Unit 5: 1914 C.E. to the Present

Item #5-13

New technologies of the late 20th century

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The year 1914 is marked by the invention of the Morgan Gas Mask by Garrett A. Morgan but, this was not the only technological development of the late 20th century.

~*~The world renowned glassware and cookware producer, Pyrex, was co-invented by Eugene Sulliovan and William Taylor in 1915 New York City.  Though originally developed as an answer to the call for railroad lanterns to be made of element proof "fire glass," Pyrex shifted to a consumer line when Bessie Littleton introduced the idea of baking in glass dishes.  The first Pyrex order was placed by Jordan Marsh in a Boston Department store on May 18, 1915.  The company website (www.pyrexware.com) contains the full history of this company.   

~*~Another important invention was for stainless steel.  The technology for its creation, called the Bessemer process, is still used in modern times, though it has been modified to incorporate the current global state (anti-pollution governances).  The most prominent use is in the building of skyscrapers.  In 1916, Henry Brearley invented stainless steel alloy while seeking an erosion-resistant alloy for gun barrels at the Brown-Fifth research laboratory in Sheffield, England.

~*~One innovation was the development of the modern day zipper.  Created by Gideon Sundback in 1917, this item is used on articles of clothing, luggage, car assesories and many other everyday items. The original Sundback patent can be examimed at http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa082597.htm .

~*~Other inventions include the superheterodyne radio circuit by Edwin Howard Armstron and the popular snack, fortune cookies, by Charles Jung in 1918. 

~*~The machine that made Toaster Struddles and Eggo Waffles possible, the pop up toaster (by Charles Strite), was invented in 1919, along with the short-wave radio, flip-flop circuit and arc welder.

~*~From 1920 to 1940, many new materials hit the consumer market, including:

     *the Band-Aid by Earle Dickson (1920)

     *the tommy gun by John T.Thompson (1920)

     *first robot (artificial life; 1921)

     *lie detector (1921)

     *insulin (Sir Frederick Grant Banting) saved millions of diabetics beginning in 1922

     *first 3-D movie (1922)

     *traffic signal by Garrett A. Morgan (1923)

     *television by Vladimir Kosma Zworykin (1923)

     *self-winding watch by John Harwood (1923)

     *frozen food by Clarence Birdseye (1923)

     *loudspeaker (Rice and Kellogg; 1924)

     *spiral notebooks (1924)  

     *mechanical television by John Logie Baird (1925)

     *liquid-fueled rockets by Robert H. Goddard (1926)

     *complete electronic Televeision system by Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1927)

     *technicolor (1927)

     *aerosol can by Erik Rotheim (1927)

     *iron lung by Philip Drinker (1927) 

     *penicillin discovered by socittish biologist Alexander Fleming (1928)

     *bubble gum by Walter E. Diemer (1928)

     *car radio by Paul Galvin (1929)

     *scotch tape patented by 3M engineer Richard G. Drew (1930)

     *neoprene by Wallace Carothers and Dupont Labs (1930)

     *jet engine by Frank Whittle and Dr. Hans von Ohain (1930)

     *stop-action photography by Harold Edgerton (1931)

     *electron microscope by Max Knott and Ernst Ruska (1931)

     *polaroid photography by Edwin Herbert Land (1932)

     *parking meter by Carl C. Magee (1932)

     *radio telescope by Karl Jansky (1932)

     *FM  radio by Edwin Howard Armstrong (1933) 

     *first tape recordrer for broadcasting by Joseph Begun (1934)

     *nylon by Wallace Carothers and DuPont Labs (1935)

     *canned beer (1935)

     *radar (1935)

     *voice recognition machine by Bell Labs (1936)

     *photocopier by Chester F. Carlson (1937)

     *Colt revolver by Samuel Colt (1936)

     *jet engine (1937)

     *strobe light (1938)

     *LSD (November 16, 1938) by Albert Hofmann  

     *teflon by Roy J. Plunkett (1938)

     *electron microscope (1939)

     *helicopter by Igor Sikorsky (1939)

     *color television by Peter Goldmark (1940)

     *jeep by Karl Pabst (1940)

~*~In 1941, the first computer controlled by software (the Z3) was invented by Konrad Zuse, a construction engineer for the Henschel Aircraft Company of Berlin, Germany.  It was by mistake that the computer was invented.  The invention was actually derived from a series of lengthy calculations that Kuse used for his engineering.  MOre about this can be found at: http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~zuse/Konrad_Zuse/en/     His Z1 computer looked like this:

Original Z1 by Konrad Zuse

~*~Kuse's concept was more developed in 1942 by Professor John Atanasoff and a graduate student named Clifford Berry.  Together they invented the first electronic-digital computer, at Iowa State University in IOwa, USA.  Presper Eckert and John Mauchly patented the digital computing device.  The computer was named ENAIC, standing for "Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator".  The program included a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a seperation of memory and computing functions.     

~*~Also in 1942, a man by the name of Max Mueller designsed and produced the first turboprop engine.  This device is made up of a jet engine and a propeller.  It is used in small airliners and transport aircraft.  Below is the basic schematic for this engine:

 

~*~The creation of synthetic rubber was out of pure necessity.  THough this was riginally created in 1909, by a team at Bayer laboratory in Elberfeld, Germany, it was not widely produced.  It was during the second World War that there was an ever growing need for rubber.  This material was needed for use in bombs, tires for military trucks, and almost every other war machine; however, most of the production plants were under Japanese control.  This led to the building of more plants and greater production levels, greatly changing the use of rubber across the world.  

~*~It wasn't until 1943 that the hallucinogenic properties of the recreational drug LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) were discovered, by Albert Hofmann.  He found that the drug could cause the user to have visuals of colored patterns, geometric shapes, and a sense of time distortion.

~*~The life-saving kidney dialysis machine was invented by Willem Kolff in 1944.  Similarly, in this same year, synthetic cortisone was invented Percy Lavon Julian.

~*~From 1945 to 1970, many important items were brought into being, including:

     *hypertext (known as HTML) the language used to create documents on the World Wide Web      

                   ---this was proposed in 1945 by Vannevar Bush 

     *atomic bomb (begun in 1939, completed in 1945)     

     *microwave oven was invented by Percy Spencer in 1946

     *the theory of holography was developed by Dennis Gabor in 1947 

     *the first mobile phone was invented in 1947, though not yet commercially sold 

     *the common electrical transistor was invented by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley (1947)

     *George de Mestral invented the product and company known as Velcro, in 1948

     *first credit card introduced by Ralph Schneider in 1950 

     *power steering (by Francis W. Davis) changed the design of cars in 1951 

     *first video tape recorder by Charles Ginsburg in 1951

     *use of bar codes was introduced by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952

     *first diet soft drink sold in 1952

     *RCA invents the first musical synthesizer in 1953

     *Radial tires (1953)

     *transistor radio was invented by the company Texas Instruments in 1953

     *oral contraceptives (1954)

     *solar cell discovered by Chaplin, Fuller and Pearson (1954)

     *first McDonald's (1954) 

     *first computer hard disk (1956)

     *Fortran (technological language) created (1957)

     *computer modem (1958)

     *laser invented by Gordon GOuld in 1958

     *Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin invented the internal pacemaker (1958)

     *microchip (1959)

     *valium (high level painkiller; 1961)

     *audio cassette (1962)

     *the first computer video game, Spacewar, was invented in 1962

     *another computer language, BASIC, was invented by John G. Kemeny and Tom Kurtz (1964)

     *compact disk was invented by James Russell in 1965

     *handheld calculator (1967)

     *computer mouse (1968)

     *RAM was invented by Robery Dennard (1968)

     *artificial heart saved millions of heart attack patients from 1969-onward

     *bar-code scanner (1969)

     *floppy disk invented by Alan Shugart in 1970

~*~A fairly popular invention, even recently, was that of the LCD (liquid crystal display) by James Fergason.  This is common in television and computer screens.

~*~The first home video player was invented in 1971 by a team led by Charles P. Ginsberg.  This player was called a videocassette or VCR and worked by collecting electronic impulses from the television and transferring them to magnetic tape.  A common problem among this invention was the scratching, tearing and tangling of the tape, no longer allowing the video to be read.  These readers looked similar to this:

 

 

~*~The first word processor was invented in 1972 by Micropro International.  The program, WordStar, allowed for the manipulation of text data in creating, storing, printing and retrieving documents.  THis invention was very important in the business industry and still remains, in more advanced forms, today.

~*~Similarly, only a year later, in 1973, ethernet (local computer network) was invented by Robert Metcalfe and Xerox.

~*~Over the next few decades, advances were made in:

     *liposuction (1974)     

     *laser printing (1975)

     *ink-jet printer (1976) 

     *Jarvik-7 artificial heart invented by Robert K. Jarvik in 1978

     *cell phones (1979)

     *walkman (1979)

     *hepatitus-B vaccine (1980) 

     *MS-DOS (1981)

     *IBM-PC (1981)

     *genetically engineered human growth hormone (1982)

     *coining of the term "virtual reality" by Jaron Lanier (1983)

     *CD-ROM (1984)

     *Apple Macintosh (1984)

     *Windows program by Microsoft (1985)

     *Fuji disposable camera (1987)

     *digital cellular phones (1988)

     *abortion pill (1988)

     *Doppler radar (1988)

     *Prozac (anti-depressant; 1988)

    *World Wide Web (WWW) (1990)

     *pentium processor (1993)

     *Java computer speak (1995)

     *DVD (Digital Video Disk) (1995)

     *gas-powered fuel cell (1997)

     *viagra (1998)

~*~The new millenium presented even more advanced technology:

     *environmentally friendly transformer fluid (2000)

     *artificial liver by Dr. KEnneth Matsura and Alin Foundation (2001)

     *artificial heart by Abiomed (2001)

     *Ipod announcement by Apple (2001)

     *virtual keyboard (2002)

     *nano-tex fabric nanotechnology (2002)

     *solar tower (2002)

     *Toyota hybrid car (2003)

     *Luminex fabrics (2003)

     *Infrared Fever Screening System (2003)

     *Adidas 1 (2004)

     *translucent concrete (2004)

     *YouTube (2005)

     *Iphone/Itouch

     *GPS systems

     *Facebook/ Myspace 

 

These are the main inventions from 1914 to present day...

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My Sources:

#1 http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/twentieth.htm

#2 http://www.pyrexware.com/index.asp?pageId=91

#3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel#History

#4 http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/WordStar.htm  

#5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD

 

******Mikayla N. Mercer (6th period)******