All things have their beginnings, and what now seems like everyday events or objects are, in fact, notable achievements. Photographs in black and white, colour, selfies, underwater or in space, the first shopping mall, the first laptop, the first mobile phone and even the first heart transplant. Starting with some examples from aplus.com, I added some other fascinating inventions.
The first photograph ever taken in 1826
French inventor and photographer Nicephore Niepce managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera in 1826. The process required at least eight hours or even several days of exposure in the camera and the earliest results were very crude.
Transylvanian Carol Popp de Szathmary, world’s first photojournalist, captured ‘Cupidon with broken arms’, in 1848
The first picture taken by a photographer in Romania is “Cupidon with broken arms”. In November 1848, Transylvanian Carol Popp de Szathmary, the world’s first photojournalist, photo-captured a statue from his personal collection in his studio in Bucharest, on Calea Victoriei street, known at the time as the Bridge of Mogosoaia.
The first modern bikini worn in public, in 1946
The first colour photograph, in 1861
The first colour photograph, Tartan Ribbon, taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861.
The first person to receive a heart transplant, in 1967
The first person to receive a human-to-human heart transplant was Louis Washkansky. The surgery was performed in 1967 by the South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard (8 November 1922 – 2 September 2001).
Apple’s first computer in 1976
The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I or Apple-1, is an 8-bit desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak.
The first underwater photography, in 1899
Louis Marie-Auguste Boutan (6 March 1859 – 6 April 1934) was a French biologist and photographer. He was a pioneer in the field of underwater photography.
The first ‘selfie’ in history, in 1839
American photographer Robert Cornelius is famous as he was the first to take a self-portrait photo.
The first space selfie, in 1966
American astronaut Buzz Aldrin posted this photo on his Twitter account, claiming he was the first person who took a space selfie. Who can contradict him?
The first fully automatic mobile phone weighed 40 kg
The company Ericsson Company developed the first fully automatic mobile phone, Mobile Telephone System A (MTA), and was launched in Sweden in 1956. The mobile weighed 40 kg (88 lbs). However, the concept of a “mobile phone” dates back to 1910, when another Swedish inventor and businessman, Lars Magnus Ericsson, installed such a device in his car. He managed to connect his device to the national telephone network through an antenna while travelling through the country.
The first commercial laptop, released in 1981
The first commercial laptop Osborne 1, was released in April 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. The screen was small, 13 cm diagonal, and weighed about 11 kg. The price was about 1,800 dollars.
The desktop computer market pioneers IBM Company launched their first laptop in 1992. ThinkPad 700C had a colour screen, a memory of 120 MB and weighed 2.3 kg.
The first shopping mall was opened in Kansas, USA, in 1922
The first shopping mall was the Country Club Plaza, founded by the J.C. Nichols Company and opened near Kansas City, in the Midwestern United States, in 1922.
In the 1980s, giant megamalls were developed. For example, the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, opened in 1981, with more than 800 stores, a hotel, an amusement park, a miniature-golf course, a church, a water park for sunbathing and surfing, a Zoo and a lake. Impressive.
Photo credit: Apulus.com, Wikipedia, Google.
