Technology

In the 1970s, Americans adopted a hedonistic lifestyle. The technology that helped power the attitude they had has matured into the cool technology we have today, the one most of us take for granted.
Ping Pong
Every year hundreds of millions dedicated gamers spend billions of dollars (all together) on what has become a national obsession, video games.
The monster success of this multibillion dollar industry can trace its origin to a simple blip of an icon that's completely 70s, pong.
Before the video game "pong" there was a video game called ping pong. In 1966 Ralph Baer, the brainchild television engineer, came up with the idea of a device that would allow people to play games using their television sets. Two years after, Baer and several associates completed the construction of a prototype. They called it the "the brown box." It stored 128 kilobytes of memory, equivalent to one page Microsoft word document. It was enough brain power to generate simple shapes. In, 1968, using these simple shapes, Baer's team came up with an idea that helped create entertainment renaissance. A series of circuits controlled ping pongs game play, when the ball appeared to come in contact with a paddle, an electronic signal was sent to a logic circuit that triggered an output signal so called flip-flop switch. The signal caused the flip flop to alter its state and change the direction of the ball. This occurred every time the ball touched a paddle or a wall. In the beginning, the game lacked some fundamental elements. For example, it did not have sound or a score counter. In 1970, Baer licensed his brown box to TV manufacturer Magnavox.

It evolved into "pong." A young engineer named Nolan Bushnell designed one of the first arcade games. Bushnell recognized the potential of "ping pong" and went on to create an arcade version of it called "pong" with his new company called Atari.

Polaroid

In the early 1970s, most photographers had to send the film they shot, away for processing. In 1972, the polaroid corporation released the sx-70, it would take out the picture you took and you would be able to see it in a matter of seconds.

Americans would spend so much money on film and they would hardly spend money on what they actually needed like soap and shampoo.  

The sx-70 was sold for over $200.00 which is around $900.00 today.

How did it work?

As the film would exit the sx-70, it would pass through two rollers that burst a pod of chemicals spreading them across the negative while the image was developing a so-called opacifier, a highly colorized dye mixed in the chemical pod shields the negative, acting like a liquid darkroom door. The opacifier absorbs all ambient light. After sixty seconds the picture is processed and the pacifying dye becomes colorless gradually revealing the image as if it is magically appearing before your eyes.

Trans Am 455

Trans Am 455 super duty, 1973. The most powerful muscle car of the decade, muscle car and more. These were THE muscle cars, nothing could have topped them. It had a Firebird emblem on the hood which was and eye-catcher, what was under the hood of the Super Duty blew away competition. It would go from 0 to 100 in just 10 seconds. In 1975, their horsepower dropped to 200. In 1977, the car dame out in a movie called "Smokey the Bandit" and their production doubled, the public was enamored with the car, everyone wanted it. Sales went through the roof.

In 1977 & 1978 Pontiac sold over a hundred and fifty thousand Trans Ams. The Trans Am model was sold up until 2002. It is a collectors item today and it is worth $40,000.

Today
Technology is only going to keep getting better. Styles are going to be changing and things will be more advanced. Children, teenagers, adults, everyone uses technology. Now, technology is doing both good and bad things. Laptops are more advanced and help kids in school, with their homework, and much more. It also helps teachers, it makes it easier to teach, books are not needed all the time, you can make PowerPoints and you don't need to be writing things down on a board. All of this can be bad because it makes us lazier. We don't use our brains as much as before. Now we have a really smart phone that can give us directions, or it includes a calculator so whenever you come across numbers you can use that instead of having to think a little. It can come in pretty handy of course and if you are lazy (like me) it may seem like the best thing ever created. But all this social media and all these new games take time away from us. A lot of people don't spend time with their family because they'd rather be on their phones listening to music or watching videos about a bunch of random stuff.
Things are getter smaller, thinner, and smarter. Nearly everything now is touch screen. Whether we like it or not, we need technology around. It helps us so much and it is an amazing thing. We need it more than we know. Although it does has its ups and downs, it definitely makes things a lot easier. Things would be different without but I think it'd be better to keep things the way they are now.

1940-1969

M.E 262
During World War II, Nazi Germany was the most technologically advanced country. The United States on the other hand was not really advanced in technology. One thing they did know how to do was how to mass produce anything during war time. The least advanced country in the fight was Russia. Technology peaked new inventions during World War II. While the United States was in an arms race against Russia, new inventions peaked as well as nuclear weaponry was becoming popularized. During the war, everyone's mind is set on having the best technology because they believe it is a definite possibility that their enemy will, and can be, destroyed.
It is a little frightening to imagine that the Nazis were so advanced they had some of the technology we have today.
For example, Nazis invented a new jet airplane called the Messerschmitt ME 262. The Messerschmitt Me 262 was the world’s first fully operational turbojet fighter and saw service in the later years of World War II. The Messerschmitt Me 262 had to potential to change the course of the air war in Europe but Hitler ordered that it be used in a capacity that undermined its whole value as a fighter plane. This jet was believed to be the jet aircraft that would dominate to retain Germany superiority from the United States and maybe even lead in the Cross Atlantic Raid Hitler vision after he would annihilate Britain. The Messerschmitt was one of the many projects where Nazis tried to produce an efficient jet aircraft. After the Allied Powers bombarded Berlin, the ME 262 production was laid back for about six months, towards the end of the war.

Tiger Tank

The German Tiger Tank and the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus ("Mouse") tank are two, out of many, of the other technological advances created during World War II. These were German Tanks, from Hitler's imagination, put into reality.

Of course Hitler wanted bigger tanks, heavier armored, and much-much bigger guns attached. Germany wanted to match the United States because the United States M6 gave Germany some complications, that is the reason why the "mouse" tank was invented. However, the "mouse" tank was declared inefficient due to its lack of ability to go through water because of the electrical diesel powered engine.

The Tiger Tanks were Germany highly produced tanks. These tanks were effective and used throughout the entire World War.

The Tiger Tank weighed about 57 tons (114,000 pounds) which is about one third of the Mouse Tank which weighs about 180 tons (360,000 pounds). Everyone believed the United States highly produced and manufactured tank was the Sherman tanks or the M4, which faced off with the Tiger Tanks.

Television
Shades of black and white were the only thing you were able to see on television. On June 25th 1951 the very first color commercial was shown on television on CBS, Colombia Broadcasting System. For us, now, it is very normal to see color on TV but imagine the look on peoples faces when they witnessed the first color commercial.
NBC was the first broadcasting company to air their logo in color.
A lot of people were not able to see the first time color TV aired because not everyone owned a colored set. There were only a few sales of color television.
By the end of 1957, only 150,000 colored sets were sold. Why? When colored sets were first marketed, in March 1954, the cost for them was $1,295, that was way too expensive for an average family to afford. At first most viewers did not like colored television, it felt too real to them.
In 1954 only 80,050 producing sets, produced in color. That was not was not enough for the entire nation and NBC was the only broadcasting company to air all its shows in color.

Bonanza

In 1959, Bonanza was the first show to be filmed and aired in color, its popularity grew over the years and because of this, more audiences sought out to watch the show on a colored set.

Inside a television set there is a device called a cathode ray tube which creates beams of electrons in three different colors, red, blue, and green. Using only those colors, but in different combinations and amounts, any color can be made. The back of a television screen is covered in dots of phosphor, when struck by the colored electron beams, the phosphor gives off light on the television screen. The human brain forms these dots into a whole picture.

Because of the introduction of colored TV CBS and NBC continued to be rivals to this day. In addition, small affiliates of large networks like NBC began broadcasting in color. Colored TV also encouraged companies to compete for better resolution and screen brightness because of this competition, consumers had a wide range of choices, this in turn made the price of color television decrease, by 1964, color television cost only $495.  

1914 through 1939

1914-1939
Technology throughout the twentieth century was growing rapidly. New ideas sparked out of the water to try to modernize every aspect of the world. In world war 1 new types of methods were needed to, obviously, fight. If the technological advances world war 1 had were not available it would not have ended the way it did. They were extremely important to the impact of the war and the cause of the millions of deaths. The use of technology in the war was beneficial. We were/are so technologically advanced and it is a very good thing.
Tanks
A seemingly unwinnable and unexpected war of trenches in 1914 had to be dealt with when the "war of movement" was expected by most European generals. Having machine guns reinforcing massed rifle from fire the defending trenches made attackers move down by the thousands before they could even get to the other side of "no-man's land." Powered by a small internal combustion engine burning diesel or gas, a heavily armored vehicle advanced in the face of overwhelming small arms fire. Once one added some serious guns and replaced the wheels with armored treads to hand rough terrain, and the tank was born. This solution presented itself in the form of an automobile and took the world by storm after the 1900s.
The first tank was British Mark 1. It was designed in 1915 and first saw combat at the Somme in September 1916. Although 21 tanks were produced in the unwieldy A7v model, Germans never got around to large-scale tank production in WW1.

Flamethrowers
The first flamethrower was first used by German troops near Verdun in February 1915. The Byzantines and Chinese had already used weapons that hurled flaming material in the medieval periods. The first design for a modern flamethrower was submitted to the German Army by Richard Fiedler in 1901, and then was tested by the Germans with an experimental detachment in 1911. The true potential of the flamethrower was realized during trench warfare. Flamethrowers could "neutralize" enemy soldiers in confined spaces without inflicting structural damage unlike grenades.

Poison Gas
A lot of Futile Activity was involved in the Great War. During the Battle of Bolimov the Germans pioneered the large-scale use of chemical weapons with a gas attach on Russian positions on January 31, 1915, but low temperatures froze the poison (xylyl bromide) in the shells. On April 22, 1915, near Ypres, the first successful use of chemical weapons occurred. When Germans sprayed chlorine gas from large cylinders towards trenches held by French colonial troops. 
Typically for the first World War, the poison gas did not yield a decisive result. The Germans were slow to follow up with infantry attacks, the gas dissipated, and the Allied defenses were restored. Before long, of course, the Allies were using poison gas too, and over the course of the war both sides restored to increasingly insidious compounds to beat gas masks, another new invention; thus the overall result was a huge increase in misery for not much change in the strategic situation.

Sanitary Napkins
In 1920, Kimberly Clark introduced the first commercial sanitary napkin, Kotex ("cotton "+"texture").
It was going rough at first, no publications would carry advertisements for such a product. Women traditionally improvised all kinds of disposable or washable undergarments to deal with their monthly period, all the way back to softened papyrus in ancient Egypt. It was not long before French nurses figured out that clean absorbent cellulose bandages were far superior to any predecessors. British and American nurses picked up on the habit. It was not until 1926 that Montgomery Ward broke the barrier, carrying Kotex napkins in its popular catalogue.

Mobile X-ray Machines
As we know, millions of soldiers suffered grievous, life-threatening injuries, and there was obviously a huge need during the Great War for the new wonder weapon of medical diagnostics, the X-ray -- but these required very large machines that were both too bulky and too delicate to move.
Marie Curie was set to work creating mobile X-ray stations for the French military immediately after the outbreak of war; by October 1914, she had installed X-ray machines in several cars and small trucks which toured smaller surgical stations at the front. By the end of the war there were eighteen "radiologic cars" or "Little Curries" in operation. Fredrick Jones later developed an even smaller portable X-ray machine in 1919.

Poison gas is no longer used. It is only used by rogue states but it is now deadlier than it was before. The whole bulky, slow vehicles carrying machine guns with relatively light armor and no reliability idea for tanks has changed to super heavy armored vehicles with a single machine gun, very reliable, and relatively fast. Weapons continue to change, technology is advancing, and to be completely honest airplanes and submarines have seen the greatest changes. They changed the nature of the war during World War II, but that can be talked about another time. War has not changed, weapons however, have.

1800s Technology

Telephone

 Throughout the years technology has changed so much, like the phone, nearly everything has been made mostly for business but is very often used just for entertainment and, most people believe, can be a huge waste of time. Around the 1870s a man named Alexander Graham Bell, a twenty nine year old teacher from Scotland invented the telephone. It is amazing how much this invention has revolutionized communication and how it has changed. Alexander Bell's father, Alexander Melville Bell, was the inventor of visible speech which is an alphabet that used symbols to represent human sounds. They both accomplished many things. By 1886, over one hundred and fifty thousand people in the United States owned telephones, numerous improvements were made and that emerged the telephones to be one of the most successful products ever.

They went from early telephones with the hand cranked generator, to the elegant candlestick telephone, to digital but has always been as much as a fashion statement as a practical communicator. Alexander's entire life was spent discovering and creating, he had so much passion for everything he did. Technology has always had a great impact on both students and teachers. It has enriched our lives and enlightened our minds, people tend to be over-reliant on it, so much that they can't even imagine life without it. Change will continue to happen as the years go by and new/more updated technology will be created and needed.

Cars

Around the 1880s the transition from men making horse drawn vehicles to vehicles with an internal engine begins. The exact year of when cars were invented is debatable but the first powered car was built by Siegfried Samuel Marcus. It is now preserved and can be seen at the Technical Museum of Vienna. This was obviously not the easiest car to use, the clutch on the car had to be constantly operated with one hand while the other hand had to be steering the car with the crank, and regulating the fuel mixture with another knob.

In 1886, Karl Friedrich Benz, introduced his motor car to the public and it took him around three years of difficult work to persuade people that his invention was and will be needed for everyone's everyday life. Many were not really all excited about this new invention because there was already established competition. That included electric vehicles, steam carriages, and hydrogen powered cars. Inventors wanted to find a way to go from place to place without the use of animals. Horses needed lots of care, food, and they could not be switched off.

Cars are changing, just like phones along with many other things, and they are getting smarter while I believe that we are getting much lazier because we have all these things doing so much for us. We live in a time where you no longer need maps or you don't even really have to remember streets or freeways because all you can do is type in a location in your phone and it will guide you there. Cars are getting fancier and much more expensive. People spend all this money on all these sumptuous, luxurious things but most of the people that buy them do not necessarily need them.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce built a boat that was propelled by an internal combustion engine, the engine was named  Pyréolophore.

Moritz Herman von Jacobi built the first electric motor, he used electricity to generate the phenomenon of a magnetic field. The engine needed very few parts and did not even require physical contact with each other but I believe it did not work out very well in the beginning. It needed some improvements.

By the beginning of the twentieth century automobiles became a mass-product, everything changed completely. The rebuilding and conversion of roads began and rules for traffic had to be made. Horses were no longer needed for what the cars are now able to do. Now that these fascinating things were being invented, tanks, armored ships, and tank transporters were built for the war.

There are both positive and negative effects in the invention of automobiles. They are very useful and helpful. They allow us to go to school, work, hospitals, stores, and allow us to travel to many beautiful places. Of course they can be dangerous, car accidents can occur and pollution can affect our health but the good definitely outweighs the bad because cars, trucks, trains, buses, motorcycles, all of that will always be needed. The fact that they are a bit harmful and cause problems to our environment is something that can be solved. Without vehicles we would not have certain types of food out here and as I mentioned before, we would not be able to travel. Yes there are planes but some people prefer driving. Common means of transportation are provided, whether you are going far or you are doing a short trip to the grocery store, running some errands. One amazing thing about it is that there are different kinds of cars. You can buy a sports car, a luxury car, family-oriented, small or large so say you have a small garage you can always get a small car that will fit in there. Maybe you like speed, you can always just get a sports car or maybe you like the way you feel driving a big truck. But that what is so cool about it, there are so many options and you can do what you need to do in something amazing. In the event of an emergency it is ready to go. Freedom and independence can be enjoyed.

Hi my name is Emelie and I love sleeping and eating pizza.

I also love these. Aren't they beautiful?