Gallery: The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 1: 1900-1910
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 Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest. Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people, places and things of their day. From the first transatlantic radio transmissions to cellphones, from vacuum tubes to microprocessors, we'll run down the most important advancements in technology, science, sports and more. We'll tackle a different decade each week, starting with the turn of the century – the last century. Our first installment takes you back to 1900-1910, when a German-born physicist named Albert Einstein started changing our perspective of space and time, attorney general Charles Bonaparte established what would become the FBI and the invention of the forward pass saved football from extinction. We don't expect you to agree with all of our picks, or even some of them. That's fine. Tell us what you think we've missed and we'll publish your list later. 1905: The Theory of Relativity (Science) ---------------------------------------- E = mc^2^. The most famous equation in physics history. It states that matter and energy are interconvertible – that is, one is essentially just another form of the other – and their equivalence is tied to a fundamental constant of the universe: the speed of light. Appearing for the first time in November of 1905, this renowned equation was just the latest in a series of cosmos-shattering discoveries from a plucky 26-year-old scientist named Albert Einstein. In a single year, this geek demigod published four papers that upended a thousand years of human thinking on space, time, light, and the subatomic world. After E = mc^2^, Einstein’s most well-known contribution to screwing with people’s minds is his theory of Special Relativity. The theory enshrines the speed of light as a universal constant while making all other measurements relative to the motion of their observers. So two scientists zipping by one another in hyperfast spaceships will disagree on nearly everything: the amount of time that passes, the mass of each scientist, and even the length of their ships. Einstein also published work on Brownian motion, observing that a tiny crumb floating in a hot liquid like tea is jiggled around chaotically. The crumb is being pushed by energetic and invisible particles, thereby establishing evidence for the existence of atoms, which were still theoretical constructs in 1905. He also discovered the photoelectric effect, which is the basis of solar power and won Einstein the Nobel Prize years later. Taken all together, this miraculous year vaulted Einstein to international recognition and certified his place forever in the geek hall of fame. *Einstein in 1905, age 26. Photo: Universal History Archive/Getty Images.*
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1906: Toaster Heating Element (Business) ---------------------------------------- It was the breakfast staple that was also a harbinger of a massive industrial shift. Toast, or more precisely the electric toaster, was the first appliance to take electricity from the confines of light into gizmos that made our lives easier. Illinois inventor Albert L. Marsh was the fellow who made it possible with some metallurgical magic patented in 1906 he called “chromel.” Four parts nickel and one part chromium, it was the first durable heating element engineered into something that took advantage of the quickly expanding electricity grid. Toasters led to vacuum cleaners, electric washers, stoves, garage door openers, and the symbol of all that is groovy and modern, the blender. All those appliance companies that came after, the door-to-door vacuum salesmen that spread out across the U.S., even banks with their new account freebies, owe a debt to Marsh. He didn’t invent toast, but he brought it and our homes into modernity. *Photo: [The Cyber Toaster Museum](http://www.toaster.org/museum.html)*
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1905: Football's Forward Pass (Sports) -------------------------------------- In the early 1900s, football was little more than game of brute force, played by big men with minimal gear. Helmets, a recent invention, were not required. Bare-headed players dove headlong in a tight-knit formation known as the "flying wedge," trying to break up the opposing line to reach the guy with the ball — often knocking themselves out in the process. It was mayhem, and no surprise that the game came under fire as entirely too dangerous after 15 high school players and three collegiate players were killed in 1905. Some colleges, including Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Stanford and UC-Berkeley, quit playing. Then the president stepped in. President Theodore Roosevelt, a football fan and Harvard alum who had attended the second game ever played between Harvard and Yale, stepped in to push hard for reform. The result was a number of rule changes, including one that transformed the sport: the forward pass. For the first time ever, players could throw the ball downfield. That opened up the game and shifted the emphasis from mass and weight to speed and skill. More than a century later, the forward pass is football's primary offensive tool. So the next time a Peyton Manning touchdown pass brings you to your feet, take a moment to thank Teddy Roosevelt for making it possible. *Photo: Courtesy [Saint Louis University Libraries Special Collections](http://cdm.slu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/photos/id/1553/rec/20)*
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1903: The Tank (War) -------------------- The tank has been so central to armored warfare for so long it’s easy to forget that at the dawn of the 20th century it was literally science fiction. But in 1903, H.G. Wells published *The Land Ironclads*, a spooky short story that effectively doubled as a weapons blueprint. Wells’ fictional war correspondent struggles to understand the mysterious, unfamiliar black behemoth that tears through lines of soldiers stuck in trenches. Wells’ Ironclad, “a large and clumsy black insect,” was a monster weapon, 80-100 feet across, that had “come into such a position as to enfilade the trench” -- in other words, the Ironclad flanks the stunned, trapped soldiers, and doesn’t stop until it yields “two or three crouching knots of men and the tumbled-looking dead.” Trench warfare was in its infancy when Wells wrote *The Land Ironclads*. But he anticipated a basic problem: how to overwhelm an opponent that digs in and responds to your maneuvers by unleashing an awful barrage. The answer was a mashup of armor and artillery that rolls inexorably forward, with men shielded within. That same year, the French army began exploring the idea of a motorized cannon, lumbering forward on treads instead of wheels, the better for durability. The so-called Levavasseur Project died a bureaucratic death in 1908, but by then prototypes for what would become the tank had constituencies in the British, Austrian and German militaries -- a prelude for its use in both world wars. It never looked back. The advent of mechanized warfare led all western land armies in the 20th century to reorient themselves around the tank and other armored personnel carriers. The U.S. Army even brought the Abrams tank to Iraq -- where it learned that separating personnel from an unfamiliar populace was self-defeating and insurgents could build homemade bombs that could disable or even destroy them. That wrote a chapter, and possibly a conclusion, to the Ironclad story that not even Wells could have anticipated. *Photo: [Wikipedia](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HG_Wells_Land_Ironclads_1904.jpg)*
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1907: The Vacuum Tube (Enterprise) ---------------------------------- Today, we build computers with transistors — tiny semiconductor devices that hold 1s and 0s. But we used to build them with vacuum tubes — big, beefy glass cylinders that hold 1s and 0s. Like so many computing devices, the vacuum tube has a long list of fathers, from Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla to John Ambrose Fleming to Robert von Lieben. But the big breakthrough came in 1906, when Lee De Forest invented the vacuum tube triode. As we discuss [later in this gallery](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/12-decades-of-geek-part-1/?pid=3864), the triode was originally used to amplify audio signals, leading to widespread radio use. But it also laid the seeds of the computer. Thomas Edison's original light bulb was a vacuum tube — a tube with, well, no air in it. But De Forest put not one, not two, but three electrodes inside his tube. The three terminal setup could serve as an electrical switch. When you changed the voltage traveling to one terminal, you could reduce the current following between the other two terminals. In this way, you could turn it "on" and "off." That's your 1 and your 0. The same basic concept underpins the transistor. But the transistor didn't arrive until 1947. The first computers were built with vacuum tubes, including the British Colossus machine used to break German codes during World War II and its commercial successor in America, the ENIAC. Built to calculate artillery trajectories for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, the ENIAC spanned over 18,000 vacuum tubes. You can trace all 18,000 back to Lee De Forest. De Forest was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Today, this tiny town is best known for housing a massive Google data center – which only seems appropriate. *Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images*
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1901: Gas-Powered Mercedes (Cars) --------------------------------- The first decade of the 20th century kicked off the era of the "horseless carriage." In 1901, the first gasoline-powered Mercedes rolled off the line, complete with a massive 6.0-liter, four-cylinder engine outputting 35 horsepower. Not only was it one of the more powerful vehicles of its day, but it was one of the lightest and most technically advanced, with camshaft actuated intake valves and a level of handling prowess that was unheard of. The Mercedes 35 was lower, sleeker and had a longer wheelbase, making it a surprisingly competent racer that dominated some of the first hillclimbs held throughout Europe. But what most gearheads don't know is that the best-selling vehicle in 1900 was electric. The battery-powered Columbia not only sold more vehicles in the U.S. during that first decade, but the all-electric Red Devil set the overall land speed record for a four-wheeled vehicle a year before. But when the Ford Model T debuted in 1908, the Columbia and dozens of other electric vehicle manufacturers were put out of business as the T and its ultra-low price took America by storm. *Photo: Courtesy Mercedes-Benz*
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1902: Nintendo Goes Global (Games) ---------------------------------- In 1633, the Japanese government banned playing cards when it cut off relations with the Western world. Japanese gamblers quickly developed a homegrown card game called “hanafuda” that skirted the ban, by using paintings of flowers instead of spades and diamonds. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as one producer of these popular “flower cards.” In 1902, with the ban lifted and Japan open for global trade again, it became the first Japanese company to produce Western-style playing cards. These hit it big and the company soon expanded into other types of games, then electronic toys, and finally the videogames of today. But it was in 1902 when Nintendo first adopted the global outlook that would eventually make it a worldwide household name. *Photo: [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nintendo_former_headquarter_plate_Kyoto.jpg)*
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1902: A Trip to the Moon (Movies) --------------------------------- French director Georges Méliès took us on *A Trip to the Moon* in 1902, and we've had our eyes on the skies ever since. His short film -- widely regarded as the first science fiction movie ever made -- showed a spaceship poking into the moon's eye, an image that remains stuck in our imaginations to this day. A skilled illusionist, Méliès transferred his magic skills to the screen, becoming a pioneer in special effects and fantasy filmmaking. His silent sci-fi film *A Trip to the Moon*, which was inspired by stories like Jules Verne's *From the Earth to the Moon* and H.G. Wells' *The First Men in the Moon*, played a prominent part in Martin Scorsese's 2011 film *Hugo*. *Photo: [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Voyage_dans_la_Lune)*
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1907: Bakelite (Design) ----------------------- Bakelite, the world's first hard, synthetic plastic, is so named not because you bake it (though you do), but because of creator Leo Baekeland, a Belgian immigrant who made a fortune selling a patent for photographic paper to Eastman Kodak. With Bakelite, Baekeland had a hit that made many iconic products possible, formed the basis for new industry, and kicked off the 20th century's plastics revolution. Invented in 1907 and patented in 1909, Bakelite was unlike anything yet devised — previous plastic was either flexible and synthetic, or shellacs made from natural polymers, like the secretions of the lac beetle. Baekeland was using a six-foot-tall pressure cooker to impregnate wood with a mixture of formaldehyde and carbolic acid, but found a thermosetting polymeric resin byproduct was more promising, offering strength and resilience, as well as electrical insulation. From the success of his invention, Baekeland served as president of some of the most important chemistry organizations around, including the National Research Council and the American Chemical Society. Its patent has long since expired, but with the nearly unpronounceable chemical name polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, the term Bakelite lives on. *Photo: [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leo_Hendrik_Baekeland,_1916.jpg)*
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1910: The Radio (Gadgets) ------------------------- The beginning of the 20th century was an exciting time for gadgets and technology in general. The gramophone (flat) record was gaining acceptance amongst phonograph owners, which led to the recording industry. And the compact vacuum cleaner roared to life on filthy carpets everywhere. But the gadget invention from that decade that had the largest impact on the century was the radio. The first radio transmissions actually took place in 1905 and were referred to as wireless telegraphy, since they consisted of wireless Morse code transmissions. It was just telegraph without the wires. Based on the work of Guglielmo Marconi, Nikola Tesla and others, these spark-gap machines were mainly used for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore naval communication. But in 1906, inventor Lee de Forest created a triode that transformed those taps and clicks into the broadcast communication system we know today. De Forest’s electronic amplifying vacuum tube worked by using two electrodes to create a stream of electrons (a DC current), and a third to modulate that current, either amplifying, rectifying, or otherwise adjusting the signal being sent across the system. The signal was then sent to a transducer (speaker) that turned the signal into sound. Forest, who also coined the name "radio," used his invention to send the first over-the-air public broadcast on January 12, 1910. That broadcast of the Italian opera Tosca revolutionized human communication. As the device that enabled the immediate dissemination of information around the world -- and also gave us music programming and episodic entertainment -- the radio stands above any other consumer gadget from that decade. *Photo: Universal History Archive/Getty Images*
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1908: Founding of the FBI (Security) ------------------------------------ Then-Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, serving for President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1908 founded a service of agents on a national level, in what later would become the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The bureau began with 10 Secret Service Agents and several Department of Justice investigators. It was named the Bureau of Investigation, and in 1935 became the FBI. Bonaparte, who had been appointed Navy secretary in 1905, has a blood line tied to Emperor Napoleon I. Charles Bonaparte's grandfather, Jerome Bonaparte, was the youngest brother of the emperor. Charles Bonaparte died in 1921 at age 70. *Photo: [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Bonaparte)*
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1900\*: The Kodak Brownie Camera (Photography) ---------------------------------------------- When Kodak’s Brownie camera hit the market in 1900 – selling for $1 and launching over 100 years of consumer photography – it was essentially just a cardboard box with a lens and shutter attached. By that time, George Eastman, Kodak’s founder, had already mass-produced roll film and affordable cameras that collapsed down to fit in a coat pocket. Kodak was actually the name of the first camera he produced in 1888 that had fixed focus, shot 100 frames and needed to be sent in to Eastman’s company for the film to be developed. The Brownie was named for Palmer Cox’s popular Disney-like characters at the time, piggybacking on their pre-existing marketing and appealing to children. The ad campaign both indoctrinated lifelong Kodak customers and sold the idea that photography was so easy and accessible that even children could use a camera. The price-point of $1 (the equivalent of about $30 today) and ease of use made for mass adoption. Releasing cheap, accessible cameras out into the world created the concept of the “snapshot,” where casual moments in life were documented for the first time by families and friends. For as much attention as Instagram gets today, the consumer appetite that it relies on is owed largely to the culture sparked by the Brownie. Early Brownie manuals prescribe only shooting a few hours after sunrise or before sunset and making sure your subject is fully in the sun. Otherwise, exposure times can range from 4 seconds to over 5 minutes for low-light and indoor shots. Hard to believe we now throw fits over the graininess of ISO 6400 on digital cameras for candle-lit situations. Brownie users were also directed to hold the camera level with the subject to preserve accurate size ratios and framing. Tilting the camera upwards to create a perspective shot – where the base of a building appears bigger than its top, for example – was considered an error of picture taking. The first Brownie model used 117 rollfilm, which made 2.25” negatives. Customers could get the camera, a roll of film and have it processed for under $2. The Brownie line would continue for over 60 years, produce over one-hundred different models and sell millions of units. For decades they were nearly everyone's “first camera.” *\* Yes, this is technically the previous decade, but the Brownie was such a close and compelling edge case that we had to include it.* __Honorable Mention:__ An honorable mention goes to the [pigeon camera developed by Dr Julius Neubronner and patented in 1908](http://publicdomainreview.org/2011/08/09/dr-julius-neubronners-miniature-pigeon-camera/). Neubronner would strap tiny timer-driven cameras to pigeons and then develop and print the photos immediately upon the birds’ return, selling them as postcards on the spot. Take that, UAV cams!   *Top photo: Brownie camera No. 2, courtesy of Wikipedia.*
