A computer is a machine that performs high-speed operations, such as processing numbers, text, graphics, symbols and sound. When you think about computers, you probably think about the computer at school or at home. The first computers were nothing like the modern ones. In fact, the first computer was an abacus, a simple device made of string and beads designed to count money and other things. It was invented in Babylon in 500 B.C. It took centuries when in 1835 Charles Babbage invented all the parts a modern computer uses and about 120 years later the first modern computers were invented. They were so big that they took up a whole room and, in comparison to the modern ones, very slow. Today, our life depends on computers. They're everywhere – from cars to space stations.
The plough is a tool used in farming for preparing the soil for planting seeds. Compared to some of the modern electronic inventions, it doesn't seem much. Yet the plow is probably the one invention that made all others possible - people could harvest more food than they needed so they were able to exchange food for other things they needed to survive. At first, ploughs were human powered, later they were drawn by oxen and horses, and today they are drawn by tractors. No-one knows who invented it or where it was first invented. One of the oldest ploughs in Europe was found in 1927 in Germany and was probably made around 2000 BC. For his finding, Jann Hanßen received a reward, which he had to share with the landowner.
A light bulb is an electric light which produces light with a wire heated to a high temperature by electricity running through it, until it glows. According to Wikipedia, there are 22 inventors of the light bulb. In 1800, Humphry Davy, an English scientist, invented the electric battery. In 1878, the English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan demonstrated his electric lamps. According to most people's belief, the true light bulb inventor is the American Thomas Alva Edison who, in 1879, made a lightbulb that could give light up for 40 hours. The invention of the lightbulb changed the way we live, but not because people didn't have lamps (they had gas lamps), but because they needed to build wires for the electricity. As a consequence, we have plugs for our modern world devices.
Without any doubt, the invention of printing press is one of the most influential events in human history. Many people believe that it was invented by the German printer Johannes Gutenberg in 1450, but the fact is that the world's first known movable type printing technology was invented and developed in China between 1041 and 1048 and that the idea of printing was brought to Europe by Marco Polo in 1295. Nevertheless, Johannes Gutenberg greatly improved the pre-existing technologies with his own ideas. Among other innovations to this device, he improved the speed with which book copies could be made, which led to the fast spreading of knowledge and information for the first time in history and around the world.
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more persons to have a conversation when they are not in the same room or they cannot hear each other. It converts the human voice into electronic signals. Though several inventors did pioneering work on voice transmission, Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish-born American scientist, was the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone in 1876. Since 1876 telephones have become absolutely necessary to businesses, government, and households, and are today some of the most widely used small appliances. The word telephone has been adapted into the vocabulary of many languages. It is derived from the Greek: τῆλε, tēle, "far" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice", together meaning "distant voice".
Cars are wheeled, self-powered motor vehicles designed to run on roads, have seating for one to eight people, typically have four wheels, and are made for the transport of people and goods. The modern car year was 'born' in 1886 when the German inventor Karl Benz built the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. Cars quickly became popular in the U.S.A., where they replaced animal-drawn carriages and carts, but it took much longer to be accepted in Western Europe and other parts of the world. Since then, they have become more and more equipped with controls used for driving, parking, and passenger comfort and safety. The car industry has caused enormous economic growth worldwide, but it's also caused a lot of pollution and injury-related deaths worldwide, due to the road traffic accidents.
A wheel is the round object that rolls and makes something move (e.g.: cars, wagons, carts or other mechanical devices). There's no way of knowing who first invented it at about 3500 B.C. The earliest wheels were made of a solid piece of wood. The oldest wheel with an axle mechanism was found at Stare Gmajne near Ljubljana, Slovenia, and dates to 3340-3030 BC. Before the wheel people weren't able to carry much nor far so it made transportation a lot easier and faster. Soon after their invention, wheels were used for many things, from water wheels, charts and other means of transport, clocks, to different motors and engines, modern centrifuges in washing machines and scientific research and more.
A steam engine is an engine that does mechanical work by using steam. Before the steam machine, most products were made by hand, and the invention of the steam engine started the Industrial Revolution, during which people invented a lot of things great things over a short period of time. The ideas of using steam to power machines had been around for thousands of years, but were not practical. The Spanish inventor Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont patented the first steam engine in 1606. In 1698 Thomas Savery, an English military engineer and inventor, patented his machine which was the first one of its kind to be used in industry.
