TABLE OF CONTENT S What Is Technology 4 Inventors 4 Agriculture 5 Farm Equipment 6 Chemicals 8 Transportation 10 Ships and Boats 12 Trains 16 Motor Vehicles 18 Aircraft 21 Rockets 24 Electronics 25 Currents 25 Circuits 26 Lasers 28 Medicine 31 Microscopes 31 Imaging 32 Surgery 34 Communications 35 Telegraphs 35 Telephones 37 Copiers and Fax Machines 40 Satellites 41 Entertainment 44 Stereos 44 Radio 46 Television 48 Cameras 50 Motion Picture Camera 52 Computers 53 Central Processing Unit 53 Dedicated Computers 54 Computers in Our Everyday Lives 54 Personal Computers 54 Drives 54 Monitor Keyboard and Mouse 55 Printers 56 Network 56 The Internet 56 Robots 59 People Who Use Technology 61
What Is Technology Science is the search for knowledge Scientists look at the world They observe how things work and develop ideas about ways to make them work better Sometimes they try to test an idea to explain how something works Scientists perform experiments to find out how things work The knowledge that they discover is useful for many things It can help to build new machines It can help scientists to develop new medicines or cure a disease Technology is the use of scientific knowledge to create new things TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Inventors An inventor is a person who creates a new idea or device to perform a task An invention is the new technology created An inventor with a new idea or design for an invention may decide to have the idea protected The idea gets protection from the law in a paper called a patent A patent prevents other people from making using or selling the new idea without permission from the inventor Some inventions are simply a better way of doing or building something They may improve an existing technology Other inventions are much more complicated Scientists must often wear protective clothing In the 1800s telephones had a crank to ring the operator for assistance to make a call Y G O L O N H C E T S I T A H W 4
TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Cell phones a new invention in the 1950s were used only for telephone calls Today’s technology has been in the process of development for thousands of years New inventions are constantly changing how people work and play They change how people think and live The future will bring even more changes This will happen as we continue to learn about the world Agriculture Thousands of years ago humans relied on hunting fishing and gathering to provide food for their families They looked to find edible plants for food Soon people realized they could grow these plants They also found they could make clothing out of plant fibers or threads People used cotton and flax to make clothing This was the beginning of farming People had to learn how to prepare or cultivate the soil for planting crops They learned how to breed or grow plants They learned how to process or change plants to grow what they wanted Agriculture is the science of growing crops Agriculture has used advancements in technology to improve the methods for growing and harvesting crops A G R I C U L T U R E Wheel rakes attach to tractors and sweep cut grain crops into piles Often farmers use other equipment to make the piles into bails 5
Farm Equipment A farmer plants crops in shallow trenches Sowing the seeds is another way to describe the process of planting Furrows are shallow trenches that look like narrow grooves in the ground The farmer turns over the dirt to mix nutrients into the soil Plants need nutrients to stay healthy Farmers also turn the ground in order to loosen the soil and give seeds room to grow One invention designed to break up soil is the plow A plow is a piece TECHNOLOGY machines Tractors are a type of vehicle which has large wheels to keep it from sinking in mud A horse pulling a plow makes a single furrow Farmers plow in a straight line wherever possible of metal shaped liked a V in the front It digs furrows when dragged along the ground A farmer pushes the plow from behind or pulls it from the front He may also use an animal like a horse or an ox to push or pull the plow A tractor is used to pull many farming A tractor pulling a plow makes many furrows E R U T L U C I R G A 6
