GREAT INVENTIONS

habits for countless millions was pioneered by Scottish – born

electrical engineer John Logie Baird.
It had been realised for some time that light could be converted into electrical impulses, making it possible to transmit such impulses over a distance and then reconvert them into light.

is probably the most widely used and most useful of

all leisure- inspired inventions. German engineer Karl Benz produced the first petrol-driven car in 1885 and the British motor industry started in 1896. Henry Ford was the first to use assembly line production for his Model T car in 1908. Like them or hate them, cars have given people great freedom of travel.

camera obscura photographic principle as early as 1515. But it

was not until 1835 that Frenchman Louis Daguerre produced camera photography. The system was gradually refined over the years, to the joy of happy snappers and the despair of those who had to wade through friends` endless holiday pictures.

the telephone in 1876. The following year, the great American

inventor Tomas Edison produced the fist working telephone. With telephones soon becoming rapidly available, the days of letter-writing became numbered.

mathematician Charles Babbage designed a form of computer in the

mid-1830s, but it was not until more than a century later that theory was put into practice. Now, a whole generation has grown up with calculators, windows, icons, computer games and word processors, and the Internet and e-mail have transformed communication and information.