A recent article in Business Insider included a chart of technological innovations and how they have spurred productivity growth over the centuries. I confess to not spending much time studying the finer points because I was immediately distracted by the dates accompanying the inventions. I realized that the ideas I have about when inventions entered my culture might be off by a substantial margin in many cases, and I wondered whether I’m alone in that. If I were to ask you to name the year that the light bulb was invented, how close would you come?
Keep your eyes up here with me for a minute, while I ask you a few questions, and then you can scroll down to see how well you did. As they used to say on radio quiz shows, if you’re playing along at home, have a paper and pencil handy.
Before we consider actual dates, let’s try something easier. Can you put these inventions in order from earliest to latest?
Television broadcast, penicillin, plastic, X-ray
Now try this set:
laser, electron microscope, FM radio, atomic clock, polyester
One more time:
touch screen, flash memory, cell phone, Hubble Space Telescope, email
Let’s see how we did.
The first group brought me some surprises:
X-rays (1895), plastic (polyethylene, 1898), Television broadcast (1909), penicillin (1928)
Here’s the next group:
Electron microscope (1931), FM radio (1933), polyester (1941), atomic clock (1948), laser (1960)
And the last group:
Email (1971), touch screen (1973), flash memory (1980), cell phone (1984), Hubble Telescope (1990)
In terms of actual dates, how well do you think you’ll do? Can you get within ten years of the introduction of any of these innovations?
Mechanical knitting machine
Telescope
Sewing machine
Video tape recorder
Nylon
Since these last two are more recent, can you get within a couple of years?
Bluetooth
Bitcoin
You can check your answers below. The list focused only on innovations that brought big changes in productivity, so there are many hundreds of other important inventions not mentioned here. I have little doubt, though, that I would be unable to state with any confidence when they were invented either.
1589 Mechanical knitting machine
1608 Telescope
1790 Sewing machine
1953 Video tape recorder
1935 Nylon
2000 Bluetooth
2009 Bitcoin
Here’s the entire chart. The original article is here.
Are there one or two inventions whose dates surprised you the most?
[Images: bianoti.com, Wikipedia, dailyman40.com, spacetelescope.org, thegraphicsfairy.com, Barclays]
