These are the 10 greatest inventors of all-time.
Of course, this list is subjective, but I’m basing the rankings on the overall impact
of their work.
Not only was Leonardo Da Vinci, the man who painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper,
one of the greatest artists ever to live, he also one of the most talented men in history
with a scope and depth of interests that were unprecedented.
His genius is why we call people of great skill in many areas, Renaissance men.
Leonardo’s innovations in the art of painting and drawing alone are incredible, and include
the way he laid on the paint, how he painted light, botany, geology, human emotion and
the anatomy.
And after his death, Da Vinci has become revered for his technological ingenuity, having conceptualized
detailed designs for things that wouldn’t be realized for hundreds of years after his
death, like flying machines, an armoured vehicle, concentrated solar power, and a double hulled
ship that was much less likely to sink.
If Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings would have been published, they would have made
a major contribution to the field of medical research.
He was also employed for a time as an engineer where he showed considerable talent.
Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was so great that, legend has it, the King of
France - who befriended Leonardo in the twilight years of his life - held Da Vinci in his arms
as the genius died.
Benjamin Franklin was the greatest thinker across a wide range of subjects in American
history.
He was a printer, a leading author, postmaster, political theorist, politician, statesman,
diplomat, and - of course - a scientist and inventor.
His contributions ranged from small things like an idea for a sea anchor, a more efficient
fireplace called the Franklin stove, and a design for new paper money that was more difficult
to counterfeit; to his famous investigation of electricity and the discovery of positive
and negative electrons, which led to his invention of the lightning rod.
Franklin was also a natural leader of men, creating the first organized firefighting
department in America; founded America’s first hospital; created the US Postal System;
was part of three man team that founded America’s college system; and - perhaps most importantly
- was an influential founding father who played a pivotal role in inventing the American political
system.
Franklin is the only Founding Father whose signature appears on all four major documents
of the founding of the country: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with
France, the Treaty of Paris, and the United States Constitution.
Archimedes was considered the greatest mathematician of his time and one of the greatest inventors
ever.
The fact that he lived almost 2000 years before nearly all the other men on this list is a
testament to his genius.
He proved a range of geometric theorems we still rely on today, like the area of a circle,
the surface area and volume of a sphere, and the area under a parabola.
He also derived an accurate approximation of pi and created a system using exponentiation
for expressing very large numbers.
These mathematical innovations weren’t widely recognized during his lifetime, but the things
he created based on his calculations were.
Archimedes was the first to describe the principles of the lever, and was an epic designer of
early machines like the screw pump, compound pulleys, the first planetarium, and defensive
weapons to protect his native city, Syracuse, during war.
The need for these last innovations was unfortunately all too great, considering he was killed during
the Siege of Syracuse by a Roman soldier, even though enemy commanders had ordered that
he not be harmed.
Galileo praised Archimedes many times and referred to him as superhuman.
Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press to Europe around 1450.
The world’s first movable type system was first invented in China the technology spread
to Korea, and they modified it to use metal, but it was Gutenberg who perfected the system’s
efficiency by creating mass-produced movable type out of metal to print the much simpler
European alphabet onto the page using oil-based ink.
This printing press suddenly made it economical to create books and pamphlets, and was the
single most important invention that sparked the era of mass communication.
Many have named it the most important invention of the entire millenium from 1-2,000 AD.
For the first time in history, information circulated unrestricted, this broke the elite’s
monopolistic grip on education and learning, because, now anyone could learn how to read
and write.
The Englishmen Charles Babbage is considered a “father of the computer” for first coming
up with the concept of a programmable computational machine that - while mechanical and unwieldy
- had the basic architecture of a modern computer, an idea born out of his work on increasing
the productivity of labor.
His book On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers was influential and included what’s now
known as the “Babbage principle,” which pointed out the advantages to those businesses
that adopted a method for dividing labor by assigning only high-skill tasks to high-cost
workers.
His data-driven mind also led him into the field of Metrology, which is the scientific
study of measurement for which Babbage is considered a pioneer.
He also invented the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the
tracks of obstacles, constructed the first dynamometer car used for measuring a train’s
performance, invented the first ophthalmoscope allowing a doctor to see inside the eye, and
achieved significant results in Cryptography--although these findings were not known until over a
century after his death as they were kept secret by the English military.
Galileo Galilei was the “Father of Modern Science,” according to Einstein.
His major achievement was improving the telescope and using it to make observations about the
planets and stars, including supporting Copernicus’ revolutionary idea that the Earth revolved
around the Sun.
He also created an early version of the thermometer, invented an improved military compass, and
did experimental physics work on the motions of bodies that was a precursor to the classical
mechanics developed by Isaac Newton.
Galileo’s other notable astronomical contributions were the discovery of Venus’ four moons,
sunspots, and the discovery that the Milky Way was in fact a multitude of stars packed
so densely that they appeared to be clouds when viewed with the naked eye.
His writings and defense of his heliocentric view of the solar system brought him in direct
conflict with the powerful Roman Catholic Church who accused him of heresy and sentenced
him to house arrest, where he remained for the rest of his life.
While there he completed his final, and perhaps finest, work, Two New Sciences, summarizing
much of his career in physics over the preceding thirty years.
The Wright brothers invented, built, and flew the world’s first successful manned airplane
in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903, one of the most consequential days
in human history.
When Wilbur and Orville were boys, their father brought them home a toy helicopter, sparking
their interest in flying.
They played with it until it broke, and then built their own.
Neither boy finished high school, but they were smart, hardworking and made a great team
and in 1890, launched their own newspaper, the West Side News.
The project was short lived, but it cemented their bond and before long they had capitalized
on the bicycle craze that was sweeping the nation by starting their own shop and manufacturing
their own bike design, a successful endeavor that would become known as the Wright Cycling
Company.
They used the proceeds to fund their growing interest in flight.
There were two key innovations that led to that fateful day on that Carolina beach.
One was the brother’s work with their shop mechanic, Charlie Taylor, to custom build
a lightweight engine out of aluminum.
The second was their invention of three-axis control, enabling the pilot to effectively
steer the aircraft and maintain its equilibrium.
They’d go on to further develop their invention into many different models and created the
Wright Company, which also trained 115 more pilots to fly Wright Company planes in demonstrations
to the public, sharing the wonder of flight with many of their very curious countrymen.
James Watt may have been the single most responsible person in bringing about the Industrial Revolution.
He made the steam engine dramatically more efficient by introducing a separate condenser
that avoided wasting energy, which radically improved the machine’s power output and
transformed it into the workhorse of factory production.
In 1781, after much financial hardship and struggle, Watt patented a steam engine that
produced continuous rotative motion.
In a flash, new classes of industry were economically viable, setting off a rapid period of immense
economic and social change across world.
Watt also developed the concept of horsepower, and invented the document copier, patenting
the device in 1780.
The principle on which the machine is based remained in use until the arrival of modern
photocopiers and the watt unit of power is named after him.
The only man born after 1900 is Tim Berners-Lee, the English computer scientist who invented
the World Wide Web.
In March, 1989 he made a proposal for an information management system and eight months later,
proceeded to implement the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer
Protocol client and a server via the Internet.
For his new system, Berners-Lee built the first Web browser, Web server and the first
website, which provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was.
Three years later he founded - and continues to lead - the World Wide Web Consortium whose
stated purpose is to “develop protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth
for the Web.”
Berners-Lee, still just 59 years old, is currently working on the Semantic Web, which aims to
convert the current web, dominated by unstructured and semi-structured documents into a "web
of data" that can be processed by machines as outlined by Berners-Lee himself:
“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on
the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers.
A "Semantic Web", which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day
mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking
to machines.
The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”
Thomas Edison is the world’s greatest inventor, not just for what he invented, but because
he had the good sense to apply the principles of mass production and teamwork to innovation.
Edison has nearly 1,100 US patents in his name for inventions that had significant impact
on the world like electric light, sound recording, motion pictures, a long lasting practical
electric light bulb, a mechanical vote recorder, and a battery for an electric car.
His development of a system of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses
and factories was a crucial development in the modernization of the world.
After the sale of his quadruplex telegraph, Edison created the world’s first industrial
research laboratory with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation
and improvement, and then controlling its application.
It’s true that Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions that many of his
employees created through painstaking research and development under his direction, but it
took a special kind of genius to seize great opportunity after great opportunity, ballance
all those projects, and lead and inspire all those people.