20th Century Technology Essay

When it comes to technologies that have greatly changed and impacted society what better time to look at than the 20th century. It was a time of great leaps and ingenuity. Some inventions of change that molded the technology of today is the personal computer, the automobile, radio waves, rocketry and the atomic bomb. While they may seem rudimentary by today 's standards, the helped to make advancements and life possible in the 20th century.
To begin the personal computer altered human lives and influenced the way we are educated, share knowledge, and entertain. In the 1900s a computer was the size of a whole room with the ability to do nothing more than be a basic calculator. Such a device today would be scoffed at but at its time it was

Although it was invented in the 1800s, it did not reach its full potential until the beginning of the 1900s. During that time Henry Ford created the assembly line system for the model T in order for his cars to be made more efficiently, this sparked inexpensive mobility for those of average wealth. People who lived in the city and worked in the city, or lived in the country and worked on a farm. Now they could work in the city and live in the country or the other way around. They changed the construction of roads to be more appropriate for driving in different types of weather. The automobile gave everyone a sense of personal mobility and now we have highways and turnpikes that help connect states to each other. Plus it sparked new businesses for entrepreneurs and gave people more

Long ago rockets were used to launch fire crackers into the air in china, now they are used to travel beyond the stars. Rockets became bigger and much more manageable which instantly made them beneficial to U.S. and the Soviet Union’s space race. The Soviet Union was the first to orbit around the world while the U.S was the first to put a man on the moon. After World War II rockets were also used specifically for launching satellites in orbit, because of this we now have gps, we can predict when the weather changes, when storms are coming, make international calls, for the most part, even use our cell phones. The final technological change of the 20th century are atomic weapons. During World War II the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima proved to be lethal to everyone. Humans now had the ability to destroy an entire country by just the push of a button. Powerful countries like the U.S and the Soviet Union realized the deadly future ahead and made it their goal to never have another world war. Atomic science on the other hand led to a controversial process of producing energy called fission, which is now used to power submarines, electricity, and aircraft