It's easy to think modern technology has always been just that — modern.
The truth is, many pieces of today's technology have actually been in development for decades.
Here are some of the most vital pieces of technology that were born before most of us were.
Battery - 1800
On March 20, the Volta battery — designed by Italian inventor Alessandro Volta — will celebrate its 216th birthday.
Volta initially called the device an "artificial electric organ," in response to the prevailing theory at the time that animal tissue was necessary for conductivity.
Instead he used stacked metal disks and brine-soaked rags. They conducted electricity. The battery was born.
Microphone - 1876
Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell unveiled his newly invented telephone, German clerk Emile Berliner realized the device's transmitter was fairly weak.
So, with only a rudimentary knowledge of electricity, Berliner set to work on a so-called "loose-contact transmitter," which amplified the noise that came from Bell's existing model.
Bell's company, the American Bell Telephone Company, was so impressed with Berliner's work that it hired him as an assistant in its lab.
Dishwasher - 1886
A few days after Christmas in 1886, Josephine Garis Cochran submitted a request to the US Patent Office.
The design: many dish- and cup-sized compartments inside a wire cage, with a rotating wheel that squirted hot, soapy water onto the dirty dinnerware.
Cochran went on to found a manufacturing company for her invention, which eventually became Kitchenaid.
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