A Brief History of Devices

Not only in the urban centers of London, New York, and Tokyo, but also in the jungles of Brazil, the deserts of Africa, and the mountains of Nepal, you can find devices. They are ubiquitous. Our world has been shaped by devices; indeed, our very consciousness has been shaped by devices. Using them, we can see into the insides of atoms and out to the edges of space, hear music from the distant past, and imagine the future. They inform us, amuse us, connect us to each other and shape our lives in ways subtle and profound.

A device is any object whose mechanical and/or electrical workings are controlled or monitored by a microprocessor. In other words, objects that are made of both hardware and software. This, however, is the definition of a modern device. Historically, and even continuing into the present, devices have been objects with all of the following characteristics:

• are for personal or small group (family) use
• generally have no fixed location — they are either portable or could be moved from place to place. Meaning they are not built into structures, i.e. not architectural mechanisms. (This has changed over the last 100 years with electro-mechanical appliances such as dishwashers and stoves.)
• are powered by other means aside from human or animal muscle — that is, they aren’t tools like knives or bows and arrows, or animal-pulled objects like a plow or cart. They employ non-human and non-animal means — natural, mechanical, steam, internal combustion, and eventually electrical power — for their engines.
• are only interpreted or steered by human thought, not powered by it. Thus paper and the abacus are not devices, although they do supplement human memory, communication, and calculation.
• they allow human beings to do an activity that could not be done (or at least done easily) with the human body alone.

Natural Devices

Using these characteristics, the first devices were powered by natural means. These were likely timepieces powered by water (“water clocks”) in China circa 4000 BC and Egypt circa 1400 BC. The sailboat (4000 BC, Egyptian) and the kite (800 BC, Chinese) were both powered by wind. The lodestone compass (400 BC, Chinese) relied on the magnetic poles. Later nature-powered devices include the astrolabe (150 BC, Greece), seismograph (132 AD, China) handguns (700 AD, China), eyeglasses (1284 AD, Italy), the hourglass (1345 AD, Italy?), the microscope (1590 AD, The Netherlands), the camera obscura (1604 AD, Germany), the telescope (1608, The Netherlands), the sextant (1757 AD, Britain), and the camera (1826 AD, France) to name a few.

Mechanical Devices

The first mechanical devices might be crossbows (500 BC, China and Greece). The oldest known scientific calculator, the Antikythera mechanism, dates to 150–100 BC, Greece. The spring clock (circa 1400, Germany?) and the pendulum clock (1656, The Netherlands) were the next major milestones in mechanical devices.

Aside from the compass, the first truly portable device was the pocket watch (circa 1500, Germany?), which were worn fastened to clothing or around the neck as pendants. Aside from the Antikythera mechanism, other mechanical calculators were the Pascaline (1642, France), the Arithmometer (1820, France), and the Curta (1938, Austria). The typewriter (1829, USA), the phonograph (1877, USA) the gramophone (1881, USA), and the movie camera (1888, England) were some notable mechanical devices prior to the introduction of electricity.

Because of the size and heat, steam engines have not been used to power many devices, instead they were mostly for large industrial facilities and for transportation (trains and boats in particular). One notable exception is the steam donkey, a steam-powered winch (1881, USA). Similarly, the internal combustible engine proved too bulky for most devices…with the notable exception of the automobile (1886, Germany) and some farming equipment. While it is admittedly unusual to think of a car as a device, it does meet the criteria for being categorized as a device above.

Electric Devices

Electricity really ushered in the era of the device. The radio (1893, USA), washing machines (1900, USA), the refrigerator (1922, Sweden), the dishwasher (1924, USA), the television (1927, USA), the electric calculator (1957, Japan), the external (1950, Canada) and internal (1958, Sweden) artificial pacemaker, and literally dozens, if not hundreds more categories, stretching from home appliances to medical equipment to consumer electronics to toys.

The flashlight (1896 AD, USA) is notable for being the first portable electronic device, using dry cell batteries for power.

Starting around 1970 with digital calculators, electronic devices started to be made with microprocessors built into them. The laptop (1968, USA), the mobile phone (1973, USA), the personal digital assistant (1992, USA), the digital audio player (1996, USA), and many more kinds of products started to be able to utilize the processing power of microchips alongside other electro-mechanical components.

For tens of thousands of years, we humans have used objects to augment our reality. We employ tools to do what we can’t do easily with our own bodies, to change our environment, and to reason through problems. Our modern devices are no different, only more powerful, with the ability to transform activities, spaces, even the entire world.