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#Science & Technology

112 entries

People (19)
Alexander Graham Bell
Scottish-American inventor of the telephone, 1847–1922
Benjamin Banneker
Self-taught astronomer, mathematician, and the first Black man to receive a presidential appointment
Benjamin Franklin
Printer, diplomat, and scientist who helped engineer American independence
Eli Whitney
Inventor of the cotton gin who accidentally expanded slavery and deliberately built American mass production
Frank Lloyd Wright
Organic architecture across seventy years, 1867-1959
George Westinghouse
The air-brake inventor who bet his fortune on alternating current, 1846-1914
Grace Hopper
Pioneer of computer programming and inventor of the first compiler
Henry Ford
Industrialist who put the automobile within reach of ordinary Americans
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Director of the Manhattan Project and father of the atomic bomb
John Wesley Powell
The one-armed Civil War veteran who ran the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon
Jonas Salk
Developer of the first effective polio vaccine, 1955
Louis Sullivan
The architect who gave the tall building a form, 1856-1924
Neil Armstrong
The first human to set foot on the moon
Nikola Tesla
Serbian-American inventor who built the modern electrical world
Rachel Carson
Marine Biologist and Author Whose Silent Spring Launched the Environmental Movement, 1907–1964
Robert Goddard
Pioneer of modern rocketry who launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926
Sally Ride
The first American woman in space
Thomas Edison
Inventor of the phonograph, the practical light bulb, and the modern research laboratory
Wright Brothers
Wilbur and Orville Wright, pioneers of powered flight
Places (16)
Cape Canaveral
The Florida Launch Site That Has Carried American Ambitions Into Space Since 1950
Hoover Dam
The concrete wall in Black Canyon that made the modern Southwest, 1936
Niagara Falls
The Great Lakes-fed waterfall that powered the second industrial revolution
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
The Secret City That Built the Uranium for the Hiroshima Bomb
Pearl Street Station
The first commercial central power station, Manhattan, September 4, 1882
Silicon Valley
How a stretch of California orchards became the engine of the digital age
The Brooklyn Bridge
Fourteen years, three Roeblings, and a span of steel wire, 1883
The Chrysler Building
Art Deco's peak and the secret spire, 1930
The Empire State Building
Built in 410 days in the teeth of the Depression, 1931
The Flatiron Building
The wedge at Twenty-third and Broadway, 1902
The Golden Gate Bridge
International Orange across an impossible strait, 1937
The Home Insurance Building
Chicago's contested first skyscraper, 1885
The Niagara Falls Power Plant
The Adams Station and the current that reached Buffalo, 1895-1896
The Willis Tower
The Sears Tower and the bundled tube, 1973
The Woolworth Building
The Cathedral of Commerce, paid for in cash, 1913
The World Trade Center
The twin towers of lower Manhattan, 1973 to 2001
Events (16)
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The 1804–1806 Corps of Discovery that mapped the American West to the Pacific
Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight
The 1927 solo crossing that made Charles Lindbergh a global icon
Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
The 1986 explosion that killed seven astronauts and shook America's faith in its space program
Spindletop
The 1901 gusher that launched the American oil age
Sputnik
The 1957 Soviet satellite that started the Space Race
The 1918 Flu Pandemic
The "Spanish flu" that killed more Americans than all the century's wars
The AIDS Epidemic
A public-health catastrophe that reshaped medicine and activism
The Manhattan Project
The secret World War II program that built the atomic bomb
The Moon Landing
Apollo 11 and humanity's first steps on another world, July 1969
The Northeast Blackout of 1965
The night the grid failed and thirty million people went dark, November 9, 1965
The Space Race
The Cold War competition between the United States and Soviet Union to conquer space
The Space Shuttle
The reusable spacecraft that defined American spaceflight for three decades
The TV Dinner
Swanson's 1953 aluminum tray and the rearranged American evening
Three Mile Island
The 1979 nuclear accident that ended the American nuclear power era
World War II
America's 1941–1945 war that defeated the Axis and made it a superpower
Wright Brothers' First Flight
The 12-second powered flight at Kitty Hawk that opened the aviation age
Concepts (3)
American Innovation
How a culture of invention turned the United States into the engine of the modern world
Medicine in America
From heroic bleeding to a research enterprise that leads the world
The Industrial Revolution
The transformation of American labor, production, and daily life, 1820–1900
Organizations (27)
Amazon
The online bookstore that became the everything store, founded 1994
Apple
The company that made the computer personal — and beautiful, founded 1976
Boeing
The company that built America's airliners and warplanes, founded 1916
CNN
The first twenty-four-hour news channel, launched 1980
General Electric
The Edison company that grew into an industrial empire, founded 1892
Google
The search engine that organized the web — and its advertising, founded 1998
IBM
The company that ran on data, from punch cards to the computer age
Microsoft
The software giant that put a computer on every desk, founded 1975
NASA
The space agency founded in 1958 that won the race to the Moon and became the symbol of American ambition
NBC
The first permanent broadcast network, founded 1926
NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, assembled 1970
The American Museum of Natural History
New York's temple of dinosaurs, dioramas, and science, founded 1869
The Associated Press
The cooperative wire service, founded 1846
The Bell System (AT&T)
The telephone monopoly that wired America, 1877–1984
The CDC
The nation's front line against disease, from malaria to pandemics, 1946
The Food and Drug Administration
The agency that guards the nation's food and medicine, 1906
The Ford Motor Company
The company that put America on wheels, founded 1903
The Mayo Clinic
The Minnesota clinic that pioneered team-based medicine, 1889
The National Geographic Society
The society that brought the world to America, founded 1888
The National Weather Service
The federal forecast, from the Army Signal Service to the watch and the warning
The NSA
The codebreaking agency founded in secret in 1952 to intercept the world's communications
The Rockefeller Foundation
The oil fortune turned to fighting disease and funding science, 1913
The Rural Electrification Administration
The New Deal agency that put wires down the farm road, 1935
The Smithsonian Institution
The national museum complex born from a mysterious English bequest, 1846
The United States Air Force
The youngest branch, born from the rise of air power, 1947
The World Health Organization
The UN's global health agency — and America's fraught partner in it, 1948
Tuskegee Institute
Booker T. Washington's school for Black self-reliance, founded 1881
Technology (31)
ARPANET and the Birth of the Internet
The Cold War research network that grew into a global communications system
Chemotherapy
Poison turned into medicine, from mustard gas to the first cures
Dialysis
The artificial kidney, the God Committee, and the one disease Congress covered
Doppler Radar
Seeing the rotation inside a storm before the funnel reaches the ground
Edison's Incandescent Light Bulb
The 1879 Menlo Park demonstration that ended the gaslight era
Ether Anesthesia
October 16, 1846 — the morning surgery stopped meaning agony
LASIK
Laser eye surgery and the arrival of elective consumer medicine
Nuclear Weapons
The weapon that redefined war, power, and the survival of nations
Organ Transplantation
From an identical-twin kidney in 1954 to a permanent scarcity
Radio
The medium that first brought live voices into the American home
Salk Polio Vaccine
The 1955 vaccine that ended summer polio epidemics — and the doctor who refused to patent it
Television
The screen that became the center of American life
The Artificial Heart
The Jarvik-7, 112 days, and the limits of a machine
The Automobile
How the car became the machine that reshaped American life
The Birth Control Pill
The oral contraceptive, approved for contraception in 1960
The Cotton Gin
The 1793 invention that mechanized cotton — and entrenched slavery
The Electrification of America
How a nation lit by flame became a nation wired for current, 1880s to 1950s
The Ford Model T
The car — and the assembly line — that put America on wheels
The Fujita Scale
Rating a tornado by what it destroyed, 1971
The Human Genome Project
Reading three billion base pairs, 1990 to 2003
The Internet
The network that gave everyone a printing press — and remade media
The Moving Assembly Line
The 1913 innovation that made mass production — and the modern economy
The MRI
Magnetic resonance imaging and the soft body made visible
The Pacemaker
The wearable box and the implant that took over the heartbeat
The Power Grid
How isolated stations became a machine the size of a continent
The Skyscraper
The American invention of building up, from the 1880s
The Telegraph
How Morse code severed the link between communication and travel
The Telephone
The 1876 invention that let the human voice travel across the wire
The Transistor
The tiny 1947 device that made the digital age possible
The War of the Currents
Edison's direct current against Westinghouse and Tesla's alternating current, 1886-1893
Weather Forecasting in America
How a nation learned to see the storm coming
All Tags
Politics 178 Economy 171 Military 129 Reform 121 Civil Rights 118 Law & Justice 116 Presidency 113 Science & Technology 112 Foreign Policy 107 Arts & Culture 103 Race 98 Founding Era 96 Industry 90 Constitution 75 Modern America 67 Protest 66 Cold War 65 Civil War 62 Westward Expansion 61 War 59 Revolution 59 Slavery 57 Media & Press 57 Women 56 Indigenous 51 Diplomacy 47 Immigration 41 Labor 40 Environment 36 Colonial America 34 Congress 33 Religion 33 World War II 32 Supreme Court 32 Disaster 29 Exploration 27 Public Health 25 Progressive Era 25 Abolition 22 Finance 22 Reconstruction 22 Democracy 20 Gilded Age 19 Assassination 15 Education 15 Suffrage 11 World War I 9 Sports 9 Corruption 9 Prohibition 1