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Electric Traffic Light
A man named Garret Morgan invented the 'T' shaped electric traffic light in the year 1923. Garret Morgan was the son of to previously enslaved people and grew up in Kentucky. Morgan would one day sell his rights to the invention to General Electric for $40,000, which is equivalent to about $600,000 dollars today! These traffic signals are now installed all across the globe! -
Sliced Bread
For many years before 1930 Otto Fredrick Rohwedder was working on a single bread loaf slicing machine. It was only in 1930 that sliced bread was officially sold to the public. The first brand to ever sell sliced bread was 'Wonder' which is still thriving and selling sliced bread today! It is very likely that you ate Wonder bread at some point in your life! -
Polaroid Camera
First Polaroid camera invented in 1947. This iconic and "retro" camera was created by Edwin Land. The first model, Model 95, would print out images in sepia tones and users would wait a couple minutes before peeling back a sheet of paper, revealing their picture! Later on the camera would instead print in black and white instead of sepia, but you still had to wait for your picture just like you need to today! -
Video Game
First video game was released in 1958! Shockingly it was a simple tennis game that was similar the the iconic game pong, and it was created by a physicist. The physicist was named William Higinbotham and originally created the game to show off his unit's work at an annual open house! -
911
The emergency phone number 911 was created in 1968 on
March 1. The idea was from company AT&T who thought it would be good to have all emergency contacts in one place. Looking back this was a pretty great idea! AT&T and 911 are both still round today with AT&T being a billion dollar tech company that is located in Texas. -
Floppy discs
Floppy discs were first invented in 1971 by company IBM. IBM is a technology company known for selling computer software and hardware today but in the past they were known for the floppy disc which they created along with inventors Ralph Flores and Herbert E. Thompson. -
Cell Phone
The first cellphone looked a little more like a brick than the modern day ones do, but the were still incredible and a huge deal in technology. The cell phone was invented by Martin Cooper, an American engineer at Motorola. Cooper first invented it on April 3rd, 1973 and it weighed roughly 2 1/2 pounds! Sense the creation of this heavy phone, the world of cell phones have made huge jumps in innovation and we now have the perfect hand held wireless phone that we can carry around in our pockets! -
GPS
The GPS, aka the global positioning system was invented in 1978 by a black women named Dr. Gladys West along with three other men. The GPS is an incredible invention that we still use today that is now widespread all over the world and in almost every home. Cr. West is just one of many incredible black women that paved the way in our technological advancements over the years! -
Artificial Heart
The first artificial heart called Jarvik7 was invented and put into a person named Barney Clark, who volunteered to be operated on. Dr. William DeVries received the honor of doing the first surgery using the artificial heart and thankfully it was successful! The artificial heart is still used today on people waiting for a heart transplant because even though it isn't a permanent option, it has saved many lives by helping people to live long enough to receive a real heart! -
Nintendo 64
The famed Nintendo 64 was invented in the year 1996 by Nintendo CEO, Hiroshi Yamauchi and lasted until 2002 in Japan and 2003 in the rest of the world. The Nintendo 64 was a huge hit and sold over 32 millions units during it's six year run. The console was so successful most people remember it as the first home video game console to be released even though it wasn't! -
Facebook
Facebook was first invented in the year 2004 by Mark Zukerberg. Facebook is no a multi-billion dollar social media giant owned by Zukerberg's company META. META also owns famous social media platform, Instagram. META made about $117 billion dollars in 2021 alone -
iPad
The tech company Apple created an released the iPad in the year 2012 and has sense released newer models that are successful as ever -
5G
5G allows us to connect to each other and the internet without the use of WiFi, which we couldn't do ever before! 5G was created by multiple companies that all contribute to the growth of the technology! However, Samsung and other Android smartphone companies were the first to release it to their phones. This is probably one of the biggest things to happen in tech in a while and almost everyone with a smartphone knows, it works well and is useful! -
3D Printed Coral Reefs
It is no secret that unfortunately the coral reefs are disappearing because of humans. To help prevent this, conservationists are now printing coral using 3D printing technology, but instead of plastic filament, they use terracotta clay because it is far better for the organisms living in the reefs! There have been multiple artificial reefs created in the past, dating back to the 17th century, and this idea had been thought of before but it was only implemented is 2022