Weekly Topics - Week 1: IT solutions in history

This week I am going to talk about interesting IT inventions in history. Of course there are many, many interesting inventions. The three I picked interested me the most. The sources for my information are listed down below.  Let’s start with the first IT Invention: 

The Black Box (1953)

David Warren and his Black Box Prototype [3] (imagesource: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dave_Warren_with_BlackBox_Prototype.jpg)

Did you know, that the Black Box did a huge contribution to the international airline safety? The Black Box is a Flight Recorder, invented in 1953 by David Warren [1]. Warren was a aeronautical research scientist and invented this device, because a lot of high-profile airplane crashes went unsolved. Interesting fact: Contrary to popular belief, the black box is mostly bright orange, not black (like the name suggests). The Black Box Flight Recorder is able to record flight data, cockpit sounds and instruments during a flight. The recorder can storage speech data for hours before an accident. It helps to clarify the reasons for accidents and also helps to find ways to prevent them. The recorder was so successfull, that only 5 years after its release, it became mandatory to install the Black Box Flight Recorder in every airplane for flight records. On flypgs [2] it says that:
Black boxes that are resistant to the most extreme situations are one of the most special tools of the aviation research industry with their voice recording features.
Since it’s very important, that the Black Box survives a possible airplane crash, it is designed to be the least affected by an impact. This is why they are located in the tail of the plane. The Black Boxes, that are used today still operate with the same principles. 

Capacitive Touch Screen (1965-1967)

The second interesting invention happened during the years 1965 and 1967. 

E.A. Johnson and his Touch Screen (photo: arstechnica.com)

During that time, the Engineer E.A. Johnson invented the capacitive Touch Screen at the Royal Radar Establishment in the UK, which is seen as the very first Touch Screen [4]. There are three components, that are used in touchscreen technology: First the touch sensor. This is a panel with a touch responsive surface. Sensors have an electrical current running through them and touching the screen causes a voltage change. The voltage change then signals the location of the touching. The second component is the Controller. It is a hardware that converts the voltage change on the sensor into signals, which the computer can receive. The third component is the software. The software tells the computer, what exactly is happening right now on the sensor: Who is touching what and where? The computer then can react accordingly. That the capacitive Touch Screen was a breakthrough in the history of Touch Screens proves the following quote from digisaurier [5]:
For selecting buttons on the screen, this technology has survived to this day - in ATMs, among other things. However, this design is rather unsuitable for tracking the movement of fingers on the surface.

 The Barcode (1948 and 1978)

The third invention originally happened in 1948, but actually got popular 20 years later! Nowadays it is very common. Do you know what it is? It is: The Barcode! It originated in 1948 by the two university students Norman J Woodland and Bernard Silver from the Drexel Institute of Technology in Miami [6]. Norman J Woodland drew some lines in the sand at the beach, made the circular and even got a patent for his idea. The problem was: During that time, there was no technology to process his code. It wasn’t until 20 years later, that his idea got picked up again by some researches who had a technology, that could process it. They modified his idea into an rectangular design (like the one we use today) and started to implement it commercially in 1980. Since then, the industry uses it everywhere for scanning and tracking. And again, this technology survived the test of time, as the following quote shows [6]:
Yet here we are in the 21st century, and the invention of the bar code has stood the test of time. Even though the original inventors probably didn’t make much money out of their invention, they certainly helped contribute towards a minor revolution in the entire shopping process.
I hope you found these three inventions interesting. See you next week! 
 
 
Sources: 
  1. https://techengage.com/top-tech-innovations-in-history/ 
  2. https://www.flypgs.com/en/travel-glossary/flight-data-recorder-black-box
  3. Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dave_Warren_with_BlackBox_Prototype.jpg
  4. https://www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-touch-screen-technology-1992535
  5. https://www.digisaurier.de/kleine-weltgeschichte-der-touch-bedienung-2/touchscreen/
  6. https://www.invention-help.com/invention-of-the-barcode

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