Geography

By Carlos García Prieto

  • James Watt invents an improved steam engine

    One Sunday in 1765, Watt was struck by the idea that was to spark the Industrial Revolution. Walking in a park near the Clyde, he suddenly he realised how he could make the standard Newcomen steam engine more efficient. He could use a separate chamber to condense steam without cooling the rest of the engine

  • The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway

    The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&M) opened on 15 September 1830. Work on the L&M had begun in the 1820s, to connect the major industrial city of Manchester with the nearest deep water port at the Port of Liverpool, 35 miles (56 km) away.

  • First oil well is drilled in Titusville

    Drake to drill an oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, which produced oil on Aug. 27, 1859. The well was drilled to a depth of 69.5 feet, and it initially produced 25 barrels a day, the first well to produce oil in commercial quantities.

  • Edison lights up a street in Menlo Park using incandescent light bulbs

    Thomas Edison demonstrated the first practical incandescent light bulb on New Year’s Eve 1879, it marked the dawn of the electric age.

  • Siemens built the first electric train

    The first electric passenger train was presented by Werner von Siemens at Berlin in 1879. The locomotive was driven by a 2.2 kW, series-wound motor, and the train, consisting of the locomotive and three cars, reached a speed of 13 km/h.

  • First electric street lighting in Salamanca

  • Karl Benz designed the world's first automobile

    Benz had so much commercial success with this engine that he was able to devote more time to his dream of creating a lightweight car powered by a gasoline engine, in which the chassis and engine formed a single unit.

  • One of the first hydroelectric power plant inaugurated in Niagara Falls

    Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse built the first hydro-electric power plant in Niagara Falls and started the electrification of the world. Adam's Power Station

  • World's first nuclear power station built in Obninsk

    On June 26, 1954, at Obninsk, Russia, the nuclear power plant APS-1 with a net electrical output of 5 MW was connected to the power grid, the world's first nuclear power plant that generated electricity for commercial use.

  • Spain’s first nuclear power plant

    The first Spanish nuclear power plant: José Cabrera. On July 17th, 1968, only five years after a group of companies and visionary professionals led the launching of nuclear energy in Spain, and three and a half years after construction started, the José Cabrera Nuclear Plant, also known as Zorita, began its operation.

  • The world's worst nuclear accident happened at the Chernobyl plant

    The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on Saturday 26 April 1986, at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR.