Washington State has built some of the biggest things in tech. Count down five firsts — from life-saving kidney dialysis in Seattle and the moon buggy built in Kent to the Boeing 747 and Amazon, which started in a Bellevue garage — plus two bonus picks, including the little company Bill Gates and Paul Allen ran before Microsoft.
#5: Long-term kidney dialysis (Seattle, 1960)
A machine that cleans the blood when kidneys fail. In 1960, Seattle’s Dr. Belding Scribner found a fix. His tiny tube let patients be treated again and again. The idea came to him in the middle of the night.
#4: Boeing 707 prototype (Renton, 1954)
A yellow-and-brown test jet nicknamed the Dash 80. Boeing built it at Renton; it first flew in July 1954. It was the model for Boeing’s 707 jetliner. Its test pilot barrel-rolled it over a Seattle crowd.
#3: Lunar Roving Vehicle (Kent, 1971)
An electric car built to drive on the Moon. Boeing built them in Kent for Apollo 15, 16 and 17. It folded flat to ride on the side of the lunar lander. Three of them are still parked on the Moon.
#2: Boeing 747 jumbo jet (Everett, 1969)
The first wide-body airliner — the original jumbo jet. Boeing built it in Everett; it first flew in February 1969. Two aisles inside made room for hundreds of travelers. Boeing built the world’s largest building just to make it.
#1: Amazon (Bellevue, 1994)
The online store that started out selling just books. Jeff Bezos founded it in his Bellevue garage in 1994. You could find and order a book without leaving home. Its first name was Cadabra — as in abracadabra.
Bonus Picks From Washington
Traf-O-Data (Seattle, 1972). Bill Gates and Paul Allen started a company in Seattle. Traf-O-Data turned road traffic counts into reports. Allen said it prepared them for Microsoft’s first product.
PageMaker (Seattle, 1985). Making newsletters and flyers on a home computer. Seattle’s Aldus released PageMaker in July 1985. Founder Paul Brainerd coined the term desktop publishing.
Tech From Every State
This is part of my Tech From Every State series: the top tech inventions and firsts from each of the 50 states, told with simple animations. Watch the whole series on YouTube and subscribe to The Tech Ranch so you don’t miss your state.
Did we miss something invented in Washington? Tell me in the YouTube comments — and give the video a thumbs up if you learned something.
