The 19th century also saw the invention of new and strange means of transport such as the bicycle. Like trains and the railways, these means of transport caught the imagination through prints and drawings. In France many similar prints and drawings were published throughout the 19th century.

Among the inventions of the 19th century, one of the most common objects in the world, the fountain pen with replaceable ink cartridge, was invented by the Romanian mathematician, engineer and pedagogue, Petrache Poenaru. He studied in France and obtained a patent from the French government.

Portugal joined the 19th-century trend of regarding technical progress as sign of development. The Astronomical Observatory responded to the need to study the world with the criteria of scientific knowledge and classification.

Meteorological, geographical and anthropological data were collected in notebooks. This notebook belonged to the Portuguese Commander Hermenegildo Capelo, who used it during an expedition to the interior of the African continent from Angola to Mozambique in 1884–85. The colony of Mozambique had an important Muslim community.

This barometer is one of the tools used on the new railways built in Turkey after the Crimean War.

During the reign of Sultan Mulay ‘Abd al-Aziz telegraph lines were introduced in Morocco.

This object is a European calendar designed according to Ottoman, Armenian and Caucasian aesthetics. It displays innovations that entered deeply into everyday life reshaped and adapted in continuity with local artistic traditions.

Later in the 19th century, power stations generated electricity for public use. Electricity was a symbol of industrialisation and modernisation for every country.

The Morse transmitter continued to be crucial for the transmission of information, even after the invention of the telephone.

Later in the 20th century, the application of technology to a wide range of sectors, among them agriculture,was common. The changes had been so deep that it was felt necessary to document traditional procedures and new technology and hygiene standards. Technical “progress” was still seen as the milestone in the advancement of the states.