12 Pictures That Show How Much Technology Has Changed

The first ever laptop weighed 12kg.

1. There were many earlier inventions that resembled telephones, but Alexander Graham Bell was the first to patent his.

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Alexander Graham Bell first displayed a working telephone at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876.

Now:

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Phones are no longer tethered to a landline and are essentially a tiny computer, rarely even used to make calls. There's a good chance you're reading this on your phone right now. What a long way we've come.

2. The first ever mobile phone was the Vodafone VT1 Transporter, which was only sort of mobile, tbh.

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It was made available in 1985, its charging time was ten hours and it weighed almost 5kg.

Now:

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Mobile phones now are essentially just extensions of our own bodies, to the extent that they are changing the way we walk and behave.

3. Though computers have existed in some form or another for centuries, the first ever electronic computers were so huge that they took up huge rooms; the one below is from 1946.

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Prior to the invention of the integrated circuit, loading 5GB onto something was no small feat.

4. Now:

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Though when we think of computers we tend to think of personal computers, in truth they are in almost all modern technology in some way – your fridge is probably computerised, so is your television, and the smartwatch on your wrist.

5. The first ever petrol car was completed and awarded a patent in 1885.

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It was called the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, created by Carl Benz, and had an output of 0.75hp/0.55kW. A Fiat 500 has an output of 51 to 77 kW.

Now:

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We are now seeing the the rise of self-driving cars, and a shift towards electric motors.

6. Though originally the London Underground was used by steam engines, it was eventually electrified in the middle of the last century.

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The system was originally built in 1863, and the first line was the Metropolitan line.

7. Now:

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Some could argue that the London Underground hasn't evolved all that much, given the lack of air conditioning. Just some, though.

8. The first steam locomotive was operated for the first time in 1804 and transformed the way people travelled and traded.

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The above is a locomotive arriving at Paddington Station sometime in the 1850s, shortly after the station was first built.

9. Now:

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High speed trains are becoming more and more commonplace, travelling at speeds of between 200-380mph depending on the train.

10. The first spacecraft containing a person to successfully orbit the Earth and return was launched in 1961 by the Soviet Union.

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The cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, after he successfully completed a spaceflight in the Vostok 1 spacecraft.

Now:

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The NASA Space Shuttle programme was retired in 2011. The SpaceX Crew Dragon space shuttle will transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time since then.

11. The first ever laptop was the Portal R2E CCMC, which was invented in 1980.

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It was completely portable, but it also weighed 12kg and had a RAM of 64K bytes. For context, an iPhone 7 can have 32GB memory – which is over 400,000 times bigger than 64k.

Now:

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There are thousands of different laptops available on the market now, with different specs, but you can rest assured all of them have a higher spec than 64k bytes RAM.