Inventions

"Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence: or shall we say it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we dreamed it." [Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (1851)]

"James Watt's improved steam engine of 1769 was bulky and required too much fuel to move about. In 1800 Englishman Richard Trevithick built a high-pressure steam engine capable of moving a carriage with passengers. In 1804 he built the first locomotive. . . . By the 1830s steamships were plying the Atlantic, carrying passengers, mail, and freight between the U.S. and England. [National Geographic Almanac, p. 32-3]

"The West has always received spiritual enlightenment from the East. The Song of the Kingdom is first heard in the East, but in the West the greater volume of sound bursts upon the listening ears." [Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 34]

"Know thou that when the Son of Man [Jesus Christ] yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great weeping. By sacrificing Himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused into all created things. Its evidences, as witnessed in all the peoples of the earth, are now manifest before thee. The deepest wisdom which the sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded, the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by the most potent of rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive, and resplendent Spirit." [Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 85]

"And yet, is not the object of every Revelation to effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind, a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions?" [Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-I-Iqan, p. 240]

"However rapidly it was changing, the world in 1800 was nonetheless recognizably similar to that of 100 years earlier. In 1900, by contrast, the world had been entirely transformed. Not only had Europe become by far the world's dominant power, every one of the world's Asian empires, for so long the globes pace-setters, had either disappeared or was rapidly disintegrating in the face of remorseless Western expansion." [DK Timelines, p. 341]

"And among the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh is that although material civilization is one of the means for the progress of the world of mankind, yet until it becomes combined with divine civilization the desired result, which is the felicity of mankind, will not be attained. Consider! These battleships that reduce a city to ruins within the space of an hour are the result of material civilization; likewise the Krupp guns, the Mauser rifles, dynamite, submarines, torpedo boats, armed aircraft and bombing aeroplanes -- all these weapons of war are malignant fruits of material civilization. Had material civilization been combined with divine civilization, these fiery weapons would never have been invented. Nay, rather human energy would have been wholly devoted to useful inventions and concentrated on praiseworthy discoveries." [Abdu'l-Baha, Foundations of World Unity, p. 30]

Five Periods of Revelation Since 1500 BC	Civilizations that May Have Been Inspired by These Revelations
Krishna (?1450-1250 BC) Zoroaster (?1200-500 BC) Moses (?1250-500 BC)	Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771); Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC); Socrates (470-399) learned about the immortality of the soul from Jewish scholars. See "Moses" on the Divine page.
Buddha (500-0 BC)	Warring States Period in China (476-221 BC) followed by Han dynasty; Ashoka in India (r. 268-232)
Christ (0-622)	Pax Romana (27-180 AD); Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD);
Muhammad (622-1753)	Rebirth of Europe from the "Dark Ages" through Andalusia and Crusaders returning from the Mideast; Tang Dynasty (618-907): the Chinese Golden Age;
Baha'I Revelation (1753-present)*	Age of Enlightenment and the birth of a global civilization;

The last column is labeled "Billion." This refers to the world population:

World population milestones in billions (Wikipedia)

Population	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Year	1804	1927	1960	1974	1987	1999	2011	2024	2042

	Western	Roman	Egyptian	Mideastern	Persian	Indian	Chinese	Billion
-1500			Millers grind wheat: -1500
-1400	Stonehenge: -1400		Water clock: -1450	Seed drill: -1450
-1300			Weld iron: -1350
-1200			Canal (Nile to Red Sea): -1200
-1100							Bronze bells: -1150
-1000				Phoenician 22-letter alphabet: -1000; Bronze Age collapse: -1177;			Pontoon bridge:-1000
-900
-800
-700	Olympic Games: -776
-600	Trieme: -650							0.1
-500					Cyrus Cylinder: -534 Pax Persica (-559 to -359)		Crossbow:-550
-400	Parthenon: -438				Edict to restore Jerusalem: -457		Confucianism spreads: -450 Compass: -400 Blast furnace: -400
-300	Socrates dies: -399 Alexander invades Persia: -334	Appian Way: -312				Hindi-Arab numerals: 4th century BC	Stirrup: -300 Moldboard plow: -300
-200			Pharos lighthouse: -283
-100	Watermill: -100	Parchment: -150 Belt drive: -100		Blown glass: -100
0		Ball bearing: 40 Claw hammer:79 Horseshoe: 100						0.2
100		Pax Romana (-27 to 180)					Paper: 105
200							Wheelbarrow: 231
300
400
500							Trebuchet: 500
600
700				Arabs make paper: 780		Spinning wheel: 700
800	Blast furnace spreads from Andalusia to Scandinavia: 800			House of Wisdom: 820; Hindu numerals used: 830	Algebra: 830	Zero: 876	Gunpowder: 800 Bank note: 800 Wood block printing: 868
900				Alhazen Book of Optics: 10th century; Al-Azhar University^: 970			Rocket: 904 Canal lock: 984
1000	U. of Bologna: 1088						Moveable type: 1041
1100	U. of Paris: 1150			Arabic numerals introduced to Europe;#			Cannon: 1128 Fireworks: 1150	0.3
1200	Fibronacci Book of Calculation: 1202			Pax Monglica (1206-1368)			Marco Polo (1254-1324)
1300	Black Death:1348 Shipborne artillery: 1350						Musket: 1300
1400	Gutenberg Bible printed: 1455 Double-entry bookkeeping: 1494$							0.4
1500	Potato in England: 1563
1600	Telescope: 1609 Bacteria seen with microscope: 1676
1700	Spinning Jenny: 1764 Steam engine: 1765 Steamboat: 1776 Hot-air balloon: 1783 Threshing machine: 1784 Metric system: 1791 Gas lighting: 1792 Cotton gin: 1793 Internal combustion engine: 1794 Steam engine: 1799 Battery: 1799
1800	Laughing gas: 1800 Submarine: 1800 Locomotive: 1804 Blood transfusion: 1818 Electric motor: 1821 Braille: 1824 1st Railway: 1825 Photography: 1826 Friction match: 1827 Screw propeller: 1827 Insulated wire: 1827 Dynamo:1831 Light bulb:1835 Telegraph: 1844 Chloroform anesthetic: 1847 Oil refinery: 1850 Great Exhibition: 1851 Elevator:1852 Rubber boots: 1852 Hypodermic syringe: 1853 Bessemer Process: 1855 Transatlantic telegraph cable: 1858 Repeating rifle: 1860 Pasteurization: 1862 Barbed wire:1865 Telephone: 1876 Dry-cell battery: 1866 Dynamite: 1866 Reinforced concrete: 1867 Periodic Table:1869 Phonograph:1877 Maxim machine gun: 1883 Automobile: 1886 Radio: 1894 Diesel engine:1895 Moving picture: 1895 x-rays: 1895							1
1900	Wright brothers' flight: 1903 Haber process: 1908 Air conditioning:1902 Electric hand drill: 1917 Arc welding: 1919 Television: 1926 Penicillin: 1928 Jet engine: 1930 Radar:1935 Atomic bomb: 1945 Nuclear magnetic resonance: 1945 Transistor: 1947 Barcode: 1948 Credit card: 1950 Nuclear reactor 1951 Optical fiber: 1952 Polio vaccine: 1952 Cloning: 1952 Heart-Lung machine: 1953 DNA structure: 1953 Nuclear submarine: 1974 Hard disc drive: 1956 Birth control pill: 1956 Sputnik: 1957 Integrated circuit: 1959 Laser: 1960 Carbon-14 dating: 1960 Intercontinental ballistic missiles: 1960 ATM: 1967 Computer mouse: 1968 Internet: 1969 Balloon catheter: 1969 1st walk on moon: 1969 Space station: 1971 E-mail: 1971 Microprocessor: 1971 Personal computer: 1973 Word processor: 1978 Internet protocol: 1983 Polymerase Chain Reaction: 1985 World Wide Web: 1989 Human genome project: 1990 Hubble telescope: 1990 DVD: 1995 Boeing-777: 1995 International space station: 1997 Sheep cloned: 1997							2 3 4 5 6
2000	iPhone: 2007							7.6
2100

*The Baha'i Revelation began in 1844 when the Bab declared His Mission on May 22, 1844. Shaykh-Ahmad (1753-1836) was first to herald the Bab.

^"For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, . . ." [President Obama speech in Cairo in 2009]

$"Double-entry bookkeeping was pioneered in the Jewish community of the early-medieval Middle East.. . . Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and collaborator of Leonardo da Vinci, first codified the system in his mathematics textbook Summa de arithmetica, geomtria, proportioni et proportionalita published in Venice in 1494." [Wikipedia]

#"Our modern Arabic numerals were popularized in the West thanks in large measure to trade documents and contracts drawn up between Muslim merchants and their Italian counterparts." [The House of Wisdom, p. 26]

Dates in table based on National Geographic Concise History of Science & Invention and 1001 Inventions that Changed the World