1.
History of science and technology
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The history of Science and Technology is a field of history which examines how humanitys understanding of the natural world and ability to manipulate it have changed over the centuries. This academic discipline studies the cultural, economic, and political impacts of scientific innovation. Histories of science were originally written by practicing and retired scientists, starting primarily with William Whewell, at the present time it is often closely aligned with the field of science studies. See the main articles History of science and History of technology for these respective topics, buenos Aires Institute of Technology, Argentina, has been offering courses on History of the Technology and the Science. National Technological University, Argentina, has a history program on its offered careers. Undergraduate coursework can be completed as part of either a Bachelor of Science or a Bachelor of Arts Degree, undergraduate study can be furthered by completing an additional Honours year. For postgraduate study, the Unit offers both coursework and research based degrees, the two course-work based postgraduate degrees are the Graduate Certificate in Science and the Graduate Diploma in Science. The two research based degrees are a Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy. University of Liège, has a Department called Centre dhistoire des Sciences et Techniques, carleton University Ottawa offer courses in Ancient Science and Technology in its Technology, Society and Environment program. University of Toronto has a program in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Kings College in Halifax, Nova Scotia has a History of Science and Technology Program. Nantes University has a dedicated Department called Centre François Viète, Paris Diderot University has a Department of History and Philosophy of Science. A CNRS research center in History and Philosophy of Science SPHERE, pantheon-Sorbonne University has a dedicated Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technics. The École Normale Supérieure de Paris has a history of science Department, technische Universität Berlin, has a program in the History of Science and Technology. The University of Athens has a Department of Philosophy and History of Science History of science, at least three generations of scholars can be identified. The first generation includes D. D. Kosambi, Dharmpal, Debiprasad Chattopadhyay, the second generation mainly consists of Ashis Nandy, Deepak Kumar, Dhruv Raina, S. Irfan Habib, Shiv Visvanathan, Gyan Prakash, Stan Lourdswamy, V. V. Krishna, Itty Abraham, Richard Grove, Kavita Philip, Mira Nanda, there is an emergent third generation that includes scholars like Abha Sur and Jahnavi Phalkey. Currently there are several institutes and university departments offering HST programmes, jawaharlal Nehru University has an Mphil-PhD program that offer specialisation in Social History of Science. It is at the History of Science and Education group of the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies in the School of Social Sciences, renowned Indian science historians Deepak Kumar and Dhruv Raina teach here
2.
Technology
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Technology is the collection of techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, the human species use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The steady progress of technology has brought weapons of ever-increasing destructive power. It has helped develop more advanced economies and has allowed the rise of a leisure class, many technological processes produce unwanted by-products known as pollution and deplete natural resources to the detriment of Earths environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and raise new questions of the ethics of technology, examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, and the challenges of bioethics. Philosophical debates have arisen over the use of technology, with disagreements over whether technology improves the condition or worsens it. The use of the technology has changed significantly over the last 200 years. Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, the term was often connected to technical education, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The term technology rose to prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial Revolution, the terms meanings changed in the early 20th century when American social scientists, beginning with Thorstein Veblen, translated ideas from the German concept of Technik into technology. In German and other European languages, a distinction exists between technik and technologie that is absent in English, which translates both terms as technology. By the 1930s, technology referred not only to the study of the industrial arts, dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 Real World of Technology lecture, gave another definition of the concept, it is practice, the way we do things around here. The term is used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics. Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time,1, defines technology in two ways, as the pursuit of life by other than life, and as organized inorganic matter. Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems and it is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material, virtual technology, such as software and business methods. W. Brian Arthur defines technology in a broad way as a means to fulfill a human purpose
3.
Productivity improving technologies
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This article is about the important technologies that have historically increased productivity. Productivity in general is a ratio of output to input in the production of goods, Productivity is increased by lowering the amount of labor, capital, energy or materials that go into producing economic goods. Increases in productivity are largely responsible for the increase in per capita living standards, Productivity improving technologies date back to antiquity, with rather slow progress until the late Middle Ages. Important examples of early to European medieval technology include the wheel, the horse collar, the spinning wheel. All of these technologies had been in use in China, some for centuries, technological progress was aided by literacy and the diffusion of knowledge that accelerated after the spinning wheel spread to Western Europe in the 13th century. The spinning wheel increased the supply of used for pulp in paper making. Cheap paper was a factor in the development of the movable type printing press, francis Bacon is known for the scientific method, which was a key factor in the scientific revolution. Bacon stated that the technologies that distinguished Europe of his day from the Middle Ages were paper and printing, gunpowder, the Four great inventions important to the development of Europe were of Chinese origin. Other Chinese inventions included the horse collar, cast iron, an improved plow, See also, List of Chinese inventions Mining and metal refining technologies played a key role in technological progress. Much of our understanding of fundamental chemistry evolved from ore smelting and refining, railroads evolved from mine carts and the first steam engines were designed specifically for pumping water from mines. The significance of the blast furnace goes far beyond its capacity for large production of cast iron. The blast furnace was the first example of production and is a countercurrent exchange process, various types of which are also used today in chemical. Hot blast, which recycled what would have otherwise been waste heat, was one of key technologies. Before the 17th century scientific knowledge tended to stay within the intellectual community, near the beginning of the Industrial Revolution came publication of the Encyclopédie, written by numerous contributors and edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond dAlembert. Economic historians generally agree that, with exceptions such as the steam engine. There were also technical colleges, such as the École Polytechnique, probably the first period in history in which economic progress was observable after one generation was during the British Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century. High productivity growth began during the late 19th century in what is sometimes call the Second Industrial Revolution, before the industrial revolution the only sources of power were water, wind and muscle. Most good water power sites in Europe were developed during the medieval period, however water wheels remained costly, relatively inefficient and not well suited to very large power dams
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Neolithic Revolution
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These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants to learn how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants and it was the worlds first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the diversity of available, with a switch to agriculture which led to a downturn in human nutrition. The Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a set of food-producing techniques. These societies radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation which allowed extensive surplus food production, personal land and private property ownership led to an hierarchical society, with an elite Social class, comprising a nobility, polity, and military. The first fully developed manifestation of the entire Neolithic complex is seen in the Middle Eastern Sumerian cities, the Levant followed by Mesopotamia are the sites of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in 1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of revolutions in Middle Eastern history. The beginning of process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent. Recent archaeological research suggests that in regions such as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was not linear. There are several competing theories as to the factors that drove populations to take up agriculture. The most prominent of these are, The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, popularized by V. Gordon Childe in 1928 and summarised in Childes book Man Makes Himself. However, today this theory has little support amongst archaeologists because subsequent climate data suggests that the region was getting wetter rather than drier, the Feasting model by Brian Hayden suggests that agriculture was driven by ostentatious displays of power, such as giving feasts, to exert dominance. This required assembling large quantities of food, which drove agricultural technology, various social and economic factors helped drive the need for food. The evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos and others, views agriculture as an adaptation of plants. Starting with domestication by protection of plants, it led to specialization of location. Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Robert Bettinger make a case for the development of agriculture coinciding with a stable climate at the beginning of the Holocene. Ronald Wrights book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History of Progress popularized this hypothesis, leonid Grinin argues that whatever plants were cultivated, the independent invention of agriculture always took place in special natural environments. It is supposed that the cultivation of cereals started somewhere in the Near East, andrew Moore suggested that the Neolithic Revolution originated over long periods of development in the Levant, possibly beginning during the Epipaleolithic
5.
Stone Age
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The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking, bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of tools in use. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System, especially toward the north in Ethiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands. The closest relative among the living primates, the genus Pan, represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and also north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia. The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks, the oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana, northwestern Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years old. Prior to the discovery of these Lomekwian tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at sites at Gona, Ethiopia, on the sediments of the paleo-Awash River. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity, or missing layer, the oldest sites containing tools are dated to 2. 6–2.55 mya. One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene, excavators at the locality point out that. the earliest stone tool makers were skilled flintknappers. The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of tools to the presence thereof include. The species who made the Pliocene tools remains unknown, fragments of Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus and Homo, possibly Homo habilis, have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools. Innovation of the technique of smelting ore ended the Stone Age, the first most significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, each of which was smelted separately. The Chalcolithic by convention is the period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, the transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia. Note the Rudna Glava mine in Serbia, Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from about 3300 BCE carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife. In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age, the Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BCE. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post–Stone Age societies by about 4000 BCE, the proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BCE, when gold, copper and silver made their entrance
6.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
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Iron Age
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The Iron Age is an archaeological era, referring to a period of time in the prehistory and protohistory of the Old World when the dominant toolmaking material was iron. It is commonly preceded by the Bronze Age in Europe and Asia with exceptions, meteoric iron has been used by humans since at least 3200 BC. Ancient iron production did not become widespread until the ability to smelt ore, remove impurities. The start of the Iron Age proper is considered by many to fall between around 1200 BC and 600 BC, depending on the region, the earliest known iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200 BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh, Lower Egypt. They have been identified as meteoric iron shaped by careful hammering, meteoric iron, a characteristic iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. Such iron, being in its metallic state, required no smelting of ores. Smelted iron appears sporadically in the record from the middle Bronze Age. While terrestrial iron is abundant, its high melting point of 1,538 °C placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tins low melting point of 231, similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800 BC. By the Middle Bronze Age, increasing numbers of smelted iron objects appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC. Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of iron production in around 1200 BC. Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC, diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of objects was fast. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during this time, more widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger, and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently. Increasingly, the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India, ancient Iran, and ancient Greece. In other regions of Europe, the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe, the Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age, during the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, particularly alloys which were produced with a carbon content between approximately 0. 30% and 1. 2% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were nearly the same weight as those of bronze, however, steel was difficult to produce with the methods available, and alloys that were easier to make, such as wrought iron, were more common in lower-priced goods
8.
Ancient Greek technology
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Ancient Greek technology developed during the 5th century BC, continuing up to and including the Roman period, and beyond. Many of these inventions occurred late in the Greek period, often inspired by the need to improve weapons, however, peaceful uses are shown by their early development of the watermill, a device which pointed to further exploitation on a large scale under the Romans. They developed surveying and mathematics to a state, and many of their technical advances were published by philosophers, like Archimedes. The Greeks developed extensive silver mines at Laurium, the profits from which helped support the growth of Athens as a city-state and it involved mining the ore in underground galleries, washing it and smelting it to produce the metal. Elaborate washing tables still exist at the site, which used rain water held in cisterns, mining also helped to create currency by the conversion of the metal into coinage. The failure of the Greeks to develop their technology has sometimes been attributed to the low status of providing labor. Manual labor was despised, and anyone applying science to it was likely to lose status in society, a sophisticated tunnel built for an aqueduct in the 6th century BC by the engineer Eupalinos at Samos has led to some reevaluation of the skills of the Greeks
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Roman technology
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Roman technology is the engineering practice which supported Roman civilization and made the expansion of Roman commerce and Roman military possible for over a millennium. The Romans achieved high levels of technology in large part because they borrowed technologies from the Greeks, Etruscans, Celts, all technology uses energy to transform the material into a desirable object or uses some form of mechanics combined with another form to make something better. The cheaper energy is, the wider the class of technologies that are considered economic and this is why technological history can be seen as a succession of ages defined by energy type i. e. human, animal, water, peat, coal, and oil. The Romans used water power, and watermills were common throughout the Empire and they were used for cereals milling, sawing timber and crushing ore. They exploited wood and coal for heating, there were huge reserves of wood, peat and coal in the Roman Empire, but they were all in the wrong place. Wood could be floated down rivers to the urban centres but otherwise it was a very poor fuel. If this was improved by being processed into charcoal, it was bulky, nor was wood ever available in any concentration. Diocletians Price Edict can give us a glimpse of the economics of transporting wood, the maximum price of a wagon load of 1,200 lbs of wood was 150 d. The maximum freight charge per mile for the wagon load was 20 d. per mile. Room heating was better done by charcoal braziers than hypocausts. But hypocausts did allow them to exploit any poor-quality smoky fuels like straw, vine prunings, hypocausts also allowed them to generate a humid heat for their baths. The Romans worked almost all the coalfields of England that outcropped on the surface, but there is no evidence that this exploitation was on any scale. After c.200 AD the commercial heart of the Empire was in Africa, there was no large coalfield on the edge of the Mediterranean. However, the aeolipile was an engine, inefficient as a stationary engine. The first useful steam engine did not use steam pressure at all, Roman technology was largely based on a system of crafts, although the term engineering is used today to describe the technical feats of the Romans. The Greek words used were mechanic or machine-maker or even mathematician which had a wider meaning than now. There were a number of engineers employed by the army. The most famous engineer of this period was the Greek Apollodorus of Damascus, normally each trade, each group of artisans—stonemasons, glass blowers, surveyors, etc
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Medieval technology
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Medieval technology refers to the technology used in medieval Europe under Christian rule. The development of water mills from their ancient origins was impressive, by the time of the Domesday Book, most large villages had turnable mills, around 6,500 in England alone. Water-power was also used in mining for raising ore from shafts, crushing ore. Often, the revolutionary aspect lay not in the act of invention itself, also significant in this respect were advances in maritime technology. Advances in shipbuilding included the ships with lateen sails, the sternpost-mounted rudder. The technical drawings of late-medieval artist-engineers Guido da Vigevano and Villard de Honnecourt can be viewed as forerunners of later Renaissance works such as Taccola or da Vinci, the following is a list of some important medieval technologies. The approximate date or first mention of a technology in medieval Europe is given, technologies were often a matter of cultural exchange and date and place of first inventions are not listed here. Heavy plough The heavy plough with a mouldboard appears in the 5th century in Slavic lands, it was introduced into Northern Italy. Essential in the efficient use of the rich, heavy, often wet soils of Northern Europe, its use allowed the areas forests, hops Added to beer, its importance lay primarily in its ability to preserve beer and improve transportability for trade. Horse collar Multiple evolutions from classical harness, to breast strap harness to horse collar, allowed more horse pulling power, horseshoes Allowed horses to adapt to non-grassland terrains in Europe and carry heavier loads. Possibly known to the Romans and Celts as early as 50 BC, wine press The first practical means of applying pressure on a plane surface. The principle later used for the printing press, artesian well A thin rod with a hard iron cutting edge is placed in the bore hole and repeatedly struck with a hammer, underground water pressure forces the water up the hole without pumping. Artesian wells are named after the town of Artois in France, in Reichenau Abbey a network of interconnected underfloor channels heated the 300 m2 large assembly room of the monks during the winter months. The degree of efficiency of the system has been calculated at 90%, rib vault An essential element for the rise of Gothic architecture, rib vaults allowed vaults to be built for the first time over rectangles of unequal lengths. It also greatly facilitated scaffolding and largely replaced the older groin vault, chimney The earliest true chimneys appeared in Northern Europe during the 12th century, and with them came the first true fireplaces. Segmental arch bridge The Ponte Vecchio in Florence is considered medieval Europes first stone arch bridge. Apart from tread-drums, windlasses and occasionally cranks were employed for powering cranes, Stationary harbour crane Stationary harbour cranes are considered a new development of the Middle Ages, its earliest use being documented for Utrecht in 1244. The typical harbour crane was a pivoting structure equipped with double treadwheels, there were two types, wooden gantry cranes pivoting on a central vertical axle and stone tower cranes which housed the windlass and treadwheels with only the jib arm and roof rotating
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Renaissance technology
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Renaissance technology is the set of European artifacts and customs which span the Renaissance period, roughly the 14th century through the 16th century. The era is marked by profound technical advancements such as the press, linear perspective in drawing, patent law, doubl. Sketchbooks from artisans of the give an deep insight into the mechanical phones then known. Renaissance science spawned the Scientific Revolution, science and technology began a cycle of mutual advancement, early evidence of such machines appears, among other things, in the works of the 15th-century engineers Anonymous of the Hussite Wars and Taccola. The Printing Revolution which it sparks throughout Europe works as an agent of change in the transformation of medieval society. The mechanical device consists of a screw press modified for printing purposes which can produce 3,600 pages per workday, by the start of the 16th century, printing presses are operating in over 200 cities in a dozen European countries, producing more than twenty million volumes. By 1600, their output had risen tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies, the prized incunables, which are testimony to the aesthetic taste and high proficient competence of Renaissance book printers, are one lasting legacy of the 15th century. Parachute The earliest known parachute design appears in a manuscript from 1470s Renaissance Italy. As a safety measure, four straps run from the ends of the rods to a waist belt. Around 1485, an advanced parachute was sketched by the polymath Leonardo da Vinci in his Codex Atlanticus. Leonardos canopy was open by a square wooden frame, altering the shape of the parachute from conical to pyramidal. The Venetian inventor Fausto Veranzio modifies da Vincis parachute sketch by keeping the square frame and this he realized decelerates the fall more effectively. Claims that Veranzio successfully tested his design in 1617 by jumping from a tower in Venice cannot be substantiated, since he was around 65 years old at the time. Dry dock While dry docks were already known in Hellenistic shipbuilding, these facilities were reintroduced in 1495/96, floating dock The earliest known description of a floating dock comes from a small Italian book printed in Venice in 1560, titled Descrittione dellartifitiosa machina. In the booklet, an unknown author asks for the privilege of using a new method for the salvaging of a ship and then proceeds to describe. The included woodcut shows a ship flanked by two large floating trestles, forming a roof above the vessel, the ship is pulled in an upright position by a number of ropes attached to the superstructure. Lifting tower A lifting tower was used to great effect by Domenico Fontana to relocate the monolithic Vatican obelisk in Rome and its weight of 361 t was far greater than any of the blocks the Romans are known to have lifted by cranes. Newspaper The newspaper is an offspring of the press from which the press derives its name
12.
Industrial Revolution
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The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and most of the important technological innovations were British, aided by these legal and cultural foundations, an entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution drove industrialisation in Britain, which would be emulated in countries around the world. A change in marrying patterns to getting married later made able to accumulate more human capital during their youth. The Industrial Revolution marks a turning point in history, almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth, mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium, and later in France. Since then industrialisation has spread throughout much of the world, the precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants. The term Industrial Revolution applied to change was becoming more common by the late 1830s. Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of an industrial revolution, however, although Engels wrote in the 1840s, his book was not translated into English until the late 1800s, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts, have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians, the commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s the following gains had been made in important technologies, Textiles – mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or water greatly increased the output of a worker, the power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50, large gains in productivity also occurred in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton. Steam power – the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel, the adaptation of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure engine had a power to weight ratio. Steam power underwent an expansion after 1800. Iron making – the substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost for pig iron, using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760 and it was later improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures
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Second Industrial Revolution
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The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid industrialization in the final third of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The First Industrial Revolution, which ended in the early to mid 1800s, was punctuated by a slowdown in macroinventions before the Second Industrial Revolution in 1870. The enormous expansion of rail and telegraph lines after 1870 allowed unprecedented movement of people and ideas, in the same period new systems were introduced, most significantly electrical power and telephones. The Second Industrial Revolution continued into the 20th century with early factory electrification and the production line, and ended at the start of the First World War. The Second Industrial Revolution was a period of industrial development, primarily in Britain, Germany and the United States, but also in France. It followed on from the First Industrial Revolution that began in Britain in the late 18th century that then spread throughout Western Europe and it also was the period during which modern organizational methods for operating large scale businesses over vast areas came into use. However, some continue to express reservations about its use, Vaclav Smil called the period 1867–1914 The Age of Synergy during which most of the great innovations were developed. Unlike the First Industrial Revolution, the inventions and innovations were engineering, a synergy between iron and steel, railroads and coal developed at the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution. Railroads allowed cheap transportation of materials and products, which in turn led to cheap rails to build more roads, railroads also benefited from cheap coal for their steam locomotives. This synergy led to the laying of 75,000 miles of track in the U. S. in the 1880s, falling costs for producing wrought iron coincided with the emergence of the railway in the 1830s. The early technique of hot blast used iron for the heating medium. Iron caused problems with expansion and contraction, which stressed the iron, Edward Alfred Cowper developed the Cowper stove in 1857. This stove used firebrick as a medium, solving the expansion. The Cowper stove was also capable of producing heat, which resulted in very high throughput of blast furnaces. The Cowper stove is used in todays blast furnaces. With the greatly reduced cost of producing pig iron with coke using hot blast, demand grew dramatically, the Bessemer process greatly reduced the cost, allowing the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The key principle was the removal of carbon and other impurities from the iron by oxidation with air blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the mass and keeps it molten
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Atomic Age
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The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, Trinity, on July 16,1945, during World War II. Since 1973, reactor orders declined sharply as electricity demand fell, many orders and partially completed plants were cancelled. In 1901, Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford discovered that radioactivity was part of the process by which atoms changed from one kind to another, involving the release of energy. ”The promise of an age, ” with nuclear energy as the global. But Soddy also saw that atomic energy could possibly be used to create new weapons. The concept of a chain reaction was hypothesized in 1933. Only a few later, in December 1938 nuclear fission was discovered by Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann. The first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place in December 1942 under the leadership of Enrico Fermi, in 1945, the pocketbook The Atomic Age heralded the untapped atomic power in everyday objects and depicted a future where fossil fuels would go unused. One science writer, David Dietz, wrote that instead of filling the gas tank of your car two or three times a week, you travel for a year on a pellet of atomic energy the size of a vitamin pill. The phrase Atomic Age was coined by William L. Laurence and he witnessed both the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki and went on to write a series of articles extolling the virtues of the new weapon. The Soviet Union would go on to test its first nuclear weapon in 1949, the phrase gained popularity as a feeling of nuclear optimism emerged in the 1950s in which it was believed that all power generators in the future would be atomic in nature. The atomic bomb would render all conventional explosives obsolete and nuclear plants would do the same for power sources such as coal. This use would render the Atomic Age as significant a step in progress as the first smelting of Bronze, of Iron. This included even cars, leading Ford to display the Ford Nucleon concept car to the public in 1958, there was also the promise of golf balls which could always be found and nuclear-powered aircraft, which the US federal government even spent US $1.5 billion researching. As soon as someone said – in an even mildly credible way – that these things could be done, the reality was that the Shippingport reactor went online in 1957 producing electricity at a cost roughly ten times that of coal-fired generation. Scientists at the AECs own Brookhaven Laboratory wrote a 1958 report describing accident scenarios in which 3,000 people would die immediately, fear of possible atomic attack from the Soviet Union caused U. S. school children to participate in duck and cover civil defense drills. In the late 1950s, there was a north of Las Vegas. At the peak of the Atomic Age, the United States government initiated Operation Plowshare, other proposals involved blasting underground caverns for water, natural gas, and petroleum storage. It was proposed to plant underground atomic bombs to extract shale oil in eastern Utah, serious consideration was also given to using these explosives for various mining operations
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Space Age
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The Space Age is a time period encompassing the activities related to the Space Race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events. The Space Age is generally considered to have begun with Sputnik, the Space Age began with the development of several technologies that culminated on October 4,1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. This was the worlds first artificial satellite, orbiting the Earth in 98.1 minutes, the launch of Sputnik 1 ushered a new era of political, scientific and technological achievements that became known as the Space Age. The Space Age was characterized by development of new technology in a close race mostly between the US and the Soviet Union. Rapid advances were made in rocketry, materials science, computers, much of the technology originally developed for space applications has been spun off and found additional uses. The Space Age reached its peak with the Apollo program, that captured the imagination of much of the worlds population, the landing of Apollo 11 was watched by over 500 million people around the world and is widely recognized as one of the defining moments of the 20th century. Since then, public attention has moved to other areas. During the 1990s funding for space related programs fell sharply as the structures of the Soviet Union disintegrated. Since then participation in space launches has increasingly widened to more governments, since the 1990s, space exploration and space-related technologies gained a perception by many people of being commonplace. Several countries now have space programs, from related technology ventures to full-fledged space programs with launch facilities, there are many scientific and commercial satellites in use today, with thousands of satellites in orbit, and several countries have plans to send humans into space. The Space Age might also be considered to have much earlier than October 4,1957, because in June 1944. Since the aforementioned V-2 rocket flight was undertaken in secrecy, it was not public knowledge for years afterward. Having a rocket powerful enough to reach orbit meant that a nation had the ability to place a payload anywhere on the planet, or to use another term, possessed an inter-continental ballistic missile. The fact that such a development nowhere on the planet was safe from a nuclear warhead is why the orbit standard is used to define when the space age started. The Space Age is considered to have influenced, Automotive design Amusement park attraction including TWA Moonliner, cold War playground equipment Space Chronology 50th Anniversary of the Space Age & Sputnik, NASA
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Digital Revolution
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Implicitly, the term also refers to the sweeping changes brought about by digital computing and communication technology during the latter half of the 20th century. Analogous to the Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution marked the beginning of the Information Age. Central to this revolution is the production and widespread use of digital logic circuits, and its derived technologies, including the computer, digital cellular phone. The motor of this incessant force of destruction is technological change. Each one of those so-called long waves has been characterized by a period of social modernization. The Agricultural Revolution led to cities in the ancient world in the Middle East, Mesoamerica, China. Then the Industrial Revolution led to cities in the 19th century such as Manchester, Newcastle Upon Tyne. In the 20th century the rise of the economy caused people to leave the industrial cities. In the late 1980s, less than 1% of the worlds technologically stored information was in digital format, while it was 94% in 2007, the year 2002 is estimated to be the year when human kind was able to store more information in digital, than in analog format. It is estimated that the capacity to store information has increased from 2.6 exabytes in 1986. Digital communication became economical for widespread adoption after the invention of the personal computer, claude Shannon, a Bell Labs mathematician, is credited for having laid out the foundations of digitalization in his pioneering 1948 article, A Mathematical Theory of Communication. The digital revolution converted technology that had been analog into a digital format, by doing this, it became possible to make copies that were identical to the original. In digital communications, for example, repeating hardware was able to amplify the digital signal, of equal importance to the revolution was the ability to easily move the digital information between media, and to access or distribute it remotely. The turning point of the revolution was the change from analogue to digitally recorded music, during the 1980s the digital format of optical compact discs gradually replaced analog formats, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes, as the popular medium of choice. In 1947 the transistor was invented, leading the way to more advanced digital computers, in the 1950s and 1960s the military, governments and other organizations had computer systems. From 1969 to 1971, Intel developed the Intel 4004, a microprocessor that laid the foundations for the microcomputer revolution that began in the 1970s. The public was first introduced to the concepts that would lead to the Internet when a message was sent over the ARPANET in 1969. Packet switched networks such as ARPANET, Mark I, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, the ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined together into a network of networks
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Information Age
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The onset of the Information Age is associated with the Digital Revolution, just as the Industrial Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age. The Information Age formed by capitalizing on computer microminiaturization advances, library expansion was calculated in 1945 by Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years, if sufficient space were made available. He advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with miniaturized microform analog photographs and he did not foresee the digital technology that would follow decades later to replace analog microform with digital imaging, storage, and transmission media. Automated, potentially lossless digital technologies allowed vast increases in the rapidity of information growth, moores law, which was formulated around 1965, calculated that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. Connectivity between computers within companies led to the ability of workers at different levels to access greater amounts of information. The worlds technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000 and it is estimated that the worlds capacity to store information has reached 5 zettabytes in 2014. This is the equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from the earth to the sun. In the 1990s, the spread of the Internet caused a sudden leap in access to, technology was developing so quickly that a computer costing $3000 in 1997 would cost $2000 two years later and $1000 the following year. In terms of capacity, there are two measures of importance, the number of operations a system can perform and the amount of information that can be stored, the number of synaptic operations per second in a human brain has been estimated to lie between 10^15 and 10^17. While this number is impressive, even in 2007 humanitys general-purpose computers were capable of performing well over 10^18 instructions per second, estimates suggest that the storage capacity of an individual human brain is about 10^12 bytes. On a per capita basis, this is matched by current digital storage, eventually, Information and Communication Technology—computers, computerized machinery, fiber optics, communication satellites, Internet, and other ICT tools—became a significant part of the economy. Microcomputers were developed and many businesses and industries were changed by ICT. Nicholas Negroponte captured the essence of these changes in his 1995 book and his book discusses similarities and differences between products made of atoms and products made of bits. In essence, a copy of a made of bits can be made cheaply and quickly. The Information Age has affected the workforce in several ways and it has created a situation in which workers who perform easily automated tasks are forced to find work that is not easily automated. Workers are also being forced to compete in a job market. Lastly, workers are being replaced by computers that can do their jobs faster and this poses problems for workers in industrial societies, which are still to be solved. However, solutions that involve lowering the time are usually highly resisted
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Ancient Egyptian technology
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Ancient Egyptian technology describes devices and technologies invented or used in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians invented and used many simple machines, such as the ramp and they used rope trusses to stiffen the beam of ships. Egyptian paper, made from papyrus, and pottery were mass-produced and exported throughout the Mediterranean basin, the wheel was used for a number of purposes, but chariots only came into use after the Second Intermediate period. The Egyptians also played an important role in developing Mediterranean maritime technology including ships, significant advances in ancient Egypt during the dynastic period include astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Their geometry was a outgrowth of surveying to preserve the layout and ownership of farmland. The 3,4,5 right triangle and other rules of thumb served to represent rectilinear structures, Egypt also was a center of alchemy research for much of the western world. The word paper comes from the Greek term for the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus, Papyrus was produced as early as 3000 BC in Egypt, and sold to ancient Greece and Rome. The establishment of the Library of Alexandria limited the supply of papyrus for others, as a result, according to the Roman historian Pliny, parchment was invented under the patronage of Eumenes II of Pergamon to build his rival library at Pergamon. This however is a myth, parchment had been in use in Anatolia, Egyptian hieroglyphs, a phonetic writing system, served as the basis for the Phoenician alphabet from which later alphabets were derived. With this ability, writing and record keeping, the Egyptians developed one of the —if not the— first decimal system, the city of Alexandria retained preeminence for its records and scrolls with its library. That ancient library was damaged by fire when it fell under Roman rule, with it, a huge amount of antique literature, history, and knowledge was lost. Some of the tools used in the construction of Egyptian housing included reeds. According to Lucas and Harris, “reeds were plastered with clay in order to out of heat. Other tools that were used were limestone, chiseled stones, wooden mallets, with these tools, ancient Egyptians were able to create more than just housing, but also sculptures of their gods, goddesses, pyramids, etc. Many temples from Ancient Egypt are not standing today, some are in ruin from wear and tear, while others have been lost entirely. The Egyptian structures are among the largest constructions ever conceived and built by humans and they constitute one of the most potent and enduring symbols of Ancient Egyptian civilization. Temples and tombs built by a famous for her projects, Hatshepsut, were massive. Pharaoh Tutankamuns rock-cut tomb in the Valley of the Kings was full of jewellery, in some late myths, Ptah was identified as the primordial mound and had called creation into being, he was considered the deity of craftsmen, and in particular, of stone-based crafts
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History of science and technology in Africa
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The Great Rift Valley of Africa provides critical evidence for the evolution of early hominins. Homo habilis, residing in eastern Africa, developed another early toolmaking industry, homo erectus developed the Acheulean stone tool industry, specifically hand-axes, at 1.5 million years ago. This tool industry spread to the Middle East and Europe around 800,000 to 600,000 years ago, homo erectus also begins using fire. Homo sapiens, or modern humans, created bone tools and backed blades around 90,000 to 60,000 years ago, the use of bone tools and backed blades eventually became characteristic of Later Stone Age tool industries. The first appearance of art is during the Middle Stone Age. The oldest abstract art in the world is a shell necklace dated to 82,000 years ago from the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco. The second oldest abstract art and the oldest rock art is found at Blombos Cave in South Africa, social sciences in Africa, including education, have a long history. In 295 BC, the Library of Alexandria was founded in Egypt and it was considered the largest library in the classical world. Al-Azhar University, founded in 970~972 as a madrasa, is the centre of Arabic literature. The oldest degree-granting university in Egypt after the Cairo University, its establishment date may be considered 1961 when non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum. Three philosophical schools in Mali existed during the golden age from the 12th to the 16th centuries, University of Sankore, Sidi Yahya University. By the end of Mansa Musas reign in Mali, the Sankoré University had been converted into a fully staffed University with the largest collections of books in Africa since the Library of Alexandria. The Sankoré University was capable of housing 25,000 students and had one of the largest libraries in the world with roughly 1000,000 manuscripts, Timbuktu was a major center of book copying, religious groups, the sciences, and arts. Scholars and students came throughout world to study in its university and it attracted more foreign students than New York University. Three types of calendars can be found in Africa, lunar, solar, most African calendars are a combination of the three. A stone circle located in the Nabta Playa basin may be one of the worlds oldest known archeoastronomical devices, built by the ancient Nubians about 4800 BCE, the device may have approximately marked the summer solstice. Ancient Egyptians may have observed, for example, the positions of two stars in the Plough / Big Dipper which was known to Egyptians as the thigh. It is thought that an alignment between these two stars checked with a plumb bob was used to ascertain where North lay
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History of science and technology in China
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Among the earliest inventions were the abacus, the shadow clock, and the first items such as Kongming lanterns. The Tang Dynasty in particular, was a time of great innovation, a good deal of exchange occurred between Western and Chinese discoveries up to the Qing Dynasty. In the 19th and 20th century the introduction of Western technology was a factor in the modernization of China. Much of the early Western work in the history of science in China was done by Joseph Needham, the Warring States period began 2500 years ago at the time of the invention of the crossbow. Needham notes that the invention of the crossbow far outstripped the progress in defensive armor, at this time, there were also many nascent schools of thought in China — the Hundred Schools of Thought, scattered among many polities. The schools served as communities which advised the rulers of these states, mo Di introduced concepts useful to one of those rulers, such as defensive fortification. One of these concepts, fa was extended by the School of Names, the development of a school of logic was cut short by the defeat of Mohisms political sponsors by the Qin Dynasty, and the subsumption of fa as law rather than method by the Legalists. You conquered the empire on horseback, but from horseback you will never succeed in ruling it, derived from Taoist philosophy, one of the newest longstanding contributions of the ancient Chinese are in Traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture and herbal medicine. These claims, however, are disputed and rely on much supposition. The Book of Silk was the first definitive atlas of comets and it listed 29 comets that appeared over a period of about 300 years, with renderings of comets describing an event its appearance corresponded to. In architecture, the pinnacle of Chinese technology manifested itself in the Great Wall of China, typical Chinese architecture changed little from the succeeding Han Dynasty until the 19th century. The Qin Dynasty also developed the crossbow, which became the mainstream weapon in Europe. Several remains of crossbows have been found among the soldiers of the Terracotta Army in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the Eastern Han Dynasty scholar and astronomer Zhang Heng invented the first water-powered rotating armillary sphere, and catalogued 2500 stars and over 100 constellations. In 132, he invented the first seismological detector, called the Houfeng Didong Yi, according to the History of Later Han Dynasty, this seismograph was an urn-like instrument, which would drop one of eight balls to indicate when and in which direction an earthquake had occurred. On June 13,2005, Chinese seismologists announced that they had created a replica of the instrument, the mechanical engineer Ma Jun was another impressive figure from ancient China. However, Ma Juns most impressive invention was the south-pointing chariot and it incorporated the use of a differential gear in order to apply equal amount of torque to wheels rotating at different speeds, a device that is found in all modern automobiles. Sliding calipers were invented in China almost 2,000 years ago, the Chinese civilization was the earliest civilization to experiment successfully with aviation, with the kite and Kongming lantern being the first flying machines. The Four Great Inventions are the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing, paper and printing were developed first
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Maya civilization
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The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. The Archaic period, prior to 2000 BC, saw the first developments in agriculture, the first Maya cities developed around 750 BC, and by 500 BC these cities possessed monumental architecture, including large temples with elaborate stucco façades. Hieroglyphic writing was being used in the Maya region by the 3rd century BC, in the Late Preclassic a number of large cities developed in the Petén Basin, and Kaminaljuyu rose to prominence in the Guatemalan Highlands. Beginning around 250 AD, the Classic period is defined as when the Maya were raising sculpted monuments with Long Count dates. This period saw the Maya civilization develop a number of city-states linked by a complex trade network. In the Maya Lowlands two great rivals, Tikal and Calakmul, became powerful, the Classic period also saw the intrusive intervention of the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan in Maya dynastic politics. In the 9th century, there was a political collapse in the central Maya region, resulting in internecine warfare, the abandonment of cities. The Postclassic period saw the rise of Chichen Itza in the north, in the 16th century, the Spanish Empire colonized the Mesoamerican region, and a lengthy series of campaigns saw the fall of Nojpetén, the last Maya city in 1697. Classic period rule was centred on the concept of the divine king, kingship was patrilineal, and power would normally pass to the eldest son. A prospective king was expected to be a successful war leader. Maya politics was dominated by a system of patronage, although the exact political make-up of a kingdom varied from city-state to city-state. By the Late Classic, the aristocracy had greatly increased, resulting in the reduction in the exclusive power of the divine king. Maya cities tended to expand haphazardly, and the city centre would be occupied by ceremonial and administrative complexes, different parts of a city would often be linked by causeways. The principal architecture of the city consisted of palaces, pyramid-temples, ceremonial ballcourts, the Maya elite were literate, and developed a complex system of hieroglyphic writing that was the most advanced in the pre-Columbian Americas. The Maya recorded their history and ritual knowledge in screenfold books, there are also a great many examples of Maya text found on stelae and ceramics. The Maya developed a complex series of interlocking ritual calendars. As a part of their religion, the Maya practised human sacrifice, the Maya civilization developed within the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers a region that spreads from northern Mexico southwards into Central America. Mesoamerica was one of six cradles of civilization worldwide, the Mesoamerican area gave rise to a series of cultural developments that included complex societies, agriculture, cities, monumental architecture, writing, and calendrical systems
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Inventions in medieval Islam
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Such innovations are listed below, in chronological order. 8th century Tin-glazing, The tin-glazing of ceramics was an imitation of white Chinese stoneware by local Islamic potters in 8th-century Basra, the first examples of this technique can be found as blue-painted ware in 8th-century Basra. The oldest fragments found to-date were excavated from the palace of Samarra about 80 kilometres north of Baghdad, 9th century Lusterware, Lustre decoration was invented during Roman and Coptic Egypt during the centuries preceding the rise of Islam. Lustre glazes were applied to pottery in Mesopotamia in the 9th century, earlier uses of lustre are known. Frequency analysis in cryptology, the first known recorded explanation of cryptanalysis was given by Al-Kindi and this treatise includes the first description of the method of frequency analysis. 10th century Vertical-axle windmill, A small wind wheel operating an organ is described as early as the 1st century AD by Hero of Alexandria, the first vertical-axle windmills were eventually built in Sistan, Persia as described by Muslim geographers. These windmills had long vertical driveshafts with rectangle shaped blades and they may have been constructed as early as the time of the second Rashidun caliph Umar, though some argue that this account may have been a 10th-century amendment. Made of six to twelve sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind grains and draw up water, horizontal axle windmills of the type generally used today, however, were developed in Northwestern Europe in the 1180s. 11th century Mercuric chloride, used to disinfect wounds, elemental mercury was known to the ancient Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Hindus before Arabs. 12th century Bridge mill, The bridge mill was a type of watermill that was built as part of the superstructure of a bridge. The earliest record of a mill is from Córdoba, Spain in the 12th century. Hybrid trebuchet, The term Al-Ghadban was applied to the hybrid trebuchet, though the usage of the term was not consistent, the first record of a counterweight trebuchet was in the 12th century from Mardi ibn Ali al-Tarsusi while talking of the conquests of Saladin. 13th century Rocket technology was adopted from China in the 13th century,1275, Hasan al-Rammah described. an egg which moves itself and burns. Fritware, It refers to a type of pottery which was first developed in the Near East, beginning in the late 1st millennium, for which frit was a significant ingredient. A recipe for fritware dating to c.1300 AD written by Abu’l Qasim reports that the ratio of quartz to frit-glass to white clay is 10,1,1 and this type of pottery has also been referred to as stonepaste and faience among other names. A 9th-century corpus of proto-stonepaste from Baghdad has relict glass fragments in its fabric, hispano-Moresque ware was distinguished from the pottery of Christendom by the Islamic character of its decoration. 15th century Coffee, The ancestors of todays Oromo people in a region of Kaffa in Ethiopia were believed to have been the first to recognize the energizing effect of the coffee plant and it was in Yemen that coffee beans were first roasted and brewed as they are today. From Mocha, coffee spread to Egypt and North Africa, and by the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia and Turkey
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History of agriculture
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The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 20,000 BC. From around 9,500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans, pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, followed by sheep between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey. Sugarcane and some vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7,000 BC. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 5,000 BC, in the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 8,000 and 5,000 BC, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. Bananas were cultivated and hybridized in the period in Papua New Guinea. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was domesticated to maize by 4,000 BC, cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3,000 BC, irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers were introduced soon after the Neolithic Revolution and developed much further in the past 200 years, starting with the British Agricultural Revolution. The Haber-Bosch process allowed the synthesis of nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale. Modern agriculture has raised social, political, and environmental issues including pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs. In response, organic farming developed in the century as a consciously pesticide-free alternative. Scholars have developed a number of hypotheses to explain the origins of agriculture. Current models indicate that wild stands that had been harvested previously started to be planted, localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant. When major climate change took place after the last ice age and these conditions favoured annual plants which die off in the long dry season, leaving a dormant seed or tuber. An abundance of readily storable wild grains and pulses enabled hunter-gatherers in some areas to form the first settled villages at this time, early people began altering communities of flora and fauna for their own benefit through means such as fire-stick farming and forest gardening very early
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History of biotechnology
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Biotechnology is the application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents to provide goods and services. From its inception, biotechnology has maintained a relationship with society. Although now most often associated with the development of drugs, historically biotechnology has been associated with food, addressing such issues as malnutrition. The history of biotechnology begins with zymotechnology, which commenced with a focus on brewing techniques for beer, by World War I, however, zymotechnology would expand to tackle larger industrial issues, and the potential of industrial fermentation gave rise to biotechnology. However, both the protein and gasohol projects failed to progress due to varying issues including public resistance, a changing economic scene. These debates gained exposure in 1975 at the Asilomar Conference, where Joshua Lederberg was the most outspoken supporter for this field in biotechnology. By as early as 1978, with the development of human insulin, Lederbergs claims would prove valid. Each new scientific advance became an event designed to capture public support. The field of genetic engineering remains a topic of discussion in todays society with the advent of gene therapy, stem cell research, cloning. While it seems only natural nowadays to link pharmaceutical drugs as solutions to health and societal problems, Biotechnology arose from the field of zymotechnology or zymurgy, which began as a search for a better understanding of industrial fermentation, particularly beer. Beer was an important industrial, and not just social, commodity, in late 19th-century Germany, brewing contributed as much to the gross national product as steel, and taxes on alcohol proved to be significant sources of revenue to the government. In the 1860s, institutes and remunerative consultancies were dedicated to the technology of brewing, the most famous was the private Carlsberg Institute, founded in 1875, which employed Emil Christian Hansen, who pioneered the pure yeast process for the reliable production of consistent beer. Less well known were private consultancies that advised the brewing industry, one of these, the Zymotechnic Institute, was established in Chicago by the German-born chemist John Ewald Siebel. The heyday and expansion of zymotechnology came in World War I in response to needs to support the war. Max Delbrück grew yeast on an immense scale during the war to meet 60 percent of Germanys animal feed needs, compounds of another fermentation product, lactic acid, made up for a lack of hydraulic fluid, glycerol. On the Allied side the Russian chemist Chaim Weizmann used starch to eliminate Britains shortage of acetone, the industrial potential of fermentation was outgrowing its traditional home in brewing, and zymotechnology soon gave way to biotechnology. With food shortages spreading and resources fading, some dreamed of a new industrial solution, the Hungarian Károly Ereky coined the word biotechnology in Hungary during 1919 to describe a technology based on converting raw materials into a more useful product. He built a slaughterhouse for a thousand pigs and also a farm with space for 50,000 pigs
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History of communication
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Since prehistoric times, significant changes in communication technologies have evolved in tandem with shifts in political and economic systems, and by extension, systems of power. Communication can range from very subtle processes of exchange, to full conversations, Human communication was revolutionized with Origin of language|speech approximately 500,000 years ago. Symbols were developed about 30,000 years ago, all of those inventions were based on the key concept of the symbol. The oldest known symbols created for the purpose of communication were cave paintings, the oldest known cave painting is located within Chauvet Cave, dated to around 30,000 BC. These paintings contained increasing amounts of information, people may have created the first calendar as far back as 15,000 years ago. The connection between drawing and writing is shown by linguistics, in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece the concepts and words of drawing and writing were one. The next advancement in the history of communications came with the production of petroglyphs and it took about 20,000 years for homo sapiens to move from the first cave paintings to the first petroglyphs, which are dated to around 10, 000BC. A pictogram is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, pictography is a form of proto-writing whereby ideas are transmitted through drawing. They were the basis of cuneiform and hieroglyphs, and began to develop into logographic writing systems around 5000 BC, pictograms, in turn, evolved into ideograms, graphical symbols that represent an idea. Ideograms, on the hand, could convey more abstract concepts. Because some ideas are universal, many different cultures developed similar ideograms, for example, an eye with a tear means sadness in Native American ideograms in California, as it does for the Aztecs, the early Chinese and the Egyptians. Ideograms were precursors of writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs. Examples of ideographical proto-writing systems, thought not to contain information, include the Vinca script. In both cases there are claims of decipherment of linguistic content, without wide acceptance, the oldest-known forms of writing were primarily logographic in nature, based on pictographic and ideographic elements. The earliest known form of writing is called futhark, the invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary in with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4000 BC. The first writing system is believed to have been invented in pre-historic Sumer. The original Sumerian writing system was derived from a system of clay used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts and this was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted
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History of computing hardware
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The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers. Before the 20th century, most calculations were done by humans, early mechanical tools to help humans with digital calculations, such as the abacus, were called calculating machines, by proprietary names, or even as they are now, calculators. The machine operator was called the computer, later, computers represented numbers in a continuous form, for instance distance along a scale, rotation of a shaft, or a voltage. Numbers could also be represented in the form of digits, automatically manipulated by a mechanical mechanism, although this approach generally required more complex mechanisms, it greatly increased the precision of results. A series of breakthroughs, such as miniaturized transistor computers, the cost of computers gradually became so low that by the 1990s, personal computers, and then, in the 2000s, mobile computers, became ubiquitous in industrialized countries. Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, the earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick. Later record keeping throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains. The use of counting rods is one example, the abacus was early used for arithmetic tasks. What we now call the Roman abacus was used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC, since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, several analog computers were constructed in ancient and medieval times to perform astronomical calculations. These include the Antikythera mechanism and the astrolabe from ancient Greece, hero of Alexandria made many complex mechanical devices including automata and a programmable cart. Ramon Llull invented the Lullian Circle, a machine for calculating answers to philosophical questions via logical combinatorics. This idea was taken up by Leibniz centuries later, and is one of the founding elements in computing. While producing the first logarithmic tables, Napier needed to perform many tedious multiplications and it was at this point that he designed his Napiers bones, an abacus-like device that greatly simplified calculations that involved multiplication and division. Edmund Gunter built a device with a single logarithmic scale at the University of Oxford. His device greatly simplified arithmetic calculations, including multiplication and division, William Oughtred greatly improved this in 1630 with his circular slide rule. He followed this up with the slide rule in 1632. Slide rules were used by generations of engineers and other mathematically involved professional workers, Wilhelm Schickard, a German polymath, designed a calculating machine in 1623 which combined a mechanised form of Napiers rods with the worlds first mechanical adding machine built into the base
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Electrical engineering
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Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. This field first became an occupation in the later half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone. Subsequently, broadcasting and recording media made electronics part of daily life, the invention of the transistor, and later the integrated circuit, brought down the cost of electronics to the point they can be used in almost any household object. Electrical engineers typically hold a degree in engineering or electronic engineering. Practicing engineers may have professional certification and be members of a professional body, such bodies include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Electrical engineers work in a wide range of industries and the skills required are likewise variable. These range from basic circuit theory to the management skills required of a project manager, the tools and equipment that an individual engineer may need are similarly variable, ranging from a simple voltmeter to a top end analyzer to sophisticated design and manufacturing software. Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early 17th century and he also designed the versorium, a device that detected the presence of statically charged objects. In the 19th century, research into the subject started to intensify, Electrical engineering became a profession in the later 19th century. Practitioners had created an electric telegraph network and the first professional electrical engineering institutions were founded in the UK. Over 50 years later, he joined the new Society of Telegraph Engineers where he was regarded by other members as the first of their cohort, Practical applications and advances in such fields created an increasing need for standardised units of measure. They led to the standardization of the units volt, ampere, coulomb, ohm, farad. This was achieved at a conference in Chicago in 1893. During these years, the study of electricity was considered to be a subfield of physics. Thats because early electrical technology was electromechanical in nature, the Technische Universität Darmstadt founded the worlds first department of electrical engineering in 1882. The first course in engineering was taught in 1883 in Cornell’s Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering. It was not until about 1885 that Cornell President Andrew Dickson White established the first Department of Electrical Engineering in the United States, in the same year, University College London founded the first chair of electrical engineering in Great Britain. Professor Mendell P. Weinbach at University of Missouri soon followed suit by establishing the engineering department in 1886
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Manufacturing
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Manufacturing is the value added to production of merchandise for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation. Manufacturing engineering or manufacturing process are the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product, the manufacturing process begins with the product design, and materials specification from which the product is made. These materials are modified through manufacturing processes to become the required part. Manufacturing takes turns under all types of economic systems, in a free market economy, manufacturing is usually directed toward the mass production of products for sale to consumers at a profit. In a collectivist economy, manufacturing is more directed by the state to supply a centrally planned economy. In mixed market economies, manufacturing occurs under some degree of government regulation, modern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes required the production and integration of a products components. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term fabrication instead, the manufacturing sector is closely connected with engineering and industrial design. Examples of major manufacturers in North America include General Motors Corporation, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, General Dynamics, Boeing, Pfizer, examples in Europe include Volkswagen Group, Siemens, and Michelin. Examples in Asia include Sony, Huawei, Lenovo, Toyota, Samsung, in its earliest form, manufacturing was usually carried out by a single skilled artisan with assistants. In much of the world, the guild system protected the privileges. Before the Industrial Revolution, most manufacturing occurred in rural areas, entrepreneurs organized a number of manufacturing households into a single enterprise through the putting-out system. Toll manufacturing is an arrangement whereby a first firm with specialized equipment processes raw materials or semi-finished goods for a second firm, manufacturing provides important material support for national infrastructure and for national defense. On the other hand, most manufacturing may involve significant social and environmental costs, the clean-up costs of hazardous waste, for example, may outweigh the benefits of a product that creates it. Hazardous materials may expose workers to health risks and these costs are now well known and there is effort to address them by improving efficiency, reducing waste, using industrial symbiosis, and eliminating harmful chemicals. The negative costs of manufacturing can also be addressed legally, developed countries regulate manufacturing activity with labor laws and environmental laws. Across the globe, manufacturers can be subject to regulations and pollution taxes to offset the costs of manufacturing activities. Labor unions and craft guilds have played a role in the negotiation of worker rights. Environment laws and labor protections that are available in developed nations may not be available in the third world, tort law and product liability impose additional costs on manufacturing
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History of materials science
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The history of materials science is the study of how different materials were used as influenced by the history of Earth and the culture of the peoples of the Earth. In many cases different cultures leave their materials as the records which anthropologists can use to define the existence of such cultures. The progressive use of more sophisticated materials allows archeologists to characterize and this is partially due to the major material of use in a culture and to its associated benefits and drawbacks. Stone-Age cultures were limited by which rocks they could find locally, the use of flint around 300,000 BCE is sometimes considered the beginning of the use of ceramics. The use of polished stone axes marks a significant advance because a wider variety of rocks could serve as tools. The innovation of smelting and casting metals in the Bronze Age started to change the way that cultures developed and interacted with each other. Starting around 5500 BCE, early smiths began to re-shape native metals of copper and gold - without the use of fire - for tools, the heating of copper and its shaping with hammers began around 5000 BCE. Melting and casting started around 4000 BCE, Metallurgy had its dawn with the reduction of copper from its ore around 3500 BCE. The first alloy, bronze came into use around 3000 BCE, iron-working came into prominence from about 1200 BCE. In the 10th century BCE glass production began in ancient Near East, in the 3rd century BCE people in ancient India developed wootz steel, the first crucible steel. In the 1st century BCE glassblowing techniques flourished in Phoenicia, in the 2nd century CE steel-making became widespread in Han Dynasty China. The 4th century CE saw the production of the Iron pillar of Delhi, wood, bone, stone, and earth are some of the materials which formed the structures of the Roman empire. That is one of the reasons that the concrete Pantheon of Rome could last for 1850 years, and why the thatched farmhouses of Holland sketched by Rembrandt have long since decayed. Thus the medieval goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini could seek and defend the gold which he had to turn objects of desire for dukes and popes. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini contains one of the first descriptions of a metallurgical process, in the 8th century, porcelain is invented in Tang Dynasty China, and the tin-glazing of ceramics is invented by Arabic chemists and potters in Basra, Iraq. In the 9th century, stonepaste ceramics were invented in Iraq, in the 11th century, Damascus steel is developed in the Middle East. In the 15th century, Johann Gutenberg develops type metal alloy and Angelo Barovier invents cristallo, in the 17th century, Galileos Two New Sciences includes the first quantitative statements in the science of materials. In the early part of the 20th century, most engineering schools had a department of metallurgy, much effort was expended on consideration of the austenite-martensite-cementite phases found in the iron-carbon phase diagram that underlies steel production
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History of measurement
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As civilization developed, so too did the need for units of measurement. These were required for tasks such as, constructing dwellings of an appropriate size and shape, fashioning clothing. Weights and measures from the oldest societies can often be inferred at least in part from archaeological specimens, the comparison of the dimensions of buildings with the descriptions of contemporary writers is another source of information. In some cases, we have only plausible theories and we must sometimes select the interpretation to be given to the evidence. By studying the evidence given by all sources, and by correlating the relevant facts, we obtain some idea of the origin. We find that they have changed more or less gradually with the passing of time in a complex manner because of a variety of modifying influences. The system attributed to the Indus Valley Civilization is sometimes cited as particularly accurate, when it was necessary to compare the capacities of containers such as gourds or clay or metal vessels, they were filled with plant seeds which were then counted to measure the volumes. When means for weighing were invented, seeds and stones served as standards, for instance, the carat, still used as a unit for gems, was derived from the carob seed. The units of used in ancient India included the dhanus, the krosa. The common cubit was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. It was divided into the span of the hand or the length between the tip of little finger to the tip of the thumb, the palm or width of the hand, and the digit or width of the middle finger. The Royal Cubit, which was a standard cubit enhanced by an extra palm—thus 7 palms or 28 digits long—was used in constructing buildings and monuments, the inch, foot, and yard evolved from these units through a complicated transformation not yet fully understood. Some believe they evolved from cubic measures, others believe they were simple proportions or multiples of the cubit, in whichever case, the Greeks and Romans inherited the foot from the Egyptians. The Roman foot was divided into both 12 unciae and 16 digits, the Romans also introduced the mille passus or double steps, the pace being equal to five Roman feet. The Roman mile of 5000 feet was introduced into England during the occupation, queen Elizabeth I changed, by statute, the mile to 5280 feet or 8 furlongs, a furlong being 40 rod s of 5.5 yards each. The introduction of the yard as a unit of length came later, some believe the origin was the double cubit, others believe that it originated from cubic measure. Whatever its origin, the yard was divided by the binary method into 2,4,8, and 16 parts called the half-yard, span, finger. There were also Rods, Poles and Perches for measurements of length, the following table lists the equivalents
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History of medicine
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The history of medicine, as practiced by trained professionals, shows how societies have changed in their approach to illness and disease from ancient times to the present. Early medical traditions include those of Babylon, China, Egypt, Greece, Rest of Africa, the Greeks introduced the concepts of medical diagnosis, prognosis, and advanced medical ethics. The Hippocratic Oath, still taken by doctors up to today, was written in Greece in the 5th century BCE, in the medieval age, surgical practices inherited from the ancient masters were improved and then systematized in Rogeriuss The Practice of Surgery. Universities began systematic training of physicians around the years 1220 in Italy, during the Renaissance, understanding of anatomy improved, and the microscope was invented. The germ theory of disease in the 19th century led to cures for many infectious diseases, military doctors advanced the methods of trauma treatment and surgery. Public health measures were developed especially in the 19th century as the growth of cities required systematic sanitary measures. Advanced research centers opened in the early 20th century, often connected with major hospitals, the mid-20th century was characterized by new biological treatments, such as antibiotics. These advancements, along with developments in chemistry, genetics, Medicine was heavily professionalized in the 20th century, and new careers opened to women as nurses and as physicians. The 21st century is characterized by highly advanced research involving numerous fields of science, although there is no record to establish when plants were first used for medicinal purposes, the use of plants as healing agents, as well as clays and soils is ancient. Over time through emulation of the behavior of fauna a medicinal knowledge base developed and passed between generations, as tribal culture specialized specific castes, shamans and apothecaries fulfilled the role of healer. The first known dentistry dates to about 7,000 B. C. E. in Baluchistan, the first known trepanning operation was carried out about 5,000 B. C. E. in Ensisheim, France. The earliest known surgery, an amputation was carried out about 4,900 B. C. E. in Buthiers-Bulancourt, Ancient Egypt developed a large, varied and fruitful medical tradition. Herodotus described the Egyptians as the healthiest of all men, next to the Libyans, because of the dry climate, according to him, the practice of medicine is so specialized among them that each physician is a healer of one disease and no more. Although Egyptian medicine, to an extent, dealt with the supernatural, it eventually developed a practical use in the fields of anatomy, public health. Medical information in the Edwin Smith Papyrus may date to a time as early as 3000 BC, the Edwin Smith Papyrus is regarded as a copy of several earlier works and was written c.1600 BC. It is an ancient textbook on surgery almost completely devoid of magical thinking and describes in detail the examination, diagnosis, treatment. The Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus treats womens complaints, including problems with conception, thirty four cases detailing diagnosis and treatment survive, some of them fragmentarily. Dating to 1800 BCE, it is the oldest surviving text of any kind
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Nuclear technology
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Nuclear technology is technology that involves the reactions of atomic nuclei. Among the notable nuclear technologies are nuclear reactors, nuclear medicine and it is also used, among other things, in smoke detectors and gun sights. The vast majority of common, natural phenomena on Earth only involve gravity and electromagnetism and this is because atomic nuclei are generally kept apart because they contain positive electrical charges and therefore repel each other. In 1896, Henri Becquerel was investigating phosphorescence in uranium salts when he discovered a new phenomenon which came to be called radioactivity and he, Pierre Curie and Marie Curie began investigating the phenomenon. In the process, they isolated the element radium, which is highly radioactive and they discovered that radioactive materials produce intense, penetrating rays of three distinct sorts, which they labeled alpha, beta, and gamma after the Greek letters. Some of these kinds of radiation could pass through ordinary matter, all of the early researchers received various radiation burns, much like sunburn, and thought little of it. The new phenomenon of radioactivity was seized upon by the manufacturers of quack medicine, gradually it was realized that the radiation produced by radioactive decay was ionizing radiation, and that even quantities too small to burn could pose a severe long-term hazard. Many of the working on radioactivity died of cancer as a result of their exposure. Radioactive patent medicines mostly disappeared, but other applications of radioactive materials persisted, as the atom came to be better understood, the nature of radioactivity became clearer. Some larger atomic nuclei are unstable, and so decay after a random interval, the three forms of radiation that Becquerel and the Curies discovered are also more fully understood. Alpha decay is when a nucleus releases an alpha particle, which is two protons and two neutrons, equivalent to a helium nucleus, beta decay is the release of a beta particle, a high-energy electron. Gamma decay releases gamma rays, which unlike alpha and beta radiation are not matter but electromagnetic radiation of high frequency. This type of radiation is the most dangerous and most difficult to block, all three types of radiation occur naturally in certain elements. In natural nuclear radiation, the byproducts are very small compared to the nuclei from which they originate, Nuclear fission is the process of splitting a nucleus into roughly equal parts, and releasing energy and neutrons in the process. If these neutrons are captured by another unstable nucleus, they can fission as well, the average number of neutrons released per nucleus that go on to fission another nucleus is referred to as k. Values of k larger than 1 mean that the reaction is releasing more neutrons than it absorbs. A mass of fissile material large enough to induce a chain reaction is called a critical mass. When a neutron is captured by a nucleus, fission may occur immediately
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History of transport
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The history of transport is largely one of technological innovation. Advances in technology have allowed people to travel farther, explore more territory, even in ancient times, new tools such as foot coverings, skis, and snowshoes lengthened the distances that could be travelled. As new inventions and discoveries were applied to problems, travel time decreased while the ability to move more. Innovation continues as transport researchers are working to find new ways to reduce costs, the first earth tracks were created by humans carrying goods and often followed trails. Tracks would be created at points of high traffic density. As animals were domesticated, horses, oxen and donkeys became an element in track-creation, with the growth of trade, tracks were often flattened or widened to accommodate animal traffic. Later, the travois, a used to drag loads, was developed. Animal-drawn wheeled vehicles were developed in the Ancient Near East in the 4th or 5th millennium BC and spread to Europe and India in the 4th millennium BC. The Romans had a significant need for roads to extend and maintain their empire. The modern history of transport also involves the development of new vehicles such as new models of horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, motor cars, motor trucks. In the stone ages primitive boats developed to permit navigation of rivers and for fishing in rivers and it has been argued that boats suitable for a significant sea crossing were necessary for people to reach Australia an estimated 40, 000-45,000 years ago. With the development of civilization, vessels evolved for expansion and generally grew in size for trade, in the Mediterranean, galleys were developed about 3000 BC. In the Industrial Revolution, the first steamboats and later diesel-powered ships were developed, eventually submarines were developed mainly for military purposes for peoples general benefit. Meanwhile, specialised craft were developed for river and canal transport, canals were developed in Mesopotamia c.4000 BC. The Indus Valley Civilization in Pakistan and North India had the first canal irrigation system in the world, the longest canal of ancient times was the Grand Canal of China. Iss 1,794 kilometers long and was built to carry the Emperor Yang Guang between Beijing and Hangzhou. The project began in 605, although the oldest sections of the canal may have existed since c.486 BC, canals were developed in the Middle Ages in Europe in Venice and the Netherlands. Pierre-Paul Riquet began to organise the construction of the 240 km-long Canal du Midi in France in 1665, in the Industrial Revolution, inland canals were built in England and later the United States before the development of railways. The history of rail transportation dates back nearly 500 years, and includes systems with man or horse power and this was usually for moving coal from the mine down to a river, from where it could continue by boat, with a flanged wheel running on a rail
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Timeline of historic inventions
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The timeline of historic inventions is a chronological list of particularly important or significant technological inventions and the people who created the inventions. Note, Dates for inventions are often controversial, where there is ambiguity, the date of the first known working version of the invention is used here. The dates listed here refer to the earliest known evidence of an invention, Dates are often approximate and may change as more research is completed. Older examples of any given technology may arise in the future, the locations listed are for the site where the earliest solid evidence has been found, but in most cases there is little certainty how close that may be to where the invention took place. 2.6 million years ago, Stone tools in Ethiopia, earliest finds are typically with Australopithecus garhi 2.3 Ma, Earliest likely control of fire and cooking, by Homo habilis 1. The earliest actual piece of cloth was found in Çatalhöyük, Turkey 37 ka, Mortar. 515 BC, Crane in Ancient Greece 6th century BC, A wagonway called Diolkos across the Isthmus of Corinth in Ancient Greece. 5th century BC, Crossbow in Ancient China and Ancient Greece, In Ancient China, in Ancient Greece, the terminus ante quem of the gastraphetes is 421 BC. 5th–4th century BC, Traction trebuchet in Ancient China, appeared in the Mediterranean by the 6th century AD. Before 421 BC, Catapult in Ancient Greece or Phoenician Carthage c.480 BC, Spiral stairs in Selinunte, Sicily 400 BC Mirror in Lebanon 4th century BC, approximately 350 BC, Greek hydraulic semaphore system, an optical communication system developed by Aeneas Tacticus. 1st century BC, Glass blowing discovered on the Lebanese coast, 1st century BC, Segmental arch bridge in Italy, Roman Republic 1st century BC, Arch dam in Gallia Narbonensis, Roman Republic 150 BC Astrolabe invented in the Hellenistic world. 118 AD, Wheelbarrow was found in a tomb at Chengdu, Sichuan province during Han Dynasty China 132, Seismometer in Han Dynasty China, 2nd century, Crankshaft in Augusta Raurica, Roman Empire 2nd century, Negative numbers in Han Dynasty China. 2nd century, Law school in Beirut, Roman Empire Early 3rd century and this made China become the world first print culture. 4th century, Fishing reel in Ancient China, In literary records,347 AD, Oil Wells and Borehole drilling in China. The stirrup appeared to be in use across China by AD477. The earliest depiction of it is a Dunhuang cave mural from the Chinese Northern Wei Dynasty,589 AD, Toilet paper in Sui Dynasty China, first mentioned by the official Yan Zhitui, with full evidence of continual use in subsequent dynasties. However, the historicity and exact chronology of this account is dubious, 7th century, Banknote in Tang Dynasty China, The banknote is first developed in China during the Tang and Song dynasties, starting in the 7th century. Its roots are in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang Dynasty, as merchants,725 AD, Mechanical clock in Tang Dynasty China by Yi Xing and Liang Lingzan
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Outline of prehistoric technology
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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to prehistoric technology. Prehistoric technology – technology that predates recorded history, History is the study of the past using written records, it is also the record itself. Anything prior to the first written accounts of history is prehistoric, including earlier technologies. About 2.5 million years before writing was developed, technology began with the earliest hominids who used tools, which they may have used to start fires, hunt, cut food. Prehistoric technology can be described as, Prehistoric – before we had written records, from the Latin word for before, prehistory is the span of time before recorded history, that is, before the invention of writing systems. Beginning of prehistoric technology – the earliest technology began before recorded history, latest prehistoric technology – the level of technology reached before true writing was introduced differed by region. Latest prehistoric technology in the Near East – cultures in the Near East achieved the development of writing first, latest prehistoric technology in the rest of the Old World, Europe, India, and China reached Iron Age technological development before the introduction of writing there. Stone Age – broad prehistoric period, lasting roughly 2.5 million years, during which stone was used in the manufacture of implements with a sharp edge. The period began with hominids and ended between 6000 and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking, Paleolithic – prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered, and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory. Lower Paleolithic – earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and it spans the time from around 2. Ancestors of homo sapiens used stone tools as follows, Homo habilis – first homo species and it lived from approximately 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago in Africa and created stone tools called Oldowan tools. Homo ergaster – in eastern and southern Africa about 2.5 to 1.7 million years ago, it refined Oldowan tools, Homo antecessor – earliest hominid in Northern Europe. It lived from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis – lived between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago and used stone tool technology similar to the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus. Control of fire by early humans – European and Asian sites dating back 1.5 million years ago seem to indicate controlled use of fire by H. erectus. A northern Israel site from about 690,000 to 790,000 years ago suggests that man could light fires, burial – the act of placing a deceased person into the ground. Homo heidelbergensis – may have been the first species to bury their dead about 500,000 years ago, Middle Paleolithic period – in Europe and the Near East during which the Neanderthals lived. Their technology is mainly the Mousterian, the earliest evidence of settlement in Australia dates to around 55,000 years ago when modern humans likely crossed from Asia by island-hopping. The Bhimbetka rock shelters exhibit the earliest traces of life in India
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Wheel
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A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle bearing. The wheel is one of the components of the wheel. Wheels, in conjunction with axles, allow heavy objects to be moved easily facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, wheels are also used for other purposes, such as a ships wheel, steering wheel, potters wheel and flywheel. Common examples are found in transport applications, a wheel greatly reduces friction by facilitating motion by rolling together with the use of axles. In order for wheels to rotate, a moment needs to be applied to the wheel about its axis, cognates within Indo-European include Icelandic hjól wheel, tyre, Greek κύκλος kúklos, and Sanskrit chakra, the latter both meaning circle or wheel. The invention of the falls into the late Neolithic. Note that this implies the passage of several wheel-less millennia even after the invention of agriculture and of pottery, precursors of wheels, known as tournettes or slow wheels, were known in the Middle East by the 5th millennium BCE. These were made of stone or clay and secured to the ground with a peg in the center, but required effort to turn. True potters wheels were apparently in use in Mesopotamia by 3500 BCE and possibly as early as 4000 BCE, and the oldest surviving example, which was found in Ur, dates to approximately 3100 BCE. The earliest well-dated depiction of a vehicle is on the Bronocice pot. The oldest securely dated real wheel-axle combination, that from Stare Gmajne near Ljubljana in Slovenia is now dated in 2σ-limits to 3340–3030 BCE, the axle to 3360–3045 BCE. Two types of early Neolithic European wheel and axle are known, a type of wagon construction. They both are dated to c, in China, the wheel was certainly present with the adoption of the chariot in c.1200 BCE, although Barbieri-Low argues for earlier Chinese wheeled vehicles, c.2000 BC. In Britain, a wooden wheel, measuring about 1 m in diameter, was uncovered at the Must Farm site in East Anglia in 2016. The specimen, dating from 1, 100–800 years BCE, represents the most complete, the wheels hub is also present. A horses spine found nearby suggests the wheel may have part of a horse-drawn cart. The wheel was found in a settlement built on stilts over wetland and it is thought that the primary obstacle to large-scale development of the wheel in the Americas was the absence of domesticated large animals which could be used to pull wheeled carriages. The only large animal that was domesticated in the Western hemisphere, Nubians from after about 400 BCE used wheels for spinning pottery and as water wheels
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Chariot
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A chariot is a type of carriage driven by a charioteer using primarily horses to provide rapid motive power. Chariots were used by armies as transport or mobile platforms, for hunting or for racing. The word chariot comes from the Latin carrus, itself a loanword from Gaulish, a chariot of war or one used in military parades was called a car. In ancient Rome and some other ancient Mediterranean civilizations, a required two horses, a triga three, and a quadriga four. The critical invention that allowed the construction of light, horse-drawn chariots was the spoked wheel, the earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca.2000 BCE. The use of chariots peaked around 1300 BCE, Chariots had lost their military importance by the 1st century CE, but chariot races continued to be popular in Constantinople until the 6th century. The domestication of the horse was an important step toward civilization, an increasing amount of evidence supports the hypothesis that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes approximately 4000-3500 BCE. The invention of the used in transportation most likely took place in Europe. Evidence of wheeled vehicles appears from the mid 4th millennium BCE near-simultaneously in the Northern Caucasus, the earliest vehicles may have been ox carts. Starokorsunskaya kurgan in the Kuban region of Russia contains a grave of the Maikop Culture. The two solid wooden wheels from this kurgan have been dated to the half of the fourth millennium. Soon thereafter the number of burials in this Northern Caucasus region multiplied. As David Anthony writes in his book The Horse, the Wheel and Language, in Eastern Europe and it is a clay pot excavated in a Funnelbeaker settlement in Swietokrzyskie Voivodeship in Poland. The oldest securely dated real wheel-axle combination in Eastern Europe is the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel, horses were introduced to Transcaucasia at the time of the Kura-Araxes culture, beginning about 3300 BCE. Prior to that, horse bones were not found, during the Kura-Araxes period, horses seem to become rather widespread, with signs of domestication. It is widely believed that wheeled transport was invented in Mesopotamia, nevertheless, recent archaeological evidence seems to indicate otherwise, pointing to Neolithic Europe. At the same time, in Mesopotamia, some intriguing early pictograms of a sled that rests on wooden rollers or wheels have been found and they date from about the same time as the early wheel discoveries in Europe and may indicate knowledge of the wheel. The earliest depiction of vehicles in the context of warfare is on the Standard of Ur in southern Mesopotamia, the hybrids were used by the Eblaite, early Sumerian, Akkadian and Ur III armies
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Invention
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An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process and it may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field, an inventor may be taking a big step in success or failure. A patent legally protects the property rights of the inventor. The rules and requirements for patenting an invention vary from country to country, another meaning of invention is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social behaviours adopted by people and passed on to others. The Institute for Social Inventions collected many such ideas in magazines, Invention is also an important component of artistic and design creativity. Inventions often extend the boundaries of knowledge, experience or capability. Brainstorming also can spark new ideas for an invention, collaborative creative processes are frequently used by engineers, designers, architects and scientists. Co-inventors are frequently named on patents, in addition, many inventors keep records of their working process - notebooks, photos, etc. including Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Evangelista Torricelli, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein. In the process of developing an invention, the idea may change. The invention may become simpler, more practical, it may expand, working on one invention can lead to others too. History shows that turning the concept of an invention into a device is not always swift or direct. Inventions may also more useful after time passes and other changes occur. For example, the became more useful once powered flight was a reality. Invention is often a creative process, an open and curious mind allows an inventor to see beyond what is known. Seeing a new possibility, connection, or relationship can spark an invention, inventive thinking frequently involves combining concepts or elements from different realms that would not normally be put together. Sometimes inventors disregard the boundaries between distinctly separate territories or fields, several concepts may be considered when thinking about invention
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Tool
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A tool is any physical item that can be used to achieve a goal, especially if the item is not consumed in the process. Tool use by humans dates back millions of years, and other animals are known to employ simple tools. Tools that are used in fields or activities may have different designations such as instrument, utensil, implement, machine, device. The set of tools needed to achieve a goal is equipment, the knowledge of constructing, obtaining and using tools is technology. Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind, because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were made of perishable materials such as sticks. Stone artifacts only date back to about 2.5 million years ago, however, a 2010 study suggests the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis ate meat by carving animal carcasses with stone implements. This finding pushes back the earliest known use of tools among hominins to about 3.4 million years ago. Finds of actual tools date back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia, one of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe. Up until recently, weapons found in digs were the tools of “early man” that were studied. Now, more tools are recognized as culturally and historically relevant, as well as hunting, other activities required tools such as preparing food, “…nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting and woodworking…” Included in this group are “flake stone tools. “Man the hunter” as the catalyst for Hominin change has been questioned, based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it is now more evident that pre-humans were scavenging off of other predators carcasses rather than killing their own food. Mechanical devices experienced an expansion in their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment of new energy sources. Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of windmills, machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the industrial revolution. Advocates of nanotechnology expect a similar surge as tools become microscopic in size, one can classify tools according to their basic functions, Cutting and edge tools, such as the knife, scythe or sickle, are wedge-shaped implements that produce a shearing force along a narrow face. Ideally, the edge of the needs to be harder than the material being cut or else the blade will become dulled with repeated use. But even resilient tools will require periodic sharpening, which is the process of removing deformation wear from the edge, other examples of cutting tools include gouges and drill bits. Moving tools move large and tiny items, many are levers which give the user a mechanical advantage
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History of the world
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The history of the world describes the history of humanity as determined by the study of archaeological and written records, beginning with the invention of writing. The latter period marked a change in history, as humans began the systematic husbandry of plants. Agriculture advanced, and most humans transitioned from a nomadic to a lifestyle as farmers in permanent settlements. As farming developed, grain agriculture became more sophisticated and prompted a division of labour to store food between growing seasons, labour divisions then led to the rise of a leisured upper class and the development of cities. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of writing and accounting, in the mid-15th century, the invention of modern printing, employing movable type, revolutionized communication, helping end the Middle Ages and ushering in the Scientific Revolution. By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology, outside the Old World, including ancient China and ancient India, historical timelines unfolded differently. However, by the 18th century, due to world trade and colonization. Genetic measurements indicate that the ape lineage which would lead to Homo sapiens diverged from the lineage that would lead to chimpanzees around six years ago. It is thought that the Australopithecine genus, which were likely the first apes to walk upright, anatomically modern humans arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago, and reached behavioural modernity about 50,000 years ago. Modern humans spread rapidly from Africa into the frost-free zones of Europe, the rapid expansion of humankind to North America and Oceania took place at the climax of the most recent ice age, when temperate regions of today were extremely inhospitable. Yet, humans had colonized nearly all the parts of the globe by the end of the Ice Age. Other hominids such as Homo erectus had been using simple wood and stone tools for millennia, at some point, humans began using fire for heat and cooking. They also developed language in the Palaeolithic period and a repertoire that included systematic burial of the dead. Early artistic expression can be found in the form of paintings and sculptures made from wood and bone, showing a spirituality generally interpreted as animism. During this period, all lived as hunter-gatherers, and were generally nomadic. The Neolithic Revolution, beginning about 8,000 BCE, saw the development of agriculture, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution. Farming permitted far denser populations, which in time organized into states, agriculture also created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production. The development of agriculture permitted the creation of the first cities and these were centres of trade, manufacturing and political power with nearly no agricultural production of their own
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Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
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Stone tool
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A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric, archaeologists often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use. Stone has been used to make a variety of different tools throughout history, including arrow heads, spearpoints. Stone tools may be made of ground stone or chipped stone. Chipped stone tools are made from materials such as chert or flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator, if the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once it has become too small to use. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper reduces the core to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform, more complex forms of reduction include the production of highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knives, sickles and microliths. Archaeologists classify stone tools into industries that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics and he assigned to them relative dates, Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic,3 to the Middle Palaeolithic,4 to the Advanced and 5 to the Mesolithic. They were not to be conceived, however, as either universal—that is, they did not account for all lithic technology, Mode 1, for example, was in use in Europe long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in Africa. Clarkes scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community, one of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology, for example, the Mode 1 / Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest, Kenya Stone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at Lake Turkana in Kenya, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, and predate the genus Homo by half million years. The oldest known Homo fossil is 2.8 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools. Dating of the tools was by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found, Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction, predominantly using core forms. The blunt end is the surface, the sharp, the distal. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter. The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, eventually, more complex, Mode 2 tools began to be developed through the Acheulean Industry, named after the site of Saint-Acheul in France
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Genetic engineering
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Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct manipulation of an organisms genome using biotechnology. It is a set of used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within. Genes may be removed, or knocked out, using a nuclease, gene targeting is a different technique that uses homologous recombination to change an endogenous gene, and can be used to delete a gene, remove exons, add a gene, or introduce point mutations. An organism that is generated through genetic engineering is considered to be a modified organism. The first GMOs were bacteria generated in 1973 and GM mice in 1974, insulin-producing bacteria were commercialized in 1982 and genetically modified food has been sold since 1994. GloFish, the first GMO designed as a pet, was first sold in the United States in December 2003, Genetic engineering techniques have been applied in numerous fields including research, agriculture, industrial biotechnology, and medicine. However the European Commission has also defined genetic engineering broadly as including selective breeding, cloning and stem cell research, although not considered genetic engineering, are closely related and genetic engineering can be used within them. Synthetic biology is a discipline that takes genetic engineering a step further by introducing artificially synthesized material from raw materials into an organism. If genetic material from another species is added to the host, if genetic material from the same species or a species that can naturally breed with the host is used the resulting organism is called cisgenic. Genetic engineering can also be used to remove material from the target organism. In Europe genetic modification is synonymous with genetic engineering while within the United States of America it can refer to conventional breeding methods. The Canadian regulatory system is based on whether a product has novel features regardless of method of origin, within the scientific community, the term genetic engineering is not commonly used, more specific terms such as transgenic are preferred. Plants, animals or micro organisms that have changed through genetic engineering are termed genetically modified organisms or GMOs, bacteria were the first organisms to be genetically modified. Plasmid DNA containing new genes can be inserted into the bacterial cell and these genes can code for medicines or enzymes that process food and other substrates. Plants have been modified for insect protection, herbicide resistance, virus resistance, enhanced nutrition, tolerance to environmental pressures, most commercialised GMOs are insect resistant and/or herbicide tolerant crop plants. Genetically modified animals have used for research, model animals. The genetically modified animals include animals with genes knocked out, increased susceptibility to disease, hormones for extra growth, humans have altered the genomes of species for thousands of years through selective breeding, or artificial selection as contrasted with natural selection, and more recently through mutagenesis. Genetic engineering as the manipulation of DNA by humans outside breeding
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Information technology
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Information technology is the application of computers to store, study, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data, or information, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. IT is considered a subset of information and communications technology, the term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several industries are associated with technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that the new technology not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology, based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development, pre-mechanical, mechanical, electromechanical, electronic. This article focuses on the most recent period, which began in about 1940, devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initially in the form of a tally stick. Electronic computers, using either relays or valves, began to appear in the early 1940s, the electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the worlds first programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered a complete computing machine. Colossus, developed during the Second World War to decrypt German messages was the first electronic digital computer, although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program in memory, programming was carried out using plugs, the first recognisably modern electronic digital stored-program computer was the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, which ran its first program on 21 June 1948. The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I, by comparison the first transistorised computer, developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version. Early electronic computers such as Colossus made use of punched tape, a strip of paper on which data was represented by a series of holes. IBM introduced the first hard drive in 1956, as a component of their 305 RAMAC computer system. Most digital data today is stored magnetically on hard disks. Until 2002 most information was stored on analog devices, but that year digital storage capacity exceeded analog for the first time. As of 2007 almost 94% of the data stored worldwide was held digitally, 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices and 11% on digital magnetic tape. It has been estimated that the capacity to store information on electronic devices grew from less than 3 exabytes in 1986 to 295 exabytes in 2007. Database management systems emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of storing and retrieving large amounts of data accurately and quickly, one of the earliest such systems was IBMs Information Management System, which is still widely deployed more than 50 years later
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Travel
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Travel can also include relatively short stays between successive movements. The origin of the travel is most likely lost to history. The term travel may originate from the Old French word travail, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the first known use of the word travel was in the 14th century. It also states that the word comes from Middle English travailen, travelen, in English we still occasionally use the words travail, which means struggle. According to Simon Winchester in his book The Best Travelers Tales and this link may reflect the extreme difficulty of travel in ancient times. Today, travel may or may not be much easier depending upon the destination you choose, how you plan to get there, theres a big difference between simply being a tourist and being a true world traveler, notes travel writer Michael Kasum. This is, however, a distinction as academic work on the cultures. Travel may occur by human-powered transport such as walking or bicycling, or with vehicles, such as transport, automobiles, trains. In some countries, non-local internal travel may require a passport, while international travel typically requires a passport. A trip may also be part of a round-trip, which is a type of travel whereby a person moves from one location to another. Once difficult, slow and dangerous, travel has tended to become easier, quicker, the evolution of technology such as horse tack and bullet trains has contributed to this trend. While travel in the Middle Ages offered hardships and challenges, it loomed large in the economy, pilgrimages involved streams of travellers both locally and internationally. Travel by water provided more comfort and speed than land-travel - at least until the advent of a network of railways in the 19th century. Airships and airplanes usurped much of the role of surface travel in the twentieth century. Authorities emphasize the importance of taking precautions to ensure travel safety, when traveling abroad, the odds favor a safe and incident-free trip, however, travelers can be subject to difficulties, crime and violence. Many countries do not recognize drivers licenses from other countries, however most countries accept international driving permits, automobile insurance policies issued in ones own country are often invalid in foreign countries, and it is often a requirement to obtain temporary auto insurance valid in the country being visited. It is also advisable to become oriented with the driving-rules and -regulations of destination countries, wearing a seat belt is highly advisable for safety reasons, many countries have penalties for violating seatbelt laws
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