essay on great invention

89 Invention Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for a topic about invention that changed the world? You’re in the right place! Find the best invention essay examples and title ideas below.

🏆 Top Invention Essay Examples

📱 interesting invention speech topics, 👍 good essay topics on invention, ❓ invention research questions.

An invention is an innovative method, device, or process. Whether it is a small improvement or a radical breakthrough, an invention is something that changes production processes and the everyday life of people. Both the wheel and a super-modern smartphone are examples of inventions.

In your invention essay, you might want to discuss the importance of inventing in our life. Another option is to talk about a famous or your favorite invention. Want to get more ideas? In this article, we’ve gathered the best invention essay examples, speech topics, and titles. Go on reading to learn more.

• Electricity Is the Most Important Invention: Essay Example This process began centuries ago, yet its most active stage was launched in the middle of the nineteenth century, and one of the major moving forces of the rapid technological development was the reception and […]
• The Invention of Internet Several events led to the advancement of the internet in the world today. The level of computer literacy in the world played a leading role in the advancement of internet as teachers and students wanted […]
• Papyrus: Its Invention and Impact on the World The invention of papyrus paper by the Egyptians changed the scene since papyrus-paper proved to be the ideal writing material of the time.
• The Gunpowder Invention and Its Impacts on the World In the present times, the production of gunpowder still goes on as a continuation of the works of the ancient alchemists from China.
• Dynamite Invention Influence on Politics, Society, and Economy The duality of the impact of the invention of dynamite is present in each of the three major civilizational areas mentioned above.
• Inventions That the World Would Do Without For instance, the invention of communication technology has been of great help to the entire world because of the convenience and reliability it has come with.
• The Inventions of Thomas Edison Many new developments appeared due to Edison’s achievements, who was one of the founders of the practical application of current. The introduction of compressed current energy marked the transition to a new technological era.
• Ancient Chinese Contributions and Inventions Trying to point to ten most useful inventions and contributions of the Ancient China, it was really difficult to select the most necessary ones as Ancient China is famous for its contribution into the development […]
• Impact of the Invention of the Camera on Art The invention of the camera immensely impacted the arts, especially in terms of painting. On the other hand, the camera’s invention spurred the development of new art directions, namely, Realism and Impressionism.
• Invention in Writing It refers to the creation of new ideas in relation to the question given or the use of old ideas to come up with new ideas in writing.
• Golden Age of Islam: Inventions and Success in Science The achievements of the Muslim technology and science contributed to the development of the Western society and helped Europe come out of the Dark Ages.
• Invention of Photography and Its Social Impact Although photography was invented in its full form only in 1835, an understanding of the social impact that was a result of the invention of photography is rightly portrayed by Azoulay in his article “The […]
• The Invention of Television According to Street, Paul Nipkow developed the Nipkow disc in 1884, which was capable of transmitting pictures by use of a cable. In the earlier times, it was hard to send a message for its […]
• The Invention of Development On being sworn in as the president of the United States, Rist notes, Truman introduced the term, underdevelopment, as a new concept of regarding the impoverished regions of the world.
• Telescope and Microscope Discovery Combo The paper will look into the history of the discoveries and their effects in the development of the human well beings as well as the enhancement of the human understanding of the surrounding nature in […]
• Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention It was a very short notice and since I had counted on working on my telephone project in the spring of 1870, I was at first not ready to move with my parents.
• The Flute Advancement and Its Invention The volume of the flute is dependent on the resonator’s size, the size of the air stream or the velocity of the air stream.
• Marcel Duchamp’s Invention of ‘The Readymade’ In his invention of readymade art, Duchamp based his artwork on the belief that creative art was not made from the perspective of the artist but from the point of view of the spectator who […]
• Computers: The History of Invention and Development It is treated as a reliable machine able to process and store a large amount of data and help out in any situation.”The storage, retrieval, and use of information are more important than ever” since […]
• Apple Company: Development, Inventions, Expansion This essay provides an insight into the development of the Apple Company and the various personalities that have contributed to its growth.
• Phonograph Invention and Evolution The time period the phonograph was invented and the circumstances that led to the invention. The invention and advancement of the phonograph and its operations has had a part to play on other inventions.
• Inventions of the Ancient Romans The Romans built some of the most impressive buildings in the world, including the Pantheon and the Colosseum. Thus, the Romans were ahead of their time, and their legacy continues to shape modern engineering and […]
• The Invention and the Power of Music This moment was the beginning of a practical study of the benefits of music therapy for the mental and physical condition of a person.
• Walter Benjamin’s Article: The Invention of Photography In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin discusses how the invention of photography and other mechanical reproduction forms has changed how people perceive works of art.
• Spectrophotometers: Invention and Development Jensen explains that spectrophotometers can be used to make measurements where previous methods were unable to, like measuring the amount of light absorbed by a substance at different wavelengths.
• The Motion Picture Invention and Inventors John Isaac played a key role in helping Eadweard to develop a technology used to take the first motion picture of a galloping horse.
• The Lego Company’s Inventions and Reinvention Hasbro and Barbie, the Lego company has the capacity to widen its range of products and diversify. The Lego company realized the importance of its community, and effectively used it in order to improve its […]
• Testing New Invention: Blender Switch The purpose of the analysis will be to determine if the proportion of returned blenders with new switches were deferent from the proportion of blenders with old switches.
• Social Needs: Inventions and Innovations The Pony Express was birthed in 1861 in the US with the primary goal of delivering mail and in the same breath, Coleman Sellers invented a Kinematoscope.
• Invention of Light Bulbs by Davy: Ethical Issues This was a pivotal moment when Humphrey picked up an interest in the field of electrochemistry in the year 1808 because it led to discovery of the most famous invention in his life which was […]
• Nikola Tesla’s Inventions and Achievements It is interesting to discuss that Tesla’s AC system led to the event in the history of the scientific and commercial world called the war of the currents.
• Radio Technology Invention and Development In 1906 he broadcasted a Christmas concert, including his voice and violin play with the help of 400-foot towers to the ships of the United Fruit Company, which were equipped with Marconi’s radios. In 1922 […]
• The Invention of Daguerreotypes Overall, the work on the daguerreotypes began in 1727, when Schulze introduced his important innovations into photography; it continued in the beginning of the 1800s, when the rudimentary camera obscura was created and actively used; […]
• Ancient Chinese Inventions and Contributions In spite of this stereotype, China is the Motherland of many inventions of the past. Gunpowder is one of the most significant and well-known inventions of ancient China.
• Discovery Versus Invention: Understanding, Comparison and Principles of the Subject The earlier example of gods invented to explain cosmology is an area where the knowledge was true for its time in the sense that it organized the universe and the world, but was later replaced […]
• “John Koza Has Built an Invention Machine” by Jonathon Keat In other words, a new scientific solution of a genius can be appropriate only when the society draws to a head with a little bit mere understanding of the scientific flow at a definite epoch […]
• Photography: Brief History of Invention At that time all images produced were in black and white and eventually all masters of the art came to believe that the only artistic way to record photographic images was in black and white. […]
• Two Inventions Comarison: Telephone and Internet However, the history of the first inventor of the telephone is shrouded in mystery with the name of Elisha Gray attached with the invention of the first telephone.
• Blackberry Device: History of Invention The introduction of the blackberry devices has provided a major breakthrough in the communication industry making it cheaper and faster to consumers.
• Airplnane: Description of the Invention The credit for the invention of the first powered airplane goes to the Wright brothers Orville and Wilbur. The worlds first powered, sustained and controlled flight in a heavier-than-air airplane was achieved by the Wright […]
• Rome and the Invention of the West In ” The Aeneid,” Virgil tells of the adventures of the hero of the Trojan war, Aeneas, who was destined by the gods to stay alive after the destruction of Troy to come to Italy […]
• “Invention as a Social Act” Analysis The paper is divided into four parts: social aspects of the invention, invention as a dialectical process, invention as an act, and classical criteria for a social view of the invention.
• Artificial Light Invention This reflective treatise attempts to explore the invention of artificial light, benefits, and usage in the field of chemistry. To begin with, artificial light is used in most of the experiments in the laboratory to […]
• Sickle Cell Disease and Scientific Inventions The disease is caused by a gene that is linked to the production of mutant hemoglobin. This is due to advance treatment and management of the disease”.
• The Enable Talk Gloves: Invention’s Pros & Cons The gloves have special sensors that turn the signs into texts on a smartphone that also turns the texts into speech. This invention will impact the participation of people with speech problems in the activities […]
• Optical Tools: History of Invention and Consequential Development Nevertheless, as the socio-cultural progress in this part of the world continued to gain a powerful momentum, the idea of using lenses to create optical devices began to appeal to more and more intellectually advanced […]
• Television, Its Invention and Technical Evolution The history of television involves the contribution of several engineers from different parts of the world. This paper seeks to explore the technical evolution of the television from its invention to the current developments.
• Biomimicry: Inventions Inspired by Nature The main idea or aim of biomimicry is that nature is able to provide humanity with brilliant solutions that can and need to be used.
• Visual Communications and Technological Inventions The invention of the printing press altered the history of the world the most notable one being the reduction of the power of the church.
• The Progressive Era and Its Technological Inventions Moreover, the period marked the shift from the agrarian to the urban society, and many critics referred to it as the age of reforms in American history.
• Umbrella and Its Invention in Different Cultures An umbrella in ancient China was not only the item of sun protection, but it was also a symbol of a high rank and nobility of its owner.
• The Invention of Cinema at the End of the XIX Century First attempt to introduce the idea of moving pictures traces back to middle of the seventeenth century, when Athanasius Kircher “who projected crude hand-painted images of the Devil…on the wall of a darkened chamber by […]
• New Product Invention: Australian Tourism This project will be beneficial because the hotels in the region have since been overwhelmed by the current flow of the visitors.
• Ancient Chinese Inventions History In this article, I highlight some of the inventions and contributions and examine four that I consider to be outstanding. A sample of these inventions and contributions include “silk, tea, porcelain, paper, printing, gunpowder, the […]
• Collective Invention During Industrial Revolution The major similarity between collective invention and heroic individual invention is that both provided important source of innovations during the early stages of industrialization.
• Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope As he famously used to say, the Kinetoscope did with the eye the same thing the phonograph did to the ear.
• Invention Analysis and Claiming: A Patent Lawyer’s Guide In page 5 of the book, the significance of persistent empirical research in technological advancement is demonstrated. Pasteurization is used in the exemplification of these different technological themes and applications.
• Aviation Industry and Its Prominent Inventions The above are some of the most influential aviation inventions ever made in the history of the industry. Given the failure in the development of manned aircraft by Russia, it is safe to conclude that […]
• Luc Sante “The Invention of the Blues” and John Jeremiah Sullivan “Unknown Bards” Personally, I have found the article “The Invention of the Blues” by Sante important because it explains in details the origin of the music genre.
• Modeling, Prototyping and CASE Tools: The Inventions to Support the Computer Engineering Despite the fact that the engineering is constantly being enriched with the new notions and techniques which add the new ways and methods to make the process of engineering quicker and flawless, the science still […]
• The Period Encompassing the Invention of Cinema Therefore, because of the establishment of the photographic film at that time that required the use of great illumination, the application of the electric spotlight that was introduced in 1904 in theatres became essential in […]
• US Inventions: Electronic Appliances and Transport Facilities Fortunately, the inventions of recorders, compact disks, and radio led to the spread of the music in other parts of the world.
• How Did the Invention of Agriculture Allowed Stable?
• How Did the Invention of the First American Transcontinental Affect the Nation?
• How Has the Invention and Use of Television Affected Human Life?
• How Has the Invention of Contact Lenses Affected People’s Sight?
• How Has the Invention of Social Media Affected Human Life Over Time?
• How Has the Invention of Vaccines Helped the World?
• How Remix Culture Fuels Creativity and Invention?
• How Did Television Change Since Its Invention?
• How the Bit Was Born: Claude Shannon and the Invention of Information?
• How Has the Invention and Use of the Computer Changed Lives in the 21st Century?
• How Venture Capital Works: Invention and Innovation Drive?
• Was Modern Art Greater Influenced by the Invention of the Camera or Kindergarten?
• What Are the Invention That Changed the 20th Century?
• What Brought About the Invention of Response Cards?
• What Did the Invention of the Bicycle as an Alternative Model?
• What Can the Invention Be Made for a Healthier?
• What Inspires Leisure Time Invention?
• What Invention Would the World Be Better off Without, and Why?
• Which Invention Has Had the Most Significant Effect on Our Lives in the Last Two Hundred Years?
• Which Invention Was More Important: The Internet or the Telegraph?
• Which Invention Has Made the Most Impact on Our Lives?
• What Was Invented in 2021?
• Why Is the Internet Most Important Invention?
• Why the Gatling Gun Is an Invention of Great Importance to the Science of Warfare?
• Computers: The Greatest Invention of the Century?
• Does Compulsory Licensing Discourage Invention?
• The Microscope: Science’s Greatest Invention?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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November 1, 2013

What Are the 10 Greatest Inventions of Our Time?

Before you consider, here are a few opinions from Scientific American readers in 1913 on what makes a great invention

By Daniel C. Schlenoff

A competition sponsored in 1913 by Scientific American asked for essays on the 10 greatest inventions. The rules: “our time” meant the previous quarter century, 1888 to 1913; the invention had to be patentable and was considered to date from its “commercial introduction.”

Perception is at the heart of this question. Inventions are most salient when we can see the historical changes they cause. In 2013 we might not appreciate the work of Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison on a daily basis, as we are accustomed to electricity in all its forms, but we are very impressed by the societal changes caused by the Internet and the World Wide Web (both of which run on alternating-current electricity, by the way). A century from now they might be curious as to what all the fuss was about. The answers from 1913 thus provide a snapshot of the perceptions of the time.

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The airplane: The Wright Flyer for military purposes, being demonstrated at Fort Myer, Va., in 1908. Image: Scientific American - November 1, 1913

Following are excerpts from the first- and second-prize essays, along with a statistical tally of all the entries that were sent in.

The first-prize essay was written by William I. Wyman, who worked in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., and was thus well informed on the progress of inventions. His list was:

1. The electric furnace (1889) It was “the only means for commercially producing Carborundum (the hardest of all manufactured substances).” The electric furnace also converted aluminum “from a merely precious to very useful metal” (by reducing it’s price 98 percent), and was “radically transforming the steel industry.”

2. The steam turbine, invented by Charles Parsons in 1884 and commercially introduced over the next 10 years. A huge improvement in powering ships, the more far-reaching use of this invention was to drive generators that produced electricity.

3. The gasoline-powered automobile. Many inventors worked toward the goal of a “self-propelled” vehicle in the 19th century. Wyman gave the honor specifically to Gottleib Daimler for his 1889 engine, arguing: “a century's insistent but unsuccessful endeavor to provide a practical self-propelled car proves that the success of any type that once answered requirements would be immediate. Such success did come with the advent of the Daimler motor, and not before.”

4. The moving picture. Entertainment always will be important to people. “The moving picture has transformed the amusements of the multitude.” The technical pioneer he cited was Thomas Edison.

5. The airplane. For “the Realization of an age-long dream” he gave the laurels of success to the Wright brothers, but apart from its military use reserved judgment on the utility of the invention: “It presents the least commercial utility of all the inventions considered.”

6. Wireless Telegraphy. Systems for transmitting information between people have been around for centuries, perhaps millennia. Telegraph signals got a speed boost in the U.S. from Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. Wireless telegraphy as invented by Guglielmo Marconi, later evolving into radio, set information free from wires.

7. The cyanide process. Sounds toxic, yes? It appears on this list for only one reason: It is used to extract gold from ore. “Gold is the life blood of trade,” and in 1913 it was considered to be the foundation for international commerce and national currencies.

8. The Nikola Tesla induction motor. “This epoch-making invention is mainly responsible for the present large and increasing use of electricity in the industries.” Before people had electricity in their homes, the alternating current–producing motor constructed by Tesla supplied 90 percent of the electricity used by manufacturing.

9. The Linotype machine. The Linotype machine enabled publishers—largely newspapers—to compose text and print it much faster and cheaper. It was an advance as large as the invention of the printing press itself was over the painstaking handwritten scrolls before it. Pretty soon we won’t be using paper for writing and reading, so the history of printing will be forgotten anyway.

10. The electric welding process of Elihu Thomson. In the era of mass production, the electric welding process enabled faster production and construction of better, more intricate machines for that manufacturing process.

The electric welder invented by Elihu Thomson enabled the cheaper production of intricate welded machinery. Image: Scientific American - November 1, 1913

The turbine invented by Charles Parsons powered ships. Assembled in numbers, they provided an efficient means of driving electrical generators and producing that most useful commodity. Image: Scientific American - November 1, 1913

The second-prize essay, by George M. Dowe, also of Washington, D.C., who may have been a patent attorney, was more philosophical. He divided his inventions into those aiding three broad sectors: production, transportation and communication.

1. Electrical fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. As natural fertilizer sources were depleted during the 19th century, artificial fertilizers enabled the further expansion of agriculture.

2. Preservation of sugar-producing plants. George W. McMullen of Chicago is credited with the discovery of a method for drying sugar cane and sugar beets for transport. Sugar production became more efficient and its supply increased by leaps and bounds, like a kid on a “sugar buzz.” Maybe this is one invention we could have done without. But I digress.

3. High-speed steel alloys. By adding tungsten to steel, “tools so made were able to cut at such a speed that they became almost red hot without losing either their temper or their cutting edge” The increase in the efficiency of cutting machines was “nothing short of revolutionary.”

4. Tungsten-filament lamp. Another success of chemistry. After tungsten replaced carbon in its filament, the lightbulb was considered “perfected.” As of 2013 they are being phased out worldwide in favor of compact fluorescent bulbs, which are four times as efficient.

5. The airplane. Not yet in wide use as transportation in 1913, but “To [Samuel] Langley and to the Wright brothers must be awarded the chief honors in the attainment of mechanical flight.” In 2013 the annoying aspects of commercial airline flying make transportation by horse and buggy seem a viable alternative.

6. The steam turbine. As with Mr. Wyman, the turbine deserved credit not only “in the utilization of steam as a prime mover” but in its use in the “generation of electricity.”

7. Internal combustion engine. As a means of transportation, Dowe gives the greatest credit to “Daimler, Ford and Duryea.” Gottleib Daimler is a well-known pioneer in motor vehicles. Henry Ford began production of the Model T in 1908 and it was quite popular by 1913. Charles Duryea made one of the earliest commercially successful petrol-driven vehicles, starting in 1896.

8. The pneumatic tire. Cars for personal transportation were an improvement on railways. “What the track has done for the locomotive, the pneumatic tire has done for the vehicle not confined to tracks.” Credit is given to John Dunlop and William C. Bartlet, who each had a milestone on the road (pun intended) to successful automobile and bicycle tires.

9. Wireless communication. Marconi was given the credit for making wireless “commercially practical.” Dowe also makes a comment that could apply equally to the rise of the World Wide Web, stating that wireless was “devised to meet the needs of commerce primarily, but incidentally they have contributed to social intercourse.”

10. Composing machines. The giant rotary press was quite capable of churning out masses of printed material. The bottleneck in the chain of production was composing the printing plates. The Linotype and the Monotype dispensed with that bottleneck.

The essays sent in were compiled to come up with a master list of inventions that were considered to be the top 10. Wireless telegraphy was on almost everyone’s list. The “aeroplane” came in second, although it was considered important because of its potential, not because there were so many airplanes in the sky. Here are the rest of the results:

There were also mentions for Luther Burbank's agricultural work (23); Louis Pasteur and vaccination work (20); acetylene gas from carbide (17); mercury-vapor lamp (7); preservation of sugar-producing plants (7); combined motion picture and talking machine (10); Edison's storage battery (6); automatic player piano (4); Pulmotor (a respirator machine) (4); telephone (4).

The motion picture: The hard-working Thomas Edison helped make this entertainment form technically viable. Image: Scientific American - November 1, 1913

The full contents of all the prize-winning essays is available with a subscription to the Scientific American archives .

Essay on Invention

Students are often asked to write an essay on Invention in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Invention

The magic of inventions.

Inventions are the creations of brilliant minds. They are new devices, methods, or processes made from innovative ideas. Inventions have shaped our world, making life easier and more interesting.

Types of Inventions

Inventions can be physical, like the telephone, or conceptual, like mathematical formulas. They can also be improvements of existing things, like the smartphone.

Impact of Inventions

Inventions have a great impact. They can change how we live, work, and play. For instance, the internet has transformed communication and information access.

Inventing the Future

Inventing is about solving problems and imagining new ways to do things. It’s a key part of progress and the future of our world.

250 Words Essay on Invention

The genesis of invention.

Invention is the cradle of progress, the heart of human advancement. It is the product of creative minds that strive to improve our lives and the world around us. Inventions, whether they are technological, scientific, or artistic, have shaped the course of history and continue to define our future.

The Role of Necessity

The axiom “necessity is the mother of invention” holds true. The need to solve problems or improve existing conditions often sparks the flame of invention. For instance, the invention of the wheel was driven by the need for easier transportation, while the development of the internet was a response to the need for global connectivity.

The Power of Curiosity

However, necessity alone can’t fuel invention. It’s the marriage of necessity and curiosity that truly births invention. Curiosity pushes us to question the status quo, to seek answers, and to venture into the unknown. It’s this curiosity that led to inventions like the telescope, which expanded our understanding of the cosmos.

The Impact of Invention

Inventions have a profound impact on society. They revolutionize industries, transform lifestyles, and redefine societal norms. The printing press democratized knowledge, the steam engine propelled the Industrial Revolution, and digital technology is reshaping our world today.

Conclusion: The Continuum of Invention

Invention is a continuum, a never-ending journey of discovery and improvement. Every invention is a stepping stone to the next, creating a chain reaction of progress. As we stand on the brink of a new era of innovation, the power of invention promises to continue shaping our collective destiny.

500 Words Essay on Invention

Introduction to invention.

Invention is a creative process that has been the cornerstone of human progress. It is the act of bringing ideas or objects together in a novel way to create something that did not exist before. Inventions have shaped and reshaped our world, influencing every aspect of our lives, from communication and transportation to healthcare and entertainment.

The Essence of Invention

The essence of invention lies in the recognition of a problem or a need, followed by the imaginative thinking to conceive a solution. It requires a blend of creativity, critical thinking, and often, a deep understanding of scientific principles. The invention process is iterative, involving trial and error, experimentation, and refinement until a workable solution is achieved.

Invention and Society

Inventions have profound impacts on society. They can stimulate economic growth, improve living standards, and even redefine societal norms. The invention of the printing press, for instance, revolutionized information dissemination, fostering literacy and the spread of new ideas. Similarly, the invention of the internet transformed the way we communicate, access information, and conduct business.

Invention and Technological Advancement

Technological advancements are often the result of inventions. For instance, the invention of the transistor led to the development of the digital computer, which has since revolutionized many fields, from data processing to artificial intelligence. Technological inventions, in turn, often spur further inventions, creating a cycle of innovation.

The Role of Invention in Scientific Discovery

Invention also plays a critical role in scientific discovery. Many scientific breakthroughs have been made possible by inventions. For instance, the invention of the microscope opened up a whole new world of microorganisms, leading to significant advances in biology and medicine. Similarly, the invention of the telescope has led to numerous astronomical discoveries, expanding our understanding of the universe.

Challenges and Ethical Considerations in Invention

However, invention is not without its challenges and ethical considerations. The process of invention often requires significant resources, and there is always the risk of failure. Moreover, some inventions can be used for harmful purposes or have unintended negative consequences. For example, the invention of nuclear technology has brought both the potential for clean energy and the threat of nuclear weapons. Therefore, it is crucial to consider the ethical implications of inventions and to strive for responsible innovation.

In conclusion, invention is a powerful force that drives human progress. It is a process of creative problem-solving that leads to new products, technologies, and scientific discoveries, with far-reaching impacts on society. However, it also brings challenges and ethical considerations that need to be carefully managed. As we continue to invent and innovate, we must strive to do so in a way that benefits society and minimizes potential harm.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on My Inspiration
• Essay on Inspiration
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The Stories Behind 20 Inventions That Changed the World

By mentalfloss .com | mar 30, 2023, 6:09 pm edt.

You might find it impossible to imagine a world without your smartphone, or have trouble remembering a time when Wi-Fi wasn’t everywhere, but many of today’s most relied-upon technologies would not have been possible—or even dreamed of—if it weren’t for the game-changing inventions that came before them. And while it’s easy to take many of the marvels of design and engineering we interact with on a daily basis for granted—think toilets, seat belts, and suspension bridges—it’s just as easy to overlook how a handful of more surprising inventions, like the Super Soaker or the pizza saver, have affected the world around us. From blood banks to barcodes and beyond, here are the stories behind 20 inventions that changed the world.

1. Suspension Bridges

Suspension bridges are nothing new; there’s one in China that until recently used bamboo that’s at least 1000 years old , and may be over 2000. But the modern suspension bridges that came along in the 1800s were something else altogether: They were cheaper to build, easier to repair, and provided plenty of leeway in case of flooding. Eventually, the bridges allowed for passage over far larger bodies of water and could withstand violent storms and the ever-increasing weight of foot and vehicle traffic in cities (not to mention drastically cutting down travel times). In the middle of the 19th century, engineer John A. Roebling saw that the Allegheny Portage Railroad was using breakable hemp ropes, leading him to create a way to spin and manufacture wire rope, a technology Roebling would soon put toward suspension bridges. Eventually, the wire could be spun and anchored on site , which helped speed up the construction process.

Roebling’s innovations led to his designs for the Niagara River Gorge Bridge, the Sixth Street Bridge in Pittsburgh, and the famed Brooklyn Bridge in the second half of the 19th century. Though the Brooklyn Bridge was John Roebling’s basic design, his son, Washington, took over the project as chief engineer following his father’s death in 1869. Then, after Washington became mostly confined to his home following a battle with decompression sickness (or “the bends”), his wife, Emily, took on many of his responsibilities. During a time when women were kept far away from STEM fields, Emily learned about cable construction, stress analysis, and other principles of suspension bridge engineering, and was a key figure in the completion of the project.

Today, suspension bridges are located in all corners of the globe, allowing people to safely and easily travel across great chasms and bodies of water. And these bridges are no longer suspended only over simple rivers— Japan’s Akashi Kaikyo Bridge stretches 12,828 feet across the Akashi Strait and features a main span that is 6527 feet long.

Dry and flush toilets have been around for thousands of years, and while many of us take these pieces of porcelain hardware for granted these days, there’s no doubt that life would look much different—and much worse—without them. “Toilets are the key to a thriving, healthy society,” Kimberly Worsham, sanitation expert and founder of FLUSH (Facilitated Learning for Universal Sanitation and Hygiene), tells Mental Floss. Having a designated place to do your business cuts back on outbreaks of infectious diseases like cholera and typhoid—both rampant in urban areas before flush toilets (and indoor plumbing and sewers) were widely used. And in the case of dry toilets, the waste deposited there can be processed for agricultural use.

Typically, people date the modern flush toilet to John Harington, godson to Queen Elizabeth I , but there were flush toilets well before he got involved (one in Knossos, which dates back to the 16th century BCE, was even connected to a sewer). “Flush toilets like his had been available to Western Europe during the Roman Empire, but after Rome fell, Europe essentially resorted to sh***ing outside again,” Worsham says. “All of those systems fell into disrepair.” (Other areas of the world, like East Asia and areas of the Middle East, still used toilets even as Western Europe went backward.)

The options available at the time Harington was innovating were chamber pots, garderobes—which Worsham describes as “dreadful closets with holes in the ground”—or going to the bathroom outside. Harington wanted to bring the toilet back in and make going to the bathroom a more comfortable experience, but his invention left a lot to be desired: Instead of connecting to a sewer, it had a pipe that went straight down into a lower chamber that would eventually need to be emptied by some unlucky person. Even worse, its design meant that the toxic, flammable gases released when urine and poop decompose could come wafting back up, creating potentially deadly situations. It didn’t catch on; Harington built just a handful of models.

Then, in 1775, a Scottish watchmaker named Alexander Cumming developed the S-trap, a piece of plumbing that attaches to the back of the toilet. “This was revolutionary because it used water in the trap to keep the toxic gasses from getting back into the home and the poo and pee from easily sliding back into the toilet,” Worsham says. “Once Cumming patented his design, we had something like a flush toilet renaissance.” Tinkering with toilets commenced in earnest, with people like Thomas Crapper (who, according to Worsham, “created a killer marketing campaign for toilets”) getting involved. Once materials to make toilets became cheaper, they became more common, and the world got much safer. “We saw mortality rates decline,” Worsham says. “It also made our living spaces far less sh***y—literally.” Bodily waste deposited into flush toilets went into sewers or septic tanks, which meant it wasn’t on the street or in drinking water.

That said, there’s still a long way to go to make sure everyone has access to a toilet: According to Worsham, “1 in 4 people in the world lack access to basic toilets, and 1 in 2 lacks access to safely managed toilets—toilets where the waste is never put back into the environment untreated.” Without toilets, people are sicker and miss both work and school more often, which can lead to poverty traps and inequality. Thankfully, toilet tinkering hasn’t stopped: “There have been some really great projects by social enterprises and non-governmental organizations in different parts of the world working to build newer, better, more environmentally-friendly toilets,” Worsham says. “There’s also been some really neat innovation in integrating fecal waste from the toilets with organic waste—a.k.a. food scraps—and treating them to create great agricultural products like fertilizer and animal feed. We’re thinking circular economies here, and it’s exciting.”

3. The Walkman

Though many of today’s kids didn’t know what a Walkman was until they saw Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill flaunt one in 2014’s  Guardians of the Galaxy , they pay unofficial homage to the device every time they play a song on their smartphone. Transistor radios had been around since the 1950s, but it was Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka who really revolutionized the idea of playing whatever you want wherever you are (provided that you had the cassette tape on hand). For Ibuka, he really wanted something he could use to listen to music on flights. The Sony Walkman debuted in Japan in 1979 (and the U.S. in 1980) and quickly became the It Girl of the ’80s. The Walkman itself was compact, lightweight, and portable, and so were its headphones. As new devices debuted over the years—from Sony’s Discman to Apple’s iPod to smartphones and the Bluetooth headphones of today—the focus on those qualities never wavered.

4. The Pill

By the end of the 19th century, bicycles were offering women a relatively cheap, easy form of independence. Their movements, and the clothing they wore , became less restricted. Decades later, a new item would hit the market and further revolutionize women’s rights: the Pill.

Hormonal birth control pills (often shortened to just the Pill) weren’t the first oral contraceptive ; people had long relied on various concoctions, such as drinking mercury or toxic pennyroyal. By the early 20th century, a push for better contraceptives was rising in the U.S.—Margaret Sanger opened America’s first birth control clinic in 1916, for example, though it was raided and shut down. Work on a contraceptive pill didn’t begin until the 1950s. A biologist named Gregory Goodwin Pincus and a gynecologist named John Rock, with encouragement and funding from Sanger and wealthy philanthropist Katharine McCormick, teamed up to develop a “magic pill” that could prevent pregnancy. “I would argue that effective contraception was probably in the whole of the 20th century the most important change for women,” Linda Gordon, author of Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America , told Allure .

When the Pill first hit the market in 1957, it was only approved to help regulate menstruation [ PDF ]; even after the FDA approved the Pill for contraceptive use in 1960, it still wasn’t readily available. In some U.S. states, it remained illegal for unmarried women to purchase the pill until 1972. Oral contraceptives have evolved since their original debut; today, there are many brands on the market, and people can now choose from a variety of monophasic, biphasic, and triphasic options, which provide varying amounts of estrogen and progestin.

The creation of the Pill did more than give women control over their sexual health and fertility—it allowed them to choose to marry later, seek additional education, and advance in their careers. As Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote in New York magazine, “These days, women’s twenties are as free and fabulous as they can be, a time of boundless freedom and experimentation, of easily trying on and discarding identities, careers, partners. The Pill, which is the most popular form of contraception in the U.S., is still the symbol of that freedom.”

5. Super Soaker

For decades, squirt guns were flimsy pieces of plastic that could barely muster enough power to water a houseplant. Then the first Super Soaker—then called the Power Drencher—hit the market in 1990, bringing along with it a Schwarzenegger-esque machismo and a sophisticated air-pressure system that promised to drench unsuspecting targets from far further than previous water guns. The allure of wreaking havoc at family get-togethers and school functions was apparently too much for kids to pass up, and more than 2 million guns flew off the shelves in its debut year. Al Davis, the former executive vice president of Larami, wrote in his book Super Soaker that “The deliveries would come into the stores, and the clerks wouldn’t even have time to put them on the shelves. They’d just take them out of the boxes and sell them to the kids waiting in line for them.”

In its first 25 years on the market, more than 175 different variations of the high-powered water gun were released, racking up over $1 billion in sales in the process. Hasbro bought Larami and the Super Soaker brand in 1995 , and to this day, the company continues to release bigger models that promise to unleash more water-fueled mayhem every summer.

When the Strong National Museum of Play inducted the Super Soaker into its National Toy Hall of Fame in 2015, former Curator Patricia Hogan noted, “[The] Super Soaker had a big impact on neighborhood play. The small squirt guns of the past had required close-in work to engage the opposition. The long, drenching reach of Johnson’s invention requires a quick retreat from a soggy assault or a good chase, meaning that kids with Super Soakers do some serious sprinting. Calculating the distance to target and the physics of velocity and arc requires kids to use their brains. Contemplating strategies and tactics and puzzling out plans forces kids to analyze the best approaches to triumphal ends. And if kids get soaked in the process? It’s all good clean fun.”

None of this would have been possible if not for the outside-the-box thinking of former NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson. He got the idea for the Super Soaker while testing a new type of heat pump he had created that used water as a coolant in the early 1980s. While the heat pump worked fine, he also realized it was pretty fun to shoot concentrated streams of water from the pump across his bathroom.

“I was having trouble getting people to understand the hard science inventions I had like a heat pump or the digital measuring instrument,” Johnson told Forbes . “I thought the toy was something anyone could look at and appreciate.”

Though Johnson holds over 100 patents and worked on NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter, his reinvention of the water gun, from 29-cent novelty to summer staple, is something that generations of kids—and some unwitting bystanders—will never forget.

6. The Blood Bank

Less than a century ago, patients requiring a blood transfusion were in a race against time. There was no organized network for people to donate blood, and because blood was difficult to preserve, there was no way to store it for future use. Patients had to find their own blood donors before it was too late.

In 1937, after devising a technique for preserving blood for up to 10 days, physician Bernard Fantus set up the nation’s first “ blood bank ” at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. People could make “deposits” of their own blood for their own use or to be given to others with matching blood types.

At about the same time, surgeon Charles R. Drew figured out a method for separating plasma from whole blood, and found that if whole blood wasn’t necessary, blood transfusions could be successfully performed with plasma alone . Plasma could be dried for long-term storage in blood banks. As World War II decimated Europe, Drew and the American Red Cross launched a groundbreaking program to collect donated plasma in the U.S. and ship it to Britain, essentially creating a national system for blood donation. During the war, he collaborated with the Red Cross to set up “bloodmobiles”—mobile blood donation centers that made sustaining blood banks more practical. Today, about 13.6 million units of whole blood and red blood cells are collected in the U.S. each year, saving countless lives.

7. Space Telescopes

When Lyman Spitzer proposed the invention of a space telescope in the 1940s, humans could look at our universe only through land-based instruments. Earth’s atmosphere acted like a veil between the land-based telescopes and space, blurring images and hindering detection of far-off celestial phenomena. Spitzer’s research paved the way for the Hubble Space Telescope, the first space-based major optical telescope , launched in 1990 and named for the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble .

Over its three decades in orbit, Hubble has determined the age of the universe (13.8 billion years), accurately measured the distance to a neighboring galaxy, and spotted numerous moons and exoplanets, in addition to revealing the beauty of the universe through stunning photographs . “The Hubble space telescope has brought about a visual revolution, more significant than any recent work of art in transforming the way we see ourselves and the cosmos,” art critic Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian . This year, NASA is scheduled to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most technologically advanced space telescope ever built, to unravel more secrets of space.

8. The Pizza Box and Pizza Table

The pizza industry has undergone numerous innovations in recent decades, but one element that has remained largely the same is the box your pie comes in. Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan changed the game in the early 1960s when he worked with Triad Containers in Detroit to develop the modern pizza box. Prior to this, pizzas were delivered in bags or paperboard bakery boxes. These containers were flimsy and often crumpled under the intense heat of the pie before they reached their destinations. Domino’s corrugated cardboard containers were much more durable. They withstood grease and kept pizzas warm while releasing steam through strategically placed openings. Most importantly, the sturdy boxes were stackable , opening the door to mass deliveries.

But there was one area where the simple design fell short: The top of the box sometimes collapsed and stuck to the top of the pizza. The answer to this issue was the pizza saver , which Carmela Vitale patented in 1985. Shaped like a miniature patio table, the plastic device keeps the box lid separate from the pizza, thus keeping the cheese and toppings intact throughout the delivery journey. Vitale was a city council member—not a pizza salesperson—but she had eaten enough delivery pizza to notice a problem and come up with an ingenious solution.

One fall evening in 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen, a German physics professor, was experimenting with the conduction of electricity through low-pressure gases when he accidentally discovered a mysterious ray capable of making a chemical-coated screen fluoresce a few yards away. He went on to put objects between the tube and the screen to see the shadows they produced—and when he tried it with a hunk of lead, he saw shadows of not just the lead but the bones in his hand. Further experimentation showed that the screen could be replaced by a photographic plate—and the X-ray was born.

Röntgen named it X-strahlen — strahlen being German for “beam” or “ray,” and X being used in mathematics to indicate an unknown quantity [ PDF ]. Röntgen's discovery revolutionized the way doctors detect disease and injury, from breast cancer to broken bones. Today, X-rays are also used to find cracks in everything from aircraft wings to nuclear reactors—helping make the modern world quite a bit safer. “Thanks to [Röntgen's] invisible light,” radiologist Richard Gunderman wrote in The Conversation, “we now operate with a much deeper understanding of the universe we inhabit, the molecules and cells of which we are composed[,] and the diseases that threaten our lives.”

10. Wildlife Cams

The first “wildlife cams” were invented by Pennsylvania Congressman and photography enthusiast George Shiras around the end of the 19th century. He got the idea from a hunting technique used by the Ojibwa tribe called jacklighting, in which a fire is built in a pan and placed in the front part of a canoe while the hunter sits in the bow. “The glow makes it possible to distinguish the animal, whose attention is caught by the flames, causing it to stand still with an expectant air,” Sonia Voss, who curated an exhibition of Shiras’s photographs, told National Geographic. “At the rear of the canoe, the hunter, cast into the shadows, only needs to aim between the animal’s eyes, which reflect the flames and stand out like two bright beacons in the night. In the photographic version, the fire is replaced by a kerosene lamp and the trigger of the rifle by the shutter release of the camera.” Later, Shiras graduated to cameras equipped with flash and tripped by a string.

Today, critter cameras have evolved to be so light that they can be strapped to marine life, are battery powered so they can be left in nature for months at a time, and have been attached to robots to get closer to dangerous creatures than ever before, giving us an unprecedented look into the lives of the animals we share the planet with, and the world they inhabit—and helping us make plenty of scientific discoveries along the way. Thanks to wildlife cameras, we know that fishers are breeding in Washington state for the first time in decades; the hairy-nosed otter—the world’s most endangered otter species—is once again lurking within Malaysia; and the rare Siamese crocodile is still slyly slipping around the waters of Thailand. Cameras have also snapped footage of previously unknown species , such as Tanzania’s grey-faced sengi (a species of elephant shrew). In 2020 , trail cameras were essential in allowing scientists to continue their field research and gather data remotely during long stretches of COVID-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions.

11. Duct Tape

Duct tape was the brainchild of Vesta Stoudt, an Illinois mom whose two sons were in the Navy. Stoudt worked at Green River Ordnance Plant packing and inspecting boxes of ammunition. The boxes were sealed with paper tape, dipped in wax, and had a tab to open them. Stoudt noticed that the boxes had a flaw: The tape was flimsy and tabs often tore off, which meant that soldiers couldn’t quickly open the boxes when they were under fire. Why not create a cloth-based waterproof tape to seal the boxes? She asked her supervisors, but they weren’t supportive, so she escalated the matter … straight to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt . “I suggested we use a strong cloth tape to close seams, and make tab of same,” she wrote. “It worked fine, I showed it to different government inspectors they said it was all right, but I could never get them to change tape.”

The president sent her letter to the War Production Board, her idea was approved, and the rest is history. Duct tape has been a quick fix for everyone from your average joe to physicists (who use it on their particle accelerators ) to astronauts (duct tape helped them make repairs on the moon ). When the three crewmembers of Apollo 13 were forced to transfer to the lunar module, duct tape helped them survive— according to Northrop Grumman, the vessel was designed to hold two people for 36 hours, but after the accident, had to hold three for over 86 hours. They used the adhesive (along with cardboard, plastic bags, and space suit components) to adapt their square carbon dioxide filters to the module's round holes. Jerry Woodfill, a NASA engineer who assisted the team from the ground, later told Universe Today , “Of course … the solution to every conceivable knotty problem has got to be duct tape! And so it was.”

12. Barcodes

On June 26, 1974, a grocery store cashier at Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, passed a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum over a scanner—and the item and price were automatically registered. It was the first time an item with a barcode had ever been purchased.

The inventors behind this marvel of commerce were N. Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, who envisioned a system of lines that could identify consumer products by using encoded information read by an optical scanner. It all started when Silver, a grad student at Drexel, overheard the president of a local food chain talking to the dean about the need to automatically obtain product information. The dean wasn't interested in pursuing the idea, but Silver mentioned it to his colleague Woodland, who thought the idea had so much promise that he quit his job and moved to Florida to pursue it. Ultimately, Woodland devised a system inspired by Morse code (which he had used as a Boy Scout) as well as the movie sound systems of the 1920s. It was later refined with help from IBM employee George Laurer, and became the basis for getting through checkout lines faster.

Today’s standard barcodes are known as universal product codes, or UPC-A, and are comprised of 12 digits. The first is a product category—3 denotes a health-related item, for example, while the rest point to the manufacturer and specific product. The more recent QR barcodes commonly recognized by smartphones can deliver information in an instant. Barcodes are used across a variety of industries and can boost productivity eight to 10 times compared to manual data entry. It all makes for a much speedier transaction, but not always: Aldi grocery employees sometimes memorize popular product barcodes so heavy items can remain in the cart.

13. Seat Belts

The idea of a seat belt for transportation safety doesn't begin with Nils Bohlin, the Swedish engineer who conceived of a three-point shoulder and lap belt for automobiles in 1958. Other innovators, like 19th century aviator George Cayley, recognized a need to keep humans from being ejected out of planes and other moving vehicles. But it was Bohlin, a Volvo engineer, who sought to improve upon the two-point lap belts, which could sometimes do more harm than good in the event of an accident. (At high speeds, the belts were capable of causing internal injuries.) By stabilizing the torso with a shoulder strap, drivers and passengers were kept in place without resorting to the more burdensome four-point belts worn by pilots or an earlier Y-shaped belt placed over the stomach. In what could only be described as an act of corporate selflessness, Volvo allowed any car manufacturer to duplicate the belt. At the time of Bohlin’s death in 2002, it was estimated his invention had saved well over a million lives.

14. The Microwave

During World War II, engineer Percy Spencer aided the U.S. war effort through his work on magnetrons—tubes that generate electromagnetic waves for radar—while working for tech company Raytheon. His work didn’t end with the war. In 1945, Spencer was tinkering with magnetrons when he noticed the peanut cluster candy bar in his pocket had suddenly transformed into a “gooey, sticky mess.” It didn’t take long for him to realize the magnetron’s microwaves were responsible, prompting him to develop a microwave oven that people could use to heat food more deliberately. The refrigerator-sized “Radarange” debuted in the mid-1940s and was originally meant for restaurants and airplanes rather than regular homes. (Its $1250 price tag—nearly $17,000 today—would have made widespread success in that realm unlikely anyway.)

Designs improved and costs decreased over time, and the 1967 edition of the Radarange was a hit among homemakers. By the mid-1970s, the microwave oven—eventually just “the microwave”—was becoming a mainstay in U.S. kitchens, and not just for leftovers. Manufacturers marketed the appliance as a faster, easier, (literally) cooler alternative to conventional ovens. “Make the greatest cooking discovery since fire,” actress Barbara Hale said in a 1972 Radarange ad that Mad Men ’s Don Draper surely would have wished he’d come up with himself. A 1971 ad for General Electric’s Just-A-Minute oven emphasized that “with the special timer, control settings, and recipe booklet that come with the oven, practically all the guesswork is taken out of cooking,” a boon to unconfident cooks everywhere. Full-fledged cookbooks cropped up, too— Madame Benoit’s Microwave Cook Book , Barbara Kafka’s The Microwave Gourmet , and so on—featuring everything from duck à l’orange to “ Elegant Beef Dinner .” One 1978 cookbook even recommended making pie in the microwave (to get around the lack of browning, it was advised, just throw some yellow food coloring in there). And when Swanson debuted its plastic, microwave-safe trays in 1986, the microwave and the TV dinner entered into a marriage of convenience that worn-out adults would rely on for decades to come.

15. The Can Opener

Decades after people started storing food in tin cans, someone finally came up with a way to crack them open that didn’t involve a chisel and a hammer (or some other dangerous tool). In the mid-19th century, a series of inventors built what were known as lever knives—not too dissimilar to the can opener on a modern Swiss Army Knife, and by 1870, William Lyman innovated a design that included a rotary cutte. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that Charles Arthur Bunker arrived on the scene with a patent that featured handles you squeeze together to safely puncture the lid and a handle you twist to propel a sharp little wheel along the rim. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because today’s manual can openers are pretty much the same.

Like the button (which dates back thousands of years, though the buttonhole is a more recent innovation) and the zipper (invented in the 19th century) that came before it, Velcro revolutionized clothing—and we have old-fashioned curiosity to thank for its invention. In the 1940s, George de Mestral and his dog returned from a hunting trip covered in burdock burrs. Intrigued, de Mestral whipped out his microscope to find out what, exactly, made the burrs stick. He discovered that the burrs were covered in little hooks, and that provided de Mestral, a serial inventor, with a burst of inspiration: If he could create a fabric that mimicked the burrs’ hooks, and combine it with fabric loops those hooks could latch into, he’d have a middle ground between fasteners like buttons and zippers.

It took him some time to find a manufacturer to create his fabric; many didn’t think it could be done. But de Mestral persevered and continued to innovate on his idea until he had a product that worked, and Velcro—a trademarked combination of the French words velours and croche , meaning “velvet” and “hook,” respectively—debuted in the early ‘60s. Since then, it has proved as useful as de Mestral thought it would: NASA has used it to anchor equipment in space missions and during walks on the moon ; Mead made use of the material as fasteners on its iconic  Trapper Keepers ; and, of course, it’s used in shoes and clothing , where it’s particularly helpful to people who have difficulty with zippers and buttons (or their caretakers ).

17. Air Conditioning

Since its introduction at the turn of the 20th century, the air conditioner has transformed the quality of life in regions with warm climates—but the first modern air-conditioning unit wasn’t invented for people at all. It was created for a printing press.

In 1902, a 25-year-old engineer named Willis Carrier was asked to come up with a way to control the humidity at the Sackett & Wilhelms printing plant in Brooklyn, where the sweltering summer days frequently messed with the color register. After early tests with rollers, burlap, and calcium chloride brine, Carrier hit on a device that sent chilled water through heating coils. The system was installed later that same summer at the printing plant alongside fans, perforated steam pipes, and other accouterments. It was a huge success, and reportedly had the same cooling effect as 108,000 pounds of ice per day.

Carrier's invention was sold everywhere from flour mills to razor factories, and air-conditioning went on to reshape both architecture (by allowing for skyscrapers where people didn't broil on top floors) and nations, making the development of modern metropolises in sun-scorched places like Singapore, Shanghai, the Sun Belt, and Dubai possible. It also, of course, made everyday life more pleasant (and productive) for millions, if not billions. Ironically, the large amount of energy air conditioners consume has contributed to climate change , making the need for artificial cool air more vital than ever. “It’s not a matter of going back to the past. But before, people knew how to work with the climate,” Malaysian architect Ken Yeang told The Guardian . “Air conditioning became a way to control it, and it was no longer a concern. No one saw the consequences. People see them now.”

The story of the invention of the radio is about a race against time between two scientists—and the power of patents.

Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, sent and received his first radio signals in 1894, and patented his invention in 1896 in England. Three years later, Marconi sent wireless signals across the English Channel, and two years after that, he claimed that he received a message sent from across the Atlantic (that claim, however, is controversial).

At roughly the same time Marconi was at work in Europe, inventor Nikola Tesla was working on a similar invention in America. Tesla invented the Tesla coil —which sent and received radio waves—in the 1890s. He was all set up for a long-distance experiment in 1895, but a fire broke out in his lab, interrupting the experiment. Two years later, Tesla applied for his patent in the United States.

Marconi and Tesla’s paths converged in 1900, when Marconi applied for a patent in the U.S.—which was denied because Tesla’s had been approved earlier that year.

Undaunted, Marconi continued to apply, and in 1904, the U.S. declared him to be the creator of the radio. This, along with the fact that Marconi had won a Nobel Prize for the technology, enraged Tesla. In 1915, he sued Marconi for patent infringement , but lacked the financial resources to pursue the case.

But beyond the courtroom drama, radio was already at work transforming the world. In 1910, it helped catch Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a man who was accused of killing his wife and escaping to Canada on a ship with his lover; he was caught thanks to Marconi’s wireless telegraph, which sent radio waves, and a very clever ship captain . On August 31, 1920, the first radio news program was broadcast by a station in Detroit, and the first ad played on the radio in 1922 , changing the world of advertising. Radio was also used during both World Wars.

From protests, music, famous speeches, and political unrest, the radio has broadcast many iconic moments and connected the world in a way Marconi and Tesla probably never imagined. Some have gone so far as to say that radio changed everything ; as Jack Lule wrote in his book , Understanding Media and Culture , the radio became “an instrument of social cohesion as it brought together members of different classes and backgrounds to experience the world as a nation.”

As for who came out on top in the radio patent war? Tesla finally got his victory in 1943, when the Supreme Court upheld that his patent had priority. But it was a win the inventor never got to celebrate: He had passed away earlier that year.

19. Aquariums

While keeping fish as pets may have begun with the Romans, the first glass aquarium wasn’t created until 1832, when seamstress-turned-scientist Jeanne Villepreux-Power got tired of studying dead specimens in her lab. Observing marine life wasn’t as easy as observing animals on land, and she wanted to come up with a way to keep cephalopods—especially the paper nautilus—alive outside of the ocean.

To further her research, Villepreux-Power created three different types of aquariums: one for indoor study, one for shallow water, and one to be anchored to the ocean floor. The indoor glass aquarium allowed her to discover that the Argonauta Argo produced its own shell at the larva stage, as well as the fact that the animals can repair their shells within a few hours. She also came up with the idea of repopulating rivers using fish raised in aquariums. (Unfortunately, most of Villepreux-Power’s research was lost in a shipwreck, and she never rewrote her findings.)

Many would improve on her work, from Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (who turned a terrarium upside down) to Anna Thynne (who created the first marine aquarium filled with coral and seaweed) to Robert Warington [ PDF ] (who published his findings after managing to keep the environment in a 12-gallon tank stable). Two decades after Villepreux-Power’s invention, the first public aquarium opened in London in 1853; a few years after that, P.T. Barnum built an aquarium inside his Barnum’s American Museum in New York, which visitors enjoyed for until the museum burned down in 1865.

Since then, aquariums have become a favorite pastime for people around the world: According to American Humane , 700 million people around the world visit zoos and aquariums annually. Like zoos, aquariums can help with conservation efforts and protect endangered species—and like zoos, they can be controversial, as we debate how humane it is to keep large marine mammals like dolphins, orcas, and beluga whales in tanks much smaller than their natural environments. Still, many aquariums aren’t just for entertainment, but are also focused on exactly what Villepreux-Power was when created an aquarium in the first place: studying and learning.

20. The Lightbulb

Lighting a home used to be a hazardous experience: Open flames on candles and in fireplaces could set things ablaze. The gas lamp , invented near the end of the 18th century, was a definite upgrade, but it had its own set of issues, from fumes to being hard to maintain to the potential for explosions.

Enter: the lightbulb.

While Thomas Edison is often credited with inventing the lightbulb, there were many scientists and researchers who worked on a version of the device before Edison. Inventors like Humphry Davy (creator of the arc lamp) demonstrated how electricity could be used to create light. In the first half of the 19th century , a series of improvements were made—so much so that in the 1840s later-Sir William Grove was able to give a lecture fully illuminated by electric light. But the light was exceedingly expensive, up to 4 shillings an hour (16 pounds or $22 in today’s money) and early lightbulbs themselves were both expensive to make and unreliable.

There wasn’t a breakthrough until 1878, when chemist Joseph Swan replaced the expensive platinum filament with a cheaper carbonized paper one that also had longevity. Edison demonstrated his lightbulb in 1879, one year after Swan. After a long patent infringement lawsuit, the two decided to combine forces and formed the company Edison-Swan United. Later in life, Edison would choose his lighting system as his greatest invention.

Even Edison and Swan’s bulb wasn’t perfect, however, and many scientists continued to improve on its design—including patent expert Lewis Latimer , who streamlined and improved the carbon filament by encasing it in cardboard instead of bamboo, an innovation that allowed for longer-lasting bulbs.

It’s not hyperbole to say that the modern lightbulb changed how society functioned. Beyond making the home safer, it helped cut back on health problems created by things like gas fumes and smoke inhalation, paved the way for longer working hours, impacted building design, and kicked off the creation of massive infrastructure like the electric grid. Lightbulbs went into everything from cars to airplanes to trains, increasing the rate of travel—and making it much safer. And the lightbulb has left its mark symbolically, too. “Even though this invention, Edison’s bulb, is 135 years old at this point,” Ernest Freeberg, author of The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America , said in 2015 , “we still use [it] as the universal symbol for a great idea, for a stroke of inventive genius, for this Eureka moment.” Today, scientists work on improving the lightbulb every year, leading to more energy-efficient bulbs—and joining the long line of scientists and engineers whose bright ideas have changed history.

A version of this story ran in 2020; it has been updated for 2023.

20 inventions that changed the world

From the wheel 5,500 years ago to the birth control pill, these 20 inventions had huge ramifications and have helped humans shape the world around us.

2. Printing press

3. penicillin, 5. light bulb, 6. telephone, 7. internal combustion engine, 8. contraceptives, 9. internet, 11. use of fire, 12. concrete, 13. magnifying glass, 14. batteries, 15. marine chronometer, 16. airplane, 17. refrigerator, 18. nuclear energy, 19. vaccines.

Humans are naturally curious and creative, two traits that have led our species to many scientific and technological breakthroughs. Since our earliest ancestors bashed a rock on the ground to make the first sharp-edged tool, humans have continued to innovate. From the debut of the wheel to the launch of Mars rovers, several of these key advancements stand out as especially revolutionary. Some inventions are thanks to one eureka moment, but most of our most pioneering inventions were the work of several innovative thinkers who made incremental improvements over many years. Here, we explore 20 of the most important inventions of all time, along with the science behind the inventions and how they came about.

Before the invention of the wheel in 3500 B.C., humans were severely limited in how much stuff we could transport over land, and how far. The wheel itself wasn't the most difficult part of "inventing the wheel." When it came time to connect a non-moving platform to that rolling cylinder, things got tricky, according to David Anthony, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Hartwick College.

"The stroke of brilliance was the wheel-and-axle concept," Anthony previously told Live Science . "But then making it was also difficult." For instance, the holes at the center of the wheels and the ends of the fixed axles had to be nearly perfectly round and smooth, he said. The size of the axle was also a critical factor, as was its snugness inside the hole (not too tight, but not too loose, either).

The hard work paid off, big time. Wheeled carts facilitated agriculture and commerce by enabling the transportation of goods to and from markets, as well as easing the burdens of people travelling great distances. Now, wheels are vital to our way of life, found in everything from clocks to vehicles to turbines.

David Anthony is professor emeritus and curator emeritus of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. He has done extensive archaeological fieldwork in Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. Anthony is the author of "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" (Princeton, 2007) and has co-authored studies including the finding that humans first rode horses 5,000 years ago .

German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press sometime between 1440 and 1450. Key to its development was the hand mold, a new molding technique that enabled the rapid creation of large quantities of metal movable type. 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. In her book “ The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe ” (Cambridge University Press, 2012), late historian Elizabeth L. Eisenstein wrote, “printers’ workshops would be found in every important municipal center by 1500.”  It has been estimated that up to twenty million volumes had been printed in Western Europe by 1500, although Eisenstein estimates that it was around eight million.

Among other things, the printing press permitted wider access to the Bible, which in turn led to alternative interpretations, including that of Martin Luther, whose "95 Theses" a document printed by the hundred-thousand sparked the Protestant Reformation.

It's one of the most famous discovery stories in history. In 1928, the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming noticed a bacteria-filled Petri dish in his laboratory with its lid accidentally ajar. The sample had become contaminated with a mold, and everywhere the mold was, the bacteria was dead. That antibiotic mold turned out to be the fungus Penicillium, and over the next two decades, chemists purified it and developed the drug penicillin , which fights a huge number of bacterial infections in humans without harming the humans themselves.

Penicillin was being mass-produced and advertised by 1944. This poster attached to a curbside mailbox advised World War II servicemen to take the drug to rid themselves of venereal disease.

About 1 in 10 people have an allergic reaction to the antibiotic , according to a study published in 2003 in the journal Clinical Reviews in Allergy and Immunology. Even so, most of those people go on to be able to tolerate the drug, researchers said.

Related: What causes allergies?

Ancient mariners used the stars for navigation, but this method didn’t work during the day or on cloudy nights, making it dangerous to travel far from land. 

The first compass was invented in China during the Han dynasty between the 2nd Century B.C. and 1st Century A.D.; it was made of lodestone, a naturally-magnetized iron ore, the attractive properties of which they had been studying for centuries. However, it was used for navigation for the first time during the Song Dynasty, between the 11th and 12th centuries,

Soon after, the technology to the West through nautical contact. The compass enabled mariners to navigate safely far from land, opening up the world for exploration and the subsequent development of global trade. An instrument still widely used today, the compass has transformed our knowledge and understanding of the Earth forever.

The invention of the light bulb transformed our world by removing our dependence on natural light, allowing us to be productive at any time, day or night.  Several inventors were instrumental in developing this revolutionary technology throughout the 1800s; Thomas Edison is credited as the primary inventor because he created a completely functional lighting system, including a generator and wiring as well as a carbon-filament bulb like the one above, in 1879.

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.

Several inventors did pioneering work on electronic voice transmission — many of whom later filed intellectual property lawsuits when telephone use exploded — but it was Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell who was the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone on March 7, 1876 (his patent drawing is pictured above). Three days later, Bell made the first telephone call to his assistant, Thomas Watson, saying "Mr Watson, come here — I want to see you," according to author A. Edward Evenson in his book, “ The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players ” (McFarland, 2015).

Bell’s inspiration for the telephone was influenced by his family. His father taught speech elocution and specialized in teaching the deaf speak, his mother, an accomplished musician, lost her hearing in later life and his wife Mabel, who he married in 1877, had been deaf since the age of five, according to Evenson. The invention quickly took off and revolutionized global business and communication. When Bell died on Aug. 2, 1922, all telephone service in the United States and Canada was stopped for one minute to honor him.

In these engines, the combustion of fuel releases a high-temperature gas, which, as it expands, applies a force to a piston, moving it. Thus, combustion engines convert chemical energy into mechanical work. Decades of engineering by many scientists went into designing the internal combustion engine, which took its (essentially) modern form in the latter half of the 19th century. The engine ushered in the Industrial Age, as well as enabling the invention of a huge variety of machines, including modern cars and aircraft.

Pictured are the operating steps of a four-stroke internal combustion engine. The strokes are as follows: 1) Intake stroke — air and vaporised fuel are drawn in. 2) Compression stroke - fuel vapor and air are compressed and ignited. 3) Power stroke — fuel combusts and the piston is pushed downwards, powering the machine. 4) Exhaust stroke — exhaust is driven out.

Not only have birth control pills, condoms and other forms of contraception sparked a sexual revolution in the developed world by allowing men and women to have sex for leisure rather than procreation, they have also drastically reduced the average number of offspring per woman in countries where they are used. With fewer mouths to feed, modern families have achieved higher standards of living and can provide better for each child. Meanwhile, on the global scale, contraceptives are helping the human population gradually level off; our number will probably stabilize by the end of the century. Certain contraceptives, such as condoms, also curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Natural and herbal contraception has been used for millennia. Condoms or ‘sheaths’ have existed in one form or another since ancient times, according to scholar Jessica Borge in her book “ Protective Practices: A History of the London Rubber Company and the Condom Business ” (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), with the rubber condom developed in the 19th century. Meanwhile, the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive pill in the United States in 1960 and by 1965, more than 6.5 million American women were on the pill, according to author Jonathan Eig in his book, “The Birth of the Pill: How Four Pioneers Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution” (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015).  

Scientists are continuing to make advancements in birth control, with some labs even pursuing a male form of "the pill." A permanent birth-control implant called Essure was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2002, though in 2016, the FDA warned the implant would need stronger warnings to tell users about serious risks of using Essure. 

Related: 7 surprising facts about the pill

The internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that is used by billions of people worldwide. 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, the predecessor of the internet. It used a method of data transmission called "packet switching", developed by computer scientist and team member Lawrence Roberts, based on prior work of other computer scientists. 

This technology was progressed in the 1970s by scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, who developed the crucial communication protocols for the internet, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), according to computer scientist Harry R. Lewis in his book “ Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science ” (MIT Press, 2021). For this, Kahn and Cerf are often credited as inventors of the internet”.

In 1989, the internet evolved further thanks to the invention of the World Wide Web by computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research). According to CERN , "the basic idea of the WWW was to merge the evolving technologies of computers, data networks and hypertext into a powerful and easy to use global information system." The development of the WWW opened up the world of the internet to everybody and connected the world in a way that it had never been before.  

Related: Inventor of World Wide Web snags computer science's top prize

This key invention dates back more than 2,000 years to the Ancient Roman period and became possible only after humans 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.

Until the 1790s and early 1800s, hand-wrought nails were the norm, with a blacksmith heating a square iron rod and then hammering it on four sides to create a point, according to the University of Vermont . Nail-making machines came online between the 1790s and the early 1800s. Technology for crafting nails continued to advance; After Henry Bessemer developed a process to mass-produce steel from iron, the iron nails of yesteryear slowly waned and by 1886, 10 percent of U.S. nails were created from soft steel wire, according to the University of Vermont. By 1913, 90 percent of nails produced in the U.S. were steel wire.

Meanwhile, the invention of the screw - a stronger but harder-to-insert fastener -  is usually ascribed to the Greek scholar Archimedes in the third century B.C., but was probably invented by the Pythagorean philosopher Archytas of Tarentum, according to David Blockley in his book “ Engineering: A Very Short Introduction ” (Oxford University Press, 2012).

The use of fire is one of humankind's most powerful early inventions and radically changed the way our ancient ancestors lived. Offering warmth and the ability to cook foods such as meat, the campfire was also a social gathering place. Fire also provided some protection against predators. 

The exact date fire was discovered has long remained a mystery, with some studies suggesting it was first used by hominins in Kenya 1 million years ago to cook meat. Other evidence suggests that Neanderthals in Europe and Asia harnessed fire , while Homo sapiens evolving in Africa mastered the skill of creating fire. More recently, archaeologists in Israel found evidence of hominin fire use dating to 1.5 million to 2 million years ago.

Ancient Romans are credited as one of the first societies to use concrete in architecture, with Roman bathhouses and iconic sites such as the Colosseumand Pantheon dome constructed using concrete mixed with volcanic ash, lime, and seawater. Incredibly, many of these ancient buildings are not only standing, but remain in good condition some 2,000 years later — a testament to the longevity of Roman concrete . However, the ancient Egyptians used a crude form of concrete in their buildings much earlier in 3000 B.C., employing forms of concrete mixed with ash and salt water to create mortar. One study concluded that parts of the Great Pyramids of Giza might have been built using concrete . Concrete is strong in compression but breaks easily in tension, so the invention of reinforced steel-concrete toward the end of the 19th century in France, which lends concrete some of steel's tensile strength, enabled concrete to be used more widely in construction.

Franciscan friar and Oxford University scholar Roger Bacon first developed the magnifying glass in 1268. Sometimes dubbed "Britain's first scientist,"' Bacon's magnifying glass built on research by Muslim scholars .

However, the use of optical tools dates back much further. Evidence suggests that as early as 700 B.C., people in ancient Egypt noticed that they could look through crystals to improve vision.

The first battery dates back to 1800, when Italian physicist Alessandro Volta wrapped stacked discs of copper and zinc in a cloth, submerged it in salty water and discovered that it conducted energy. In 1802, Scottish professor William Cruickshank invented a variation of Volta's design known as the trough battery , which consisted of 50 discs of copper and zinc in a wooden box filled with a salt solution to conduct energy. However, it was French physicist Gaston Planté who invented the first practically used battery, in 1859. Modern variations on Planté's rechargeable lead-acid battery are still used in cars today.

The 15th century marked the beginning of the great voyages of discovery by adventurers and sea merchants and the development of a global ocean trade network . Trading vessels carried highly prized silk, spices, salt, wine and tea across often-treacherous seas for months on end. After the loss of four ships at sea in the Scilly naval disaster of 1707 , seafarers realized they needed an accurate way to determine longitude when out of sight of land.

In 1714, the British parliament offered a prize of 20,000 pounds to anyone who could solve the problem. Carpenter John Harrison won the bounty in 1735 with his marine chronometer. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that Harrison was a self-taught clockmaker. His ingenious timekeeping device was powered by the rocking motion of the ship rather than by gravity and could be used by sailors to accurately calculate longitude at sea.

The ability for humans to fly has captured the imagination of inventors for centuries, with the first human-operated flight taking place in 1783 when Joseph-Michael and Jacques-Ètienne Montgolfier took to the skies in a hot air balloon. In 1853 British engineer George Cayley designed the first glider to successfully take flight, but it wasn’t until 1903 that Orville and Wilbur Wright's plane became the first airplane to have a successful voyage. It not only took off from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina using its own power; it flew and landed without destruction, unlike many earlier aircraft inventions. The Wright brothers were inspired by watching' birds in flight. The glider took a page from birds' wings but had a 32-foot (10 meters) wingspan.

Refrigeration in some form has been around for thousands of years. Depending on the climate, ice or cold water was used to keep food cold in ancient times. But artificial refrigeration didn't come until 1748, when the physician William Cullen  first demonstrated evaporative cooling. Further breakthroughs came in 1834, when a vapor-compression system was developed by American engineer Jacob Perkins . In 1876, German engineer Carl von Linde came up with a process of liquifying the gas, ushering in the era of commercial refrigeration. In 1913, American engineer Fred Wolf invented the first domestic refrigerator , and as demand for fresh produce grew, so did the number of households with refrigerators.

Nuclear energy was first discovered in the 1930s by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi , who found that bombarding atoms with neutrons could split them, generating huge amounts of energy. He went on to develop the first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. This successful experiment led to the development of several nuclear plants in the 1950s, with Idaho launching the first nuclear plant in 1951 with electricity produced from atomic energy at its Experimental Breeder Reactor I site. Obninsk in the former Soviet Union became the first grid-connected nuclear power plant in the world in 1954, while Shippingport nuclear plant, Pennsylvania became the first commercial nuclear plant in 1957.

Nuclear power remains widely used around the world today, generating approximately 10% of global energy .

One problem is that existing nuclear power plants use fission to split atoms, and this produces radioactive substances that take ages to decay. And the risks of nuclear disasters, such as those at Chernobyl and the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant, highlight the challenges of fission-based nuclear power.

So scientists are working to create usable nuclear fusion reactors, which could theoretically generate clean, limitless energy. In 2022, scientists reported a minor breakthrough: a fusion reactor that generated more energy than was put into it. However, we're still a long way from a usable fusion reactor , experts say.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 2 million to 3 million lives are saved annually thanks to vaccinations against contagious diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus and measles.

The earliest rudimentary vaccination is thought to date back to the 10th century in China, when people inoculated small scratches in the skin with small doses of smallpox to provide protection against the disease. But in 1796, English physician Edward Jenner discovered that milkmaids rarely caught or died of smallpox because they were previously infected by the cowpox virus , also called Vaccinia. So he used cowpox to develop a smallpox vaccine. He inoculated an 8-year-old boy with cowpox and then with smallpox, and the boy never caught the deadly scourge. Jenner's experiment led to the creation of a smallpox vaccine and his work is regarded as the start of immunology. In 1980, smallpox was declared officially eradicated by WHO. But scientists continue to develop new life-saving vaccines — most notably, the coronavirus vaccines that played a large role in combatting the pandemic .

Like many famous inventions, the X-ray was discovered by accident. In 1895, German engineer and physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was undertaking a two-month study into the potential of radiation. In an experiment testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass, he noticed that the radiation was able to pass through screens of considerable thickness, leaving a shadow of solid objects. He soon discovered that X-rays could pass through human tissues to show a clear picture of the skeleton and organs. A year later, a group of physicians took the earliest X-rays on patients . These observations led to the development of radiology as we know it today and has since helped medical professionals diagnose broken bones, tumors, organ failures and more.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to correct the location of Edison's lab. It was Menlo Park, New Jersey, not Menlo Park, California.

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Jessica is a former staff writer for History of Royals and All About History magazines. She has both a Bachelor and Master's degree in History from the University of Winchester , with dissertations on 'The Power of Dress' in the French court between the mid-sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and 'Abdicating Queens': an analysis of the contemporary and modern images of Juana la Loca, Mary, Queen of Scots and Christina, Queen of Sweden.'

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The 10 Inventions that Changed the World

The U.S. librarian of Congress ranks history's most important innovations.

Thomas Edison liked to say that he never failed. He succeeded every now and again with an invention that would change the world. The rest of the time, he tried thousands of other things with only one fault—that they would never work.

That’s the sort of spirit and tenacity that leads to progress, says Carla Hayden , the U.S. librarian of Congress. The library keeps archives of many of America’s copyrights and blueprints, so National Geographic asked Hayden to list what she considers 10 of the most meaningful advances in history—the inventions and innovations responsible for the trappings of modern life.

Ranking innovations is more art than science. Can you really compare a camera to an airplane? But while progress is incremental, it’s also exponential; it builds on itself. The printing press allowed literacy to spread and thinkers to share ideas and, thus, invent more things.

Modern inventions tend more toward improving than transforming: an app that connects the world in a better way, planes that fly farther, faster. But there’s still room, every so often, for dramatic advances like, say, 3-D printing or the Internet. “There will be more great leaps,” says Hayden. “We have a momentum and acceleration I think we can all feel.”

Top 10 innovations

• Printing press
• Personal computer
• Refrigeration

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Vaccination — Vaccination – the Greatest Invention of All Times

Vaccination – The Greatest Invention of All Times

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Essay on Scientific Discoveries

• Updated on  
• Feb 7, 2024

Writing and speaking skills are the most important skills in the world. It shows how well a student will convey his or her ideas, experiences and thoughts. Essays are one of the most popular forms of writing to ascertain an applicant’s general knowledge, experiences, writing style and language skills. It is used in many entrance exams like SAT, IELTS, TOEFL and in college applications as well. From a very early age, school curriculums have been encouraging students to write essays and give speeches. Sometimes the topics provided to students can be complicated. So, today we have come up to help the students with an essay on Scientific Discoveries.

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Before we provide you with an essay on scientific discoveries. Let’s learn about essay writing. Writing an essay is a difficult thing. The writing should be rich in content plus should not bore its readers. Here are the five qualities a perfect essay should have:-

• Focus: All of your writing should come under one single topic. No matter how vast your essay is, it should always revolve around the topic of the essay. Avoid unnecessary details.
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Sample Essay on Scientific Discoveries

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Everything around us is a great discovery. Be it a necessity, comfort, or luxury, they all came from different scientific discoveries that took place over some time. Starting from a small pin to a big ship, everything is just a mere invention to make the lives of humans easier. Scientistic discoveries take place in every arena of thought so before we talk about these inventions. Let’s examine what is science. What is science? Science is a system for acquiring knowledge. We use observations, and experimentation to come to a conclusion and explain any natural phenomenon. In simple language, science is the systematic field of study or knowledge gained from experimentations, observations and some accepted facts. And so scientific discoveries have done miracles in human lives.  Scientific discoveries and inventions have made our lives easier and more comfortable than we could have ever imagined. Scientific equipment accomplishes lengthy tasks in just minutes. Be it in the health sector, education, transportation, and more. All the inventions are just the gifts of science. Nowadays we are in a situation where without science, we cannot imagine our survival. In the absence of Science, no country, and no single person would have made progress. Scientific discoveries and inventions are machines that accomplish any task of humans either fully or partially. According to the business dictionary, the word ‘invention’ is “a new scientific or technical idea and the means of its embodiment or accomplishment. To be patentable, an invention must be novel, have utility, and be non-obvious. To be called an invention, an idea only needs to be proven as workable. But to be called an innovation, it must also be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need. That’s why only a few inventions lead to innovations because not all of them are economically feasible.” Wikipedia further says, “An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field.” These definitions made us clear about how important scientific discovery is for us. Due to science, we can get all kinds of things we desire for. Electricity is a miracle that gives us light even in the dark. It further helps us to run industries conserve the environment and control pollution .  A cricket match is going on in America and we can watch it. Why? Inventions! Nowadays medical science is doing its best all over the world. Let us not forget computers, which is the greatest invention of mankind.  However, it is rightly said that every coin has two sides. Scientific discoveries and inventions have given us a lot and at the same time created a lot of disadvantages too. Nowadays people have become so dependent on technology that even walking has become difficult. Inventions made people so lazy, especially the young generation. All they could think about now is sitting at their home, with their computers and tablets on.

Gone are the days when people used to go out, play and have actual fun in life. Also, scientific inventions have made people jobless. Employers are substituting their employees with heavy machines. And this is the sad reality everywhere. Along with a luxurious life, technology has made our lives more complicated. People nowadays catch the disease early due to no exercise and sitting in front of their computer the whole day.  The biggest and most disastrous inventions are weapons, guns and bombs. What’s worse than taking the life of people? It has ruined unity, peace and harmony all over the world.  Scientific discoveries and inventions have contributed so much that my essay would never be enough to explain it. Ultimately, I would like to say that do not take up the monstrous side. Try the blessing of discoveries and make your life better in every aspect.

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Essay: Innovations that Changed the World

• Essay: Innovations that Changed the…

Over the years that the humans have walk upon the earth there have been countless technological innovations, some dating back to the Stone Age.  Although the ancient world didn’t have all the resources that we have today, the people of those times did magnificent things that paved the road for us today; from the stone tools made in Paleolithic and Mesolithic times to the wheel in 3000 BC, all the way to the pyramids in 2560 BC.  These inventions helped make it possible for us to build smartphones, remote controls, and skyscrapers.

Throughout the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, humans used stone tools.  These stone tools are the oldest technology that has evidence of surviving.  The humans would use flakes of rock, usually flint, to make different tools.  For example, the oldwan choppers, seen to the right, were designed to help break things down.  These stone tools can be compared to smartphones, the most useful tool of today. 

While the humans of the past had a different shape designed for different tasks, today we have “an app for that.”  Smartphones have different apps designed for each task; likewise, there are different designs of stone for each objective.  A smartphone is a tool that most people today could not live without.  Like stone tools, a smartphone is designed to make the lives of people easier. 

Lastly, stone tools were refined by Neolithic farmers.  These farmers sharpened the stone tools, making them better suited for hunting spears and knives.  The same goes for the smartphone.  It seems like every other month there is a new update to make the device better suited for the task at hand.

With the invention of the wheel, transportation was put on another level.  Although it is believed that the first wheels were meant for pottery in Mesopotamia, they ended up being an invention that changed the way humans traveled.  The remote is a great innovation to society. 

The remote, like the wheel, changed the lives of humans.  Before the wheel, people would have to walk everywhere.  In the same way, the remote made it so we did not have to get up to change a channel on the television.  The remote made life easier for people, as did the wheel.  These two inventions were made to help people in their everyday lives but actually helped to make people lazier. 

The wheel made it so people didn’t have to walk and the remote made it so people didn’t have to get up, leaving people able to sit most of the time.  Obviously, these technological breakthroughs had both positive and negative effects.

Around 2560 BC, the Egyptians created one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, the pyramids.  The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest man-made structure for almost 4,000 years. Today, if we go to a city we can see buildings that are a quarter of a mile tall.  These buildings help to make more space for business by taking up unused air space, which is why they are an important invention. 

Skyscrapers have multiple purposes, one of these purposes is to be a living environment like hotels and apartments.  The pyramids were used as a final resting place for Egyptian kings.  Like the rich kings of Egypt who had the best, rich people today usually have the best living environment in hotel skyscrapers. These huge structures are all being outdone, like the pyramids were, losing the title of the tallest building. 

The Great Pyramid of Giza may have lasted 4,000 years without being outdone, now, however, it is hard for one to last 10 years.  The Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world, reigning 2,717 feet, but there is another skyscraper said to be built in 2017 which would be 3,280 feet tall, that is nearly one kilometer.  Clearly, the ancient world built up the way for us to soar to new heights.

To conclude, the inventions from the past can be seen in the innovations of today; from the stone tools and the wheel help making it possible to make the pyramids, all the way to discoveries today, like the smartphone, remote, and skyscrapers.  Nolan Bushnell once said, “The best ideas lose their owners and take on lives of their own.” 

This quote is seen in all of these technological discoveries that changed the world.  Ultimately, without these inventions we would be just cavemen without tools, never advancing in evolution.

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Inventors And Inventions Essay & Paragraph In English

In this article you can read a brief paragraphs essay about inventors and inventions. I hope you will find following composition a meaningful for all class students.

The process of creating something new that has value is known as invention. This could be a new product , a new process, or a new way of doing something. Taking what already exists and making it better, faster, or cheaper is a common method of invention.

Table of Contents

500 Words Paragraph Inventions

Individual inventors’ hard work and dedication have resulted in many great inventions. These inventors are frequently enthusiastic about their work and devote a significant amount of time to developing their concepts. Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb, and Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin, are two well-known inventors.

Individuals do not, however, create all inventions. Sometimes groups of people collaborate to create new products or processes. The Wright brothers, for example, were not the only people involved in the development of the first airplane. They had a team of people who helped them with their ideas and prototypes.

Inventions have transformed society as we know it, making life easier and more efficient for people. Some inventions, such as cell phones and televisions, have changed the world so dramatically that they have become an essential part of everyone’s daily lives. Inventions improve our lives in a variety of ways, including improved health care, transportation, communication , and more!

As you can see, great inventors create some of the most important things in life. People make the world go round by creating new things that benefit everyone, whether they do so alone or as part of a team. Whether it is cute cat videos on YouTube, an app to help you hail a Left, or even a good old- fashioned light bulb inventions have improved our lives!

What do they imply? Is not invention the process of creating something new and valuable? Is this to say that anything goes?

No way, no how. For example, if I went outside right now and made fire out of thin air, I would be creating something new, but it would be worthless, so it would not be an invention. Something must be valuable to someone in order to meet the definition of invention. It could be value to the creator, such as a new toy they created for themselves, or value to others, such as a new medical procedure that saves lives. Creating things that are useful and valuable to someone is what invention is all about.

Who was the inventor of the light bulb? The light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison. He spent a lot of time working on different versions of the light bulb and came up with the idea of using electricity to power lights.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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The Four Great Inventions of China

Ancient China's technological brilliance is renowned worldwide, thanks to its Four Great Inventions. These monumental inventions have not only transformed people's lifestyles but also propelled the development of science and technology. In this blog post, we will delve into China's Four Great Inventions, exploring their significance throughout history and in the present day.

Papermaking 造纸术 (zào zhǐ shù): Revolutionizing Writing

Papermaking is an outstanding invention of ancient China, dating back to around 105 B.C. Innovator Cai Lun transformed materials like plant fibers, fishing nets, and old cloth into paper, providing a cost-effective and mass-produceable medium for writing. The advent of papermaking not only facilitated the dissemination of literature, science, and culture but also laid the foundation for later developments such as printing and cultural advancements.

 Printing 印刷 (yìn shuā): Artisan of Text Replication

The invention of printing is often credited to Zhao Ji, active during the Northern Song Dynasty in the 9th century. He creatively employed movable type printing technology, allowing books to be reproduced more rapidly and accurately. This technology significantly reduced the time and labor costs of writing, facilitating the widespread dissemination of knowledge. Large projects like the completion of the "Great Yuan Unified Records" and the "Yongle Encyclopedia" relied on the progress of printing.

Compass 指南针 (zhǐ nán zhēn): Guiding Light for Maritime Exploration

The compass, initially used for indicating direction, can be traced back to the 11th century in the Southern Song Dynasty. Its appearance allowed navigators to swiftly and accurately determine direction at sea, fostering the development of maritime trade and exploration. The compass played a crucial role in promoting geographical discoveries, cultural exchanges, and trade connections, contributing significantly to the understanding of world geography.

Gunpowder 火药 (huǒ yào): Spark of Military Revolution

Gunpowder, originating from China, dates back to the 9th century. Its military applications, from simple fireworks to firearms, cannons, and later rockets, revolutionized the landscape of warfare. The dissemination of gunpowder not only influenced military tactics but also had a substantial impact on the global military and political landscape.

The Four Great Inventions hold unique and profound meaning for the Chinese, shaping various aspects of Chinese history and culture.

Here's a brief exploration of the special significance of these inventions in the hearts of the Chinese:

Cultural heritage and pride (wénhuà chuánchéng yǔ zìháo gǎn):.

The Four Great Inventions symbolize outstanding achievements in ancient Chinese culture, serving as a source of pride for the Chinese people. These inventions not only showcase China's leading position in ancient technological fields but also strengthen the pride and identity of the Chinese in their cultural heritage.

Technological Innovation and Wisdom Tradition (Kējì Chuàngxīn Yǔ Zhìhuì Chuántǒng):

These inventions reflect China's remarkable contributions to technological innovation in ancient times. Through papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder, the Chinese demonstrated a profound understanding of practical technology, providing future generations with powerful insights into innovation and a tradition of wisdom.

• The invention of papermaking revolutionized how we write. 造纸术的发明彻底改变了我们的书写方式。  Zào Zhǐ Shù de fāmíng chèdǐ gǎibiàn le wǒmen de shūxiě fāngshì.
• Have you heard about the compass? 你听说过指南针吗？ Nǐ tīngshuō guò zhǐnánzhēn ma?
• Yes, it helps sailors find their way at sea. 听说过，它帮助船员在海上找到方向。 Tīngshuō guò, tā bāngzhù chuányuán zài hǎishàng zhǎodào fāngxiàng.

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Opinion Dogs are our greatest creation. And we might be theirs.

Tommy Tomlinson is the author of “ Dogland .” He lives in Charlotte with his wife, her mother and a cat named Jack Reacher.

The dog is humankind’s greatest invention. The wheel, the lightbulb, concrete — all amazing. Top of the line. But nothing in human creation has been as essential and adaptable as the countless descendants of the ancient gray wolf.

How did we do it? I spent three years following the traveling carnival of American dog shows — like a Grateful Dead tour with Milk-Bones — in search of the answer. My journey culminated in the dog world’s most prestigious event: the Westminster Dog Show. Show dogs are bred from the purest stock, culled from litters at just a few weeks old, trained with the dedication of Olympic gymnasts — and groomed like supermodels. They’d be unrecognizable to their ancient kin — and to ours.

The American Kennel Club, arbiter of bloodlines, now recognizes about 200 breeds, while tracking crossbreeds like goldendoodles, and even mutts. From the most massive mastiff to the tiniest teacup chihuahua, all dogs trace back to the same common ancestors.

Scientists think this weird and powerful companionship of humans and dogs might have started somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago. Humans of that era were mainly hunters traveling in camps. They ate meat by the fire. The cooking meat attracted wolves who were drawn to the aroma but stayed safely out of range of the flames. Every so often, a human would fling a bone into the darkness. The wolves gnawed on the bones. They trailed the humans to the next campsite, still keeping their distance. There was an unspoken arrangement. The wolves alerted the humans to intruders, and the humans fed the wolves well.

Over time the wolves crept closer. One fateful night a curious wolf came all the way into the firelight. The humans didn’t chase it off.

Slowly, the humans mingled with the wolves. After days or months or generations or centuries, a wolf curled up at a human’s feet. Maybe got its belly rubbed. That was the first dog.

As far as we can tell, dogs are the first animals that humans ever tamed. The wolves that hung out with humans found themselves changing inside and out. They developed shorter muzzles and smaller teeth. Their instinct to run became a desire to stay close. With time, dogs were manufactured through breeding to meet different human needs. We made huskies to pull sleds and Newfoundlands to pull fish nets and dachshunds to catch badgers.

Dogs taught humans the early science of designer genes. In the mid-19th century, as we moved off the farm and into the factory, we created dogs we could bring indoors at the end of a workday. And we created dogs we could bring to work: French bulldogs (now the most popular breed in America ) started out as literal lap dogs for lace-makers in France. We molded dogs to be friends, companions, playmates and unofficial therapists.

So dogs are not just humanity’s greatest invention but also its longest-running experiment.

That’s one way to look at it.

Now switch out the frame. Swap the subject and the object. Change the verbs.

Here’s another view:

Around the time early humans evolved, Neanderthals also walked the planet. At some point — roughly 40,000 years ago — humans started to thrive while Neanderthals died off. And this is about the time when those first curious wolves began to evolve into dogs. Some scientists believe the timing is not a coincidence. Maybe the dog was the key advantage in the triumph of humankind.

Dogs enabled humans to settle down and stop their endless wandering. Dogs protected humans at this vulnerable transition from nomadic to settled life. Dogs did work that humans did not have the strength or stamina to do: guarding, herding, hunting, pulling sleds. They created time for humans to build and think and create without having to focus every moment on the next meal or the next threat.

We domesticated dogs, and they domesticated us.

Today, dogs provide not just companionship but also an uncomplicated kind of love in an ever more complicated world. And for those restless souls wandering from town to town, chasing job after job — nomads again — a dog can be an anchor, something to hold on to on a lonely night.

From the gray wolf by the ancient fire to a coifed Pomeranian prancing around the show ring, dogs have been with us nearly as long as we have been human.

They might be our greatest creation. And we might be theirs.

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Lord Byron Was Hard to Pin Down. That’s What Made Him Great.

Two hundred years after his death, this Romantic poet is still worth reading.

“Who would write, who had anything better to do?” Byron once said. Credit... Musée Fabre/Hulton Fine Art Collection, via Getty Images

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By Benjamin Markovits

Benjamin Markovits is the author of a trilogy of novels about Lord Byron, “Imposture,” “A Quiet Adjustment” and “Childish Loves.”

• April 19, 2024

This week is the 200th anniversary of Lord Byron’s death. The most famous poet of his age (an odd phrase now) died fighting for Greek independence in the marshes of Missolonghi. “Who would write, who had anything better to do?” he once said. There was a strange contest over his body and memory: The lungs and larynx remained in Greece but friends carried the rest back to England, where huge crowds followed the funeral procession. A month after his death, his former editor burned his memoirs, worried they would damage the reputation of a superstar read around the world.

Does anyone read Byron now? He’s one of those unusual figures who have become better known for the lives they led than the books they wrote. Even some of his fans admire the letters more than the poems. It isn’t totally clear what it means to say that Byron is your favorite poet. Of the so-called Big Six Romantics, he’s the hardest to place. The hikers and the introverts read Wordsworth, the hippies love Blake, Keats is for the purists, Shelley for the political dreamers … and Byron? In spite of his fame, he lacks brand recognition. That’s partly because, halfway through his career, he decided to change the brand. “If I am sincere with myself,” he once wrote, “(but I fear one lies more to one’s self than to any one else), every page should confute, refute and utterly abjure its predecessor.”

All of which makes him a complicated sell. Academics trying to revive his reputation sometimes claim him as the anti-Romantic, a satirist who made fun of the movement’s clichés. Which is true. But he also wrote wonderful love poems, including two of his best-known lyrics, “ She Walks in Beauty ” and “ So We’ll Go No More a Roving .” Both are cleareyed about their own sentimentality, but more sad than satirical.

There are other ways of reclaiming him: as the first celebrity writer, as an early adopter of autofiction, for his sexual fluidity. He fell in love with both men and women, and slept with almost everybody, including his half sister, Augusta — which explains why his old editor, John Murray, decided to burn the memoirs.

Writers usually get famous because they touch a chord, and then keep playing it. And even if, as their work matures, they find ways to deepen the tone, it’s still recognizable; readers know what to expect from the product. And Byron touched a chord very young. His breakthrough poem — another odd phrase — was published when he was 24. “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” about a moody young nobleman who travels through war-torn Europe chased by some secret sorrow, made him a household name. Fan mail flowed in; women offered themselves in assignations. (Philip Roth joked in “The Ghost Writer” that for an author to get laid in New York you need only publish a couplet.) “Childe Harold” eventually stretched to four volumes.

Movie versions of Byron’s life tend to take the Childe Harold angle, presenting him as the beautiful young nobleman and exaggerating his Gothic or camp tendencies. He’s been played by Rupert Everett and Hugh Grant. You can find those elements in his writing, too, especially in the early verse, but then a few things changed. He got married, and the marriage went badly; he left England in 1816 and didn’t return; his fame hardened, and as it hardened, he began to realize that it didn’t really fit him.

People who met Byron for the first time expected him to be someone he wasn’t. This bugged him, not just as a human being but as a writer. He asked his friend Tom Moore to tell a well-known literary critic “that I was not, and, indeed, am not even now , the misanthropical and gloomy gentleman he takes me for, but a facetious companion, well to do with those with whom I am intimate, and as loquacious and laughing as if I were a much cleverer fellow.”

Byron was writing this from Venice after his separation from his wife. It was in many ways an unhappy couple of years. Still recovering from the trauma of his marriage, he overindulged himself, sexually and otherwise. The beautiful young nobleman was growing middle-aged. “Lord Byron could not have been more than 30,” one visitor remarked, “but he looked 40. His face had become pale, bloated and sallow. He had grown very fat, his shoulders broad and round, and the knuckles of his hands were lost in fat.” Some of Byron’s reputation for scandalous living dates to his stay in Venice. But he also made another literary breakthrough, finishing one long poem, “ Beppo ,” and starting his masterpiece, written “in the same style and manner” — “ Don Juan .”

“Don Juan” would occupy him for the rest of his short life. It cost him his relationship with Murray, who disapproved of the new tone in Byron’s writing. “You have so many ‘ divine ’ poems,” Byron told him. “Is it nothing to have written a Human one?” Around the time that Shelley was writing “ To a Skylark ” (“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!”) and Keats was working on “ Ode to a Nightingale ” (“Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!”), Byron in “Beppo” was advising visitors who come to Venice for the Carnival to bring ketchup or soy with them, because Venetians give up sauce for Lent. But he was making a broader point, too. Poetical truths, about birds, about nature, don’t always rank high on the list of what matters. Poets should spend more time talking about things like money and food.

Part of what his early success taught him was to be suspicious of it, which meant being suspicious of writers — of the ways they lie to themselves and their readers. Keats, for example, was guilty of “a sort of mental masturbation,” Byron said. “I don’t mean that he is indecent but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a state which is neither poetry nor anything else.” The work of Leigh Hunt was “disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was that his style was a system … and, when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless.” Experience, Byron believed, was the real source of literary value. “Could any man have written it,” he said of “Don Juan,” “who has not lived in the world?”

But experience relies on the honesty of the writer, and honesty, as Byron knew, is not a simple virtue. His own style became increasingly hard to pin down and hard to imitate — there is nobody who writes quite like him. Sometimes he lays on the devices pretty thick (“He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell”), the way you might scatter salt over a meal to add all-purpose flavor. But he can also write poetry that is unabashedly prosy: “There might be one more motive, which makes two.” What he’s particularly good at is achieving vividness without metaphor or adjective: “I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some Sequins in a drawer to count, & cry over them once a week.” This is classic Byron, self-mocking and sincere at the same time.

The overall effect is like someone pitching knuckle balls. He seems to be just tossing lines at you, almost carelessly or without effort, but they’re always moving unpredictably, and when you try to do it yourself, you realize how hard it is to throw without spin. Two centuries later, this still seems a talent worth celebrating.

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