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William Gilbert publishes his great book De Magnete describing how Earth behaves like a giant magnet. It's the beginning of the scientific study of magnetism.
Magnete -
Christiaan Huygens develops the pendulum clock (using Galileo's earlier discovery that a swinging pendulum can be used to keep time).
pendulum clocks -
Bartolomeo Cristofori invents the piano.
Piano -
John Campbell invents the sextant, an improved navigational device that enables sailors to measure latitude.
satellite naigation -
French Brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier make the first practical hot-air balloon.
Hot air balloons -
Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents the automated cloth-weaving loom. The punched cards it uses to store patterns help to inspire programmable computers.
History of compputers -
Michael Faraday builds primitive electric generators and motors.
electricity generators electric motors hub motor -
James Clerk Maxwell figures out that radio waves must exist and sets out basic laws of electromagnetism.
Radio -
Christopher Latham Sholes invents the modern typewriter and QWERTY keyboard.
Typewriters -
Thomas Edison develops the phonograph, the first practical method of recording and playing back sound on metal foil.
CD players MP3 players -
Thomas Edison opens the world's first power plants.
power plants -
Karl Benz builds a gasoline-engined car.
Car engine -
Friedrich Reinitzer discovers liquid crystals.
LCD screens and displays -
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X rays.
X rays -
Alva Fisher invents the electric clothes washer.
clothes washer -
Robert H. Goddard develops the principle of the modern, liquid-fueled space rocket.
bullets space rockets -
Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow invent the maser (microwave laser). Gordon Gould coins the word "laser" and builds the first optical laser in 1958
lasers -
Soviet Union (Russia and her allies) launch the Sputnik space satellite.
satellites -
World's first solar power station opened in France.
solar cells -
James Dyson invents the bagless, cyclonic vacuum cleaner.
vacuum cleaner -
Pico Electronics develops X-10 home automation system
smart homes -
Electronic voting plays a major part in a controversial US Presidential Election.
touchscreens -
Apple introduces a touchscreen cellphone called the iPhone.
cellphones touchscreens -
Apple releases its touchscreen tablet computer, the iPad.
computers touche screens -
Three nanotechnologists win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for building miniature machines out of molecules.
nanotechnology -
Quantum computing shows signs of becoming a practical technology.
quantum computers
