THE WHEEL (approx. 3100 BC)

While the inventor’s name might have been lost to history, their creation most certainly has lived on. The wheel is a natural inclusion on this list for how it revolutionized travel and trade. But it’s the wheel’s use outside of transportation that is truly remarkable. Many machines and devices use wheels, like pulleys, centrifuges, water wheels, and jet engines. Without the wheel, many inventions we now take for granted would’ve never existed.

THE AUTOMOBILE (1885)

Speaking of wheels, the most obvious use of wheels today is another boon that changed travel forever. Between the four wheels of the chassis to the steering wheel, the automobile gave people a chance to travel without spending a fortune or huge amounts of time. Henry Ford and Karl Benz may not have invented the car, but it’s their contributions that are most widely remembered and made automobiles accessible to the public. Ask yourself: how much harder would modern life be without a car?

THE COMPUTER (20^th century)

If you’re reading this, then it means you have one of two entries on this list: a computer. Again, there’s no exact inventor of the computer, but Alan Turing is largely considered one of the most influential people to computer sciences in general. Computers themselves have given us more than just video games and word processors; without them, we would’ve never landed on the moon or sequenced the human genome. Of course, most computers benefited greatly from the dawn of…

THE INTERNET (1960s)

AKA: The other component needed to read this blog post. Society is still reeling from the internet’s invention, with our approaches to communication, entertainment, and information all being upended. For this reason, it’s impossible to really describe just how it’s impacted the globe since the process is still ongoing. Nevertheless, the rapid change to global expectations on nearly all fronts makes the internet an obvious choice for this list.

COMMUNICATION (1836)

While we’re on the subject, communication surely qualifies as world-changing. While the term is broad, here it means “telephone, radio, and television” (although some might want to include the advent of language, both written and oral). Thanks to the telephone, you could speak to anybody, anywhere, at any time. The radio and television radicalized entertainment and newscasting, bringing it right into our homes without the need for a newspaper or cinema. While all three have suffered declines in popularity thanks to the internet, the internet wouldn’t exist without these forefathers.

REFRIGERATION (1876)

What’s for dinner? Before refrigeration, whatever you bought or caught that day would answer the question. Iceboxes were the first attempts at mainstream refrigeration but had to be restocked with ice daily and couldn’t last as long in the summer months. Now, the cold is completely artificially manufactured, allowing us to store meats and dairy products safely year-round. It’s also possible to transport ingredients across the globe, even in the most brutal of heats. And we can’t forget the greatest benefit here: being able to eat ice cream in the summer.

THE PLOW (approx. 3500 B.C)

The planet is resistant to change. Trying to dig up fertile soil to raise plants used to be back-breaking and slow before the plow was introduced. It may not be as flashy as some other entries on this list, but the plow allowed people to plant larger plots of land and move from subsistence farming to farming for trade. Interest in trade caused further developments in transportation, numbers, written language, and the construction of shelters and markets for agricultural products. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to claim that the plow is responsible for a blossoming of human civilization.

THE LIGHTBULB (1870s)

Up at dawn, asleep by dusk: this is how humans lived before lightbulbs. Even with candles, the flames were limited in range and only lasted for so long. The creation of Thomas Edison (and Nikola Tesla, but that’s another story…) is less notable for its power of light, however. It’s how it introduced electricity to every home- something that many appliances we now take for granted need in order to run.

STEAM ENGINE (1781)

If you wanted to travel prior to the steam engine, you had to dedicate days, even weeks to get to your destination. With a train, however, journeys took less time and didn’t require stops at night for the animals. We can thank James Watt for adding an additional condenser to a Newcomen engine in 1769 for this steam-powered wonder, the face of the industrial revolution.

THE PRINTING PRESS AND MOVABLE (1430s)

Before printing presses, books were for the wealthy and royal alone. Johannes Gutenberg brought literature out of the era of hand-copied manuscripts and eventually revolutionized communication, education, and entertainment. Without the printing press, many later inventions wouldn’t be possible. Think about it…how could we put together Ikea furniture without those easy-to-follow instructions by our side?

Where would these life-changing inventions be if it wasn’t for the inventors behind them? Every inventor has their own personality and approach to coming up with ideas. Do you know your inventing personality? You may be an everyday Edison or perhaps a dynamic or critical inventor. Take our quiz below to find out which one you are!

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Today, we are going to take a look at five products whose invention stories might not have gotten their start as one would think! Nonetheless, let’s get started and take a quick look at these great inventions that came to fruition from some interesting circumstances!

Scrabble– Surprisingly enough, this fun family board game got its start during the Great Depression. Since Alfred Mosher Butts was out of work, he decided that he wanted to invent a board game; so, that’s exactly what he did. After conducting research on his own, he found that games fell into three categories: number games (dice and bingo); move games (chess and checkers); and word games (anagrams). So, he decided to combine all three elements in to one game that included the vocabulary skills of crossword puzzles and anagrams with a component of chance. The result was Scrabble. But, at the time, this game was first named “Lexico,” only to be changed later by Butts to “Criss-Cross Words.”

Fender Guitars- Now a hot commodity in the music industry, this invention got its start from humble beginnings. Fender guitars are another byproduct of the Great Depression. When Leo Fender lost his job, he didn’t lose his inventor’s spirit. He borrowed $600 and opened Fender Radio Service. He then began to play around with sound products and ultimately decided to design and invent his own line of steel guitars and amplifiers. His guitar, which was dubbed the “broadcaster,” soon became the first six string one pickup Fender guitar that we know today!

Computers- This invention that we use every single day came to be during World War II when the United States military needed powerful help with ballistic research. From that necessity, ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was invented. ENIAC was the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer that was built by the U.S. during WWII. Known as the “Giant Brain” in the press, this invention at the time was designed with a specific purpose in mind,  to compute values for artillery range tables.

Calculus- Despite the fact that this invention might have single-handedly ruined your GPA or was the bane of your existence in high school, you can thank Isaac Newton for calculus. At the young age of 23, Newton discovered and developed the principles of calculus while at his mother’s farm between 1665 and 1667 after his university was closed because of an outbreak of the plague. Newton dubbed his invention as “the science of fluxions.”

Tabasco Sauce- Some people add it to almost everything that they eat to get that extra kick of spice and flavor. The invention idea for tabasco sauce stems back to the bland and monotonous diet of the Reconstruction South. During that time, Edmund McIlhenny decided to take matters into his own hands and invent a pepper sauce that would give food a nice kick. He selected and crushed the reddest peppers from his plants and them mixed them with Avery Island salt and aged the mixture for 30 days in crockery jars and barrels. Once the first 30 days had elapsed, he then added French white wine vinegar to the aged mixture and let it meld for another 30 days. This tabasco sauce invention process still holds true to this day, except now, the aging period is much longer!

So, in honor of National Inventors Month, we wanted to take a look at those ideas that came from less than ideal situations. Whether an idea came out of boredom, necessity or simply to find a better way to do something, invention ideas are constantly evolving from human experience.

Although these are just a few examples, we have to admit that the invention world is ever-changing, yet always interesting!

Copyright Davison 2014

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Would you believe it if we told you that one material made of a single layer of carbon atoms that are bonded together in a repeating pattern of hexagons could change the way that electronic components are made?

Believe it or not, this emerging material, otherwise known as graphene, has taken the scientific research world by storm through advancements that suggest this material could boost internet speeds, act as a touch-sensitive coating and prolong the lives of computers.

It all began when two Russian scientists, Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov, from the University of Manchester, were testing flakes of carbon graphite in an attempt to explore its electrical properties. After some testing with the material, both scientists decided to make the flakes thinner with the help of Scotch tape.

Both scientists used the tape to peel off a layer of the material from its block and then continued to peel off further layers from the original flake until they were able to get the flakes down to only a few atoms thick. Soon after, they realized that by repeatedly peeling off the layers,  they could reach the thinnest possible layer, one-atom thick.

The original idea of the two scientists working with this material is based on the fact that they wanted to investigate to see if graphite could be used as a transistor; the fundamental switching device that is at the core of computing. The idea to use Scotch tape came from both scientists hearing that other researchers had used the tape to clean the mineral before putting it under the lens.

Just like diamonds are a girl’s best friend, graphene is a scientist’s best friend and is, in fact, stronger than a diamond; yet, it is one million times thinner than paper. It’s so thin that it is considered to be two dimensional. This material has the ability to conduct electricity and heat better than anything that has ever been discovered to date. It is likely that graphene will be an integral part in many future products and processes.

So how strong is graphene? James Hone, a mechanical engineering professor at Columbia University, puts graphene’s strength into perspective. Hone said that graphene is so strong that it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene as thin as a piece of Saran wrap.

Now that you can wrap your mind around the strength of graphene and how it was discovered, you might be wondering, “why is there so much hype surrounding this material?” Well, for one, graphene has the potential to be used in common everyday situations and products. For instance, graphene can be used to desalinate seawater in order to make it drinkable. Many scientists believe that when water passes through graphene’s tiny pores that the filter can potentially transform salt water into drinking water within a year.

Right now, you might be reading this blog on your computer. Many hope that graphene can replace silicone chips; in fact, IBM has already created pilot computers that use the material to achieve the record-setting speed of 100GHz.

Perhaps you are reading this blog from your smartphone.  Samsung, among other companies, is beginning to use graphene to develop their touchscreen interfaces, because of its transparent and conductive properties.

There are a variety of ways that graphene can be used.  For instance, New York scientists have designed a polymer coating that contains this form of carbon and discovered that it protected steel from rusting for up to a month. This is good news for car owners who do not want their car to rust. The graphene works to repel water and delays the electrochemical reactions that oxidize iron.

This discovery of graphene has allowed many scientists to exercise their ideas in the hopes of furthering scientific research. Only time will tell just how many products and processes are infused with the ultra-thin and ultra-strong material otherwise known as graphene.

Copyright Davison 2013

Sources:

http://gigaom.com/2013/07/15/what-is-graphene-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-material-that-could-be-the-next-silicon/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-graphene-story-how-andrei-geim-and-kostya-novoselov-hit-on-a-scientific-breakthrough-that-changed-the-world-by-playing-with-sticky-tape-8539743.html

Media:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147456-researchers-successfully-grow-defect-free-graphene-commercial-uses-now-in-sight

http://gigaom.com/2013/07/15/what-is-graphene-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-material-that-could-be-the-next-silicon/

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