Curated playlist
19th-century inventions
- Roberts LoomThe Roberts loom arrived in 1830, and within a few years it had helped push the number of power looms across Britain from around 55,500 to 100,000. Richard Roberts, working out of 15 Deansgate in Manchester, had built something the textile…
- Incandescent light bulbThe incandescent light bulb is an electric light that produces illumination by Joule heating a filament until it glows. For well over a century, that simple idea - sending current through a wire until it shines - lit homes, streets,…
- Steam turbineThe steam turbine quietly powers the modern world. In 2022, about 42% of all electricity generated in the United States came from machines built on the same fundamental principle: pressurized steam spinning a shaft. At the outermost edge…
- PhotographyOn a busy Paris boulevard in 1838, a man stopped to have his boots polished. He held still for several minutes. That stillness made him the earliest confirmed person ever captured in a photograph. Every other figure on that crowded street,…
- AccordionThe accordion takes its name from a 19th-century German word, Akkordeon, rooted in Akkord, meaning a musical chord or a concord of sounds. Inside its pleated bellows, air rushes past strips of brass or steel called reeds, and those reeds…
- Clothes dryerThe clothes dryer is a machine most people use without a second thought, tossing in a wet load and walking away. Yet behind that rotating drum lies a surprisingly varied family of technologies, a history stretching back to 1800, and a…
- Bessemer processThe Bessemer process changed the price of steel from forty pounds per long ton to six or seven pounds - in a single generation. Before Henry Bessemer filed his patent in 1856, steel was a precious material. It made cutlery and tools, but…
- BicycleBy the early 21st century, more than 1 billion bicycles existed in the world. The bicycle was invented in Europe in the 19th century, and its basic shape has barely changed since the first chain-driven model appeared around 1885. Yet…
- FilmA locomotive races toward the audience at high speed, and according to legend, people panic and bolt from the theater. That moment captures something about film, a work of visual art that simulates experiences and communicates ideas,…
- CarThere are over 1.6 billion cars in use worldwide as of 2025, and the count is still climbing fast. A car is a motor vehicle with wheels that runs primarily on roads, seats one to eight people, and carries passengers rather than cargo. Most…
- Internal combustion engineInside an internal combustion engine, a fuel burns with an oxidizer inside a chamber that sits directly in the path of the working fluid. The high-temperature, high-pressure gases produced by that combustion press straight against the…