Technology, however, has a more eclectic past. It is this eclectic past that we will explore in this unit. Our travels through technology will not be comprehensive; instead, we will focus on three specific topics: Technology in the Middle Ages , Chinese Contributions to Technology , and Islam Spain and the History of Technology.
These topics were chosen to build upon our discussion of the nature of technology in Unit 1 and to provide a context for our future discussion of technology beginning at the Industrial Revolution in Unit 3 Technology and Work. It is hoped that when you move to Unit 3 you will better understand the complex nature of technological development and diffusion. To return to the main menu, you can click here.
Or you can go immediately to one of the three sections in this unit. Main Menu. Technology in the Middle Ages. Islam Spain and the History of Technology. Chinese Contributions to Technology. Wilbur pilots the machine.
On a flight later that day, Orville will remain aloft 59 seconds and travel feet. By , when it is discontinued, Ford owes much of his success to his improved assembly line process, which by will produce a complete Model T every 93 minutes. Kettering, who developed the electric cash register while working at National Cash Register, sells his electric automobile starters to the Cadillac company.
This device increases the popularity of the gasoline-powered car, which no longer needs to be started with a hand crank. The canal cuts the sailing distance from the East Coast to the West Coast by more than 8, miles. Armored tanks, machine guns, poisonous gas, submarines and airplanes will force military commanders to rethink traditional strategies of war.
The boat weighs over 10, pounds and uses underwater fins to raise the hull of the boat and decrease drag between the hull and the water. Radio experiences immediate success; by the end of , other licensed stations will join KDKA. The idea for a facsimile transmission was first proposed by Scottish clockmaker Alexander Bain in Convicted murderer Gee John takes 6 minutes to die.
Goddard, Professor of Physics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, makes the first successful launch of a liquid-fueled rocket at his aunt Effie's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket reaches 41 ft. Farnsworth receives backing and applies for a patent, but ongoing patent battles with RCA will prevent Farnsworth from earning his share of the million-dollar industry his invention will create.
Birdseye got the idea during fur-trapping expeditions to Labrador in and , where he saw the natives use freezing to preserve foods. William Bennett Kouwenhoven develops a device for jump-starting the heart with a burst of electricity. Dollar Mountain follows with an order for six more. Carothers at E. Nylon will soon become popular as a fabric for hosiery as well as industrial applications such as cordage.
It can store data and perform addition and subtractions using binary code. The next generation of the machine will be abandoned before it is completed due to the onset of World War II.
Pabst of the Bantam Car. Given its name by its military designation, G. This experiment and others will result in the development of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer, Arthur H. Following the tests, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan -- one at Hiroshima, one at Nagasaki -- that claimed more than , lives. Edwin H.
Land introduces a new camera that can produce a developed photographic image in sixty seconds. Land will follow in the s with a color model and eventually receive more than patents for his innovations in light and plastics technologies. Later renamed the Telecaster, the guitar will become a favorite with guitar slingers worldwide. Census Bureau. The memory called up data by transmitting sonic pulses through tubes of mercury.
John H. Gibbon performs the first successful open heart surgery in which the blood is artificially circulated and oxygenated by a heart-lung machine. This new technology, which allows the surgeon to operate on a dry and motionless heart, greatly increases surgical treatment options for heart defects and disease.
Conventional submarines need two engines: a diesel engine to travel on the surface and an electric engine to travel submerged, where oxygen for a diesel engine is not available.
The Nautilus, the first nuclear sub, can travel many thousands of miles below the surface with a single fuel charge. Albert Sabin develops a polio vaccine using strains of polio too weak to cause infection but strong enough to activate the human immune system. His invention will put an end to the polio epidemics that have crippled thousands of children worldwide.
Explorer I's mission is to detect radiation; it discovers one of the Van Allen radiation belts. Maiman creates the first laser. The core of his laser consists of a man-made ruby -- a material that had been judged unsuitable by other scientists, who rejected crystal cores in favor of various gases. President John F. Kennedy, who vowed to the world that the United States would put a human on the moon before , has not lived to witness the moment. Noland Bushnell, the 28 year-old inventor of Pong, will go on to found Atari.
Scanners at checkout stations read the codes using laser technology. The hand-punched keyboard cash register takes one step closer to obsolescence. They sell their first software to Ed Roberts at MIT, which has produced the Altair , the first microprocessor-based computer. Gates soon drops out of Harvard. Supercomputers designed by Seymour Cray will continue to dominate the market; the Cray 2, marketed in , will be capable of 1,,, calculations per second.
The flight takes 2 hours, 49 minutes, and wins a [sterling], prize for its crew, headed by designer Dr. Paul MacCready. Constructed of Mylar, polystyrene, and carbon-fiber rods, the Albatross has a wingspan of 93 feet 10 inches and weighs about 70 pounds. The shuttle can be used for a number of applications, including launch, retrieval, and repair of satellites and as a laboratory for physical experiments.
While extremely successful, the shuttle program will suffer a disaster in when the shuttle Challenger explodes after takeoff, killing all on board. Robert Jarvik implants a permanent artificial heart, the Jarvik 7, into Dr. Barney Clark. This chopping tool and others like it are the oldest objects in the British Museum. It comes from an early human campsite in the bottom layer of deposits in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.
Potassium-argon dating indicates that this bed is between 1. This and other tools are dated to about 1. Using another hard stone as a hammer, the maker has knocked flakes off both sides of a basalt volcanic lava pebble so that they intersect to form a sharp edge. This could be used to chop branches from trees, cut meat from large animals or smash bones for marrow fat—an essential part of the early human diet. The flakes could also have been used as small knives for light duty tasks.
To some people this artifact might appear crude; how can we even be certain that it is humanly made and not just bashed in rock falls or by trampling animals? A close look reveals that the edge is formed by a deliberate sequence of skillfully placed blows of more or less uniform force.
Many objects of the same type, made in the same way, occur in groups called assemblages which are occasionally associated with early human remains.
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