The
National
Academy of Engineering has identified the 20 greatest engineering
achievements of the 20th Century.
At the beginning of this year we looked at the
greatest
inventions of the past 2,000 years. As we head into the
waning days of the Millennium, let's look back for a moment at the
technologies of the last 100 years that we use every day and probably
take for granted, specifically the 20 greatest
engineering achievements of the 20th Century identified
by the National
Academy of Engineering. In addition to a one paragraph
description, NAE thoughtfully gives a history and a timeline for
each technology. The comments below are an amalgam of theirs
and mine.
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Electrification - From a quarter
million people and a few factories in 1900, electricity now
reaches every American home and factory. It has made large-scale
manufacturing possible, encouraged the growth of cities, transformed
farming, and magnified our ability to communicate. The
prime driver of wiring the nation was establishing the Rural
Electrification Administration in the mid-1930's. |
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Automobile - The automobile
is a symbol of personal freedom, as well as the world's major
transporter of people and goods. There are now more than 500
million cars in the world, one-third of them in the United States,
covering 1.5 trillion miles yearly. A particularly poignant
note in light of the recent announcement that the Oldsmobile
line will be dropped is that Raymond Olds, not Henry Ford, originated
mass production techniques in 1901. |
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Airplane - Trips that once
took weeks now take hours. In 1903 Orville Wright flew
852 feet in 59 seconds, average speed 10 mph. Last week
I traveled 11,133 miles in 23 hours on four flights, average
speed 484 mph. Planes transport people, are instruments
of war, and enable us to depend on overnight delivery of goods
and documents. |
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Water Supply and Distribution
- Clean water has virtually eliminated water-borne disease,
made kitchen work more convenient, done away with trips to the
outhouse, and generated huge amounts of power. Water projects
on a grand scale spurred the development of entire regions or,
in the case of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River, turned Egypt
into a self-sustaining agricultural economy. |
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Electronics -
The vacuum tube dominated the first half of the century; the
transistor and integrated circuit the latter half. They
gave us hearing aids, television, computers, CD players, bar
codes, cellphones, e-mail, and the Web. Communication,
convenience, and entertainment have been its fruits. |
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Radio and Television
- Radio and TV gave us real-time windows into remote areas of
the world. Roosevelt's fireside chats to the nation bound
us together. The explosion of television in the 1950's
brought sports, culture, music, and entertainment into our homes.
More recently, technology has put these into our pockets.
And who in the pre-Baby Boom generation can forget the introduction
of transistor radios in 1954? |
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Agricultural Mechanization
- At the start of the century, it took four U.S. farmers to
feed 10 people. Today a single farmer feeds 97 Americans and
32 people in other countries. The tractor, the reaper,
the combine, mechanized irrigation, and hundreds of other machines
transformed farming from muscle power to machine power, vastly
increasing its efficiency. World agricultural production
has never been higher. |
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Computers - For
most people, computers are the defining technology of their
lives. They have transformed businesses and lives around
the world, increased productivity, and opened access to vast
amounts of knowledge with little effort. |
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Telephone - The
telephone is a cornerstone of modern life. Where news-bearing
messengers once traveled by horse, stagecoach, or foot, today
nearly instant phone connections - between friends, families,
businesses, and nations - enable communications that enhance
lives, industries, and economies. As telephone poles with
their thousands of miles of copper wire are being replaced by
new technologies, mobile telephony connects us ever more conveniently.
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Air Conditioning and
Refrigeration - The ability to transport and store fresh
foods and to adapt our environment was made possible by air
conditioning and refrigeration, which changed our food shopping
habits, the design of our homes, and where we live. |
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Highways - Though
the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, it took World War
II to pressure the United States to launch the development of
an Interstate Highway System, which was begun in 1956 and finished
some 40 years later. New bridge, tunnel, and surface technologies
emerged for the Interstates, which convey >75% or more of all
goods in the country. |
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Spacecraft - The
launch of Sputnik in 1957 electrified the world and began the
space race that pitted the United States against the Soviet
Union, inspiring a generation of engineers. Few will forget
the moment in July, 1969, when Apollo 11 landed on the moon
and Neil Armstrong stepped onto its surface. Spacecraft
have thrilled us, expanded our knowledge of the universe, and
contributed to new products, improved weather forecasting, and
wireless communications. |
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Internet - From
its origin in the 1960's as a network linking government and
university research centers, the Internet grew explosively in
the 1990's to transform business practices, educational delivery
systems, and personal communications. Providing global
access to news, commerce, and vast stores of information - more
than one billion Web pages - the Internet is shrinking the world. |
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Imaging - From
tiny atoms to distant galaxies, imaging technologies - electron
microscopes, ultrasound, radar, sonar, CAT scanners - have expanded
the reach of our vision. Coupled with computers, imaging gives
us incredible new views of the human body, ocean floors, distant
galaxies, and weather patterns. |
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Household Appliances
- Resistance heating and small motors in the first half
of the century and the magnetron and microprocessor in the second
half led to vacuum cleaners and dishwashers, electric stoves
and heaters, washing machines and dryers, toasters and microwave
ovens, freeing up time from chores and food preparation. |
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Health Technologies
- Artificial organs, replacement joints, imaging technologies,
electrocardiographs, defibrillators, prosthetic heart valves,
and pacemakers have saved and improved the quality of life for
millions. Each year, worldwide, physicians implant 200,000 pacemakers,
100,000 heart valves, 1 million orthopedic devices, and 5 million
intraocular lenses. Fermentation processes and large-scale
manufacturing techniques have facilitated the production of
vaccines and other pharmaceuticals to reduce or eradicate disease. |
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Petroleum and Petrochemical
Technologies - Automobiles and aircraft made oil a more
significant fuel than coal by 1920. Crude oil became a
raw material of immense economic value and international political
significance. Oil refining innovations led to the development
of modern plastics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, synthetic
fabrics, fertilizers, pesticides, building materials, and cosmetics. |
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Laser and Fiber Optics
- Pulses of light from lasers are used in industrial tools,
surgical devices, and satellites. Fiber optic cables are
the medium of choice for modern communications, carrying vastly
more information than copper cables. Both lasers and fiber
optics had their origin in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
(As an historical note, I wrote my first term paper at M.I.T.
in Fall, 1962, on "sending coded signals through skinny glass
tubes using a laser.") |
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Nuclear Technologies
- Harnessing the atom changed war and international politics
forever, gave us a new source of electric power, and expanded
capabilities in medical research and imaging. Today nuclear
power plants generate close to 20% of the world's electrical
power. The safety record in more than 40 years of commercial
nuclear power operations demonstrates it is safer than fossil
fuel systems in terms of industrial accidents, environmental
damage, health effects, and long-term risks. |
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High-performance Materials
- Polymers, fiberglass, ceramics, and composites are used
in aircraft, medical devices, computers, and other products.
State-of-the-art materials include silicones, Dacron, polyurethanes,
nylon, titanium, and Teflon. New biomaterials continue to be
developed for use in heart assist devices, artificial kidneys,
contact lenses, vascular grafts, shunts, sutures, and prostheses. |
What
technologies would you add to the NAE's list?
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