-
The first skyscraper
The world's first skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, erected in 1884-1885. The so-called “Father of the Skyscraper” towered all of 10 stories with its peak at 138 feet, miniature by today's standards but gargantuan at that time.It was made by William Le Baron Jenney. -
The first automobile
The first automobile (1885–1886) The first stationary gasoline engine developed by Carl Benz was a one-cylinder two-stroke unit which ran for the first time on New Year's Eve 1879. -
The first truck
The first motor truck was built in 1896 by German automotive pioneer Gottlieb Daimler. Daimler's truck had a four horsepower engine and a belt drive with two forward speeds and one reverse. It was the first pickup truck. Daimler also produced the world's first motorcycle in 1885 and the first taxi in 1897. -
The first airplane
Buoyant over the success of their 1902 glider, the Wright brothers were no longer content to merely add to the growing body of aeronautical knowledge; they were going to invent the airplane. Still, they recognized that much hard work lay ahead, especially the creation of a propulsion system. During the spring and summer of 1903, they were consumed with leaping that final hurdle into history. -
The first sports car
Though the term sports car would not be coined until after World War One, the first sports cars are considered to be the 3 litre 1910 Prince Henry (Prinz Heinrich) Vauxhall 20 hp (tax rating), and the 27/80PS Austro-Daimler designed by Ferdinand Porsche. -
The first athletic shoe
It wasn't until 1917 when Goodyear made the correlation and started to advertise Keds as an athletic shoe. They eventually became known as sneakers, because of the rubber sole, they could 'sneak' around silently'. The father of the modern running shoe was Adolf Dassler who began making shoes in 1920. -
The first computer ever made
The ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and began construction in 1943 and was not completed until 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. -
The first manned spaceship
The first manned spacecraft was also built and launched by the Soviet Union. It was called Vostok 1. It carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961. -
The first spaceship
The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19, 1963. The first partially reusable orbital spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, on April 12, 1981. -
The first video game console
When most people think about the first video game, they think of Pong, the ping-pong arcade game released by Atari in 1972. However, months earlier, Magnavox had released its Magnavox Odyssey, a home video game system based on the “Brown Box,” a prototype invented by Ralph Baer.
