The way technology is and how quickly the world changes, I think it’s easy to assume everything we see and touch isn’t that old.

Some things are, though, and if you’re thinking these handful of things haven’t been around long at all, you’re sorely mistaken!

We still haven’t gotten it right.

The electric car.

What is likely the first human-carrying electric vehicle with its own power source was tested along a Paris street in April 1881 by French inventor Gustave Trouvé. The first crude electric car was built in the 1830s but it was essentially a semi-functioning model.

The electric car was a direct competitor to gasoline powered vehicles until the 1920s when roads got better, people started driving further than the range of an electric car, and the world started finding major oil reserves.

18th century soda.

The first carbonated drink to be sold to the public was invented by Swiss watchmaker and amateur scientist J. J. Schweppe in 1783, who sold his delicious “sparkling water” to thirsty customers in Geneva.

In just seven years, he was doing business so fast that he moved the factory to London and introduced a new flavor, sparkling lemon, to stand out from competitors who were trying to imitate his drink.

Go check them out for yourself!

Escalators have been around since 1859, though they were called rotating stairs.

Yet the US state of Wyoming still only has 2 of them.

The basics remain the same.

The Aux connector that we still use for headphones and speakers was invented in 1877.

There have been improvements since, but the basics of it are pretty much the same.

Back in the day.

Cruise control, power windows and automatic headlights.

I saw all 3 on a 1955 Cadillac. Oh, and the radio on it had a seek function.

Simple and delicious.

Beer is thought to be older than bread.

It’s much easier to fill a jar with wheat and water, let it ferment, and brew beer than it is to grind grain, mix it, and bake it.

Grandma and Grandpa had no idea.

Touch screens.

We think they’re one of the main defining features of modern technology since they only really got big in the late 2000s / early 2010s, but they were actually invented 55 years ago in 1965. It’s kind of crazy to think about, but while most of our grandparents were getting rid of their black and white TVs, researchers already had touchscreen devices in the labs.

It wasn’t really until the 80s that it really got good, but by 90s it was easily sophisticated technology. In fact, Microsoft even had a Windows XP tablet out by 2001 that had seriously good finger/stylus recognition, but it didn’t really pick up until smartphones became a thing a decade later.

You could also consider the magnetic drawing board to be a touch screen since it more or less has a stylus and surface for you to draw on, but that was actually invented later than the touch screen in 1974!

That’s pretty darn old.

Sharks. As a species they’re older than the rings of Saturn.

Rings of Saturn are 10 to 100 million years old whereas we have found shark scales dating back 450 million years ago. Pretty crazy!

This one blew my mind.

Fax Machines. They were invented in 1843. Before the telephone.

To put this in perspective, tumbleweeds aren’t native to the American southwest, but by a quirk of history we know exactly which shipment of flax from Ukraine brought their seeds to the US… in 1877.

Commercial fax service has been around longer than tumbleweeds in the American southwest.

Brains not necessary.

scorpions are also nearly 450 million years old so it kinda shows that you don’t need that much brain to survive, if your species is evolutionarily overkill it’ll survive just fine.

Insane how far we fell.

The ancient Romans (well, the wealthy ones) had central heating in their homes.

You can actually still see the pipes in some of the buildings at Herculaneum!

I want one of those.

Wristwatches. Queen Elizabeth I got one in 1571.

We had alarm clocks that rowed themselves down a table and shot off mini cannons in the 1500s.

Priorities.

Flushing toilets date all the way back to the Indus River Valley civilization, back in 2000 BC

That sounds right to me.

National Geographic was founded in 1888

Good ideas last.

Oreos.

I was shocked to learn that Oreos predate chocolate chip cookies, sliced bread, and my 100 year old Great Grandmother.

They’ve had it going on for a while.

I was really surprised to discover when Oxford university was founded.

They don’t know the year for sure, but they know there was definitely teaching going on there in 1096.

A tale as old as time.

The sentiment that modern society is degenerate and that the youth are to blame is, iirc, one of the oldest things we have written down.

That I can remember off the top of my head, Cato the Elder complained that the younger generations were becoming too greek, and Socrates used to complain that the younger generations were ruining their brains by writing instead of memorising information. There are far more older examples, but those are the oldest I remember (maybe Socrates was onto something :p)

It’s counterintuitive.

The fact that the lighter is older than the match shook my head as a kid.

When you think about it, it makes sense. The lighter is a simple mechanical concept: some flammable gas and a spark. The match, on the other hand, is a complex chemical reaction.

Sounds painful.

Brain Surgery In 1997, archaeologists discovered an ancient tomb in the French village of Ensisheim from 5,000 BC, which contained the decomposing body of a 50-year-old man with holes in his skull.

After a thorough examination, it was determined that the holes, located near the frontal lobe, were caused by a type of surgery, not by forced trauma, and the operation appears to have been successful because the wounds healed before the patient’s death.

To this day, however, researchers cannot say for sure what exactly the surgery was trying to fix.

A few of these definitely surprised me.

Time is just going by way too fast!