About.com says : "Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928. Andrew Moyer patented the first method of industrial production of penicillin in 1948."
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About.com says : "There are many major milestones in the history of computers, starting with 1936, when Konrad Zuse built the first freely programmable computer."
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About.com says : "The telephone is an instrument that converts voice and sound signals into electrical impulses for transmission by wire to a different location, where another telephone receives the electrical impulses and turns them back into recognizable sounds. In 1875, Alexander Graham Bell built the first telephone that transmitted electrically the human voice."
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In 1769, the very first self-propelled road vehicle was invented by French mechanic, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. However, it was a steam-powered model. In 1885, Karl Benz designed and built the world's first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine. In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler took the internal combustion engine a step further and patented what is generally recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine and later built the world's first four-wheeled motor vehicle.
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About.com says : "Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Alva Edison didn't "invent" the light bulb, but rather he improved upon a 50-year-old idea. In 1809, Humphry Davy, an English chemist, invented the first electric light. In 1878, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, an English physicist, was the first person to invent a practical and longer-lasting electic lightbulb (13.5 hours) with a carbon fiber filament. In 1879, Thomas Alva Edison invented a carbon filament that burned for forty hours."
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The Telegraph says : "In the UK there were 7.4 billion purchases made during 2008 with plastic cards. Combined with internet banking, cards have made the cheque almost redundant.
Credit cards gave us greater convenience for spending, greater security and the ability to spend money anywhere in the world. They also brought us internet fraud and record levels of debt that have contributed to the global credit crunch."
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In 1884, Paul Nipkow sent images over wires using a rotating metal disk technology with 18 lines of resolution. Television then evolved along two paths, mechanical based on Nipkow's rotating disks, and electronic based on the cathode ray tube. American Charles Jenkins and Scotsman John Baird followed the mechanical model while Philo Farnsworth, working independently in San Francisco, and Russian émigré Vladimir Zworkin, working for Westinghouse and later RCA, advanced the electronic model.
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About.com says : "In 1814, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce created the first photographic image with a camera obscura, however, the image required eight hours of light exposure and later faded. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre is considered the inventor of the first practical process of photography in 1837."
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The Bar code

The telagraph says : "These boring sets of black and white lines can now be found on almost every single item bought from a shop. At first glance, it seems hard to see how they possibly made any impact on the world, but they have fundamentally changed the way we shop.
Norman Woodland first developed an early form of the bar code in 1949 by combining ideas from movie soundtracks and Morse code to help him speed up store checkouts. They now stores to instantly access product details, prices and stock levels with a sweep of a laser. "
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About.com says : "Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin on March 14, 1794. The cotton gin is a machine that separates seeds, hulls and other unwanted materials from cotton after it has been picked."
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The telegraph says : "Around the world, every day, more than three billion minutes are spent by computer users on Facebook. Along with other social networking sites such as MySpace and Twitter, it has completely changed the way we interact and who we interact with.
Millions of people now communicate tiny details of their professional and personal lives by poking, twittering and posting. Online social networking has allowed people to rekindle friendships with friends they lost touch with years ago.
Others chat online with complete strangers on the other side of the world.
In 1967 American psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the small world experiment to prove the strength of old fashioned social networks. In the digital age, his six degrees of separation have almost become redundant. "
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About.com says : "The first functional sewing machine was invented by the French tailor, Barthelemy Thimonnier, in 1830. In 1834, Walter Hunt built America's first (somewhat) successful sewing machine. Elias Howe patented the first lockstitch sewing machine in 1846. Isaac Singer invented the up-and-down motion mechanism. In 1857, James Gibbs patented the first chain-stitch single-thread sewing machine. Helen Augusta Blanchard patented the first zig-zag stitch machine in 1873."
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The Telegraph says : "Not the ovens, but the electromagnetic waves. Microwaves – electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging between 1 millimetre and one metre – are used by mobile phones, wireless broadband internet and satellite television.
Radar, which helped Britain win the Battle of Britain, also uses microwave radiation. They also gave us a new way of cooking food while the US military has developed a "less-than-lethal" weapon that can blast victims with a heatwave. "
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The Telegraph says : "Food on the go has been around since the time of Ancient Greece, but convenience food really took off in the 1970s and transformed the way families ate meals, the high-street, the countryside and national health.
Traditional family dinners around the table disappeared and pre-packaged "ready meals" eaten on the sofa became the norm. Due to hectic lifestyles, the products, which were often frozen, were designed to make life easier for time-pressed consumers.
The popularity of processed food, however, is also blamed for driving the obesity crisis. With high fat, salt and sugar content to make the meals last longer on the shelves, the diet of the Western world has deteriorated. "
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The telegraph says : "Originally developed as a navigation system by the United States military, the Global Positioning System uses a network of satellites around the Earth to pinpoint the exact position of a receiver anywhere on the planet.
Since its development in 1978, it is now used in cars, aircraft and boats. Geologists use it to track the movements of continental plate tectonics and glaciers while conservation scientists have tagged turtles with GPS receivers to follow their epic migrations. "
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The Telegraph says : "Text messaging has created a new vocabulary and new grammar that is almost incomprehensible to those who do not use it. LOL and FYI have now passed into everyday English.
It has also changed the way people use their thumbs – the old QWERTY keyboard layout suddenly became redundant. Among 13-17 year olds, text messaging now outweighs old fashioned phone calls by seven to one. "
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The Telegraph says : "n 1979 Sony spawned the era of wearable technology with its iconic personal stereo. It enabled music fans to listen to their music while on the move without inflicting their choices on those around them. It provided the soundtrack to millions of morning commutes.
The Walkman quickly changed listening habits and became hugely popular as jogging culture took the 1980s by storm – here was something that allowed you to listen to your music while you worked out.
This wearable technology has now evolved, thanks to Apple, into the iPod and has changed music for ever. "
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The telagraph says : "Although games consoles had been around for some time, Sony's PlayStation took gaming out of spotty teenager's bedrooms and into adult living rooms when it was released in 1994.
Here was a computer with more power than the average family PC. As of July 2008 more than 102 million PlayStation units have been sold, while the next generations, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, have also been turned into best sellers.
The gaming industry is now worth almost as much as the film industry, taking in more than £15 billion in 2008. "
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The Telegraph says : "Nightclub bouncers might not like them, but trainers changed fashion and the feet of generations. The Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company was the first to use a new manufacturing process that melded rubber to cloth in 1892, but it was not until the 1970s they took off.
With the help of celebrity endorsements by sporting superstars such as basketball legend Michael Jordan, trainers turned from being purely practical clothing for sport into a fashion item.
The Army now reports that young people are increasingly growing up without ever wearing leather shoes and their feet are now too soft to wear traditional miliary boots. "
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About.com says : "Thomas Savery was an English military engineer and inventor who in 1698, patented the first crude steam engine. Thomas Newcomen invented the atmospheric steam engine in 1712. James Watt improved Newcomen's design and invented what is considered the first modern steam engine in 1765."
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