ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic computers, was unveiled in Philadelphia in February 1946. It filled a large room, used some 18,000 vacuum tubes and could add 5,000 numbers a second.
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In the Bible · c. AD 95 (by tradition) · Patmos, in the Aegean Sea
John on Patmos
On the small island of Patmos, off the coast of Asia Minor, John sees the visions written in the book of Revelation.
Isa 40:1–8
“Comfort, comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her forced labor has been completed; her iniquity has been pardoned. For she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.” A voice of one calling: “Prepare the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground will become smooth, and the rugged land a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all humanity together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry out!” And I asked, “What should I cry out?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall when the breath of the LORD blows on them; indeed, the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”At the same time in the world
Before the find, the oldest known Hebrew manuscripts of most biblical books had been copied around AD 900–1000. The scrolls let scholars compare the text across a thousand years, and they found both close agreement and differences. The discovery came in the years just after the Second World War. Here is the world of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The AmericasAn electronic brainAD 1946
ElsewhereThe cave of LascauxAD 1940
Four teenagers exploring a hole in a hillside in south-western France found the cave of Lascaux, its walls painted some 17,000 years ago with horses, bulls, deer and other animals.
EgyptBooks from Nag HammadiAD 1945
Farmers digging near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt found a jar with thirteen leather-bound books in Coptic, copied in the 4th century. Most of their texts, from early Christian groups, had been lost; among them is the Gospel of Thomas.
ElsewhereThe Kon-Tiki raftAD 1947
The Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl and five companions sailed the balsa-wood raft Kon-Tiki for 101 days from Peru to Polynesia, to show that such a voyage was possible in ancient times. Most scholars think Polynesia was settled from Asia.
The AmericasDating by carbonAD 1949
In Chicago Willard Libby and his colleagues showed how to date ancient wood, bone and cloth by their carbon-14. In 1951 he tested linen from the first Qumran cave; its date agreed with the age scholars had given the scrolls.
ElsewhereThe double helixAD 1953
In Cambridge James Watson and Francis Crick, using X-ray images made in London by Rosalind Franklin, described the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule that carries inheritance in living things.
ElsewhereThe top of the world29 May AD 1953
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, about 8,849 meters above the sea.
