Invention Facts for Kids

The famous first phone call happened on March 10, 1876, between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson.

Bell was in one room and Watson was just a few rooms away in Boston, proving the device worked.

He intended to say the word “LOGIN,” but the machine quit after the first two letters. So, the actual first words spoken over the telephone were simply “LO”!

Luckily, they fixed the system about an hour later so he could say the full, intended sentence: “Mr. Watson–come here–I want to see you.”

You might think of cavemen rolling logs, but the wheel showed up way later, around 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia.

The very first wheels weren't for transportation at all! They were used as potter’s wheels for shaping clay.

It took another 300 years before people figured out how to put wheels and axles together for carts and wagons.

That means the wheel was around for about 800 years before the first Great Pyramids of Giza were even started around 2700 BCE!

The very first message on the network that would become the Internet—called ARPANET—was sent on October 29, 1969.

A programmer at UCLA tried to type the word “LOGIN” to a computer at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), which was 350 miles away!

He typed the 'L', got a confirmation, typed the 'O', got a confirmation, but when he typed the 'G', the whole system crashed.

So, the literal first message sent across the early Internet was just 'LO'!

In February 1941, a 43-year-old policeman named Albert Alexander was the first person to receive the powerful drug penicillin.

He had a deadly infection from a simple scratch, but after the injection, his health improved remarkably within 24 hours!

Sadly, the world only had a tiny amount of the drug. Doctors had to extract the penicillin from his urine to re-inject him.

But the precious supply ran out, and he passed away a month later, showing how badly they needed to learn how to mass-produce it.

Thomas Edison's team tested over 3,000 different designs for a lightbulb that wouldn't burn out instantly!

In October 1879, they finally got one to burn for 14.5 hours using a filament made from cotton thread.

The best material they found was carbonized bamboo, which could keep the light on for up to 1,200 hours!

This was the breakthrough that made electric light systems practical for homes for kids everywhere.

The first magnetic compasses appeared in China around the 4th century BC and were made from a naturally magnetic rock called lodestone.

They weren't used for finding North on the ocean; instead, they looked like a spoon that would settle pointing South to help people order and harmonize their environments—a practice called Feng Shui.

It wasn't until the 11th century AD that Chinese sailors began using a magnetized needle version for maritime navigation.

That's a difference of over 1,400 years between using it for magic layout and using it for finding your way!

Johannes Gutenberg invented his movable-type printing press around 1440 in Germany, launching the Printing Revolution.

Before this, a scribe copying a book by hand might only manage a few pages a day. Gutenberg’s press could crank out up to 3,600 pages in a single workday!

By 1500, just a few decades later, printing presses across Western Europe had already produced over 20 million volumes.

That's like having 90 times the speed of hand-printing—imagine how fast knowledge traveled!

Chemist Dr. Harry Coover and his team were trying to invent a clear plastic for precision gun sights during World War II in 1942.

Instead, they accidentally created cyanoacrylates, a substance so sticky it bonded instantly to everything they touched!

The team thought it was a failure because they couldn't separate anything they stuck together.

It took over a decade before someone realized this 'failed' mess could be the best glue ever for quick repairs!

Before the Industrial Revolution had cool trains, the steam engine’s first big job was getting rid of water.

Thomas Newcomen’s engine in 1712 was the first one that worked well enough to be used in coal mines to pump out flood water.

It was a piston and cylinder engine that used the power of a vacuum created by steam condensing to lift the water.

It took James Watt’s later improvements in 1781 to make an engine that could turn a shaft and power factory machinery!

In 1945, Percy Spencer was working on a new magnetron tube for military radar technology—not for cooking!

He noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had completely melted while he was near the device—whoops!

He immediately tried popcorn kernels next, which popped everywhere, and then an egg, which exploded!

This series of 'oops' moments led him to create the first box to control the energy and cook food super fast.