From the beginning inventions
Have been going on.
Even now, from year to year.
Such a lot of really clever stuff,
So many things invented.
Too many to mention here.
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The first wheels began to turn,
Improving transportation and travel,
By an ever increasing degree.
It may have started with a potter’s wheel,
In three thousand five hundred BC.
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Writing implements in Mesopotamia;
Its importance couldn’t be clearer.
Three and a half thousand years
Into the Common Era.
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The compass allowed navigation,
With ships sailing to and fro,
Exploring new lands across the seas.
With travellers busy preparing maps,
It enabled geographical location,
Two hundred years ago.
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From the first solar calendars,
To the one now widely used,
Two long millennium have past.
With its accuracy in doubt,
A pope sorted it out,
And made it more accurate at last.
–
Sundials have been on the go
For around six thousand years.
They’ve seen a complete redesign.
All clocks from them derive,
Water clocks became mechanical
In China, in seven twenty five.
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In fourteen fifty, came the printing press.
It was Gutenberg’s solution.
With newspapers spilling onto the streets,
It really came into its own,
And playing an intrinsic part
In the industrial revolution.
–
The electric battery in eighteen hundred;
Volta’s clever invention.
Creating a constant supply of power,
And used to operate so many things,
It’s certainly worth a mention.
–
There was Babbage’s mechanical computer,
Back in eighteen twenty two,
Weighing in by the ton.
Despite its many moving parts,
Something digital had begun.
–
Perkins built his refrigerator in eighteen thirty four,
Prolonging the life of food.
Based on the principle of removing heat,
The idea was rather shrewd.
–
Then came the telegraph from Morse and his team.
A far reaching thing to invent.
Long-distance communication made possible,
And using his code in eighteen forty four,
The first telegraphic message was sent.
–
The electric bulb, designed to last,
Lit up in eighteen eighty.
After lots of filaments braking,
And with tungsten finally used,
It certainly brought more light into the world,
The invention being quite weighty.
–
The airplane would take travellers across the globe,
Something da Vinci could draw and foresee.
It all started with the Wright brothers,
In nineteen hundred and three.
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In nineteen forty seven, the transistor was born,
Amplifying electric signals greatly.
Replacing the vacuum tube to send signals further,
It opened the way for the electronics age,
With a great deal more, lately.
–
At an annual trade show in nineteen fifty nine,
An amazing thing was first demonstrated.
It was a solid integrated circuit,
Now commonly called the microchip,
Allowing new ways of doing things,
And an exciting future was created.
–
And finally to the humble pork pie, quite out of place,
From way back in seventeen forty seven.
It could be considered before its time,
The recipe came from Hannah Glasse.
And for some, the taste of heaven!
