IF DARWIN TRACKED HOMO TECHNICUS!

we have not come this far through a wormhole. every invention, every breakthrough, every disruptor has been a stepping stone on the evolutionary path of technology. Let’s look back at 40 of these stairs.

- Pratima H

From paper to processors to adjacent developments in engineering and chemistry – here is a walk down the memory lane of technology’s evolution, so far.

1 PRINTING PRESS: IT KINDLE-D KNOWLEDGE

Imagine what we would do with smartphones and computers if we did not know how to write, or read. In other words, if we did not know how to print. That’s where this marvel helped mankind. It’s a machine by which text and images could be transferred from movable type to paper or other media by means of ink. This progress on traditional printing by johannes Gutenberg actually helped a lot, as it mechanized printing. From metal presses, to power-driven cylinders, to the rotary press, to offset printing—this machine, too, kept evolving with time—up till Lithography and 3D printing.

2 ELECTRICITY: LIGHTING A BULB, LITERALLY

As much as Milennials brag about Internet to the Baby Boomers, none of this dance would have been possible without advances in electricity. Researchers were already struggling with the overheating problem when they tried to create a raw version of electricity-based on the premise that electricity could be used for lighting just as people were using small, individual gas burners' that time. Edison proposed to connect his lights in a parallel circuit by subdividing the current, and ensuring that the failure of one lightbulb would not cause a whole circuit to fail. He tried to achieve this with a bulb with high resistance. He came close through a complex, regulator-controlled vacuum bulb with a platinum filament. And then crossed the impracticality hurdle of platinum's cost through a carbon filament. The rest is electricity.

3 PHONOGRAPH: RINGS A BELL