20th-Century Inventions That Changed the World

Glider being launched

In many ways, the 20th century was defined by groundbreaking scientific discoveries and revolutionary new technologies. When the century began, the industrialized world was still using the steam engine, and as it came to a close, the digital age had ushered in transformational new inventions. From the airplane and the era of high-speed travel to the personal computer and our modern information age, the innovations of this era fundamentally changed the fabric of people’s everyday lives. Here are five transformative inventions from the 20th century.

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The Electric Refrigerator

Today the electric refrigerator is so commonplace, you would barely give it a second thought, but when it was first invented, this humble appliance completely changed the way people lived. The first electric fridge designed for home use was patented in 1913 by an American engineer named Fred Wolf, and by the 1960s the technology had advanced enough for fridges to become a fixture in most U.S. homes. The new kitchen staple transformed nearly every aspect of the way Americans bought, stored, and shipped food. Before the fridge, if you didn’t live near the source of certain perishable foods, it often meant you simply couldn’t get them. Refrigeration made it possible to ship fresh food over long distances without spoilage. It also meant that people could store certain foods year-round without resorting to time-consuming, taste-altering preservation processes such as drying or pickling. Today, electric refrigerators can be found in 99.5% of American homes, allowing people to eat foods from all over the world, pretty much whenever they want — a way of life that would have been unrecognizable to someone living at the turn of the 20th century.

The Television

When the first fully electronic television system was created by American inventor Philo Farnsworth in 1927, it altered the media landscape forever. The TV made it so that for the first time in history, people could witness significant political and historical events as they were actually happening. Footage of world-changing moments — from Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon to the fall of the Berlin Wall — could be broadcast directly into people’s homes instead of merely described over the radio or summarized after the fact in a newspaper. TV didn’t just change the way people consumed their news, of course; it also gave rise to a whole new form of entertainment. Entirely new storytelling formats — from the sitcom to the hour-long prestige drama of the modern era — were created especially for the small screen and gobbled up by millions of viewers around the world, transforming popular culture in the process.

The Airplane

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers completed their first successful airplane flight and ushered in the age of air travel. The world was never the same. As air travel became more accessible, people were able to complete journeys in a matter of hours that previously would have taken days or even weeks. The pace of international trade and globalization increased dramatically, and tourists could suddenly visit distant places and experience cultures that would have been inaccessible before. The invention of the airplane also led to rapid advances in aerodynamic technology that propelled air travel to (literal) new heights, opening up possibilities that once existed solely in the realm of science fiction. It was just 66 years after the first airplane flight that the Apollo 11 astronauts successfully landed on the moon.

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The Personal Computer

When the world’s first personal computer, the Kenbak-1, was released in 1971, it would have been easy to dismiss the invention as a mere flash in the pan. Only 40 units of this early PC were sold, and the company that made it, the Kenbak Corporation, dissolved just two years later. However, over the next few decades, the personal computer went from a niche technology to one of the most transformative innovations of the 20th century. In 1977, Apple released the Apple II to considerably more success than had greeted the Kenbak-1: Apple’s PC went on to sell nearly 6 million units between 1977 and 1993. The power of computer technology, which had once been accessible only to a few select specialists, became available to many ordinary people. The average consumer could use computers to automate complex tasks, store huge amounts of information, and — with the advent of computer games — experience totally new forms of entertainment that only scratched the surface of what was to come.

The Internet

Computers were a powerful technology in their own right, but it was the invention of the internet in 1983 that made them touch nearly all aspects of everyday life. The internet allowed computers to communicate with one another in a global network, which meant that huge amounts of information could be exchanged across vast distances in the blink of an eye. As the 20th century came to a close, the web was rapidly becoming a central part of the way most people shopped, communicated, worked, played, and even found love. It became a principal source of news and entertainment, and permanently altered industries as diverse as global finance, popular music, and tourism. It’s no exaggeration to say the internet transformed the world at the end of the 20th century, and the society we live in today is a product of its profound influence.