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20 Greatest Engineering Achievements of the Modern Age

Electrification – With the flick of a finger on a switch or button, countless times every day, we tap into vast sources of energy. From coal and oil to gusting winds, rushing waters, to the brilliance of the Sun and the hidden power of the atom - all are transformed into electricity to power our homes, businesses, schools and industry.

Automobile - Thomas Edison must have known something back in 1895 when he said "The horseless carriage is the coming wonder, it is only a question of a short time when the carriages and trucks in every large city will be run with motors."

Airplane - Not a single human being had ever flown a powered aircraft when the 20th century began. Today flying has become relatively common for millions of people, and some are even flying through space. The first piloted, controlled flight lasted 12 seconds and carried one man 120 feet - today non-stop commercial flights last as long as 18 hours and carry passengers halfway around the world.

Water Supply & Distribution - It’s a fact that humans can’t survive without water and the development of water supply and distribution systems has led to an increase in life expectancy and improvements in environmental quality in developed countries.

Electronics - Electricity was discovered in 1799 when Scottish teacher Michael Faraday stood on top of Ben Nevis (that’s a mountain) in a thunderstorm, flying a kite made of aluminium foil. It took until mid-1948 for it to be adapted to public use in the form of a transistor and even then it was met with underwhelming enthusiasm.

Radio & Television – In 1901 Guglielmo Marconi, waiting at a wireless receiver in St. John’s, Newfoundland, picked up the first transatlantic radio signal, transmitted some 2,000 miles from a Marconi station in Cornwall, England. Nearly a quarter of a century later in 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first recognisable image (the head of a ventriloquist’s dummy) at a London department store using a device he called a Televisor. Both have changed the world and play a huge role in our communication, entertainment, and the way we gather information.

Agricultural Mechanisation – Mechanisation spelled a revolution in agriculture. Tractors, harvesters, irrigators, crop sprayers and more have succeeded in saving hours of backbreaking work ever since.

Computers – At 27 tonnes and the size of an entire room, the world's first computer was just as elaborate as its name suggests - ENIAC or Electronic Numerator Integrator Analyser and Computer. Performing an equation of 5,000 additions was accompanied by all sorts of big noises, cracking and buzzing. Big difference between that and the computer you’re sitting at now.

Telephone – Throughout his life, Alexander Graham Bell had been interested in the education of deaf people. It was an interest that led him to invent the microphone and, in 1876, his "electrical speech machine," which we now call a telephone. And we haven’t stopped talking since.

Air Conditioning & Refrigeration – In the middle of a long, hot summer, most of us are pretty grateful both these were invented. Mechanical refrigeration was snapped up by a welcoming public in the 1800’s, but they didn’t have our domestic convenience and comfort in mind in 1902 when electrical air conditioning was invented by Willis Haviland Carrier. He actually created it to control temperature and humidity for improved manufacturing process control.

Highways – Rivers, lakes and coastal seawaters were the first highways of human kind. William Durant, founder of General Motors in America was quoted in a 1922 interview as saying, "Most of us will live to see this whole country covered with a network of motor highways built from point to point as the bird flies, the hills cut down, the dales bridged over, the obstacles removed." How right he was!

Spacecraft – The event was draped in so much secrecy that, despite its monumental historic significance, no photographs were taken. It was marked by a blinding flash and a shuddering roar. The rocket lifted from its concrete pad and thundered into the sky, soon becoming little more than a glowing speck. It happened on the plains of Kazakhstan, on October 4, 1957. The Soviet Union had just launched the first-ever spacecraft, its payload a 184-pound satellite called Sputnik

Internet – The Internet began as a Cold War project to create a communications network that was immune to a nuclear attack or natural disaster. In 1969, the U.S. government created ARPANET, connecting four western universities and allowing researchers to use the mainframes of any of the networked institutions. New connections were soon added to the network, bringing the number of "nodes" up to 23 in 1971, 111 in 1977, and up to almost 4 million in 1994.

Imaging – Humankind has always been obsessed not only with learning more but also seeing more, since the times of Leeuwenhoek and Galileo, considered fathers of the microscope and telescope, respectively … both of which enabled the human eye by means of lenses to observe enlarged images of tiny objects. They have made visible the fascinating details of worlds within worlds.

Household Appliances - Our homes have changed considerably over the years. Today, we cook meals in minutes with programmable ovens, wash clothes in energy-efficient machines, and can even program our grocery order online from our fridge. All thanks to human ingenuity and invention, oh and of course, the introduction of electricity – what would we do without them?

Health Technologies – In 1900 the average life expectancy in developed countries was 47 years, today it’s 76 and rising. That remarkable increase is the result of a number of factors including creation of a safe water supply, as well as amazing advances in the field of medicine – from diagnosis to pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other forms of treatment.

Tanker Petroleum & Petrochemical Technologies – In the 19th Century coal was king and fuelled industries like steel and heavy engineering. But a century later, oil took over from coal as a major source of fuel and the lifeblood of the industrialised world. It ran our cars, trains, planes, tractors, engines and more … making it the fuel on which the 20th century ran.

Laser & Fibre Optics – Most long-distance message traffic used to be carried by electrons travelling along copper or coaxial cables, but it was an expensive process with limited capacity and demand soon began outstripping supply. Fibre optics proved to be a telecommunications breakthrough. It can carry much more information than copper wire of the same size, but as well as transporting data; it can also be used as sensors to gather data.

High-Performance Materials - In 1901 Andrew Carnegie, Scottish businessman and founder of the Carnegie Steel Company praised what he referred to as the ‘monarch of metals’ for working "wonders upon the earth." A few decades earlier a British inventor named Henry Bessemer had figured out how to make steel in large quantities, and Carnegie and other industry empire builders began producing millions of tons of it annually. Today it’s everywhere … from bridges to skyscrapers, railway tracks to tin cans.

Biotechnology & Genetics – While modern biotechnology had its beginnings as early as the 1950’s, it is this century that will mark some of the greatest advances, as both present phenomenal and sometimes frightening breakthroughs in agricultural and medical processes.