In our contemporary world, dominated as it is by cutting-edge technology, it can be easy to forget that some of our most cherished items actually have their roots in a bygone era. Maybe it’s time to take a step back and to acknowledge the ingenious inventions of the past? From electric cars to emojis, there are plenty of things that have been enhancing human lives for way longer than we thought!
Vaccines
Known as the father of immunology, the English physician Edward Jenner changed the world forever in 1796. Jenner had heard rumors that milkmaids, who were prone to catching the relatively mild disease of cowpox, never seemed to then catch the far-more-dangerous smallpox. So, he purposely infected a young boy with cowpox, which he’d acquired from a sore on a milkmaid’s hand. The kid fell ill for a few days, but he soon got better. Jenner then exposed the child to smallpox, finding that he now didn’t seem vulnerable to it.
Jenner, in other words, had discovered vaccination. But long before that, since at least the 15th century, people had been purposely exposing each other to smallpox, understanding, on some level, that it built immunity. Some historians have even suggested practices like this were happening as far back as 200 B.C!
Ice creams
While Marco Polo and Catherine de Medici have both on occasion been credited with introducing ice cream to Europe, the truth is that neither of them probably had anything to do with it. So what are ice cream’s true origins? Well, icy treats in some form or another have existed for millennia; some were even mentioned in the Bible! The ancient Greek leader Alexander the Great, and later the Roman Emperor Nero, are also believed to have both enjoyed icy refreshments of different kinds.
But it was really the ancient Chinese leaders of the Tang Dynasty, who were in power from 618 to 907, who were the first true ice-cream connoisseurs. They had a treat whipped up more like modern ice cream using cow, goat, or buffalo milk and flour. It was then infused with a fragrant substance called camphor extracted from trees. This creamy concoction was then put inside metal tubes and dunked into an ice pool to freeze.
Emojis
Think emojis are a 21st-century invention? Well, throughout history, all sorts of cultures have used different types of pictograms as a means of expression. The ancient Egyptians, for instance, wrote in hieroglyphs, which, you know, aren’t totally dissimilar. But emojis as we know them come to us from the 1990s, when people started typing things like : ) or ; ) to each other in order to communicate feelings.
Things got more sophisticated at the end of the decade, when a Japanese cell phone company called NTT DOCOMO allowed people to choose from 176 emojis when using their phones or pagers. These new emojis were designed by a guy named Shigetaka Kurita and changed the way we write to one another forever.
Cameras
It’s difficult to imagine a world without cameras nowadays, but it wasn’t so long ago that it wasn’t even possible to snap photographs. Or was it? Well, the invention of the camera actually dates back further than you might have realized. The roots of photography actually go way back to the first half of the 1800s and a French guy named Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who began experimenting with light-sensitive materials to create images.
Niépce came up with a technique he dubbed “heliography,” and in 1826 — after years of experimentation — he successfully used it to capture the oldest-known photo. Showing off the view from his house, this photo needed eight hours of exposure! The camera may be old, but it’s definitely come a long way since Niépce’s day.
Wristwatches
We’ve come a long way from the ancient ways of telling time using sundials and water clocks, but the modern, mechanical watch has a long history, too. It starts in England in 1275 when the mechanical clock was brought into being. It was in 16th-century Switzerland, though, where timekeeping devices really started to more closely resemble the watches we’d recognize today.
It was actually a ban on jewelry imposed by Protestant reformer John Calvin that led Swiss jewelers to pivot into watchmaking. Pocket watches became all the rage, before the wristwatch became the next big trend — predominantly as a lady’s accessory at first! Abraham-Louis Breguet crafted the very first one for the Queen of Naples in 1810.
Spring-loaded mousetraps
Did you know that the classic spring-loaded mousetrap has been around since the late 19th century? While human beings have been trying to kill mice for literally thousands of years — the ancient Egyptians, for instance, are believed to have tried keeping their numbers down — it was American inventor William C. Hooker who patented the first spring-loaded trap. It was available in 1894.
Three years later, British inventor James Henry Atkinson introduced the “Little Nipper” to the world, a new type of spring-loaded trap that could snap down in a tiny fraction of a second. This ingenious design is still in use today.
Fast food
In ancient Rome, where city homes often lacked kitchens, people used to grab meals at their local thermopolium. This was a type of fast-food joint, where customers could grab ready-to-eat options or stuff to take home and warm up. Inside these establishments were countertops lined with dolia, which were jars filled with dried and cold foods.
But what tended to be on the menu in a thermopolium? Well, meats, cheeses, nuts, lentils, fish sauce, and a warm spiced wine called calida seem to have been available. Some places even offered a baked cheese doused in honey. Fast food isn’t as modern as we might presume!
Brain surgery
While Harvey Cushing is generally credited with pioneering modern neurosurgery in the early 1900s, brain surgery itself dates back way further. Ancient healers actually performed a form of it known as trepanation, which involved drilling into or chipping away at a person’s skull — without the use of scalpels or pain meds. It sounds like a pretty gnarly process.
We have evidence — in the form of 32 skulls uncovered by archaeologists — that this process used to take place in the Peruvian Andes in the years circa 200-600 A.D. Despite the rather rudimentary technique, the practice of trepanation actually worked sometimes!
Seismographs
The roots of the earthquake-detecting modern seismograph trace back to 1880 and the Englishman John Milne. Along with fellow scientists Sir James Alfred Ewing and Thomas Gray, Milne founded the Seismological Society of Japan and secured funding for the invention of seismographs. He then revolutionized the game with his creation of the horizontal pendulum seismograph. But really, the concept of earthquake detection was around way before Milne!
In 132 A.D. the Chinese scientist Zhang Heng unveiled his “dragon jar,” an invention that featured eight dragon heads with a ball in each of their mouths. Beneath them were eight frogs. If an earthquake hit, a ball would plummet from a dragon’s mouth and be caught by a waiting frog. Whichever frog caught the ball would indicate the direction in which the seismic waves had been traveling.
Computers
Computers are everywhere these days, but it wasn’t so long ago that they weren’t such a central part of our lives. Those of us born before the turn of millennium will remember the rise of the computer, but even that doesn’t quite tell the full story. Such machines have been around for a long, long time.
The roots of computing stretch back over two centuries, first coming into being as theory and later as mechanical calculating devices used to crunch numbers and solve mathematical tasks. These early contraptions paved the way for the insane technological leaps that followed.
Beer
Some people out there may be under the impression that the invention of beer can be traced back to Germany during the Middle Ages. And sure, the Germans and other Europeans around that time did develop types of beer we still enjoy today. But the beverage in general has way more ancient origins.
Around 10,000 B.C., in what is now modern-day Iran, people were already sipping on what they considered the “divine drink.” They called it that because, well, it got them drunk. It seems to have been an important part of their lives.
Dishwashers
It was in 1850 that Joel Houghton created what we might, generously, refer to as a “dishwasher.” It amounted to little more than a basic, hand-turned contraption with a splash function. The thing was a start, but you couldn’t really say it was the finished article just yet. We got closer to that in 1886 when Josephine Cochrane came along and revolutionized dishwashing with an invention of her own.
Cochrane’s dishwasher featured a wooden wheel, which lay inside a copper boiler. This wheel rotated, either by hand action or automatically if a power source could be hooked up to the device’s pulley system. When the wheel spun, a cascade of warm, sudsy water washed over the crockery, which was held in place by wire frames.
Rockets
As much as the image of rockets shooting up to space might seem futuristic, the technology, in its most basic form, actually has roots in the ancient world. In 400 B.C. the Greek mathematician Archytas invented a rudimentary steam-powered rocket, which took the form of a wooden pigeon on wires. Fast-forward three centuries, and another Greek mathematician, Hero of Alexandria, was inventing the aeolipile, which was basically a sphere placed above boiling water. The steam from the water rose inside the hollow globe and escaped through vents, creating thrust and causing it to spin.
Later, the Chinese pushed rocket technology further. In the ninth century, monks there created gunpowder, which propelled rocketry into a new era. By 1232 the Chinese were unleashing “flying fire lances” against their enemies in battle, marking the first military application of rockets. By the 16th century, rockets were integral to both military conflicts and dazzling fireworks displays across Asia and Europe.
Electric cars
It seems as though electric cars have only truly started to gain widespread popularity in recent years, but that’s not actually the case at all. In fact, the first electric car was invented in Britain in 1832! That was roughly around the time when cars with internal combustion engines were also being developed. In the end, the latter were cheaper and easier to manufacture and they caught on to a far greater extent.
But still, electric vehicles were still a big deal for a while. Around the turn of the 20th century, electric vehicles accounted for a third of all vehicles on the road in the United States! It’s pretty wild to think we’re going back to that idea after so long.
Contact lenses
The development of the contact lens took time, and it started, arguably, with none other than Leonardo da Vinci. He sketched out a concept for aiding poor eyesight in the 16th century, imagining a person could stare through the base of a water-filled glass bowl. René Descartes, the famed French philosopher, later built on this idea, writing about a water-filled test tube that, when you stared through it, would achieve a similar result.
British scientists in the 19th century honed these concepts further. One, a man named Thomas Young, experimented with Descartes’ water-filled tube idea and ultimately created lenses, but they weren’t exactly the easiest things to put on! Later, another Brit named John Herschel crafted molds of human eyes and designed lenses that could be placed over them. By 1887 his ideas had been built upon and the modern glass contact lens was born.
Audio jacks
It’s pretty amazing to think of how old the audio jack really is. The quarter-inch version, which we still use today for powering things like professional headphones in studios and guitar leads, has been around since 1878. In those days it was a crucial tool for operators working in telephone switchboards, allowing them to pull connections in and out with ease.
As technology advanced and audio equipment got smaller, so, too, did the need for a more compact jack. Enter the mini version, which quickly gained popularity in the mid-20th century thanks to personal headsets on transistor radios. This unassuming plug has had to change remarkably little over the years.
Automatic doors
The Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria really was way ahead of his time. In addition to so much else, he also created the first automatic door over 2,000 years ago! Obviously unable to rely on sensors and electricity, Hero’s invention instead relied on fire, water, and weights.
Basically, the fire was lit, which heated water in a container. The liquid then passed into a new container held in the air by a rope. As the water weighed this other container down, it descended, and, thanks to a pulley system, it opened the door as it did so.
Cell phones
While Motorola engineer Martin Cooper is credited with inventing the modern cell phone in 1973 the device has much deeper roots. We have to rewind to World War II, where a rudimentary form of cell-phone tech was first utilized. Soldiers relied on short-range mobile radios to communicate in those days, before the transistor later emerged in 1948.
By the 1950s transistor radios were all the rage, and soon some people even had massive car phones. By the ’60s these things were more compact, and by the following decade the stage was set for Cooper to place the first call on a true modern cell phone.
Bluetooth
People use Bluetooth to connect our devices all the time nowadays, but the technology has actually been around for ages! We can trace it back to 1994 when Dr. Jaap Haartsen was asked to experiment with short-range radio connections for his company Ericsson. He did what was required of him, but what to call this new technology he’d pioneered? A colleague named Jim Kardach had a temporary suggestion: Bluetooth.
Kardach had been learning about Harald Gormsson at the time, a Viking leader nicknamed “Bluetooth” owing to a rotten, blue tooth in his mouth. He was also known for bringing the kingdoms of Norway and Denmark together, or “uniting” them in the same way as this new technology “united” devices. Or, at least, that was how Kardach saw it. The name, in the end, stuck.
Submarines
Submarines ostensibly seem like extremely high-tech machines, but they’ve been around for literally centuries! At the very least we can look to 1620 when a Dutchman named Cornelis Drebbel designed and manufactured an operational submersible. We have solid records in relation to Drebbel’s invention, but it’s possible submersibles were around long before his time.
There’s an illustration in existence, for instance, that depicts a scene in which Alexander the Great was being lowered into the ocean in a submersible of a sort. Whether or not this event really happened, we don’t know, but it’s possible.
Batteries
Modern batteries as we know them can trace their history to the work of Alessandro Volta, who, in 1799 invented the voltaic pile, which was capable of generating a continuous electric current to a circuit. If we take Volta’s invention as the first of its kind, it would make batteries more than 200 years old, which is pretty impressive in its own right. But it’s possible rudimentary versions were around way before even that!
In 1938 an archaeologist uncovered an artifact in Baghdad. Potentially 2,000 years old, this thing was composed of a jar made of clay, a cylinder made of copper, and a rod made of iron. If you added a weak acid to it — say, for example, vinegar — a volt of electricity could be produced. Whether or not the object’s ancient users understood that it worked as a battery is unclear.
Televisions
John Logie Baird, a Scottish engineer, wowed the world in 1926 when he demonstrated the first television. Baird’s invention was a mechanical design, and, frankly, it wasn’t great, in terms of quality. But it was a start! And it didn’t take long before people were building upon it, with the innovation of the world’s first electronic TV a year later, as demonstrated by the inventor Philo Farnsworth.
The next big innovation on the cards was color TV. Over the years a couple of different inventors submitted patents for color television, but these guys never really made anything of it. Color TV finally did arrive, though, courtesy of a team of researchers from RCA Laboratories, who worked on the technology from 1946 to 1950.
Central heating
We don’t tend to think of ancient Roman civilization dealing with the cold, but the winters did, of course, bring a chill. And in order to deal with it, the wealthiest in society could rely on a wonderful innovation: what is believed to be the first central-heating system in history.
The system was called a hypocaust and it relied on heat generated from a furnace. The heat then spread through hollowed-out compartments beneath the flooring and through pipes behind the walls. This made everything all nice and toasty.
Bikes
The bicycle’s journey through history is a tale of twists, turns, and unexpected innovations. In 1418 Giovanni Fontana, an engineer from Italy, crafted something kind of like a bike, although it had four wheels and used rope instead of a metal chain. It was the start of something, but it would take another four centuries before something like bikes as we know them started to emerge.
In 1813 the German inventor Karl von Drais introduced his four-wheeled Laufmaschine before honing it into a two-wheeled version four years later. This became known as a dandy or hobby horse, and its creation had been inspired by a shortage of actual horses. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia had contributed to a global crop failure, which also saw the widespread death of big animals like horses.
Bowling
Bowling is way, way older than you might have guessed. Archaeologists have actually discovered evidence that a game very much like it was played in ancient Egypt. It seems it was played as far back as 5200 B.C., which is pretty wild. But bowling wasn’t confined to Egypt: it apparently thrived in the South Sea Islands in ancient times, too!
The people who lived in the South Sea Islands, the Polynesians, played their version of the game with small stone balls and discs. The balls were supposedly launched at the discs from a specific distance of 60 feet.
Lawnmowers
Did you know that the very first lawnmower was invented as far back as 1830? It was Edwin Budding, an inventor from England, who we can thank for giving us the gift of neatly trimmed green spaces! Initially designed for big gardens, sports fields, and cemeteries, his machine was a 19-inch-wide, wrought-iron mower that was propelled from behind.
The evolution didn’t stop there, and a decade or so later an animal-pulled mower made its debut. Within another couple of decades a steam-powered mower had come into play, and from there the developments kept on coming until the point where, nowadays, we even have robot mowers!
Flamethrowers
Forget World War I: the first flamethrower made its debut almost 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece! Their version was basically a big, hollow tree trunk, placed onto a four-wheeled chariot, plus a couple of bellows, capable of blowing big gusts of air through the tube.
The air was forced into a chamber filled with highly flammable materials, which then, predictably, dramatically combusted. Flames were sent roaring out from the end of the tube, consuming anything in their path.
Artificial hearts
Whenever there’s a new innovation in medicine, it tends, depressingly, to be tested first on the animals. And so it was with the artificial heart, which Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov first implanted into a dog as long ago as 1937. He never patented his invention, though, so technically the first patented artificial heart was created by Paul Winchell.
As well as being a medical innovator, Winchell had another job, too: he was ventriloquist! He’d previously been trained in medicine, though, plus he had help while working on his artificial heart. His assistant was Henry Heimlich, whose name you might recognize: the very man who gave his name to the Heimlich maneuver!
Video games
In 1958 the physicist William Higinbotham was given a task. A visitors’ day was scheduled at the laboratory where he worked, and he needed to come up with some exhibits to try and demonstrate what he and his colleagues could do. He figured that if he made something visitors could actually interact with, they’d be much more engaged.
Higinbotham quickly thought up an idea for a game that could be played on the lab’s small computer. It was a sort of digital tennis game, not at all dissimilar to Pong, which would be released in 1972. Higinbotham’s version was called Tennis for Two: it was the world’s first video game.
Pancakes
Pancakes are very much a favorite food item for people today: it seems they were popular with our ancient ancestors, too! Analysis of traces of starch found on ancient tools has indicated that Stone Age chefs were whipping up their own version as long as 30,000 years ago.
These people made flour out of ground-down ferns and cattails using rudimentary tools. They then mixed it with water and cooked the resulting batter on hot stones. Voilà! While their creation might have been a little more rugged than our versions, they’d still made pancakes!
3-D movies
Can you remember all the hype that surrounded James Cameron’s first Avatar movie when it came out in 2009? It was almost like the movie marked the first ever time that 3-D technology had been used in a film. But the truth is that it wasn’t: not even close. We literally have to look back to the end of the 19th century to learn about the origins of 3-D moving pictures.
William Friese Greene filed the first ever patent for what The Guardian described as “a 3-D viewing process using two screens side-by-side, united in the viewer’s eye by a cumbersome stereoscope headset.” And 3-D movies were then developed throughout the 20th century, with their popularity tending to rise and fall at different points.
Parachutes
The parachute has developed over a long, long period of time. The Chinese arguably came up with the concept first, around 4,000 years back. There are legends that state they even experimented with their idea, completing a safe jump. There’s also evidence that base jumping off cliffs was undertaken in Spain around 800 A.D.
By the 15th century, thinkers in Renaissance Italy were working on the development of the parachute: in fact, the most famous Renaissance man of them all put his mind to it. Leonardo da Vinci sketched out a version, which was actually put to the test by researchers in 2000; you might not be surprised to learn that It worked just fine.
Microwaves
In 1945 the engineer Percy Spencer was testing a new type of vacuum tube, when he realized his chocolate bar had mysteriously melted. Intrigued, he placed corn kernels near the tube and watched as they popped. He later positioned an egg near the tube: it got so hot it blew up! He realized the vacuum tube was emitting low-density energy capable of cooking food, so he fashioned a metal box into which he could direct this energy. In short, he’d created the first microwave oven.
That’s all well and good, but people were cooking with microwaves even before Spencer came along. In 1933 at the World’s Fair in Chicago, for example, manufacturing firm Westinghouse demonstrated a shortwave radio transmitter that you could use to cook steak and potatoes!
Toilet paper
Toilet paper, it seems, has a royal history. In the 14th century the Hongwu dynasty of China started using perfumed paper sheets to clean up after doing their business. Over in Europe around this time, the rich were using woolen, lace, or hemp rags, while common people wiped with whatever cloth they could get their hands on.
It wasn’t until the 1800s that proper toilet paper became more accessible, leading to a breakthrough in bathroom comfort. In 1857 a New York-native called Joseph Gayetty patented the first commercially available toilet paper; he dubbed it “Medicated Paper for the Water-Closet.”
Lacrosse
Indigenous peoples of North America were the inventors of lacrosse, playing different versions of this captivating sport since the 12th century. For them, though, it went far beyond mere recreation: it held deep cultural and spiritual significance, serving as both ritual tradition and a form of combat training.
Different tribes put their own spin on the game, crafting unique rules and styles. Fast-forward to the 17th century, and European settlers took notice of it and began to adopt the sport.
The internet
The seeds of the internet were sown in the 1950s, in the midst of the Cold War. Back then, computers were colossal machines, used only by military researchers and academics. There weren’t very many, which meant actually accessing them often meant a long trip. A solution was needed, and it took the form of an innovation called “time-sharing,” which allowed multiple users to tap into a mainframe computer simultaneously.
This approach was promising, but imperfect. Fresh research began in earnest, with the possibility of a widespread computer network being investigated. Then, in 1965, a man named Lawrence Roberts accomplished a groundbreaking feat. He facilitated a “conversation” between two separate computers located miles apart, marking the spiritual birth of the internet.
Fax machines
Experiments with what would one day come to be known as the fax machine were going on way earlier than you might think. An inventor named Alexander Bain worked on a version of one between 1843 and 1846. His experiments were fairly successful: he managed to transmit an image across a wire, though the picture produced at the receiving end wasn’t especially well-defined.
All the same, long before modern fax machines were all the rage, Bain’s invention marked the start of a new era in communication. His pioneering work paved the way for the fax technology the world would come to know down the line.
Escalators
As early as the 19th century, thinkers and inventors were trying to come up with what would come to be known as the escalator. Nathan Ames from Massachusetts held the first patent for one, which was issued in 1859. In his own words, his invention “consists in arranging steps, or stairs, upon an inclined endless belt, chains, or ropes, or in attaching the stairs or steps together by links or joints so as to form an endless inclined flight of steps or stairs, which are placed on, over, or around, rollers so that the stairs or steps shall serve as elevators when motion is transmitted to the rollers.”
Despite the detail noted in his patent, Ames never made anything of it. It took another few decades before anyone actually successfully made one. That was Jesse Wilford Reno, who completed a functional one in 1892.
Soft drinks
The first soda concoctions were being whipped up during the 18th century, though they probably didn’t quite hit the mark in terms of taste. They were, after all, fundamentally created by throwing chalk and acid into water. Doesn’t sound terribly refreshing, does it? Towards the end of the century, thankfully, people were experimenting with better recipes and techniques
Jacob Schweppe — yes, the man behind the famous Schweppes brand — brought his seltzer to the market in Geneva in 1789, revolutionizing the soda game in the process. Within a short number of years soda water was rapidly spreading across the United States.
Popcorn
While Chicago native Charles Cretor’s mobile popcorn cart is often credited with revolutionizing the snack game in the 1880s, the art of popping corn has a much older history. Archaeologists in Mexico have unearthed fossilized popped corn kernels: they’re roughly 5,000 years old.
This shouldn’t come as a shock, considering that indigenous Americans were the people responsible for first cultivating corn. They started that about 10,000 years ago! So, sure, Charles Cretor popularized popcorn as it looks and tastes now, but let’s not forget its ancient roots.