Photo Gallery: Follow the Links From Fireworks to Forensics
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gunpowder
In ancient China, Taoist monks laid the groundwork for what came to be known as 'alchemy'. These monks believed that mixing and burning different ingredients would create an immortality potion. They discovered that by mixing purified bat guano (potassium nitrate or saltpeter), with charcoal, sulphur and a little bit of fire, you get a powerful explosion.
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musket and powder
Once people began loading gunpowder into bamboo tubes to lauch projectiles, weaponry changed forever. The musket is the ancestor of every firearm in the last 500 years. It was able to inflict damage on a scale never seen before, changing the fortunes of war and conquest.
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field surgery tools
The new, massive amount of destruction that the musket was capable of brought wartime casualties up to a new scale. Along with the destruction came new knowledge about the way the human body works - and how to heal it. Based on the legacy of Ambroise Pare and his battlefield surgeries, Belgian Andreas Vesalius persuaded the prison authorities in his home town to take home the bodies of executed criminals and dissect them. This leads to a revolution in the way people understood the human body.
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chain drive
People began viewing the human body as less magical, and more of a machine. Inspired by this, inventors of the day began creating 'automata' or mechanical toys driven by clockwork that mimicked the movements of the human body. French engineer and inventor Jacques de Vaucanson was a well known inventor of such automata. But he also invented the chain drive. Used to power everything from bicycles on up to factory machines, the chain drive was a leap forward in technology in many different fields. It even powered the first flying devices built by the Wright Brothers.
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Red RADAR
The development of aircraft had a huge impact on warfare. Responding to the problem of locating aircraft, a British scientist invented the cathode ray tube which gave us RADAR ('Radio Detection and Ranging').
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A New Way to Play
In 1958, Willy Higginbotham used an old cathode ray oscilloscope (the same tube used to make RADAR) to create the world's first video game - Tennis for Two, an even more primitive version of Pong.
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Virtual Reality Goggles
Developments in video game technology led to the creation of virtual reality, a technology that allows you to experience a digital environment. Crime scene investigators can now scan entire crime scenes and import them into game engines, allowing them to record and examine crime scenes to a hitherto unparalleled degree.
