1000 Inventions and Discoveries

1901 – 1950

SEEING BY RADIO

“RadaR” gets its name from “radio detection and Richter scale Helicopter The Fw 61 looked
ranging.” It detects objects and measures their more like a wingless plane than a
distance, or range, by sending out short pulses of 1935 helicopter. Its rotors spun in opposite
radio waves and showing if anything reflects them directions to make it fly straight.
back. The time between sending a pulse and getting Charles Richter,
it back shows the distance of the reflecting object. Beno Gutenberg Helicopter
Its direction is found by using a steerable antenna.
News reports usually rate 1936
early radar earthquakes on the
The discoverer of radio waves, Heinrich Hertz, showed that Richter scale. Devised in 1935 Heinrich Focke
they were reflected from metallic surfaces, and several early by US seismologists Charles
radio experimenters thought that they might be used to detect Richter and Beno Gutenberg, It took a long time to develop
objects. German engineer Christian Hülsmeyer patented a a really usable rotating-wing
detection system in 1904, and a crude form of ranging with the scale relates to aircraft. Early helicopters had
radio pulses was achieved in 1925. the energy released little lift, and because the way
by an earthquake the rotor worked was not fully
Original Electrical at its centre, with each step understood, they tended to
magnetron connection representing 10 times the flip over sideways. The French
developed energy of the previous one. Breguet-Dorand gyroplane of
in 1940 So an earthquake measuring 1935 solved most of these
8 on the Richter scale, which problems, but the first
Pipes carried would usually be catastrophic, helicopter to develop into a
water for cooling releases a million times as practical production machine
much energy as one rated at 2, was the Focke-Wulf Fw 61.
later developments which wouldn’t be noticed. Designed by German engineer
The first radar stations worked with quite large wavelengths. Heinrich Focke, the machine
This made their measurements rather imprecise, and also meant Snorkel had two rotors and took to the
that the stations had to be big. In 1940, the invention of the air in 1936.
magnetron, which could produce much shorter waves called 1936
microwaves, allowed compact, precise radars to be installed in Suntan lotion
aircraft. Radar is now essential to aviation. Jan Wichers
1936
Parking meter who wanted to stop all-day Snorkels allow swimmers
parkers clogging the streets. He to breathe underwater, but Eugène Schueller
1935 also thought it might make a they were originally used on
little money for his city. The submarines, allowing them The first mass-market
Carlton Magee Park-O-Meter, as Magee called to run their engines while suntan lotion was produced
it, was remarkably similar in submerged. The first modern in 1936, after Paris designer
The hated parking meter appearance to the meters used snorkel was a tower on top of Coco Chanel acquired a house
first appeared in 1935, on today. Much to the annoyance a submarine. It let fresh air in in the south of France and
the streets of Oklahoma City. of inconsiderate parkers, and exhaust gases out, and made tanning fashionable.
It was invented by Oklahoma Magee’s idea has proved a hit was designed by Lieutenant The perfumed, golden oil
businessman Carlton Magee, with city authorities everywhere. Jan Wichers of the Royal that helped to prevent the
Netherlands Navy in 1936. skin from burning was created
After the Netherlands was by a small company founded
invaded by Germany in 1940, by French chemist Eugène
the Wichers snorkel idea was Schueller. Today, his company,
applied to German submarines. L’Oréal, is much larger, and the
By 1944, these could cruise for name of his oil, Ambre Solaire,
hours just below the surface, is known worldwide.
invisible to radar.

1936 Adolf Hitler fails to in Berlin, when black US athlete 1936 After years of strife People from many nations join
demonstrate white Jesse Owens wins four gold between Nationalists in. After three years and 100,000
racial superiority at the carefully medals. Hitler simply refuses and Republicans, the Spanish deaths, Nationalist general
stage-managed Olympic Games to acknowledge the fact. Civil War starts on July 17. Franco will control Spain.

199

InventIons for everyone Epoxy resin temperatures things can Customers resisted the
be very different. In 1937, strange-looking contraptions
Television 1937 Russian physicist Peter Kapitsa at first, so Goldman hired
discovered that below about people to push his first crude
1936 Henry Moss -456°F (-271°C) liquid helium grocery carts around the store
loses its resistance to flow, and until everyone got the idea and
Vladimir Zworykin, Epoxy resins are found in also develops strange habits, started to use them.
Isaac Shoenberg glues that come in two such as climbing up the walls
tubes. One tube contains resin, of its container as a thin film. Pressurized
See pages 202–203 for the other a hardener. When the Kapitsa published his findings aircraft cabin
the story of how two are mixed, they set hard in 1938, as did Canadian
Vladimir Zworykin and because the hardener contains physicist John Allen, who 1937
Isaac Schoenberg perfected chemical groups that link the discoverered it independently.
all-electronic television. resin molecules together. British Lockheed Corporation
chemist Henry Moss made the Grocery cart
Pulse code first epoxy resins in 1937, and Aircraft fly more smoothly
modulation a two-part glue was marketed 1937 and use less fuel at high
in 1946. Its Swiss makers, Ciba altitudes. But the low pressure
1937 (now Ciba-Geigy) named their Sylvan Goldman at these heights does not agree
new product Araldite. with people, so passenger
Alec Reeves US retailer Sylvan Goldman cabins have to be pressurized.
Superfluidity noticed that people in his The first fully pressurized
In 1937, British engineer Alec Humpty Dumpty supermarkets aircraft was the experimental
Reeves came up with a new 1937 never bought more than they US Lockheed XC-35, which
way to reduce interference on could carry. He reasoned that was based on an existing
telephone calls: convert them Peter Kapitsa, John Allen if they could carry more they Lockheed plane, the Electra.
into code, like telegraph would buy more. So, in 1937, Built in 1937, the modified
messages. The code would It normally takes an effort he got a local odd-job man to plane’s reinforced fuselage had
resist interference during to make a fluid flow. few windows, causing pilots to
transmission, and could be But at really low weld wheels and dub it the “Can’t see-35.”
converted back into speech baskets to metal
once received. Reeves called EsprEsso folding chairs. Espresso coffee
his idea pulse code modulation.
With the electronics of his day, coffEE Chamber into 1938
it was too expensive to use which hot water
widely, but it is central to the Small espresso was forced Achille Gaggia
digital communications machines, like
revolution of today. this one from Holder for When Italian
about 1950, use ground coffee engineer
Trampoline steam pressure Achille Gaggia
to force water Cup was wanted coffee, he
1937 through the coffee. placed here wanted it fast. So he invented
to catch a pump that forced nearly
George Nissen the coffee boiling water through finely
ground coffee. Because the
As a child, US businessman water moved so quickly, there
George Nissen loved to wasn’t time for bitter flavours
watch trapeze artists bouncing to develop. A cup of espresso
on their safety nets. So he later took only the pull of a lever,
designed his own, more so it soon became popular
effective bouncing rig. In 1937, with café owners. Gaggia
he learned that the Spanish for patented his invention in
springboard was “trampolín.” 1938, and his name is now
This, in English form, would likely to be seen wherever
become the trademark of his coffee lovers gather.
new product. Children loved
the Trampoline, and when war
came Nissen sold lots to the
US air force to help pilots with
fitness training. The first world
trampolining championship
was held in 1964.

1937 San Francisco’s water by engineer Joseph Strauss. 1937 On July 7, a into war. The local problem is
elegant Golden Gate For another 27 years its 4,200 ft misunderstanding cleared up, but Chinese leader
Bridge opens to traffic, after (1,280 m) main span will be the between Chinese and Japanese Chiang Kai-shek later attacks
heroic struggles with rock and longest in the world. soldiers near Beijing escalates Japanese troops in Shanghai.

200

Nylon 1901 – 1950
nylon After being knitted,
1938 stockings are shaped to ensure a
wrinkle-free fit by pulling them
Wallace Carothers over dummy legs, a process
known as boarding. It is seen
Nylon was launched here in a factory of 1946.
by US chemical
company DuPont in Worker
1938. Its inventor, US checks for
chemist Wallace Carothers, flaws in the
specialized in polymers – stocking
molecules made by joining while she
lots of identical molecules boards it
together. He was trying to
imitate silk, which is a Dummy legs
protein, so he tried joining made of metal
molecules with a linkage
found in proteins, called
the amide bond. In
1934, he succeeded
so well that he could
pull a continuous
strand of “polyamide,”
or nylon, straight
out of a laboratory
beaker. The first
nylon stockings went
on display, to wild
acclaim, in 1939.

Ballpoint
pen

1938

Ladislao Biró, Later, the brothers met British Teflon tetrafluoroethylene. He had
Georg Biró entrepreneur Henry Martin. He some in a cylinder, but it
noticed that ballpoints didn’t 1938 wouldn’t come out. When he
Hungarian leak at high altitude, and sold investigated, he found that it
artist them to the Royal Air Force. Roy Plunkett had turned into a white
Ladislao Biró Ballpoints reached British shops powder. The gas molecules
and his brother in 1945 – in time for Christmas. The slippery, heat-resistant had joined together to form
Georg, a chemist, plastic used for coating polytetrafluoroethylene. Its
thought they pans was discovered by more familiar trademark,
were making a accident. On April 6, 1938, Roy Teflon, was registered in 1945.
totally new writing Plunkett, a research chemist for In the 1960s, researchers found
instrument. In fact, US inventor US chemical company DuPont, a way to make the nonstick
John Loud had invented was testing the refrigeration gas plastic stick to metal.
something similar in 1888.
New or not, Ladislao’s ball-tip
rolled on, lubricated by Georg’s
greasy, smudge-proof ink. The
Biro pen was patented in 1938.

Ballpoint pen The original ballpoint pen
of the 1940s, made by the Miles Martin Pen
Company, was a luxury product, which cost
more than an ordinary fountain pen.

1938 The world’s first by fish such as sharks and rays, 1938 On March 13, the suppress disorder. Next day,
large oceanarium, normally seen only in the open Nazi chancellor of Hitler and troops are in Vienna,
Marineland, in Florida, opens to sea. Later, they will get soaked Austria, brutally installed by declaring Anschluss (union)
the public. Visitors are thrilled as dolphins do tricks. Hitler, asks in German troops to between the two countries.

201

InventIons for everyone

MAKING THE DREAM COME TRUE

Vladimir Zworykin and Isaac Shoenberg work
to perfect all-electronic television.

Saturday January 30, 1937, was a sad day for Scottish television pioneer
John Logie Baird. That was when the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC) finally abandoned his mechanical television system, with its whirring

wheels and messy chemicals. He had come a long way since his first

experiments with television in 1923, but it wasn’t far

enough. His dream was over. The future was electronic.

Three months earlier, on November 2, 1936, the

BBC had started the world’s first regular, high-

definition, public television broadcasting service.

In alternate weeks it used two different sets of

equipment. The idea was to test two rival

systems. One was Baird’s; the other had been

created by a team at Electrical and Musical

Industries (EMI) led by Russian-born engineer

Isaac Shoenberg. The all-electronic EMI system

won easily. Its pictures were sharper, its cameras were

more mobile, it was more reliable, and

it cost less. In all but detail, it was

the system we use today.

electronic eye Shoenberg’s team had been formed
The strange shape of the
Emitron camera reflected the five years earlier. They had worked
shape of the image tube inside
it. The drooping nose held the with remarkable speed, but they weren’t the
tube’s electron gun. Above this
were two lenses, one of which John Logie first to research all-electronic
was a viewfinder. Baird television. On the other side of

Pictures from the Atlantic, a lone pioneer,

a sPinning disc Philo T. Farnsworth, had

Baird did much to create started work on his
interest in television. He
used a rotating disc to electronic “image dissector”
sweep a spotlight over the
subject to be televised, with in 1926. He gave the first
a matching disc in the
receiver. This mechanical demonstration of all-
system could not make
pictures good enough to electronic television in
compete with electronics.
1934. Unfortunately, his

cameras needed too much

light, and his work came

Baird Televisor, 1926 to a dead end.

202

Isaac 1901 – 1950
Shoenberg Vladimir
Zworykin

Modern television owes far more to another US
engineer, Russian-born Vladimir Zworykin. He was
the first to take up the suggestion, made in 1908 by
Scottish engineer Alan Campbell Swinton, that a
cathode ray tube could create as well as display
pictures. In 1929, Zworykin took charge of

Tv pioneers
The two main pioneers of all-
electronic television were both
born in Russia. Shoenberg was
born in 1880, and Zworykin in
1889. Shoenberg emigrated to
Britain in 1914, and Zworykin
to the US in 1919. It was
Zworykin who developed the
first successful camera tube. It
scanned the image with a beam
of electrons. Tubes of this type
were highly sensitive and could
show fine detail.
Britain’s first television receivers
were very expensive, worked
only in London, and offered only
a single channel. But they were
the start of something big.

television development at the Radio Corporation of America. Television in The Us
By 1931, he and his team had created the first successful Regular television broadcasts
electronic camera tube, the Iconoscope. Shoenberg’s team began later in the US than in
later used Zworykin’s basic idea to develop their own Britain, but the US system
Emitron tube, which formed the heart of the cameras they expanded more quickly. This
designed for the BBC. National Broadcasting Company
studio, equipped by the Radio
On September 1, 1939, as war gripped Europe, the BBC television Corporation of America, is seen
service was closed down. Just four months earlier, the US’ first regular in 1939, broadcasting where
television service had started, when the National Broadcasting Company war had forced the BBC to stop.
(NBC) broadcast the opening of the New York World’s Fair. Zworykin,
Shoenberg, and a host of other engineers and enthusiasts had finally
made the dream of television come true.

203

InventIons for everyone

makiNg copieS

Xerography Chester Carlson did Xerography gets Its name from the Xerography
much of the basic research into dry Greek “xeros” meaning “dry.” A lens
photocopying in his kitchen. projects an image on to a drum, at work
the surface of which conducts
Xerography electricity when exposed to Carlson’s process
light. Where the image is has transformed
1938 bright, the drum office work. Machines
becomes more that make 60 copies
Chester Carlson conductive and the a minute are now
electricity leaks commonplace.
US physicist Chester away. Powdered Xerography is also
Carlson wanted to make resin dusted on the used in laser printers,
office work easier. He studied drum is attracted to which produce
various methods of copying the parts that are documents directly from
documents, then, in 1938, still electrified. The digital data, rather than
produced his first xerographic resin is transferred from other documents.
copy, using a zinc plate coated to paper and Color copiers, basically three
with sulfur. The original was heated until machines in one box, now
on a microscope slide, and the it melts to offer excellent quality.
copy was formed from moss form a
spores stuck to waxed paper. permanent Single-rotor
(✷ See also Making copies.) copy. helicopter

DDT Early 1940
xerographic
1939 copiers were Igor Sikorsky
big and slow.
Paul Müller This is part of The first successful
one from 1960. helicopter, made in 1936,
The chlorine-based chemical had two rotors that went
DDT had been known for Life without Xerography
years before Swiss chemist Copying documents used to be difficult.
Paul Müller discovered, in They could be photographed with a special camera,
1939, that it made a good but this was expensive and too big for an office. Or they
insecticide. It kills insects but could be made by the diffusion-transfer process, invented in
has little effect on warm- 1939. This made copies in the office, but used wet
blooded animals. In World chemicals and was very slow.
War II, DDT was used to
protect troops from insect- Nuclear fission German chemists Otto Hahn
borne diseases. Later, it was and Fritz Strassmann in 1938,
used to kill insects that attack 1939 but it was Austrian physicists
crops. Because DDT tends to Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch,
persist in the environment and Lise Meitner, Otto Frisch her nephew, who explained the
can find its way into food, it is details and coined the term
now little used. When uranium is “nuclear fission.” Realizing that
bombarded with it could be used to make a
neutrons, the nuclei of its bomb, they quickly alerted
atoms can split, releasing other physicists and, through
energy. This was discovered by them, the US president.

1939 On September 1, on Germany. The French rely on 1940 US writer Ernest Spanish Civil War. Its main idea
German troops their heavily fortified “Maginot Hemingway writes is that everyone, wherever they
invade Poland. Two days later, Line” along the German border. live, should be concerned by
Britain and France declare war Britain prepares for all-out war. his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, oppression occurring anywhere.
based on his experiences in the
204

Single-rotor helicopter Rotor blades provide lift Anti-g flying 1901 – 1950
The Westland-Sikorsky S-51 for the helicopter and can suit causing a blackout. When
was the first helicopter to also move it in a team under Sir Frederick
be developed for civil any direction 1941 Banting, better known for his
purposes, in 1947. work on insulin (✷ see page
Tail rotor Frederick Banting, 186), discovered this, US
around in opposite directions. stabilizes and Wilbur Franks scientist Wilbur Franks started
This stopped the machine from work on an anti-g suit. The
spinning around. By 1940, the helps steer Afighter plane making design his team produced was
Russian-born US engineer Igor the helicopter a tight turn acts like a made from two layers of rubber
Sikorsky had flown a single- spin- dryer. The so-called with water in between them.
rotor helicopter. He stopped Landing “g” force drains blood out of When the suit was laced tightly
the spin with a small tail rotor gear the pilot’s brain, possibly around the pilot, it kept the
that pushed sideways. It could blood in place, allowing tighter
also be used to help the or extremely rare in nature, Anti-g flying Suit By the turns. The Franks Flying Suit
helicopter turn left or right. but can be made in artificial 1950s, suits like this one by Dunlop Mk II was ready by 1941.
nuclear reactions. US chemist were filled with air, not water. Sadly, on his way to Britain
Digital logic Glenn Seaborg and his to demonstrate it, Banting died
design colleagues discovered 10 of in an airplane crash.
these between 1940 and
1940 1955. Plutonium is the most Suit covers
important because of the the legs and
Claude Shannon special properties of one form abdomen
called plutonium-239. This
Digital logic circuits operate highly toxic material, which is
machines from computers produced in some types of
to dishwashers. They would be nuclear reactors, can be used
almost impossible to design to make atomic weapons.
without US engineer Claude
Shannon’s thesis of 1940. He Binary
said that the work of British electronic
mathematician George Boole computing
(✷ see page 140) could be
used to simplify the design of 1940
electrical circuits that worked
out what a machine should do John Atanasoff,
next. To prove it, he built a Clifford Berry
robot mouse that could find its
way around a maze. Early computing machines
used the decimal system to
Plutonium represent numbers. This is not
a good way of using electronic
1940 circuits. US mathematician
John Atanasoff and his student
Glenn Seaborg Clifford Berry realized this as
early as 1940. Their
Plutonium is one of several unsuccessful attempt at a
elements, all heavier than computer, the ABC, used the
uranium, that are nonexistent binary system, which works
with the base 2 instead of 10.
It was more efficient because
logic circuits work best when
switching between just two
voltages. Although the ABC was
little known at the time, it may
have influenced EDVAC, the
first modern computer design
(✷ see page 208).

1941 On December 7, the planes attack the US Pacific 1941 US sculptor Gutzon Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and
US wakes up to the fleet based at Pearl Harbor. Borglum completes Theodore Roosevelt carved into
reality of world war as Japanese Eight battleships and 10 other his giant heads of presidents the granite of Mount Rushmore,
submarines and carrier-based vessels are sunk or damaged. George Washington, Thomas South Dakota.

205

InventIons for everyone

Printed circuit board
The front and back of a
board from a 1959 Ferranti
Orion computer reveal its
simple, hand-drawn design.

engineer Wernher
von Braun and first
launched in October
1942. It carried 1,600 lb
(725 kg) of explosive
50 miles (80 km)
above Earth to drop on
London as the most
feared weapon of World
War II.

Scanning

electron

microscope

Electro- laboriously wired by hand. Silicon solar cell 1942
mechanical In 1941, Eisler printed wiring
computer patterns on to copper foil 1941 Vladimir Zworykin,
stuck to plastic sheet, then Dennis McMullan
1941 placed this in an etching bath Russell Ohl
to remove the copper not Scanning electron
Konrad Zuse protected by printing. After Solar cells convert sunlight microscopes, or SEMs,
cleaning, and drilling holes for into electricity. Modern cells combine high magnification
The first true computer was wires, the board was ready to can convert about one-third of with great depth of focus to
built in 1941 by German receive components. The first the sunlight that falls on them, produce vivid pictures of tiny
engineer Konrad Zuse. It was PCBs were fitted inside anti- but the very first devices, made three-dimensional objects.
controlled by a program, and aircraft shells. from about 1890, converted They work by scanning objects
represented numbers in binary less than one-percent. The with a beam of electrons. The
form, but it was not electronic. Polyethylene breakthrough came with a cell first SEM was built by Russian-
It used relays – switches terephthalate invented in 1941 by US born US physicist Vladimir
operated by electromagnets. scientist Russell Ohl. He used Zworykin and others in 1942.
As these have actual moving 1941 two types of impure silicon, It didn’t seem as good as
contacts, they are extremely rather than pure silicon and a existing electron microscopes
slow compared with electronic Rex Whinfield, metal. When brought together (✷ see page 196), so it was
switches. So Zuse’s Z3 James Dickson and exposed to light, current
computer was really the last of flowed from one to the other.
the mechanical computers, not Clothes, duvet filling,
the first of those we use today. bottles, and photographic Ballistic missile
film can all be made from
Printed circuit polyethylene terephthalate, 1942
board better known as PET. It was
invented in 1941 by British Wernher von Braun Scanning electron
1941 chemists Rex Whinfield and microScoPe The picture from a
James Dickson. Because Britain Aballistic missile is a rocket SEM is viewed on a screen, not
Paul Eisler was at war, it was not until with a warhead that flies through an eyepiece.
1954 that the new material high into the sky and then
Until Austrian engineer Paul went into production there, falls on to its target. The
Eisler invented the printed as Terylene. By then, the US development of such weapons
circuit board, or PCB, all DuPont company had already has now led to the design of
electronic equipment was developed and launched their large rockets for peaceful
own version of the material, purposes. The first effective
which they called Dacron. ballistic missile was the V-2,
designed for Hitler by German

1942 The elegant French crossing – which it won with a 1942 In Oxford, England, Greece, which is ravaged by war.
luxury liner time of 3 days, 22 hours, and an organization It will continue after the war to
Normandie, holder of the Blue 7 minutes – catches fire in New called Oxfam is created to raise provide aid for refugees and for
Riband for the fastest Atlantic York harbor and is destroyed. money for hungry children in poorer parts of the world.

206

dropped. Later, British engineer Silicones Kipping from about 1900 1901 – 1950
Charles Oatley got his student onward, but it was not until in 1944 by Canadian-born US
Dennis McMullan to try again, 1943 1943 that US chemist Eugene bacteriologist Oswald Avery,
and by 1951 he had built a Rochow developed an economic who explained an observation
working instrument. The first Frederic Kipping, process for making them. made by British researcher Fred
commercial SEM, producing Eugene Rochow Griffith in 1928. Griffith found
the striking images familiar Function of that pneumonia bacteria were
today, was launched in 1965. Silicones are oily or rubbery DNA either rough or smooth, and
compounds. They are used that an extract of the smooth
Nuclear reactor as lubricants and sealants for 1944 bacteria could make the rough
waterproofing and in surgical ones smooth. More important,
1942 implants. Their molecules are Oswald Avery all their descendants inherited
chains of units that have a core this characteristic. In a long
Enrico Fermi of silicon and oxygen atoms The first step towards series of experiments, Avery
with carbon-based groups unlocking the mechanism showed that the substance
When a uranium-235 attached. Silicones were studied of genetic inheritance was taken responsible was not a protein,
nucleus splits under by British chemist Frederic as expected, but a nucleic acid,
bombardment by neutrons, DNA (✷ see page 149).
it gives out further neutrons.
These can split other nuclei,
which release yet more
neutrons. This process was
first kept going in a controlled
“chain reaction” by a team led
by Italian-born US physicist
Enrico Fermi. Their nuclear
reactor, built in a squash court
at Chicago University, was
used for research that helped
build the first atomic bomb.
The reactor was working by
December 1942.

Aqua-Lung

1943

Jacques Cousteau,
Émile Gagnan

Before French explorer
Jacques Cousteau and
engineer Émile Gagnan thought
up the Aqua-Lung in 1943,
divers got air through pipes,
used a snorkel, or just held
their breath. They could not
swim freely far below the
surface. The Aqua-Lung had
compressed air cylinders worn
on the body and connected to
the diver’s mouthpiece through
an automatic pressure
regulator. It changed our view
of the oceans and created the
popular sport of scuba diving.

AquA-Lung Scuba divers, like
this one exploring Red Sea corals,
take their own air with them, which

gives them greater freedom.

1943 The Rodgers and acclaim. Including songs such as 1944 Kiri Te Kanawa is After success as a soprano in her
Hammerstein Surrey with the Fringe on Top, it born in Gisborne, own country, she will study
will win a Pulitzer prize and New Zealand, to an Irish mother singing in London and eventually
musical Oklahoma! opens on and an aristocratic Maori father. become an international star.
Broadway, New York, to wild continue for 2,248 performances.
207

InventIons for everyone

mathematician John von
Neumann, who was heavily
involved in designing the
“stored program” computer
EDVAC. This design appeared
in 1945, but the concept was
first proved by an experimental
computer in Manchester,
England, in 1948. (✷ See also
Computer pioneers.)

Atomic bomb Only part of Charles Babbage’s
Analytical Engine was completed
1945 before Babbage’s death in 1871.
This is part of the “mill” or
Robert Oppenheimer processor of the machine, with its
printing mechanism.
Most people would prefer
that the atomic bomb
had not been invented. But in
1940, with Germany at war

Artificial kidney ArtificiAl kidney Home Little Boy,
dialysis machines appeared dropped on Hiroshima
1944 in the 1960s. This machine,
discreetly disguised as Atomic bomb Fat Man,
Willem Kolff furniture, was used by one dropped on Nagasaki
of the first home patients. The Manhattan project
When kidneys fail, a produced two types of bomb. Bikini
machine can take over all-electronic computer was Little Boy was a plutonium bomb
their job. Artificial kidneys developed by US engineers and Fat Man was a uranium bomb. 1946
clean up blood by passing it John Mauchly and John Presper
through a membrane that lets Eckert of the Moore School of with the world and possibly Jacques Heim, Louis Réard
out unwanted chemicals but Electrical Engineering at the working on a bomb of its own,
keeps in the rest. The first University of Pennsylvania. the development of an atomic Skimpy two-piece swimsuits
practical machine was invented ENIAC was a huge machine weapon seemed essential. US get their name from Bikini
in 1944 by Dutch doctor containing 18,000 electronic physicist Robert Oppenheimer Atoll in the South Pacific. French
Willem Kolff. It passed the tubes. Programmed by took charge of the Manhattan fashion designer Louis Réard
blood through artificial sausage plugging in wires, it performed project, which developed the chose the name to upstage rival
skin, which has microscopic 5,000 operations per second. It technology needed to purify designer Jacques Heim who, in
pores. The skin was wrapped went to work in 1945, but was the right kind of uranium or 1946, had started selling a two-
around a slatted drum soon replaced by machines of a plutonium and make it explode. piece called the Atome. On
immersed in a special fluid. completely different design. After a test in July 1945, the July 5, four days after the US
Kolff later pioneered better first atom bomb used in war was tested an atomic bomb over
machines and techniques that Modern dropped on August 6, destroying Bikini, Réard launched his
have now made kidney dialysis computer the Japanese city of Hiroshima explosively small creation under
a routine procedure. architecture and most of its inhabitants. the suddenly well known name.

Electronic 1945
computer
John von Neumann
1945
Most modern computers
John Mauchly, keep their programs, and
John Presper Eckert the data on which they work,
in one and the same memory.
Mechanical computers were This makes them more flexible.
in use by the 1930s, but It is not clear who invented
electronics promised much the idea, but the best candidate
faster computation. The first is Hungarian-born US

1944 US composer Aaron music from the ballet perfectly 1945 On May 8, the France. On August 14, the
Copland writes expresses the open-air, end of war in Japanese surrender to the
Appalachian Spring for US ballet pioneering spirit of the US, and Europe is formally declared. US and Allies. World War II
dancer Martha Graham. The will become a concert classic. as the Germans surrender in is finally over

208

COMPUTER PIONEERS early electronic coMputers 1901 – 1950
The first all-electronic computer,
The compuTer archiTecTure pioneered by ENIAC, was huge and slow. Microwave oven
John von Neumann is basically simple. A single Better architecture and use of the
memory stores data coming from outside and binary system gradually improved 1946
from the arithmetic unit that does the computing. things. The first practical stored-
Instructions and data are retrieved from the same program machine, EDSAC, Percy Spencer
memory by the control unit – which sequences started working in Cambridge,
and decodes instructions – and by output devices England, in 1949. When US engineer Percy
such as displays. Earlier computers used several Modern coMputers Spencer was working
different architectures, and often worked with The arrival of integrated circuits on radar for the Raytheon
inefficient decimal arithmetic. (ICs) transformed computers Company in 1945, he noticed
from the early 1960s onwards. that the powerful microwaves
Before electronics Computers had already been had melted some candies in
The idea of a programmable computer goes back to shrunk by transistors, but ICs his pocket. After experimenting
British mathematician Charles Babbage’s Analytical made them even smaller and with popcorn and eggs,
Engine, conceived in 1834 but never built. The first could also form compact, high- Spencer built the first, crude
working, nonelectronic computer was built in 1941 speed memories. microwave oven. In 1946,
by German engineer Konrad Zuse. Raytheon took out a patent,
and in 1947 the Radar Range
Motor scooter His boss, Enrico Piaggio, (Italian for wasp) was named went on sale at $5,000.
wanted something to get him after the sound its engine
1946 around the aircraft engine made, and it became an Tupperware
factcry he owned. D’Ascanio engineering classic.
Corradino d’Ascanio soon came up with the basic c 1946
design: U-shaped body, two- Grip was
The shape of the modern stroke engine under the twisted to Earl Tupper
motor scooter was seat, and small, easy-to- control the
determined in 1946 by Italian change wheels. Cheap to throttle Plastic refridgerator boxes
engineer Corradino d’Ascanio. make and fun to ride, the Vespa were invented by US plastics
manufacturer Earl Tupper, in
Motor scooter This about 1946. He found the right
Vespa 125 is the 1951 version plastic and designed an airtight
of the first 125, which was seal, but people did not seem
introduced by Piaggio in 1948. to want the boxes. In 1948,
after meeting ace saleswoman
Brownie Wise, Tupper hit on a
new sales technique. Hostesses

invited their friends over,
then demonstrated and sold
the boxes to them. These

Tupperware parties did
the trick.

Engine and gearbox Easily
directly connected changed
to the rear wheel
wheels

1946 Former British speech warning of the dangers 1946 Perhaps the most US pediatrician Benjamin Spock,
prime minister of communist expansion and widely read book is published. It will be blamed
Winston Churchill popularizes Soviet isolationism. The Cold about babies, Common Sense Book for many things, including the
the term “iron curtain” in a War begins. of Baby and Child Care, written by youth culture of the 1960s.

209

InventIons for everyone TransisTor Transistor light waves reflected by an
Looking like object. This makes objects
Carbon dating a random 1947 appear with startling realism:
collection of in a hologram viewed at an
1947 wires, the first John Bardeen, angle, objects look just as they
transistor was Walter Brattain, would from that angle. The
Willard Libby the result of William Shockley technique was invented in
advanced 1948 by Hungarian-born
Carbon dating enables thinking. Atransistor is a tiny piece British engineer Dennis Gabor.
archaeologists to estimate Modern of silicon within which the It works by recording the
the age of organic materials. It transistors flow of electricity is controlled, interference pattern created
was developed by US chemist are a million making the whole of modern when light reflected from an
Willard Libby in 1947. He times smaller. electronics possible. There are object mixes with unreflected
showed that Earth’s atmosphere many different types of light. The best light source is a
contains a tiny proportion of a Transistor is transistor. The first one, laser. As this was not invented
radioactive form of carbon, about 10 cm invented in 1947 by US in 1948, Gabor had to make do
carbon-14, and that living (4 in) high physicists John Bardeen, Walter with ordinary light shining
organisms take up both this Brattain, and William Shockley, through a small hole.
and ordinary carbon. After the mounted on curved bases, was made of germanium, not
death of an organism, its which allow them to move Long-playing
carbon-14 starts to decay, so without falling over. Players silicon, and worked on a record
the smaller the proportion of flick their chosen players at an different principle from
carbon-14, the older the oversized ball. The game was those in modern computer 1948
sample must be. invented in 1947 by British chips. But it started a
birdwatcher Peter Adolph. He revolution. Within 25 years, Peter Goldmark
Subbuteo named it using the Latin name electronics based on vacuum
of a bird called the hobby, Falco tubes (✷ see page 176) was Before 1948, a 12 in
1947 subbuteo. When its current virtually dead. (30 cm) record played for
maker, Hasbro, said in 2000 only four minutes each side,
Peter Adolph that production would have to Holography produced poor sound, and
stop, there was an international broke easily. So a disc that
Subbuteo is a popular table- outcry. They relented and the 1948
top football game played game lives on. Long-pLaying record By 1967,
with model football players Dennis Gabor when The Beatles released the
False eyelashes record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Unlike an ordinary Club Band, LP cover design had
1947 photograph, a hologram become high art.
captures every detail of the
David Aylott, Eric Aylott

The first convincing false
eyelashes were made for
the film industry. In 1947,
British studio makeup artists
David and Eric Aylott created
strips of false eyelashes that
were easy to apply and could
stand the scrutiny of a close-
up. The Aylotts later developed
lashes for everyday use under
the name Eyelure. By the
1960s, Eyelure was selling
eight million pairs a year.

1947 Jack R. (Jackie) century. As a player for the 1948 The General Rights at a session in Paris on
Robinson becomes Brooklyn Dodgers, he wins Assembly of the December 10. The vote is carried
the first African–American major- rookie of the year for leading United Nations adopts the unopposed, but eight members,
league baseball player of the 20th the league in stolen bases. Universal Declaration of Human including the USSR, abstain.

210

offered 25 minutes of pure Plastic wrap for window frames and 1901 – 1950
sound per side, and was made electrical insulation. Plastic professional caterers, but a
of flexible vinyl, created a 1949 wrap was supposedly domestic version, Saran Wrap,
sensation. It was developed by discovered in 1933 by accident, appeared in 1953.
Hungarian-born US engineer Dow Chemical Company as an indestructible sticky
Peter Goldmark for Columbia residue on laboratory glassware. Error-correcting
Records. Rival company RCA- Traditional plastic wrap is a It was first marketed in the US code
Victor soon brought out a plastic called PVDC. It is by the Dow Chemical Company
record that played for the same related to PVC, a material used in 1949. The first users were 1950
time as the old “12-incher” –
ideal for a single song – but Polaroid camera The first Polaroid Land Richard Hamming
was only 7 in (18 cm) across. camera looked much like the roll-film cameras
Both were highly successful. many photographers were using at the time. Today, much information
comes in the form of
Polaroid camera digital codes. Mobile phones
and CDs, for example, use
1948 digital codes. Unfortunately, the
media that transmit or store
Edwin Land these codes are not perfect, and
errors occur. If these were not
US inventor Edwin Land corrected, many systems would
had a successful company not work. US mathematician
making Polaroid material. Richard Hamming solved this
When his daughter asked to problem as early as 1950. He
see a picture he had just taken devised codes that showed
of her he asked himself “Why when an error had been made,
not?” In 1948, after a few years’ and also how to correct it.
work, he launched the Polaroid
Land camera. The secret was in Lens panel
the film, which contained its was folded
own developing system and flat for
could produce a brown and carrying
white print 60 seconds after Cable
the picture was taken. release
could be
Tennis attached
shoes here

1949 Front moved on
rails for focusing
Adolf Dassler

Tennis shoes can be traced
back to a design that
German sports shoe
manufacturer Adolf “Adi”
Dasler registered in 1949 – a
year after he split with his
brother Rudolf to found the
company Adidas. Dasler’s shoes
were worn by some notable
athletes, including the
American Jesse Owens, who
won four gold medals in the
1936 Olympics. The new shoes
had three stripes down each
side, which gave extra support.
The stripes were probably the
start of the elaborate decoration
seen on tennis shoes today.

1949 On October 1, Nationalist opposition, proclaims 1950 US scientist I, Robot. It includes his three laws
China becomes a that the government of the and science-fiction of robotics, a moral system that
communist country as Mao People’s Republic of China is now writer Isaac Asimov publishes a
Zedong, having defeated established in Beijing. collection of short stories entitled should be built into all robots to

stop them from hurting humans

211

unincfoermrattaionin&ty

Improvements in information
technology, and a new understanding
of the machinery of life, dominated

the years after 1950. These
developments were related: scientists
needed computers to help them map

human genes. They used them for
many other discoveries, too.

Suddenly, we knew almost too much.
How should we use this knowledge?

212

Airbag resistance to the virus. It Color 1951 – 2014
contained an inactive (dead) television National Television Systems
1952 virus, and was first used in a Committee (NTSC) provided
successful trial in 1952. After 1953 the solution in 1953. Their
John Hetrick further trials, the Salk vaccine system splits pictures into
was approved in 1955. Later, National Television brightness variations, which
The first airbag was patented Polish–US physician Albert Systems Committee can be displayed on a normal
in 1952 by US inventor Sabin developed the vaccine black-and-white set, and colour
John Hetrick. But it was not more widely used today, It was hard to make television information, which colour
until 1973, when the rising which is taken by mouth. show color without making receivers use to add colour to
death toll on US roads began to This contains weakened polio existing black-and-white the picture. Later variants of
cause concern, that General virus, which creates immunity receivers useless. The US NTSC that transmit colors
Motors developed a practical without causing harm. more accurately are now in use.
airbag and offered it as an Colour television The
option. In spite of consumer Sony Trinitron, introduced in Single Trinitron
resistance, and worries about 1968, was a descendant of beam gun tube
deaths caused by early airbags, the tubes first
by 1988, most US cars were developed to
equipped with airbags. European show colour
car makers followed suit later. pictures in
the NTSC
Cinerama system. It was
based on the same principle,
1952 but it had a much simpler
design and gave brighter,
Fred Waller more stable pictures.

Movies that fill the whole Use of heart–
field of vision make a big lung machine
impact. US photographer Fred
Waller created them with his 1953
Cinerama process in 1952. He
bolted three cameras together John Gibbon, Jr
then projected the resulting
films onto a wide screen. Apart Heart surgery was once
from fuzzy areas where the almost impossible, because
pictures joined, the result was the heart is full of blood and
sensational, particularly for constantly moving. The first
scenes such as roller-coaster person to drain a human heart
rides. But it wasn’t so good for so that he could work on it was
serious drama, and was not US surgeon John Gibbon, Jr in
used after 1963. 1953. He was able to do this
because the job of the patient’s
Polio vaccine heart had been temporarily
taken over by a heart–lung
1952 machine. This continually
pumped blood out of the body,
Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin recharged it with oxygen, and
pumped it back. Modern
Poliomyelitis, or polio, is versions are the result of
a viral infection that can decades of development by
cause paralysis. It posed a experimenters. Their use in
serious threat until US heart surgery is now routine.
physician Jonas Salk developed
a vaccine that could create

use of heart–lung maChine
This reconstruction of a 1980

operating room shows a heart–
lung machine in use. The circular
devices in the centre pump blood.

1952 In Kenya, the British African Union, in an effort to 1953 Nepalese Sherpa of Mount Everest, on 29 May.
declare a state of crush the Mau Mau – armed Tenzing Norgay They are the first people who can
emergency and arrest Jomo members of the Kikuyu tribe and New Zealand mountaineer prove they have climbed to the
Kenyatta, leader of the Kenya rebelling against British rule. Edmund Hillary reach the top summit. Hillary is later knighted.

213

InformatIon & uncertaInty

Structure of Breathalyzer US psychologist James Olds Nuclear power
and physiologist Peter Milner station
DNA 1954 found a part of the rat’s brain
that they could stimulate 1954
1953 Robert Borkenstein electrically to give a reward
greater than any food. By Institute of Physics
Francis Crick, James Watson The difficulty in proving that wiring this “pleasure centre” and Power Engineering
a driver had been drinking to a lever, they could get the
See pages 216–217 for the led US policeman Robert rat to push it thousands of The first operational nuclear
story of how Francis Crick Borkenstein to invent the times an hour. The centre is power station was built at
and James Watson raced to find Breathalyzer in 1954. Alcohol now thought to be involved Obninsk, near Moscow. It
the structure of DNA. in human behaviours such started working in June 1954.
Breathalyzer A police as drug addiction. The station was designed by
officer would fit a fresh the USSR’s Institute of Physics
sample tube into this Bag inflated and Power Engineering, which
1979 Breathalyzer to measure started work on it in 1951.
breath It was small and simple, and
before asking a driver had a power output of only
to blow into 5 megawatts (MW), as
the bag. compared with 1000 MW for
a modern reactor, but it was
still a triumph for the USSR.

Polypropylene

1954

Turboprop in the bloodstream passes into Kidney Karl Ziegler, Giulio Natta
airliner the breath, so the more alcohol transplant
there is in a driver’s blood, the In 1953, Italian chemist Karl
1953 more there will be in their 1954 Ziegler discovered a catalyst
breath. The Breathalyzer has a (a substance that speeds up a
Vickers Armstrong Aircraft glass tube containing chemicals Joseph Murray chemical reaction) that allowed
that change from orange to polythene to be made from the
The turboprop led the way green as they react with alcohol. All early attempts to gas ethylene more easily. In
towards today’s mass air Drivers blow into a bag to give transplant organs failed. 1954, Italian chemist Giulio
travel. Basically a jet engine a measured quantity of breath. Scientists eventually realized Natta discovered that Ziegler’s
driving a propeller, it gave If the green goes too far along that rejection was caused by catalyst also worked with the
higher speeds and a smoother the tube, they are over the limit. the body’s immune system. related gas propylene. The
flight than a piston engine. The US surgeon Joseph Murray result was polypropylene, the
first turboprop airliner was the Pleasure center confirmed this when he tried tough, flexible plastic now used
British Vickers Viscount. It in the brain to graft skin on to wounded for everything from garbage
carried its first paying soldiers. He noticed that the cans to carpets. Commercial
passengers in 1953. The 1954 only successful grafts came production began in 1957.
makers liked to boast that it from an identical twin. In 1954,
was so smooth you could James Olds, Peter Milner he and several colleagues tried Atomic clock
balance a coin on the arm of transplanting a kidney from one
your seat – on its edge. Laboratory rats can be twin to another. The twin given 1955
trained to work a lever in the new kidney survived for
return for food. But in 1954, years. In the 1960s, after drugs Louis Essen, Jack Parry
to suppress the immune system
were developed, Murray made In 1955, working at the
successful kidney transplants National Physical Laboratory
from unrelated donors. with his colleague Jack Parry,
British physicist Louis Essen
made a clock that would gain
or lose less than one second in
300 years. It worked by
electrically sensing a natural
vibration of cesium atoms.

1954 British medical breaking both a record and a 1954 Japanese director Samurai, perhaps the best ever
student Roger (later psychological barrier. Bannister’s Akira Kurosawa film about the Samurai, a
Sir Roger) Bannister runs a mile time will be beaten seven weeks
in less than four minutes, later by Australian John Landy. blends Japanese tradition with powerful warrior caste. It wins
western technique in The Seven
214 silver at the Venice Film Festival.

Oven Coils 1951 – 2014
produced cancelled Atomic clock
a stream the effect This part of the first
of cesium of Earth’s atomic clock created
magnetic a beam of cesium
atoms field atoms that could
Liquid
air trap Rigid absorb radio
improved supporting waves of only

the column one precise
vacuum frequency. This
effect was used to
Vacuum pump
removed air monitor the
from the frequency of a
chamber separate quartz
oscillator, keeping
it very accurate.

Hovercraft

1955

Christopher Cockerell

The hovercraft principle is
most often seen in
lawnmowers, but seagoing
hovercraft vessels have been in
use since 1959. The principle
was patented by British
engineer Christopher Cockerell
in 1955. He arrived at it by
blowing air from a vacuum
cleaner through the space
between two cans of slightly
different sizes, mounted one
inside the other. He found that
this arrangement gave increased
lift, and eventually scaled it up
to produce machines that could
travel over both land and water.

Within two years, Essen’s clock incredibly high pressures – one Exhaust outlet HovercrAft Cockerell’s first
was a hundred times more of the conditions essential to for engine working model, about 3 ft (1 m)
accurate, and, in 1967, the unit the formation of diamond from long, was built in 1955. It
of time itself was redefined in carbon. In 1955, scientists at the worked well, but needed
terms of atomic vibrations. US General Electric Company a lot of power.
used Bridgman’s techniques to
Synthetic make the first synthetic Smooth skin
diamonds diamonds. Since 1960, reduced drag
industrial diamonds
1955 have been made in
quantity by this
Percy Bridgman, process. These
General Electric Company diamonds,
which are a
US physicist Percy Bridgman bit like grains
never made diamonds of sand, are
himself, but he did develop used to add bite
ways of subjecting materials to to cutting tools like
saw blades and drill bits.

1954 British writer of the Flies. Schoolboys stranded 1955 Rock ’n’ roll gets its charts with Rock around the Clock.
William (later Sir on an island descend into savagery first wide airing as Its blues-based harmony and
US band Bill Haley and the strong backbeat enrage the old
William) Golding publishes his as they struggle to survive. It will Comets shoot to the top of the and enchant the young.
first and best known novel, Lord
be filmed in 1963 and 1990. 215

InformatIon & uncertaInty

THE SECRET OF LIFE

Francis Crick and James Watson race to find
the chemical structure of DNA

CriCk and Watson In February 1953, two men rushed into the
World War II Eagle, a pub in Cambridge, England. The
interrupted Francis English one, Francis Crick, said that they
Crick’s studies, so
he was still had found the secret of life. The American,
working on an
advanced degree James Watson, wondered if they really had.
when biologist
James Watson The race to find the structure of DNA
arrived at the
Cavendish. Crick’s began in 1944, when US immunologist
official work was soon
put aside as he took up Oswald Avery showed that bacteria inherited
the challenge of DNA.
their characteristics through DNA. This has four
Original
laboratory Francis Crick James Watson key components – A, T, G, and C for short. In
model of DNA
1949, Austrian biochemist Erwin Chargaff noticed that the amount of A is

always the same as the amount of T, and likewise for G and C.

This was all that was known about DNA when biologist James Watson

arrived at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory in 1951. The Cavendish

specialized in X-ray analysis of molecular structures, and physicist Francis

Crick was an expert there. Watson was convinced that unraveling DNA

Making CheMistry visible
The ways that atoms fit with
each other follow known rules.
Before computers, it was hard
to see the effect of these rules
without building a physical
model. This double helix was
assembled by James Watson
using metal plates shaped to
represent the chemical groups
he knew were present in DNA.
216

1951 – 2014

would be the breakthrough of the century. He needed Crick’s help because Rosalind
in the US, the great chemist Linus Pauling was already hot on the trail. FRanklin
Using X-rays
At King’s College, London, physicist Maurice Wilkins and his assistant, alone,
Rosalind Franklin, were using X-rays on DNA. Crick and Watson decided Rosalind
to do something different. They used Franklin’s X-rays to help them build Franklin
models. The first attempt looked like three spiral staircases. Wilkins and nearly found
Franklin said that Crick and Watson had to think again. All the time, the structure
Pauling was breathing down their necks. Crick and Watson eventually saw of DNA. Her
a draft diagram of his proposed structure, but they knew it was wrong. work was vital
to Crick and Watson. She
Watson studied Franklin’s latest X-ray picture and became convinced died in 1958, four years
that a DNA molecule was spiral, or helical, in shape. He wondered before they and Wilkins
whether it could be a double helix, got their Nobel prize.
rather than the triple helix they

CoPying maChine
Life continues through the ages because DNA,
with the help of several enzymes, can reproduce
itself. As the molecule untwists and splits down

the middle, a new T bonds to each A, and a
new C to each G, forming two identical copies.

had considered,

because important

biological objects

come in pairs. Then Franklin

suggested that DNA’s “backbone” was on the

outside. Suddenly, Watson saw that T fit with A,

and C with G, like rungs between the uprights of a

twisted ladder. It explained

Chargaff’s observation and,

more importantly, how DNA Thymine Adenine

was copied. He told Crick, and Guanine

that was when they rushed to PaiRing oFF
In DNA, atoms forming a type
the Eagle. Cytosine of sugar are linked by groups
containing phosphorus.
Watson and Crick were Between these, hydrogen
atoms link thymine (T) to
worried in case they were mistaken, so they adenine (A), and cytosine (C)
to guanine (G). This model
raced to build an accurate model. There was is diagrammatic only.

nothing wrong with it. It was definitely the

structure of DNA. Later, even Pauling was

delighted to agree that Crick and Watson had

indeed found the secret of life.

217

InformatIon & uncertaInty It weighed only 184 lb (84 kg) Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley
Video recorder Video cameras and went only 584 miles (all later knighted). They found
of the early 1970s needed a (942 km) into space, but that an excited nerve releases a
heavy box like this proved that the USSR was well substance that opens pores in
to make the actual ahead in space technology. The the outer membrane of the next
recording on a reel engineers responsible, Valentin nerve cell. Sodium ions then
of wide tape. Glushko and Sergey Korolyov, flow in, making the cell
received many honors. The US electrically positive and also
Field ion problem was responded by creating the making more pores open. The
microscope solved by US National Aeronautics and Space process continues, causing an
engineers Charles Administration (NASA) in July electrical wave to travel down
1956 Ginsburg and Ray 1958. The space race was on. the nerve.
Dolby in 1956.
Erwin Müller They used a wide Chemical Rotary internal
tape running mechanism of combustion
The first microscope to horizontally at low engine
reveal individual atoms, the speed while a rotating nerves
field ion microscope, was head scanned it 1957
invented in 1956. (Ions are vertically at high speed, 1957
atoms or groups of atoms that effectively folding up a
have lost or gained one or more long, fast tape into a short, John Eccles, Alan Hodgkin, Felix Wankel
electrons to become electrically slow one. Domestic video Andrew Huxley
charged.) Working in the US, recorders, such as VHS, use a Car engines go around and
German physicist Erwin Müller related principle. Nineteenth-century around, but their pistons
put an extremely sharp metal scientists knew that nerves go up and down. German
point inside a cathode ray tube Velcro worked electrically. By 1957, engineer Felix Wankel thought
(✷ see page 166) containing the exact mechanism had been this was bad. By 1957, he had
helium at low pressure, and 1956 unraveled by Australian built and tested an engine
subjected it to an electric field. physiologist John Eccles and without pistons. The Wankel
Helium around the tip was George de Mestral British physiologists Alan engine has a rotor that spins
ionized by the stronger field
that developed at the The name Velcro comes Engine is Car body is
boundaries between atoms. The from the French for velvet mounted in the basically the
ions flew toward the screen of (velours) and hook (crochet). It rear compartment Bertone-styled
the tube, spreading out to give is actually two materials: one
an image 10 million times covered in tiny hooks, the rotary internal combustion engine Sportprinz
bigger than the metal point and other in tiny loops. The first production car with a Wankel engine
revealing its atomic structure. Placed in contact, was the German NSU Spider, a sports car
the hooks catch launched in 1963. It won the German GT
Video recorder in the loops and Rally Championship in 1966 and all classes of
the surfaces cling the German Hill Climb Championship in 1967.
1956 together to fasten
clothes and much
Charles Ginsburg, Ray Dolby else. Swiss
inventor George
Television signals contain de Mestral got the
much higher frequencies idea in 1941 by noticing
than those recorded on audio plant burrs clinging to
tape (✷ see page 169). his dog. It took 15
Capturing them by running the years of research to copy
tape faster is not practical. The the burrs’ hooked surface
in a fabric.

Artificial satellite

1957

Valentin Glushko,
Sergey Korolyov

The first artificial Earth
satellite was Sputnik I,
launched on October 4, 1957.

1956 Soviet writer Boris an individual’s struggle for 1956 Egyptian president will close it to vital oil shipments,
Pasternak’s only identity within the USSR, it is Gamal Abdel-Nasser launch an invasion of the area,
novel, Dr Zhivago, is published considered subversive and not nationalizes the Suez Canal. with Israel as an ally, but pull out
in the West. Because it describes published there until 1987. France and Britain, fearing he under international pressure.

218

inside a fixed chamber to carry code. FORTRAN, released by of perspective. Inspired by 1951 – 2014
out the various stages of IBM in 1957, produced results these, British geneticist Lionel
combustion. Although it has nearly as good as those Penrose and his physicist son Wearable
been used in cars, it has proved achieved by hand coding, but Roger invented the Penrose pacemaker
difficult to maintain a gas-tight in a fraction of the time. triangle in 1958. It looks like a
seal between rotor and chamber. triangle until you realize that it 1958
So the piston engine, in spite of Penrose triangle contains three right-angle
needing more parts than the joints, so could not be made. Earl Bakken
Wankel, still rules the road. 1958 Escher was in turn inspired by
the Penroses’ work to draw Pacemakers keep faulty
FORTRAN Lionel Penrose, Roger Penrose some more impossible worlds. hearts going with electrical
impulses. US heart specialist
1957 Many drawings by the In reality, the sides of Paul Zoll invented one in 1952,
Dutch artist M. C. the triangle do not meet but it was too big to wear. US
John Backus Escher show “impossible surgeon Walton Lillehei wanted
worlds” that include The impossible
Early computer programmers baffling tricks looks possible a pacemaker that could
had to write thousands of from this angle be strapped to the body,
virtually unreadable coded allowing children to
instructions to make their Penrose move around, and would
machines work. US researcher triangle A real also keep going during
John Backus changed this with Penrose triangle is power failures. In 1957,
the first successful high-level impossible, but this object US engineer Earl Bakken
programming language, which looks like one when viewed produced a battery-
could translate English-like from the correct angle. powered pacemaker,
statements into which was small enough
machine Radiator to wear. He marketed
and fan at his invention the
Flap following year as the
conceals the front Meditronic 5800.
the gas cap
Superglue

1958

Harry Coover, Fred Joyner

Superglue bonds
surfaces carrying any
trace of water.
The water
triggers a
reaction that
turns the liquid
glue into
strong plastic.
The chemical
involved –
cyanoacrylate
– was discovered
in 1942, but it
was 1951 before
US researchers
Harry Coover and
Fred Joyner realized its
potential. Superglue
became a product in 1958, and
Coover demonstrated it on
television by using just one
drop to lift the show’s host
right off the floor. Many careless
people have since confirmed
how well it sticks to skin.

1957 Chinese communist diverts farm labor to industry. 1958 The US establishes National Aeronautics and Space
leader Mao Zedong Agriculture is affected so badly the independent Administration (NASA). The
launches his “Great Leap that 20 million people starve to government agency responsible first seven astronauts will be
Forward”, a program that death over the next four years. for the exploration of space, the chosen the next year.

219

InformatIon & uncertaInty Silicon Van Allen
Semiconductor integrated chip
circuit This early chip is
shown without its normal radiation belts
protective package.

1958

Laser concept Semiconductor components connected to form James Van Allen
integrated a complex circuit. The first of
1958 circuit these, made in 1958 by US Earth is surrounded by
engineer Jack Kilby, contained electrically charged particles
Charles Townes, 1958 only a few components, but that come from the Sun and are
Arthur Schawlow demonstrated the principle. captured by Earth’s magnetic
Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce The following year, another field. They gather in two
The laser started out in 1953 US engineer, Robert Noyce, doughnut-shaped belts around
as a type of amplifier for Modern electronic devices, invented a better way of the equator. The inside of the
microwaves called a maser such as laptop computers, making integrated circuits. He inner belt is about 600 miles
(from Microwave Amplification pack a lot into a small space. used a film of metal to connect (1,000 km) above Earth’s
by Stimulated Emission of They do this with integrated up transistors buried beneath equator, while the outside
Radiation). One of its inventors, circuits – silicon chips the surface of a silicon chip. of the outer belt is about
US physicist Charles Townes, containing thousands or With many improvements, this 15,000 miles (25,000 km) up.
and another US physicist, millions of transistors and other process is still used today. These dangerous regions are
Arthur Schawlow, later showed called the Van Allen belts, after
that the same principle could US physicist James Van Allen,
apply to light. Changing the who discovered them in 1958
initial M to L for light gave the by studying cosmic-ray data
name laser. Most lasers are, gathered by equipment on
however, used not as light board the Explorer 1 satellite.
amplifiers but as light
sources with very special A mold can
properties. (✷ See also produce 2,880
Masers and lasers.) bricks an hour

Lego

1958

Godtfred Shape of brick Lego Massive, accurate molds like
Christiansen these are needed to make bricks that
will always snap together.
Lego bricks existed in
1949, but were re-
invented in their modern
form in 1958 by Godtfred
Christiansen. He was the
son of a Danish carpenter,
Ole Christiansen, who, in
1932, founded a company
making wooden products,
including toys. By 1934,
the toys were taking over,
and the company was
renamed Lego, from the
Danish “led godt” meaning
“play well.” Godtfred, who
joined the company when only
12, was also the force behind
the creation of Legoland.

1959 Twelve nations sign operations, including nuclear 1959 After an unsuccessful Dalai Lama, flees to India with
the Antarctic Treaty. weapons, and make it somewhere rebellion by the 100,000 followers. He sets up
Its goal is to keep the world’s last science can flourish in a spirit of people of Tibet against Chinese a government in exile at
wilderness free of military international cooperation. rule, their spiritual leader, the Dharmsala, in the Himalayas.

220

MASERS AND LASERS 1951 – 2014
Laser Light
When atoms or molecules absorb energy, they Laser light is pure, that is it consists of waves of a single
frequency, all in step. This makes it useful where a light bulb’s
become “excited.” If they are then struck by uneven waves of many frequencies would not do. It can be very
intense, allowing industrial lasers to cut through metal,
radiation of a suitable frequency, they release and can also be formed into a much narrower beam
than ordinary light.
their energy as a wave exactly in step with that
Lasers in action
radiation. This “stimulated emission” was Lasers are ideal for measurement. Their narrow beam
is used in surveying to bounce off distant reflectors and
predicted by Albert Einstein give pinpoint positioning. Tiny, low-powered infrared
lasers detect the microscopic messages written on CDs.
in 1917. In a laser, the Lasers are essential for making holograms (✷ see
page 210), as well as great for putting on light shows.
new radiation strikes

other excited atoms,

which then emit

further light.

This chain

reaction produces Lasers in machines
high-intensity like this cut metal
radiation with all without distorting it.

the waves in step This enlarged view
with each other. of the music layer of
an audio CD shows
fine depressions that

a laser can read.

Float glass that its occupants will carry on learning difficulties and medical
at their original speed. This problems, have an extra copy
1959 means that they will hit the of one particular chromosome,
inside of the now stationary known as chromosome 21,
Alastair Pilkington car, and be injured. The way to making 47 in all. As a result of
prevent this is to anchor them later work, babies can now be
Nearly all window to the car, so that they stop checked for this and other gene
glass is made by when it stops. Various seat belts problems before they are born.
the float glass process. were tried before Swedish
A ribbon of molten engineer Nils Bohlin came up Bubblewrap
glass is poured on to with today’s lap-and-diagonal
the mirrorlike surface of a design. His belts were first used 1960
pool of molten tin. The tin in a 1959 Volvo.
smooths the underside of the Alfred Fielding,
glass while flames play on the Cause of Marc Chavannes
top to smooth this. Alastair Down’s
Pilkington of British glass syndrome Bubblewrap consists of two
company Pilkington thought layers of soft plastic with
up the idea in 1952. After 1959 rows of air bubbles trapped
seven years’ development, between them. Used to pack
it was ready to use. Jérôme Lejeune delicate articles, it is cleaner
and more effective than
Seat-belt Human cells usually have 46 materials like shredded paper.
chromosomes containing It appeared in its earliest form,
1959 their genes. But in 1959, French AirCap cellular cushioning, in
geneticist Jérôme Lejeune 1960. Its US inventors, Alfred
Nils Bohlin showed that the cells of people Fielding and Marc Chavannes,
with Down’s syndrome, a were originally trying to make
When a car stops suddenly, condition which can cause textured wall coverings, but
as in a crash, Newton’s soon realized that packaging
first law (✷ see page 96) says offered a bigger market.

1960 In Sharpeville, South black Africans. Police open fire; 1960 One of the U-2 spy Powers parachutes to safety, but
Africa, a crowd 67 people are killed. A state of planes regularly is put in prison for 10 years. The
gathers in protest against laws emergency is declared, and black flown over Soviet territory by the incident wrecks an East–West
that restrict the movement of political groups are outlawed. US is shot down. Pilot Gary summit meeting in Paris.

221

InformatIon & uncertaInty Artificial neural put these cells together to Quasar
network form the first ANN, a pattern-
Communications recognizing network called the 1960
satellite 1960 Perceptron, He demonstrated
it in 1960. ANNs are used Allan Sandage,
1960 Frank Rosenblatt in deep learning – training Maarten Schmidt
computers on real-world
John Pierce An artificial neural network data, for use in tasks such Quasars are starlike objects.
(ANN) is a lot of electronic as speech recognition. They are found in some
Communications satellites “nerve cells” joined together. parts of the sky that also give
are radio relay stations in It processes information in a SI units out strong radio waves. US
space. They enable signals to similar way to the brain. astronomer Allan Sandage
reach places far away from Electronic models of natural 1960 found the first in 1960. Its
the transmitter. In 1960, to nerve cells were developed in spectrum was puzzling. In
convince people that this would the 1940s by US researchers 11th General Conference 1963 Dutch-born US
work, US engineer John Pierce Warren McCulloch and Walter on Weights and Measures astronomer Maarten Schmidt
made use of the experimental Pitts to help them understand suggested that it was a normal
satellite Echo 1. This giant how the brain worked. Another Science and technology spectrum shifted sideways by
aluminum-coated balloon made US scientist, Frank Rosenblatt, need consistent units of a huge amount. According to
a good radio reflector, and measurement for things like astronomical theory, this
Pierce showed that signals length, mass, force, and showed that the quasar was
could be bounced off it over electric current. The Système billions of light-years away and
long distances. His work led to International d’Unités, or SI, therefore must be fantastically
the launch of Telstar, the provides such units. Adopted bright. Further observations
first satellite to relay in 1960, SI cleaned up an older indicated that quasars are also
television, in system called MKS (meter– quite small, suggesting that
1962. kilogram–second) by defining they are active black holes
six basic units (plus a seventh (✷ see page 184).
Synthetic added in 1971) and deriving all
ruby rod the others from them. It also Ruby laser
standardized the prefixes, such
Mirrorlike surface as kilo (a thousand) that are 1960
ensures that the ruby used to express measurements.
is bombarded with as Theodore Maiman
much light as possible Lamp lies next
to the ruby rod Ayear after it was shown
when the unit that lasers were possible
is closed (✷ see page 220), US physicist
Theodore Maiman made one.
Synthetic He used a rod of synthetic
ruby rod ruby with silver-coated ends,
surrounded by flash tubes.
Closed laser unit Light from the tubes excited
Ruby laseR Flash tubes pumped atoms in the rod, making them
energy into the pale pink ruby rod of
this 1960 laser. The inside of the casing give out light. Trapped
was silvered to prevent energy from being between the reflecting
wasted. The ends of the rod had to be ends, this stimulated
precisely parallel to get laser action. further atoms, creating the
first pulses of laser light.

Disposable
diaper

1961

Vic Mills

From the mid 1940s onward,
many attempts were made
to invent a disposable diaper.

1960 In an unsuccessful weaker, pro-Western government 1961 The Communist East prevent them from getting into
effort to prevent of South Vietnam, the US sends Germany stems the West Germany. Temporary at
communist North Vietnam from military advisors and weapons flow of illegal emigrants by first, it soon becomes 29 miles
invading and taking over the and the Vietnam War begins. building a wall across Berlin to (47 km) of solid concrete.

222

None were really successful WIllIng ServantS 1951 – 2014
until US engineer Vic Mills,
fed up with the cloth diapers THE WorD “roBoT” comes 18th century, clockwork dolls were
worn by his granddaughter, from the Czech word for forced serving tea in Japan, while French
put the US company Procter & labor. It first appeared in 1920, in inventor Jacques de Vaucanson had
Gamble to work on the the play R.U.R. by Karel Cv apek, but made a realistic mechanical duck.
problem. After several years of people have been making machines But a self-sufficient, intelligent robot
tests, Pampers were launched that imitate life for centuries. By the remains the stuff of science fiction.
in 1961.
A robot arm spot-welding the suspension unit of a car. Robots are ideal for dangerous, repetitive jobs like this.
Shape memory
alloys Following the rules Breaking Free
Most modern robots have little intelligence or More advanced robots have less need of
1961 awareness of their surroundings. They have to be humans. With sensors to detect obstacles,
programmed in great detail to tell them what to they can move around freely, while a
William Buehler, do. Some robot arms can learn what movements computer gives them enough intelligence to
David Muzzey to make by recording the actions of a human do complex tasks like cleaning, cooperating
operator. They then simply repeat them. with other robots, or even exploring Mars.
When strongly heated and
then cooled, shape
memory alloys (SMAs)
“remember” the shape they
had when hot. However much
they are bent while cold,
heating them restores their
original shape. They are useful
for making, among other
things, sleeves to join metal
tubes, and valves to control
the rate of fluid flow. The first
SMA was made from nickel
and titanium by US researcher
William Buehler. Another US
scientist David Muzzey
discovered its properties in
1961, supposedly by heating a
bent metal strip with his lighter.

Industrial robot

1961

George Devol,
Joseph Engelburger

Industrial robots are jointed
arms controlled by computer.
They can do complex jobs, such
as welding and painting cars.
They are also good at tedious
jobs like unloading finished
parts from a machine. The first
working robot did this. It was
developed by US engineer
George Devol and installed in
1961. With businessman
Joseph Engelburger, Devol
went on to found the first
industrial robotics company.
(✷ See also Willing servants.)

1961 US writer J. Heller and he must be crazy to be flying, 1961 on May 5, Alan mission to study the physiological
invents a new phrase but if he asks to be grounded he Shepard becomes the changes of the pilot in space
in Catch-22. To be grounded, can’t be crazy any more, so he first American in space. The flight. Shepard flies in sub-orbital
airman Yossarian has to be crazy, has to keep flying. Catch 22! Mercury 3 mission is the first space for a little over 15 minutes.

223

Space flight advanced aircraft and for
high-performance sports
1961 equipment. Carbon
fiber technology was
Yuri Gagarin pioneered in 1963 by
British engineer Leslie
The first person to fly Phillips at the Royal
through space was Yuri Aircraft Establishment. It
Gagarin, a major in the USSR’s is now used throughout
air force. He went into orbit the aircraft industry.
around Earth in the spacecraft
Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Push-button
Gagarin’s flight lasted for phone
1 hour, 48 minutes. He reached
a speed of 17,000 mph 1963
(27,400 km/hr) and a height of
203 miles (327 km). Gagarin AT&T
was an international hero on
his return. Sadly, he was killed Phones with buttons
seven years later, while he was began to replace
testing a new plane. phones with dials in
1963, when US phone
Hip company AT&T
replacement introduced its Touch-
Tone system. Dial phones
1962 work by disconnecting
the phone line once for
John Charnley Space flight This later. His zippers were formed 1, twice for 2, and so
poster was produced in 1973 separately and then welded on. Push-button phones
As people grow older, onto the bags. In 1962, send musical tones down
their hips can wear out. to commemorate Russian Japanese inventor Kakuji Naito the line. There are four
The first successful hip cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s space created even better bags by tones for the four rows
replacements were largely forming bag and zipper from of buttons, and three
the work of British surgeon flight. It reads, “Cosmonaut the same piece of plastic. for the three columns.
John (later Sir John) Day USSR 12 IV 1961.” Pressing a button sends
Charnley in 1962. Carbon fiber out the pair of tones
He inserted a Resealable corresponding to its
metal ball into the plastic bag 1963 row and column.
top of a patient’s
thigh bone with a 1962 Polaroid color
new kind of photograph
cement, and Steven Ausnit, Kakuji Naito Leslie Phillips
matched this with 1963
a cup made of Plastic bags with little Fibres of carbon, made by
tough polythene toothless zippers built in stretching synthetic fiber Edwin Land
attached to the were conceived by Danish then toasting it to blackness,
pelvis. With inventor Borgda Madsen in are twice as stiff as the same Polacolor film, launched in
improvements, the 1940s. Romanian engineer weight of steel. Plastics 1963, has three layers, each
this became the Steven Ausnit, working in the reinforced with them are both sensitive to light of one color –
method now used US, produced the first practical stiff and light, making them red, green, or blue. Each layer
for millions of versions of these about 10 years ideal for critical structures in contains a dye that absorbs just
people every year. the light to which the layer is
sensitive. The blue-sensitive
hip replacement layer, for example, contains
Many designs of yellow dye, which absorbs only
blue light. Pulling the film out
artificial hip have been of the camera activates it and
tried since Charnley’s squeezes it into contact with a
white print sheet. As the layers
work in the 1960s. This
“Exeter” joint, made in
1985, uses stainless steel

for its metal part.

1962 War threatens as installation of Soviet nuclear 1962 After thousands of introduced in 1958, is finally
presidents Kennedy missiles in Cuba. After a tense babies are born with withdrawn. Doctors had traced
of the US and Khrushchev of the few days, Khrushchev backs abnormally short arms and legs, the malformations to mothers
USSR stage a standoff over the down and the missiles go home. the sedative drug thalidomide, taking the drug while pregnant.

224

develop, their dyes are trapped Miniskirt Ultra-short skirts 1951 – 2014
in proportion to the exposure and dresses were a symbol of
received, and the remaining the social upheaval of the 1960s. Quarks
dye moves into the print. Where In Britain, they even created
the subject absorbs blue, for problems for the tax man, 1964
example, the blue layer receives because their length allowed
less exposure, so more of its them to be classified as children’s Murray Gell-Mann
yellow dye reaches the final clothes, which were tax-free.
print, making it, too, In the early 1960s, nuclear
absorb blue. physicists observed more and
The process more new subatomic particles.
takes just 60
seconds. It seemed that even protons
and neutrons were made
Polaroid color PhotograPh passing it through designer André up of particles, which
In 1975, Polaroid launched a new filters that reduced Courrèges, who could combine in
camera, the Color Swinger. It was the loudness of showed them in Paris previously unseen
designed to encourage use of a new each harmonic by a in 1964. His models ways. In 1964, US
and improved Polacolor film different amount. This wore them with boots. physicist Murray
introduced the same year. is known as subtractive By December 1965, the Gell-Mann,
synthesis. The Moog fashion had reached building on
Electronic could also vary the way Britain, where London earlier work
music in which sounds started, designer Mary Quant with Israeli
continued, and stopped, offered skirts that stopped physicist
synthesizer giving effects that varied more than 6 in (15 cm) Yuval Ne’eman,
from plucked strings to short of the knee. proposed a set of
1964 organ notes. truly basic particles
that explained the new
Robert Moog Miniskirt
observations. He called them
Several people had already 1964 quarks. He and other scientists
attempted to produce then developed an elaborate,
electronic music before US André Courrèges and now accepted, theory of
inventor Robert Moog invented how they work.
the Moog synthesizer in 1964. Miniskirts,
Unlike most of its earlier, less shorter than Electronic
successful rivals, it could any that women telephone
be played from a normal had worn before, exchange
keyboard. It produced each of first appeared in
its different sounds by starting the collection of 1965
with a note that was rich in French fashion
harmonics – multiples of the AT&T
note’s basic frequency – and
Old-fashioned automatic
telephone exchanges
(✷ see page 161) were built

from unreliable electro-
mechanical switches in which
electromagnets moved
mechanical contacts. They
were replaced in the 1960s
by so-called “electronic”
exchanges. Calls were
actually switched by a new
type of electromechanical
switch, because purely
electronic switching proved

difficult to combine with
the existing network. The
first such exchange was the
ESS No. 1. Developed by
the US company AT&T, it
went into service in 1965.

1963 On November 22, Dallas, Texas. The alleged killer, 1963 Comic art meets the blowup of a comic strip frame.
US president John F. Lee Harvey Oswald, is himself serious kind when His careful rendering of the
Kennedy is assassinated as he killed by a nightclub owner comic’s crude printing helps
travels in an open car through before he can be tried. US artist Roy Lichtenstein paints start the Pop Art movement.
Whaam!, a 13 ft- (4 m-) wide
225

InformatIon & uncertaInty Cable hypertext the basis of his Dolby noise
attaches to program Enquire, which reduction
Computer the computer developed into the
mouse World Wide Web system
Transparent Shape suits (✷ see page 240).
1965 plastic left- or right- 1966
matches handed users Pull tab can
Doug Engelbart modern Macs Ray Dolby
1966
US engineer Doug Computer mouse Tape recordings were plagued
Engelbart was The Apple Pro Mouse, Ermal Fraze by background hiss until
leader of the Human introduced in 2001, uses US engineer Ray Dolby
Factors Research optical tracking rather than The first canned drinks had invented his noise reduction
Center of the Stanford the rolling ball of the to be opened with a system. It works by boosting
Research Institute in conventional mouse. It also separate opener. If this got left quiet, high-frequency sounds
California. The does away with a separate behind on a picnic, everyone during recording. On playback,
computer mouse mouse button: users click by these sounds are reduced to
was one of several pushing its whole body. went thirsty. So, in 1965, US their original volume. Since the
similar devices his document. The idea of a engineer Ermal Fraze hiss is a high-frequency sound,
team tried out in machine for instant cross- patented a new kind of it gets reduced too. Dolby
the 1960s. It was referencing dates back to 1945, can with a pull tab delivered his first batch of noise
the clear winner. when US engineer Vannevar on the top. Pulling reduction units to the Decca
Despite its ease of use Bush described an imaginary the ring peeled Record Company in 1966.
and friendly nickname, device, the Memex. US off a metal tab
it was nearly 20 years computer guru Ted Nelson, to open the Jump jet
before the mouse was believing that computers can. Sharp-
introduced to the public should be simple to use, took edged can 1966
with the launch of the up the idea and in 1965 coined tabs became
Macintosh computer in 1984. the term hypertext. In the a menace on Hawker Siddeley Aviation
1980s, British computer expert streets and
Minicomputer Tim Berners-Lee made beaches, but Most aircraft get lift from
in 1976, US wings or rotors, but jump
1965 engineer Daniel jets get off the ground by
Cudzik saved the pull directing the thrust of their jet
Kenneth Olsen tab by inventing the stay-

In the 1960s, computers were on type used today.
huge – and cost at least
$1,000,000 apiece. US engineer Jump Jet The Cockpit holds
Kenneth Olsen thought that Harrier GR1 showed single pilot
smaller might be better. In its capabilities at Air for engine is
1965, he produced the PDP-8, Britain’s Farnborough sucked in here
one of the first computers to air display in 1968,
use integrated circuits (✷ see and in a transatlantic
page 220). It was air race. Powered by
small (about the size of a a Bristol (later Rolls-
two-drawer filing cabinet), Royce) Pegasus Mk
powerful, and cost an affordable 101 engine, it entered
$18,000. Designed mainly for service with the
laboratory use, it was an instant Royal Air Force
success with scientists and in 1969.
engineers around the world.

Hypertext

1965

Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson

Hypertext allows computer
users to click on a word
and jump to a related

1965 US artist Andy choosing such an everyday 1966 On St Valentine’s and its proposed replacement,
Warhol achieves object, he states that painters Day, Australian the Royal, and opts for the
fame with his painting of a can have no exclusive claim to call currency goes decimal. The Dollar. The switch goes smoothly
of Campbell’s tomato soup. By their work art. nation rejects the British Pound and is completed in 1967.

226

1951 – 2014

engines downward, giving but new techniques and better tiny smoke particles produced and menus – seem normal
them the versatility of a drugs to prevent rejection have as a fire starts. The first domestic now. But when US engineer
helicopter with the speed of a now made transplants an option alarm was designed in 1967 by Doug Engelbart and his team
jet. Once the plane is airborne, where nothing else offers hope. US company BRK Electronics, showed the beginnings of
the thrust is directed backward and received official approval in such a system, the “electronic
for forward flight. The first Pulsar 1969. By the 1980s, intensive office”, at the National
operational “vectored thrust” marketing and safety drives had Computer Conference in
aircraft was the Harrier, made 1967 helped to put smoke alarms in San Francisco in 1968, the
in Britain by Hawker Siddeley millions of homes. audience were stunned. Among
Aviation. Based on the earlier, Jocelyn Bell, Antony Hewish them was graduate student
experimental Kestrel fighter, it Graphical user Alan Kay, who later developed
jetted off the ground in August In 1967, in Cambridge, interface the idea of the computer
1966. Needing no runway, England, a young astronomer, screen as a virtual desktop,
it could be used to fly in and Jocelyn Bell, found a new kind 1968 complete with icons.
out of combat areas to support of radio source that emitted
troops. The Harrier is now short, closely spaced pulses. Doug Englebart, Alan Kay
used by several air forces. She and fellow astronomer
Antony Hewish later realized Computer screens
Heart transplant that it was the spinning remnant with a graphical user
of a supernova (✷ see page 82) interface – windows, icons,
1967 sending out a rotating beam of
radiation, like the lamp on a Graphical user
Christiaan Barnard police car. Whenever the beam interface The
hit Earth, it created a pulse. window-icon-menu
The world’s first heart Since then, more than 300 idea is very adaptable.
transplant was carried pulsars have been discovered. Here it is seen displaying
out by South African surgeon a museum database.
Christiaan Barnard in 1967. Smoke alarm
The patient survived for only
18 days, but he would have 1967
died anyway if he hadn’t had
the operation. During the BRK Electronics
following year, more than
100 heart transplants were The shriek of a smoke alarm
attempted by Barnard and can wake the occupants
other surgeons around the of a burning building and give
them time to escape. Smoke
world. Results continued to alarms use light sensors or low-
be poor at first, level radioactivity to detect the

Main Pylons for Outrigger
undercarriage attachment wheels stabilize
with wheels of weapons aircraft on
for landing the ground
Movable nozzles direct
thrust downward
for takeoff

1968 Black US civil rights workers. While standing on his 1968 In May, increasingly protests and riots. The same
leader Martin Luther motel balcony, he is killed by a rebellious French year sees demonstrations
King visits Memphis, Tennessee, sniper. The gunman, James Earl students bring turmoil to the worldwide against US
in support of a strike by sanitation Ray, gets 99 years in prison. streets of Paris with political involvement in the Vietnam war.

227

InformatIon & uncertaInty

Sailboard in 1955, but the way its atoms computers. By 1973, IBM had Intel to develop a new scientific
are arranged in space – useful a disk drive that could accept calculator chip. Engineer Ted
1968 information for people trying input from users, but the Hoff at Intel thought it would
to make a synthetic version – disks were just as big. Small, be much easier to design a
Newman Darby, Jim Drake, was finally figured out in 1969 3.5 in (9 cm) floppy disks programmable chip than to
Hoyle Schweitzer by British crystallographer were introduced by the Sony build in all the required
Dorothy Hodgkin. She analysed Corporation in 1980. Today, functions. When Busicom went
Windsurfers get closer to the structure of insulin crystals disks are largely obsolete as new bust in 1970, Intel bought back
the waves than do most with X-rays, a technique media, such as online sharing the rights to the chip and, in
other sailors. The idea started pioneered by physicist and storage, have taken over. 1971, launched it as “a micro-
with US enthusiast Newman Lawrence (later Sir Lawrence) programmable computer on a
Darby, but the first people Bragg in the early 20th century. Microprocessor chip,” the Intel 4004. Although
to get a patent were two very slow by modern standards,
Californian surfers, Jim Drake Floppy disk 1971 it was the first in a series of
and Hoyle Schweitzer. Their devices that led to today’s
1968 Windsurfer was 12 ft 1970 Ted Hoff powerful microprocessors.
(3.5 m) long and weighed 60 lb
(27 kg). Modern boards are IBM The microprocessor, which Microchip
shorter and lighter, typically made personal
weighing only 26 lb (12 kg). Floppy disks were originally computers possible, Microprocessor Two Intel 8008
8 in (20 cm) across and was invented by processors, successors to the original
Workmate held only 100 kilobytes of data. accident. In 1969, 4004, are seen with their top covers
IBM engineers used them from Japanese calculator removed to reveal the chip inside.
1968 about 1970 onward to update makers Busicom asked
programs on mainframe US microchip company Kevlar

Ron Hickman 1971

The Workmate is a folding Stephanie Kwolek,
workbench that also acts Herbert Blades,
as a large vice. It was invented Paul Morgan
by British engineer Ron
Hickman, who patented it Kevlar is a plastic that,
as the Minibench in 1968. weight for weight, is
He failed to get support five times as strong as steel.
from manufacturers, so he It was developed in the US
started producing it himself. by chemists Stephanie Kwolek,
Eventually, his idea was taken Herbert Blades, and Paul
up by tool makers Black & Morgan. Chemically, it is
Decker, which began selling it related to nylon, but the
as the Workmate in 1972. It addition of an extra chemical
reached the US in 1975, and group adds strength and
has sold millions worldwide. stiffness. This makes it suitable
for demanding applications
Structure of such as radial tires and bullet-
insulin proof vests. Kevlar is also used
in fiber-reinforced panels for
1969 aircraft and boats, and in golf
clubs and flameproof clothing.
Fred Sanger, It can even stand the heat in
Dorothy Hodgkin brakes, replacing asbestos.

Insulin (✷ see page 186) is a
hormone that is essential to
health. The sequence of its 51
amino acids was determined by
British biochemist Fred Sanger

Kevlar This Kevlar-reinforced
vest, made in 1996, was designed
to resist both bullets and knives.

1969 In September, Arab Libya in a military coup that 1972 China and the US president Richard Nixon sign
nationalist Captain deposes King Idris. Al-Qaddafi creep toward a better the Shanghai Communiqué
Muammar al-Qaddafi seizes later allegedly supports relationship when Chinese in March. Formal diplomatic
control of the government of international terrorist groups. premier Zhou Enlai and US relations will start in 1979.

228

1951 – 2014

Food processor

1971

Pierre Verdon

Afood processor, unlike a
food mixer (✷ see page
184) can chop and blend solid
foods such as vegetables. Its
electric motor can save hours
of work with a knife and
whisk. The first domestic
machine of this kind was the
Magi-Mix, introduced in 1971
by French engineer Pierre
Verdon, who based it on an
earlier, professional machine
of his called the Robot-Coupe.
It now has many imitators.

Video game

1972

Nolan Bushnell

The first successful video
game, Pong, was designed
by US computer enthusiast

Video gAme Toshihiro Nishikado’s CAT sCAnner With the patient’s slices across the long axis of the benefited from advances in
classic game Space Invaders was head inside an X-ray scanner, a body. (“Tomography” comes technology. His Executive
written in 1978 and is still played. radiographer builds up a picture from the Greek “tomos” a “slice”.) calculator, launched in 1972,
Nolan Bushnell in 1972. of their brain, slice by slice. When the scanner was tested was only 0.4 in (1 cm) thick.
Although extremely simple – in 1972, it gave doctors their
just two on-screen paddles that CAT scanner first three-dimensional glimpse Genetic
flipped a ball back and forth – inside a living human body. engineering
it fascinated customers in bars 1972
and pubs, who had never seen Pocket 1972
anything like it before. The Godfrey Hounsfield, calculator
prototype, installed in Andy Allan Cormack Stanley Cohen,
Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, 1972 Herbert Boyer
California, quickly broke down Normal X-ray pictures are
as its makeshift coinbox filled taken from just one angle. Jack Kilby, Jerry Merryman, An organism’s genes are
up and jammed. Later adapted By taking them from several James van Tassel, carried in its DNA. In 1969,
into a phone app, Pong can still angles, and doing some Clive Sinclair US biochemists discovered how
be played today. calculations, much more can to snip DNA into smaller
be revealed. British engineer The earliest “pocket” pieces. Then, in 1972, US
Godfrey (later Sir Godfrey) calculator, the Canon biochemists Stanley Cohen and
Hounsfield and US physicist Pocketronic, weighed 880 g Herbert Boyer began work on
Allan Cormack worked (31 oz). Released in 1970, altering organisms by cutting
independently on this idea. it was based on work by US up the DNA of one organism
Cormack developed much of engineers Jack Kilby, Jerry and inserting genes from
the math, while Hounsfield Merryman, and James Van another. This is called genetic
built the first practical machine. Tassel at Texas Instruments. engineering. It has produced
His computerized axial British inventor Clive (later useful new bacteria and plants,
tomography (CAT) scanner Sir Clive) Sinclair developed but some people worry about
used X-rays and a computer to his pocket calculator later, and its long-term effects.
produce images of successive

1972 At the Munich a record seven gold medals. 1972 The nuclear arms between the US and the USSR
Olympics in He also sets a new world record race slows down as finally bears fruit. The most
Germany, 22-year-old US in each of the seven events the first series of Strategic Arms important outcome is a treaty
swimmer Mark Spitz wins that bring him gold. Limitation Talks (SALT 1) to limit deployment of missiles.

229

InformatIon & uncertaInty Ozone layer for human studies was built in
OzOne layer damage A computer damage 1974 by US chemist Michael
Phelps, assisted by his student
graphic shows the average distribution 1974 Edward Hoffman.
of ozone in Earth’s southern
hemisphere ozone layer in Mario Molina, Supercomputer
October 1991. Sherwood Rowland
1976
Blue area indicates In the 1980s, scientists
the thinning of noticed that Earth’s Seymour Cray
the ozone protective ozone layer had
layer thinned dramatically over Even with the enormous
the Antarctic. This had been power of today’s computer
Plastic Skylab, predicted. In 1974, US chips, scientists with really
soft drink launched by chemists Mario Molina and serious calculations to do have
NASA in May Sherwood Rowland had figured to use supercomputers. These
bottle 1973 and occupied out that the gases used in big machines crunch numbers
until February 1974. It aerosols would decompose in at high speed by using several
1973 was used to observe the Sun intense sunlight, releasing processors at once. The first
and a comet, and to experiment chlorine that destroyed was the Cray-1, produced by
Nathaniel Wyeth with manufacturing in space. It US engineer Seymour Cray
survived until 1979. ozone. Dutch in 1976. It could perform
Most plastics can’t stand chemist Paul 240 million calculations a
up to the pressure exerted Binary pulsar Crutzen had second, operating not just on
by carbonated drinks, so for a earlier pairs of numbers, like a normal
long time bottle manufacturers 1974 computer, but on lists of pairs.
stuck to glass. Then US predicted By 1985, the Cray-2 was
engineer Nathaniel Wyeth Joseph Taylor Jr, a similar effect churning out more than a
figured out a way of using the Russell Hulse for nitrogen
plastic PET (✷ see page 206) oxides from cars. billion results per second.
to make a stronger bottle. In 1974, US astronomer Many governments had
Knowing that synthetic fibres Joseph Taylor Jr. and his taken action to reduce these Long, thin
were strengthened by being student Russell Hulse pollutants, but too late. wings like a
stretched during manufacturing, discovered an unusual pulsar glider
he designed a tool that stretched (✷ see page 227). The time PET scanner
PET in two dimensions as it between its pulses varied over Modified
was molded. The result, an eight-hour period. Taylor 1974 bicycle in the cockpit
patented in 1973, was the first and Hulse deduced that the powered the propeller
carbonation-proof bottle. pulsar was orbiting another, Michael Phelps,
unseen star. The Doppler effect Edward Hoffman
Space station (✷ see page 134) squeezed the
pulses together when the pulsar APET (positron emission
1973 was approaching Earth, and tomography) scanner can
stretched them apart when it produce images that show
NASA was receding. The orbit seems events inside a living body,
to be shrinking gradually, particularly the brain. It works
Aspace station is a base in suggesting that the system is by responding to the gamma
space with accommodation radiating gravitational waves, rays produced when positrons
and laboratories for several as predicted by Einstein (✷ see meet electrons. A substance
people. The earliest attempt pages 178–179). modified to make it emit
was Salyut 1, launched by the positrons is tracked inside the
USSR in 1971, but this crashed body by combining information
back to Earth within six from several gamma ray
months. The first successful detectors. The first PET scanner
space station was the 83 ton

1973 In Australia, Sydney’s the result of a long political 1974 Richard Nixon is the over the Watergate scandal.
world-famous opera struggle, which included the first US president to People connected with him had
house is completed. Its beautiful resignation of Joern Utzon, its resign. He steps down rather burgled the offices of his election
shape, like the sails of a boat, is Danish architect, in 1966. than be charged with misconduct rivals, the Democratic party.

230

Conductive huge magnet, a picture of the 1951 – 2014
plastics inside of their body can be
created. when the nuclei release Gene exons and
1977 this energy, using Magnetic introns
resonance imaging (MRI).
Alan Heeger, MRI reveals chemical 1977
Alan MacDiarmid, differences, so it can
Hideki Shirakawa detect abnormal Phillip Sharp,
cells. US chemist Richard Roberts
Metals conduct electricity. Paul Lauterbur
Plastics don’t. Unless and US physician When scientists
they’re conductive plastics, Raymond discovered
created in 1977 by US chemist Damadian that DNA carries
Alan Heeger, New Zealand both genes, they
chemist Alan MacDiarmid, contributed
and Japanese chemist Hideki to its thought that these
Shirakawa. They used iodine invention. would be strung
to free up the electrons in Damadian along the
polyacetylene, creating a plastic produced molecule one
a billion times less resistant the first after the other.
to electricity. It can even, in human Then, in 1977,
some cases, emit light. The body US biologist
possibilities seem endless. image magnetic Phillip Sharp and
British biologist
Magnetic resonance Richard Roberts both
resonance imaging This discovered that genes are often
imaging in 1977. experimental MRI separated or split by stretches
of DNA that don’t do anything.
1977 headset fed radio waves into people’s heads. They called the active parts
exons and the inactive parts
Paul Lauterbur, Public-key Human- introns. Before genes get to
Raymond Damadian work, the cell makes a copy
cryptography powered aircraft with the introns chopped out.
Placed in a magnetic field,
some atomic nuclei absorb 1977 1977
energy. If someone is probed
with radio waves while inside a Whitfield Diffie, Paul MacCready,
Martin Hellman, Ron Rivest, Bryan Allen
Human-powered Adi Shamir, Leonard Adleman
aircraft Gossamer Dreams of human flight
Albatross got its name Public-key cryptography, faded in the 17th
from its structure – conceived in 1975 by US century, when
cryptographers Whitfield Diffie scientists realized
thin plastic stretched
over a frame – and and Martin Hellman, allows the size of the wings
its huge wingspan. people to send electronic and muscles required.
messages securely. The system Then, with the invention
Polyester was given practical form by of modern plastics, long,
film US researchers Ron Rivest, light wings became
covering Adi Shamir, and Leonard possible. Using these,
Adleman in 1977. People give human leg muscles are
Wings could out a public key that specifies just big enough for flight.
be removed for how messages sent to them US engineer Paul MacCready
transportation should be scrambled. Once provided 96 ft- (29 m-) long
in this form, messages can be wings with Gossamer Condor.
read only by someone with Cyclist Bryan Allen provided
the matching private key. A muscles to drive a propeller.
public key is a huge number They achieved human-powered
containing hundreds of digits. flight on August 23, 1977. Two
It could take a powerful years later, Allen pedaled
computer years to find the Gossamer Albatross across the
matching private key. English Channel.

1975 Former Portuguese granted it independence, and the 1976 Popular interest in Roots. Built around the life story
colony East Timor is UN. It will become an Indonesian black history is of an African slave, Kunta Kinte,
taken over by Indonesia, despite province in 1976 and will suffer increased by the publication of it explores black identity while
protests from Portugal, who had continuing unrest. US writer Alex Haley’s book promoting racial understanding.

231

InformatIon & uncertaInty

Personal Receivers now tune in to four COMPUTERS FOR ALL
computer out of 24 satellites, each of
which carries a highly accurate In 1975, encouraged by his friend Steve Jobs,
1977 atomic clock. By comparing
the received times with the US computer hobbyist Stephen Wozniak built and
Steve Jobs, Stephen Wozniak actual time and the known
positions of the satellites at marketed the Apple I computer – a bare circuit
The first three computers for that time, the receiver can
personal use appeared in determine where it must be. board aimed at electronics hobbyists. Jobs saw that
1977. The Commodore PET
and Tandy TRS-80 are now Test-tube baby computers had a wider market, and got Wozniak to
almost forgotten, but the third
was the Apple II, a machine 1978 design a more complete, stylish-looking machine
with its own monitor and plug-
in expansion cards. The other Patrick Steptoe, that simply plugged in and worked. Apple II
machines were good, but the Robert Edwards
dedication of the Apple’s transformed the computer industry, making even
promoter and designer, US Louise Brown, the world’s
computer enthusiasts Steve first “test-tube” baby, giants like IBM take notice. Apple I
Jobs and Stephen Wozniak was born in England on computer
made all the difference. (✷ See July 25, 1978. British Rise of the hobbyist
also Computers for all.) gynecologist Patrick The personal computer came out of the
Steptoe took an egg from work of countless electronics hobbyists
Global her mother. His colleague – some of them now big names –
positioning Robert Edwards added who, in the early 1970s, built and
sperm from her father. programmed their own crude
system The doctors placed the machines in their bedrooms
fertilized egg in her and garages.
1978 mother’s womb, where
it grew into a healthy the AltAiR 8800
US Air Force baby. Twenty-one years The first kit computer appeared in 1975.
later, Louise had a job The Altair 8800 had no screen, no keyboard, and
in a nursery. hardly any memory, but its very simplicity made it ideal for
computer pioneers to cut their teeth on.

If you had a global Mobile phone Word processing
positioning system software
(GPS) receiver you 1979
would never get 1979
lost. The present Bell Labs
GPS began in 1978 Seymour Rubinstein
with the launch by Mobile phones were
the US Air Force pioneered in the US By the late 1970s, personal
of the first two by Bell Telephone computers could display a
NavStar satellites. Laboratories. After a trial page of text. With cheaper
in Chicago in 1979, the printers available, they looked
Mobile phone first public service opened set to replace typewriters. US
The first mobiles in 1983. Meanwhile, software developer Seymour
were called “car Scandinavia had launched Rubinstein, seeing his chance,
phones” because its own system in 1981. started writing word processing
they were too All mobiles use the same software. Unsuccessful at first,
big to carry idea. There are relatively he launched a second attempt,
around. few radio frequencies, WordStar, in 1979. This used
but millions of users, so short, easy-to-remember, non-
the base stations that printing codes typed into a
relay calls to the fixed document to specify its fonts
phone network are given and formatting. Although it
a limited range. Outside cost $450 (about $1,150
that range, frequencies can today), the program quickly
be reused. As callers move, took a two-thirds market share,
computers automatically selling nearly a million copies
retune their phones to a in five years. People were still
frequency in the new area. using it in the late 1980s.
It nearly always works.

1979 Margaret Thatcher Conservative party. Her time in 1979 The nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, An
becomes Britain’s office will bring more freedom industry reels when accidental meltdown damages
first female prime minister after a for private companies and less the “impossible” happens at the the plant and dents public
decisive election victory for her for trade unions. Three Mile Island nuclear power confidence in nuclear safety.

232

Apple II 1951 – 2014
computer
its launch in 1979 it was the
Computer Soundabout in the US and
Stowaway in Britain. Morita
liberation got his way in the end – it is
now the Walkman everywhere.
In the early 1970s,
some people, including Cellular address
Ted Nelson, son of a Hollywood code
actress, began to demand computing
power for all. Personal computers and the 1980
Internet have given this to many in the West,
but most of the world’s population still has no Günter Blobel

access to computers. Healthy people
have all their
Walkman different proteins in the right
places, wherever they are
1979 needed. By 1980, German
doctor Günter Blobel had
Akio Morita discovered how this happens.
He found that every protein
Akio Morita, cofounder of carries a molecular code, a
the Japanese firm Sony, sequence of amino acids, which
invented a cassette player controls its movement through
small enough for people to the body. Responding to the
carry around. His name for code, a cell membrane either
it was Walkman. This was blocks the protein or lets it
considered bad English, so at through – unless it is needed
by the membrane itself, in
which case it hangs on to it.

Spreadsheet Transparent area
software allows tape to be seen

1979 Walkman Sold in Britain as the Adjustable
Stereo Stowaway, this early Walkman headset
Daniel Bricklin, had some facilities absent from later
Bob Frankson models, including provision for two Lead plugs into the
sets of headphones. cassette player
Aspreadsheet program
displays a constantly Headphones allow
updated table of related the user to listen to
numbers. This simple idea has music without
probably sold more personal disturbing other
computers than any other people nearby
piece of software. When US
student Daniel Bricklin and
programmer Bob Frankson
launched the first
spreadsheet program,
VisiCalc, in 1979, it
was a revelation.
People were amazed
by the way they could
make changes to one number
and instantly see the effect on
all the others. They had a
new management tool.

1979 Soviet Union troops which has been weakened by 1980 Strikes over food unions. Under their leader, Lech
cross the border into years of infighting between its prices in Gdansk, Walesa, they form the union
Afghanistan to prop up the leaders. Within days, the USSR Poland, lead to workers getting Solidarity, which will later defeat
country’s communist regime, has installed a new leader. the right to form free trade the communist government.

233

InformatIon & uncertaInty Optical Mirror reflects
microscope for light into
Genetic control viewing sample optical
of embryonic and probe microscope
development

1980

Edward Lewis, Controls used to
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, position probe

Eric Weischaus Electrical and Scanning
computer tunneling
The fruit fly breeds quickly
and has large chromosomes connections system
(✷ see page 176), so is ideal hidden in
for genetics research. In 1978, Scanning
US geneticist Edward Lewis here
found that its genes are arranged tunneling
along its chromosomes in the
same order as the body parts microScope The part
they control. By 1980, of the microscope that
German geneticist actually scans a surface is
Christiane Nüsslein- dwarfed by all the equipment
Volhard and US needed to line it up with its tiny
geneticist Eric Weischaus target and hold it steady.
had found that only 140
of the genes are essential Post-it note Twin all-moving Engines Paint
during development. Some tail fins shielded by designed
control the body plan, others 1980 to absorb
create segments of the body, angular microwaves
and others determine features cowling
within segments. Work like this Spencer Silver,
helps scientists to understand Art Fry
development in humans.
Post-it notes
G proteins started with a not
very sticky adhesive made by
1980 US chemist Spencer Silver,

Martin Rodbell, who worked for US that wouldn’t fall out of his
Alfred Gilman manufacturing company 3M. music. A strip of Silver’s
He had a feeling that the adhesive was the answer. After
Bodies wouldn’t work if adhesive might be useful, but much development, and the
cells didn’t respond to couldn’t think of a use for it. realization that the peelable,
things. Heart cells respond to Eventually, his colleague Art sticky sheets had many other
adrenaline (✷ see page 174) Fry found one. Art sang in a uses, 3M’s Post-it notes were
by pumping harder. Eye cells choir, and needed bookmarks launched in 1980.
respond to light with nerve
impulses. US pharmacologist
Alfred Gilman used the work
of US
biochemist
Martin Rodbell to
help find the link between
stimulus and response. By
1980, he had found G proteins.
Activated by a stimulus, these
make cells containing them
respond. Gilman’s finding has
helped to explain some
diseases, including cholera.

1982 In April, Canada gets Constitution Act. Canada’s new 1982 Argentine troops Margaret Thatcher, sends troops
total independence status is largely the result of a invade the British- to defend the islands. Altogether,
from the British parliament when long campaign by its prime run Falkland Islands, off South about 900 British and Argentine
Queen Elizabeth II signs the minister, Pierre Trudeau. America. Britain’s prime minister, troops die. Argentina is defeated.

234

Scanning suggested that the company Compact disc 1951 – 2014
tunneling should develop a personal
microscope computer. A small company 1982 into enough to analyse.
called Microsoft provided the A machine repeatedly uses
1981 operating system. By fall, the Philips Electronics, heat to split DNA into its
design was ready, and another Sony Corporation two component strands, then
Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer manager, Don Estridge, took uses the enzyme polymerase
over production. The IBM PC Competing companies to make more DNA from
The scanning tunnelling was launched in New York Philips and Sony did not these. The process is cheap
microscope, invented by on August 12, 1981. Within want a repeat of earlier mistakes, enough to use routinely.
Swiss physicists Gerd Binnig days, output had to be in which their rival video
and Heinrich Rohrer in 1981, quadrupled as demand systems had both been beaten Stealth aircraft
reveals the three-dimensional outstripped supply. by the VHS recorder (✷ see
reality of individual atoms. It page 218), so they worked 1983
scans a metal surface with a Space shuttle together to invent the CD. The
sharp probe that doesn’t quite basics were agreed upon by Lockheed Martin Corporation
touch it. A small voltage makes 1981 1980, and the two companies
electrons “tunnel” out of the then started developing players Stealth technology tries to
metal, creating a current, and a NASA and disc-making machinery. make planes invisible to
control signal raises or lowers When commercial CD players radar (✷ see page 198). The
the probe to keep this current Aspace shuttle blasts into appeared in 1982, the Philips idea is not new: in World War
constant as the surface is space, then glides home player included a key II, German submarine snorkels
scanned. Fluctuations in the like a plane. Unlike a plane, component made by Sony. were coated with radar-
control signal can then be it starts each journey attached absorbing material to reduce
converted into an amazingly to a huge fuel tank and booster, Polymerase the risk of detection. Another
detailed picture of the surface. rockets, the whole thing chain reaction technique is to shape objects
weighing 2,000 tons. The tank so that they do not reflect radar
IBM PC is discarded, but the boosters 1983 waves back to where they came
are reused. After trials in which from. Both ideas were used in
1981 shuttles were launched from Kary Mullis the first stealth aircraft, the US
jumbo jets, the shuttle Lockheed F-117 fighter, which
William Lowe, Don Estridge Columbia lifted off from Cape Detectives and doctors can became operational in 1983.
Canaveral in Florida on now use tiny amounts of Despite its weird shape and
In 1980, US computer giant April 12, 1981. Its 54-hour DNA to find out about bodies, special paint, one was shot
IBM saw the desktop mission, ending at Edwards dead or alive. In just an hour down over Yugoslavia in 1999.
computer as both a threat and Air Force Base in California, or two, the polymerase chain
an opportunity. One of its was the first of many. reaction, invented in 1983 Cyclonic
managers, William Lowe, vacuum cleaner
by US biochemist Kary
Mullis, can turn a few 1983
DNA molecules
James Dyson

See pages 238–239 for
the story of how James
Dyson took on the world

with the first cyclonic
vacuum cleaner.

Conventional Louvres hide hot Stealth aircraft The angular
wheels hidden engines from heat- shape of the F-117A deflects radar
seeking missiles pulses, while its special black paint
during flight absorbs them and also makes it
less visible at night.

1983 On Wednesday ever bush fires kill 72 people, 1983 At Black Rock, jet car Thrust 2. His speed of
February 16, including 12 firefighters, and Nevada, British 633.468 mph (1,019.467 km/h),
which will be known as “Ash cause $400m of damage. Some businessman Richard Noble is 11.061 mph (17.797 km/h)
Wednesday,” Australia’s worst fires are the work of arsonists. makes land speed history in his faster than the world record.

235

Internet Top “cup” Dust-free builDer’s chute A DNA
is attached chute like this, erected in minutes, fingerprinting
1983 to the is safer than earlier chutes, which
building 1984
J. C. R. Licklider, took hours to build.
Larry Roberts Alec Jeffreys
3D graphics
US psychologist computer Every person’s DNA is
J. C. R. unique. DNA fingerprinting
Licklider, head 1984 compares DNA found after
of Information a crime with DNA from a
Processing at the James Clark suspect. It was invented in
US military’s 1984 by British geneticist Alec
Advanced Research Computer-generated images (later Sir Alec) Jeffreys. The
Projects Agency for films and advertising DNA is first split into fragments
(ARPA) started his are made with specialized with an enzyme. Everyone’s
Intergalactic graphics computers. The first DNA will split differently.
Computer Network person to see the need for such When drawn through gelatin
– officially known computers was US engineer by electricity, some fragments
as Arpanet – in James Clark. He intended them move faster than others. The
1963. Its goal was for scientific and military work, resulting pattern of spots is
to link research computers but when his company, Silicon revealed by making radioactive
together. Network specialist DNA stick to the original DNA.
Larry Roberts took over in Graphics, gave one of its first It can be used as evidence in a
1966. By 1970, Arpanet was workstations to Star Wars trial. In 2013, advanced DNA
using packet switching, the director George Lucas, in sequencing techniques were
transmission technique that 1984, it opened up a new developed that can distinguish
makes the Internet possible. market. Today, digital actors between identical twins.
Procedures for transferring can replace extras in a movie,
data were fixed by 1978, and and entire films are created
became compulsory in 1983, without a single actor.
effectively creating the modern
Internet. (✷ See also Network Figures’ movements based 3D graphics computer Graphic
of networks.) on those of real actors computers generated hundreds of
“actors” for the film Titanic.
Dust-free
builder’s chute

1984

G. H. Vlutters, A. J. Vlutters

Dutch building equipment
suppliers G. H. and A. J.
Vlutters invented their garbage
chute in 1984. Before then,
builders made their own chutes
from planks. Dust went
everywhere, and large objects
sometimes bounced out and
fell. The Vlutters were inspired
by a stack of disposable cups.
If the cups had no bottoms,
they would form a flexible tube.
They made the cups bigger,
added chains and a winch, and
persuaded builders to buy them.

Sections link together
to form the chute

1983 Germany’s Stern Despite the approval of British 1984 In Bhopal, central a populated area. About 2,500
magazine excites historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, India, a leak at people are killed, 50,000 are
world interest with excerpts from they turn out to be the work of an insecticide plant releases temporarily disabled, and many
what it says are Hitler’s diaries. a forger called Konrad Kujau. 50 tons of deadly gas into more will claim lasting effects.

236

1951 – 2014

PostScript page Fullerenes A buckminster- NETWORK OF NETWORKS
description fullerene molecule is a semiregular
language polyhedron. Buckminster Fuller There are many inTerneTs but only one “internet.”
based designs for huge domes on An internet is any network that interconnects
1984 polyhedra of this kind. several smaller networks. The Internet connects
thousands of internets to form a vast global
John Warnock, British chemist Harold (later network. It consists of “backbones,” such as
Charles Geschke Sir Harold) Kroto and US NSFNET in the USA and EBONE in Europe, into
chemists Richard Smalley which are plugged smaller regional and local
PostScript is a language that and Robert Curl vaporized networks. These connect to individual computers.
describes printed pages. graphite with a laser beam.
Any printer that understands This formed molecules GettinG the messaGe exchanGinG data
PostScript can print a PostScript containing 60 carbon atoms A home computer connects Computers using the Internet
file. Because the language arranged as a hollow ball. to the Internet through a have to talk TCP/IP, its official
describes shapes, rather than They named the new form of computer belonging to an “language”. This is actually a
issuing instructions, the result carbon buckminsterfullerene, Internet Service Provider pair of protocols, or standards.
is limited only by the quality after a US architect famous for (ISP). This computer is TCP is Transmission Control
of the printer. PostScript was his domes. Other fullerenes connected through the ISP’s Protocol, responsible for the
devised by US computer have since been found. network to the Internet, and exchange of data between
scientists John Warnock and has a unique address. Data programs running on
Charles Geschke and released Windows travels as independent different computers. IP is
by their company, Adobe, in operating “packets”, which find their Internet Protocol, which
1984. When Apple used it in way with the help of special ensures that data can find
their LaserWriter printer, and a system computers called routers. its way around the net.
third company, Aldus, added a
layout program, PageMaker, 1985 Microsoft hit back with version, so Maclike that it
desktop publishing was born. Windows, but because PC provoked a lawsuit, appeared
Microsoft Corporation users wanted to keep their in 1987. Finally, Windows 3,
Fullerenes old programs, Windows launched in 1990, helped the
The Apple Macintosh set a operated through MS-DOS, PC dominate the computer it
1985 new standard. Its point- making it slow. An improved had once imitated.
and-click interface made the
Harry Kroto, IBM PC’s text-based operating
Richard Smalley, Robert Curl system, Microsoft’s MS-DOS,
look old-fashioned. In 1985,
Scientists once knew only
three forms of carbon –
diamond, graphite, and
amorphous. Then, in 1985,

1984 India’s prime minister, Sikh extremists in the Punjab 1985 Irish musician Bob further time at Philadelphia’s
Indira Gandhi, is violently sought independence, Geldof organizes Live JFK Stadium. World-class
killed by her Sikh bodyguards. It and resented the use of troops to Aid, a 16-hour charity concert at performers take part, and money
is the end of a conflict in which clear the Sikh temple at Amritsar. London’s Wembley Stadium, with rolls in for the world’s poor.

237

InformatIon & uncertaInty

TAMING THE WHIRLWIND

James Dyson takes on the world with the first
vacuum cleaner that doesn’t need a bag

Early vacuum clEanEr It was late at night. An intruder was creeping around a factory yard.
From their invention in about For a long time, he stared at and examined a giant metal cone
1902 until Dyson applied the sticking out of the factory roof. He made several sketches of the cone,
cyclonic principle, all vacuum then he was off into the darkness. James Dyson had just had his first
cleaners sucked air through a encounter with an industrial cyclone, a device that removes dust from
bag. Some early models were the air coming out of a factory. It was to change his life.
powered by hand. Electricity
The next morning, Dyson built a copy of the cyclone in his own
made cleaning easier and a small factory, where he was making wheelbarrows. He wanted it to
little more efficient. trap the paint powder that filled the air when his wheelbarrows were
sprayed. There was already a fan in the factory that sucked air through
Vacuum a cloth filter, but the cloth needed cleaning hourly. In the cyclone
cleaner system, the air whirled around inside a cone. The powder was flung
early out like water out of clothes in a spin dryer and deposited at the
1900s bottom of the cone.

Dust Then Dyson thought of something else. At
collected home, near Bath, England, he used a powerful
vacuum cleaner. The design of vacuum
in here

Dyson got the idea for his
cleaner from the industrial
cyclone, which is used to
collect unwanted particles,
such as the sawdust from
a sawmill. His challenge
was to get the principle
to work on a much
smaller scale inside
a domestic machine.

238

1951 – 2014

cleaners hadn’t changed much since they were Dyson G-Force cyclonic
vacuum cleaner, sold in
invented. They worked well only with a new bag,
Japan from 1986
because the dust they sucked up from the carpet
Force For change
quickly clogged the pores in the bag, reducing Japanese customers loved the
unusual pink of the G-Force,
suction. The bag was like the cloth filter in the first cyclonic cleaner to go
into production. The colour was
Dyson’s factory, which he had replaced with a suggested by the early morning
light in the fields of Provence
cyclone, and he wondered if he could replace in the South of France.
James Dyson
the bag with a cyclone system too. The multi-cyclone cleaner seen
here is just one of many ideas
Dyson rushed home and made a cardboard Dyson has produced. Training
at the Royal College of Art,
model of the industrial cyclone. He ripped London, helped him to develop
his creativity. Before the
the bag off an old vacuum cleaner and cyclonic cleaner, he had
invented a new kind of boat,
replaced it with his cardboard cone. To his and a wheelbarrow with a
ball-shaped wheel. Just as
delight, he found that the bagless vacuum important as his creativity,
though, was his determination
cleaner worked well. He had made an to see things through.

important invention.

That was in 1978. It would be another 15 years

before Dyson’s Dual Cyclone cleaner was launched,

although his first cyclonic cleaner, the G-Force, featured

on the cover of Design magazine in 1983 and reached 1940s
Japan in 1986. Those years were filled with intensive advertisement
engineering, which he loved, and dealing with for a Hoover
vacuum
businessmen and lawyers, which he hated. In the end, cleaner

he had to manufacture his invention himself. He didn’t

want his idea stolen or suppressed by jealous rivals.

When the Dual Cyclone was finally launched in

1993, the first reaction

from customers was

shock: it looked so

different. Then sales

grew. After two years,

Dyson’s invention

was the number one

vacuum cleaner in

Britain and was

generating

worldwide sales

of well over

$1 million

a day. The

whirlwind

was tamed.

239

High- Prozac Prozac A drug prescribed for World Wide
temperature depression, Prozac is taken by Web
superconductors 1987 about 40 million people worldwide.
1990
1986 Arvid Carlsson, Ray Fuller neurologist Arvid Carlsson,
who developed another anti- Tim Berners-Lee
Georg Bednorz, Alex Müller In 1972, a team led by US depressant, later withdrawn
biochemist Ray Fuller The World Wide Web grew
Superconductors, used in synthesized the compound because of side effects. from the work of British
powerful electromagnets, fluoxetine. Fifteen years later, physicist Tim Berners-Lee at
show no resistance to electric it became the antidepressant Supermassive the European Centre for
current. But they work only Prozac. Fluoxetine reduces black hole Nuclear Research (CERN) in
at very low temperatures. In the rate at which serotonin, Switzerland. CERN’s scientists
1986, German physicist Georg a nerve chemical, is reabsorbed. 1987 needed to get at information
Bednorz and Swiss physicist This makes more serotonin scattered among computers
Alex Müller found a available, which eases John Kormendy, worldwide. Berners-Lee’s
superconductor that worked depression. Fuller’s work Alan Dressler, answer was the Web. In 1990,
at a higher temperature. Their used some research by Swedish Douglas Richstone when he had written the
new barium-lanthanum copper software and defined the
oxide sparked off a search for Chamber Supermassive black holes have standards that would make
others. By 1988, researchers of liquid the mass of millions of Suns. it work, the Web became
had found a similar oxide that They can destroy everything available to CERN scientists.
was superconductive at -234°F helium around them, but astronomers The public saw it a year later.
(-148°C), which could be made now believe they are involved
to work by being cooled with in the creation of galaxies. They Gene therapy
cheap liquid nitrogen. can be detected by the way
nearby stars and matter orbit 1990
HigH-temPerature them at colossal speeds. In
1987, a 30-million-Sun black French Anderson
suPerconductors hole was found independently
by Canadian astronomer John Gene therapists attempt to
Electromagnets like this use Kormendy and US astronomers restore health to people
superconductors to carry their Alan Dressler and Douglas with genetic disorders by
Richstone. Many more have replacing faulty genes. The
huge currents. The magnet is been found since then. first person to receive officially
enclosed in a cooling chamber. approved gene therapy was
Gene that causes a four-year-old girl who had
cystic fibrosis inherited a defective immune
system. In 1990, US geneticist
1989 French Anderson removed
some white cells from her
Lap-Chee Tsui, blood, inserted normal copies
Francis Collins of a faulty gene, then replaced
the cells. With regular follow-
In cystic fibrosis (CF), thick, up treatments to maintain
sticky mucus clogs the lungs enough gene-corrected white
and intestines. A child can cells, the girl became able to
inherit the condition if both lead a normal life.
parents are carriers. The faulty
gene that causes it was found Digital mobile
in 1989 by Canadian geneticist phone
Lap-Chee Tsui at the Hospital
for Sick Children in Toronto, 1991
Canada, and US geneticist
Francis Collins at the Groupe Spécial Mobile
University of Michigan.
Their discovery makes it The first mobile phones
possible to detect CF carriers used a simple but insecure
and may one day make the analogue radio system, in
condition curable.

1986 Chernobyl power radioactive fallout. Coming after 1989 TV screens Berliners of all ages join in
station in the USSR several other nuclear disasters, worldwide fill with cracking up the concrete barrier
explodes, showering much of this one finally shatters dented scenes of jubilation as the Berlin between East and West. Bemused
northern Europe with long-lasting confidence in the industry. Wall is torn down after 28 years. East German soldiers just watch.

240

Gene therapy A scientist pulls a units. Because nearly all the actual genes. He examined the 1951 – 2014
thread of pure DNA out of solution DNA is “junk”, not genes, this resulting “expressed sequence
to isolate it from an organism. takes a long time. US geneticist tags” to find which fragments Graphical Web
Craig Venter made use of the corresponded to anything browser
which speech was converted ability of living cells to remove interesting. This meant he
more or less directly into radio the junk, leaving fragments of could track down genes much 1993
waves. In 1982, the Groupe more quickly. In 1991, he
Spécial Mobile was formed to revealed more than 330 new Marc Andreessen
develop a digital system for genes – adding some 10 percent
Europe and beyond. Digital to the then known total. The first World Wide Web
phones convert sound waves sites (✷ see page 240)
into numerical codes describing Disposable TV were entirely text-based.
their shape, then send these camera The Web could deliver
codes by radio. By 1991, trial pictures, but not with text.
versions of the GSM system 1992 This changed in 1993, when
were ready, and the following the US National Center for
year all major European Smith & Nephew Dyonics Supercomputing Applications
operators began to use it. GSM released Mosaic, the first
now powers cell phones in 85 In surgery, the smaller the graphical Web browser.
percent of the world market. incision the better. So one Developed by 21-year-old
essential tool of modern surgery US student Marc Andreessen,
Expressed is the endoscope, a fibre-optic it changed the way we use
sequence tags device that lets surgeons peer the Web. The richness and
through a “keyhole” incision. convenience of Mosaic’s direct
1991 In 1992, US company Smith & descendants, Netscape (by
Nephew Dyonics patented a Andreessen) and Internet
more flexible alternative: a tiny Explorer, are now taken
camera that could be passed for granted by Web users.
into the body. As it is difficult
to sterilize, the camera is Graphical Web broWser
designed to be used only once, Mozilla Firefox, released in
then thrown away. 2002, is available in 75 languages
and is used by more than 500
million people around the world.

Craig Venter

Agene is a sequence of
chemical units strung along
a DNA molecule. Specific genes
can be spotted by sifting
through thousands of such

1990 After 27 years in F. W. de Klerk. Mandela and de 1993Steven Spielberg wins concentration camps. The same
prison, South African Klerk work to create a nonracial a best picture Oscar
antiapartheid activist Nelson democracy. Mandela will win the year, his dinosaur movie, Jurassic
Mandela is released by President first election open to all races. for Schindler’s List, his World Park, grosses a record $725
War II drama about German million in four months.

241

InformatIon & uncertaInty

Genetically Comet Hale- Comet Hale-Bopp When Hale-Bopp was at its
modified food closest to the Sun, in April 1997, its dust tail was

1994 longer than the distance from the Sun to Earth.

Calgene Inc. Bopp

Farmers and growers have 1995 amateurs. The professionals Complete
been changing the genetic found that it was a thousand bacterial DNA
makeup of our food for Alan Hale, Thomas Bopp times as bright as Halley’s
centuries. The first genetically comet, with a nucleus about sequence
modified (GM) food produced In 1995, two US amateur 30 miles (50 km) across. By
by genetic engineering (✷ see astronomers, Alan Hale and 1997, it was much closer to 1995
page 229) and approved for Thomas Bopp, independently the Sun, and was clearly visible
sale was the Flavr Savr tomato, discovered a new comet. At to the naked eye. It has now Robert Fleischmann
produced by US company seven times further away from retreated into space, and will
Calgene. A modified gene made Earth than the Sun, it was the not be seen from Earth for An organism’s complete set
it firmer, allowing it to be picked most distant ever spotted by another 2,400 years. of genes – its genome – is
later without its being too soft hidden among the millions of
to transport. This meant it had chemical units making up its
more flavor. Other GM foods, DNA (✷ see pages 216–217).
such as soybeans, followed. To study a genome, scientists
first have to list these units in
Flavr Savr the right sequence. The first
tomatoes stayed free-living organism to have
firmer for longer its entire DNA sequence
revealed was a bacterium
Complete BaCterial DNa sequeNCe Haemophilus influenzae that can cause meningitis –
(above) was the first of several organisms to have its entire DNA Haemophilus influenzae.
sequenced by The Institute for Genomic Research in the mid-1990s. A team led by US geneticist
Robert Fleischmann at The
Institute for Genomic Research
(TIGR) used the “shotgun”
method. The team first broke
the bacterium’s DNA into
thousands of random
fragments, then used a
computer to put these into
a complete sequence. The
result was presented, to
great acclaim, in May 1995.

1994 The dream of to link Britain and France by rail, 1994 South Africa rejoins clear winner is the African
decades is realized is opened. Construction of the the Commonwealth National Congress, led by Nelson
when the Channel Tunnel, which tunnel has taken more than six after holding its first election Mandela, who becomes the
runs under the English Channel years and cost £10.5bn ($15bn). open to people of all races. The country’s first black president.

242

1951 – 2014

Internet 1990s, specialized graphics spotted some gaps, but by also inorganic compounds
retailing computers (✷ see page 236) 1995, with the help of Richard that are secreted by bacteria.
became capable of doing most Taylor, one of Wiles’ former Scientists regard the evidence
1995 of the work. The first film that students, these were plugged as inconclusive.
was made in this way was and Fermat’s last theorem
Jeff Bezos Disney’s Toy Story, a tale of was proved. Dolly the sheep
rivalry between a handcrafted
While hundreds of internet cowboy and a mass-produced Life on Mars? 1997
retailers crashed in 2001, space ranger. It was released
the oldest of them all remained in 1995. Its success led to the 1996 Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell
healthy. Amazon.com, the making of other computer-
internet bookstore (which now generated films, including David McKay See pages 244–245 for the
sells other things as well) was A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc. story of how Ian Wilmut
founded by US computer In August 1996, US geologist and Keith Campbell created
scientist Jeff Bezos in 1994. It Proof of David McKay made an Dolly the sheep.
sold its first book in July 1995. Fermat’s last announcement about
Following a great US tradition, a meteorite. It contained Growth of new
business whizz Bezos started theorem evidence, he said, that there brain cells
the website in his garage. He may once have been life on
also wrote his own software for 1995 Mars. The 4.5 billion-year- 1998
the site, which he named after old meteorite was found
the world’s longest river. Andrew Wiles, in Antarctica in 1984, but Fred Gage, Peter Eriksson
Richard Taylor its Martian origin was not
Full-length confirmed until 1994. Two People used to think that
computer- The last unproved theorem years’ work revealed organic once all our brain cells are
generated movie of 17th- century French chemicals within it that in place, no more can grow. In
mathematician Pierre de Fermat suggested the presence of 1998, neurologists Fred Gage
1995 stated that, for n greater than 2, living bacteria at some time in the US and Peter Eriksson
there were no positive whole in the past. The surface of in Sweden showed this is not
The Walt Disney Company numbers x, y, and z such that the meteorite carried no such so. They labeled brain cells in
xn + yn = zn. Fermat said he chemicals, ruling out Earth terminally ill patients with a
Making a full-length had a proof, but never wrote it contamination. There were chemical that revealed cell
animated film is laborious down. In 1993, British division. On examining the
and expensive. In the early mathematician Andrew Wiles Internet retaIlIng brains after death, they found
produced his own 200-page Amazon.com is the world’s biggest that they had been producing
proof. Other mathematicians Internet business. It has more than up to 1,000 new cells every day.
80 giant warehouses worldwide.
MicroStar air
reconnaissance

vehicle

1998

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Small aircraft are harder to
detect than large ones. In
1989, the US Lockheed Martin
Corporation took this to an
extreme with their military
reconnaissance plane MicroStar.
Its wingspan was 5 in (12 cm),
and it weighed 3 oz (85 g). It
carried a tiny television camera
and transmitter. Designed to
fly at a height of 200 ft (60 m),
it could send vital spy pictures
to people below.

1996 Afghan Islamic out in Afghanistan when Soviet 1997 Britain’s lease on agreements are negotiated by the
fundamentalists, the troops left in 1989. They seize Hong Kong runs out British in an attempt to ensure
Taliban, capture the capital, power and impose a strict rule after 100 years, and the area is that Hong Kong citizens retain
Kabul, in the civil war that broke based on Islamic law. handed back to China. Elaborate their full political rights.

243

InformatIon & uncertaInty

cloning an adult mammal

Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell create
Dolly, a perfect copy of a grown-up sheep

ian wilmut Harry Griffin picked up the phone.
Born in 1944, Ian It was the evening of Saturday
Wilmut joined the February 22, 1997, and he was enjoying a
Animal Breeding
Research Station break from the busy Roslin Institute,
(now the Roslin
Institute) near Scotland, where one of his jobs was
Edinburgh, Scotland,
in 1974. There, with to deal with journalists. The call
Keith Campbell, he
developed a way of shattered his weekend. Tomorrow,
cloning animals
from partly a Sunday newspaper was going to
developed embryos.
The results, two publish a story that was supposed to be
sheep called Megan
and Morag, were born kept secret until the following week.
in 1995. They were
forerunners of the Scientists at the Institute, collaborating
first clone from an adult.
with the biotechnology company
An egg cell has its
nucleus removed. PPL Therapeutics, had created a sheep that was

How animals an exact copy – a clone – of an adult sheep.

are cloned Lamb 6LL3 – Dolly – had been born in July 1996. Journalists

To create a copy of an tried to figure out what she meant for humanity. Could humans
animal, one of its cells
is grown in a laboratory now be cloned? Should they be? British genetic engineer Ian
under special conditions
then injected into a cell Wilmut, who led the Dolly team, didn’t think so. He wanted to
from which the nucleus
has been removed. The produce sheep that delivered medicines in their milk. If he could
fused cells are usually
given a brief electric make one sheep do this, cloning might turn it into a flock.
shock to activate them.
Although the basic Animals had been cloned before, but all
technique for moving
genetic material from from cells at an early stage of development.
cell to cell dates from
1952, success rates for As an embryo grows, its cells become
cloning are still low.
specialized. Some of them form nerves,

some form muscles, and so on. The genes

not needed in any particular type of cell

A laboratory-grown adult cell is collected. are “turned off”. It is this that allows many
different types of cell to be created from

just one set of genes. So although every

adult cell contains every gene, none has all

its genes available in working form.

In 1995, another scientist at the Roslin

Institute, Keith Campbell, had found a way

A pipette, on the left, holds the nucleus-free egg to turn back the clock and make an adult
cell in place while the complete adult cell is cell behave like an early embyronic cell.
pushed into it by the tube seen on the right.

244

1951 – 2014

The world’s press converged on
Dolly after Britain’s Observer
newspaper printed her story on
Sunday February 23, 1997.

He kept adult cells alive in culture dishes Dolly becomes a mom
using a medium that contained very little “growth On April 13, 1998, Dolly
factor” – in effect putting them on a starvation diet. This proved that she was a fully
starvation turned the genes that had been turned off during functional sheep by giving
development back on again. A cell birth to a healthy lamb named
treated in this way, because it had a Bonnie. The following March,
full set of genes available for work, Dolly produced triplets, seen
could, when fused with an egg that here with their mother. The
had had its nucleus removed, form lambs are completely normal,
the starting point for a new animal. but Dolly seems to be older
Wilmut and his colleagues took than her chronological age.
an egg from a sheep and sucked out
its genetic material with a tiny tube.
Then they inserted a “starved” cell
from the udder of a different sheep.
A tiny electric shock started the egg
dividing to produce an embryo.
They implanted this in the womb of another sheep. They had to do this
277 times to get just one Dolly – the others all died at some stage.
When Dolly was born, she didn’t look like the sheep that had carried
her, or even like the sheep that had provided the egg. She looked exactly
like the sheep that had provided the udder cell. Shaped by the genes from
that cell, Dolly was that sheep’s clone – a world first. A little ahead of
schedule, Dolly was front-page news.

245

InformatIon & uncertaInty

MP3 At first, demand fell short of superior performance. It occurred when the motor
compression expectations, and Iridium had Developed by an international was immersed in a solution of
to close down, but it is now team led by US scientist Ray the energy-rich molecule ATP.
standard back in business. Baughman, the muscle flexes Such motors may one day
when a low voltage is applied. power invisible pumps inside
1998 Carbon nanotube The movement is small, but human bodies.
“muscle” the force is greater than with
Fraunhofer Institut, human muscle. With the right Home-grown
Moving Picture Experts 1999 leverage, it could work a robot. replacement

Group Ray Baughman Biological organ
molecular motor
Downloading music from Better robots came 1999
the internet would take closer in 1999 with the 1999
forever without compression demonstration of “muscles” Anthony Atala
to remove unnecessary made from fullerenes (✷ see Carlo Montemagno
information. This could reduce page 237). Robots are Rejection problems and lack
quality, but MP3 (or MPEG normally operated by electric Molecular motors are of donors make replacing
Layer-3) ensures that the or pneumatic actuators. so small that they human organs difficult. In
effects of compression are These are slow and heavy, contain only a few molecules. 1999, US doctor Anthony Atala
masked by louder sounds. but an actuator made from In 1999, researchers led by US showed that an entire new
It was developed by the “buckypaper” – a sheet engineer Carlo Montemagno organ could be made from
Fraunhofer Institut in containing billions of tubular demonstrated a motor whose just a few cells of the old one.
Germany, and released by the carbon molecules – promises shaft, 12-millionths of a He took muscle and lining
Moving Picture Experts Group millimeter in diameter, and cells from the bladders of dogs,
(MPEG) in 1998. Although its made from a protein molecule, and grew them around plastic
use on the internet created rotated at 200 revolutions per balls to form new bladders.
some copyright problems, a minute. The movement
little MP3 player is a really neat was created by a When he replaced the
way to carry music around. reaction between dogs’ bladders with
the protein and the the artificial ones,
Satellite mobile enzyme ATPase.
phone Ordinary satellite they worked
phones use satellites in high perfectly.
orbits. They are not truly
mobile because they have
to be carefully aimed at the
chosen satellite before use.

Satellite mobile
phone

1998

Iridium Satellite LLC

Mobile phones will not
work in remote areas
where there are no base
stations. Phones working
through satellites in high
Earth orbits have been
available since 1982,
but the mobile network
Iridium, which went live
in 1998, uses 66 satellites
in much lower orbits.

1999 South African Prize twice. Having won it in 2000 The century’s most 1999 to 2000. Although some
novelist J. M. feared “insect,” the older chips think it is now 1900,
Coetzee becomes the first author 1983, with his novel The Life and millennium bug, bites only mildly, the worldwide chaos predicted
to win the prestigious Booker Times of Michael K, he completes as computer clocks flip from by doomsters fails to materialize.
the double with Disgrace.
246

Leech neuron material containing silicon, 1951 – 2014
computer calcium, and phosphorus.
This had been developed in START OF SOMETHING BIG
1999 the 1960s by British researcher
Larry Hench. It is now hoped The human genome is only the start of a project
Bill Ditto that it will be possible to inject that could last another century. Scientists will
liquid Bioglass enriched with use it, among other things, to find connections
In 1999, US physicist Bill bone cells into patients to aid between genes and diseases.
Ditto demonstrated the first the healing of broken bones There will be several areas
computer made by connecting or to treat brittle bones in of study. Important among
living nerve cells together. His older people. these will be functional
“leech-ulator” could do only genomics, which is
simple operations, and needed Human genome about what genes do,
an ordinary computer to help and structural genomics,
it display the results, but it 2000 which deals with the
worked. Ditto’s goal was to shape of the proteins that
develop a computer that could Francis Collins, enable them to do it.
“think” without detailed Craig Venter
programming. Human Genome Project Dr Craig Venter, former
The human genome – a This international project was president of Celera Genomics
Gene targeted human being’s complete
sheep set of genes – is contained started in 1990, with the goal of completing it by 2005.
within a long sequence of This was later brought forward to 2003. There are four
2000 chemical units (A, T, G, or major participants in the US and one in Britain, with
C) that is unique to human research centers in at least 18 other countries making
Kenneth McCreath DNA (✷ see pages 216–217). contributions. Its results are freely published.
A draft of the sequence was
Gene targeting is inserting announced on June 26, 2000, celera Genomics
a new gene at a specific by two rivals, the public Celera was founded in 1998 by the PE Corporation, a US
point in an organism’s genome Human Genome Project biological laboratory equipment company, and Craig Venter.
(✷ see page 242), rather than (HGP), led by Francis Collins, It operates the world’s largest genomic production plant and
adding it at random. It allows and the private Celera makes extensive use of supercomputers. Academic and
the gene to work properly and Genomics, led by Craig Venter. commercial organizations pay a subscription to make use
be inherited by offspring. The Neither genome was actually of the company’s genomic information.
first person to target genes complete. Celera had done
in a large animal was Scottish more, but charged people to cloned endanGered animal
geneticist Kenneth McCreath. see theirs, while HGP’s less- The gaur is found in forests in Asia.
He put the gene for an enzyme complete genome was free. It eats grass and bamboo shoots.
into the DNA of sheep cells, Both organizations published
moved the nuclei to egg cells, more complete information in from a dead gaur,
and grew these into sheep. The February 2001. (✷ See also frozen eight years
enzyme appeared in their milk. Start of something big.) earlier. He fused
these with cow
Growing bone Cloned eggs whose genes
outside the body endangered had been removed,
producing
2000 animal embryos which

2001 he implanted
into cows.
Julia Polak Philip Damiani Noah was the
only calf to
In 2000, Julia Polak and her The gaur, an ox found come through
team at the Chelsea and in Asia, is on the list of alive, but he
Westminster Hospital in Britain endangered species. In January later died from
discovered that human bone 2001, a baby gaur called Noah an infection.
cells could be made to grow was born to a domestic cow
outside the body. The cells in Iowa. Researcher Philip
were helped to bond together Damiani cloned it (✷ see
using Bioglass, a ceramic pages 244–245) from skin cells

2000 It’s “Happy Birthday” reaches 100 on Friday, August 4. 2001On September 11, Trade Towers in New York.
to Queen Elizabeth Crowds see her on the balcony the US is attacked by The US and other countries
the Queen Mother, affectionately of Buckingham Palace with three terrorists flying four hijacked unite together to fight terrorist
known as the Queen Mum, as she generations of royal children. planes – two destroy the World organizations around the world.

247

InformatIon & uncertaInty

Self-cleaning 1,000 songs, in 2001. Early Single-atom from scratch. Using the genome
glass models used the MP3 music transistor (genetic makeup) of the polio
compression system (✷ see virus, as downloaded from the
2001 page 246), but later iPods can 2002 Internet, they made a copy
also use an even more efficient using ordinary chemicals.
Kevin Sanderson file format unique to Apple. By Paul McEuen,
2005, more than 1.5 million Dan Ralph Super-tough
Window cleaning may songs, and even the album art fibre
soon be a thing of the that goes with them, were The first transistor built
past. In 2001, Britain’s available for downloading around a single atom was 2003
Pilkington glass company through Apple’s iTunes created by scientists at Cornell
announced the invention of website. Despite the sleek University in 2002. Buried Ray Baughman
self-cleaning glass, developed white box and ultra-cool user inside a specially designed
by a team under chemist interface, the iPod did not molecule was a lone atom of The plastic fibers in bullet-
Kevin Sanderson. Its secret contain any new technology, cobalt. When the molecule was proof vests are tough, but in
lies in a special coating, just a hard disk drive and a hooked up to an electronic 2003, scientists at the University
which makes rain run off the little computer to control it and circuit, the cobalt atom of Texas and Trinity College,
glass, taking dirt with it. The decode the music. With its responded to a control voltage Dublin, spun a fiber 17 times
coating, which is extremely distinctive look and ability to by changing the current through tougher. It was made from
thin, also acts as a catalyst, find any tune in seconds, it the device. This is only what an carbon nanotubes – tubular
allowing ultraviolet light and quickly displaced the portable ordinary transistor would do, molecules consisting entirely
oxygen to unstick any dirt CD player and the Walkman but the invention could be a of carbon – dispersed in a soft
that might be left behind . (✷ see page 233) step towards something new – plastic. Possible uses include
molecular electronics. This better seat belts and explosion-
iPod More moons technology would involve the proof blankets.
for Jupiter building of circuits by chemical
2001 synthesis, replacing the current Outer coat made of
2002 technique of etching shapes four different proteins
Steve Jobs, onto silicon. (false color)
Lee Black Scott S. Sheppard,
David Jewitt Synthetic virus
Apple launched its now-
famous music player, the In 2002, astronomers from the 2002
first pocket device able to hold University of Hawaii revealed
that the planet Jupiter Jeronimo Cello,
iPod Since 2001, the basic iPod has even more moons Aniko V. Paul,
has acquired enough capacity for than we thought. Using Eckard Wimmer
10,000 tunes, and a color screen a 140-in (3.6-m)
that can show photos and album art. telescope atop a Any virus can easily
Hawaiian volcano, they mass-produce
discovered 11 new itself by using
satellites. This took the the genetic
total number of Jupiter’s machinery in
known satellites up the cells of a
to 39 – far more than suitable victim.
any other planet in the In 2002,
solar system. It is however, a team
perhaps a bit of an from the State
exaggeration to call University of New
these moons – they are York was the first
not large, round bodies, to synthesize a virus
but relatively small,
irregularly shaped Synthetic ViruS The
lumps of rock polio virus has 20 five-
that were sided faces around its
captured by genetic core.
the giant planet’s
huge gravitational field.
By 2013, 67 moons had been
found orbiting Jupiter.

2002 The traditional zone nations switch their coins 2003 The US, Britain, party are toppled, leaving the
currencies of many and banknotes to the Euro. and other nations country free of its cruel dictator,
European countries cease to be Money in other forms has been invade Iraq. Within three weeks, but devastated and under the
accepted for payment as 12 Euro- Euro-based since 1999. Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath control of foreign troops.

248