Fascinating chart showing the adoption rate of new technologies over the past century.

Horace Dediu re-graphed the data to show how long it took each technology to reach 50- and 80-percent adoption rates (see how Smartphone is the fastest tech to reach 50-percent penetration while telephone is the slowest?).

And for fun, check out this list of the fastest adopted gadgets in the last 50 years. I guess it should be no surprise, but it still is fascinating to me that 13 (arguably, 16) of the 20 items on this list are directly related to entertainment. (Bonus points if you can guess what’s first on the list before clicking through.)

(Via Justin Blanton.)

The 100-Year March of Technology in One Graph