Yes, I know that I haven't been doing very good on the whole "three posts a week thing." In my defense, I had to do extensive research for this post to keep it accurate, and that took about a week. I also had school, and we just got back from a family vacation and I had forgotten to post this before we left, so I had it done in time, I just didn't get it posted. My apologies for making you wait.
Okay, so you're ten yeas old and you have a laptop, iPod, Facebook, and a Blackberry........................Dude, when I was your age I had one thing to play with
It was called, "OUTSIDE".
The actual definition of technology is:
You will notice that I underlined the second statement. Perhaps you have derived or assumed from such a bold display that this is the aspect of the definition that I wish to place the most emphasis on. If you have assumed this, you are indeed correct.
In other words, I'm going to write more about the second definition than I do about the first.
If I really wanted to go in deep on this, I could write a timeline of important inventions since the beginning of time, however I don't want to still be writing this post next month. Let's just cover some of the more recent technological advances, with a specific focus on technology that has majorly affected the American home-life.
I would suppose the best place to begin from here would be with the light bulb.
Believe it or not, Edison did not invent the first actual light bulb. There were at least twenty inventors before him who all created some form of electrical light or a similar device.
In 1802, Humphry Davy created the first incandescent light by passing the current through a thin strip of platinum. It was not bright enough nor did it last long enough to be practical, but it was the precedent behind the efforts of scores of experimenters over the next 75 years.
During the majority of the 19th century, other inventors would use various combinations of material to create lights, and several of these creations were even patented.
In addressing the question of who actually invented the incandescent lamp, there is a list of 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Swan (Who managed to create a working light a year before Edison, sadly it had a very short lifetime) and Edison. They conclude that Edison's version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve and a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable.
The next invention is going to be the telegraph, followed by his twin the telephone. What were their parents thinking when they named them?
The first form of telegraph, known as semaphore lines, or semaphore telegraphs date back to 1792 when they were invented by Claude Chappe. Semaphore lines were the mother of the telegraph. They were far faster than the current (for the year) methods of long distance postal services, but they were also expensive and less private than the telegraph lines which would eventually replace them. Semaphore lines were optical, employing the use of light beacons and sometimes smoke signals to send a message.
The first telegraph used for regular communication was the electromagnetic telegraph in 1833, built by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber.
However, the man in America who made the telegraph famous was Samuel Morse. His telegraph was also electrical and sent messages in a form of clicks. The length of the click determined whether it was a dot or a dash, and a certain pattern of dots and dashes were put to the alphabet in what is known as Morse Code. However, Morse was not the one who invented the code, instead it was his assistant, Alfred Vail.
And now for the telephone. I really don't know where to start here, since there are so many different inventors all creating the same thing at almost the exact same time.
The earliest version of the telephone that I can find, however, is the tin can or lovers phone in the late 1600s. Have any of you ever strung a string between two cups or cans? That's what I'm talking about here.
Credit for the invention of the actual electrical telephone is often disputed. Charles Bourseul, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray, among others, have all been credited with the invention of the telephone. However, the only one of these who was able to obtain a patent for his invention was Alexander Graham Bell. He is the one most often credited for the invention of the first practical electrical telephone.
Since the tin-can phones, the telephone has definitely come a long way. Once upon a time you had to be hooked up to wires and switch boards and the actual telephone was wall mounted and big. Very few people had them in their homes.
These days you can't walk down the street without seeing someone holding a phone to their ear, or typing out a text message. Most phones are now wireless, and only require your being in a certain location and an acceptable battery level to work. And they aren't limited to talk and text. You can surf the web, take pictures and video, use a GPS, play games, and so much more all on that one little box.
I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would think if he saw the phones of today.
I've done the light bulb, the telegraph and telephone, and even snuck in a bit about cell phones. I suppose the next thing to cover would be the radio.
The radio was a device that transmitted sound. Simply speaking, it was a telephone without the ability to respond. You could hear noise come out of one end, but you were not able to talk to the person on the other end.
Now, as for the inventor of the radio, that is the question. (Look up The Great Radio controversy people. No, not the song by the album by the rock band Tesla.) The actual work that led to the invention of the radio was started by Hans Christian Orsted, and continued through several other scientists. These investigations concluded with the development of the complete theory of electromagnetism by James Clerk Maxwell.
After this some people dabbled with wireless communication, and it is thought that the first EM (electromagnetic) transmission was performed by David Edward Hughes around 1880, however, the first actual systematic and unequivocal transmission of EM waves was done by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz and described in papers published in 1887 and 1890. Reginald A. Fessenden was the first man to send an audio signal by means of electromagnetic waves.
Since Orsted, Maxwell, Hughes, Hertz, and Fessenden, the radio has developed. Now it is completely wireless, compact, and portable. Some radios can fit in your pocket, while others are as big as some tables.
I would attempt to explain the components and how the radio actually works, but unfortunately I was not gifted in technology and all of that is above my learning level. I would fry my own brain just by reading about it.
What is one thing most American homes have? (No, not the telephone, I already covered that.)
The television, of course!
Pretty much everything that I've covered so far all leads up to the television. The light bulb is one of the reasons why we have electricity today, the telegraph and phone both involve sending signals over a distance, and the radio involves audio. The only thing we're missing is the big picture!
When was the television invented? Good question. Let's find out, shall we?
Ideas leading up to the television began in the 1870s, and took off from there. But the first actual television to produce moving pictures (audio wasn't available for a few years) was made by John Baird. That is, if television is defined as the live transmission of moving images, which he first achieved privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking, he had not yet achieved moving images. The scanner Baird used worked at only five images per second, which is below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion, usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.
Like the other inventions of its time, the television has come along way since its day of birth. These days, you don't even need a television to watch television. Many portable devices made in the late first and second decades (the only decades for this century) of the 21st century are capable of streaming or playing television shows and movies. Wonder what Baird and the other early inventors of all these devices would think of that?
You walk down the street and I guarantee that you will see someone with a phone, computer, or other portable device. Owning them has become the norm these days.
But once upon a time, these things didn't exist. Kids didn't come home from school, do their homework and plop down in front of a TV, or a game system. They didn't spend hours texting or IMing one another. You wanted to communicate, you wrote a letter. You wanted to see your relatives in a different state, you didn't hop on Skype, you actually went to see them.
Yes, technology is a big help to many people. Instead of it taking weeks to speak to family far away, it now only takes seconds to get a hold of them. Instead of hearing news months after it happens, you can hear it less than five seconds later. But I wonder what the world would be like today if we didn't have this technology.
I say this as I'm using my laptop to surf the web while writing this, and I'm listening to my iPod which is hooked up to my stereo, and have my nook hooked up charging. But really, think about it.
What would your life be like without technology? Just a thought.
