The Wright brothers managed to create an engine that was light enough to power their aeroplane … The world’s first powered flight took place at Kitty Hawk. ibid.
Frank Whittle: a completely new kind of engine … He came up with this: the jet engine. ibid.
It will take an unlikely alliance with a dangerous predator, devastating floods, a nineteenth century publicity stunt, an avalanche of horse manure, exploding cannons and a trip to the slaughterhouse to get the ultimate freedom machine – the car. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World II: Car
Today around 1.2 billion automobiles transport us from place to place on some 32 billion kilometres of road. ibid.
Dogs were humankind’s first engine. ibid.
Horse-powered vehicles dominated transportation for the next five thousand years. ibid.
Thomas Newcomen: An engine that harnessed a new type of power – steam. ibid.
But building a piston that fits so precisely within a cylinder that could contain that steam under high pressure was really tricky for eighteenth century engineers. ibid.
In 1886 German inventor and engineer Karl Benz had his patent accepted for what is regarded as the world’s first automobile. ibid.
A must-have play thing for the rich and famous. ibid.
By 1900 one-third of all cars were powered by electricity. ibid.
Ford’s second revolution was to mass-produce the parts. ibid.
The car has revolutionised almost every aspect of our lives and it’s reshaped our world. ibid.
It’s a spirit which has carried us off the planet to new frontiers which one day may make us a multi-planetary species … To create a machine with the power to break free from Earth’s gravity and hurl us towards other worlds. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions III: Rocket
A rocket revolution is upon us with more companies building and launching their own rockets that at any other time in human history. ibid.
This is the story of humanity’s greatest adventure. And our grandest dreams. And who knows what effect this will have on society. ibid.
If the gunpowder is confined into a tiny place, the gas that’s released provides thrust that pushes the bamboo shoots in this case in the opposite direction. And this is the principle of the rocket: a force in one direction producing a force in the other direction. ibid.
His name Jules Verne, and his stories the grandest adventures imaginable. ibid.
A way to turn fiction into fact, and his name was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky … A young man with the time and the ability to carefully work through the possibility of space flight using first principles and the laws of physics. ibid.
That speed turns out to be very large indeed:7.8 kilometres per second or 17,210 miles per hour. ibid.
His passion for building rockets was ignited: he would become America’s greatest rocket pioneer and his name was Robert Goddard. ibid.
March 16 1926: Humanity’s [Goddard’s] first liquid-fuelled rocket makes it from the Earth into the sky. ibid.
In 1930 a young engineer joins a Berlin science club – the Society for Space Travel – His name is Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun. ibid.
1944: A pump that can make the magic twenty-five tons of thrust possible for the rocket now called the V-2. ibid.
Each superpower soon realised the potential for rockets to deliver their new weapons of mass destruction. ibid.
Sergei Korolev got a remarkable promotion: from political prisoner to Colonel in the Red Army. The reason is simple: Korolev is a brilliant rocket scientist. ibid.
Korolev drew up plans for a massive new rocket known as the R7. It will be the world’s first multi-stage design. ibid.
A new surge in rocket development: no expense was too great. ibid.
This idea – to use hydrogen to power rockets - was as profound a breakthrough – as a discovery of other worlds beyond Earth. ibid.
Rockets need a new revolution. ibid.
Today nearly two thirds of humanity use a smartphone. It connects billions of people in a way that’s not been possible before. I always say that the smartphone is one of the most transformative technologies ever invented and we’ve only just got going. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World IV, Smartphone
The telephone’s invention was one of the great milestones in the history of technology. ibid.
It would take Marconi to see what use these waves could be put to. ibid.
SIGSALY was the world’s first encrypted wireless telephone … SIGSALY was never cracked. ibid.
‘[Jack] Kilby’s innovated [integrated circuit] really changed the world.’ ibid. scientist
Since the dawn of humankind we’ve looked to the stars and wondered, what’s up there? What lies beyond this small blue planet we call home? If only, our ancestors thought, there was a way to bring the night sky closer, to really see the stars. Just how humanity managed to do that is quite a tale. It would take crystals forged inside the Earth, a plant that grows by the sea, a chance alignment of two small pieces of glass, a property boom in New York, and an accident of chemistry and light, to create the device that would reveal the heavens in all their glory: the telescope. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World V: Telescope
Giant telescopes are being built all over the world which scientists hope will answer some of the oldest and most profound questions humans have ever asked. ibid.
Baghdad (9th century) in this period was like Florence during the Renaissance or Silicon Valley in the age of the Internet. ibid.
The secrets of the spy-glass were unleashed. ibid.
Galileo’s most powerful telescope pushed the limits of our seeing to the moon of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and ultimately to far beyond what had ever been seen with the naked eye. ibid.
Lenses grew bigger and more powerful. ibid.
A new artificial species might challenge our superiority. Mechanical beings have the potential to change everything. And how we got them is a story of astonishing twists and amazing turns. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World VI: Robots
A new breed of robot is taking shape in laboratories all over the world. A kind of robot that can do more than just make things or perform repetitive tasks. These are the robots that will interact with us. Become our friends. Or perhaps our enemies. Robots will usher in a new era of humanity’s relationship with technology. ibid.
The runner’s name was Alan Turing, at the time a fellow of Cambridge University. The problem he was wondering about concerned the limits of mathematics itself. He imagined a machine that carried a program in its memory, a device that could solve any problem that could be described mathematically. The idea became known as a Universal Turing Machine, or universal computer. ibid.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Voltaire
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. Thomas A Edison
I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent it. Thomas Edison
So much of what humankind has achieved over the past three millennia has come out of the remarkable collaborative creations that come out of cities. We are a social species. We come out of the womb with the ability to sop up information from people around us. It’s almost our defining characteristic as creatures. And cities play to that strength. Cities enable us to learn from other people. They enable us to become better, in a sense, by leveraging the talent of the crowds around us. When you think about all the great inventions that human beings have made – from Athenian philosophy to Henry Ford’s Model T’s, to Facebook – they were always collaborative. There was always situations in which one person borrowed an idea from someone else and then another idea was borrowed and then all of a sudden something absolutely magical occurred. Cities make all of that possible. And that’s why I think they’re are not only mankind’s greatest invention, but also our best hope for the future. Kai Ryssdal, Harvard University economist, cited Marketplace online
I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention – invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. Steve Jobs
He came here to the Council of Venice not as a painter but as an inventor. Alan Yentob, Leonardo II: Dangerous Liaisons, BBC 2003
Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. But she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it. Leonardo da Vinci