“Necessity is the mother of invention” is an old proverb. It means that necessity compels the man to exercise his power of invention. Humans are an ingenious species. From the moment someone bashed a rock on the ground to make the first sharp-edged tool, to the development of Mars rovers and the Internet, several key advancements stand out as particularly revolutionary. When you imagine inventors, you probably picture a lone genius in a laboratory concocting brilliant devices, experimenting and redesigning until some concept or contraption works perfectly.
Imagine this is 1980: If you were reading this article back then, chances were you would have read it on paper — with a printed newspaper or magazine in your hands. Today, you are probably reading it on a desktop computer, a laptop (or as a printout from either of these), or perhaps even on the smartphone. The pace of innovation has been so hectic in recent years that it is hard to imagine about which innovations have had the greatest impact on business and society.
“Innovation is a surprisingly hard word to define,” - says Kevin Werbach.
Everyone thinks they know it, but when you ask them to explain exactly what an innovation is, it gets very hard. In order to achieve the best results and narrow down the most authentic list of winners, Werbach, and his fellow judges defined innovation as more than simply a new invention. “It’s something new that inventions create new opportunities for growth and development,” he says, citing cellular technology that ranks three on the list. “We’ve gone from zero to close to three-and-a-half-billion people who have a mobile device and are connected to each other.”
So, here are the 10 following innovations that changed our lifestyles completely and made us dependent on them.
1. Internet
Hardly a surprise, the Internet — combined with broadband, browsers, and HTML — was ranked first in a list dominated by technological and medical advancements. MacMillan notes that the Internet is an innovation that created an industry and subsequent new technologies, making it an especially important category. “Some [innovations] are more transient and come and go very quickly,” he says. “To me, the ones that really matter are the ones that generate whole new industries.”
The Internet, a network of computers covering the entire planet, allows people to access almost any information located anywhere in the world at any time. Its effects on business, communication, economy, entertainment and even politics are profound. The Internet may not have changed the world as much as the plow, but it’s probably on par with the steam engine or automobile. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development arm of the U.S. military, created The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (
ARPANET) in the late 1960s.
This network of computer-to-computer connections was intended for military and academic research. Other computer networks began to cross the globe in the next few years, and by the late 1970s computer scientists had created a single protocol, TCP/IP, that would allow computers on any network to communicate with computers on other networks. This was, essentially, the birth of the Internet, but it took 10 or so years for various other networks in the world to adopt the new protocol, making the Internet truly global. The Internet is such a powerful invention that we have probably only begun to see the effects it would have on the world. The ability to diffuse and recombine information with such efficiency could accelerate the rate at which further world-changing inventions are created. At the same time, some fear that our ability to communicate, work, play and do business via the Internet breaks down our ties to local communities and makes socially isolated. Like any invention, the good or ill it accomplishes will come from how we choose to use it.
2. Computer
A computer is a machine that takes information in, is able to manipulate it, and gives new information as outputs. There is no single inventor of the modern computer, although the ideas of British mathematician Alan Turing are considered eminently influential in the field of computing. Mechanical computing devices were in existence during the 1800s (including the rare devices that could be considered computers in ancient eras), but electronic computers were invented in the 20th century. Computers are able to make complicated mathematical calculations at an incredible rate of speed. When they operate under the instructions of skilled programmers, computers can accomplish amazing feats.
Some high-performance military aircrafts wouldn’t be able to fly without constant computerized adjustments to flight control surfaces. Computers performed the sequencing of the human genome, let us put spacecraft into orbit, controlled medical testing equipments, and create the complex visual imagery used in films and video games. If we examine these grandiose uses of computers, we would overlook our daily-based reliance on them. Computers let us store vast amounts of information in it and retrieve any piece of information almost instantly. Many of the things that we take for granted in the world wouldn’t function without computers, e.g., from cars to power plants and to phones.
3. Light bulb
If there’s a common theme to this list, it would be the fact that no major invention came from a single stroke of genius from a single inventor. Every invention is built by incrementally improving earlier designs, and the person usually associated with an invention is the first person to make it commercially viable. Such is the case with the light bulb. We immediately think of Thomas Edison as the electric light bulb’s inventor, but dozens of people were working on similar ideas in the 1870s when Edison developed his incandescent bulb. Joseph Swan did similar work in Britain at the time, and eventually, the two merged their ideas into a single company, Ediswan. The bulb itself works by transmitting electricity through a wire with high resistance known as a filament. The waste energy created by the resistance is expelled as heat and light. The glass bulb encases the filament in a vacuum or in the inert gas, preventing combustion. You might think tthe light bulb changed the world by allowing people to work at night or in dark places (it did, to some extent), but we already had relatively cheap and efficient gas lamps and other light sources at the time. It was actually the infrastructure that was built to provide electricity to every home and business that changed the world.
4. Automobile
The way the steam engine mobilized industry, the automobile mobilized people. While ideas for personal vehicles had been around for years, Karl Benz’s 1885 Motorwagen, powered by an internal combustion engine of his own design, is widely considered as the first automobile. Henry Ford’s improvements in the production process — and effective marketing — brought the price and the desire for owning an auto into the reach of most Americans. Europe soon followed.
The effect of automobile on commerce, society and culture is hard to overestimate. Most of us can jump in our car and go wherever we want, effectively expanding the size of any community to the distance we’re willing to drive to shop or visit friends. Our cities are largely designed and built around automobile access, with paved roads and parking lots taking up huge amounts of space and a big chunk of our governments’ budgets. The auto industry has fueled enormous economic growth worldwide along with generating a lot of pollution.
5. Calculator
This device does not need any introduction as every middle school-going student knows its importance in our lives. The first electronic calculator was created in the 1960s, and the pocket size version became available in 1970s. From students to researchers to scientists, everyone carries a calculator these days and it would be hard to find a cell phone without a pre-installed calculator app on it.
6. Microwave oven
The first commercial microwave oven was sold in 1947. They are most commonly used for rapid reheating of previously cooked foods and rapid heating of slowly-prepared cooking items, such as melting chocolates or butter. Any modern kitchen would be incomplete without this amazing and helpful machine.
7. Global Positioning System (GPS)
This system was developed in 1978 and was made to pinpoint your exact position of a person or thing within a couple of meters with the help of up to 32 satellites. It became a great invention for explorers, paramedics, and pilots but now even for common people who have GPS enabled devices in their cars or even GPS-based apps on their smartphones.
8. ATM
You ran out of money. Don’t worry. Find an ATM!
“Automated teller machines (ATM)” were invented by John Shepherd-Barron, and the first ATM was introduced in June 1967 at Barclays Bank in Enfield, UK.
9. Fridge
It is the greatest kitchen convenience in history. Before its conception, icehouses were used to provide cool storage for most ofthe year. The first refrigerator to see widespread use was the General Electric “Monitor-Top” refrigerator introduced in 1927.
10. Telephone
Alexander Graham made the first working phone in the 1870s. Today there are 1.3 billion phone lines in use around the world. The modern telephone network, consisting of a worldwide net of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, cellular networks, communications satellites and under-sea telephone cables connected by switching centers, allows any telephone in the world to communicate with any other.
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