vk.com/englishlibrary vk.com/englishlibrary s m i t h s o n i a n INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES Written by Roger Bridgman A Dorling Kindersley Book vk.com/englishlibrary US_001.indd 1 11/02/2014 15:54 Contents 4 .................. introduction LONDON, NEW YORK, MUNICH, MELBOURNE, and DELHI learning the basics 6 ............. NEW EDITION 3,000,000 – 500 Senior Editor Carron Brown c bc bc Designer Mary Sandberg US Editor Allison Singer Managing Editor Linda Esposito Managing Art Editor Michael Duffy Category Publisher Andrew Macintyre the age of authority Production Controller Gemma Sharpe 40 .................... Production Editor Ben Marcus 499 – 1400 c bc Picture Library Martin Copeland Jacket Editor Maud Whatley Jacket Designer Laura Brim Jacket Design Development Manager Sophia MTT , new worlds new ideas Publishing Director Jonathan Metcalf Associate Publishing Director Liz Wheeler ........................ 72 Art Director Phil Ormerod 1401 – 1750 Delhi office Jacket Managing Editor Saloni Talwar Jacket Designer Suhita Dharamjit HARDBACK EDITION revolutionary changes Senior Editor Marie Greenwood 104 ..................... Senior Art Editor Clare Shedden 1751 – 1850 Designed and Edited by Bookwork Editor Louise Pritchard Art Editor Jill Plank Assistant Editor Annabel Blackledge Designer Kate Mullins Picture Research Marie Osborn science takes control Picture Library Sally Hamilton, ..................... 138 Rose Horridge, Sarah Mills 1851 – 1900 Production Kate Oliver DTP Designer Siu Yin Chan US Editor Margaret Parrish vk.com/englishlibrary US_002-003.indd 2 11/02/2014 15:44 Contents inventions Hardback edition first published in the United States in 2002 This updated edition first published in for everyone the United States in 2014 by ..................... 172 DK Publishing, Inc., 375 Hudson Street 1901 – 1950 New York, NY 10014 14 15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001–256610–7/14 & information Copyright © 2002, 2006, 2014 Dorling Kindersley Limited uncertainty .................... 212 All rights reserved under International and 1951 – 2014 Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, index of inventions & without the prior written permission of the ....................... 252 copyright owner. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited. discoveries A Cataloging in Publication record is available From the Library of Congress index of inventors & ISBN 978-1-4654-2038-1 ...................... 254 Printed and bound in China discoverers Discover more at www.dk.com P & icture credits .............. 256 acknowledgments Smithsonian Institution vk.com/englishlibrary US_002-003.indd 3 26/02/2014 16:47 Introduction Three million years of creativity and curiosity have produced tens of thousands of inventions and discoveries. Those that successfully met basic human needs – from the need to survive to the need to know – have played a big part in shaping our world. O ur world is very principle that already existed, needing only different from the to be found. But it is often difficult to tell world of our ancestors. where invention ends and discovery Tens of thousands of begins. Whatever they are, few inventions inventions and or discoveries are made overnight. There is discoveries have usually a period of preparation before they transformed the way we do things and the emerge. Even then, they take time to act. way we think. An invention is something An invention may take years to displace new, created by arranging things in some existing methods. A discovery may take novel way. A discovery is a thing or generations to change habits of thought. W ? hen did it happen This is not a book of “firsts”. I have listed It is often difficult to most inventions and discoveries under the date when they were first made public. But some dates relate to the beginning of tell where invention something that only later became well known, or to a later stage of something that took time to influence people. It can ends and discovery also be difficult to say exactly who invented or discovered something. Often, when the time is right, many people come begins, and neither up with the same idea. And making an idea work can be more important than simply thinking of it. At the top of each happens overnight. invention or discovery, I have named the people who I think contributed most to it. vk.com/englishlibrary 4 US_004-005.indd 4 05/02/14 11:59 AM Below, where possible, I have We may soon know enough mentioned others who helped or attempted something similar. Some stories are too interesting to control the machinery to squeeze into a small space. I have given these either a separate box or two whole of life itself, making the pages. These longer stories show how complicated inventing or discovering can future less certain. be, and how it can change people’s lives. Other aspects of these lives appear at the foot of most pages in a timeline, which records events in the wider world. and discoveries have had a lasting effect. Some, such as windmills or the theory of F aster and Faster continental drift, vanished for a while but Over the centuries, inventions and were born again. Others, such as pottery, discoveries followed two main trends. have never been replaced. Inventions and Ancient ideas became modern science as discoveries like these were used or measurement and mathematics improved remembered because they met basic human on observation and argument, and the way needs. Until recently, these needs have not things were made changed radically as changed. But we may soon know enough to scientific techniques displaced traditional control the machinery of life itself, changing crafts. These trends continue at an ever our basic needs and making the future less greater rate today. You may notice that while certain. I hope that this book will help you the first section of the book covers nearly to understand how we got where we are three million years, the last covers only fifty. now, and maybe even help you to guess Despite this rapid change, many inventions where we are going next. vk.com/englishlibrary 5 US_004-005.indd 5 05/02/14 11:59 AM learning the basics B that either y making tools change their environment or help them to cope with it, human beings can survive where other animals cannot. It took hundreds of thousands of years for people to make the basic inventions and discoveries that underpin what we now call technology. vk.com/englishlibrary 6 US_006-007.indd 6 05/02/14 12:58 PM Stone tools Use of fire drill The bow drill (right) is Egyptian. The c3,000,000 c1,400,000 drill (left) is a recent bc bc pump drill from New Guinea, which was used to drill holes in wood. The main difference between People discovered the value ourselves and most other of fire long before they animals is that we use tools. found out how to make it. Drill was kept The oldest known tools, found Fires can be started naturally upright by a piece of wood in Africa, were made more than by friction, lightning, or or stone held two million years ago. They are sunlight striking on top of it simply lumps of stone that through a drop have been shattered with of water. The another stone to make a sharp first people edge for chopping meat or to use wood. The people who made Cord attached to them would also have made the ends of the crosspiece is also tools from wood, but none fixed to, and have survived. wrapped around, the shaft fire simply kept these natural flames going. Hand axe They used fire for The best stone for warmth and to cook tools was flint. Wooden This flint hand food. Better still, fire crosspiece could be used to clear was pumped ax, from about 1000–5000 bc, away bushes and trees tduornw nthwea rsdh atfot was found in so that the grass grew via the cord Saint Acheul, thicker, attracting near Amiens, animals for people to France. catch and eat. Stone weight was used to If flakes are Mining apply more chipped off, flint pressure to naturally forms the bit c40,000 sharp edges bc Early people made full use of Drill everything around them, Hand axe including rocks, which c35,000 they used to make tools and to bc c1,800,000 bc extract minerals. After a time, the good rocks on the surface were all used up, and people The earliest drills were Over a period of more than had to start digging to find probably pointed stones one million years, the first what they wanted. The first that people spun between crude stone tools evolved into mines were just shallow pits, the palms of their hands. beautifully shaped blades. but miners were eventually Later, sticks were spun like this Their makers flaked away the forced underground. One of to make fire (✷ see page 11). surfaces of a large flint pebble the minerals they wanted was People also discovered that until its sides were sharp, for red ochre, which was used as a they could spin the drill faster Drill shaft, cutting or scraping, and one pigment for ritual purposes by wrapping a cord around it, the end of end was pointed, for piercing. and for cave paintings. The which was tying the ends of the cord to a The remaining blunt end fitted oldest known underground equipped wooden bow, and pushing this snugly into the hand, which is mine was used for collecting with a cast- back and forth. This bow drill iron bit why the blades are called red ochre. It is at Bomvu Ridge was used in some parts of the hand axes. in Swaziland, Africa. world until recent times. c1,600,000bc northern Europe and North c50,000bc is now Arizona, The rock weighs America. Most of it will have about 440,000 tons and forms a Earth enters its most recent ice gone by 10,000 bc, leaving A huge meteorite, the size of a huge crater 0.75 miles (1.2 km) age. Ice will eventually cover behind a changed landscape. building, falls on Earth in what wide and 490 ft (150 m) deep. vk.com/englishlibrary 7 US_006-007.indd 7 05/02/14 12:58 PM Learning the basics Bow and arrow in bone or wood. This impact and increasing the allowed people to create length of their swing. Hand more precise tools, such axes (✷ see page 7) could be c30,000bc as needles, and to used to clear away bushes, but engrave decoration on axes with hafts could be used larger objects. to chop down trees. Bows and arrows were depicted in cave paintings Fish hook Spear thrower from 30,000 bc onward, but Fishing line is no actual examples survive made from c35,000 c35,000 natural plant bc bc today. By 18,000 bc, arrows creeper were equipped with flint points, making them deadly The earliest method of By creeping along quietly, to animals. Later, the bow catching a fish was with a early hunters could often came into use as a major piece of stone, pointed at both get close enough to an animal military weapon and became ends, baited, and tied to a line. to throw a spear at it and kill it. deadly to people, too. This gorge, as it is called, But sometimes the animal Cave painting simply jammed in the fish’s would run away. What the throat. The first real fish hooks hunters needed was a way of c30,000 were developed by the earliest throwing spears from farther bc Fish hook This “modern” humans, the Cro- away. The spear thrower was a modern fish hook Magnons. They caught their piece of wood or antler with a from Hawaii was fish using a barbed bone hook, notch at one end to hold the Dramatic paintings made by made in much the one of the many small, spear. It enabled hunters to people living more than same way as the first fish hooks. specialized tools they made hurl their weapons farther and 30,000 years ago lay forgotten using the versatile burin that increased their chances of until 1879, when a little girl, they had perfected. killing their prey. Maria de Sautuola, visited the Handles Bricks are molded from Roof structure built from mud and baked in the sun branches and reeds for tools Barb prevents the c35,000 fish from bc escaping, once caught Attaching a wooden handle to a blade may not sound like a breakthrough, but it Hook made was. People could not hit from ivory things very hard with a tool held in their hands because it hurt. Nor could they swing the tool very quickly because their arms were too short. A handle, or haft, helped them to overcome both these limitations, protecting their arms from Engraving tool house After 20,000 c35,000 years of development, bc houses began to be made of brick. This is a model of a As long as 40,000 years ago, house from the people were making 6th century delicate objects and works of bc. art using stone engraving tools called burins. Made by forming a sharp edge on a flake of flint, a burin could be used to scratch lines and cut grooves c35,000bc between Siberia and Alaska, c27,000bc Venus of Willendorf, one of the which is exposed by the low earliest known sculptures of a The first people to enter the sea level. The bridge will later In what will become Germany, an human. It has exaggerated female Americas travel over a land bridge disappear as ice melts worldwide. unknown sculptor carves the proportions and is painted red. vk.com/englishlibrary 8 US_008-009.indd 8 05/02/14 1:02 PM