Morse sent the first telegraph: “What hath God wrought?”
The phrase, taken from the bible, was selected by the daughter of one of Morses friends.
New technology has connected us in many ways, making it easier to communicate and get around.
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Over the past 175 years, weve seen an array of emerging technologies.
Here are eleven of the most significant technological advances since 1844.
His first words were: Mr. Watson, come hereI want to see you.
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(Mr. Watson was his assistant.)
And now, of course, most of us carry a smartphone or cellphone every day.
The Television 1927
Before appointment TV and binge-watching, movie theaters were king.
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The first TV sets were black and white; then came color TVs and the ever-convenient remote control.
Personal computers didn’t take off in thepersonalsense until Apple introduced the Apple II line of computers in 1977.
They were sold at stores and included software that expanded what it could do beyond simple programming.
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The first spreadsheet, ViscCalc, was available on the Apple II line.
The personal computer we all know today exploded once IBM introduced the IBM PC in 1981.
Once businesses adopted it, the entire industry expanded to produce all the products we know and use today.
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Originally called Navstar GPS, the U.S. government owns it, and the U.S. Air Force operates it.
The Internet: ARPANET 1973
Its hard to imagine a computer without theinternet or the web.
The online grid shut down in 1990.
The World Wide Web (WWW) became popular in the mid-’90s, through services like AOL.
Its common for people to conflate the two terms.
Now, most of us use GPS in the form of digital maps like Google Maps.
ARPANET /Public domain
The Digital Camera 1990s
Technically, the first digital camera was invented by Kodak in the 1970s.
It took a while before the technology made its way into the ancestors of the products we use today.
Kodak introduced its first professional digital camera in 1991, but it was mounted on a Nikon film camera.
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Digital cameras are everywhere now, from security cameras to smartphones and laptop and desktop computers.
But we can thank Mosaic for giving us modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
So, whats next?
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It could be self-driving cars, robot assistants, or something we havent even thought of yet.
Programm: National Center for Supercomputing Applications/CC0
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