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The industrial revolution started in 1760 and lasted till about 1820. We moved from craftspeople to mass-producing wares especially metals and textiles. With the creation of steam engines it meant that we could build massive machines to use for manufacturing, of which industries such as the textile industry benefited massively from it.
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Bell makes the first phone call saying, "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!"
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First telephone exchange is built in Boston
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In 1893, brothers Charles and Frank Duryea founded the first car manufacturers in the US, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company.
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After years of experiments from various people, Guglielmo Marconi patents the first radio. With the first radio station being created a year later.
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Reginald Fessenden used an Alexanderson alternator and rotary spark-gap transmitter to make the first radio audio broadcast, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible
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The first Ford Model T rolled off the production line bringing in a new era of manufacturing with the assembly line, a method still widely used today
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In the 30's the first rotary phones began increasing in popularity replacing the old candlestick models. They also integrated the headset into one unit.
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Single sideband (SSB) and frequency modulation (FM) were invented by amateur radio operators. By 1940, they were established commercial modes.
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In the mid 20th Century the first robots were created for use in manufacturing.
The robot could stack wooden blocks in pre-programmed patterns. The number of motor revolutions required for each desired movement was first plotted on graph paper. This information was then transferred to the paper tape, which was also driven by the robot's single motor.
It was created by Griffith P. Taylor in 1937 and published in Meccano Magazine -
Sony introduced their first transistorized radio
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In 1961 the first robot was used on a car assembly Line
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In 1963, AT&T introduced Touch-Tone, which allowed phones to use a keypad to dial numbers and make phone calls. Each key would transmit a certain frequency, signaling to the telephone operator which number you wanted to call.
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Motorola manager Martin Cooper placed a cellular phone call to Dr. Joel S. Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs
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Robots became standard on car assembly lines
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Global Positioning System satellites launched
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Digital transmissions are started
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Robots continued to get more and more advanced and now are used almost everywhere for manufacturing and often outnumber the workers in the factories.
The impact of robots has good and bad points. On one hand it saves time and in the long run cuts costs. But it leads to fewer jobs and the jobs they create need extensive training and also industrial robots cost lots of money. -
Over the Last couple of years a new technology has come into play, 3D Printing. This is basically creating products out of plastic at the moment.
It is currently used for rapid prototyping but is starting to be used in factories for manufacturing.
Over the next few years it is expected that we will be able to use stronger materials for 3d printing and I believe/hope that we will get to the stage of being able to have one in the house to print things like food or clothes etc...
