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10 Famous inventions that were the peak of other people’s work
There is a list of famous inventions that are the four Conner stone of the existing technology today. Yes, is true that many inventions are a result of progressive developments without anyone being responsible for the full development.
That is why in many cases it is very difficult to identify the particular date and individual responsible for the invention. Most time many people are base on the basic model, In turn, improve it into workable models
However, let us look into some of the famous inventions that were the peak of other people’s work
1.Galileo and the telescope
Though, Galileo is often attributed as the first person who invented the first telescopes. Dutchman called Hans Lippershay was actually the first man who has been making magnification devices using glass.
Hence, Galileo was away of this and decided to start building his own, he made a lot of improvement in the process, and one of such development was the introduction of the new optics as a scientific instrument, that was when his real value was added.
However, he was not the first person to invent telescope but the first to use it systematically monitor celestial objects and record his discoveries. That was how he became famous.
2. James Watt and the steam engine
The Watt steam engine otherwise known as the Boulton and Watt steam engine was not the first practical and driving force of industrial revolution. In 1689 Thomas Savery invented the first steam engine that was in the form of pump use in removing water from mines.
Thomas Newcomen 1712 invented steam operated engine pump with pistons. James Watt from 1712 started improving from the previous development made by Newcomen’s ideas and develops additional efficient steam engines.
3. Eli Whitney and the cotton gin
The cotton gin is a machine that has the capacity to rapidly and without difficulties removes the cotton from their seeds, enhancing greater productivity than the manual operation. The fibers are then processed into a different type of cotton suchlike linens.
This particular machine was invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, this influenced the history of the United States. It was very popular in the south. They became the cotton producing country.
While he significantly improved the production ability for cotton, it also had the sad side effect of increasing the demand for slaves to man field.
4. Elisha Otis and the elevator
Right from the ancient time of the Egyptian, they have been the existent of Devices capable of lifting people into tall buildings. Because as the day passes by there have been greater development and growth in the city, and this lead to taller buildings being constructed.
However, as such climbing, multiple flights of stairs become a problem. So, elevators were invented, using either steam or electric engines which pulled up elevators with ropes.
However, ropes have a tendency to break. And even being in an elevator only a few stories high, if the rope broke and you plummeted with the carriage it would result in at least severe injury, if not death.
Otis actually invented the safety brake, which would stop the elevator from crashing if it was activated by sudden falling when a rope broke. This removed a major risk of death from buildings taller than a few stories and spurred on the building of the first skyscrapers. Otis’ big brake catching him
5.Thomas Edison and the light bulb
It is perhaps the most famous invention of all time, and its symbol actually epitomizes the concept of an idea.
And yet, Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb. Not the glass bulb, or the glowing filament inside it. He merely improved the previous designs to the point that they became commercially practical, in 1880.
The first electric light device, called an Arc-Lamp, was developed by Humphry Davy about 78 years before that, but didn’t last long and was far too bright. In 1850, Joseph Swan found that carbonized paper was a much better material for a filament and used them to make light bulbs. However, he couldn’t get his design to be efficient or long-lasting.
After further experimentation, both Swan and Edison found subsequently better materials, and eventually, their two companies merged to market their new improved design together, though most people only remember Edison.
6. Guglielmo Marconi and the Radio
In the 1890s, both Marconi and Nikola Tesla were fighting to develop the radio. Tesla actually received more of the early patents for the technology. However, the initial discovery of electromagnetic radiation was actually made a decade earlier by German scientist Heinrich Hertz, who was able to both transmit and receive radio waves in his lab.
However, he couldn’t think of any practical applications for his discovery. It was later Marconi who was able to take all these technologies and turn them into a commercial product. Guglielmo Marconi radio
7. Henry Ford and the car
Ford released the Model T in 1908, and it was the first car to gain mass market appeal and success at a time when many people still traveled by horse.
However, the car as powered by an internal combustion engine was actually created by Karl Benz in 1885, and many other engineers subsequently improved on the design for better efficiency, comfort, and performance.
What Ford achieved was to improve the production process of the machine. His assembly line improved production efficiency significantly, bringing down the cost of each unit to a price point where people could actually afford it.
8. The Wright Brothers and the airplane
Humankind has been dreaming of flight for eons. From Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches of flying machines to the story of Icarus, people have desired to rid themselves of the shackles of gravity.
And the Wright Brothers were not the only people of their time to try and develop a machine capable of powered flight.
George Cayley was the first person to move from designs involving flapping like birds to a “fixed wing” design. Another engineer called Otto Lilienthal then used a lot of those designs to create actual gliders with fixed wings and testing them, producing a lot of data which the Wright Brothers would subsequently use.
Additionally, the Wright Brothers were able to use another recent invention from the time: the internal combustion engine from automobiles. They were around at just the right time when this became available.
Their true innovation was in their designs which allowed their plane to actually be steered and controlled. And the rest is history.
9. Philo Farnsworth and the TV
Philo T Farnsworth
An excellent example of an invention that was only possible thanks to numerous other inventions across industries.
Farnsworth was able to take the developments of the cathode ray tube (by Ferdinand Braun) and combine it with a way to scan images using electrons which he apparently began thinking of in high school.
His design also outperformed the other competing TV technology at the time: mechanical TV.
10. Bill Gates and the Graphical User Interface
Early computer systems were primarily command-line driven, meaning you needed to know all of the inputs to type into a keyboard to tell the machine what you wanted it to do.
Many people credit Microsoft Windows with introducing the world to the Graphical User Interface (GUI), where you can use a mouse to click on-screen objects to tell it what to do, making the whole process much more user-friendly.
However, a lot of the progress in GUI development happened much earlier. A pioneer was Douglas Engelbart, who demonstrated an Operating System with a mouse pointer in 1968. This idea was then taken up by Xerox, who released their Alto computers which were the first with a mouse and GUI.
As legends go, Apple’s Steve Jobs saw an Alto while visiting Xerox’s PARC research center and inspired him to make sure the Apple Macintosh would have a GUI, the first mass-market GUI computers. This then paved the way for the more business-focused Microsoft Windows Operating System, which took the idea truly mainstream.
