Changing technology

Science and technology are moving so fast that it is difficult to keep up, let alone understand, to all new developments. Mechanization, automation and robots make people?s work easier in many branches of industry, and have become a common occurrence.
Progress in the 20th century is based on new discoveries and developments in sciences. In physics (It is particularly the relativity theory ? Albert Einstein or the quantum theory ? Max Planck), mathematics (computers), chemistry (new materials, such as nylon, lycra), engineering
(power-driven machines, numerically – operated machines), biology (public sanitation), biotechnology, medicine (new medicines and new curing methods), etc.
I will start with computers that have found their way in various jobs and control
a number of processes. Since the 1960s, when the first electronic computer was developed, computers have undergone dramatic changes in size, speed, software and prize. Extensive research is being carried out to develop a computer that could communicate with people by means of a human language, or even by reading human thoughts.
In business, computers are used to store, process and retrieve data at a speed that is thousand times faster than formerly. Computers have enabled home-working to women with children or people living in distant places, who would have to commute to work every day. The general public use personal computers mainly as word processors and to run the family budget.
The Internet / the information highway / enables people to get information that is normally unavailable ? from world libraries, museums and other institutions including business and finance offices. You can also send and receive e-mail letters that reach their destinations in a few seconds or minutes irrespective of the distance.
Owing to unprecedented progress in medicine, modern man lives much longer. Public sanitation has eliminated many of the lethal-diseases such as plague, dysentery, tuberculosis and diabetes. Many cures have been found for infectious diseases, flu, diabetes, etc. Penicillin (an antibiotic that kills bacteria) was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, insulin by F. Sanger in 1958. Many people survive serious injuries thanks to blood transfusions and sophisticated operations with the use of the latest apparatuses (laser). Quite a few people live longer owing to transplanted organs, such as heart, kidneys, lungs or liver.
Scientists have cloned a sheep, a pig and a monkey, and hope to use this method to clone and replace sick organs in humans. People who are unable to have children can have
a tube baby.
Transport has changed completely. At the beginning of the 20th century most people travelled on foot or by horse-drawn vehicles. Nowadays there is public transport in most towns, high-speed trains and supersonic planes to travel long distances and cars to get to work, to shops or to go for a weekend break.
Then, for example, man has overcome the power of gravity and can launch satellites, rockets, space shuttles, spaceships, space probes, telescopes that either serve communication on Earth or explore the Solar System. A couple of them have already left it. Man has set foot on the Moon and has brought back some moon rocks. The first man in the space was Jurij Gagarin from Russia in )
12.4. 1961 but the first man on the Moon was the American Neal Armstrong in 1969.

Inventors of last century:
Albert Einstein (1879 ? 1955)
German born US physicist. He profoundly influenced science in many fields, such as radiation physics and thermodynamics, but is best known for formulating the theories of relativity (1905 and 1915). He is also distinguished for his work for peace and justice. He received the Nobel Prize in 1921. In 1911 he became a lecturer in theoretical physics in Prague; in 1933 he immigrated to the USA and became professor of mathematics in Princeton, New Jersey.
Sir Alexander Fleming (1881 ? 1955)
Scottish bacteriologist, who discovered the first antibiotic drug, penicillin in 1928, although it did not come into use until 1941. In 1945 he won the Nobel Prize.
James Dewey Watson (1928 – )
American biologist whose research in the molecular structure of DNA and the genetic code, in collaboration with Francis Crick, earned him a shared Nobel Prize in 1962. He was born in Chicago. After attending public schools in his native town, he entered the university there in 1943, when only 16. When he had graduated, he did work in genetics at Indiana University and received his PhD in 1950. Then he went to Europe and worked at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, Great Britain, from 1951 to 1953. There he met Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, and the collaboration resulted in the discovery of a structure for DNA in 1953. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the molecule of heredity. J. Watson became the youngest ever holder of the Nobel Prize. After his return to the USA he became professor of biology at Harvard University, Cambridge. His discovery stimulated a rapid development of genetic engineering in America.