1,000 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