A popular Mark Twain quote says “There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take an old idea and put it into a mental kaleidoscope to be used later”. Twain’s saying holds true for several things, the most important of them being however, the modern technologies we have grown up with.
True to Twains’ words, some modern technologies may not be as modern as we think they are and may actually predate our great grandfathers. Here are 5 such technologies that are not as modern as you think them to be.
Mobile Phones
Although we consider mobile phones to be a recent invention, the first ever mobile phone ever built dates back to 1946. A team of researchers at Bell Labs are accredited with creating a device that would make wireless phone services possible in about 100 cities. However, the device was expensive, bulky and came with a party line capable of handling only three calls at any one time in a city. This made it quite unpopular with the locals and led to the silent death of what can be termed as the first mobile phone ever.
3-D Movies
3-D movies have been gaining popularity from the late 90s’ and many consider this as the era when the concept of a 3-D movie was actually born. However, 3-D has a longer history than that, with the first ever 3-D film coming out in 1922. This was followed by more films in the 30s’ and 50s’ until 3-D films started gaining more popularity later on.
3-D Printing
Many consider 3-D printing to be a rather modern technology that only surfaced a few years back. On the contrary, 3-D printing has been around for far longer than we can think. The first functional prototype for a 3-D printing device was invented by a Japanese based research institute in 1981. This was later followed by another 3-D printing machine in 1992 after which the more modern 3-D printing machines came out.
Plastic Surgery
Who said cosmetic procedures are something performed only today? Plastic surgery dates back to over 3000 years ago when the first nose job was performed for Ramses II. Ancient Egyptians in fact, used to perform plastic surgery on the dead before trying them out on living people as well. The same can be said for ancient Indians and Romans who were known to carry out several kinds of plastic surgeries to correct imperfections and hide wounds.
Heat Rays
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Although the U.S. military prided itself on inventing the heat ray weapon in 2007, the first heat ray dates back to several centuries before to 400 BC in Syracuse. Stories reveal that Archimedes had in fact built a heat ray using polished surfaces to reflect the sun’s heat on the enemy ships until they burned down. Although this was considered a myth by many, you can’t deny the fact that the U.S. may have possibly got its idea for the heat ray from Archimedes’ example.
We tend to credit the creation of a lot of technologies to recent years. However, a number of technologies we think are modern are actually much older than anyone of us can ever guess.