
The Miraculous 1880s - pross356
http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-miraculous-1880s
======
adventured
In my opinion, the 1880s are no more impressive than the 1990s.

\- Hubble

\- International Space Station

\- World Wide Web

\- Human Genome Project

\- GPS becomes fully operational

\- Drones / UAVs

\- Large Hadron Collider project gets underway

\- Wi-fi (every bit as amazing as the coin operated vending machine)

\- Web / Internet search engines

\- Vast breakthroughs in understanding stem-cells

\- Streaming media, explosion of digital media

\- E-commerce

\- Consumer e-mail (far more important than the electric iron)

\- Instant messaging

\- Mass adoption of the graphical user interface

\- Digital cameras commercially available

\- Commercial lithium ion batteries

\- Protease Inhibitor, countless drug breakthroughs, advancements, vaccines

\- Cloning, eg Dolly

\- Vast numbers of breakthroughs around mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs,
screens, touch, etc.

\- Linux

\- First robotic vacuum cleaner (again, every bit as impressive as the
electric iron)

\- GMOs commercialized

\- Voice over IP becomes a commercial product

Some of these things were obviously continuations, or built upon previous
technology. That is true of many of the 1880s breakthroughs as well.

~~~
dalke
It's a bit odd to see "Large Hadron Collider project gets underway" in the
same category as "Hubble [Space Telescope]", given that HST got underway in
the 1970s. Also, Willadsen cloned mammals in the 1980s using embryonic cells.
(Dolly was the first mammal cloned from adult cells.) And "consumer e-mail"
was available already in the 1980s with Minitel, CompuServe and Prodigy, among
other organizations, as well as from BBSes.

That's not to say there have been no wondrous things in the 1990s, only that
the details are hard to pin down.

There's a belief that the rate of technological growth it itself advancing, so
that the rate of growth now is much more than the rate of growth 100+ years
ago. See for example
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change)
for people who believe this is the case.

This essay is trying to counter-balance, or ground, that belief.

The problem, described at [http://www.innovationfiles.org/is-technological-
change-speed...](http://www.innovationfiles.org/is-technological-change-
speeding-up-how-can-you-tell/) , is that it's hard to measure the rate of
technological change. Among other things, we suffer from bias error because we
forgot that some apparently simple things - my favorite example is the
vertical file system, dating from the late 1800 - didn't exist until recently.

------
Florin_Andrei
Interestingly, Jules Verne (the then equivalent for technology- and
exploration-worshipping hard sci-fi authors of today) was reaching the height
of his output around that same decade (and the next), with some of his most
significant works having been already published in the 15 years preceding it.
It was definitely an age of great enthusiasm about technology and progress,
and I think Verne's books capture that energy pretty well.

If the 1880s were the miraculous decade in terms of technological
breakthroughs, the first 3 or 4 decades of the 20th century were a radical
fracture in terms of fundamental thinking across the whole culture: Einstein,
Godel, quantum physics, post-modernism, dadaism, Picasso, Joyce's Ulysses. I
think we have yet to fully comprehend the magnitude of that tectonic shift in
how we think of and understand... well... everything. It was _massive_ and it
touched _everything_.

And there's a common thread to that whole massive change. If I had to
summarize it in one word, it would be 'relativity'. We've stopped thinking in
absolute terms, and started to understand the value and validity and truth of
the many different points of view. A century later, that kind of understanding
is still percolating into politics, social mores, and daily life.

------
Tloewald
Don't get me wrong, I like the article, but it dismisses a whole bunch of
silicon valley stuff as "variations on a theme" of microprocessors and parsing
radio spectrum. Fair enough but including the invention of Coca Cola and
Edison opening a power plant? That's like counting "Apple starts selling
iPhones in China" as an innovation.

The "safety" bicycle? (the chain drive was invented in 1879) First practical
street railway? (It's like a railway, on a street.) The Wall Street Journal?

It's always worth putting technological progress in context. It reminds me of
a 1999 WIRED article where they asked people to pick which 20th century
technology would most shape the 21st century, to which one expert replied (I
paraphrase), "if I weren't restricted to 20th century technologies, I'd say
the telephone" (pointing out that the majority of the world's population
lacked access at the time). Someone (maybe the same person) nominated the
bicycle as the most important technology of the 20th century.

~~~
yahappynow
To address one point, the safety bicycle was the point in the development of
the bicycle that made it possible for women to ride while wearing long skirts.
This was a huge step for women's autonomy as it allowed women a way to travel
independently. So yes, the safety bicycle was a big deal, though I agree that
it's nonsense to try to rank decades.

[http://www.annielondonderry.com/womenWheels.html](http://www.annielondonderry.com/womenWheels.html)

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
I don't think it's really nonsense to try to rank decades, as long as you have
some specified criteria. For inventions by lasting impact, some decades are
clearly superior to others. The 1750s, for instance, basically had nothing. I
can't find a single thing invented in the 1750s that we still use today or
inspired further inventions directly. I'm sure there's a couple, but I would
argue that since it's hard to find them they're relatively unimporant.

The first decade of the 1800s? The first modernish battery, the arc lamp,
morphine, the steam locomotive, the first automobile, the steamboat.

Perhaps it's _silly_ to rank decades, but I don't think it's nonsense.

~~~
abecedarius
Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod in the 1750s. Harrison's marine
chromometer. Achromatic lenses: interestingly, they were really from the 1730s
and then sat on:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens).
The navigational sextant: also found in Newton's unpublished writings. (But
I'm disinclined to feel smug about these delays, compared to some bits of
computing history.) "First high-quality cement using hydraulic lime since
Roman times." The
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_escapement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_escapement).
Lind's treatment of scurvy, and an early attempt at vaccination. Some
chemistry of practical import.

So, I agree: the 1800s beat the 1750s in the invention cage-fight.

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1750_in_science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1750_in_science)
and following, from which I left out science and math discoveries.

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
I don't know how the lightning rod didn't come up in my googling!

Total aside, re: the chronometer, the 1750s definitely was not when it came
into existence. He may have refined the design during that time, but the H1
chronometer was completed during the 1730s. I'm not sure if there's an exact
date around for its completion.

~~~
lmm
H4 was the one that was good enough, no?

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
The H4 was completed in 1761.

------
bra-ket
also

\- Lilienthal gliders developed in the 1880s that inspired Wright brothers to
create the first airplane:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal)

\- Heaviside's work on Maxwell equations

\- Boltzmann's work on thermodynamics

\- Hertz discovers the photoelectric effect and radio waves

\- Hollerith receives a patent for electric tabulating machine, one of the
first computers

\- Design of rocket propulsion by means of explosives (a precursor for Project
Orion):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kibalchich#Final_lette...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kibalchich#Final_letter)

~~~
akgerber
The 1880s also saw Chicago's population grow by 118% and New York's by 23%.

Compare that to today, when we treat urban population booms of 5% a decade as
'breakneck growth' (e.g. San Francisco, from 777k to 815k from 2000 to 2011).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Chicago in 1880 was starting with a pretty small base, though...

~~~
mlinksva
1880: 503,185

1890: 1,099,850

~~~
AnimalMuppet
OK, bigger than I thought. Big enough that the comparison to SF is not totally
invalid...

Except that SF has the problem that almost nobody can afford to _live_ there,
so everybody commutes. So how big is the SF metro area? 7,000,000 in 2000 -
though that includes San Jose and Oakland. Those are places that send
commuters to SF, true, but a bunch of them don't go there too, and so it's
getting really hard trying to figure out how to come up with validly
comparable numbers...

~~~
akgerber
Why does SF have that problem? To a significant degree, because more people
can live in buildings like this: [http://cache-
graphicslib.viator.com/graphicslib/media/c8/ver...](http://cache-
graphicslib.viator.com/graphicslib/media/c8/very-busy-paris-streets-
photo_1489864-770tall.jpg) than buildings like this:
[http://c718756.r56.cf2.rackcdn.com/26000/93334/2010-08-25/35...](http://c718756.r56.cf2.rackcdn.com/26000/93334/2010-08-25/35b9b123d2a5a4838c5cab39f69780ce.jpg)
yet it's illegal to replace the latter with the former in SF. Unlike, say,
Chicago in the 1880s.

~~~
dredmorbius
The bulk of Chicago _isn 't_ highly multistory buildings, and most of the
early skyscrapers were office towers, not residential.

What Chicago has that San Francisco hasn't is _land_. The city sprawled both
north and south along Lake Michigan, and westward.

San Francisco has less space in the city proper, yes, but it also wasn't
filled out fully until the 1950s. Now, of course, it _is_ fully built up, and
the only way to add more people is to grow up rather than out.

Chicago, though, _also_ has highly developed suburbs, which were principally
served until the 1960s by commuter rail, radiating out in all directions.
Contrast with SF which had only one line south (CalTrain) through what remains
a comparatively sparsely developed area (the Peninsula), and limited East Bay
service (though the Key System _did_ exist until the 1950s).

It's simply easier to build out more metropolitan infrastructure in the
midwest.

Chicago is also within reasonable rail distance of much of the East Coast. By
the late 1850s, it was less than two day's travel from New York, and well
under one by the 1930s (about the same, by rail, as now).

[http://railroads.unl.edu/documents/view_document.php?id=rail...](http://railroads.unl.edu/documents/view_document.php?id=rail.str.0241)

San Francisco was four _weeks '_ travel in the 1850s, and still 3-4 days by
the 1930s.

Today, California is increasingly practically limited by water access.

------
lordnacho
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment)

Happened 1887. A load of other things mentioned by other people here, too.

I wonder if there was some sort of geographic centre to it. A lot of it sounds
like it happened in the US.

------
cbd1984
This is pointless: If you let me define the terms, I can 'prove' that the
Ancient Romans invented radio, computers, and whatever else, and nothing of
note has been created since 500 CE. Picking out the 'first' of something is
_always_ an exercise in defining terms, meaning the person who does it gets to
pick the winners by defining some key words correctly.

(First computer: The rock. It enables partially-mechanized computation. The
abacus is merely a variation on the theme of using pebbles to count, and
nothing later counts at all.)

(First radio: Using torches to send messages. After all, all light is in the
electromagnetic spectrum, just like the modern FM band.)

------
CapitalistCartr
This author doesn't seem to be familiar with Belle Époque
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque)

The Gilded Age from 1871 until we screwed it all up with WW I is well known in
history as an age of major advancement.

------
panglott
Coinciding with the Long Depression of 1873-1896?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression)

Those good old technological explanations for secular stagnation don't look
great over longer timescales.

------
sytelus
Question: If you can choose any 100-year span in human history to live, which
one would you chose?

My answer was 1869 to 1969. Imagine the world without cars, electricity,
airplanes, telephones, skyscrapers... You start from there. And then within
100 years man lands on moon. You would have witnessed two biggest wars in
human history, multiple cultural revolutions, art revolutions, medical
revolutions... It would be the most interesting years in the human history to
live. Now compare that to our time span :).

~~~
sosuke
I am quite happy to be missing out on my share of world wars thought I read
plenty about them.

Otherwise I often think I was born too late, that I missed so many
opportunities if I had just been a few years older. If I had only bought
Google when I had the chance, if I hadn't been such a young fool, if I was in
the work place during the boom I could have gotten lucky. Oh man the ifs go on
forever. So I throw up my hands and look around to see if I can avoid an if
today.

------
fleitz
And how many stem cell treatments were available in 2005?

There are lots of innovations in tech happening outside of microprocessors.

~~~
dredmorbius
How much are stem cells improving quality of life?

How much did clean water, flush toilets, and municipal waste removal improve
quality of life and life expectancy?

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/MsQfdPAn_0XUdZUoReBfbg](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/MsQfdPAn_0XUdZUoReBfbg)

[https://d324imu86q1bqn.cloudfront.net/uploads/asset/attachme...](https://d324imu86q1bqn.cloudfront.net/uploads/asset/attachment/1468664/ello-
xhdpi-281770e7.jpg)

------
crystaln
Biotech? Nanotech? Transportation? Software? Information accessibility? Social
technologies? Genetic engineering? Space travel? Artificial intelligence?

We do a lot more than processors these days.

