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    Stuff which has changed our lives

    This will be just a picture and description thing and a bit of a mix of resources.



    The birth of personal computing began with the Commodore 64, introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. Some even claim the computer remains the highest selling computer of all time, although it’s difficult to prove. Claim notwithstanding, the Commodore 64 certainly made the PC accessible to a wide audience and ushered in the now-thriving market for home computing systems. The Commodore 64 also provided a platform for a new generation of computer programmers that would change the world with their inventions years later.
    (Source: Wikipedia Commons)
    Note that the above is a misnomer as in fact the C-64 didn't look like the above picture. The above is a picture of the second/third generation Commodore computer. I owned a first generation C64 computer. It sold initially for $599. It was a replacement for the Commodore Pet computer at the time. I then went on to purchase more C64's because they could do so much. IE: Moving satellite dishes for a major TV station in Chicago, running navigation on a tugboat, text to speech are some of the things I did with it in the early 1980's. I did also play with the TRS-80, TI, Apple II (which by that time were "has been" computers" and couldn't really counter the cheaper prices of the C64 computer and what it could do and the ability to purchase it anywhere and everywhere.)



    Wiki the Commodore 64 computer for more concise and accurate information.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

    The original article of inventions was really full of misnomers and personal opinions mixed with a bit of facts.



    If you grew up in the 1980s, either you had or you knew someone who had an Atari game console and spent hours playing games like Pong and Space Invaders. Gaming -- whether on PCs or game consoles -- has since become a leading form of entertainment and even learning for children and young adults today, and often even grown adults. Without the Atari game console (the version sold between 1980 and 1982 pictured here) -- the brainchild of California entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell -- we wouldn’t have the Xbox or the Wii, which today not only serve as game consoles but also have become multipurpose Internet and multimedia devices.
    (Source: Wikipedia Commons)
    Yea initially I purchased the Magnavox Odyssey. It was a PITA to use such that I purchased the Atari afterwards which I did play for a time and lost interest after a while.



    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey%C2%B2



    The invention with the most impact on the human race in at least the last 50 years, having changed the way we communicate, legislate, search for information and services, seek entertainment, find gainful employment -- the list goes on. The Internet had its tender beginnings in the first packet-switching network called Arpanet (a logic map of which is pictured here), named for the government agency -- the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPA -- that funded it. (ARPA is now DARPA.) Though the general public wouldn’t start using the Internet until the 1990s, when browser technology brought it mainstream, it’s unlikely its inventors knew just how impactful the Internet would be.
    (Source: Wikipedia Commons)


    While the Internet was invented in 1969, it didn’t become commonplace in our lives until 1994, with the release of the Netscape browser. The browser gave people a user-friendly interface for surfing this new thing called the “World Wide Web,” which people soon learned offered swift access to information and allowed us to communicate in ways we never had before. The history of Netscape’s battle with Microsoft and the ultimate demise of the browser is now infamous, but we will always have Jim Clark and Mark Andreesen to thank for opening the Internet to the world.
    (Source: Wikipedia Commons)
    Wikipedia wasn't around for a little bit. First browser looked like this: (there really wasn't much too it at the time).





    We have certainly come a long way from the heavy, cumbersome Motorola DynaTAC 8000 (pictured here), the first mobile phone introduced to consumers in 1983. First demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973 and brought to market 10 years later, the idea at the time that you might make phone calls whenever and wherever you wanted was revolutionary and fulfilled a longtime dream of engineers.


    The Whittle W.2/700 engine (pictured here) flew in the Gloster E.28/39, the first British aircraft to fly with a turbojet engine. The invention of the jet engine by Frank Whittle -- who submitted his patent for the engine in 1930 -- opened people up to a world of possibilities, literally, through the enhanced travel experience they offered. The invention also bolstered the military and paved the way for the modern Air Force. Jet propulsion also made space exploration possible and powers a number of non-aircraft applications, such as industrial gas turbines and ship engines.
    (Source: Wikipedia Commons)
    Again the above is a bit of a misnomer.

    In 1928, RAF College Cranwell cadet Frank Whittle formally submitted his ideas for a turbojet to his superiors. In October 1929 he developed his ideas further. On 16 January 1930 in England, Whittle submitted his first patent (granted in 1932). The patent showed a two-stage axial compressor feeding a single-sided centrifugal compressor. Practical axial compressors were made possible by ideas from A.A.Griffith in a seminal paper in 1926 ("An Aerodynamic Theory of Turbine Design"). Whittle would later concentrate on the simpler centrifugal compressor only, for a variety of practical reasons. Whittle had his first engine running in April 1937. It was liquid-fuelled, and included a self-contained fuel pump. Whittle's team experienced near-panic when the engine would not stop, accelerating even after the fuel was switched off. It turned out that fuel had leaked into the engine and accumulated in pools, so the engine would not stop until all the leaked fuel had burned off. Whittle was unable to interest the government in his invention, and development continued at a slow pace.



    In 1935 Hans von Ohain started work on a similar design in Germany, initially unaware of Whittle's work.

    Von Ohain's first device was strictly experimental and could run only under external power, but he was able to demonstrate the basic concept. Ohain was then introduced to Ernst Heinkel, one of the larger aircraft industrialists of the day, who immediately saw the promise of the design. Heinkel had recently purchased the Hirth engine company, and Ohain and his master machinist Max Hahn were set up there as a new division of the Hirth company. They had their first HeS 1 centrifugal engine running by September 1937. Unlike Whittle's design, Ohain used hydrogen as fuel, supplied under external pressure. Their subsequent designs culminated in the gasoline-fuelled HeS 3 of 1,100 lbf (5 kN), which was fitted to Heinkel's simple and compact He 178 airframe and flown by Erich Warsitz in the early morning of August 27, 1939, from Rostock-Marienehe aerodrome, an impressively short time for development. The He 178 was the world's first jet plane.


    Surgeons Domingo Liotta and Denton Cooley placed the artificial heart pictured here into the chest of a patient named Haskell Carp on April 4, 1969 in Houston. It remained there for 64 hours and functioned as a real heart would until a donor heart became available. The patient didn’t survive but the heart itself functioned the way it was meant to, revoking the death sentence for people with life-threatening heart malfunctions. The device -- which appears klunky and uncomfortably mechanical compared to current designs -- also paved the way for other artificial organs and devices that are helping people with severe medical problems live longer lives.
    (Source: Smithsonian Museum of American History)
    This was my very first Homeseer touchscreen tablet. Thinking I owned it a couple of years. I used it wirelessly.

    The ePodsOne (EP1) was an internet appliance from ePods.com (Salton) from the dot.com bubble era that lives on as a hacked platform. ePods.com was founded in 1999; the company and the EP1 was discontinued in 2000.[1][2] The EP1 was described as:

    - Compact and light Internet appliance, about the size of a magazine
    - Requires only power and a phone line
    - 256-color, 8.2-inch, 640 x 480 LCD touch screen controlled by stylus; also includes onscreen keyboard
    - Customized Internet content and 5 e-mail accounts ($24.99 monthly service)
    - 129 MHz, 32-bit RISC processor, 16 MB RAM, 56kbit/s modem, rechargeable NiMH battery,
    - PCMCIA Slot II port, 2 USB ports, a serial port, IrDA 1.1 port, internal microphone, headphone and microphone jacks
    - Windows CE operating system
    - 2.2 pounds
    - Partnered with Google for search
    - Originally $199 (retail)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPod



    A moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned (robotic) missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959.

    The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings (between 1969 and 1972) and numerous unmanned landings, with no soft landings happening from 1976 until 14 December 2013. To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing
    Last edited by Pete; June 12, 2014, 04:42 AM.
    - Pete

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