Technology Timeline

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Technology Timeline

• 1900 2000

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Put these 10 technologies in orderPast to
Present
HTML
Superheterodyne Radio Circuit
Photocopier
Robot
PONG
Modem
Disposable Camera
Handheld Calculator
Lie Detector
Mechanical Television
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Lie Detector
An earlier and less successful lie detector or
polygraph machine was invented by James
Mackenzie.  Twenty years later, John Larson, a
University of California medical student,
invented the modern lie detector (polygraph) and
has been used in police interrogation and
investigation since.
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Superheterodyne Radio Circuit
Invented by Edwin Howard Armstrong. Today, every
radio and television set uses this invention.
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Mechanical Television
John Logie Baird is remembered as being an
inventor of a mechanical television system. John
Logie Baird and American Clarence W. Hansell
patented the idea of using arrays of transparent
rods to transmit images for television and
facsimiles respectively. Baird's 30 line images
were the first demonstrations of television by
reflected light rather than back-lit silhouettes.
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Photocopier
The process called Xerography was invented by
American law student Chester Carlson. Xerography
became commercially available by the Xerox
Corporation. Xerography comes from the Greek for
"dry writing". Carlson had a hard time finding
investors in his new invention. He was turned
down by IBM and the U.S. Army Signal Corps, it
took him eight years to find an investor, the
Haloid Company which later became the Xerox
Corporation.
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Robot
An early example of robot technology, Grey
Walter's "Machina Speculatrix" was recently
restored to its working glory after being lost
for some years. Walter's "Machina" were small
robots that looked like turtles. The restored
cyber turtles are freewheeling and light-seeking
creatures, propelled by two small electric
motors. They roam in any direction with
sensor-contacts to avoid obstacles. A
photoelectric cell mounted on the steering column
helps the turtles search and aim towards the
light.
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Modem
Digital modems developed from the need to
transmit data for North American air defense.
Modems were used to communicate data over the
public switched telephone network or PSTN. The
first commercial modem was manufactured - the
Bell 103 by ATT. The Bell 103 was also the first
modem with full-duplex transmission,
frequency-shift keying or FSK, and had a speed of
300 bits per second or 300 bauds.
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Handheld Calculator
Jerry D. Merryman, who was selected as the
project manager, came up with the logic designs
for the calculator in three days. Together,
Kilby, Merryman, and Van Tassel began work on the
calculator. The three filed for a U.S. patent
for the world's first handheld calculator.
Although the machine did not go into actual
production for three years, the prototype had
been made. The machine could add, subtract,
multiply and divide. There was some automatic
decimal placement, and input numbers could be as
large as 12 digits. The machine's dimensions
were about 4¼ by 6¼ by 1¾ inches and it weighed
about 45 ounces.
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PONG
Nolan Bushnell together with Ted Dabney, wrote
the first arcade game. It was called Computer
Space, based on Steve Russell's earlier game of
Spacewar!. The arcade game Pong was written and
released by Nolan Bushnell (and programmed by Al
Alcorn) a year later. Nolan Bushnell and Ted
Dabney started Atari Computers that same year.
Three years later, Atari re-released Pong as a
home video game.
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Disposable Camera
Fuji introduced the disposable camera. We call
them disposables but the people who make these
cameras want you to know that they're committed
to recycling the parts, a message they've
attempted to convey by calling their products
"single-use cameras."
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HTML
Vannevar Bush first proposed the basics of
hypertext in 1945. Tim Berners-Lee invented the
World Wide Web, HTML (hypertext markup language),
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs
(Universal Resource Locators). Tim Berners-Lee
was the primary author of html, assisted by his
colleagues at CERN, an international scientific
organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.
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Time to put the 10 technologies in orderPast to
Present
PONG Photocopier Robot Modem Lie
Detector HTML Superheterodyne Radio
Circuit Mechanical Television Handheld
Calculator Disposable Camera
Correct 10-8 Expert 7-6 Good job 5-4
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