|
Continued from Science of the 19th Century 1900: Max Planck discovers that atoms can emit energy only in discrete amounts or "quanta" and that the energy of light is proportional to the frequency 1900: Ferdinand von Zeppelin builds the first rigid dirigible 1900: Sigmund Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" 1901: Guglielmo Marconi conducts the first transatlantic radio transmission (for the first time humans can send sounds to any place on Earth without any wires) 1902: Willis Carrier invents the air conditioner 1902: Clarence McClung discovers the sex chromosomes 1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first airplane 1903: Valdemar Poulsen invents an arc transmitter for radio broadcasts 1903: Albert Einstein discovers that light is a stream of finite "photons" 1903: William Bayliss and Ernest Starling discover that hormones are chemical messengers 1904: John Fleming uses a diode to detect radio signals 1905: Albert Einstein publishes "The Special Theory of Relativity" 1905: Albert Einstein explains that the photoelectric effect is due to the fact that light is made of packets ("photons") 1906: William Bateson names a new discipline, "Genetics" 1906: Robert von Lieben invents the triode, the "vacuum tube" (birth of electronics) 1907: Lee DeForest creates the first electronic amplifier 1907: Leo Baekeland invents "bakelite", the first entirely synthetic plastic 1908: Jacques Brandenberger invents cellophane 1911: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity 1911: General Electric introduces the first commercial refrigerator 1911: Ernest Rutherford discovers that the atom is made of a nucleus and orbiting electrons 1911: Edward Thorndike founds "connectionism" to explain how the mind learns 1912: Alfred Wegener discovers the continental drift 1912: Max Wertheimer founds Gestalt Psychology 1913: Ford installs the first assembly line 1913: John Watson founds Behaviorism 1913: Niels Bohr proves that electrons are permitted to occupy only some orbits around the nucleus of the atom 1915: Albert Einstein publishes "The Theory of General Relativity" 1916: Karl Schwarzschild predicts the existence of black holes 1917: Wolfgang Koehler studies problem solving in chimpanzees 1918: Ronald Fisher founds Population Genetics 1919: Theodor Kaluza adds a fifth dimension to General Relativity 1920: David Hilbert sets out a program to axiomatize mathematics 1921: Edward Sapir formulates the "principle of linguistic relativity" that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers think 1923: Jean Piaget formulates the theory that the mind grows just like the body grows 1923: Arthur Holly Compton performs an experiment (the "Compton Effect") demonstrating that light cannot be only a wave but must also be made of particles 1924: Louis DeBroglie discovers that matter is both particles and waves 1924: Alexander Oparin formulates the theory of the "primordial soup" to explain the beginning of life 1924: Hans Berger records electrical waves from the human brain, the first electroencephalograms 1925: Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein discover a condensate that exhibits macroscopic quantum phenomena 1925: Wolfgang Pauli discovers that some particles (the "fermions") can never occupy the same state at the same time 1926: Erwin Schrodinger's equation of Quantum Mechanics 1926: Oskar Klein proposes a fourth spatial dimension that is undetectable because it is the size of the Planck length 1926: Films with synchronized voice and music are introduced (talking movies) 1926: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket 1926: Max Born introduces the probability density function in Quantum Mechanics 1927: First vaccines for tuberculosis and tetanus 1927: Philo Farnsworth invents the television 1927: Werner Heisenberg discovers the uncertainty principle 1927: Louis de Broglie discovers a "hidden-variables" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics 1927: Fritz London introduces the first successful gauge theory (phase invariance of electromagnetism) 1928: Paul Dirac discovers antimatter 1928: Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin 1928: Umberto Nobile's dirigible flies over the North Pole 1929: Edwin Hubble discovers that the universe is expanding 1930: Karl Lashley discovers that functions are not localized but distributed around the brain 1930: Wolfgang Pauli derives theoretically the existence of the neutrino, a particle that does not interact with ordinary matter 1931: Kurt Goedel's theorem of incompleteness 1932: Fredrick Bartlett formulates the theory of Reconstructive Memory 1933: Edwin Armstrong invents FM radio 1933: Ernst Ruska builds an electron microscope that exceeds the resolution attainable with an optical microscope 1935: Wallace Carothers invents nylon 1935: Robert Watson-Watt builds the first RADAR 1935: AEG introduces the first magnetic tape recorder 1935: Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen discover an apparent paradox of Quantum Mechanics (the EPR paradox) 1935: Arthur George Tansley introduces the concept of the "ecosystem" 1936: Technetium, the first human-made element 1936: Alan Turing's Universal Machine 1936: Heinrich Focke flies the first helicopter 1937: Chester Carlson invents the photocopier 1938: Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassman and Lise Meitner demonstrate nuclear fission 1939: Niels Bohr and John Wheeler describe the mechanism of nuclear fission 1943: Enrico Fermi achieves a nuclear reaction 1943: Tommy Flowers and others build the Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer 1944: Oswald Avery discovers that genes are made of DNA 1945: Howard Florey and Ernst Chain develop the first antibiotics 1945: John Von Neumann designs a computer that holds its own instructions, the "stored-program architecture" 1945: The first atomic bombs are exploded by the USA 1947: John Bardeen and William Shockley invent the transistor 1947: Edwin Land invents Polaroid, the first instant camera 1947: Norman Wiener's Cybernetics 1947: Dennis Gabor invents the hologram 1948: Claude Shannon's Theory of Information 1948: Georgiy Gamow develops the Big Bang theory 1950: James-Jerome Gibson argues that biological systems pick up information from the environment 1951: Carl Djerassi and others invent the oral contraceptive pill 1951: Nathaniel Kleitman identifies Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep 1952: David Bohm's "pilot-wave" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics 1953: Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double helix of the DNA 1953: Taiichi Ohno invents "lean manufacturing" (or "just-in-time" manufacturing) 1954: George Devol designs the first industrial robot, Unimate 1954: The first transistor radio ("Regency") 1955: John McCarthy's Artificial intelligence 1955: Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine 1955: Niels Jerne proposes a natural-selection theory of antibody formation 1956: Charles Ginsburg builds the first practical videotape recorder 1956: The first flying car, the Aerocar, is certified in the USA 1957: Frank Rosenblatt conceives the "Perceptron", the first artificial neural network 1957: The Soviet Union tests the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) 1957: John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer provide a theory explaining superconductivity 1957: Hugh Everett introduces an interpretation of Quantum Mechanics without uncertainties, the multiverse 1957: Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar 1957: the Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite, the Sputnik, mostly designed by Sergei Korolev 1958: Boeing introduces the long-distance jet 1958: Jack Kilby invents the integrated circuit 1958: Jim Backus invents the Fortran programming language, the first machine-independent language 1959: Eveready (later renamed Energizer) introduces the alkaline battery 1959: Min Chueh Chang invents in-vitro fertilization 1960: Theodore Maiman demonstrates the first working LASER 1960: Wernher von Braun spearheads development of NASA's Mercury and Apollo space programs 1961: Charles Bachman develops the first database management system 1961: Fernando Corbato builds the first time-sharing system that allows users to remotely access a computer 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut 1961: Marshall Nirenberg cracks the genetic code 1961: Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob discover gene regulation 1962: Telstar, the first telecommunication satellite 1962: Roger Sperry studies the "split brain" and discovers that the two hemispheres are specialized in different tasks 1962: The first Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) takes place with, among others, Frank Drake and Carl Sagan 1962: Michel Jouvet discovers that REM sleep is generated in the brain stem 1963: Murray Gell-mann's theory of quarks, Quantum Chromodynamics 1963: The touch-tone phone 1963: Douglas Engelbart builds the first "mouse" 1963: Ivan Sutherland demonstrates "Sketchpad", the first program with a graphical user interface 1964: American Airlines' SABRE reservation system is the first online transaction processing 1964: John Young proposes a "selectionist" theory of the brain (learning is the result of the elimination of neural connections) 1964: John Stuart Bell solves the EPR paradox 1964: IBM introduces the first "operating system" for computers 1964: Japan inaugurates the first "bullet train", the Shinkansen 1964: Peter Higgs proves the existence of a mass-giving boson 1965: DEC introduces the first mini-computer based on integrated circuits, the PDP-8 1967: Jack Kilby develops the first hand-held calculator 1967: Christian Barnard performs the first human heart transplant 1967: Rene Thom formulates catastrophe theory 1967: Ilya Prigogine shows that biological systems are dissipative systems which self-organize far from equilibrium 1968: Barclays Bank installs networked "automated teller machines" or ATMs 1968: Andries van Dam introduces the "Undo" command 1968: The Arpanet (Internet) is inaugurated 1968: Gabriele Veneziano discovers that a string can describe the interaction of strongly interacting particles 1969: Neil Armstrong is the first human to walk on the Moon 1969: The Concorde, a supersonic passenger airplane 1969: Paul MacLean proposes the theory of the "triune brain" 1969: Yoichiro Nambu introduces string theory 1970: The first practical optical fiber is developed by glass maker Corning Glass Works 1970: Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph Ledoux discover the left-brain "interpreter" 1971: Ananda Chakrabart develops a genetically engineered organism, a new species of Pseudomonas bacteria 1971: Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin build the first universal micro-processor 1971: Pierre Ramond introduces the first supersymmetric theory 1972: Ray Tomlinson invents e-mail 1972: Hamilton Watch introduces the Hamilton Pulsar P1, the first electronic digital watch and the first using a digital LED display 1972: Raymond Damadian builds the world's first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine 1972: Godfrey Hounsfield and Allan Cormack invent computed tomography scanning or CAT-scanning 1972: Theodore Friedmann and Richard Roblin's "Gene Therapy for Human Genetic Disease?" 1972: Paul Berg's team synthesizes the first recombinant DNA molecule 1972: The Global Positioning System (GPS) is launched 1972: Magnavox introduces the first videogame console, "Odyssey" 1973: Sharp develops the LCD technology for display monitors 1973: Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer create the first recombinant DNA organism (the birth of "biotechnology") 1973: Brandon Carter introduces the "anthropic principle" in cosmology 1973: Martin Cooper invents the cellular telephone 1973: Jean-Pierre Changeux discovers neural Darwinism 1974: Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer, the Altair 8800 1974: Sam Hurst invents the touch-screen user interface 1974: Stephen Hawking discovers the radiation of black holes 1974: John Schwarz suggests that string theory is a theory of gravity (superstring theory) 1974: Howard Georgi and Sheldon Glashow propose a grand unification theory (GUT) to unify weak, strong and electromagnetic forces 1975: BenoŚt Mandelbrot presents a theory of "fractals" 1975: Wilson Edward Osborne founds Sociobiology 1976: Martin Hellman, Ralph Merkle and Whitfield Diffie describe the concept of public-key cryptography 1976: Julian Jaynes introduces the theory of the "bicameral mind" 1976: Sergio Ferrara, Daniel Freedman, and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen introduce the first supersymmetry that included gravity. 1977: The Voyager unmanned probes are lauched to explore the solar system and beyond 1977: The World Health Organisation (WHO) announces the eradication of smallpox 1978: Louise Brown is born through Robert Edwards' technique of in-vitro fertilization, the first "test-tube baby" 1980: Douglas Hofstadter publishes "Godel Escher Bach" 1980: Humberto Maturana publishes "Autopoiesis and Cognition" 1980: Ilya Prigogine publishes "From Being to Becoming" 1981: Alan Guth's inflationary model of the universe 1982: Richard Feynman proposes a universal quantum simulator that can simulate any physical object 1984: Psion introduces the first personal digital assistant 1985: David Deutsch's universal quantum computer 1984: Fujio Masuoka invents flash memory 1984: Michael Green and John Schwarz demonstrate that superstring theory can only work in ten dimensions 1986: The Soviet Union launches the permanent space station MIR 1986: Ernst Dickmanns demonstrates the self-driving car "VaMoRs" 1986: Karl Muller and Johannes Bednorz discover the first high-temperature superconductor 1986: Abhay Ashtekar founds quantum loop theory 1989: Magellan Corporation introduces the first hand-held GPS receiver 1989: Christof Koch discovers that at, any given moment, very large number of neurons oscillate in synchrony and one pattern is amplified into a dominant 40 Hz oscillation 1990: The Hubble space telescope is launched 1990: The first Internet search engine, "Archie" 1990: Tim Berners-Lee invents the HyperText Markup Language "HTML" and demonstrates the World-Wide Web 1990: Dycam introduces the world's first digital camera 1990: William French Anderson performs the first procedure of gene therapy 1992: Calgene creates the "Flavr Savr" tomato, the first genetically-engineered food to be sold in stores 1992: The first text (SMS) message is sent from a phone 1993: Gerard 't Hooft develops the holographic theory 1995: The MP3 standard is introduced for digital video 1995: The top quark, the last missing quark, is finally observed at Fermilab 1995: Edward Witten introduces M-Theory 1995: Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman produce the first Bose-Einstein condensate 1995: Ward Cunningham creates WikiWikiWeb, the first "wiki" 1996: Nokia introduces the first "smartphone" 1996: Giacomo Rizzolatti discovers that the brain uses "mirror" neurons to represent what others are doing 1997: Ian Wilmut clones the first mammal, the sheep Dolly 1997: The Mars Pathfinder is the first rover robot on Mars 1997: Toyota begins selling a hybrid car, the Prius 1998: Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess discover that the expansion of the universe is accelerating (dark energy) 1998: The first handheld devices to read ebooks 1999: The first social networking platform, Friendster, is launched by Jonathan Abrams 1999: John Pendry discovers a way to create metamaterials 2003: The Human Genome Project is completed, having identified all the genes in human DNA 2004: Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novosolev, isolate individual graphene planes 2010: Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith reprogram a bacterium's DNA 2010: Autonomous vehicles drive 13,000 km from Italy to China, the first intercontinental trip ever by autonomous vehicles 2012: Markus Covert simulates an entire living organism (Mycoplasma genitalium) in software 2012: Kiyotaka Miura at Kyoto University invents quartz glass memories that can hold data for millions of years 2012: PAL-V builds a flying car See also A Timeline of Neuroscience A note on the past, the present and the futureWhen "futurists" talk about "accelerating progress", they are usually not talking about new ideas and inventions, but about the refinement of old ideas and inventions, particularly in electronics, a fact that is due mainly to progress in manufacturing (miniaturization, customization, integration, etc). They mainly count a new product in an existing category as progress, and even the new releases of a product as progress. They don't count (and discount) the many examples of fields in which progress has fallen short: travel speed has actually decreased with the decommissioning of the Concorde in 2003; energy is still mostly provided by oil, followed by nuclear; the agricultural revolution (which increased grain yields by 126% between 1950 and 1980) has stalled; life expectancy in most developed countries is no longer increasing; incomes have been stagnating for decades in the West and are actually falling in parts of Europe; health care is more likely to deteriorate than improve; the Great Recession of 2008 was the biggest in 80 years; the space program of the 1960s (that took us to the Moon in 1969 but nowhere else) has been largely abandoned and the Space Shuttle retired; the flying car debuted in 1956 but we still drive regular cars; smartphone batteries last about one day whereas traditional phones were working 24/7 and voice quality has deteriorated dramatically with smartphones; not to mention customer support that is rapidly dwindling towards a simple "good luck, buyer"; on october 21 of 2011 Google's news aggreator displayed "Internal Server Error" as the main news of the day; etc. Even population, that was supposed to increase exponentially forever, has begun to decline in some countries. And of course the attention span of people, especially the abovesaid futurists (whom i find stunningly ignorant about history, economics and even technology and science), has been declining exponentially, something that qualifies as "progress" only in the universe of insects. The unquestionable progress has been in manufacturing techniques. In particular, the rate of miniaturization has been truly stunning in the last century. The recent "miracles" of technology were not due to conceptual breathroughts (a smartphone was simply a bad camera plus a bad phone plus a bad computer plus a bad camcorder) but were due to progress in manufacturing techniques, a progress that started when transistors were invented. This progress accounts for the ability to integrate more functions in smaller devices. Whether this constitutes "invention/discovery" is debatable. In my opinion it belongs to a different timeline. See also my essay on Regress and the debate on the stagnation of innovation:
|