Here is a list of some of the most important inventions we can show, which thoroughly transformed our world as we see it today.
The current day that we live in may seem as a result of rapid innovations and discoveries. But if we venture to trace back the facilities and machines of today, most of them are advances of devices that were built well into the past. We have been creating tools to help us tame the physical world since the early days of our species.
Transportation, communication and information exchange all follow the same route of continuous innovation on an invention that dates back hundreds of years ago.
However, there happen to be some inventions that have stood the test of time and remain as indispensable as they ever were, while some that have been long forgotten completely revolutionized how we think about time and energy. These inventions didn’t just change the course of humanity but paved a completely new one out of sheer chaos. Any attempt to count down the most important technological inventions is certainly debatable, but here are some major advancements that should probably be on any such list:
1. Compas
Throughout history, people had an unquenchable thirst for exploring the unknown. But it wouldn’t have been possible without knowing the reference points that helped in identifying the geographical location. Ancient mariners navigated by the stars, but that method didn't work during the day or on cloudy nights, and so it was unsafe to voyage far from land.
The Chinese invented the first compass sometime between the 9th and 11th century; it was made of lodestone, a naturally magnetized iron ore, the attractive properties of which they had been studying for centuries. (Pictured is a model of an ancient Chinese compass from the Han Dynasty; it is a south-indicating ladle, made of polished lodestone.) Soon after, the technology passed to Europeans and Arabs through nautical contact. The compass enabled mariners to navigate safely far from land, increasing sea trade and contributing to the Age of Discovery.
This is why compasses were one of the most important tools that helped mankind to explore and record the land and water masses around the world. In today’s world of satellites and GPS, it may seem irrelevant, but it was one of the key inventions that changed the world for better!
2. Nail
Without nails, civilization would surely crumble. This key invention dates back more than 2,000 years and became possible only after people developed the ability to cast and shape metal. Previously, wood structures had to be built by interlocking adjacent boards geometrically a much more arduous construction process.
3. Calendar
The modern calendar didn't come into use until the 1600s, so there were several forms of calendars that were used to fill in for a unified system. The first form of the calendar used by Egyptians was the solar calendar. Then, Julius Caesar brought the Julian calendar that used a 12-month system. But, it had major flaws. The Gregorian calendar or the modern calendar we use today was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.
4. Optical Lenses
From glasses to microscopes and telescopes, optical lenses have greatly expanded the possibilities of our vision. They have a long history, first developed by ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, with key theories of light and vision contributed by Ancient Greeks. Optical lenses were also instrumental components in the creation of media technologies involved in photography, film, and television.
5. Clock
Time is something that helps us keep track of everything. People didn’t invent clock as such, as it was a redesign of the sundial.
Sundials were the first devices that man used to keep track of time, and its use dates back as long as 6 thousand years. The Egyptians and the Chinese used water clocks to keep track of time. The first mechanical clock was made by Yi Xing of China in 725 AD.
6. The Printing Press
The printing press is a prominent part of the foundation on which modern civilization was built upon. It was the invention of Johannes Gutenberg. Though others before him — including inventors in China and Korea — had developed movable type made from metal, Gutenberg was the first to create a mechanized process that transferred the ink (which he made from linseed oil and soot) from the movable type to paper.
With this movable type process, printing presses exponentially increased the speed with which book copies could be made, and thus they led to the rapid and widespread dissemination of knowledge for the first time in history. Twenty million volumes had been printed in Western Europe by 1500. The machine helped to mass produce newspapers and other forms of informative pieces. It also meant that the prices on printed paper came down and it was accessible for many. The printing press served a great role in the industrial revolution, and by then, even the lower classes were able to afford newspapers and get to know what happened around them.
7. The Steam-Powered Train.
The steam engine, without which the progress of the agricultural and industrial revolution would have been impossible, deserves an honorable mention. These revolutions shaped the physical landscape, as well as the social and political ideologies of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The first successful steam engine locomotive was built by George Stephenson in 1814. George Stephenson built the steam engine based on the design by John Blenkinsop. It ran on the engine design put forward by James Watt. The invention of the steam engine and its capability in carrying massive loads made it the best way to carry tons of load across vast stretches of land quickly. Soon miles and miles of railroad was laid down to connect states and countries.
8. Battery.
In the 1800s, people had no continuous electric lines that carried a constant supply of power. So, the production of electricity was not at all an easy task. This changed when the Italian inventor Alessandro Volta invented the first-ever battery using zinc and silver discs placed alternatively in the form of a cylindrical pile. The battery was able to produce repeated sparks and helped to operate many apparatuses.
9. The telephone.
Though several inventors did pioneering work on electronic voice transmission (many of whom later filed intellectual property lawsuits when telephone use exploded), Alexander Graham was the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone in 1876. He drew his inspiration from teaching the deaf and also visits his hearing-impaired mom, according to PBS. He called the first telephone an "electrical speech machine," according to PBS. The invention quickly took off and revolutionized global business and communication. While Graham died on Aug. 2, 1922, according to PBS, U.S. telephone service stopped for a minute to honor him.
10. Telegraph.
The Telegraph was the forerunner in communication prior to the invention of the telephone by Antonio Meucci. It was developed by Samuel Morse and his team of engineers. With the invention of the telegraph, long-distance communication no longer had to depend on messengers. With the use of Morse code, long-distance communication became easier, and people could communicate with their loved ones over long distances by sending their messages through telegram offices.
11. Computer.
Computers are one of people greatest inventions without a doubt. Primarily built for doing complex mathematical calculations, the computers of the past have evolved into machines that can be used to chart the evolution of stars and rocks in space in advance.
The first mechanical computer was invented by Charles Babbage. But it was vastly different from what we have now. It used moving parts to do the computations and weighed tons. The compact computers we use today are a result of inventions like the transistors and integrated circuits. Invented in the 1970s, personal computers greatly expanded people's capabilities. While your smartphone is more powerful, one of the earliest PCs was introduced in 1974 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) via a mail-order computer kit called the Altair. From there, companies like Apple, Microsoft, and IBM have redefined personal computing.
12. The Transistor.
Invented collectively by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley in 1947, the transistor is the greatest invention of the last century. The device, which is now not wider than a human hair, bears on its shoulders the entire weight of the Information Age. Prior to its invention, computers were built with bulky vacuum tubes, which caused one to occupy an entire room. The ridiculous scalability of transistors or semiconductor technologies, in general, enabled us to pack more transistors into smaller volumes. The result was smaller, faster and cheap computers, phones, routers and basically every other electronic device in your sight.
13. Light.
Utilization of electricity is a process to which a number of bright minds have contributed over thousands of years, going all the way back to Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. It's hard to overestimate how important electricity has become to people as it runs the majority of our gadgetry and shapes our way of life. The invention of the light bulb, although a separate contribution, attributed to Thomas Edison in 1879, is certainly a major extension of the ability to harness electricity. It has profoundly changed the way we live, work as well as the look and functioning of our cities.
The efforts to create a lightbulb started in around 1800s. But the inventions back then were not sustainable as the thread broke after a few days of use. This made the commercial use of bulbs, not a feasible option. But fast forward to 1879, Thomas Edison and his group of engineers perfected the lightbulb by using tungsten as the fiber material. The invention of lightbulbs liberated people from the dependence of just daylight and brought about a scenario where people can work or do other labor-intensive chores at night under sufficient lighting conditions.
Light bulbs changed the world by allowing us to be active at night. As well as initiating the introduction of electricity in homes throughout the Western world, this invention also had a rather unexpected consequence of changing people's sleep patterns. Instead of going to bed at nightfall (having nothing else to do) and sleeping in segments throughout the night separated by periods of wakefulness, we now stay up except for the 7 to 8 hours allotted for sleep, and, ideally, we sleep all in one go.
14. Internet.
It really needs no introduction: The global system of interconnected computer networks known as the Internet is used by billions of people worldwide. Some of you might not be familiar with the term ARPANET, but you might be well accustomed to its modern-day version – the Internet. There is no single person who can be credited with the invention of the internet as it was done by many. Countless people helped develop it, but the person most often credited with its invention is the computer scientist Lawrence Roberts. In the 1960s, a team of computer scientists working for the U.S. Defense Department's ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) built a communications network to connect the computers in the agency, called ARPANET. It used a method of data transmission called "packet switching" which Roberts, a member of the team, developed based on prior work of other computer scientists. ARPANET was the predecessor of the Internet. By 1970s, Transmission Control protocol was developed by the scientist Vinton Chef that enabled computers to communicate with each other. The internet we know today was developed by a computer programmer named Tim Berners-Lee as he created the World Wide Web, which essentially was a web of information that people can access.
15. Vaccination.
While sometimes controversial, the practice of vaccination is responsible for eradicating diseases and extending the human lifespan. The first vaccine was developed by Edward Jenner in 1796. He invented vaccine of smallpox that saved countless lives and earned him the title of Father of Immunology. A rabies vaccine was developed by the French chemist and biologist Louis Pasteur in 1885, who is credited with making vaccination the major part of medicine that is it today. Pasteur is also responsible for inventing the food safety process of pasteurization, that bears his name. Vaccines have helped us in curbing a ton of life-threatening epidemics. It was estimated that nearly 500 million deaths were registered because of variola alone. The world benefited a lot from the invention of vaccines as its derivatives helped people to transgress periods of deadly diseases.
16. Cars.
Providing people with incredible freedom of movement, the automobile has made traveling great distances simple. In addition, it has led to the creation of suburbs as people no longer need to live in the city center. Cars completely changed the way we travel, as well as the design of our cities, and thrust the concept of the assembly line into the mainstream. They were invented in their modern form in the late 19th century by a number of individuals, with special credit going to the German Karl Benz for creating what's considered the first practical motorcar in 1885.
17. Airplane.
Our body was not engineered to make the flight and those who thought it could be achieved failed in their efforts. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the visionaries who believed that man could indeed fly, provided that he can build an apparatus that can aid in flight. Invented in 1903 by the American Wright brothers, planes brought the world closer together, allowing us to travel quickly over great distances. Their invention evolved over the years to become what we now call as modern-day airplanes. Now people can cover thousands of miles in a matter of hours thanks to the achievement of Wilbur and Orville Wright. This technology has broadened minds through enormous cultural exchanges.
18. ATM (Automated Teller Machine).
The invention of the ATM (Automated Teller Machine) is the most important inventions ever made. In the present world, ATMs drove banking into a new concept of self-service. According to the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), there are now over 2.2 million ATM machines installed worldwide. Using ATM, customers make a variety of transactions such as cash withdrawals, check balances, or credit mobile phones. Many experts believe that the first ATM was the creation of Luther Simjian, called Bankograph. In 1967, John Shepherd-Barron came up with a bright idea of money vending machine, which was completed a London bank called Barclays. Earlier machines used paper vouchers instead of plastic cards. The customer entered an identification code and can draw a maximum of £10 at a time. American Engineer Donald Wetzel devised the first automated banking machine in the U.S.
19. Films.
Almost everyone loves to watch movies of different sorts like a love story, comedy, drama, horror, suspense, action, fiction, biography, documentary, etc. A film is also called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film, photoplay, flick. The name "film" originates from the fact that a photographic film has been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Soon the inspiration for movies were the plays and dance, which had elements common to film: scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, and storyboards. Later in the 17th century, the lanterns were used to project animation, which was achieved by various types of mechanical slides. Much later in 1839, Henry Fox Talbot makes an important advancement in photography production. In 1846 was important for the development of motion pictures. The first movie ever made is the horse in motion. In March 1895, the first film with a Cinématographe camera was shot on La Sortie de leucine Lumière a Lyon (Workers leaving the Lumière factory at Lyon). With time, the movies evolved with sound, music, color, and advanced technology.
20. Guns.
For some guns might be a sensational invention while for others it might be a dreadful invention. But the gun has a positive sides. The gun an important place in our world because the guns defend peoples which undergo injustice and aggression, the guns defend law and order in society, the guns defend from wild animals and criminals and etc. But in history and today, we testify how the bad or aggressive people use the gun for their terrible aims. These people break the law and stability in our world turning such inventions in negative inventions! Guns have been the primary tools since ancient age. But, it is an undeniable fact that the Guns have revolutionized the world. The earliest usage of a firearm might have been in China during the 13th century CE. In earlier days, guns were fired by holding a burning wick to a "touch hole" in the barrel igniting the powder inside. The first machine gun is the matchlock, which dates to 1400s. By the 12th century, technology started spreading to Asia, followed by Europe. The problem of loading and reliability was solved by the invention of a hand-driven machine gun called Gatling gun. It was invented by Richard J. Gatling during the American Civil War.
Comments