Punched card tabulating equipment, invented and developed by Herman Hollerith to process data from the United States Census of 1890, was the first mechanized means for compiling and analyzing statistical information. Through continual improvements, first by Hollerith and then by many others, punched card equipment created and expanded the worldwide information processing industry and continued to play a significant role in that industry for more than two decades after the first commercial electronic computers were installed in the early 1950s.

As a result of the pioneering work of many scientists, engineers and doctors, the fully implantable pacemaker was invented and developed in the mid 20th century. This is a medical device that uses electrical impulses to keep a human heart pumping, when the internal electrical timekeeper of that heart has failed. By the end of that century, some 100,000 artificial pacemakers were being implanted annually worldwide into patients, almost all of whom benefitted from lengthened and enhanced lives.

One of the most influential technologies of the past hundred years has been motion pictures. Not only are movies big business, but they are also a large part of popular culture. They have an enormous impact on how people perceive the world and how people behave, as they provide information, elicit empathy, and shape everyday behavior. This entertainment medium and art form began more than a hundred years ago as a relatively simple technology of motion-picture camera and projector. Since then, continual technological innovation has improved the medium, all the while expanding its expressive possibilities.

Communications cables under the seas have played a pivotal role in binding the world together—economically, politically and culturally—in ways that have been both beneficial and detrimental (or, one might say, stabilizing and destabilizing). Technical developments have taken the cables through three distinct eras: telegraphy with single-conductor copper wires, beginning in the 1850s; telephony by means of coaxial cables with repeaters, beginning in the 1950s; and data transmission through optical fibers, beginning in the 1980s.

Some of the most difficult problems in science and technology involve solving equations relating to complex physical situations such as predicting the heights of tides, designing antenna systems for radio communication, creating a reliable electrical power grid, and accurately predicting where an artillery shell would fall. These problems were only capable of being solved when mechanical analog devices were invented to aid in the solution of differential equations. The creation of the differential analyzer in the first half of the 20th century was a breakthrough that allowed for advances in these and many other areas.