History
Looking back on great characters, eras and moments in technology and innovation.
Random related stories from our 25-year archives
Tycho Brahe is best known as a Danish Renaissance astronomer. But he was also a bit of an alchemist, and a first-ever analysis on shards found at his former home from the 1500s has shed some light on just what he was up to in his basement lab.
We are only just beginning to tap the potential of living in a wired world, but as technology hurtles onward without pause it's easy to overlook the size and si
Resembling a grape with thicker and darker skin, the kiwiberry may be one of the least known and most underrated fruits on Earth. It's also old, dating back more than 20 million years. But until recently, we only cared about the plant's aesthetics.
Sections of the historic 15th century Fibonacci manuscript are going to be put up for auction.
Carl Sagan is best known as a science popularizer, but he was also a pioneer in the early US space program, a planetary scientist, astrobiologist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and social activist. Now a major archive of his work preserved by his assistant Shirley Arden is up for auction.
August 16, 2007 New research suggests that a key aspect of the calculus, commonly attributed to Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz in the late 1600s, may i
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November 01, 2026 | Bronwyn ThompsonFrom self-service book bars to a building where robots fetch paperbacks stacked over nine floors, there's a reason Shenzhen is China's "city of libraries." It also has the highest number of wealthy entrepreneurs and leads the way in AI and tech. -
October 15, 2026 | Mike McRaeIn 2013, space historian William B. Cade found an anonymous report claiming a “very intense magnetic disturbance” was responsible for a train delay in England in 1841. When scientists looked into it, they found one serious hole in the story. -
March 29, 2026 | Bronwyn ThompsonA slab of limestone excavated in 1984 from the ancient Coriovallum settlement presented a puzzle for researchers of Roman history. Because of its grooves, the stone piece looked like a board game. More than 40 years on, we may have the rulebook. -
November 03, 2025 | Abhimanyu GhoshalAfter two decades under construction, Egypt has officially thrown open the doors to the largest archeological museum in the world, spanning 94 football fields and built to house some 100,000 exhibits through several millennia. -
August 05, 2024 | Michael IrvingThe ingenuity of ancient Egyptian engineers may have been more advanced than we thought. A currently unexplained ancient structure may have been part of a water purification system feeding a hydraulic lift to raise huge stone blocks to build a pyramid. -
June 16, 2024 | David SzondyThe wreck of the ship used for Sir Ernest Shackleton's final Antarctic expedition has been located by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) off the coast of Labrador. The Quest, aboard which Sir Ernest died in 1922, sank in May 1962. -
May 23, 2023 | Michael IrvingIt’s hard to construct a building without a plan, but when did humans first start doing that? Archeologists have discovered the oldest known blueprints, with a 9,000-year-old rock carving in Jordan depicting a to-scale plan for a nearby megastructure. -
March 09, 2022 | David SzondyThe wreck of one of the most famous exploration ships in history has been located. Using a robotic submersible, the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust has found Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, which was crushed in the Antarctic pack ice in 1915. -
March 14, 2021 | David SzondyA team of scientists at the University College London has used 3D tomography to shed new light on the Antikythera Mechanism – the world's first computer, which was an accurate model of the Cosmos as it was known to the ancient Greeks. -
February 21, 2020 | James HollowayAfter the death of Larry Tesler this week, New Atlas takes a brief look back at the invention of those now-ubiquitous computer commands: cut, copy and paste. -
November 29, 2019 | James HollowayWhenever computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee makes the headlines, a significant minority of outlets inevitably, and wholly incorrectly, refer to him as “the inventor of the internet.” Here’s why they’re wrong. -
March 14, 2018 | James HollowayNew Atlas looks at some of Stephen Hawking's most memorable quotations, and to set them in the context of his life and work. Brace yourself for a whirlwind tour of free will, the state of humanity, God and fake news, all thanks to one of science's finest minds… -
August 29, 2017 | Anthony WoodA file of 148 documents belonging to Alan Turing including correspondence, official letters, and a handwritten draft of a BBC radio program on artificial intelligence has been discovered in a filing cabinet at the University of Manchester. -
February 16, 2017 | David SzondyIn a comment piece in Nature, astrophysicist and author Mario Livio discusses a recently rediscovered 1939 essay by Sir Winston Churchill in which he discusses the possibility of life on other planets and the exploration of the Solar System. -
December 05, 2016 | Mike HanlonTrains held the land speed record until 1907 when Glen Curtis ran 136 mph on a V8 motorcycle. Within a decade he would become the Henry Ford of the aerospace industry, but his motorcycle record of 1907 was not bested until 1930.
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