Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest.
Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people, places and things of their day. From the first transatlantic radio transmissions to cellphones, from vacuum tubes to microprocessors, we'll run down the most important advancements in technology, science, sports and more.
This week's installment takes us back to 1931-1940, when quantum physics began to make our heads hurt, the government put the nation to work and the world's love affair with Kodachrome began.
We don't expect you to agree with all of our picks, or even some of them. That's fine. Tell us what you think we've missed and we'll publish your list later.
1935: Radar (War)
In the mid-1930s, the British Air Ministry offered a thousand pounds to the first man who could kill a sheep from 100 yards away using nothing but electromagnetic energy. The generals were half-convinced that Hitler had already obtained a "death ray," and they didn't want to fall behind this latest arms race.
Needless to say, no one claimed the prize. But the contest wasn't exactly for naught. The Ministry asked prominent physicist Robert Watson-Watt in January, 1935 to see if a radio-wave-based death ray was feasible.
In February, Watson-Watt reported back. "Although it was impossible to destroy aircraft by means of radio waves," he wrote, "it should be possible to detect them by radio energy bouncing back from the aircraft's body." The invention became known as radar. And the principle of locating an object by timing how long it takes for electromagnetic energy to bounce back from it – that not only changed warfare, but a whole lot of other things, as well.
The invention didn't end the search for the death ray, however. By 1945, the Japanese had a prototype. As Tom Shachtman discussed in his book on World War II science, it was able to kill a rabbit from distances of 10 yards away. It worked by means of focused microwaves – kind of like today's microwave ovens.
Photo: Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt (1892-1973) is seen here with the apparatus he developed to detect reflected radio echoes from enemy aircraft. SSPL/Getty Images
Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/the-decades-that-invented-the-future-part-4-1931-1940/
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