Artificial Intelligence(1956)

Since the dawn of computers, people have wondered if they can be made to show intelligence-to think in the way that humans think. Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace first debated the question when they worked together to create the first computer in 1835.
   By 1950, U.S. mathematician Claude Shannon was busy trying to figure out how computers could play a good game of chess. On the other side of the Atlantic, Alan Turing published his paper "On Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which considered the thorny problem of how you could actually tell if a machine was intelligent or not.
   In 1955, John McCarthy, of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, proposed a conference to study the issue of intelligence research. In his proposal, he used the phrase "artificial intelligence" for the first time, and an entire field of study was born.The 1956 Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, proposed a conference to study the issue of intelligence research. In his proposal, he used the phrase "artificial intelligence" for the first time, and an entire field of study was born. The 1956 Dartmouth Conference is now known as the defining moment of artificial intelligence(AI) research. The conference set the path for research for years to come, asking questions that remain unanswered to this day. Many of the great minds who attended, such as Harvard's Marvin Minsk, devoted the rest of their careers to a subject that had only just been given a name.
   While there was great optimism at the conference, with many attendees expecting intelligent machines to appear within a decade, artificial intelligence remains elusive. Although there have been notable successes-IBM's Deep Blue computer beating chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, for example-they have been in very narrow fields.

Speed Camera(1955)

Rather ironically, it was a Dutch rally driver, Maurits Gatsonides (1911-1998), who invented the speed camera. Gatsonides enjoyed most of his driving successes in the 1950s, and it was during this period that he came up with a device-known as the Gatso-to measure his speed while cornering in a bid to improve his driving, that is, to make him drive faster.
   The camera works by using radar to measure the speed at which a vehicle passes the device, photographing those that break the limit. Two photographs are taken and, should the initial measurement be questioned, the position of the vehicle relative to the white lines painted on the road indicates the average speed that the vehicle traveled at during a set time interval.
   Fixed speed cameras have been used widely in the United Kingdom, Australia, and France, but only marginally in the United States. Despite being billed as life-saving devices, speed cameras remain unpopular with large portions of society. Some people consider speeding fines an unethical source of revenue for the local law enforcement agencies or the private organizations that operate them. However, a research study conducted in 2006 estimated that "Gatsos" and other traffic enforcement measures have reduced road fatalities by about a third in the United Kingdom.

Podcast(2003)

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a proliferation in new communications technology. It is now possible to watch a favorite television show on a laptop, read a newspaper on a cell phone, or listen to a radio broadcast on an MP3 player. The evolution of the podcast is one more important development.
   A podcast is a digital audio or video file, distributed automatically to a subscribed user. That user can then listen to or view the file on a mobile device such as a personal computer, MP3 player, or cell phone. The podcaster first creates a "show"-usually a video or MP3 audio file-and then an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed file that points to where the podcast can be found. The receiver uses "aggregator" software to subscribe; this periodically checks the RSS feed to see if content exists or new content has been added, and then downloads that content automatically.
   The term itself was coined by British technology writer Ben Hammersley in 2004,from the words "iPod" and "broadcast." Although former New York Times reporter and radio broadcaster Christopher Lydon (b. 1940) is often cited as creating the first true podcasts, much credit also belongs to background innovators such as Dave Winer (b. 1955), who developed the RSS syndication feed that enabled Lydon's blogs-a series of cutting-edge interviews to achieve automated widespread distribution.

Voice Over Internet Protocol(VoIP)(1995)

In 1973, researcher Danny Cohen's Network Voice Protocol was first used on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), where it allowed research sites to talk with each other over the computer network. For many years afterward, however, sending your voice over the Internet was the preserve of researchers, geeks, and early computer gamers.
   But in 1995 a company called VocalTec released a piece of software it called Internet Phone. Designed for Microsoft Windows, it turned the speaker's voice into computer data, compressing it enough to send it in real time over a modern connection to another computer on the Internet.
   Many people suddenly became interested in Internet Telephone, for one simple reason-it was cheap. In the United States, for example, the local call to connect to the Internet was often free, whereas long-distance calls were costly.
   As Internet speeds improved and other companies started to offer similar services, making telephone calls across the Internet gained a generic name: Voice over Internet Protocol, commonly known as VoIP. VoIP is now extremely popular. Skype, one of the best known VoIP companies, has clocked up more than a hundred billion minutes of calls between its users since 2003 when the service started.

WLAN Standard(1996)

Today's wireless networks owe much to one of the earliest computer networks, the University of Hawaii's ALOHAnet. This radio-based system, created in 1970, had many of the basic principles still in use today. Early wireless networks were expensive, however, and their equipment was bulky. They were used only in places where wired networks were awkward, such as across water or difficult terrain. It was not until the 1980s, with the arrival of cheaper, more portable equipment, that wireless networking began to go mainstream.
   There was a problem, however. By the end of the 1980s several companies were selling wireless networking equipment, but it was all incompatible. What was needed was some joined-up thinking. Step forward the Institute of Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and in particular Vic Hayes (b.1941).Hayes did not invent any new technology, but he took charge of the IEEE's wireless standards committee, and fostered cooperation between the manufacturers. In 1996 they released the first standard wireless local area network (WLAN); its IEEE designation was "802.11."
   Adopted in 1999 by a group of like-minded industrial leaders, who gave it the more catchy name of "Wireless Fidelity," or Wi-Fi, the standard lets us take our laptops around the world, confident that, without wires, we will be able to browse the Web anywhere, from an airport in Australia to a zoo in Zanzibar. 

DVD(1995)

After the futuristic-looking compact disc (CD) took the audio market by storm-consigning the humble cassette tape to the back of a billion cupboards-it was only a matter of time before technological wizard set their sights on abolishing the VHS tape.
   Although the technology for LaserDisc already existed, it never really took off in the way that CD technology did, and so the market for a compact digital video disc was still very much open. The first proposals for a high-density CD were put forward in 1993, leading to the creation of two competing formats. Electronic powerhouses Sony and Philips led their collected investors forward with the MMCD format, going head to head with industry giants Toshiba, Masushita, and Time Warner's effort, the SD. Then, in 1995, a combined effort-known as the DVD-was officially announced and consequently developed by a consortium of ten companies.
   The DVD was capable of storing two hours of high-quality digital video, eight tracks of digital audio, and thirty-two tracks of subtitle information, as well as offering the practical benefits of being light weight, compact, easily rewindable, and two-sided DVDs(which can be flipped over like vinyl LPs) doubled it again without creating needless bulk.
   Although DVD is often cited as being an acronym for digital video disc or digital versatile disc, the official line on it-as stated in 1999 by the 250 company members in the DVD Forum- is that it is simply a three-letter name. So, in short, DVD stands for DVD.

USB Connection(1995)

Long-term computer users will be all too familiar with the frustration of having to switch off and reboot their machines. Thanks to USB (universal serial bus) connectivity, however, this scenario has become, largely, a distant memory. These days, almost every device you plug into a computer, such as a printer or scanner, comes complete with a USB connector, instead of a card that the machine has to learn to recognize in a lengthy installation process.
   The impetus behind the USB was toward a future where you could connect any device to any computer, using any port-because all the ports and plugs would match. The universal, three-pronged "trident" symbol is used on all plugs and sockets to indicate USB functionality. The reality, of course, is that  there are still a few rougue devices that do not conform, but now all PCs are made with USB ports as standard.
   The first USB interconnect (USB 1.0) appeared in the mid-1990s. Today's USB 2.0 & USB 3.0 connections allow data transfer to occour at ten times the speed users expected of older types of connectors.
   The formation of the USB Implementers Forum(USB-IF) by Intel in 1995 marked an important point in computing history. For the computing history. For the computing industry, it was a way to show their commitment to increasing connectivity. The next step will be to do away with physical connections altogether. In 2007 the USB-IF announced significant progress in wireless USB communications. Wireless USB will work like a small scale WiFi network, so that your printer can be placed unconnected anywhere you like in the room.