“Year of Health Care Universalization”

“The most important inventions and

technological advances in history”

By CASTAÑEDA CHÁVEZ Gabriel

ELEMENTARY INTENSIVE I

SCHEDULE: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 6:00

P.M. – 10:00 P.M.

TEACHER: Lic. PAREDES DULCE Edher

February - 2020
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank God for loving me, for blessing me, for sustaining me and being the support to
go on in spite of the adversities.

I would like to express my special thanks to my family and friends who supported and
helped me in my professional training, giving me confidence, encouragement and love.

I also want to thank my professors and mentors at the School of Mechanical

Engineering.

And finally, last but not least, to my teacher Edher Paredes who helped me with the
research as well as transmitting me many teachings. Also for all of my class at CEIDUNS, it
was great to share many experiences with all of you in depth this time.

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 ABSTRACT

Technology with its accelerated evolution has played an important role in recent years.
So much so, that it has become part of our daily lives and has made us dependent on it. In most
homes, there is a telephone, an oven, a television, a computer. These things have become, over
the years, indispensable for the normal development of our lives. The various technological
innovations that have occurred throughout history have changed people's lives. Technological
advances are the characteristics that technology has acquired over time, taking into account that
human beings have the ability to improve and evolve their environment and tools, and thus
improve the quality of life of people.

The objective of the work is to describe the inventions and technological advances, and
to know the importance that they have in the history of humanity. In this research work, a
theoretical analysis has been made in three chapters; in chapter I, the origin of technology is
described, in chapter, II it is defined what is technology and invention; and in chapter III, some
of the most important technological advances are cited.

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 INDEX

Table of contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................................................................................................... I

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................... II

INDEX ................................................................................................................................................... III

I. THE ORIGIN OF TECHNOLOGY ........................................................................................ 1

II. DEFINITIONS OF TECHNOLOGY AND INVENTION .................................................... 2

III. INVENTIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES ...................................................... 2

3.1. THE COMPASS .................................................................................................................... 2

3.2. THE PRINTING PRESS ...................................................................................................... 3

3.3. THE CLOCK ......................................................................................................................... 4

3.4. THE TELEGRAPH .............................................................................................................. 5

3.5. THE TELEPHONE............................................................................................................... 5

3.6. THE ELECTRIC LIGHT..................................................................................................... 6

3.7. THE TELEVISION............................................................................................................... 7

3.8. THE COMPUTER ................................................................................................................ 8

3.9. THE RADIO .......................................................................................................................... 9

3.10. THE ANTIBIOTICS ....................................................................................................... 10

CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................................................... IV

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................. V

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I. THE ORIGIN OF TECHNOLOGY
The history of the world and the development of the human being is linked to the
inventions and discoveries made throughout the ages. Initially, man found himself in the
urgency of solving the most primary needs, he created, one after the other, the tools and
mechanisms that allowed him to transform reality and start a civilizing process that has not
stopped in its evolution. From the discovery of fire, the invention of tools and the development
of language, to the most recent and sophisticated discoveries that have allowed the
disintegration of the atom and the use of atomic energy, the exploration of the cosmos and the
development of multiple disciplines or fields of knowledge, such as biotechnology,
nanotechnology and info technology, the human being, a thinking subject, endowed with
intelligence, memory and will, has made numerous contributions, through notable figures in the
sciences, arts and techniques.

Along this path, both terms, invention and discovery, have been closely related to
development and progress. The fact is that both (inventions and discoveries) originate from
different types of knowledge (practical, aesthetic, philosophical, scientific, among others),
different sources of knowledge (customs or traditions, authorities or specialized people,
experiences, trials and errors, inductive or deductive logical reasoning and scientific or
disciplined research, among others; and different steps or methods to obtain them, which have
been passed on from generation to generation, changing existing knowledge and affecting
directly or indirectly economic, social and/or cultural welfare.

From a conceptual approach, science, whether formal or factual, is characterized by

rational, verifiable and therefore fallible knowledge, accepted, systematized and validated by
the scientific community, and as an activity (research), insofar as it is applied to the
improvement of our natural and artificial environment, and to the invention and manufacture of
material and cultural goods, it becomes technology.

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II. DEFINITIONS OF TECHNOLOGY AND INVENTION
The definition given by Mascus (2003) has broadened the concept of technology where
technology is defined as “the information necessary to achieve a certain production outcome
from a particular means of combining or processing selected inputs which include production
processes, intra-firm organizational structures, management techniques, and means of finance,
marketing methods or any of its combination”.

The definition given by Levin (1996) has the concept where technology is defined as
“Technology is not really a ‘thing’; it is better characterized as an approach. It is the application
of scientific principles to solve practical problems. Technology has been described as having
three facets: material artifacts (things), the use of artifacts to pursue a goal, and the knowledge
to use these artifacts”.

The definition given by Merriam–Webster’s Dictionary has the concept where

technology is defined as “a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical
processes, methods, or knowledge” or “the practical application of knowledge especially in a
particular area”.

The definition given by Merriam–Webster’s Dictionary has the concept where invention
is defined as “a device, contrivance, or process originated after study and experiment”.

III. INVENTIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

From pioneering inventions to bold scientific and medical advances, here are some of
the most important inventions and technological advances in history

3.1. THE COMPASS

Compass is an instrument for navigation and orientation. It has a magnetic needle or a
card that can rotate freely, and if positioned horizontally it will align itself with the magnetic
field of the Earth and point Magnetic North-South. The First compass was invented in China
during the Han Dynasty between the 2nd century BC and 1st century AD, (we don’t know
precisely when). At first, it was used for divination, fortune telling and geomancy, for finding
precious gems and in Feng Shui but in time people discovered that it can be used for navigation
and orientation. People knew about magnetite even before then, but it took centuries for it to
get at least some purpose.

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 Earliest compasses were made of lodestone, a particular form of the mineral magnetite.
The first compass was a lump of lodestone that was tied to a rope and left to hang freely. China
military used a compass for navigational orienteering in the 11th century and for naval
orienteering in 12th. Compasses were then made of magnetized iron instead of lodestone and
were so called “south pointing fish” which was a magnetized iron fish that floated in a bowl of
water and pointed south. Later was invented a turtle the compass, which was a type of dry
compass. Its main part was a wooden turtle which had lodestone in it which was fixed with wax
and had a needle sticking out. Wooden turtle balanced on a bamboo needle, which allowed it
to rotate freely and the needle pointed north.

In the 12th century compass appeared in Europe. Both types of compass appeared: a
floating compass for astronomical purposes and a dry compass for seafaring. It improved sailing
which, until then, relied on orientation by the sun or by stars and was limited to sea travel
between October and April. Now ships could sail throughout the whole year.

Compass is still used today but in its improved forms, made from modern materials.

Technological advances in navigation and orientation

3.2. THE PRINTING PRESS

In the early 1450's rapid cultural change in Europe fueled a growing need for the rapid
and cheap production of written documents. Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and businessman
from the mining town of Mainz in southern Germany, borrowed money to develop a technology

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that could address this serious economic bottleneck. The need for documentation continued to
increase with expansions in trade and in governmental scope and complexity.

Gutenberg developed his press by combining features of existing technologies: textile,

papermaking and wine presses. Perhaps his most significant innovation, however, was the
efficient molding and casting of movable metal type.

Gutenberg’s machine improved on already existing presses through the use of a mould
that allowed for the rapid production of lead alloy type pieces. This assembly line method of
copying books enabled a single printing press to create as many as 3,600 pages per day.The
printing press not only made books affordable for the lower classes, but it helped spark the Age
of Enlightenment and facilitated the spread of new and often controversial ideas. In 1518
followers of the German monk Martin Luther used the printing press to copy and disseminate
his seminal work “The Ninety Five Theses,” .The printing press proved so influential in
prompting revolutions, religious upheaval and scientific thought.

3.3. THE CLOCK

A clock is a device used to measure, keep, and indicate time. The clock is one of the
oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural
units: the day, the lunar month, and the year. The origin of the all-mechanical escapement clock
is unknown; the first such devices may have been invented and used in monasteries to toll a
bell that called the monks to prayers.

The oldest surviving clock in England is that at Salisbury Cathedral, which dates from
1386. This clock is large, iron-framed structures driven by falling weights attached to a cord
wrapped around a drum and regulated by a mechanism known as a verge (or crown wheel)
escapement. Its error probably were as large as a half hour per day.

Around 1450, watchmakers began making small spring-loaded watches.. The time-
telling dials of these clocks usually had an hour hand only (minute hands did not generally
appear until the 1650s) and were exposed to the air; there was normally no form of cover such
as a glass until the 17th century, though the mechanism was enclosed, and the cases were made
of brass.

About 1581 Galileo noticed the characteristic timekeeping property of the pendulum.
The Dutch astronomer and physicist Christiaan Huygens was responsible for the practical

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application of the pendulum as a time controller in clocks from 1656 onward. In 1670 the long,
or seconds, pendulum was introduced by English clock makers with the anchor escapement.

3.4. THE TELEGRAPH

The authorship is usually given to a single man, Samuel Finley Beese Morse, but it was
really the result of a chain of contributions made by several researchers. Some of those
examples are Francisco Calvá y Campillo, who managed to send a part of it thanks to the
discharges of a condenser, Guillermo Eduardo Weber and Carlos Federico Gauss installed an
electric telegraph between the University and the Observatory of Góttingen consisting of an
arrow that pointed to the direction of the current, or Carlos Augusto Steinhel who created a
system so that a needle hit two bells with different pitch.

However, it was the photographer and painter Samuel F. B. Morse who managed to
create the first telegraph in 1837, in addition to creating an alphabet to transmit the information
that would later bear his name, the Morse code.

The idea came about due to a tragic event. Morse was painting a portrait of General
Lafayette in Washington when his wife died in Connecticut. The news reached him a week
later. Due to the delay with which the information had arrived, he decided to try to invent a
device that would allow communication without space or time barriers.

He had the help of Henry and Alfred Vail in creating the alphabet he would use. Two
types of electrical signals were used, a short one, or dot, and a long one, or dash. Each of the
letters would be made up of a combination of these signals.

Both the device and the alphabet began to be used 7 years after its invention. The first
communication was between Washington and Baltimore, separated by only 60 kilometers. The
communication was made on May 24, 1844 and the message sent was "What God has created".

3.5. THE TELEPHONE

Telephone is the set of devices and wires with which the word and all kinds of sounds
are transmitted remotely by the action of electricity.

Around 1857 Antonio Meucci built a telephone to connect his office with his bedroom,
located on the second floor. However, due to lack of money, the company where he went to
patent his product, Western Union, not only did not patent his product, but also did not return
the materials.

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 It was at this time, 1876–1877, that a new invention called the telephone emerged. It is
not easy to determine who the inventor was. Both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray
submitted independent patent applications concerning telephones to the patent office in
Washington on February 14, 1876.

Bell’s patent was approved and officially registered on March 7, and three days later the
famous call is said to have been made when Bell’s summons to his assistant (“Mr Watson, come
here. I want to see you.”) confirmed that the invention worked.

Alexander Graham Bell, one year younger than Lars Magnus Ericsson, had been born
in Edinburgh. Bell’s interest in telephony came through his mother, who was deaf, and his
father, Alexander Melville Bell, who was a teacher of elocution, famous for the phonetic
transcription system he had developed to help the deaf learn to speak.

3.6. THE ELECTRIC LIGHT

An electric light is a device that produces visible light from electric current.

Beginning with Benjamin Franklin's experiment with a kite one stormy night in
Philadelphia, the principles of electricity gradually became understood. In the mid-1800s,
everyone's life changed with the invention of the electric light bulb. Prior to 1879, electricity
had been used in arc lights for outdoor lighting. The light bulb's invention used electricity to
bring indoor lighting to our homes. One of the main inventors who developed the light bulb in
the United States was Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison's greatest challenge was the development of a practical incandescent,

electric light. Contrary to popular belief, he didn't "invent" the light bulb, but rather he improved
upon a 50-year-old idea. In 1879, using lower current electricity, a small-carbonized filament,
and an improved vacuum inside the globe, he was able to produce a reliable, long-lasting source
of light. Edison's eventual achievement was inventing not just an incandescent electric light,
but also an electric lighting system that contained all the elements necessary to make the
incandescent light practical, safe, and economical.

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3.7. THE TELEVISION
Television (TV) comes from the Greek τῆλε (tele), meaning “distant” or “far,” and the
Latin visio, meaning “sight” or “vision.” It is a mode of (tele) communication typically used
for transmitting moving (color) images (and potentially sound) to audiences. Although the
technology was commercially available since the late 1920s (in very limited amounts and at a
very high price), television has since become a common household good. It is also used in
businesses and institutions particularly as a vehicle for advertising, entertainment, and news
broadcasting. From around the 1950s onward, television increasingly became the primary
medium in the Western world for shaping public opinion because of the saturation of television
in society.

In Europe the beginning was with the so-called "mechanical television", which worked
by means of a perforated rotating disc system capable of breaking up the image, devised by the
German P. Nipkow in 1884. It was a flat, circular disc that was perforated by a series of small
holes arranged in a spiral shape starting from the center. By rotating the disc in front of the eye,
the hole furthest from the center explored a strip at the top of the image and so on until the
entire image was broken down into sixty lines. However, due to its mechanical nature the

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Nipkow disc did not work effectively with large sizes and high rotation speeds to achieve better
definition.

The first transmission of images occurred in 1881 using a device called the
pantelegraph. Scanning in one form or another has been used in nearly every image
transmission to date this includes television. “Rasterization” is the concept used to describe the
process of converting a visual image into a stream of electrical pulses. In 1927, Philo
Farnsworth made the world’s first working television system with electronic scanning of both
the pickup and the display devices; it was demonstrated to the press on September 1, 1928.

3.8. THE COMPUTER

The computer as we know it today had its beginning with a 19th century English
mathematics professor name Charles Babbage.He designed the Analytical Engine and it was
this design that the basic framework of the computers of today are based on.

First generation: 1937 – 1946 - In 1937 the first electronic digital computer was built by
Dr. John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry. It was called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer
(ABC).Computers of this generation could only perform single task, and they had no operating
system.

Second generation: 1947 – 1962 - This generation of computers used transistors instead
of vacuum tubes which were more reliable. In 1951 the first computer for commercial use was
introduced to the public; the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC 1). During this
generation of computers over 100 computer programming languages were developed,
computers had memory and operating systems. Storage media such as tape and disk were in use
also were printers for output.

Third generation: 1963 - present - The invention of integrated circuit brought us the
third generation of computers. With this invention computers became smaller, more powerful
more reliable and they are able to run many different programs at the same time. In1980
Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-Dos) was born and in 1981 IBM introduced the personal
computer (PC) for home and office use. Three years later Apple gave us the Macintosh
computer with its icon driven interface and the 90s gave us Windows operating system.

As a result of the various improvements to the development of the computer we have

seen the computer being used in all areas of life. It is a very useful tool that will continue to
experience new development as time passes.

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3.9. THE RADIO
Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first predicted the existence of radio waves in
the 1860s. In 1886, German physicist Heinrich Rudolph Hertz demonstrated that rapid
variations of electric current could be projected into space in the form of radio waves, similar
to light waves and heat waves.

In 1866, Mahlon Loomis, an American dentist, successfully demonstrated "wireless

telegraphy." Loomis was able to make a meter connected to a kite cause a meter connected to
another nearby kite to move. This marked the first known instance of wireless aerial
communication.

But it was Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, who proved the feasibility of radio
communication. He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. In 1899, he flashed
the first wireless signal across the English Channel, and two years later received the letter "S,"
which was telegraphed from England to Newfoundland (now part of Canada). This was the first
successful transatlantic radiotelegraph message.

In addition to Marconi, two of his contemporaries, Nikola Tesla and Nathan

Stubblefield, took out patents for wireless radio transmitters. Nikola Tesla is now credited with
being the first person to patent radio technology. The Supreme Court overturned Marconi's
patent in 1943 in favor of Tesla's.

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

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3.10. THE ANTIBIOTICS
With the discovery of penicillin and the dawning of the antibiotic era, the body’s own
defenses gained a powerful ally. In the 1920s, British scientist Alexander Fleming was working
in his laboratory at St. Mary’s Hospital in London when almost by accident, he discovered a
naturally growing substance that could attack certain bacteria. He called this substance
penicillin, named after the Penicillium mold that made it. Fleming and others conducted a series
of experiments over the next 2 decades using penicillin removed from mold cultures that
showed its ability to destroy infectious bacteria.

Starting in 1941, they found that even low levels of penicillin cured very serious
infections and saved many lives. For his discoveries, Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize
in Physiology and Medicine.

Drug companies were very interested in this discovery and started making penicillin for
commercial purposes. It was used widely for treating soldiers during World War II, curing
battlefield wound infections and pneumonia. By the mid- to late 1940s, it became widely
accessible for the general public. Newspaper headlines hailed it as a miracle drug.

With the success of penicillin, the race to produce other antibiotics began. Today,
pediatricians and other doctors can choose from dozens of antibiotics now on the market, and
they’re being prescribed in very high numbers. At least 150 million antibiotic prescriptions are
written in the United States each year, many of them for children.

SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES IN MEDICINE

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 CONCLUSIONS

According to the information that resulted from the research of books, magazines and
diverse support materials, it was determined:

 Humanity has been in need of developing technology from ancient times to the
contemporary age.
 It is defined as technology as a form of performing a task using science and
invention as the object or process originating from an experiment.
 The inventions that man has created have allowed him to improve his quality of
life and to know his environment but one of these inconveniences is when man
becomes dependent on technology.

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