Basketball is unique amongst all the world’s team sports because its history is well known and documented so we know exactly when the rules were first drawn up, we know when the first games were played, we even know where the first teams were formed. Basketball is an American institution that has spread throughout the world to become one of the most popular college, social, and even professional sport. In the winter of 1891 at […]

The telephone, that dinosaur of 20th century technology that seems to be rapidly going out of favor as cellphones and the Internet take over, is also probably one of the most influential inventions of the post industrial age era. For more than a hundred years business has depended on having access to phones, and it is no accident that the wealthiest of nations have very high telephone use across all parts of society. In the […]

Video games in the 21st century are one of the biggest selling products in the entertainment industry, in some markets even starting to overtake conventional music sales. Video games are roughly described as an electronic game with some rudimentary form of interaction in terms of the player having control of some aspect of the game, and there being a point to playing. Video games weren’t invented until after the invention of the computer since a […]

Opera is a form of stage musical, quite different from typical Broadway musicals, and is often considered more cultural because it incorporates classical music and period costumes. Despite the use of classical orchestras, and a distinctive style of singing, opera actually describes a type of stage drama where singing is the main method of delivering lines instead of the more usual method of speaking a part. The renaissance era in Europe, especially in Italy, was […]

Radio refers to both the technology used to broadcast programs, and also the underlying science of radio waves, which are actually electromagnetic radiation that travels in waves just like light. Radio, even though it is used to broadcast audio signals is not in fact sound, though sound also travels in waves, but much much slower than radio waves. Because radio is electro magnetic, it’s discovery goes back to around the same time that electricity was […]

Unlike the telephone, computer, or television, electricity wasn’t really invented since it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is easily seen whenever lightning rods are present during a powerful storm. Electrical storms can release more electricity in a single storm than the entire world uses in a year, most of the time storms and lightning is quite safe, but whenever electricity is present, the natural attraction of the current is to the ground, and anything […]

Soccer, which is also known as football in countries where it is the main team sport, is a game played with two teams of eleven players who kick or pass a round ball using only feet, shins, chests, and foreheads until they are able to score by getting the ball through the opposition’s goal posts. Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and generates billions of dollars of revenue from TV rights, merchandising, ticket sales, […]

Human flight has been the dream of so many since probably before civilization was invented. The airplane, a fixed wing vehicle capable of controlled flight like a bird, able to take off, maneuver through air currents in any direction, and then land at will safely again, that has been the challenge, and it was the first flight of a heavier than air airplane that finally decided the name of the inventor of the airplane. As […]

Since the invention of the wheel people have been using carriages drawn by horses and donkeys for transport, but the invention of the car truly redefined transport since speed was no longer limited by the speed of the slowest running horse. Desire for a horseless carriage has been around for many hundreds of years, and some of the first experiments predate the industrial revolution. Cars, which are also known as automobiles have gone thru many […]

Cellphones, also called mobile phones, are an invention that in the late 1990s and into the 2nd millennium have become so ubiquitous many people can’t imagine life without them anymore. Cell phones work wirelessly using radio waves to communicate with a tower that transfers the call to the network, and then to the phone of the other party. The idea of using towers arranged in a cellular pattern with each only handling a small area […]