On a typical morning, Libby wakes to the music of a British rock group on her clock radio. She is probably unaware that the first experimental public radio broadcast took place in 1906 from a small Massachusetts station, about a decade after an Italian named Guglielmo Marconi patented the radio, or wireless.

Once dressed, Libby pours a glass of orange juice, a drink made from a fruit once popular in ancient China. The orange juice concentrate was preserved by a freezing process invented in Florida in the 1940s. Her mother uses an electric coffee grinder to grind beans imported from Brazil. The machine was invented in Ohio in the 1930s. (Manual grinders date to the 17th century.) Her mother pours the ground coffee into a Melitta filter cone that was invented around the turn of the century by a German woman, Melitta Bentz. Libby decides to have a bowl of Kellogg’s corn flakes, named after the American family that developed the cereal in the late 1890s. As she eats, she reads the newspaper. The first regular weekly newspapers appeared in Germany in the early 17th century.

After breakfast, Libby says good-bye to her father, who is shaving with a safety razor—patented in 1901 in the United States by King Camp Gillette, a salesman from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The first razors were made of such materials as shells and sharks’ teeth centuries ago. The safety razor dates back to late 18th-century France.

Before Libby leaves for school, she brushes her teeth. The Chinese claim that they invented the toothbrush in the late 15th century.

Libby packs up her school belongings, including the saxophone she is learning to play. The saxophone was invented in the 1840s by Adolphe Sax, of Brussels, Belgium. She also grabs her Walkman, invented in the late 1970s in Tokyo, Japan. Despite the fact that she just brushed her teeth, she pops some gum into her mouth as she heads out the door. Since ancient times, people have chewed gum. The Indians of Mexico and Central America chewed a substance called chicle that came from wild sapodilla trees. It was not until the 1860s that Americans discovered the chewing pleasures of chicle.

As Libby leaves the house, it starts to rain. A low-pressure system that swept down from Canada sends her running back inside for her Taiwanese-made umbrella. Umbrellas were depicted in scenes in ancient Egypt, and have reappeared throughout history in either ceremonial roles or as protection from the elements.

Back outside, she runs across the street when the traffic light turns green. The first working traffic signal was installed outside the Houses of Parliament, in London, England, in 1868. Despite its usefulness, several policemen were killed while operating it, including one who came to light it after some gas from the city gas main had seeped up into the hollow signal pole. The modern version is an early 20th-century invention.

Solid, smooth roads, like the one in front of Libby’s house, were built using a surface developed in part by the English engineer for whom it was named—John Loudon McAdam. His early 19th-century “macadam” design became popular in much of England and the United States.

Along comes a city bus to take her to school. The first bus line was established in Paris, France, in the 17th century, but it was short-lived. Not until the early 19th century were horse-drawn buses a regular feature in cities such as Paris, London, and New York.

And Libby is off to school.