Technology
- February 19 - The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison. The oldest known audio recording is later recovered from this device, in 2012.
- March - The 'basic' process, enabling the use of phosphoric iron ore in steelmaking, developed at Blaenavon Ironworks by Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, is first made public.
- October 14 - The world's first recorded floodlit football fixture is played at Bramall Lane in Sheffield.
- August - Cleopatra's Needle is raised onto its base in London.
- December 18 - Joseph Swan of Newcastle upon Tyne in England announces his invention of an incandescent light bulb.
- December 31 - Karl Benz produces a two-stroke gas engine.
- William Crookes invents the Crookes tube which produces cathode rays.
- Gustav Kessel obtains a patent in Germany for an espresso machine.
- Lester Allan Pelton produces the first operational Pelton wheel.
Read more about this topic: 1878 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)