20 things that were invented much earlier than you probably thought

Edward Jenner introduced the first vaccine before the turn of the 19th century — a rudimentary version of the cowpox virus to eliminate smallpox.

A milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes approached Jenner with several cowpox lesions on her hand. Jenner drew fluid from the lesions, then scratched it into the skin of an 8-year-old boy, his first test subject.

Though the boy came down with a fever initially, his illness quickly abated. When Jenner later introduced the smallpox virus, the boy was immune.

Volta initially called the device an "artificial electric organ," in response to the prevailing theory at the time that animal tissue was necessary for conductivity.

Instead, he used stacked metal disks and brine-soaked rags. They conducted electricity. The battery was born.

Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell unveiled his newly invented telephone, German clerk Emile Berliner realized the device's transmitter was fairly weak.

So, with only a rudimentary knowledge of electricity, Berliner set to work on a so-called loose-contact transmitter, which amplified the noise that came from Bell's existing model.

Bell's company, the American Bell Telephone Company, was so impressed with Berliner's work that it hired him as an assistant in its lab.

A few days after Christmas in 1886, Josephine Garis Cochran submitted a request to the US Patent Office.

Cochran went on to found a manufacturing company for her invention, which eventually became KitchenAid.

In a weird transition from ordinary eyeglasses, the contact lenses of the late 19th century were made entirely of glass and meant to cover a person's whole eye.

They were initially called "scleral lenses," referring to the white of the eye.

Roser sold his recipe to Kennedy Biscuit Works, which would later become Nabisco.

The mass production of Fig Newtons became possible through a machine that used two funnels: the inner funnel that supplied jam and the outer funnel that pumped out the dough. Roser would later patent it.

Reno's first model was installed at the Old Iron Pier at Coney Island as a ride. The invention quickly gained favor among the Industrial Revolution's miners and factory workers, who could spare their legs the long journey to work.

In reality, gelatin itself has been around since the 15th century, but the traditional Jell-O we know and love today was created at the dawn of the 20th century.

In 1899, Wait sold Jell-O to the Genesee Pure Food Company, which purchased the product due to its similar name with a product the company already owned, Grain-O. By 1902, the Genesee Pure Food Company was marketing Jell-O as "America's Most Famous Dessert," and had introduced dozens of new flavors.

Since the wheat crackers were baked near Niagara Falls, Nabisco advertised them as being "baked by electricity." There's even a theory that electricity is where Triscuits get their name — the "tric" in electricity.

According to Gizmodo, Oreos were released as part of a trio of "highest class biscuits" that included Mother Goose Biscuit and Veronese Biscuits. However, neither of the other two biscuits remain today — and Oreos have only grown in popularity.

The Ruston Proctor Aerial Target was a radio-controlled pilotless airplane, and was based on technology from the inventor Nikola Tesla.

The Aerial Target was meant to act as a flying bomb that could be piloted into enemies. However, it was never used in a combat.

All-Stars, Converse, Chuck Taylors — whatever you know them by — originally started as the shoe for basketball players, though they're better known now as casual sneakers.

At the time of its invention, it wasn't supposed to even be its own product. Velveeta was originally created to stick in the cracks of broken cheese wheels.

Kraft purchased Velveeta in 1927 and marketed it as a healthier version of cheese, and the rest is history. Velveeta can now be found in cheesy bites, macaroni and cheese, and cheesy skillets, as well as in its original form.

Grebe tested out an early version of a car radio that would later come to define a budding car culture of the 1920s.

Grebe's set up included the vacuum tube in the backseat, a small motor to power the vacuum tube, and a separate battery to power the radio itself.

According to The New York Times, Avery invented a machine to make self-adhesive labels with a $100 investment from his future wife Dorothy Durfee, who was a teacher.

Avery started a company in 1935 called Kum Kleen Products, but renamed it to Avery Adhesives in 1936. The brand still lives on today as Avery Dennison.

With help from Dr. Henry Heimlich, comedian and ventriloquist Paul Winchell filed his patent for the world's first artificial heart in 1961.

The device included a small battery pack worn outside the body that controlled the pumping mechanism within.

While Winchell's design was accepted two years later, it wouldn't be until 1982 that the invention would see the first successful implantation in a human.

Shortly before midnight on October 29, 1969, engineers from UCLA sent Stanford Research Institute the word "LOG" one letter at a time over a newly formed network called ARPANET.

It was a primitive system, but the setup held the core ingredients that would eventually create the internet as we know it.

The prototype offered just 30 seconds of call time and required 10 hours to charge — not to mention, it weighed almost 2.5 pounds.

Known as Navstar 1, the first satellite to reach orbit did so in 1978. It has long since been taken out of orbit, but it helped usher in a new era of interconnectedness around the world.

Thanks to the 1978 launch, we can now yell at our phones for being too pushy with driving directions.

Two decades before Apple unveiled the iPod, Kramer filed a patent for his digital audio music player, which he called the IXI.

The device was roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes, featured a four-button control system, and could hold about three and a half minutes of music.

"In a matter of seconds," the filing read, "a live performance at Carnegie Hall can be recorded and available in shops all over the world."

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