A brief history of Technology
Man’s involvement with technology start from the very beginning. The hostile surroundings in which he evolved forced him to cultivate technology in order to improve his chances of survival. Perhaps, the first significant event in the history of technology was when he devised and made a stone hand axe.Around 500000 years ago man discovered the use of fire and hardened wood in it to make tools and weapons. Thousands of years later he made objects in horn, bone and wood.
During Neolithic age, man changed his monadic habits to settle down in one
place. The development of technology extended beyond the production of mere
tools and weapons. The Mesopotamian civilization records the use ploughs
first with stone blades and later of bronze. During this time use sledges
for transport and construction of bladed mud houses were reported. Closely
following this came the potter’s wheel and the solid cart wheel. Earlier,
Egyptians astounded the world with their skill in civil engineering. They
built huge edifices in stone. The great pyramid of Chepos, 148 meters high
and covering about five hectares is a monumental example of craftsmanship
in design and construction. In the other part of the globe, Japan and China
were making silk around 2000BC. The Indus valley civilization around 2300-1700
BC boasted of cities complete with houses , granaries, water wells and most
surprising of all the earliest known drainage and sewage system. During
the Roman times, bronze and iron were extensively used for armour and for
engines of war. When Christianity took roots in Europe, great cathedrals
were built with large strained glass windows. Thus, even before the Renaissance,
(around 1400 AD) sufficient technology had developed to form bedrock for
future developments.
The advent of Johannes Guttenberg’s printing press in Germany revolutionized
the growth rate of technology. Canals were built for commerce and trade.
Blast furnace were in use for producing iron. Mines with improvised ventilation
system were in operation. This period also saw the appearance of Galileo’s
telescope and many other sceindtific instruments. Then came the industrial
revolution which saw the emergence of steam power, coal mining and iron
smelting. The steam engine invented by the Englishman James Watt resulted
in the development of locomotives for powered transport. Manufacture of
sulfuric acid by the lead chamber process opened the portals for the development
of chemical industry. This period also inspired the English mathematician,
Charles Babbage to build the first calculating machine.
Another great English scientist Michael Faraday conceived the idea of electric
and magnetic field lines and pioneered the advent of transformer, dynamo
and motor. Based on this work of Faraday, Maxwell developed his celebrated
equations that govern the whole gamut of electrical and communication technology.
His prediction of the existence for the electromagnetic waves was soon realized
in the laboratory by the great German physicist Heinrich Hertz. This opened
the flood gates of modern telecommunication technology. Based on this knowledge
men like Tesla, Edison, Bell and Marconi laid much of the foundations of
our modern day living. In due course, electric power stations were built
and electric energy was supplied to individual houses and a number of factories.
Around this time transport technology took a revolutionary step with the
invention of the horseless buggy – automobile. The appearance of airplanes
and huge passenger ships crowded of the corridors of space and sea. By now,
the giant technology tree had grown branches in new areas which were not
even dreamt of even a couple of decades earlier. New fields with exotic
names like molecular engineering, genetic engineering, bioscience, nuclear
science etc., developed their own technologies to probe deep into secrets
of nature. The appearance of the transistor, the integrated circuits and
miniaturization in electronics revolutionized the whole concept of instrumentation
technology. We have witnessed all these spectacular developments taking
place in a couple of decades. We have also watched on the small television
screen in our drawing rooms the historic feat of moon- landing and man’s
first step on the moon. The invention of microprocessor and its offshoot
the PC has started yet another revolution comparable to that of printing
earlier.
Another triumph of modern technology is the Hubble space telescope. The
telescope meant to record the celestial events free from the interference
of the earth’s atmosphere, developed technical. The culmination of these
extraordinary technological achievements came when the Hubble space telescope
sent back to the spectacular picture of the great cosmic drama of the collision
of the comet shoemaker-levi9 with the planet Jupiter. The rate at which
technology is progressing is beyond our comprehension. Entire systems are
getting obsolete even before they are fully understood.