Issue 10.01 | Jan 2002
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THE HISTORY ISSUE
Past Is Prologue
The future is history. Rewind.
We've heard it a lot over the past decade: These are extraordinary times. The combination of innovation and prosperity created a moment unique in history, a moment that marked the triumph of technology. Then, when the bubble exploded and terror reigned, we heard it said again: These are extraordinary times.
The truth is that our history is filled with bursts and busts. Freneticism and disappointment, excitement and fear: The cycles are familiar. History is bunk - right up until it repeats itself. The Internet is just part of a stream of economic, cultural, and industrial revolutions that date back centuries. Each was amazing. Each was disruptive. All left both glory and chaos in their wake.
Looking backward is not to retreat into the past but to prepare for the future. From medical ethics to management trends, the clues to where we're going lie in where we've been.
Age of Seige Warfare
c.1000 Chinese scientists perfect gunpowder from mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. Around the same time, hops added to beer, allowing it to be transported; brewing becomes viable trade throughout Europe.
1050 Crossbow introduced in France; arrows travel 1,000 feet and penetrate chain mail.
c.1120 Magnetic compass debuts.
1121 Physicist Al-Khazini describes force of gravity in text on hydrostatics.
1126 First artesian well uncovered in France when water rises through bore hole without having to be pumped.
c.1200 Arabic numbers - developed around AD 600 - introduced to Europe, greatly easing computations.
1232 Chinese launch rockets against invading Mongols.
1285 Spectacles invented in Italy; the first had convex lenses, helpful only to the farsighted.
Age of Exploration
1295 Marco Polo returns to Venice from the East, reporting amazement at Chinese use of petroleum, coal, and asbestos.
1324 Cannons used to knock down walls of besieged towns and castles in Europe.
1328 Perfected water-powered sawmills spur development of shipbuilding in Europe.
1363 Guy de Chauliac publishes what will remain definitive guide for surgeons for next 300 years.
1415 English defeat French at battle of Agincourt, thanks to longbow, which shoots 10 to 12 arrows a minute.
1455 Johannes Gutenberg's printing press produces 42-line Mazarin Bible, beginning era of movable type and opening way for mass production of books.
1492 Christopher Columbus sails for India and lands in New World. The same year, in his notebook, Leonardo da Vinci describes flying machine.
1500 Chinese philosopher and would-be astronaut Wan Hu straps 47 rockets to wicker chair, climbs aboard, and is blown to smithereens.
1514 Nicolaus Copernicus outlines heliocentric theory.
1569 Gerardus Mercator issues cylindrical projection map, which proves invaluable for navigators.
Age of Astronomy
1609 Galileo Galilei builds optical refracting telescope.
1623 Wilhelm Schickard engineers mechanical calculator, which can add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
1633 Galileo charged with heresy for discoveries supporting Copernicus and placed under house arrest.
1687 Isaac Newton publishes Principia Mathematica, which for two centuries serves as essential description of natural laws governing physical universe.
1705 Edmond Halley concludes that comets observed in 1531, 1607, and 1682 are same object and predicts it will return in 1758.
1712 Blacksmith Thomas Newcomen makes first commercially successful steam engine to pump water from mines, offering up significant power source besides wind and water.
1735 Carolus Linneaus proposes taxonomic system for naming species; man gets new name: Homo sapiens.
1794 Early optical communications network sends messages from Paris to Lille; it consists of semaphore flags hoisted atop observation towers.
Age of Invention
1798 Thomas Malthus publishes An Essay on the Principle of Population, arguing that the world population will increase faster than the food supply.
1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard invents automatic loom using punched cards for control of patterns in fabrics.
1811-15 Luddites riot, triggering first organized antitechnology movement, though not the last.
1822 Mathematician Charles Babbage conceives Difference Engine No 1., considered the first mechanical computer.
1859 Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, stating that organisms evolve over time through natural selection.
1865 Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel presents his principles of heredity, introducing notion of dominant and recessive factors and laying groundwork for field of genetics.
1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents telephone.
1877 Thomas Edison invents phonograph.
1879 Edison perfects carbon-thread incandescent lightbulb.
1905 Albert Einstein publishes special theory of relativity, stating the equivalence of matter and energy in the now-famous equation: E = mc2.
1939 John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry complete prototype of digital computer; it's able to store data and do addition and subtraction using binary code.
1942 Team lead by physicist Enrico Fermi produces first controlled, self-sustaining fission reaction, leading to development of atomic bomb in 1945.
1946 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), one of the world's first electronic computers, delivered to US Army.
1957 Sputnik I, first man-made satellite, goes up; Laika the dog, first living creature in space, flies aboard Sputnik II.
1969 Neil Armstrong walks on moon. Arpanet, precursor to Internet, officially commissioned.
1993 Wired magazine launches - the color fuchsia suddenly cool.
2000 Working draft of human genome sequence completed, providing road map to about 90 percent of genes on every chromosome.