The history of medicine has not unfurled gradually. Instead, it is made up of moments—points in time when someone did something really important that would go on to have a significant impact on the medical world as a whole. Each subsequent moment brings us closer to the inevitable conclusion where we all become immortal cyborgs, but until that day, we can look back on some of the noteworthy moments from our past.

10Charles-Francois Felix Removes The Sun King’s Anal Fistula

The year is 1686, and the king has a pain in the butt. Specifically, we are talking about Louis XIV, king of France. Despite enjoying a very lengthy reign of 72 years (also earning the moniker “the Sun King”), Louis was not a healthy man. He suffered from headaches, gout, periostitis, and (some also suspect) diabetes. And in 1686, the king was stricken with a very painful anal fistula that would not go away despite all the enemas and poultices that were the accepted practice at the time.

Perhaps in an act of desperation, the king did something unusual for that time—he turned to a barber-surgeon. Back then, physicians considered surgery beneath them, so the practice was usually left to barbers since they were skilled with a blade. The barber in question was named Charles-Francois Felix. He received around six months to prepare and was told to come up with a procedure to ease the king’s suffering. After practicing on 75 alleged volunteers from France’s prisons, Felix perfected two instruments with which to perform the surgery—a spreader and a scraper.

The procedure went well, and King Louis showered Felix with wealth and titles. All of a sudden, having an anal fistula became the latest trend in France, and many courtiers approached Felix, demanding the royal surgery to imitate the king. But on a more serious note, this also helped legitimize surgery, and physicians started looking at it as a viable alternative.

9Ambroise Pare Runs Out Of Oil

One of the most famous barber-surgeons in history was Ambroise Pare. During the 16th century, he served four different French kings, and before that, he was a pioneer of battlefield medicine. During that time, the pain suffered by a patient wasn’t of paramount concern to medical professionals. It was more of a “you either live or you die” scenario. Pain was expected with most medical procedures, and it wasn’t uncommon for it to be so excruciating that patients would pass out in the middle of the operation.

One of the most painful but essential procedures was cauterization. The surgeon would use boiling oil to seal gunshot wounds. Even so, the chances of the patient surviving the ordeal were slim. In 1536, during the Italian War, Pare was serving as a war surgeon. One day, he ran out of boiling oil to treat injured soldiers, so he created a tincture using rose oil, egg yolks, and turpentine. He didn’t expect it to do much good. To his surprise, the next day, the soldiers treated with his new recipe were in much better shape.

Pare showed the world there were less agonizing alternatives to cauterization and continued his trend by also popularizing the use of ligatures after amputations. Furthermore, Pare brought attention to his ideas through a very simple yet unconventional method—he wrote in French instead of Latin. That way, all the less educated barber-surgeons would be able to learn what he had to say.

8Andreas Vesalius’s Dissections

Claudius Galenus (or simply Galen) was one of the most important scientists of ancient Greece. Primarily a physician and surgeon, Galen’s medical accomplishments are almost on par with those of Hippocrates. He became renowned for his insight into the inner workings of the human body, which he gained primarily through dissections on animals. However, we are still talking about the second century here, so Galen got a lot of stuff wrong.

The man was so respected that his notions remained mostly unchallenged for centuries. It wasn’t until the 16th century that Galen’s teachings were challenged by another publication by Dutch anatomist Andreas Vesalius. In 1543, Vesalius wrote On the Fabric of the Human Body, which showed conclusively that Galen was wrong on several points regarding the human anatomy. More than that, Vesalius based all of his observations on his own personal human dissections, so he also urged doctors to take a hands-on approach to medicine.

Fortunately, Vesalius also had some powerful supporters (like Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire), which ensured that his book became one of the most important anatomy publications of all time. Like Pare, Vesalius wanted to ensure that his book was as accessible as possible, which is why it contained over 200 high-quality illustrations by skilled artists who were clearly present during the dissections.

7Ephraim McDowell Performs The First Ovariotomy

American physician Ephraim McDowell earned worldwide renown for one particular case—or two cases, if we’re counting the time he removed bladder stones from a 17-year-old James Polk, future president of the United States.

On December 13, 1809, McDowell went to see Jane Todd Crawford, a woman who was thought to be pregnant beyond term by her local doctor. After McDowell inspected her, he promptly diagnosed Mrs. Crawford with a giant ovarian tumor. He explained to her that nobody had ever tried to remove such a tumor and that most doctors would consider the procedure impossible.

Even so, Mrs. Crawford had nothing to lose at that point, so she let McDowell operate on her. She had to endure a 25-minute procedure without anesthesia, during which the doctor removed a 10-kilogram (22 lb) tumor. Despite the grim prognosis, Mrs. Crawford recovered fully in less than a month and lived for 32 more years. McDowell went on to become known as the “father of the ovariotomy,” although not immediately since he waited for eight more years before writing about the procedure.

6Richard Lower Performs The First Blood Transfusion

Blood transfusions are an essential part of modern medicine, but there was a time when they were mocked. Obviously, blood has played a role in many rituals throughout history, but it wasn’t until the middle of the 17th century in London that transfusions were studied as a possible medical treatment. The man behind the research was Richard Lower, an Oxford physician and member of the Royal Society, which had only formed a few years prior.

In 1665, Lower performed the first successful animal transfusion. He took blood from one dog and put it in another dog. That done, he moved on to people. In 1667, a sheep served as the donor, while a volunteer named Arthur Coga became the first human recipient of a blood transfusion and was paid 20 shillings for his services. Noted diarist Samuel Pepys was present at Coga’s medical procedure and took extensive notes.

Coga received 9–10 ounces of sheep’s blood, and the landmark procedure was published in Philosophical Transactions. However, the public didn’t regard this event as anything noteworthy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Lower and the Royal Society were mocked and branded as mad scientists. A play called The Virtuoso written by Thomas Shadwell even satirized the sheep-to-human transfusion.

Coga was a little mad, and Lower incorrectly thought the blood transfusion would fix his mental problems. When that didn’t happen, people dismissed the idea, and it would take a century before blood transfusions would seriously be considered again.

5Dominique Jean Larrey Perfects Battlefield Medicine

Dominique Jean Larrey is often regarded as the first modern military surgeon because of his many innovations in the field that are still relevant today. It didn’t take long for Larrey to learn all the standard practices of the time and enroll as a military surgeon under Napoleon. After that, he pretty much decided that all of those practices were wrong. For example, it was standard for hospitals to be kept miles away from the battlefield for safety. While this made them safe, it also made them empty, as many injured soldiers died en route. Larrey decided that battlefield medicine would be much more effective in medical tents erected near the front lines.

Now that the hospitals were closer, Larrey also wanted the method of transportation to be faster. That idea gave birth to the flying ambulance, the first army ambulance corps. They were horse-drawn carriages, typically used to maneuver artillery. Larrey also became an expert on amputations, developing techniques to make the procedure faster and safer. Supposedly, he once performed 200 amputations within 24 hours.

Larrey’s dedication earned him the admiration of Napoleon (who first named him surgeon-in-chief of the French army and later a baron), but he was also idolized by the soldiers. After the devastating defeat at the Battle of Borodino, Larrey was picked up and passed around crowdsurfing-style by soldiers who wanted to make sure he didn’t get trampled while retreating. Even Napoleon’s most bitter enemy, the Duke of Wellington, gave orders to his men not to shoot on Larrey’s tent at Waterloo.

4Sushruta’s Rhinoplasty

Ancient India excelled in many scientific fields such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. While the Western medical world had men like Hippocrates and Galen, India had Sushruta. An ancient surgeon active during the sixth and fifth centuries BC, Sushruta is sometimes called the “father of plastic surgery” for his teachings on nasal reconstructions. He gave quite a detailed description on how to perform a primitive form of rhinoplasty by removing skin from the cheek flap and attaching it to the nose. We can’t say for sure if Sushruta ever actually successfully attempted this procedure, but the level of detail is still quite remarkable for the time period.

Plastic surgery aside, Sushruta’s other notable contribution to medicine was the Sushruta Samhita, an ancient text that became one of the foundations of Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medicine that’s still used today. The compendium contained most, if not all, of the medical knowledge India had at the time. It covered over 1,000 illnesses and hundreds of plants, minerals, and animal preparations that supposedly had healing capabilities.

3Jean Civiale Performs The First Minimally Invasive Surgery

Passing a kidney stone is often claimed as one of the most painful experiences you can endure, with certain women even putting it one step above the pain of child labor. Over one million people have to deal with a kidney stone every year in America alone. Thankfully, we don’t do it the old-fashioned way anymore. Nowadays, we use a minimally invasive procedure called a lithotripsy, which uses various techniques to crush the stones.

Before the 19th century, the standard procedure was a lithotomy. It involved making an incision and removing the stone whole. Not only was it extremely painful, but it also carried a high mortality rate. But in came French physician Jean Civiale with his invention, the lithotrite, which he used to perform the first minimally invasive surgery in the world. With this tool, Civiale was able to crush the stone before removing it through the urethra.

Civiale, a pioneer of urology and the founder of the first urology center in the world at Necker Hospital in Paris, showed that his method was much more efficient than a lithotomy. While the traditional technique had a mortality rate of over 18 percent, his lithotripsy hovered around the 2-percent mark. He did this through an ample and comprehensive study commissioned by the Paris Academy of Science, a significant feat of evidence-based medicine that was highly influential for the time.

2George Hayward Performs First Amputation Under General Anesthesia

Very soon after William Morton introduced ether as anesthesia in 1846 with his “Letheon” inhaler, physicians were already thinking of the possible applications it might have. Sure, the gas proved itself potent enough during a minor surgical procedure, but could it be used for major surgery as well?

The process was somewhat delayed by Morton’s reluctance to reveal ether as the core ingredient of his inhaler. Doctors wanted to use his concoction but were wary of using an unknown agent on their patients due to potential side effects. Morton offered to supply Boston hospitals with Letheon free of charge, but physicians took a stand and demanded to know the formula used with the inhaler. At this point, Morton finally conceded and admitted to using sulfuric ether.

Now that that issue was out of the way, the anesthesia could be used on a much more ambitious medical procedure—an amputation. The task was undertaken by Dr. George Hayward. The patient was a 21-year-old servant girl named Alice Mohan whose leg needed to be amputated due to tuberculosis. Like before, Morton administered the gas until the patient fell asleep. Hayward tested her reaction by stabbing Alice with a pin. When she didn’t react, he quickly proceeded to cut off her leg.

Alice later awoke, not realizing that she’d fallen asleep and that the procedure was finished. When she said she was ready to begin, Hayward reached down and picked up her leg from sawdust and presented it to its former owner.

1Ignaz Semmelweis Tells Doctors To Wash Their Hands

Humans can be very slow to change when a new notion goes against long-held beliefs. Richard Lower was mocked for his work on blood transfusions. When Edward Jenner came up with the smallpox vaccine, he was criticized by the clergy for his ungodly work. And yet probably no man has made a greater contribution to medicine that earned him nothing but scorn and mockery than Ignaz Semmelweis.

Nowadays, the man is known as the “savior of mothers” and you don’t get that kind of moniker unless you did something right. We also know that infection is a serious problem, and doctors go to great lengths to ensure that they operate under sanitary conditions. This wasn’t always the case, though.

Joseph Lister usually gets the credit for pioneering antiseptic surgery, but Dr. Semmelweis had the same idea several decades prior. The only difference between them was that Semmelweis became a pariah of the medical world for his ideas.

Semmelweis realized that there was a direct correlation between infection and puerperal fever in obstetrical clinics. Just by washing their hands and their instruments, doctors could drastically lower the mortality rates caused by the fever to below 1 percent. Puerperal fever was a common problem in the 19th century and had a mortality rate of up to 18 percent. However, doctors simply refused to believe that they could be responsible for so many deaths. It wasn’t until Pasteur proved germ theory that people finally realized Semmelweis’s ideas had some merit. By then, Semmelweis went insane trying to convince others and was committed to an asylum, where he was beaten to death by guards.

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We think of human evolution as a natural, step-by-step feature of life on Earth, even if all evidence suggests that it’s not the case. Over the eons, life on Earth had to go through many different, unique steps to lead to the evolution of modern humans, including our decision to stand up on two feet instead of four and move from hunter-gatherer societies to settled, farming communities. 

10. Last Universal Common Ancestor

LUCA refers to the Last Universal Common Ancestor – a theoretical ancestor to all life forms that exist today. Existing some time around four billion years ago, it would have played a pivotal role in the evolution of life on Earth. 

According to simulations, it would have lived deep underground in iron-sulfur rich hydrothermal vents, possibly in dark, metal-rich environments. It would have also been anaerobic and autotrophic, not relying on oxygen and producing its own food from hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. 

According to many scientists working on tracing the genetic tree of life, LUCA would be the root of the tree and the beginning of life’s evolutionary journey. Sadly, LUCA’s exact physical organization and properties remain theoretical and – to a large extent – imaginary. While the traditional understanding of evolutionary sciences depict LUCA as the last common ancestor of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes – the three main branches of life forms that exist today – our understanding of the subject has also undergone significant changes due to new data and analytical techniques in the past few years, further muddying our understanding of the evolution of early life. 

9. The Great Oxidation

The Great Oxygenation Event happened some time around 2.7 billion years ago, when the planet’s atmosphere had no free oxygen and life primarily consisted of anaerobic organisms that didn’t rely on it to survive. The emergence of a group of microbes called cyanobacteria, however, profoundly changed that equation, as this was when they developed the ability to carry out photosynthesis and produce oxygen as a waste product. As they thrived and released huge amounts of oxygen into the oceans, it gradually accumulated in the atmosphere and laid the basis for most modern life today.

This sudden rise of free oxygen had far-reaching consequences for life on Earth. While it became vital for the evolution of aerobic organisms, the oxygen proved to be toxic for the anaerobic cyanobacteria and many other anaerobic life forms, leading to a mass extinction that wiped out over 90% of life on Earth. A few life forms managed to adapt and utilize the newly-available free oxygen, leading to the evolution of aerobic metabolism. The Great Oxygenation Event was a turning point in Earth’s history that completely altered the planet’s chemistry, paving the way for diverse, oxygen-based organisms we see everywhere around us today. 

8. Evolution Of Complex Cells – Eukaryotes

The evolution of complex cells, or eukaryotes, was a major milestone in the history of life on Earth. Prokaryotes, or simple cells like bacteria, emerged around four billion years ago as some of the most ancient life forms. Eukaryotes, however, do not appear in the fossil record until over a billion years later, around 2.7 billion years ago. The origin of eukaryotic cells still remains a mystery, though we know that it was a turning point for the evolution of all complex life found around the world today. 

The primary difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells lies in their complexity. Cells found in eukaryotic organisms contain a nucleus, specialized organs for energy production like mitochondria, and a cytoskeleton that provides structural support and allows for the movement and growth of complex cells. While their origin still remains a scientific mystery, they directly gave rise to all modern multicellular organisms, including humans.

7. Multicellularity

The emergence of multicellularity was another important step during our evolution, as multicellular organisms display many properties that arise from communication between cells and their environment. Many recent studies have proved the importance of these dynamic interactions in various biological processes found across the tree of life today, including collective cell migration, cell differentiation, and cell proliferation. 

Throughout our history, multicellularity has emerged out of single-celled organisms at different times, even if we don’t quite understand how it happened. The capacity to form multiple cells and specialized cell types, in turn, has resulted in the evolution of diverse organisms, including plants, animals, algae, and fungi. Multicellularity has also had a huge impact on Earth’s biodiversity and ecological complexity, as without it, our planet would lack the diversity of life forms we observe today.

6. Cambrian Explosion

The Cambrian Explosion refers to the emergence of a surprisingly-high number of organisms around the planet about 541 to 530 million years ago. Many major classes of animals that make up modern animal life showed up during this period, leading to the diversification of life forms. The evolution of hard body parts like calcium carbonate shells allowed for better-preserved fossil specimens to study and analyze, leading to a better understanding of this time than any other period in the early history of life on Earth. 

While there are still some doubts about exactly what caused the Cambrian explosion, we know that increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere around this time likely played a role in this unprecedented proliferation of complex animals across diverse types of ecosystems on Earth. The rapid appearance of various marine animals during this time profoundly impacted Earth’s biodiversity, setting the stage for further expansions in the coming periods. 

5. The First Sea Animals Move To Land

The first marine animals started moving to land more than 470 million years ago, when plants colonized the mainland during the Ordovician period. Their presence fundamentally altered land ecosystems, as it oxygenated the atmosphere, shaped the soil for future plant evolution, and established new climatic conditions that could house the oncoming diversity of animals. 

While organisms like arthropods, myriapods, and arachnids came to land during the Silurian period around 430 million years ago, insects – or hexapods – followed around the beginning of the Devonian period around 410 million years ago. This transition from marine to terrestrial life was a major turning point in the early history of the planet, leading to the evolution of life on Earth as we know it today. 

4. Bipedalism

The ability to walk entirely on two feet – or bipedalism – represents a distinct evolutionary milestone in human evolution, setting us apart from other four-legged apes. This adaptation is marked in our evolutionary history by several changes in the spine, pelvis, skull, and feet, enabling hominids to stand upright and walk on two legs. However, all this came at a high cost, like overloaded lower backs and lower extremity joints that now cause knee and back pain later in life, especially for females during childbirth. 

Initially, scientists believed that it was big brains that distinguish hominids from other species. The discovery of the Taung Child’s skull by Raymond Dart in the 1920s, however, greatly changed that belief. Subsequent fossil findings further supported the idea that bipedalism preceded the development of larger brains in human evolution. 

3. The Rise Of Homo Sapiens

Homo sapiens evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago during a period of climate change. Like other early human species at that time, we adapted to survive in unstable environments by gathering and hunting for food. Anatomically, modern humans can be characterized by our lighter skeletal build compared to earlier humans, large brains, and distinct facial features with less prominent brow ridges. 

Prehistoric Homo sapiens developed advanced stone tools, specialized them, and made more refined and complex tools like bows, arrows, and fishing equipment. Over time, we transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming and herding, leading to the transformation of Earth’s landscapes, settlements, and a marked rise in the human population.

While early Homo sapiens coexisted with other human species like Homo erectus, the Denisovans, and Neanderthals, that changed around 40,000 years ago, when we emerged as the last surviving member of the hominin family. 

2. Leaving Africa

The first humans moved out of Africa some time around 2 million years ago, though the challenging arid environments of northern Africa and Middle East initially hindered their movement. To leave Africa successfully, our ancestors had to develop physical and mental capabilities suitable for surviving in harsh conditions, where food and water were scarce and seasonal. 

The first species believed to have left Africa was Homo ergaster – or African Homo erectus – about 1.75 million years ago. An alternate theory, however, suggests that hominins might have migrated out long before that, possibly around 2 million years ago. Recent studies based on DNA analysis support it, indicating an expansion out of Africa about 1.9 million years ago, with gene flow between Asian and African populations around 1.5 million years ago. 

Regardless of the timeline, the ability to leave Africa allowed us to develop physical attributes like efficient walking, intelligence for adapting to new environments, improved tools, and a diet that included more meat, all of which would play a crucial role in human evolution for years to come. 

1. Neolithic Revolution

The rapid development of agriculture in human populations and proliferation of agriculture-based societies around the world – also known as the Neolithic Revolution – was perhaps the most decisive step in the evolution of modern humans. This pivotal transition happened some time around 10,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent region in the Middle East, leading to the emergence of the first farming communities we know of. 

The Neolithic Revolution marked a shift from small, nomadic hunter-gatherer groups to larger settlements and the birth of early civilizations. It was a time of profound and long-lasting change for our species, as this was when we first started cultivating plants and breeding animals for food, along with forming permanent communities to protect those advancements.

The causes of the Neolithic Revolution are multifaceted and may have varied across regions. One theory is that changes in the climate and a warming trend in the Middle East around 14,000 years ago played a role in the development of agriculture there, leading to the growth of wild wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent. Intellectual advances in human societies – including the development of religious and artistic practices – also likely influenced the transition to settled farming.

The development of modern artificial intelligence systems has been a long time in the making, dating back to the earliest days of automated machine algorithms and robotics. Here are 10 of the most critical moments in the advancement of robotics, and in giving those robots the ability to think…

10. Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine – 1822

Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine – a computational device designed in the 1820s – could be called the earliest machine in history capable of artificial intelligence. The invention sought to automate tedious adding and multiplication tasks using metal wheels and levers, which could in turn be used to store numbers and perform complex calculations, at least for the time. 

While Babbage created various prototypes of the Difference Engine, the full machine was not constructed in his lifetime. His work later resulted in the development of the Analytical Engine – a more-advanced theoretical machine powered by steam that, if constructed, would have been the first operational, general-purpose computer. Babbage believed it could perform any calculation using a list of instructions – a concept shared by modern computers. 

Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine was a giant leap towards artificial intelligence, even if his ideas remained unrealized during his lifetime. Because of its importance, the invention is sometimes referred to as the beginning of the age of artificial intelligence. 

9. Leonardo Torres Quevedo’s Chess Automaton – 1914

Leonardo Torres Quevedo was a Spanish engineer credited with the creation of the El Ajedrecista automated chess player – perhaps the first machine in history that could think and apply its thoughts to practical situations. Torres Quevedo’s machine was programmed to play a modified endgame called KRK, where it played a king and a rook against a human opponent’s single king. The machine used complex conditional rules to make decisions on its own, and its design allowed it to detect and respond to illegal moves.

Torres Quevedo belonged to an early group of scientists and thinkers that wanted to build machines that could truly think on their own, with the capability of making choices from a complex set of possibilities. His 1914 essay, Essays on Automatics, laid out ideas for machines capable of performing arithmetic using switching circuits and sensors, making automata with emotions a possibility. 

Despite his pioneering contributions to artificial intelligence, Torres Quevedo’s work was largely overlooked outside Spain because of his numerous achievements in other engineering fields, like funiculars, aeronautics, and remote control devices. 

8. The Turing Test – 1950

Developed by Alan Turing in 1950, the Turing Test remains a benchmark measure of a machine’s ability to exhibit human-like intelligence even today. At its most basic, the test involves a human being in a text-based conversation with a human and a machine, attempting to tell one from the other. If they can’t succeed, the machine is considered to have passed the Turing Test. 

Since its inception, it has been a standard in evaluating the progress of AI systems around the world, inspiring a number of studies and experiments to develop machines capable of passing the test as a measure of AI advancement. While it has its limitations, especially for the advanced AI systems of today, the Turing Test remains an important reference point in the field of artificial intelligence, and a starting-off point for the development of more-rigorous tests to identify artificial intelligence in the future. 

7. First Industrial Robot – 1954

Unimate was the world’s first industrial robot introduced in 1961, released after almost two years of development. It was a revolutionary step not just for manufacturing, but also for automated systems, as this was the first time automated bots were deployed for use in an industrial capacity. 

Unimate was first used at a General Motors die-casting plant in Trenton, New Jersey, and its efficiency led to the development of about 450 more Unimate robotic arms used across the die-casting industry. Soon, the robot was being used for industrial use around the world, including at companies like BMW, Volvo, Mercedes Benz, British Leyland, and Fiat. 

6. The Dartmouth Conference – 1956

The term ‘artificial intelligence’ was coined at the Dartmouth conference, held in 1956 by a group of leading inventors in the field at Dartmouth College. Led by John McCarthy, it was organized to explore the potential of thinking machines beyond simple behaviors. While they didn’t know it at the time, the conference managed to clarify and develop the ideas that would eventually lead to the evolution of modern artificial intelligence, all based on a revolutionary idea that computers should now simulate the kind of intelligence found in human beings. 

The discussions that took place at the Dartmouth conference set the foundation for AI as an interdisciplinary field. It had a lasting impact on various fields other than AI, as well, including engineering, mathematics, computer science, and psychology. 

5. First Artificial Neural Network – 1958

In 1958, Frank Rosenblatt, a research psychologist and project engineer at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, announced the release of the Perceptron – the first machine capable of generating ideas on its own. It was a single-layer neural network inspired by the brain’s neurons and their interconnected communication. It was capable of making binary classifications, firing an output of 1 if the result exceeded a certain threshold, or 0 otherwise. Though limited to solving linear classification problems, the Perceptron’s basic learning algorithms marked the first generation of neural networks in history. 

Despite popular interest from the computing community and media, the Perceptron didn’t do well in the market and indirectly led to a phenomenon we now call the ‘AI winter’, where federal research for AI projects was curtailed for a number of years. Now, however, Rosenblatt’s invention is widely recognized as an important step in the evolution of artificial intelligence, as deep learning and artificial neural networks are now integral parts of modern AI systems. 

4. John McCarthy’s Development Of LISP – 1960

LISP, short for ‘list processing’, is a computer-programming language developed by John McCarthy in the early 1960s. Its foundation lies in the theory of recursive functions, where a computer function can appear in its own definition. Unlike traditional procedural languages like FORTRAN, LISP treats a program as a function applied to data. This unique approach allows LISP programs to operate on other programs as data, making it an ideal language for AI programming.

While the language didn’t gain much traction in other area, LISP has grown to become the main choice of language for artificial intelligence research, especially due to its strong connection with AI work at MIT and its support for self-modifying programs. Today, most AI programmers work with it for research and development purposes, particularly in areas of natural-language processing, theorem proofs, and problem-solving. 

3. First Chatbot – 1966

The first chatbot was released to the public in the mid-1960s, developed by a German-American computer scientist at MIT’s artificial intelligence lab called Joseph Weizenbaum. Running on the early mainframe computer IBM 7094, ELIZA was designed to engage in natural conversations with users by scanning for keywords and using them to form responses. Interestingly, many of its users ended up forming bonds with the chatbot, even after being told that the program lacked true human comprehension – a phenomenon now known as the ‘ELIZA effect’.

ELIZA’s development was a major milestone in the evolution of artificial intelligence, paving the way for the study of human-computer interactions and chatbot technology. Weizenbaum’s early experiments with ELIZA challenged the conventional idea that true intelligence was necessary for convincing communication, instead proving the simulation of intelligence could be enough to deceive people and create a sense of connection with a machine. 

2. IBM’s Deep Blue Defeats World Chess Champion -1997

Deep Blue was a revolutionary IBM computer specially designed to play chess. In 1997, it achieved something no machine had ever done before. In a six-game match, Deep Blue secured two wins, one draw, and one defeat against the reigning chess champion of the time, Garry Kasprov, marking the first time a computer won in a traditional chess tournament over a human opponent.

Deep Blue’s victory was a groundbreaking moment in artificial intelligence and computer science in general, showcasing the sheer calculating power possessed by machines at the time – as the computer was capable of analyzing up to 200 million chess positions per second – and their potential for complex tasks beyond chess. The match attracted media coverage from around the world, paving the way for all the other man-vs-machine matches we’ve seen since then.

1. ‘Stanley’ Robot Wins DARPA Challenge – 2005

The 2005 edition of the DARPA Grand Challenge – an important competition in the field of technology – made history when it was won by Stanford University’s autonomous robot, Stanley. It required the development of mobile ground robots to navigate 132 miles of harsh desert terrain in under ten hours. The Stanford team, made up of 65 students, professors, engineers, and programmers, converted a 2005 Volkswagen Touareg into a sophisticated, autonomous robot capable of self-driving. Its success heavily relied on advanced artificial intelligence and a pipelining architecture that converted sensor data into vehicle controls, enabling Stanley to understand and navigate the course.

The vehicle was equipped with state-of-the-art hardware, including roof-mounted light detection and ranging units that reflected lasers off the ground to create a 3D map of the terrain, guiding the robot’s path. Various complex algorithms allowed Stanley to process the data from different sensors and make informed decisions, along with learning from previous mistakes to continuously improve its performance.

Few things furthered the steady march of history as substantially and exponentially as the Age of Discovery. From the early 1400s through the late 17th Century, Europeans powers took to the seas in search of new land, new riches and new ways to get to far-flung destinations. From the Caribbean to the Americas to Africa and beyond, the world would be radically reshaped for both better and worse.

Here are ten momentous occasions from that adventurous age, in chronological order.

Top 10 Triumphs Of Western Civilization

10 1419: Prince Henry the Navigator and the Science of Seafaring

The man typically credited with kickstarting the Age of Discovery is Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu, better known as Henry the Navigator. Born in 1394, Henry was the fourth child of Portuguese King John I, who reigned until 1433. Fascinated with exploration and blessed with the ample resources of a major European power, Henry played a pivotal role in the development of Portuguese maritime endeavors, including charting new territory and forging new trade routes and partners.

Unsurprisingly given Portugal’s proximity to the “Dark Continent,” Henry was particularly intrigued by Western Africa and, among other excursions, in 1415 he encouraged his father to conquer the Muslim port of Ceuta^[1] in modern-day Morocco, directly across the Strait of Gibraltar from Portugal. In the late 16th Century, Ceuta passed to Spanish hands where it remained until 1995, when Spain granted it autonomy.

But Henry’s most impactful contribution was made not in foreign lands but right at home. In modern-day Sagres on Portugal’s southwestern coast, in 1418, Henry founded a navigation school^[2] where he gathered the era’s most prominent mapmakers, instrument makers, shipbuilders, scientists and sea captains. The cross-discipline meeting of the minds helped attendees perfect their various trades, helping each stand on the others’ shoulders. The school’s site still exists today as a museum in Portugal’s popular Algarve region.

9 1497: Vasco da Gama Connects Europe and India

While Henry the Navigator’s encouraged exploration of Africa certainly intrigued European powers, Africa was also seen as a continent-sized obstacle to a more enviable prize: a convenient seafaring trade route to India’s ports.

Around 1488, Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias^[3] became the first to reach the Cape of Good Hope, Africa’s southern tip. Less than a decade later his countryman, Vasco da Gama,^[4] sought to capitalize on this newfound knowledge by sailing around the cape and on to India – however far that may be.

The voyage was quite an ordeal. Leaving Lisbon on July 8, 1497 with a four-ship fleet, da Gama reached the Cape Verde Islands by month’s end, then took a circuitous route around the Gulf of Guinea’s worrisome currents. The fleet didn’t reach modern-day South Africa until early November, and didn’t round the cape until later that month. By January, stalled near modern-day Mozambique, many of da Gama’s crew were sick with scurvy.

In wasn’t until mid-April, by now in Kenya, that da Gama encountered a pilot who knew the route to Calicut, on India’s southwest coast. From there, a comparably trouble-free 23-day sprint across the Indian Ocean made instant heroes of the long-sputtering Portuguese seamen. Now that the route was known, subsequent voyages could be completed far more expeditiously.

Notably, on his second expedition to India, da Gama is rumored to have stalked and attacked an Arab ship near Calicut, looted its cargo and set it afire, killing up to 400 passengers including women and children. So much for diplomacy.

8 1498: Columbus (Finally) Makes It to the Mainland

Everybody knows that Christopher Columbus bravely sailed west across the ocean and set foot in America. The year was 149-… 8?

Yes, 1498. Because Columbus didn’t set foot on mainland America – South America to be precise – until his third^[5] of four intrepid voyages. In May 1498, Columbus left Spain with six ships, three filled with provisions for the fledgling colony tenuously established on Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and Dominican Republic), and three hellbent on finding land south of previously charted islands.

He found it. This time, he made landfall on Trinidad, planting the Spanish flag on August 1. His next stop was the Paria Peninsula in modern-day Venezuela, where Columbus’ crew became the first Europeans to reach the American mainland^[6] on August 5, 1498.

In terms of furthering the Age of Discovery, however, Columbus’ fourth and final voyage may have been his most significant. Exploring the Central American coasts of present-day Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama, in 1503 Columbus established a short-lived garrison near Panama’s Belén River, a fortification whose remnants can still be toured today.

Columbus went to such trouble because he’d heard rumors of a waterway leading to another ocean: the so-called Northwest Passage. Though it didn’t exist, the isthmus was narrow enough that, just a decade later…

7 1513: Balboa Discovers the Pacific Ocean

Following his final foray into the New World, Columbus returned to Europe with much to report, including rumors of a potential passage to open ocean via Panama. Soon, a party led by Vasco Núñez de Balboa^[7] of Spain established the first stable settlement on the South American continent at Darién, Panama. And though Balboa’s primary goal was gold, he found something nearly as valuable.

Balboa had been in the New World for years, including an unsuccessful stint as a planter and pig farmer in Hispaniola. Through grit and guile – to escape debtors in Hispaniola, he stowed away in a barrel with his dog – Balboa eventually found himself leading expeditions to find gold for the Spanish crown.

Balboa first heard of the present-day Pacific Ocean in 1513, as an aside to a heated discussion about (what else) gold. A native, angered by the Spaniards’ single-minded greed, disgustedly exclaimed: “If you are so hungry for gold that you leave your lands to cause strife in those of others, I shall show where you can quell this hunger.” He told Balboa of a place where people drank from goblets of gold, but warned a thousand men would be required to conquer tribes living inland and along the coast of “the other sea.”

Despite a manpower shortage, Balboa departed on September 1, 1513. On September 25, he reached a summit from which he saw the vast ocean. Balboa triumphantly waded into the water, raised his sword and claimed the new sea^[8] and all adjoining lands for Spain. A bit presumptuous, no?

6 1513: Ponce de Leon Becomes Europe’s First #FloridaMan

It’s odd that children in the United States are taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America, when Columbus never set foot anywhere near the present-day United States. The distinction of first European on US soil goes to Juan Ponce de Leon, who claimed modern-day Florida for Spain in 1513.

de Leon had already been in the New World quite some time before landing in Florida. He started as a military official in Hispaniola and, in 1509, was appointed governor of Puerto Rico; Ponce, a major city on Puerto Rico’s southern coast, still bears his name.

Of all people, it was a dispute with Christopher Columbus’ son,^[9] Diego, that led to de Leon packing his bags for sunny Florida. On April 2, 1513, de Leon came ashore near St. Augustine, dubbing the peninsula “La Florida” due to the approaching Easter-season celebration, called Pascua Florida (“feast of flowers”) in Spanish. A preview of the utter nonsense^[10] Florida would host half a millennia later, the explorer was searching for the fabled “Fountain of Youth,” a water source said to bring eternal youth.

He didn’t find it. But he did pave the way for a successful Spanish settlement starting in 1565, though this was more than 40 years after de Leon’s death in 1521. Today, St. Augustine is considered the oldest continuous settlement in the United States.^[11] Notably, intermarriage with Native American tribes (and even African slaves) was prevalent early in St. Augustine’s history, an uncommon intermingling during the early Age of Discovery.

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5 1519: The New World’s Most Impactful Import

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés slaughtered thousands of Aztecs, toppled the empire’s capital city of Tenochtitlán, renamed it Mexico City – today the most populous city in the Western Hemisphere – and enriched his country’s coffers with thousands of pounds of gold, silver and jewels…^[12]

… none of which was his most meaningful contribution to history.

Wars happen. Empires rise and fall, and precious metals change hands in bloodshed. But very rarely in human history is something introduced that radically transforms societies across two continents.

That something was the horse.^[13] When Cortes landed in present-day Veracruz, Mexico with 16 steeds, he introduced horses to the New World’s mainland (Columbus had brought them to the Caribbean islands). Subsequent explorers brought ever-growing numbers of horses, which were instrumental in subjugating both the Aztec and Incan Empires.

Soon, the horse would radically change Native American culture.^[14] Vast distances were suddenly traversable, bringing once-segregated tribes into contact for intermarriage, trade, and war. Animals once nearly impossible to hunt on foot – most notably, the thunderous herds of buffalo roaming the North American plains – became easy pickings. The newfound mobility made Native American societies less insular, more multicultural and, per master cavalrymen like the Comanches, certainly more bellicose.^[15]

4 1522: Magellan Comes Full Circle

Well, almost. While an expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan did indeed become the first to circumnavigate the globe, its fearless leader died before the journey’s completion. But not before he named an ocean and proved a point or two.

In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan^[16] set sail from Spain with five ships, with the goal of finding a faster commerce route to the East Indies. No such convenient pathway existed, of course, but what Magellan did discover – after sailing hundreds of miles south down the east coast of modern-day South America – was a narrow waterway near the continent’s southern tip that connected two oceans.

While Balboa had been the first to see (and presumptuously claim) the body of water, Magellan gave what Balboa dubbed the South Sea a better, longer-lasting moniker. Emerging from what is now known as the Strait of Magellan, the explorer marveled at the ocean’s comparable calmness, giving the Pacific – or “peaceful” – Ocean its name.

Magellan never made it all the way back to Spain; in April of 1521 he was killed in a fight with natives in the Philippines. In fact, only one of the original five vessels made it back to Spain the following year. However, the expedition proved two things. First, Earth’s already widely-suspected roundness^[17] was confirmed. Second, and just as importantly, the world was BIG. Like, really big – too big to sail west to get to far-flung established trading posts like the East Indies… at least via modern-day Central and South America.

3 1526: A Dark Year in an Enlightened Era

While brightened by a steady succession of progress – new territory charted and mapped, new cultures encountered, new trade routes developed – the Age of Discovery has a decidedly dark side. The greed-driven bloody conquests of Native American empires such as the Aztecs, Incans and Mayans are strong examples.

But perhaps the greatest injustice inaugurated by the Age of Discovery was the African slave trade – the wholesale kidnapping and carting of human cargo doomed to toil until death in foreign lands.

The first transatlantic voyage delivering African slaves to the New World was completed in 1526, when Portugal carried a boatload of chained chattel to Brazil. They would become the first of an estimated 4.9 million Africans transported to Brazil over the ensuing three-plus centuries, more than any other country in the world (by comparison, “only” about 400,000^[18] were shipped directly to North America).

Often overlooked is that the role of New World slaves went well past agricultural. If they survived the squalid below-deck conditions during the months-long crossing, kidnapped Africans were put to work in wide-ranging ways; in addition to planting and harvesting coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton, forced labor was used to mine precious metals, cut timber for ships, construct infrastructure (including the wall that gave New York City’s Wall Street its name), and domestic servants.

2 1608: Vive la (New) France: Samuel de Champlain Founds Quebec City

A year before our next explorer, Henry Hudson, claimed New Amsterdam for his Dutch financiers – a short-lived distinction, as the British would siege, seize and promptly rename the colony in 1664 – Samuel de Champlain was up north making sure that French, unlike Dutch, would be widely spoken in the New World for centuries to come.

de Champlain’s seafaring life was impressive well before his marquee moment. From 1604-07, he took part in the exploration and settlement of Port-Royal in present-day Nova Scotia – only the second permanent European settlement in North America (Florida was first). The locale became part of the French colony of Acadia. Notably, when British forces expelled huge swaths of Acadians from the area in the 1750s,^[19] many fled to the fledgling city of New Orleans in French-owned Louisiana. Their modern ancestors are – you guessed it – Cajuns.

But then de Champlain outdid himself: sailing up the St. Lawrence River, he staked out and claimed the location soon to become Quebec City, which to this day remains one of the most charmingly Europeanesque cities in North America, capped with the castle-on-a-hilltop Chateau Frontenac.^[20] The French’s influence over Quebec would steadily grow, and in 1642 a missionary colony was founded that grew up to become the province’s most populous city, Montreal.

1 1609: Henry Hudson’s Happy Accident

Throughout the 1500s and early 1600s, the search for an elusive seafaring shortcut through the New World and on to Asia went on. Sailing for his native England in 1607 and 1608, explorer Henry Hudson took two cracks at finding a northeasterly route through the Arctic Circle. All ice, no dice.

In 1609 Hudson, this time funded by the Dutch East India Company, took a slightly more southerly route, sailing down from present-day Nova Scotia to the Chesapeake Bay. With no east-west waterway in sight, he decided to check out New York,^[21] whose harbor Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano – namesake of the recently spell-checked bridge^[22] connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island – had deemed especially inviting back in 1524.

There he found a wide river that bent inland. Could it be the Northwest Passage? Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, pushed on. He anchored near the West 40s in Midtown, Manhattan. He stopped in the Bronx, then Westchester, and kept going until he reached modern-day Albany.

He hadn’t, of course, found the Northwest Passage. But what he’d found was, per Hudson, “as beautiful a land as one can hope to tread upon”.^[23] He claimed the region, including the colony soon dubbed New Amsterdam, for the Dutch. Today the valley, the river and an adjacent perpetually congested highway proudly bear Hudson’s name.

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