The 1910s Science and Technology: Chronology

1910:      Electric washing machines become popular in American homes.

1910:      Halley's Comet is observed "as a giant headlight" in the night sky across the United States.

1911:      The Bell Telephone Company creates a research and development division.

1911:      Physicists from across the world discuss recently developed atomic theories at the first Solvay conference, named for the Belgian industrial chemist and philanthropist who founded the Solvay Institute at Brussels, Belgium.

1911:      The world's first escalators are introduced at London's Earl's Court underground (train) station.

1911:      German American Franz Boas publishes The Mind of Primitive Man, a groundbreaking exploration of cultural anthropology (the study of human beings).

1911:      The word "vitamin" is coined by Polish American biochemist Casimir Funk.

1911:     August 1 Harriet Quimby becomes the first licensed female pilot.

1911:     August 8 The U.S. Patent Office awards its one-millionth patent, for the invention of an improved automobile tire.

1911:     December 14 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes the first person in history to reach the South Pole.

1912:      The Morse Code SOS (Save Our Ship) is adopted as the universal signal for a ship at sea in distress.

1912:     April 14–15 The "unsinkable" steamship Titanic strikes an iceberg while on its maiden voyage and promptly sinks.

1913:      Henry Ford introduces the assembly line, employed in the manufacturing of automobiles.

1913:      Construction is completed on the Los Angeles aqueduct, which carries fresh water into the city from high in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

1913:      Hungarian American Bela Schick develops the "Schick test" for diagnosing diphtheria (a disease characterized by inflammation of the heart and nervous system).

1913:      Russian-born American aeronautical engineer Igor Sikorsky builds and flies the first multimotored airplane.

1913:      French physicist Charles Fabry discovers the ozone layer in the Earth's stratosphere.

1914:      Theodore Richards becomes the first American to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

1914:      The first transcontinental telephone line is completed.

1914:      The Boston Wire Stitcher Company introduces the modern staple gun.

1915:      A new type of glass called Pyrex (8 percent silicon oxide and 12 percent boron oxide) is created at the Corning Glass Works in New York.

1915:      An all-metal airplane is developed in Germany.

1915:      German-born American physicist Albert Einstein discloses his general theory of relativity.

1915:     January 25 Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, completes the first transcontinental phone call, from New York to San Francisco.

1915:     October The first transatlantic radiotelephone conversation is completed between the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Arlington, Virginia.

1916:      German astronomer Karl Schwarzchild suggests the theoretical existence of "black holes" (intense gravitational fields in space, from which nothing, not even light, can escape).

1917:      Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter asserts that the universe is expanding.

1917:     November 1 The Hooker Telescope, a reflecting telescope with a 100-inch mirror installed at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California, is used for the first time.

1918:      The nation's first three-color traffic light (red, amber, green) is installed in New York City.

1919:      Short-wave radio is invented, and amateur radio operators begin taking to the airwaves.

1919:      A mechanical system for transmitting television pictures is patented.

1919:      Lockheed produces the hydraulic braking system for automobiles.

1919:     May 19 Astronomers confirm Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity by observing the bending of a star's light around the Sun during a total eclipse.

1919:     June 14–15 John Alcock and Arthur Whitten-Brown make the first nonstop aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

1919:     October The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) is founded.