Electric Age
Radio, automobile, powered flight, antibiotics, plastic. The five-decade transition from "horses" to "moon landing prep".
Part of First
17 moments in this segment.
- — Radio Waves Generated. Heinrich Hertz generates and detects electromagnetic waves — confirming Maxwell's 1865 equations experimentally. Asked the use, Hertz replies "of no use whatsoever."
- — Cinema (Lumière Brothers). On December 28, 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière hold the first commercial film screening at the Salon Indien du Grand Café, Paris. 33 paying spectators, ten short films.
- — X-Ray. Wilhelm Röntgen accidentally discovers x-rays at the University of Würzburg — photographs his wife's hand showing her wedding ring on the skeleton. Medical diagnostics transformed within a decade.
- — Wireless Telegraphy. Guglielmo Marconi patents the first practical wireless telegraph. By 1901 he transmits "S" across the Atlantic. Radio communication becomes a global industry.
- — Radioactivity. Marie and Pierre Curie isolate polonium and radium from pitchblende, name the phenomenon "radioactivity". Marie wins two Nobel Prizes in different sciences.
- — Powered Flight (Wright Brothers). On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright flies 120 feet over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina — 12 seconds at 6.8 mph. Within six years, planes are crossing the English Channel.
- — Special Relativity. Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis — four papers including E=mc² and the photoelectric effect. He is 26, working in the Bern patent office.
- — First Radio Broadcast. Christmas Eve 1906: Reginald Fessenden broadcasts music and a Bible reading from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea hear human voices on their wireless receivers.
- — Model T (Mass-Production Automobile). Henry Ford's Model T begins production in Detroit. 1913 sees the introduction of the moving assembly line — Model T cost drops from $850 to $260 by 1925.
- — General Relativity. Einstein presents the field equations of gravity. The 1919 solar eclipse expedition confirms his prediction of light bending — overnight he becomes the most famous scientist in the world.
- — Insulin. Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin in Toronto. Within a year, diabetic patients who were dying within months of diagnosis are surviving for decades.
- — Television. John Logie Baird transmits the first recognisable human image — a 30-line mechanical scan from his Soho laboratory. Electronic TV catches up by 1936; mechanical TV is dead by 1940.
- — Penicillin. Alexander Fleming notices that Penicillium mold has killed bacterial colonies in a contaminated petri dish. Mass production by 1944 transforms wartime medicine; antibiotic era begins.
- — Jet Engine. Frank Whittle's Power Jets W.1 runs in Rugby; Hans von Ohain's parallel German design powers the Heinkel He 178 in 1939. Jet airliners are routine within 15 years.
- — First Nuclear Reactor (Chicago Pile-1). December 2, 1942: Enrico Fermi achieves the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under the stands of an unused football field at the University of Chicago.
- — ENIAC (First Programmable Electronic Computer). University of Pennsylvania, completed November 1945. 17,468 vacuum tubes, 30 tons, 1,800 sq ft of floor space. Calculated artillery firing tables for the US Army.
- — Atomic Bomb (Trinity Test). July 16, 1945: the first nuclear-weapon test, 200 miles south of Albuquerque. Oppenheimer reportedly thinks of the Bhagavad Gita. Three weeks later, Hiroshima.
