The Coffee House

Over the years (and decades, and centuries), human technology has advanced a great deal. In celebration of all the technological achievements of mankind, here's a thread where we can share and discuss images, videos, and other illustrative examples to show just how far our technology has come.

I'll start with the following video, which shows the evolution of the phone, from Alexander Graham Bell's first prototype in 1876 all the way through to 2019 (the title says '2020'; however, the video doesn't actually include any phones from that year ):



Some of these technologies are quite a bit older than most people think (for example, I was rather surprised that there was a videophone as early as 1970 ). Quite a lot of rapid change between the 1980s and 2000s as well; less so in the years since, as pretty much everything since the iPhone has looked outwardly similar, although that might change again if folding phones ever get off the ground .

So, do you have any comments on that video - or any other illustrations of technological progress that you'd like to share?

Here's a comparison of six laps of the Monza racing circuit, driven on six different games, released between 1988 and 2003:



In that 15-year period, computer graphics really did undergo some quantum leaps . Even the 7-year stretch between 1988 and 1995 brought truly radical improvements!

Technically, I'm not sure if this should count as an "illustration of technological progress", because it's not illustrating the progress of the technology itself - but rather, how widespread the implementation is. But IMO, it's close enough - and still pretty spectacular:

I know we already have a thread about the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope... but, I think it's worth leaving this here too:

This one is... not entirely serious, but I'll still share it because I found it funny :