History OlderThanTheyThink / Technology

* Those cool looking machine guns in {{Modern Warfare}} must be pretty high tech, right? Well, The first truly automatic weapon, the Maxim gun, was invented in 1884, and even the most advanced 21st century assault rifle basically works the same way as the Maxim gun. There have been improvements in material, but the method in which they load and fire hasn't changed in 120+ years. Oh, and electrical gun sights? Patented in the year 1900, and used on military aircraft as early as 1918.

** Of course, the whole Renaissance was largely spurred on by the rediscovery of ancient Greek knowledge. The Greeks were arguably on the verge of the Industrial Revolution before the Romans and later Christians messed things up.

* A lot of technological devices are subject to this trope. Possibly the best example is the [[CellPhone mobile telephone]]: devices that a modern observer would recognize as such have been in limited use since the 1950s, and the basic is much older than that. New tech appearing on the market is less often the result of a new idea and more often a new way to make an old idea economically feasible. Mobile phones hit the general consumer market in the 1980s and 1990s, but the first true mass-market phone that launched the device into the ubiquity it enjoys today was the Nokia 5110 (nicknamed the "brick") launched in 1999. The term "mobile phone" itself was first attested in 1945.

* Electric instruments were introduced in the late XIX century, the first being Thaddeus Cahill's ''Telharmonium''. It was, in all regards, a room-sized synthesizer.

* Leonardo da Vinci invented[[hottip:*:Note, I didn't say built]] the following: tanks, robots, calculators, solar power, and parachutes, along with many other things.

* The answering machine was invented in 1935. [[http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/benjaminthornton.html It could also keep track of the time]]. The use of one in the 1979 ''DoctorWho'' story "Shada" is perfectly accurate.

* The first plastic was created in 1856. Granted, it was of such poor quality that plastic was not mass-produced until the early twentieth century, and the earliest plastics would likely be considered hazardous materials today, but it was around in the 1800s...

* The oil lamp is already known to be an old invention, around for at least centuries, even millenia, but many would be surprised to find that the forerunner to the modern oil lamp is probably the second big technological breakthrough of man, after controlling fire. The oil lamp in a primitive form of oily moss in a hollowed out bowl-shaped stone dates back to around 70,000 BC. This means that it predates the wheel, often erronously associated with cave men, by nearly 65,000 years!

* The oil lamp is already known to be an old invention, around for at least centuries, even millenia, but many would be surprised to find that the forerunner to the modern oil lamp is probably the second big technological breakthrough of man, after controlling fire. The oil lamp in a primitive form of oily moss in a hollowed out bowl-shaped stone dates back to around 70,000 BC. This means that it predates the wheel, often erronously associated with cave men, by nearly 65,000 years!

* Speaking of batteries, many people think the battery is a relatively new invention, no older than the early 20th century or late 19th century. However, a few clay jars with structures strongly resembling modern batteries (and have been tested to produce an electric charge) known as the Badghdad Batteries, date back to anywhere from 250 BC to 250 AD. Their use, however, remains unknown.

* Electric cars are a futuristic concept, right? Wrong. They even predate ones powered by internal combustion! In 1828 Hungarian engineer Ányos Jedlik built an electric toy car. The first electric car capable of carrying a person has been demonstrated in 1881 by Gustave Trouvé in Paris and until 1890's electric cars became quite popular. Some people were even sure that no one will be interested in the 'dangerous' internal combustion engines. Combustion however proved to be better alternative due to the low efficiency of early electric engines and batteries.

* Electric instruments were introduced in the late XIX century, the first being Thaddeus Cahill's ''Telharmonium'' that was, in all regards a room-sized synthesizer.
* The first motorbike was Daimler-Maybach ''Reitwagen'' built in 1885 but its creators [[ItWillNeverCatchOn considered the concept a dead end]] and abandoned their invention focusing on cars instead. Boy, they were wrong.
* Electric cars are a futuristic concept, right? Wrong. They even predate ones powered by internal combustion! In 1828 Hungarian engineer Ányos Jedlik build an electric toy car. The first electric car capable of carrying a person has been demonstrated in 1881 by Gustave Trouvé in Paris and until 1890's electric cars were quite popular. Some people were even sure that no one will be interested in the internal combustion engines as they were considered more dangerous. Combustion however proved to be better due to the low efficiency of early electric engines and batteries.

* The first motorbike was Daimler-Maybach ''Reitwagen'' built in 1885 but its creators [[ItWillNeverCatchOn considered the concept a dead end]] and abandoned their invention focusing on cars instead. Boy, they were wrong.

* A lot of technological devices are subject to this trope. Possibly the best example is the [[CellPhone mobile telephone]]: devices that a modern observer would recognize as such have been in limited use since the 1950s, and the basic idea is much older than that. New tech appearing on the market is less often the result of a new idea and more often a new way to make an old idea economically feasible. Mobile phones hit the general consumer market in the 1980s and 1990s, but the first true mass-market phone that launched the device into the ubiquity it enjoys today was the Nokia 5110 (nicknamed the "brick") launched in 1999. The term "mobile phone" itself was first attested in 1945.

* First fully automatic multi-barelled gun, capable of firing 7200 rounds per minute (impressive even for today's standards) was a Fokker-Leimberger aircraft gun designed in 1916. It was abandoned only because wartime substandard ammunition was causing jams.

* First fully automatic multi-barelled gun, capable of firing 7200 rounds per minute (impressive even for today's standards) was a Fokker-Leimberger aircraft gun designed in 1916.

** First, the original testing started around 1770, with ''six'' different doctors discovering the method entirely independently. But more importantly, there was a method of vaccination -- or rather, inoculation -- before that, but it was more dangerous. This method was common in the 1770s, and can be reliably dated to around 1550 in China. Some researchers believe it goes back even further in India -- much further, with some claiming ''1000 BC''. There are two variants of the Smallpox virus; ''variola major'' is hideously deadly, fatal in 20-30% of cases; ''variola minor'' is only fatal in around 1% of cases. A bit of infected tissue (a pock) from a sufferer of the lesser variant was placed in a cut on the back of the hand (thus putting it far from the vital organs and less likely to develop into a full-blown case). The subject would thus catch the minor version and gain immunity from the more serious one. Occasionally somebody would die of the inoculation, so it wasn't a treatment to be taken lightly, but it was better than getting full blown smallpox. The cowpox method was better because it was universally nonlethal, and the first example of using one virus to protect against another.
** "or rather, inoculation"? No, vaccination is the correct term. The word "inoculation" means "introduction of substance". The fact that it is so commonly used to introduce a vaccine has caused it become perceived as the correct term for vaccination or immunization, but it merely refers to the introduction. "Vaccination" is the entire process; "inoculation" is merely the delivery system. Taking a cowpox virus versus a ''variola minor'' virus is a different method of vaccination, but it's the same method of inoculation.

** [=MP3=] ''format'' predates [=MIDI=] by five years; great leaps forward in drive space and processing time have made compressed audio more successful than the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, despite the latter being both newer, smaller and more utilitarian. Of course, some people like to actually hear things like, say, ''lyrics''.
*** No, it does not. MIDI 1.0, the first version of MIDI, dates to 1982 and the SMF format for storing them was made in 1990, a year before the MP3 format.
**** Besides that, MIDI isn't an audio format. It's essentially digital sheet-music. MIDI tells a machine what notes to play and for how long (and many other things), but the sounds themselves are already on the computer. Back in the '90s, most sound cards had a basic set of beeps and boops built in, hence the common misconception, but if you were to play that exact same file on a professional music workstation, it would sound like real instruments.