Technological Advancements over the years

Mubashir Ibrahim
3 min readMar 11, 2023

Technology has so much advanced over the years. From People sleeping on a tree branch or in caves to sleeping in a comfortable Bed, from doing calculations on paper to calculating complex problems on Advanced Calculators.
Nearly every sector has benefited from the advancements in Technology. It is hard to even imagine people spending a day without their mobile/laptop. So let's go back to the roots, at first humans started innovation and creativity for survival and curiosity. Imagine yourself in 4000 BCE, you are living in Mesopotamia (Modern day Iraq).

The picture is taken from iStock

Finally, Sumerian people around you invented a way to drag carts easily by inserting rotating axles into solid discs of wood.
Hurrrahhhh!!!! life wasn’t this much easy right? That’s how Slowly people started to think about inventing other things too. Now fast forward to the 8th to the 14th century CE, The Islamic Golden Age. Muslim Scientists are making some of the most mesmerizing and amazing inventions of human history. From Mathematics, physics, and chemistry to astronomy, and medicine.
Muslim Scientists like Al-Khwarizmi, who is considered the father of algebra; Ibn al-Haytham, who made important contributions to the field of optics; and Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna), who wrote extensively on medicine and philosophy. Other notable scientists were Al-Farabi, Al-Kindi, Al-Fergani, and Al-Biruni.

The picture is taken from Alchetron

The Islamic Golden Age was a time of great intellectual and scientific progress, and the discoveries and innovations made by Muslim scientists during this period had a significant impact on the development of modern science and technology. Until the sack of Baghdad by Mongols in 1258 CE, which was the end of the Islamic Golden Age, 80–90% of Muslim scientists’ inventions were burned inside the libraries of Baghdad, which are unknown till today.
Ahhh…. A sad period right? Now lets time travel to Industrial Revolution in the 18th to 19th century CE. Great Britain, Europe, and the United States are making breakthroughs in the industrial sectors of Machineries. Inventions like the steam engine are helping empires build vehicles, factories, and even trains. Inventions like Electricity, Radio, wireless telegraphy, Magnetic detector, Microscopes, Sewing Machines, Cotton gin, and many more.

The picture is taken from the page of the University of Cambridge

People began to think about what else is left to invent now. until the events of two horrible wars began World War 1 and World War 2 killing around 100 million people in both wars.
But apart from the horrible deaths, there were great scientific inventions too, which are listed following:-

Inventions of World War I

  1. Machine gun
  2. Tanks
  3. Poison gas
  4. Airplanes
  5. Submarines

The above-mentioned are some of the terrific inventions of World War I by the British, Germans, and Americans.

Inventions of World War II

  1. Radar
  2. Nuclear Energy
  3. Jet Engine
  4. Penicillin
  5. Ballistic missiles

Again these were invented by Europeans, Germans, and Americans. Because the above is War Inventions and are made up only for destruction and killing, still these inventions are considered one step forward in Technological Advancements.

The Picture is taken from The Atlantic

Gradually, post-war conditions urged humans to explore more about machines and computers resulting in the successful invention of Technology, that was only dreamt about.
I think that’s enough for today. I’ll try to write more in my next blog, I hope. Especially the periods that I missed and post-war technological advancements.
Following I am enlisting some Wikipedia resources, you can read about history too. Try to explore your history too.

References

  1. Wheel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel
  2. The Islamic Golden Era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
  3. The Siege of Baghdad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)
  4. The Industrial Revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
  5. Technology during WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_during_World_War_II

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