200 Years in Tech

And they said that after one hundred episodes it was too much already, but we kept going. Yes, we did. So today we're going to present our two hundredth episode spectacular. Yeah. Now, if you remember, on our one hundredth episode spectacular, we decided to do something that would require us to do absolutely no research whatsoever. We talked about our favorite technology, which was easy, right. We were like, Hey, this is great. I don't have to look anything up. I just think

what kind of stuff do I like to play with? Well, we decided for the two hundred episode we'd go the opposite direction. We wanted something that would require lots and lots of research. So we've decided to talk about some of the biggest innovations and inventions over the last two hundred years, because why did we two? Why did I know the connection? But I'm just wondering why we decided to go with the whole let's research stuff. Yeah, and and uh, well I don't know. Yeah, but in retrospect

it seems like a silly Oh it's Ariel's fault. Yes, it was my friend Ariel who suggested that. Thanks Ariel, thanks so much. Okay, Well, we we should point out, though, um, that we just made a list of all the different technologies we thought were important, and we there there are tons and tons and tons of important technologies, and as the cases with science and engineering, um, one person builds

on the work of someone else. So we sort of picked highlights here and there that we thought were important. We're probably gonna leave out, uh one or two of your favorites, in which case feel free to write in and she let us know what they are. Um, but we're gonna touch on some of the ones that we thought were important, maybe call out some some points on on a few of the most important ones, but definitely, you know, pick some of our favorites over the last

couple hundred years. Yeah, what's a couple of centuries between friends. I kind of actually started at eighteen hundred, but I don't really have anything between eighteen under eighteen ten anyway, so I guess that's all right. So you know, let's just go straight to eighteen fourteen, Joey, that sounds good, okay. So in eighteen fourteen, and a man who had been working in coal mines pretty much his whole life, George Stevenson,

built the first successful steam locomotive. Now we're including this on here because of course, steam locomotives ended up changing the face of much of the world and allowed for shipping on a scale and a speed that up to that point had never been seen before. So it was definitely a revolutionary development. Now, the first train was called Bluecker Bluer and uh that was a young Frankenstein reference,

which is why Chris doesn't get it, um. But Bluecker was uh yeah, it pulled several cars of coal that wade several times up a hill at a maximum speed of a blistering four miles per hour. But you know, this is the first time that they've been able that anyone had been able to create a steam driven locomotive, and that didn't explode or you know that that actually worked. There had been some steam engines before that point, but this was the first one as use of a in

a locomotive, so that was my first choice. Also in eighteen four team we had the first use of the camera obscia. Actually, no, not exactly. The camera obscarra had been around for quite some time before that well, but it was around that time that Joseph Nissa phone nyeps nice. Try no, actually I went to uh, by the way, four vote dot com for seriously, four vote dot com has if you're looking for difficult to pronounce words or a lot of cases um names for names, um, they

have a service where you can contribute your pronunciation. Should hurry this up because it's not on topic, but very nice. So Joseph nia phone nieps or nissa phone nieps um. He was. He was an inventor who and he made the first permanent photographic image. So he's the first person to actually print out a photo UM and he sort of he had difficulty with He and his brother Claude Um they actually had an internal combustion engine. I found out in doing this uh and in poking around on

on Britannica. We're gonna get to that in a minute. Um. But he ended up partnering with Louis Jacques Monday Daguerre, whom you might know from the Dagara type, um, and they refined the practice of putting photos on paper and really making modern photography uh more possible because before, I mean, you had the camera obscura, but it really wasn't able

to make a print of an image. And now you you could take a photo and print it out, although it was a much more arduous and painful process than it is now, right because now what I do is I push a button and then it's digital, and then I pressed another button and then in prints. But I don't print because I post put them in my Facebook. Okay, okay, So in or skipping ahead a little bit, uhh, Yeah,

we're gonna We're gonna jump around a little bit. It's not gonna be year by year that would take forever, because of course years or so. The last two hundred years happened to be during the Industrial Revolution, So it turns out there's quite a few things that were invented at that time. We're, like was said, we've tried to concentrate on things that we thought really changed the world.

So not just something that was cool or interesting, but something that really did revolutionize the way we do things. I don't want to change the world. I'm not looking for New England. So in eighteen five William Sturgeon uh invinced the electro magnet. Now this was actually the culmination of several observations that that ended with the electro magnet.

So back in eighteen twenty, Hans Christian erst Did discovered that UH, wire carrying a current generated by a magnetic field, or rather a wire that carries a current could generate a magnetic field. Okay, so we've talked about this before. You know, you electricity moves through a wire, and then you get a magnetic field because there's this interesting relationship between magnetism and electricity. Um. Then you have Andre Marie Ampere, who found that a helix of wire, also UH carrying

a current would create a magnetic field. UM. And you had Dominique Francois Jean Arago. He found that you could magnetize an iron bar if you wrapped this coil of wire around it, ran the current through it creates the magnetic field. You can actually magnetize an iron bar. Take the iron bar out and it's a magnet. Uh. That leads us to Surgeon who discovered that if you kept the bar in there, if you did not remove the bar,

it actually created a much stronger magnetic field. He bent that bar into a U shape and then uh you think of like the base of the U is is uh embedded in some sort of foundation. There's a coil of wire around each end. You've got two poles. Well, the two poles are close to each other, and that generated a particularly strong magnet magnetic field. This was essentially the first real electro magnet, which ended up being really

really important in electronics later on. In fact, a lot of the developments that we're going to talk about shortly, Um, we're based upon the electro magnet. Without it, they don't work. That's true. That's true. So um an nine the typewriter w a burt yep and we have we Uh this might be a good uh plug again for our podcast on the keyboard, the quarty keyboard when it got popular in the voort keyboard. UM. But yeah, this we're not talking like the IBM S electric here. We're talking about

the manual uh mechanical typewriter. Right. Um, and then you wanted to talk about eight thirty one, the electric dynamo and mutter with Michael Faraday. Yes, okay, so this is another really important discovery. It's not so much an invention as a discovery. So we just started talking about the electro magnet where you create the magnetic field by running

the current through the wire. Well, Faraday found out that the opposite was also true if you subjected a coiled or if you subject a wire to a magnetic field, it would induce electricity to flow through the wire. So, uh, this induction became the basis of things like electric motors, generators, and transformers. So that became extremely important later on. So you noticed that a lot of these developments are happening pretty close to each other, like a decade or so

within each other. And um, and that's where we really saw the rapid development of technology take off. Once once we've got a real firm understanding of things like electromagnetism, Uh, it really made lots of uh, really cool developments possible. And that kind of goes back to my point earlier about how these different engineers and scientists were working off of each other's discoveries. I mean, fair Day was obviously interested interested in electromagnetism, and then you know, moved on

from there. Right. So it's it's really kind of interesting to note just what you know, you discover and then you keep you just follow a different path as you make a new discoveries exactly. Um. Also where those transformers autobots are moving on in eighteen thirty five, you knew I was gonna do it in eighteen is you know, more than meets the ichris. In eighteen thirty five we

have Charles Babbage creating his mechanical calculator. And of course you could argue in a way that the the Advocus was a type of mechanical calculator although you had to move the beads by hands. I would say that's a manual calculator. Yeah, yeah, we're being a little more technical than that. Um. But uh. And the of course Babbage made many many contributions that would later become extremely important in computer science definitely. Uh. And then eight seven Samuel

Morse and the telegraph. Actually, this is one of those devices that the electromagnetic played a huge part in. Right, So Samuel Morris came up with this idea. Actually, the idea had been booted around by a few different people, but Morse was one of the folks who was able to actually put it to use and and get to

to work properly. The idea was that you would be able to create an electric current with one device, send that electric current through a wire, so that would activate a second device, and you would get some sort of mechanical action out of it. That was just the very basics. So you you know, essentially think of it like if you've flip a switch, it would send on an electric current through a wire to another switch, which would then trip.

That's kind of the basis for this. Well, that would give you the the very basics of being able to communicate with someone on the other end. Now, granted, uh, there were some limitations, of course. One was that you could only really communicate through clicks and to you could only communicate one way at a time. You couldn't have

two way communications simultaneously. Yeah. Um, But that that is also a good point because Samuel Morse came up with the idea for Morse Code, probably uh, because you needed some way to send messages from one side to the other yep, yep, and then uh and and a few years after he had developed this, uh, there was the infamous Morse code message sent from DC to Baltimore. What hath God wrought? Yes, yep, Morse code. No wait, that

was Samuel at any rate. So again, now that revolutionized communication because, of course, up to that point, the way that we communicated was sending a piece of paper with a messenger from one place to another right either on train or on horseback pony express type stuff. Yeah, I mean it was slow to communicate between cities or between countries. Definitely, it was very slow. And but the the invention of the telegraph completely revolutionized communication. Now we've got a few

that we're just going to kind of jump on. First of all, one of the most important inventions of all time created in eighteen forty one by Samuel Slocum, the stapler. Yes, please don't touch mine, Milton will be very pleased. Yes, and told I could listen to my music at a

reasonable volume between the end of ten and eleven. Um. So then we've got around eighteen eighteen sixties when subways actually first became practical and uh launched in London, and yeah, and now it's you know, pretty popular all over the world and in many major cities. Um. But that really I think helped solidify the urban area, you know, being able to spread people out and still get them in and a form a mass transit um that would enable people to uh to move a little bit more quickly

without having to rely on horseback or foot. Because we don't have something yet that we're going to talk about in a minute. Um. In eighteen fifty two, we have the gyroscope, Yes, invented by a Jean Bernard Leon for Colt. I have no idea four vo dot com is what I'm saying you. All right, Well, very useful, see Chris, here's here's a little hint. Yeah, your tips are a

lot more useful before we go into the studio. While we're in the studio, let me point out that it didn't really help my pronunciation, even I didn't listen to

it beforehand. Okay, all right, Well at any ray, Um, the gyroscope extremely important in navigation, space travel, YEP, accelerometers, things like that, I mean gyroscopes like yes, space travel in particular, it was extremely important, I mean gyroscopes and and gimbals together where some of the Yeah, they seem like they're pretty basic to us now, but really play

an integral role in those technologies. So while it seems like, you know, you might look at a gyroscope, is like especially the ones that you see in like toy stores or hobby stores, like it's a little kids toy. No, that's it's very important. No, I don't. I don't shop at Gimbal's. Maybe. And now we have a Jean Lenoire that one I knew I could say, so Jean Lenoire invented Well apparently not since it pre existed by forty

years according to you. Well, from what I understand, this is the first successful gas powered engine internal combustion engine. Now we should kind of explain what the internal combustion engine means. So when you're talking about things like steam powered or or even coal powered engines from before, you generally were heating up an element really really high and then using the pressure from say the steam like steam

locomotives the steam to power pistons. Uh So, but you had a chamber where all the combustion took place, and then the steam was then transported to wherever it needs to go to to push pistons. To make things move. Internal combustion has a the the combustion take place within a cylinder, that where the piston actually is. So that's that's the internal part. Because people say, well, what was it? Were there external combustion engines before that kind of in

that the combustion didn't take place within the cylinder. In this case, the cylinders contained a mixture of air and gas from coal, and then a spark from a little electrode spark plug essentially would ignite the gas. Uh, and that would cause is the guest to expand very quickly, pushing a piston which generated the power you needed to move things. Yes. Uh. And in case you're wondering the difference between Joseph Nissaphone niepps uh and his brother Clode

Uh there there their system was a little different. It did use pistons, but what they were using for fuel was um. Their their machine, by the way, was called the Pirae la four. Why did you even try? I don't know. But he used like a podium powder as fuel and he theoretical he theoretically a power to boat with it um. But Britannic I said he claimed to have so I guess we don't know for sure. All right,

Well they were finding other people we find it. Nicolas Otto in eighty eight, Um, you know made it a little better. And that's when people really, you know, really took off when they had an opportunity to do that. Sure, So moving ahead, eighteen sixty two, man made plastic thanks to Alexander Parker's parks rather uh and then eighteen sixty nine we had ball bearings. Yes, you you wanted to add that to the list. I did want to add

that to the list. There are very many things. Yes, they're extremely important, and it's the kind of thing where I think previously to that they hadn't been able to machine them fine enough to make them available to many different things. And uh, you know, and I know it had a lot to do to improve the a lot of industry because they were able to make different kinds of machinery on different scales with the advent of the

ball bearing. So it's a small thing and if you have a lot of them on the floor, they will make you fase. It plays a pivotal role in many early comedies. Yes it does. But you know that's the kind of thing that it shows up and you go, huh, yeah, well that does little things, do you make a difference sometimes? All right? Eighteen seventy six, this is a big one. The telephone Alexander Graham Bell. Now this was, of course, this is you know, the next evil ouan for the

whole telegraph technology. Bell at the time was working on a harmonic telegraph, the idea being that you would be able to have multiple lines of communication going over the same through the same medium. Yes, sort of to solve the earlier problem you mentioned of only being able to stand one communication in one direction of time exactly, but in secret more or less in secrets probably too strong a term. But he was working on this idea of

being able to transmit voice over an electrical line. So you would speak into a device, The device would convert the sound waves into electricity. The electricity would travel over a line to another device, which would decode the electrical

signals and then play them back as sound using various membranes. Yes. Uh, he was actually granted a patent for and that quote the method of an apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically by causing electrical undulation similar informed to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds. That's what you said, yeah, and of course his fancy

ways saying it. The first sentence broadcast over telephone or a what would become the telephone was, of course, can you pick up some milk? Now it was Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you. The second sentence was I would like cheese, pepperoni, and shovies and extra crispy crust. Uh. Yeah, Actually Watson, Thomas Watson was a big part of the success of the telephone because his help was really key to um getting Bell's telephone together.

He apparently was really good working with the different parts of the mechanical stuff, where Bill less, so he was more of the theoretical and and like the electrical engineering behind it. But also we should point out that Watson was not Charlotte Holmes as assistant, Not that Watson, No, that would that would be John Watson to be the other one. Eight seven, eighteen seventy seven. The phonograph Thomas Edison. Yes,

he's gonna pop up again in a second. Those are those big well not, I guess sort of at that time, the big vinyl plastic things. This one. At this point he dated CDs. This one actually predated vinyl. This one was on aluminum. This is a cylindrical phonograph that was that was still the cylinders. So yeah, this was before even they were using wax um. This was so but it was one of the earliest examples of the technology

um socially want I put it down there. And also moving pictures were first invented then, which is not that you don't take it's not that you take a picture down from the wall and then go to move it around. I was gonna say, I didn't know Rush was still around. Back we're talking about movies, you know, like like animation, that sort of thing, that album. And then eighteen seventy nine we get back to Edison, Yes with the lightbulb.

Lightbulb very important. Yeah, it's one of those things where I I you know, otherwise you wouldn't have a way to get picked it when somebody has an idea, right, yeah, we would all be without ideas for the rest of you know, it's amazing. Nothing would have happened now, Okay, so light bulb, it's very simple, simple idea. The idea here is that you use electricity to heat up some sort of elements so that it gives off light very thin filament of of metal, right, and some of the

earliest ones were platinum. And Edison found that he could make the light bulbs last longer if he encased or if he encased the filament in a vacuumed sealed tube, which in this case was the light bulb to the glass. And he actually would uh did glassblowing himself, and he would form the light bulbs and put it all together.

And um, the first one he had, I think it lasted maybe like four hours, and then he was able to make some improvements and gradually the lifetime of the light bulb began to to get to a point where it was actually a useful thing. And this really did revolutionize the world. I mean you think about the world was dark before the light bulb. I mean the when night came you had you had candles and fireplaces and that was about it. Yes, so you can move on. I was just looking at the time, we need to

move on. And five Carl Benz he was the he's credited with creating the first automobile with an internal combustion engine that was a practical vehicle. Um, I mean there had been some vehicles that used internal combustion engines for uh to propel propelled themselves. Cush, It's been a long day before that, but his was the first really practical one.

Also the year when the safety bicycle was invented. Yes, there had been all kinds of bone shakers and velocipedes and unsafety bicycles, unsafety bicycles, you know, those ones with the giant front wheel and the tiny back wheelac But in five the Rover safety was released, designed by John Kemp Stanley, and uh it, you know, basically equalized the size of the wheels and introduce some other revisions to to the design and people dia A few years later

when pneumatic tires came out. We're gonna get to eighty eight in a minute. But that really made a difference because then they weren't so painful to ride. So reminds me have a joke, but it's dirty, so I have to skip it. E seven. Radar, Heinrich hurts, well, then he should take never mind. You're gonna be like that with the Avengers too, are you thor yes it hurts? Uh eight We get back to our buddy Nikola Tesla. Oh, yes, this is when his A C motor and transformer invention

starts to take off. Now, Tesla, of course was a contemporary and sometimes UM antagonists kind of to Edison. I would say Edison was more of the antagonist Edison didn't get along. Let's say Edison did everything in his power to make Tesla look bad and even though and probably

because the fact that Tesla's approach was the superior. UH. Edison was backing direct current, which was great except for the fact that you needed the generator every two miles if you wanted to be able to transmit it over distance, whereas Tesla's alternating current, where the current would move one way and then move another way and then cycle through

those different ways like sixty times a second. His variation would allow you to transmit electricity over huge distances without losing power, which is why Tesla's method one out in the long run. Yes. UH. In the in the late eighteen sixties, UM Graham had introduced a way of generating power that basically helped people warm up to the idea of using electricity, but his UH were DC only dynamos

and UH. It was in eight when Tesla's version for alternating current became available that people you know, really helped it make a difference because you could send power over longer distances with a C so it made it more useful. And then years later he would be played by David Bowie. Okay, then shall we go to your next one? Yes. One of the most important patents to ever be patented. Patent was the year note was the year that Edwin Prescott patented the roller coaster rock on Edwin, I bet it

works better with Baul bearings. In nineteen o one, we had the Transatlantic radio. Thank you Marconi. Yes, I'm sorry, Tesla. Marconi also was a contemporary and sometimes antagonist to Tesla, as it turns out, um, though he probably didn't wasn't as aware of it. Nineteen o three, we have the motor powered airplane. Do you remember who it was that

had that infamous flight at Kitty Hawk? Uh? Should well, considering it's my home stage, that would be the Yeah, that is right, Yes, the right brothers, Orville and Red and Bucker. No wait, I'm Soilber Wilbur Orville and Wilbur so I had a little popcorn on the brain there. Um, Yes, they had their famous flight in the first flight in nineteen o three where Orville piloted it the first time for about It was about twenty ft above the ground. It lasted all of twelve seconds, but it covered about

twenty feet so went a pretty good distance. Then they made three more flights with Wilbur piloting the record flight, which lasted one second shy of a minute fifty nine seconds, went two ft. You can go a lot faster and a lot farther now, But of course, yes, airplanes revolutionized travel. Moving on splitting the atom in nineteen nineteen Lord Rutherford. Yeah, he had a very fine fine knife. Uh. Nineteen twenty seven television, All right, now, this is one of technology's

great controversies. Who invented television? Uh? Well, if you if you look at patents, you're gonna see Philo T. Farnsworth. And in fact he did successfully demonstrate h television working through using an electron scanning too. But a Russian Vladimir's Vorkian uh managed to first patented back in the twenties. Yeah, this is one of the situations. We're sorry, go ahead. This is one of the situations when both men were working on it independently at the same time, so they

both you know, really have a legitimate claim. Now, who's first? Yeah, Land Most people just think Lad got a little ahead of Philo, But Vlad's Lad's invention never or it didn't work. He couldn't get to work before Philo got his to work. So even though Lad may have come up with the idea first, and I say, I stress may, because the truth is still so Murky um Filo was the one who got to work, and that's what kind of counted

in the eyes of history. Really, so we we credit Philo as the inventor of television and h he the first television picture was transmitted on September seven. N Yes, moving over to nine yep uh. Nuclear fission. That's splitting yes atoms so that you can get energy from them. Now, they're two different ways you can get energy from by

splitting atoms. One is a very controlled method, which would be the way that we create nuclear power plants and clear power plants still exists on fission there explaining these in orders to generate heat, which then creates usually steam

to create power. The other way is an uncontrolled release of energy, which we also call a bomb, yes, which tragically we've also used atoms to do yes, yes, but this uh Ottohn and Fritz Strassmann in Germany uh finally proved that you could, uh that trans urentic elements are are actual pieces of the radioisotopes of barium, lendenium and

other elements. According to Britannica. Yeah, and there were a lot of so they could actually prove for a fact that you could split or create fission, and there were lots of that was really really famous names that were connected to this because of course this is also during World War Two and you have both the Germans and the Americans and other countries as well working feverishly to try and master the power of the atom in order

to put it to use in the war. So we had everyone from like Niels Borne and Robert Oppenheimer, like famous names, where all very much focused on nuclear fission at the time. UM I would ask to point out to really quickly that keep in mind that this is after and I'll tell you why that's important at the end of the podcast. UM. Then in ENIAC the first electronic computer yep, yep. We talked about that in the History of Computers ninet forty seven. We've talked about this before.

Bell Labs creates the transistor. Yep, yep. We we've talked about a lot of these things towards the end of the twentieth century, so we're gonna kind of uh yeah, hop forward seven the things that went deep sput Nick sput Nick. Of course, the first man made satellite launched into orbit, launched by the ussr uh completely sent America into a tizzy because if the Russians could launch a satellite into space, they could also launch a missile at the United States, or so was the thinking at the time.

And uh, it didn't do much other than beep, but it was the first of many satellites, and of course that has truly revolutionized technology. Speaking of those satellites, in ninets come three was the first geo state g O stationary satellite. You can't even look up, you know, pronounced the words that, hey, I don't know how to look at thank you need to look thank you Mr clark Yes, but that's thank you to h Arthur C. Clark Um,

the famous writer and science dude. So in uh in nineteen seventy three, actually April third, nineteen seventy three, we can nail this down to the day. The first cell phone was used by Martin Cooper, who used it to call a competitor from across the street and wave in, say, nanny ninni, boo boo, we have a horrible phone. The home computer, Yeah, that's when we first start seeing computers actually marketed for home use. And then in the nineteen

eighties we see the development of the Internet. The Internet kind of evolved over time, so it's hard to you can't really nail it down to a single year because again it's predated the of course, if you talk about Arpanett being the grandfather Shore, but that wasn't when people in the general public was using the service, and you could argue that arpin net was a single network, in which case it would not be an Internet because an Internet is an interconnected series of networks. So Arpanet would

just be one network. You would have to add a second network before could call it an Internet. But that's being a little picky compact, discs Tim berners Lee. He creates the Worldwide Web, which is one of the most important tools I think in the last century. Um, it's how a lot of us managed to get information stay in touch with each other. Everything from social networking to uh researching recipes to getting a job. I mean, it's

really become something we heavily depend upon. And uh, you know what he wrote the program on what's that he used a next computer? Just thought you think that was kind of cool? Yes, I do think that he used a next computer. We should do a podcast on that on the next Yeah, sure, and uh or maybe other computer platforms that didn't survive, you know, we can do that one next DVD SEP, the Digital Versatile disc, and then there's all kinds of other discs that have followed

since into and we could go on. I mean, there are obviously dozens and dozens of other technologies that we could talk about, but that was HD and three players, and lots of the developments are so fast now that it's hard to even keep a track on. I mean, we didn't talk about B A VHS, we didn't talk about cassettes, we didn't talk about magnetic tape at all really, or you know, in solid state drives anything like that. But yeah, I mean, when you get down to it,

there's way too much to cover In two years. We wanted to hit the really really big points, and there are tons and tons of others that deserve mentioned so you know, please feel free to let us know if we missed one of your favorites. But as I, as I said before, you have to tell us one other thing to everything after we mentioned otto Frederick row Wedder invented the bread slicing machine, So everything after you have to tell us which is the best thing since sliced

bread from roller Coaster? Okay, well that wraps up our two hundred episode. And that's what happens. I know, that's what happens. Would they do lots and lots and lots of research would go way over time? You know, you start finding fun stuff and then we investigator. In my defense, the one episode also went over time. So if you guys have any questions or suggestions for podcast topics or you just want to, you know, say hello, you can

email us. Our address is tech Stuff at how supports dot com Chris and I will talk to you again probably two hundred more times really soon if you're a tech stuff and be sure to check us out on Twitter text stuff hs ws R handle, and you can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash tech Stuff h s W for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com and be sure to check out the New Tech

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