World's First Concept Car (1938): Buick Y-Job

Designed in 1938 by the famous General Motors designer Harley Earl, the Buick Y-Job is considered by most to be the first concept car. The car had power-operated hidden headlamps, "gunsight" hood ornament, wraparound bumpers, flush door handles, and prefigured styling cues used by Buick until the 1950s.

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World's First Skyscraper (1885): Home Insurance Building in Chicago

Considered to be the first skyscraper in the world due to the building's unique architecture and unique weight bearing frame, the Home Insurance Building was built in 1885 in Chicago, Illinois and demolished in 1931 to make way for the Field Building (now the LaSalle National Bank Building). It was the first building to use structural steel in its frame, but the majority of its structure was composed of cast and wrought iron. It was the first tall building to be supported, both inside and outside, by a fireproof metal frame. It had 10 stories and rose to a height of 138 feet (42 m) high.

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World's First Computer Mouse (1964): by Douglas Engelbart

The world's first computer mouse was made by Douglas Engelbart in 1964, it consisted of two gear-wheels positioned perpendicular to each other -- allowing movement on one axis. Ergonomic shape, great button placement -- and it's made of wood.

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World's First X-Ray (1895): Röntgen's wife hand World's First X-Ray

In 1895 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, professor of physics the University of Wurburg in Germany, was doing experiments with electrical discharges in evacuated glass tubes. Late in 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen was alone at night doing his experiments, this time in the dark and noticed a glow was produced on the wall, which he knew was not caused by fluorescence or visible light. He named these new, unidentified rays 'X' or if you prefer; X-rays. After several months of playing with his discovery he noticed that objects place in the path of the rays cast shadows and created images on the wall. Soon after he used a photgraphic plate and had his wife, Frau Röntgen, place her hand in the path of the X-rays, creating the world's first X-ray picture. In 1901 Wilhelm Röntgen was awarded the very first Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

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World's First Motorcycle (1885): Daimler's "riding car" World's First Motorcycle

The First Motorcycle was designed and built by the German inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Bad Cannstatt (Stuttgart) in 1885. It was essentially a motorised bicycle, although the inventors called their invention the Reitwagen ("riding car"). It was also the first petroleum-powered vehicle.

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World's First Web Server and Web Site (1990): a NeXT computer at CERN World's First Web Server and Web Site

Info.cern.ch was the address of the world's first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN.

The first web page address :

The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, made by Tim Berners-Lee.

1990 was a momentous year in world events. In February, Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison. In April, the space shuttle Discovery carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. And in October, Germany was reunified.
Then at the end of 1990, a revolution took place that changed the way we live today.

Tim Berners-Lee followed his dream of a better, easier way to communicate via computers on a global scale, which led him to create the World Wide Web.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is where it all began in March 1989. A physicist, Tim Berners-Lee, wrote a proposal for information management showing how information could be transferred easily over the Internet by using hypertext, the now familiar point-and-click system of navigating through information. The following year, Robert Cailliau, a systems engineer, joined in and soon became its number one advocate.
The idea was to connect hypertext with the Internet and personal computers, thereby having a single information network to help CERN physicists share all the computer-stored information at the laboratory. Hypertext would enable users to browse easily between texts on web pages using links. The first examples were developed on NeXT computers.
Berners-Lee created a browser-editor with the goal of developing a tool to make the Web a creative space to share and edit information and build a common hypertext. What should they call this new browser: The Mine of Information? The Information Mesh? When they settled on a name in May 1990, it was the WorldWideWeb.

Robert Cailliau, collaborator on the World Wide Web project and first Web surfer.

Info.cern.ch was the address of the world's first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, which centred on information regarding the WWW project. Visitors could learn more about hypertext, technical details for creating their own webpage, and even an explanation on how to search the Web for information. There are no screenshots of this original page and, in any case, changes were made daily to the information available on the page as the WWW project developed. You may find a later copy (1992) on the World Wide Web Consortium website.
However, a website is like a telephone; if there's just one it's not much use. Berners-Lee's team needed to send out server and browser software. The NeXT systems however were far advanced over the computers people generally had at their disposal: a far less sophisticated piece of software was needed for distribution.
By spring of 1991, testing was underway on a universal line mode browser, which would be able to run on any computer or terminal. It was designed to work simply by typing commands. There was no mouse, no graphics, just plain text, but it allowed anyone with an Internet connection access to the information on the Web.

The historic NeXT computer used by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, on display in the Microcosm exhibition at CERN. It was the first web server, hypermedia browser and web editor.

During 1991 servers appeared in other institutions in Europe and in December 1991, the first server outside the continent was installed in the US at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). By November 1992, there were 26 servers in the world, and by October 1993 the figure had increased to over 200 known web servers. In February 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign released the first version of Mosaic, which was to make the Web available to people using PCs and Apple Macintoshes.
... and the rest is Web history.
Although the Web's conception began as a tool to aid physicists answer tough questions about the Universe, today its usage applies to various aspects of the global community and affects our daily lives.
Today there are upwards of 80 million websites, with many more computers connected to the Internet, and hundreds of millions of users. If households nowadays want a computer, it is not to compute, but to go on the Web.

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World's First Novel (1007): Tale of Genji World's First Novel

More than a thousend years ago, on 1007, a Japanese court lady put the finishing touches on what is considered the world's first novel. Spanning 75 years, more than 350 characters, and brimming with romantic poems, the "Tale of Genji" tells the story of an emperor's son, his quest for love, and the many women he meets along the way. It is attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu.

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World's First Album Cover (1938)

Smash Song Hits by Rodgers and Hart

Before Alex Steinweiss, then a 23-year-old designer, invented album covers in 1938 for Columbia Records, albums were sold in plain brown wrappers. The album "Smash Song Hits by Rodgers and Hart" was the very first album cover in the world.

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World's First Motel (1925): Motel Inn

Motel Inn in San Luis Obispo, California, is the world’s first motel. It was built in 1925 by LA architect Arthur Heineman, who coined the term motel meaning "motor hotel." Motel Inn was originally called the Milestone Mo-Tel. Back then, one night stay was $1.25. Heineman couldn’t afford the trademark registration fee, so his competitors were able to use the word "motel." The motel is still in operation today.

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World’s First Digital Camera (1975)

Created by Kodak's engineer Steve Sasson

In December 1975, Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented something that would, decades later, revolutionize photography: the world’s first digital camera. It was the size of a toaster, and captured black and white images at a resolution of 100×100 - or 0.01 megapixels in today’s marketing terminology. The images were stored on cassette tape, taking 23 seconds to write. The camera uses an ADC from Motorola, a bog-standard (for the 1970s) lens from a Kodak movie camera, and a CCD chip from Fairchild Semiconductor - the same technology that digital cameras still use today. To playback the images, a special computer and tape reader setup (pictured below) was built, outputting the grainy images on a standard TV. It took a further 23 seconds to read each image from tape.

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