A Must-See Collection of the World’s First Things

5. Car

In 1886, Karl Benz had developed the first gasoline powered automobile. The car had two seats, three wheels, a one-cylinder two-stroke engine and ran at a top speed of 16km per hour. While there were several people working on completing their automobiles, Benz was the first and the first to receive a patent for the invention. The company Mercedes-Benz was founded on his early work and continues to be successful.

4. Photo uploaded to the internet

The very first photo uploaded to the Internet was of a comedy band called Les Horribles Cernettes, or The Horrible CERN Girls. They were all employees of CERN and the initials of the band, LHC, can also stand for the large hadron collider. The photo was uploaded by one the internet’s founders, Tim Berners-Lee to the CERN website to promote the band.

3. Computer virus

The first computer virus was made by two Pakistani brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi who were only 17 and 24. They ran a computer store and found that their customers were making copies of their products and distributing them. They called the virus Brain and was supposed to be a friendly warning to customers to not steal their programs, and would slow down the infected computer’s floppy drive. But this lead to every floppy disc inserted into a computer becoming infected, and soon the virus spread all over the world.

2. TV

The first television was made by 21 year old Philo Taylor Farnsworth. He began his work while he was in high school, trying to find a way that a moving image could be captured in a signal and then transmitted to a screen. Farnsworth used a beam of electrons to transmit the images and in 1927, he was able to transmit a single line onto a screen. The following year, he had developed the invention further and demonstrated his invention to the world. His wife Elma posed while her image was transmitted live

1. Mobile phone

The very first mobile phone was created by Motorola in 1973. The phone weighed over a kilo and could handle up to half an hour’s talking on it before the battery went flat. The battery only took ten hours to charge though, so it was pretty practical. Martin Cooper was the first person to call using the phone, and the phone call he placed was to a rival phone company to inform them that Motorola had invented the mobile phone.

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So there’s our list of world’s firsts. Did this listicle pique your interest? Let us know on Twitter and Facebook.