"Everything that can be invented has been invented.".Charles H. Duell Charles H. Duell was the commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1899 and is famous for purportedly saying "Everything that can be invented has been invented." However this has been debunked as apocryphal by librarian Samuel Sass [1]. , 1899 That's a statement made not at the close of the twentieth century but of the nineteenth; and, even more incongruously, attributed to someone who should have known better: the commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents. But consider the vantage point from which he surveyed the technological scene. He was looking back on a century of change that had been like no other. At its start, the movement of people, goods, and information was stuck at the speed of the Greeks and Romans. Faster meant a faster horse. Then came the birth of the train, the steamship steamship, watercraft propelled by a steam engine or a steam turbine. Early Steam-powered Ships Marquis Claude de Jouffroy d'Abbans is generally credited with the first experimentally successful application of steam power to navigation; in 1783 his , and the telegraph, fundamentally altering the way people could move, consume, and communicate. What more could a civilization need? Who could have foreseen TV dinners, Pac-Man, or the laser printer? This century will close with no pronouncements of the limitation of human endeavor; after all, in the past 100 years, we've gone to the moon and begun to decipher our genes. The residents of our planet have reached what had been considered unreachable, and learned what had been considered unknowable un·know·a·ble adj. Impossible to know, especially being beyond the range of human experience or understanding: the unknowable mysteries of life. . Emboldened em·bold·en tr.v. em·bold·ened, em·bold·en·ing, em·bold·ens To foster boldness or courage in; encourage. See Synonyms at encourage. Adj. 1. by our achievements and certain of our potential, we refuse to be satisfied. Which brings to light the greatest miscalculation mis·cal·cu·late tr. & intr.v. mis·cal·cu·lat·ed, mis·cal·cu·lat·ing, mis·cal·cu·lates To count or estimate incorrectly. mis·cal of those who, a 100 years ago, imagined what our lives would be like. Those dreamy days of leisure, in which robots are working hard, have yet to materialize. Sure, such visions were the concoctions of science fiction writers, but they reflected a sense of infinite possibility, and a society moving ever closer to utopia. Yet most of us are only moving ever closer to answering our e-mail in a timely manner. The possibility of speed--of instantaneous communication, or information on anything and everything literally at our fingertips--has in turn created the demand for speed. So we're moving faster, working harder, under more pressure to produce. To progress. And finding it increasingly tough to do it all and still play plenty of computer solitaire solitaire or patience, any card game that can be played by one person. Solitaire is the American name; in England it is known as patience. There are probably more kinds of solitaire than all other card games together. . Relax? Maybe at the end of the next century. -- Seth Oltman Upfront The Last One Hundred Years 1900s 1901 The keypunch To punch holes in a punch card. Although punch cards are obsolete, some people still say "keys are punched" on a keyboard. is introduced 1902 "The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not for the near future, in spite of the many rumors to that effect." --Harper's Weekly 1910s 1911 Calculating, Tabulating, and Recording Co. is formed; will later become IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) 1919 Eccles and Jordan invent the flip-flop electronic switching circuit 1920s 1922 "The radio craze... will die out in time."--Thomas Edison 1929 Color television signals are successfully transmitted 1930s 1935 IBM introduces an electric typewriter 1938 Hewlett-Packard is formed in a garage in Palo Alto, CA 1940s 1943 "I think there is a world market for about five computers."--Thomas J. Watson, chairman of IBM 1945 The University of Pennsylvania's ENIAC ENIAC in full Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer Early electronic digital computer built in the U.S. in 1945 by J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly. is operational 1947 First transistor developed at bell Labs 1950s 1953 The IBM 650 becomes the first mass-produced computer 1959 Xerox introduces the first commercial copy machine 1960s 1963 Douglas Engelbart receives a patent on the mouse pointing device for computers 1967 IBM builds the first floppy disk 1969 Internet's birth: Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (networking) Advanced Research Projects Agency Network - (ARPANET) A pioneering longhaul wide area network funded by DARPA (when it was still called "ARPA"?). It became operational in 1968 and served as the basis for early networking research, as well as a central backbone during links host computers at various academic locations 1970s 1972 Nolan Bushnell's Pong (games) Pong - A computer game invented in 1972 by Atari's Nolan Bushnell. The game is a minimalist rendering of table tennis. Each of the two players are represented as a white slab, controllable by a knob, which deflects a bouncing ball. video game is a success; he founds Atari 1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak form Apple Computer 1977 "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp. 1980s 1981 "640K ought to be enough for anybody."--Bill Gates, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Microsoft 1984 Apple's "1984" commercial runs during the Super Bowl to introduce the Macintosh 1985 CD-ROMs are introduced for computer use 1990s 1990 Bell Labs develops a speech-driven robot, which understands and responds to conversational English 1990 Tim Berners-Lee writes the initial prototype for the World Wide Web 1993 Intel introduces the Pentium chip |
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