Classical Antiquity

AROUND 500 BCE TO 600 CE

Cameras

500 BCE

Chinese philosopher, Mo Ti, noticed that a pinhole could form an inverted yet clear image when light is focused through that hole into a dark area. He is the first person to have utilised this to create an image.

Gears

400 BCE

Early examples of gears date from the Late East Zhou dynasty in China, which have been preserved at the Luoyang Museum of Henan Province.

Origami

100 CE The art of paper folding did not actually start in Japan; it began in China. “Origami” is a compound of two Japanese words: ori, which means

“to fold”, and kami, which means “paper”. Chinese Buddhist monks brought paper to Japan in the sixth century. Paper was expensive then and in limited supply due to the fabrication process, so origami was only used for religious ceremonial purposes.

Caesarean Section

300 BCE While many references to caesarean section appear in Hindu, Egyptian, Grecian, Roman and European folklore, its early history is shrouded in myth. One account of the first surgical delivery comes from India in the third century BCE: Bindusara, the second Mauryan emperor of India, was supposedly cut out of his mother’s belly after she accidentally consumed poison and died when she was in the late stage of pregnancy. Roman law under Julius Caesar decreed that mothers that were dead or dying should be cut open to save the baby. Telegraph 300 BCE–400 BCE

The ancient Greek hydraulic telegraph system transmitted its semaphoric information to the receiver visually, which limited its use to line-of-sight distances in good visibility weather conditions only.

Vending Machine

100 CE

The earliest known reference to a vending machine is in the work of Hero of Alexandria, an engineer and mathematician in first-century Roman Egypt. His machine accepted a coin and then dispensed holy water.