Page 12 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

Timeline

Radio pioneer Marconi with
apparatus similar to that he
used to send the world’s first
ever wireless communica-
tion over open sea

Reproduction of Mende-
leev’s 1869 Periodic
Table, including gaps
1869
The Russian chemist
Dmitri Mendeleev
organises the
elements into the
Periodic Table and 1897
predicts ones that While physicists are
have not yet been investigating the scientific
discovered. Reading properties of radio waves,
across the rows, the Guglielmo Marconi becomes 1910
atomic number the first to realise their Pure metallic radium is first isolated by Marie
increases one at a commercial potential for Skłodowska Curie, a Polish woman living in Paris.
time; in the vertical long-distance communication The first winner of two Nobel Prizes, she investi-
columns, elements using Morse code. Unable to gates pitchblende ore, which is rich in uranium
with similar proper- get Italian funding, his earliest salts, to make the novel suggestion that radioactivi-
ties are grouped successful messages are ty comes from inside atoms. The discovery of
together. sent in Britain. radium revolutionised cancer treatment.
1900

1905

Albert Einstein (pictured
below) is working in
the Swiss patent office
when he formulates his
theory of special relativity,
including the notion that
time appears to stretch at
high speeds. His famous
2
formula E=mc underpins
the atomic bomb and
shows that a small change
in mass can release vast Depiction of Wegener’s theory
of Pangea fragmenting into
amounts of energy.
the continental landmasses
1912
When the German meteorolo-
Edison photographed in c1910 with gist Alfred Wegener suggests
an early light bulb, one of 1,000 that a single original landmass
inventions he patented called Pangea had slowly split
apart, few scientists believe
1879 him. He is only vindicated in the
Prolific inventor Thomas Edison 1950s, when magnetic mea-
devises a commercially viable surements made beneath the SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY/BRIDGEMAN
electric light bulb that can be Atlantic Ocean confirm
cheaply produced, lasts a long time Wegener’s theory of
and uses relatively little power. continental drift.

12 The Story of Science & Technology