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A Look Back at History's Greatest Inventions and Projections for Tomorrow's Innovations…
©️Gallica - BnF
140 years ago, in 1880, Alexander Graham Bell created the first wireless telephone and communicated over a distance of 213 meters using the photophone. Speaking into a tube that amplified his voice, the vibrations were then converted into light rays, which were received by a concave mirror that converted them back into sounds.
In 2017, the American magazine 'National Geographic' published a ranking of the 10 greatest inventions in history. This ranking was created by Carla Hayden, director of the Library of Congress, where most American patents and plans are stored.
At the top of this ranking is printing. Invented by Gutenberg in 1450, the impact of this invention was significant, with a decrease in illiteracy rates and a democratization, to some extent, of knowledge.
Next comes the electric light bulb, invented by American Thomas Edison in 1879. A discovery that would become a real revolution thanks to the spread of electricity.
At the bottom of the podium is the airplane! Developed by French engineer Clément Ader in 1890, the first powered airplane only truly flew in 1903 thanks to the Wright brothers. A breakthrough for commerce, among other things...
In the rest of this ranking, we find the personal computer, invented in the 1960s, the vaccines that have saved millions of lives, the automobile which also saw phenomenal success, the clock invented in the 13th century, the telephone by Bell in 1876, refrigeration and the camera by the French Niépce and then Daguerre.
Moreover, in our previous Ancestors' Stories, we introduced you to two women who revolutionized computing. Indeed, we revisited the life of Ada Lovelace, 'The First Geek in the World', creator of the first computer program, and the career of actress Hedy Lamarr, the inventor of Wi-Fi.
In the transportation sector, many inventions from the last century seem surprisingly current. This is the case of the electromagnetic system cart from 1906, which seems to be the precursor to the Hyperloop. Elon Musk aims to develop a means of transportation that is twice as fast as the airplane by reducing air friction through electromagnetic suspension.
The electromagnetic system cart, developed by American Franklin Smith, was inspired by a Jules Verne novel and envisioned a cart held in levitation by an electromagnet to reduce friction during movement. This 20th-century project never came to fruition on a large scale; only a 550-meter test line was installed.
Another example is the hydrogen truck, invented by the French Hubault and Dubled in 1945, which could be considered in current discussions about clean transportation. After World War II, in the midst of an oil shortage, hydrogen seemed to be an interesting energy source for transportation. The two inventors were able to travel thousands of kilometers in their hydrogen truck between 1945 and 1951.
Source: The Forgotten Mobility - Act 2: Hubault and Dubled - Logicites
Did you believe in self-lacing shoes, hoverboards, and flying cars for 2015? Back to the future, yes! And the screenwriters weren't entirely wrong. In 1985, the science fiction film Back to the Future was released, in which Marty McFly travels in time to 2015.
30 years earlier, we imagined that fingerprint recognition, the digital tablet, video calls, and even virtual reality headsets were possible, among other things. Innovations that are now commercialized, accessible, and perhaps even used by you daily.
All this to say that things move fast, very fast, even faster than we could imagine. And there have been millions of innovations, good ideas, to revolutionize our daily lives up to today. What will tomorrow's innovations look like?
Virtual currency, hyper-personalized medicine, anti-aging drugs... Futura Science takes a look at some of these future (or current?) technologies.