Technology & Innovation Facts
The computers, networks, robots, and energy machines that reshaped daily life in a single lifetime.
Energy & Engineering
Tesla
The American electric car maker founded in 2003 and named after inventor Nikola Tesla, whose Roadster, Model S, and Supercharger network pushed the electric car from niche experiment to mass market.
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Solar Power
Turning sunlight into electricity, from an 1839 laboratory curiosity to the cheapest source of new electricity in history and the fastest-growing energy technology on Earth.
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Skyscrapers
The steel frames, safety elevators, and wind engineering that let buildings climb from ten stories in 1885 to more than half a mile in the air.
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Nuclear Fusion
Joining light atomic nuclei to release energy, the reaction that powers the Sun and the one engineers have spent seventy years trying to run on Earth.
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Nuclear Power
Splitting uranium atoms to boil water and spin turbines, the technology that began under a Chicago sports stand in 1942 and now supplies about a tenth of the world's electricity.
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Computers & Internet
AI & Robotics
xAI
The artificial intelligence company Elon Musk founded in 2023, maker of the Grok chatbot and the Colossus supercomputer, acquired by SpaceX in 2026 and renamed SpaceXAI.
4 reading levels: Rookie · Curious · Sharp · Expert
Robots
Machines that sense, decide, and act on their own, from the first factory arm installed in 1961 to surgical systems, robot vacuums, and the helicopter that flew on Mars.
4 reading levels: Rookie · Curious · Sharp · Expert
Artificial Intelligence
The field that began at a 1956 summer workshop and now writes text, recognizes images, and folds proteins, along with the long winters and hard limits along the way.
4 reading levels: Rookie · Curious · Sharp · Expert