One hundred years ago Robert H. Goddard, often cited as one of the fathers of modern rocketry and, by extension, space travel, was working on his first academic paper on the use of liquid fuel rocket technology. Hermann Oberth was fifteen years away from his seminal work on the matter, and Werner von Brown and his famed V2 rocket would not see success until late 1942. Now we routinely lob material and people into earth orbit.
The network of satellites that orbit the earth power the space-age telecommunications technology we take for granted. Marconi’s wireless telegraph was a relatively new idea in 1909, and represented the bleeding edge of communication systems. In the intervening 100 years we have seen the rise of the radio, television, cellular telephony and the Internet.
By 1909 analog computer technology was celebrating (by some accounts) roughly its two-thousandth birthday, but was reaching its practical limit in many ways. Charles Babbage’s difference engine and James Thomson’s differential analyzer were gear-driven tinker toys compared to the machines that would come after.
The revolutionary power of digital computing, the rise of transistor and integrated circuit technology that brings the iPod to life, was not even a realistic possibility seventy-five years ago, let alone one hundred. ENIAC, widely credited as the first electronic, digital and fully programmable computer, was built in 1946 cost roughly 6 million (adjusted) dollars. A modern nettop computer has thousands of times the computing power of ENIAC, millions of times the storage capacity, and costs roughly 300 dollars.
Really, this article could go on practically forever. But I think the spirit of my message is evident even from this poultry list of achievements. To steal a quote from Hubert Humphrey, “The good old days were never that good, believe me. The good new days are today, and better days are coming tomorrow. Our greatest songs are still unsung.”
It is impossible to look at all the things we have accomplished in the last hundred years and not marvel at the majesty of what we have done, and what we may do in the future.
P.S. As these are just a handful of the incredible improvements that have happened over the last one hundred years, I invite you all to contribute to this piece in the reply space below.
2 Comments
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