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Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest.
Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people, places and things of their day. From the first transatlantic radio transmissions to cellphones, from vacuum tubes to microprocessors, we'll run down the most important advancements in technology, science, sports and more.
We'll tackle a different decade each week, starting with the turn of the century – the last century. Our first installment takes you back to 1900-1910, when a German-born physicist named Albert Einstein started changing our perspective of space and time, attorney general Charles Bonaparte established what would become the FBI and the invention of the forward pass saved football from extinction.
We don't expect you to agree with all of our picks, or even some of them. That's fine. Tell us what you think we've missed and we'll publish your list later.
1905: The Theory of Relativity (Science)
E = mc2. The most famous equation in physics history. It states that matter and energy are interconvertible – that is, one is essentially just another form of the other – and their equivalence is tied to a fundamental constant of the universe: the speed of light. Appearing for the first time in November of 1905, this renowned equation was just the latest in a series of cosmos-shattering discoveries from a plucky 26-year-old scientist named Albert Einstein. In a single year, this geek demigod published four papers that upended a thousand years of human thinking on space, time, light, and the subatomic world. After E = mc2, Einstein’s most well-known contribution to screwing with people’s minds is his theory of Special Relativity. The theory enshrines the speed of light as a universal constant while making all other measurements relative to the motion of their observers. So two scientists zipping by one another in hyperfast spaceships will disagree on nearly everything: the amount of time that passes, the mass of each scientist, and even the length of their ships. Einstein also published work on Brownian motion, observing that a tiny crumb floating in a hot liquid like tea is jiggled around chaotically. The crumb is being pushed by energetic and invisible particles, thereby establishing evidence for the existence of atoms, which were still theoretical constructs in 1905. He also discovered the photoelectric effect, which is the basis of solar power and won Einstein the Nobel Prize years later. Taken all together, this miraculous year vaulted Einstein to international recognition and certified his place forever in the geek hall of fame. Einstein in 1905, age 26. Photo: Universal History Archive/Getty Images.
Since 2007, Wired.com's This Day In Tech blog has reflected on important and entertaining events in the history of science and innovation, pursuing them chronologically for each day of the year. Hundreds of these essays have now been collected into a trivia book, Mad Science: Einstein's Fridge, Dewar's Flask, Mach's Speed and 362 Other Inventions and Discoveries that Made Our World*. It goes on sale Nov. 13, and is available for pre-order today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online book stores.*
