
Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions - raleighm
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/ctnlistPubDate.asp
======
greggman3
It's hard to find the first reference of each idea.

I remember some picture floating around showing Star Trek as inspiration for
cellphones, tablets, augmented displays, video calling

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/15/26/e5/1526e5f6cfd6c2beb010...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/15/26/e5/1526e5f6cfd6c2beb010bb1cc67f51e5.jpg)

but the creators were not aware all of those things existed long before.

[https://i.imgur.com/RtyUYoR.png](https://i.imgur.com/RtyUYoR.png)

------
analog31
While the patent system has its flaws, one good concept is that a patent
requires not only an idea, but a credible recipe for reducing the idea to
practice. As such, few of the ideas in science fiction are actual inventions.

At the workplace, someone will often suggest something at a meeting, or to a
subordinate, and claim "credit" for it later on. My rule of thumb is that
credit goes to the person who actually made it happen, because that person had
to work out whether it was feasible or not. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

~~~
_ph_
I think you are wrong. Ideas are a dime a dozen, good ideas are not. Ideas,
which can be put into something useful. Yes, bringing an idea to life is also
important, and often credit belongs to the person who does. But on the other
side, there are plenty ideas, which once being had, are trivial to put into
production.

So credit belongs to all involved people. Sometimes it is more the execution,
sometimes it is the idea by itself. And very often, it is a process of
iteration. Having an idea, implementing it, augmenting the idea and implement
that.

------
hirundo
I recently discovered that Jules Verne's Nautilus (1875) was named after the
"first practical submarine", designed and built by Robert Fulton (later a
steamboat designer) and first tested in 1800. Fulton built the submarine as a
delivery device for the torpedoes he also invented, and tried to sell the
weapons system to Napoleon to counter the dominant British fleet.

So while Verne is one of the great scifi inventors of all time, his submarine
was an homage to an older invention, dialed up to eleven.

I wonder if there is another timeline somewhere of inventions that no science
fiction story ever anticipated. It may be a shorter list.

------
aspenmayer
This is cool. Reminds me of Orion’s Arm, a kind of collaborative hard sci-fi
world building exercise that pulls from any and all sources.

[https://www.orionsarm.com](https://www.orionsarm.com)

Then there’s this:

ATOMIC ROCKETSHIPS OF THE SPACE PATROL or "So You Wanna Build A Rocket?"

[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php)

------
peter_d_sherman
This is great from many perspectives... Futurists would like it; other science
fiction writers would like it, philosophers, particularly philosophers about
technology would like it (and even would-be future comedy-about-technology
writers such as yours truly, would find inspiration in it!)...

A fascinating and inspiring collection of ideas! Worth re-visiting at various
intervals in the future!

------
neoplatonian
I think such articles underestimate the ingenuity and detailing that goes into
inventions. The idea represented by the science fiction and its execution by
science are not the same thing. Case in Point: The dream of human flight must
have existed ever since man first looked up at the sky and found it beyond his
reach. But to say ancient humans came up with the idea and Da Vinci executed
it (unsuccessfully) would be either belittling Da Vinci's designs or the
thought and imagination that went into them. Better to say ancients had some
idea (Hindus with flying chariots, Greeks with wings stuck-on with wax etc.),
Da vinci had some other idea, and Wright Brothers an altogether different one.

------
illuminated
The moving picture player, by H.G. Wells, from 1899 is definitely intriguing:
[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=762](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=762)

~~~
codingdave
Edison had already invented it (sans sound) and was publicly showing films a
few years before that.

Seeing the timing in sci-fi remains interesting. But quite a few items on this
list are responses to inventions, not newly conceived concepts. I'd be
interested in seeing a breakdown of which ideas were first conceived in
fiction.

~~~
Tagbert
And Edison’s work was based on Lumière‘s Cinematographe and before that, the
Zoöpraxiscope which was proceeded by the Zoetrope. Each one took and idea and
developed it in ways that made improvements. This is how invention actually
works, not the sudden inspiration of the lone inventor who deserves full
credit. It is a serial process of inspiration and enhancements that over time
produce progress.

------
Flenser
This entry on workplace distancing is apropos:

[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=3253](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=3253)

------
Anon4Now
The movie Impostor doesn't get enough credit. The personalized ads credited to
Minority Report appeared a year before in Impostor. Both were based on Philip
Dick works, so maybe he was the genesis for both.

------
KineticLensman
Interesting. Just as a test I decided to see it it included concepts as well
as SF devices, and it did indeed include 'flashcrowd' (Larry Niven in 1972)
and 'worm' (John Brunner, 1975).

