interconnected across the globe. Wetzel left Docutel and created companies that sold banking equipment.
1969 - Charge-coupled device
George Smith and Willard Boyle, scientists at Bell Labs, sketched out the idea of a light-sensitive circuit that could record images in just an hour. Ultimately, the mechanism for storing and transmitting video without using video tape was used in video cameras, and by 1975, Bell Labs produced a broadcast camera. The same operating principle was applied to fax machines and telescopes.
1969 - Internet
Who knew that the military-industrial complex would become the godmother of online pornography? In order for scientists working for the US Armed Forces to communicate with each other via computer, the Arpanet network was created, consisting of two terminals at Stanford and the University of California at Los Angeles. Later, the State Science Foundation, using the same technology, created a network with greater bandwidth, which is still the basis of the Internet today. With the increasing commercialization of the network, Arpanet merged with the Internet.
1970 - Relational database
Edgar F. Ted Codd, a mathematician and graduate of Oxford University, researched computers and developed the concept of a relational database in 1970. Earlier databases were organized in a strict order; Codd's idea was that disparate groups of data could be combined using common fields. However, IBM management supported a more primitive system. However, the relational database is now the standard and the foundation of Larry Ellison's Oracle fortune.
1970 - CD.
James T. Russell (1931), a laboratory physicist at the Battelle Memorial Institute (Richland, Washington) and an audio enthusiast, tried in every possible way to improve the sound of his old vinyl records. He came up with the idea of digitizing music and recording it on a photosensitive disk using light flashes. This would allow the computer to read music without physical contact with the source, which would immediately solve the problem of aging and wear. The first compact discs were from phonograph records. Russell went on to develop CD-ROM (memory reader) technologies, which are now widespread and allow the creation of not only music, but also DVD and software discs. Last year, 3 billion recording discs were sold.
1971 – Microprocessor.
Robert Noyce, a member of Fairchild's integrated circuit design program, co-founded the chip manufacturing company Intel. A group of specialists from this company, led by Marcian (Ted) Hoff (1937), took another step in the miniaturization of computers by placing the CPU on a single chip. The first model of microprocessor, developed for the Japanese calculator company Busicom, could perform 60 thousand operations per second, just like the 30-ton ENIAC computer created two decades earlier. Try today to give Intel a loan for the development of a microcircuit with the expectation of subsequently buying all the rights (except for the rights to microcircuits for calculators) for $60 thousand.
1971 – Answering machine.
In the 90s of the 19th century, Waldemar Paulsen patented the prototype of a modern answering machine - a telegraph, consisting of a telephone set, a steel wire and an electromagnet. However, a commercial model of the device suitable for sale on the market appeared 7 decades later. PhoneMate's first answering machine, the Model 400, weighed 4 kg and could store up to 20 messages on a reel-to-reel tape. Today, 67% of American households use lighter, cheaper models from PhoneMate.
1972 - Computed tomographic imaging.
For more than 7 decades, doctors used X-rays to penetrate the human body, but could only see the skeleton. Godfrey Honesfield and Allan Cormack, working separately, created a method in which crystals were used instead of X-ray film, a camera rotated around a person, and a computer compared the resulting multiple images. As a result, it was possible to obtain a detailed image of the internal organs of the human body. Shortly thereafter, chemistry professor Paul Lauterber published a paper proposing nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, which led to the development of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, which provides three-dimensional images of internal organs.
1972 - Ethernet technology.
Robert Metcalfe, an employee at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, was responsible for organizing a single, high-speed network. His term (<стандарт локальных сетей>) refers to a system of wires and chips that allow computer systems to communicate with each other locally without jamming each other. His real achievement was Xerox's technology collaboration with Digital Equipment and Intel, which made Ethernet an industry standard and is now the most widely used technology for local area networks. In 1979, Metcalfe founded 3Com to implement Ethernet technology.
1972 - UNIX/C operating system.
The first operating system written in C that is still in use throughout the world. Bell Labs researchers Dennis Ritchie (1941) and Kenneth Thompson (1943) developed a system based on simple discrete commands that was used in multitasking devices and was supported by users: one user could run a spell check while another created a document. Currently, C programming exists in various forms and implementations. Today, UNIX continues to be used to manage most Internet servers and large economic systems.
1972 – Video games.
Nolan Bushnell (1943) came up with another way to keep young people busy: he created Pong, a crude electronic tennis game, a home version of which was released later. Bushnell's Atari game became the top seller in the video game market, but ultimately lost to the game<Пиццерия>. Now Sony and Microsoft have monopolies in the industry that Bushnell started, and their income in the United States exceeds that of the film industry.
1974 - Catalytic exhaust afterburner.
After the US Congress passed the Air Pollution Control Act (1970), Corning scientists Rodney Bagley, Irwin Lachman and Ronald Lewis began developing an idea that allowed automakers to reduce emissions. As a result, scientists have created a ceramic honeycomb coating that is used in car exhaust systems and converts 95% of pollutants into water vapor and carbon dioxide.
1976 - Recombinant DNA.
Robert Swanson, a 29-year-old entrepreneur, and Herbert Boyer, a professor at the University of California (San Francisco), have teamed up to commercialize Boyer's major advances in “recombinant DNA,” a technology that creates combinations of DNA molecules that can be of great benefit to humanity, like insulin. for diabetics, growth hormones for children and antibodies for cancer patients. Two members founded the first biotechnology company, Genentech. The company gained fame in 1980, when its profits amounted to $35 million. Swanson died in 1999. Today the company's market value is $17 billion and sales are $2.2 billion.
1976 - Personal computer.
Apple co-founders Steven P. Jobs (1955) and Stephen Wozniak (1950) made the PC as popular as sports cars, ushering in the PC era. But because the company never seriously pursued the business market, its successes were much more modest than those of its larger competitors, which always adopted Apple's innovations in design and marketing. Wozniak resigned in 1985. That same year, Jobs was forced to leave the company, but in 1997 he was invited to lead the company's transformation.
1977 - Cash management accounts.
After meeting with members of the Stanford Research Institute, Thomas Christie, chief accountant<Мерил Линч>, proposed the idea of a single account, which included the issuance of a checkbook, foreign exchange market services, a Visa credit card and brokerage services. The idea remained without development, and the company<Мерил>I almost forgot about her. Ultimately, the idea spread widely, inspiring those who dreamed of creating megabanks.
1979 - Spreadsheet
Daniel Bricklin (1951) and Bob Frankston (1949) invented the computer program VisiCalc, which freed accountants and other professionals from hours of paperwork by making it easier to record financial data and speed up comparative analysis. The VisiCalc program was in some way a contribution to the computerization process, as it showed the real possibilities of using a PC. Due to legal problems, the VisiCalc program was sold to Lotus, which used a spreadsheet in version 1-2-3 of the program.
1984 - Liquid crystal display.
Liquid crystals, which exist between solid and liquid states, were discovered by the Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer in 1888. After 80 years, two independent groups of scientists from RCA Labs and Kent (Utah) created the first liquid crystal display based on a generalization of the results of the action of electric charges on crystals. In the early days, LCD screens were used in watches. By 1984, it was possible to improve the resolution of liquid crystals, which made it possible to transmit images, and not just text, and laptops and portable computers appeared.
1987 - Mevacor (“Mevacor”).
It took Merck scientists more than 35 years to create Mevacor, a drug that reduces cholesterol in the body. The tablet blocks the enzyme that is responsible for the formation of mevalonic acid, the acid does not affect the liver, and cholesterol is not produced. Led by P. Roy Vagelos, a Merck executive, scientists created Zocor, a second-generation drug, and showed that taking all cholesterol-lowering drugs reduces the risk of heart attack. In 1995, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Zocor as a heart attack preventative, greatly increasing demand for the drug from people who had already suffered a heart attack.
1991 - World Wide Web.
Tim Berners-Lee, a software consultant, developed the Enquire program, which provided a documented connection of computers around the world, making travel through cyberspace a reality. In 1993, Marc Andreessen created the Mosaic program, which allowed you to view images and text. Two years later, Netscape's search engine ushered in the era of Internet advertising.
1995 - Internet business.
Seduced by this new form of business, Jeffrey Bezos began selling books online on Amazon.com, and Pierre Omidyar launched Ebay, an online marketplace. Hundreds of other entrepreneurs followed suit, selling everything from bicycles to chewing gum.
2000 - Automated sequence determination device.
Using 300 high-speed DNA sequencing instruments, genetics guru J. Craig Venter revolutionized the scientific world: his company Celera Genomics managed to decipher the complete human genetic code in just over two years with a budget of $270 million. Studying genetic differences among people will allow scientists to better diagnose and ultimately treat diabetes and schizophrenia.