Three Inventions That Changed The Way We Live History Essay

It is assumed that the human race subsist on earth about 200,000 years, first originating in Africa, but now they occupy every continent, with a total population of over 6.5 billion people. Additionally, with the humans on the planet, pollution increases, natural resources extinct and technology grows, that strands the question if we can save our world or not. Because we never know are those technological progress and changes good or bad. Moreover, human race faces extinction threats and problems, what forces them to make important decisions and improvements. Considering that the planet Earth is a massive place; we can assume that one person cannot possibly influence one or another sphere of our life and make its total change for the sake of the humanity. However, if a group of people work at making their living area safer and healthier the planet as a whole can become a better place to live. Therefore, from the variety of possible topics, I decided to observe three the most important inventions of different times that we see daily in our 21st century. They affected our life, changed its ways and made it easier for the society. They are the inventions of: wheel, electricity and internet, which serve as a basis for later improvements in every sphere of our life.

Throughout history, people have first imagined and then created new things to make their lives better, safer, easier, and more enjoyable. New thing can be called an invention. To define it fully, invention is a new device, method, or process that has developed from study and experimentation. Inventions created by large groups of people and continue to change the way we live. Without the discovery of the choosing by me inventions, it is difficult to imagine the continuing prosperity of the earth, because thousands of opportunities became available for us. It would be sufficient to provide a brief description of them: the wheel is the transportation tool, has the ability to move large objects and always was a part of the important inventions such as the gear leading to the invention of automobiles. Electricity is a convenient source of energy, providing heat and light. Also, electricity provides power which is the basis for the most technology. Moreover, it helps restarting a person’s heart. As, for internet, it is the unique invention of the 20th century, because of the variety of functions it offers. Among these functions are: product advertising, immediate distribution of information, easy perform of surveys, fast announcements and so forth.

To start talking about the invention of the wheel, I want to say that I consider it to be one of the most significant inventions of the history. Since the industrial revolution has begun, nearly every built machine involves this mechanical devise. It’s impossible to imagine any mechanized system without the wheel, starting from the watch scheme to automobiles, the principle is the same.

To mention the history of the wheel, I want to mention that the question of who invented the wheel and when the wheel was actually invented remains the mystery. “Archeologists assume that it was probably invented around 8,000 B.C. in Asia. However, according to the diagrams on the clay tablets, tells us that the earliest use of the wheel was a potter’s wheel in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) as early as 3500 BC. The interesting thing is that wheels may have had manufacturing and industrial applications before they were used on vehicles. The first use for transportation was on Mesopotamian chariots in 3200 BC. According to the … A wheel with spokes first appeared on Egyptian chariots around 2000 BC, and wheels seem to have developed in Europe by 1400 BC without any influence from the Middle East. Also, they the authors of the article made an assumption that the wheel would have simply “happened” in every culture when it reached a particular level of sophistication, because the idea of the wheel appears so simple. However, the great Inca, Aztec and Maya civilizations reached an extremely high level of development, without using the wheel at all. In fact, there is no evidence that the use of the wheel existed among native people anywhere in the Western Hemisphere until well after contact with Europeans. In Europe, the wheel wasn’t used much until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution has begun.” (“Facts about the Wheel,” 2005) From this time the wheel became the necessary tool of technology and came to be used in countless different mechanisms in millions of ways.

The main advantage of the wheel creation is that it was the very first step toward the transportation development. “After using the domesticated horses, the creation of wheel helped the society to transport crops from one place to another less awkward, and therefore created the idea of trade and exchange. After, the wheel was put into practical uses, this invention led to the development of mass transportation. Then, wheel served as the benefit for creating the cart and chariot. According to the information provided …The two-wheel chariot believed to be the world’s first form of wheeled transportation. Built around 3500 BC, this chariot increased the speed of travel over land, and eventually led to the four-wheeled cart, which took the burden of carrying supplies and equipment off of the shoulders of the common man.” (“The history of the wheel,” 2005)

The invention of wheel also allowed the creation of mechanical devices such as clocks, water wheels, cogwheels, and astrolabes for sailors to navigate. The wheel also is a part of the most modern inventions. Without the wheel, there would be no automobiles, no airplanes, no space launches, and no turbine engines. The invention of the wheel helped completely to the developments during the Industrial Revolution. Also, steam engines, railroads, and factories were able to be built. For my opinion, such contribution to the development of technology made our life easier enjoyable. I strongly believe that the creator of the wheel would be awarded the Nobel Prize, since he would be alive and we would know who this great man is.

The second invention I want to describe is the electricity. This invention just as a wheel serves as a bases for the later inventions of modern devises, because most of them run on electric power. However, it would be reasonable to use the word “discovery” instead of the word “invention.”, because there is not a one man who invented the electricity, it is rather a chain of discoveries made by different people at different times. From the history of electricity it is known, that Benjamin Franklin is credited to have discovered electricity through his well-known experiment of flying a kite during a thunderstorm. But, the first discoveries of electricity were made in ancient Greece. “Greek philosophers discovered that when amber is rubbed against cloth, lightweight objects will stick to it. This is the basis of static electricity.” (“Electricity history”) Then, the history of electricity started to expand from year to year. To provide the brief information, I refer to the Buzzle.com Web site that, help me to view some of the most important experiments and findings. If there is a question stands about the name of the discovery of electricity, you would say Benjamin Franklin. “His kite flying experiments in 1752 were incredibly important and influential, but there is evidence that people were aware of electricity as far back as 600 BC. Thales of Miletos is thought to be the first to study the creation of electrical energy. While experimenting with amber rods, Thales found that after rubbing them, they attracted lightweight objects. It wasn’t until 1600 that Thales’ study was significantly expanded upon. While many were curious about electricity, no one made any substantial advancement in the field until an Englishman named William Gilbert studied electricity along with magnetism and argued that they were not the same thing. He actually coined the term “electricity” which comes from the Greek word for amber-a substance that, like Thales, he used in his studies. The next major advance in electricity was in 1752 when Benjamin Franklin and his kite proved that lightning was a form of electricity. From then on discoveries in electricity took off rapidly, down the path toward the electricity that we know today. Less than 50 years after Franklin and his kite, Alessandro Volta created the first electric cell and connected a few together to create a battery-the first safe, dependable source of electricity. Next, Michael Faraday discovered that you could create an electric current by passing a magnet through a copper wire, which led to the creation of generators and power plants. In 1879 Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, which is what really got the public utilities ball rolling. Intent on finding a way to make electricity less costly and more practical, Edison built the Pearl Street Power Station in Manhattan in 1882. The first electric power plant capable of bringing electricity into people’s homes, Edison’s station served 85 customers within a square mile. His design quickly took off and was duplicated around the country. In 1895, another huge milestone came when George Westinghouse opened the first major power plant that used the newly developed AC power systems, which could transport electricity more than 200 miles-a huge improvement from Edison’s one mile radius! By 1930, roughly ninety percent of people living in cities and big towns had electricity in their homes. It was easy for power companies to get electricity to groups living in close proximity to each other. It wasn’t easy dealing with rural areas. Only about ten percent of Americans living on farms or in other rural areas had electricity. The privately owned power companies argued that it would cost them too much money to bring electric lines to farms that are miles and miles apart. They also felt that the farmers would be too poor to pay for the services. President Roosevelt did not agree with this logic and in 1935 the Rural Electric Administration was established to bring electricity to rural areas. Within four years, electricity in rural areas rose 25 percent.” (Oak, M., The history of electricity)

In the 21st century, the society knows the ways to create electricity without any problems. But still we try to find the ways to make it cheaper and easier to provide. Today it is hard to imagine life without electricity, because we meet its power everywhere. Electricity helps many things to function. All of the electrical devises that we use every day: televisions, light bulbs, ovens, computers, fans and many more. It is impossible to describe all of the electrical equipment and devises, without which we cannot continue to live the way we do it now. I think that the providing light is the best example can be made. I personally just hope that the burning crude oil will never end, because it is the limited natural resource, which we take electricity from. The only advice is to save the electricity.

And the third invention I want to perform is the internet. The invention of the internet is a very complex and revolutionary invention of 1965, which has changed our world. The Internet is the best for my opinion project that provides many facilities to the people. “The Internet can be defined as a global communications network consisting of thousands of networks typically interconnected by fiber optic cabling.” (Gharbawi, A. “Revolution of the Internet”)

This project was developed not by a single man or even corporation, but it developed from the involvements of many experts from the different fields, who united their knowledge to reach the common goal. “Before there was the public internet there was the internet’s forerunner ARPAnet or Advanced Research Projects Agency Networks. ARPAnet was funded by the United States military after the cold war with the aim of having a military command and control center that could withstand nuclear attack. The point was to distribute information between geographically dispersed computers. ARPAnet created the TCP/IP communications standard, which defines data transfer on the Internet today. The ARPAnet opened in 1969 and was quickly usurped by civilian computer nerds who had now found a way to share the few great computers that existed at that time. Also, the great work for the development of the internet was made by Tim Berners-Lee, who was the man leading the development of the World Wide Web (with help of course), the defining of HTML (hypertext markup language) used to create web pages, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators). Tim Berners-Lee calls himself as the father of the internet and his developments took place between 1989 and 1991. Besides Tim Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf is also named as an internet daddy. Ten years out of high school, Vinton Cerf begun co-designing and co-developing the protocols and structure of what became the Internet.” (Mary Bellis, 1997, The history of the Internet)

Internet includes so many spheres that it would be inappropriate to describe all of them all in my paper. Therefore, it would be reasonable to talk about some of these fields in the advantages that the internet offers for the society in our 21st century. First of all, internet is all about sharing information around the world easily, cheaply and fast. Also, Internet contains a lot of information of different types (text, pictures, and videos). The scientists, writers, engineers, professors and many other people use search engines to collect latest information for different purposes. The best thing about it is that it is free of cost and available 24 hours a day. Internet provides also the latest news of the world. Newspapers and television reports of the world are also available on the Internet. Advertising is also a significant part of the internet. It is the cheapest and efficient way to advertize the product, therefore it is used by most of the commercial organizations. Moreover, advertising in the internet could contain the larger information about the certain product in an attractive way. The fifth advantage I want to mention is communication. The ability to communicate around the world every time you need it through the services such as: E-mail, blogs, Internet telephony, chat and so forth. Moreover without any difficulties, you can even see people you communicating with be having a video conversation. Another useful tool of the internet would be the online Education. Universities around the world use this possibility to perform online lectures and tutorials. It is a very cheap and useful way to get more knowledge. Internet also can provide with a certain advice. It could be medical advice that provides you with the information about the diseases, and the instruction how to get rid of it. Another example could be a railway or airline companies that may suggest you to book a ticket for the lower price and directly from home. The last advantage I want to mention as a student is the ability to view results online. Most of the universities, including the LCC International University, provide grades and information about the important events on the Internet. The students can watch the results from any part of the world or country. To stop discussing offers of the internet, I want to mention, that there are many more of them that you can observe also by using search opportunity in the internet. However, I hope that the provided advantages helped you to observe deeper how the invention of the internet eased up and revolutionized our life in many ways.

To sum up all of the information given, I want to put a quotation of the great poet and dramatist George Farquhar: “Necessity, the mother of invention”. He is right by saying this, since the every invention described above is necessary for the way we live in the 21st century.

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