1900-1909 The Turn of a Century

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Inventions
     Most people thought they had the best technology ever in 1900-1909. Talking movies were introduced in the 1900's.  Henry Ford invented the assembly line that made cars. Most people thought they would never overcome horses. The cars were stinky and loud and they were really expensive too. People called them "A rich man's toy."  The vacuum cleaner was invented.  People loved it because it could remove all sorts of dirt. The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, made the first successful airplane. On December 17, 1903, they tested it in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  It was a wooden craft with cotton fabric wing. It had one engine powering two propellars. It was a rickety craft.  They flew it four times that day, the longest flight being 852 feet and lasting 59 seconds.

Other inventions were:

1900

  • Brownie camera; the beginning of the Kodak company.

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  • First photocopying machine invented in France

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  • A New Haven, Connecticut, restaurant served a beef patty on two slices of toast, inventing the hamburger, (although it would be another 55 years before Ray Kroc started his McDonald's empire.)
  • The first successful flight of a steerable airship, Ferdinand Zeppelin's dirigible, was on July 2, 1900 at Lake Constance in the south of Germany. The rigid, cigar-shaped dirigible had an internal steel framework support and was powered by onboard engines. The ship was 420 feet (128 meters) long, with two external cars for the pilots. Each car carried a 16-horsepower motor attached to two propellers.

1901

  • The first electric typewriter, the Blickensderfer, was introduced.

1902

  • Willis H. Carrier designed a practical system for indoor air-conditioning.

1903

  • Sanka was introduced in Germany by a coffee merchant whose shipment was accidentally soaked in sea water. Its name is derived from the French sans caffeine--without caffeine.

1904

  • The comic book was invented, building on the tradition of comic strips.

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  • A telephone answering machine is invented.

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  • The tea maker was invented.

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  • The first flat-disk phonograph is introduced, replacing wax cylinders as the most popular form of recorded music.

1906

  • Sound radio broadcasting was invented.

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  • The jukebox was invented.

  • Hydrofoil was a design of a revolutionary boat whose front end could lift out of the water.

1908 

  • The Geiger Counter was invented to measure radioactiveness.

1909 

  • The first completely synthetic plastic, Bakelite, is invented by Belgian-born chemist Leo Baekeland.
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