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The Atomic Bomb
Two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both times by the United States near the end of World War II. On 6 August 1945, a uranium gun-type fission bomb code-named "Little Boy" was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on 9 August, a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb code-named "Fat Man" was exploded over Nagasaki, Japan. -
The Hydrogen Bomb
In his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. It was just three years earlier on January 31, 1950, that Truman publicly announced that had directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. Truman's directive came in responds to evidence of an atomic explosion occurring within USSR in 1949. -
Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age
One of the greatest shocks of the decade hit Americans on 4 October 1957. That day, scientists heard a high-pitched radio beep being broadcast from overhead. It was Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, and it was passing over the United States every 92 minutes as it whizzed around the planet at 18,000 miles an hour. And it was a Russian creation. -
Medicare and Medicaid
Medicare and Medicaid are health insurance programs sponsored by the federal government that cover medical expenses for elderly, disabled, and low-income Americans. Both programs took effect in 1965 and are administered by the Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA) which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. Government provides health care coverage to a variety of groups—including federal employees, military personnel, veterans, and Native Americans—but the Medicare -
Intel's First Microprocessor
Intel 4004 was the first commercially available single-chip microprocessor in history. It was a 4-bit CPU designed for usage in calculators, or, as we say now, designed for "embedded applications".
As the first single-chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004 is very popular with CPU collectors and non-collectors. Earlier Intel C4004 CPUs in white ceramic package are sought-after by beginner and intermediate collectors, and are usually sold for hundreds of dollars. -
Sony's Betamax
Betamax is a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released in Japan on May 10, 1975.[1] The cassettes contain .50 in (12.7 mm)-wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional .75 in (19 mm) wide, U-matic format. -
MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging
In 1970, Raymond Damadian, a medical doctor and research scientist, discovered the basis for using magnetic resonance imaging as a tool for medical diagnosis. He found that different kinds of animal tissue emit response signals that vary in length, and that cancerous tissue emits response signals that last much longer than non cancerous tissue. -
NASA's Twin Voyager
NASA's twin Voyager probes were launched in the late 1970s to explore the outer planets in our solar system. The two spacecraft, called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, are on their way out of our cosmic neighborhood, knocking on the door of interstellar space. Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched about two weeks later, on Sept. 5. Since then, the spacecraft have been traveling along different flight paths and at different speeds. -
Atari 2600
Atari release a conversion of the hit arcade game Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 which popularises the home video game console.
The 2600 was typically bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a cartridge game—initially Combat[5] and later Pac-Man. -
The Walkman
The Walkman was launched in 1979 in Japan, The Walkman was an unprecedented success and by 1986 the name had entered the Oxford English Dictionary. People used it to listen to music while on the move and teenagers everywhere rejoiced at its ability to drown out the sound of their parent's voices. -
CTRL-ALT-DEL David Bradley
David Bradley, the IBM engineer who originally invented Control-Alt-Delete, has said over the years that he didn’t intend for the command to be widely used. It was meant to be used by people writing programs or documentation, so that they could reboot their computers without powering them down. Bradley said, "I may have invented it [Control-Alt-Delete], but I think Bill made it famous". -
IBM 5150: The Personal Computer
IBM's own Personal Computer (IBM 5150) was introduced in August 1981, only a year after corporate executives gave the go-ahead to Bill Lowe, the lab director in the company's Boca Raton, Fla., facilities. He set up a task force that developed the proposal for the first IBM PC. Early studies had concluded that there were not enough applications to justify acceptance on a broad basis and the task force was fighting the idea that things couldn't be done quickly in IBM. -
Galileo The Spacecraft
Galileo changed the way we look at our solar system. The spacecraft was the first to fly past an asteroid and the first to discover a moon of an asteroid. It provided the only direct observations of a comet colliding with a planet. Galileo was an unmanned NASA spacecraft which studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other solar system bodies. Named after the astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted of an orbiter and entry probe. It was launched on October 18, 1989, carried -
Text Messaging
In December 12, 1992 in the UK the first text message was successfully sent and received. The sender used a computer and the receiver was using a hand held Vodaphone network system, called the Orbitel 901. Mr. Neil Papworth, who was employed with the SEMA group, sent a message that said Merry Christmas, to the Vodaphone user, Richard Jarvis. Originally, this system was used only for business purposes. It was first used by Aldiseon a member of the Logica Corporation, this is now Acision, and Teli -
Google
Google is now worth billions and has its own place within the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb, but it took two men with a big dream to turn a small idea into a reality that has made a significant contribution to how the world uses the internet. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both PhD candidates when they met in 1996 at Stanford and came up with the concept for a search engine that they were going to name BackRub. -
Wikipedia
In January 2001, Wikipedia, the free user-generated online encyclopedia, came online and quickly became the reference site of choice for Internet users. But that was just the beginning of a new era of user-generated content. -
Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg, 23, founded Facebook while studying psychology at Harvard University. A keen computer programmer, Mr Zuckerberg had already developed a number of social-networking websites for fellow students, including Coursematch, which allowed users to view people taking their degree, and Facemash, where you could rate people's attractiveness. -
YouTube
The most popular and successful invention in the year 2005 was YouTube. The website which achieved the greatest consumer response is a video-hosting website that lets users share videos across the globe. The website invented by Jawed Karim, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley is currently one of the most famous websites in the world! -
Pluto The Dwarf Planet
In August 2006 Pluto was demoted to a "dwarf planet" after being considered a planet for 76 years. Other "dwarf planets" in our solar system now include Ceres and Eris. Pluto is the only dwarf planet to once have been considered a major planet. Once thought of as the ninth planet and the one most distant from the sun, Pluto is now seen as one of the largest known members of the Kuiper Belt, a shadowy disk-like zone beyond the orbit of Neptune populated by a trillion or more comets. -
iPhone
Apple's head of design, Jonathan Ive is heavily credited with the aesthetic design and look of the iPhone. The iPhone was the first smart phone that had no hard keypad for dialing, it was entirely a touchscreen device, and the iPhone's touchscreen technology was groundbreaking with multi-touch controls, more than select, you could scroll and zoom as well.
The iPhone also introduced the accelerometer, a motion sensor that allowed you to turn the phone sideways and rotate the display.
