istoryworld
Events relating to technology
Telegraph messages lead to the arrest of Dr Crippen and his mistress Ethel Le Neve in mid-Atlantic
Ferdinand Zeppelin's dirigible Deutschland provides the first commercial air service for passengers
US inventor Isaac Newton Lewis patents a lighter version of the machine gun
The Titanic is launched at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast
US aeroplane designer Glenn Curtis demonstrates the potential of the first successful flying boat, The Flying Fish
William Morris opens a factory at Cowley, near Oxford, to produce motor cars
The first sea-going diesel-powered ship, the Selandia, is constructed and launched in Denmark
The US navy begins transmitting by radio a regular time signal, much used by the nation's watchmakers and menders.
The Morris company launches the Morris Oxford, later known as the Bullnose Morris from the shape of its radiator
An underground railway opens in Buenos Aires, the first subway in Latin America
The Panama Canal opens to shipping on a neutral basis just two weeks after the start of World War I
Alexander Graham Bell again summons his assistant Thomas Watson (as in 1876), but this time he is in New York and Watson in San Francisco
The Corning Glass Company launches Pyrex, a new range of heat-resistant kitchen ware made from borosilicate glass
Radiotelephone messages are transmitted from Arlington in Virginia to the Eiffel Tower in Paris
Thomas Edison invents a machine to record telephone conversations, calling it the telescribe
Winston Churchill is a firm supporter of a new invention, the tank, encouraging its initial development while still at the Admiralty
The French aviator Roland Garros fires a machine gun through the propeller in his fighter plane, using metal plates to deflect any bullets that hit the propeller
Dutch aircraft designer Anton Fokker, working for the Germans, vastly improves the Roland Garros technique for firing machine guns through the propellers of fighter planes
William Boeing flies an aircraft built by himself, and a month later sets up in Seattle his own Aero Product company
The Federal-Aid Highway Act sets up the first national road system in the US
Captain Peter Nissen, a Canadian mining engineer, designs the Nissen Hut for the Allied armies
Eleven British tanks go into pioneering but ineffective action at the battle of the Somme
Chaim Weizmann, later the first President of Israel, uses a microbial culture to create corn starch in the first example of biotechnology, the use of living organisms to make useful products
Suitable ground is selected by the British at the battle of Cambrai for the first serious deployment of their new tanks
John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown fly from St John's in Newfoundland to Clifden in Ireland
