Manchester Mark 1, one of the fist computers
From our last post, let’s advance a bit further in time. While “computer” machines have been around even as early as 100BC, they have evolved in tandem with the scientific world and their advances. From the General Purpose computing device of Charles Babbage to the Hypothetical device of Turing Machine, created by Alan Turing in 1936 that pretty much dictates the definition of computers today, we have evolved the computers to be more efficient and faster ever since, to the point in time, where thanks to Nikolas Tesla Alternate Current, whose main characteristic is being able to be send for long distances and another invention, the Morse Code, by Samuel Morse, Joseph Henry and Alfred Val in 1836, the idea of a interconnected network was born.
The ARPANET starting network
In 1960, the US government created the first intercommunicating network, the ARPANET and not much later, in 1980, the World Wide Web. Ever since, the internet has been growing exponentially each passing day, each time faster and faster thanks to new programs that allow people with less knowledge of programming and web-based code to create their own web-pages. The internet is already having theories of being compared to be a living organism and its astonishing creation of information is already surpassing the information we created ever since the first invention of “writing”.
Nowadays, inventors don’t have the same halts the old ones had thanks to those already having broken the ground and paved the way with their inventions. Now, one is free to propose and try their hands at creating anything they want as long as it is in the realms of reality, and some inventions, such as the levitating super conductor magnets and brain-wave reading headbands already tap the realms of what we could have called magic a few decades ago.
ARduino, one of the cornerstones of DIY projects
Now, thanks to the internet’s connection and storage of information, as well as the invention of many “facilitator” machines, almost everyone with an idea can create it and patent it. Ideas no also don’t necessarily limit to physical realm as well, we have whole ideas and market for fully digital ideas, called software’s. That is the so-called Maker Culture, full of Do It Yourself kits(DIY), DIY oriented communities that help explore and enhance those very same kits and even create new inventions that doesn’t necessarily use a DIY kit. the Maker Culture has a heavy “open source” policy, meaning anyone that creates a new invention or comes with a nice and interesting solution to a problem will most likely post instructions on how they achieved so or will sell for an affordable price the items they produced.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#Development_and_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mmPfilWXtw(the internet is alive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPqEEZa2Gis(levitating magnets)