Technology and Information Age

Technology first started during the early Stone Age when someone discovered fire. The Needle was a very important object in the history of technology, for if it wasn’t invented, the syringe wouldn’t be invented, neither would the sewing machine and the textile industry would plummet. The Information age made communication easy because during the early ages information was spoken and it was easy to forget something.

A caveperson is sitting near the entrance near his cave when he sees his mother making some new clothes for his brother. He started to wonder how she is putting the mammoth furs the tribe leader brought her, into one single piece of fur? He walks toward the Neanderthal and sees that she is using a piece of bone to put the furs together. So that’s how she puts the furs together, with a pointy bone. The young caveperson thought, and he was right, the furs were being sewn together by a needle.

People think technology is the latest computer. But in reality, technology has been around when the fire was discovered.  Needles have always been an important milestone in the history of technology. Without the needle, Barthelemy Thimonnier would not have invented the sewing machine, making clothes would almost be impossible, and Ammar al-Mawsili will not have invented the syringe.  In other words, most of the world’s advancements would not happen.

The first needles were made of bones, with plant fibre or animal sinew as thread. Bone needles and sinew thread later evolved into bronze needles and woollen thread. When bronze was not that abundant, people would use iron needles. Later, in 1830 a Frenchman named Barthelemy Thimonnier made the sewing machine. Unfortunately, many tailors who sewed clothes by hand feared unemployment with this new machine, so they burnt his factory. After this, the stainless steel needle was invented and plated with nickel or gold to avoid corrosion or rusting. But sewing isn’t the only application of needles.

The needle has a lot of applications. Medicine is one of those. The earliest use of needles in medicine was by Abu al Qasim Ammar ibn al-Mawsili who invented the syringe. Emperor of China, Huangdi started acupuncture, which is still in use today in Chinese medicine. In what is now Turkey, old women would sometimes inoculate people by scratching a needle in the skin, then dab pus into the wound. This was used during the smallpox epidemic in Turkey. Then, Edward Jenner invented the vaccine against smallpox. After that, surgeons would sew stitches using a needle. From the stone age to this day the needle has been changing to suit its purpose of it.

From the man or woman who invented the needle to the latest sewing machine, Information has also been an important object in our lives. During the early ages, people had to communicate through words, and it was easy to forget something. Let us fast forward to the year 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Augustus Watson made the telephone. With this, people could talk long distances to each other. 44 years back, Samuel F.B. Morse invented the Morse code and the telegram. Fast forward to the year 1938 when Chester Carlson invented the photocopier. With this machine, you could copy any document you wanted. Then William Gates invented Microsoft Office, Larry Page invented Google, and Mark Zuckerburg invented Facebook. Also, modern printers are used to print, copy, or scan any file you want. David Packard and Bill Hewlett invented Hewlett-Packard, and Kiyoshi Ichimura invented Ricoh.

Technology and information have always been innovating us in our daily lives, and always will be. In fact, technology and information could always be on the change, and never stop improving. One thing is for sure, technology will always be used by everyone for the good of the future, and the good of humanity for the generations to come.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/Sewing_needle

https://en.wikipedia.org/Sewing_machine

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Author biography

Ali Athfan Amir was born in Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Male, Maldives. He currently lives in Hulhumale, Maldives and he is one of the select few to attend the Leaders of Tomorrow program led by Professor Hassan Ugail.  In his spare time, he likes to play with his circuit kit, read books by authors like Roald Dahl, Kjartan Poskitt, and Nick Arnold, and also do coding projects, and research topics on his own.

Cite this article as:
Ali Athfan Amir, Technology and Information Age, theCircle Composition, Volume 1, (2021). https://thecirclecomposition.org/technology-and-information-age/