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- Who Invented the Television
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- Who Invented the American Flag
- Who Invented Football
- Who Invented Chocolate
- Who Invented Basketball
- Who invented the Telephone
- Who invented Video Games
- Who invented Opera
- Who invented Radio
- Who invented Electricity
- Who invented Soccer
- Who invented the Airplane
- Who invented the Car
- Who invented the Cell Phone
- Who invented the Paper Clip
- Who invented the Segway
- Who invented the Space Shuttle
Who invented Video Games
Video games in the 21st century are one of the biggest selling products in the entertainment industry, in some markets even starting to overtake conventional music sales. Video games are roughly described as an electronic game with some rudimentary form of interaction in terms of the player having control of some aspect of the game, and there being a point to playing.
Video games weren’t invented until after the invention of the computer since a processor is required to render graphics on screen, keep track of player interaction, keep score, and assume the role of game adjudicator or another player. Computer video games can be run on home computers, consoles using a TV screen, or mini consoles with their own screen built in. The difference between electronic games and video games is the addition of a screen, as compared to electronic board games for example which may only emit sounds.
Original OXO Screenshot
The very first games invented for computers used oscilloscopes to plot the movement a dot on screen, or simply displayed a character in a given position, and early games sometimes had a piece of clear film placed over the CRT screen to provide extra information. The first recorded video game was written in 1952 at Cambridge on the EDSAC computer by Alexander Douglas, and was a very simple yet effective rendition of tic-tac-toe. Many historians agree this was one of the first video games but disagree that it was influential since it could only be played at Cambridge.
A similarly simple game was developed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958 by William Higinbotham that also used an oscilloscope to display the game which consisted of a horizontal line, a short vertical line in it’s center, and a dot that flew from one side to the other and simulated a tennis game. Two players could operate dials to ‘hit’ the ball and get it to return to the opposite side.
The first game that could be played on more than one machine was Spacewar, written by Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Wiitanen in 1961 for the DEC PDP-1 platform. Source code for the game was freely shared amongst the academic fraternity so was likely played on hundred’s of machines, and definitely qualifies as the very first video game.
Pacman - Original Screenshot
The first video game that could be played on a TV set, called Chase, was written by Ralph Baer in 1967 for a new console being developed by Sanders Associates which was subsequently licensed to Magnavox and sold over 100,000 units, but shipped with other games developed by the firm. Ralph Baer’s patents were licensed to Atari as well, who developed the biggest selling arcade console of the 1970s.
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Who invented Opera
Opera is a form of stage musical, quite different from typical Broadway musicals, and is often considered more cultural because it incorporates classical music and period costumes. Despite the use of classical orchestras, and a distinctive style of singing, opera actually describes a type of stage drama where singing is the main method of delivering lines instead of the more usual method of speaking a part.
The renaissance era in Europe, especially in Italy, was when opera was first developed. Renaissance society was rediscovering many of the artistic highs of ancient Greek and Roman literature, poetry, art, sculpture, even philosophical thought, most of which had been forgotten for over a thousand years as Europe experienced the dark ages and then settled into the medieval ages.
Florence, one of Italy’s leading centers of enlightenment, was the setting for regular meetings of the Florentine Camerata under the leadership of Count Giovanni de’Bardi during the second half of the 1500s, who were determined to revive classical Greek drama and music. These leading men of Florence would interpret and read the classics, and came to the conclusion that Greek drama was probably sung instead of spoken.
Girolamo Mei, a music historian of the era considered that some of the parts of Greek drama needed to be sung if they were to be heard over the sound of the instruments he believed would have been played in he background. The ancient Greeks may have sung small parts of their dramas, but modern historians now agree most Greek drama was spoken. In any event, Mei and the Florentine Camerata developed a new style of drama with parts being sung to accompaniment by a chamber orchestra.
Lei rarely attended the meetings of the Camerata, but wrote profuse notes to Vincenzo Galilei, a member of the Camerata and also a celebrated lutist in Florence. Galilei first put classical Greek poetry to music in a style known as the recitative. Several other members of the Camerata were also musically minded so Galilei shouldn’t be considered the only person of the Camerata to have created the new style.
The first drama to music that modern opera enthusiasts and historians consider to be opera as we know it today was composed by Jacopo Peri in 1597 entitled Daphne. Peri’s first opera hasn’t survived thru the ages but his second opera Euridice, first performed in 1600 has, Peri was the first composer to create a completely new drama set to music in the new opera style, and for this is credited with the invention of opera.
Sadly, Peri was quickly eclipsed by a younger generation, of whom Claudio Monteverdi was considered the composer to be watched and emulated, and many people who don’t know of Peri often incorrectly describe Monteverdi as the inventor of opera. In fact his style was so different from Peri, and still very much appreciated even in the 21st century, that perhaps the honor does belong to him, whereas Peri’s music is considered quite rough, and lacking finesse compared to his successors.
Learn about the complete history of opera.
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Who invented Radio
Radio refers to both the technology used to broadcast programs, and also the underlying science of radio waves, which are actually electromagnetic radiation that travels in waves just like light. Radio, even though it is used to broadcast audio signals is not in fact sound, though sound also travels in waves, but much much slower than radio waves.
Because radio is electro magnetic, it’s discovery goes back to around the same time that electricity was being experimented with in the early 1800s, however the ability to broadcast electromagnetic waves wirelessly wasn’t considered until much later. Many years of calculating the speed of electromagnetic waves, and creating formula for defining them went by. James Maxwell, the first person to start creating math for determining electromagnetic equations published his results in 1865, but the equations which are now known as Maxwell’s equations were extended by several other mathematicians, including Heinrich Hertz.
From these equations it became possible to experiment with broadcasting electromagnetic waves, and in 1879 David Hughes became the first person to successfully broadcast a morse code signal wirelessly across a room, however his achievements were dismissed and almost forgotten about, and Heinrich Hertz, a German university professor, has incorrectly been labeled the first person to send and receive radio signals.
Hertz deserves as much credit for helping the development of radio of any of his peers, but he in his own lifetime dismissed his radio experiments as worthless and doubted they would ever have a practical use. Hertz also inadvertently discovered radar, and once again dismissed his discovery as worthless and only useful in proving Maxwell’s theories to his students. Hertz died in 1894, so never saw how his discovery would change the world, but his writings were studied, and his experiments copied by a young Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi.
Gugliemo Marconi
Marconi is very well known worldwide as the inventor of radio, and in 1894 tested his first radio transmitter over a distance of a few yards. By 1896 he was in England working for the British Post Office developing a wireless telegraph system that would be cheaper and more convenient to use than running wire stretched between poles from one end of the country to the other. Marconi’s original techniques weren’t powerful enough to cover a great distance until he started using coils invented by Nikola Tesla.
Tesla had actually demonstrated wireless radio in 1891, several years before Marconi, at one time commenting that Marconi was a good chap who had used 17 of Tesla’s patents to build his business. In 1915, when Marconi received the Nobel prize for inventing radio Tesla became very upset, and started legal proceedings to have his place in history assured. In 1943 Tesla finally won his case, long after both Marconi had died, and sadly, a few months after Tesla himself passed away.
Learn about the complete history of radio.
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Who invented Electricity
Unlike the telephone, computer, or television, electricity wasn’t really invented since it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is easily seen whenever lightning rods are present during a powerful storm. Electrical storms can release more electricity in a single storm than the entire world uses in a year, most of the time storms and lightning is quite safe, but whenever electricity is present, the natural attraction of the current is to the ground, and anything in the way will likely be hit.
From the earliest times people knew that lightning was dangerous, and it was common knowledge that the tallest trees, or tallest buildings would be hit more often than those that were shorter. The reason for this wasn’t discovered until much later but it did give people a healthy respect for the power of lightning or electrical sparks. In ancient time, the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans believed the electrical charge from catfish or rays were therapeutic for headaches.
Thales of Miletos
Static electricity, which is just one form of electricity, was discovered by accident by a Greek philosopher named Thales of Miletos who in 600BC experimented with rubbing some things such a rod of amber with his hand or another object would attract some light objects such as feathers, and which Thales mistakenly attributed to magnetism instead of electrical charge.
A thousand years later in Baghdad, the Sassanid people discovered that copper and iron suspended in a pottery jar filled with an acidic fluid such as lemon juice, could generate a current that some historians believe was used to electroplate small icons with silver or gold. Known as the Parthian battery, it’s inventor is unknown but is the first clear example of electricity being used by people. Other historians disagree that electroplating was the purpose, instead they believe that electrical current was used in religious ceremonies by connecting a group of batteries to artifacts that when touched would give worshippers a low shock and which could be said to indicate the presence of God.
An English renaissance scientist, William Gilbert rediscovered Thales principles, but correctly identified that electrical charge was responsible, and then named the phenomenon electricus from the Greek word for amber. Benjamin Franklin, one of the presidents of the US, discovered in 1752 that lightning is generated by electricity in a famous kite experiment with an iron key suspended close to the string that he was holding. When lightning strayed close to the key, Franklin would feel the hairs on the back of his hand tingle.
In 1800, an Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, invented the first modern battery that could be used to draw a regular current, and it is in his honor that the method of measuring a unit of electricity, the volt, was adopted. By the 1820s scientists all over Europe were actively experimenting with electricity, and in 1819 Andre-Marie Ampere discovered electromagnetism, quickly followed in 1821 with the invention of the electric motor by Michael Faraday in 1821.
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Who invented Soccer
Soccer, which is also known as football in countries where it is the main team sport, is a game played with two teams of eleven players who kick or pass a round ball using only feet, shins, chests, and foreheads until they are able to score by getting the ball through the opposition’s goal posts. Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and generates billions of dollars of revenue from TV rights, merchandising, ticket sales, and product endorsements.
Kicking a ball around a pitch, with the aim of getting past the other team and score a goal is a common activity in most ancient societies, with the ball varying from filled animal bladders, to pig’s heads, even purpose made balls of leather stuffed with sawdust. The ancient Chinese are believed to have played football first around 2,500 years ago, a game they called cuju and which was also played in Japan and Korea.
Other indigenous peoples from Africa, the Americas, and even Australia, have had their own versions of football that may be as old as the Chinese game. Australian aboriginals were cut off from the rest of humanity for over 40,000 years, and since they had their own soccer game, historians now believe that soccer is perhaps the first truly instinctive and global game, that in fact nobody invented the first games since they are so common in almost every society.
The game of soccer as we know it today originated in the British Isles during the medieval ages, supposedly from an earlier Roman or Greek game, but the similarities are superficial. In England many attempts were made to regulate or ban soccer which was considered a disruptive and violent game. Tournaments between villages would see players kick a ball several miles through the countryside to score a single goal against the other village, the goal of the defensive players being to prevent the ball even reaching their village.
By the mid 1500s soccer was being played in British schools, and the first known mention of the game, was published by William Horman in 1519, though it wasn’t until 1581 when the headmaster of Eton College, Richard Mulcaster, wrote about the rules of the game as it was played at Eton. By this time tackling and handling the ball other than with the feet were not permitted, but in other parts of Britain, for example in Scotland, soccer was still a hybrid game that allowed picking up the ball like in rugby or American Football.
The modern game of soccer really started in 1848 when a group of schools and universities in England joined together to write the Cambridge rules under the leadership of Henry de Winton and John Thring. These same rules were updated in 1857, and in 1862 John Thring wrote a simpler set of rules, a combination of his older and newer rules being adopted by the Football Association in 1863. So it seems the inventor of modern soccer is none other than John Thring.
Learn about the complete history of soccer.
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Who invented the Airplane
Human flight has been the dream of so many since probably before civilization was invented. The airplane, a fixed wing vehicle capable of controlled flight like a bird, able to take off, maneuver through air currents in any direction, and then land at will safely again, that has been the challenge, and it was the first flight of a heavier than air airplane that finally decided the name of the inventor of the airplane.
Wright Brothers
As long ago as the 10th century in Islamic Spain, a scholar named Abbas ibn Firnas, born in Ronda, but who found favor in Córdoba, at that time the world’s most enlightened city, and quite possibly it’s largest too, invented a set of wooden wings covered with bird feathers, and then jumped from the tower of Córdoba’s great mosque, and successfully managed to glide to the base although his landing jarred his spine. Despite only gliding a short distance, history has been kind to ibn Firnas and he is recognized as the first human to successfully fly.
Of course gliding from a tower to the ground is a very different thing from taking off on flat ground with enough power to attain powered flight, and the next person to give serious thought to how this might be possible was Leonardo da Vinci who secretly designed a vehicle that today reminds us of a corkscrew with a seat suspended to it’s side. Modern scientists have computed the odds of da Vinci’s flying machine being able to fly as quite high, though sadly da Vinci’s machine was never built.
In the early 1900s Wilbur and Orville Wright, inspired by the efforts of Otto Lilienthal and Percy Pilcher, pioneers of 19th century gliding, the Wright Brothers set about designing an airplane that would give them complete control over flight rather than just rely on following the direction of the wind. In 1903, the Wright Brothers successfully tested their airplane and flew for 12 seconds, but by the end of that same day had increased this to 59 seconds and over 850 feet of flying, although their height above ground never increased beyond about 10 feet.
Wright Brothers Airplane
Controversy surrounds the Wright Brothers claim to have invented the airplane, with many flight historians claiming their achievements were remarkable, but were nothing more than gliding and shouldn’t be considered the first true flight. Instead, Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian living in France is considered by many as the inventor of airplanes for successfully flying a proper fixed wing plane in 1906.
Others dispute both the Wright Brothers or Santos-Dumont as the first to fly, and point to Clement Ader of France who was witnessed flying a plane he named Eole in 1890. His first flight only managed a height of 12 inches and a distance of 50 meters, but by 1892 this had been improved to over 200 meters distance at a height of 2 feet. Consensus seems to favor the Americans, Wilbur and Orville Wright as being the first to fly, but the argument will probably never be settled.
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Who invented the Car
Since the invention of the wheel people have been using carriages drawn by horses and donkeys for transport, but the invention of the car truly redefined transport since speed was no longer limited by the speed of the slowest running horse. Desire for a horseless carriage has been around for many hundreds of years, and some of the first experiments predate the industrial revolution.
Cars, which are also known as automobiles have gone thru many styles and variations, with early cars looking more like trackless trains or horse drawn carriages than anything we would recognize as a car in the 21st century. On the other hand, some of the futuristic designs presented at car shows in the 20th century, and even some of the current crop of future designs are so different from anything we have seen in production that people of the 22nd century may be as fascinated with today’s cars as we are with those first models.
Ferdinand Verbiest
Many people believe the very first car ever invented was a small scale steam model built for the Emperor of China by Ferdinand Verbiest in 1672, but modern historians dismiss this claim since the vehicle was just a toy and could never have been used to transport a person being only 64cm long. Steam engines have been known of since Roman times and whilst Verbiest’s design was unique, even if it was built today it could not transport people or cargo since the entire platform was taken up with the engine.
The first full size vehicle capable of carrying people some distance was invented by a Frenchman named Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot whose four wheeled carriage had a large steam boiler attached to the front. His design worked, but the technology in 1770 didn’t exist to create high pressure steam so his car was slow and quickly abandoned. Steam was experimented with for many years, and by the 1830s was being used extensively in the construction of trains and buses in London, but as the power behind cars it never really was accepted.
The first car with an internal combustion engine using liquid fuel was built by Siegfried Marcus in 1870, but his design was only a proof of concept and it was another 18 years until he produced a vehicle with seating for passengers, and rightfully cementing Marcus as the inventor of the car. He only built one model, which can still be seen in the Technical Museum of Vienna.
Ford T
Many historians consider a German, Karl Benz, to be the true inventor of the car because his was the first car with an internal combustion engine built with seating for passengers in 1885, and entering production in 1888, leading many to suggest Marcus only developed his second vehicle after seeing the success of his counterparts in Germany.
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Who invented the Cell Phone
Cellphones, also called mobile phones, are an invention that in the late 1990s and into the 2nd millennium have become so ubiquitous many people can’t imagine life without them anymore. Cell phones work wirelessly using radio waves to communicate with a tower that transfers the call to the network, and then to the phone of the other party.
Amos Joel
The idea of using towers arranged in a cellular pattern with each only handling a small area of the total number of subscribers has been around since after the second world war. The technology however didn’t exist to create a cellular network that would allow subscribers to move from tower to tower automatically, and a system of calling a specific phone didn’t exist either, so until the 1960s most mobile calls were operated like two way radios.
In 1956 Ericsson, Sweden’s major telecommunications company and one of the world’s largest, invented the first fully automatic phone system that could be used away from normal telephone infrastructure. The system eventually had 125 subscribers in Stockholm and Gothenburg but hasn’t been considered a precursor to modern cell phones because the system was still more like a two way radio system.
In 1970, a breakthrough occurred when Amos Joel of Bell Labs invented a system he called “call handoff” that allowed phones to maintain an active call when traveling from tower to tower, and this invention, whilst often under appreciated by some historians, is in fact the most significant invention in the history of the cell phone because for the first time portable phones became truly mobile, capable of roaming many miles outside the range of the original tower.
Competition in the mobile radio market was intense in the US during the 1960s, and resulted in one of the most amusing anecdotes of the history of cell phones occurring in 1973 after a period of development at Motorola. A prototype cell phone was invented by a research team led by Martin Cooper. In a game of one-up-manship Cooper tested their prototype cell phone by calling Amos Joel over at Bell Labs to let him know that Bell had lost the race to produce the first cell phone. At the time Cooper was standing in a New York street and was witnessed by a group of reporters specially invited to the event.
Whilst Martin Cooper has been described as the inventor of the cell phone, he was actually the Motorola’s director of research and development, and shares the honor with a team f engineers who were also mentioned in Motorola’s patent for a radio telephone system.
Learn about the complete history of cell phones.
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Who invented the Paper Clip
Paper clips are such a simple invention most people would be forgiven for thinking they must have been invented thousands of years ago, perhaps by ancient ancestors who first learned to work with tin or iron. Steel is notoriously difficult to work with, and especially so when small items like wire for a paper clip are being produced.
In fact paper clips couldn’t have been invented earlier than 1830, the year an American doctor named John Ireland Howe successfully created a machine that would automate producing pins with a solid head. Previously pins had been made by hand forcing the price of pins out of the reach of most seamstresses in a time when almost all clothing was handmade by the wearer or someone they knew.
John Ireland Howe
Paper clips and pins are obviously quite different, although they have a similar purpose, to keep the item being pinned or clipped organized. After pins were successfully marketed at only a few cents per packet instead of the more expensive dollar that handmade pins had cost, the demand for pins to hold together sheafs of papers became insatiable.
The first turned paper clip wasn’t produced until many years later in 1867 when the Fay paper clip (also known as the Cinch paper clip) was first produced. This was a short length of wire with both ends turned back 120 degrees but leaving a small length of wire between each bend that formed the spine of the clip. A patent was registered to Samuel Fay in 1867, though his paper clip cannot be said to have been widely available until the turn of the century.
By contrast, another design known as the Wright paper clip, invented by Erlman Wright was only patented in 1877 but also marketed and advertised in the same year. The Wright paper clip was specifically advertised as being a replacement for stitching pages together and could hold newspapers together.
In England in the early 1880s a paper clip known as the Gem paper clip was being produced, and this is the version most common today with two rounded ends, but first imported into the US in 1892. The Gem paper clip was never patented in England and in 1904 the Cushman & Denison company obtained a trademark over the name.
Popular folklore claims that a Norwegian man named Johan Vaaler invented the paper clip in 1899 and successfully registered a patent in Germany in 1899, and in the US in 1901. It is true that Vaaler designed his own paper clip in that year and registered the patents, unfortunately his designs never worked since there was no torque being applied to holding the papers resulting in the clip coming loose.
Since many people aren’t aware of Fay and Wright, or even of the English origin of the Gem paper clip Vaaler has been erroneously declared the inventor of the paperclip. The true honor of inventing the paperclip belongs to an American, Samuel Fay.
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Who invented the Segway
The Segway electric vehicle made by Segway Inc of the United States is a unique battery powered vehicle that needs only two wheels and self balances while riders stand with their feet placed on two small platforms located on the inside edge of each wheel. A steering column is positioned in the center of the vehicle with controls for acceleration and braking.
Dean Kamen
In 2001 the Segway PT, short for personal transporter, was officially unveiled by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway on the ABC TV show “Good Morning America” with Diane Sawyer who uttered the infamous line “That’s it?” in a very underwhelmed tone of voice after the wraps were taken off.
The previous year Kamen’s new invention had been widely speculated about as the new thing in transportation that Steve Jobs famously said would force cities to be redesigned. The story leaked about the imminent release of the Segway after Kamen had invited a journalist Steve Kemper to his DEKA factory to see the Segway prototype. Diane Sawyer’s reaction was sadly echoed by many and sales of the Segway were a disappointing 6,000 units in it’s first 3 years.
Dean Kamen had previously made his fortune with a number of other inventions such as the AutoSyringe allowing patients to receive medications reliably without having to be under constant care, and the iBot, a gyroscope balanced wheelchair that could climb stairs.
Kamen’s inventions have allowed him to develop an invention design company, DEKA, that employs over two hundred staff, and is the company that overseas all of his inventions. Shortly after the first Segway was launched, a spinoff company was founded with it’s own purpose designed factory to manufacture and sell the Segway PT. In 2002 the Segway finally reached the market.
Late 2002, after the disappointing release of the Segway PT it emerged that in fact Dean Kamen may not have been the actual inventor of the vehicle after a Japanese professor, Kazuo Yamafuji from Tokyo University announced that he had invented and produced prototypes of a similar vehicle in 1986, and that he and his colleagues had also registered a patent for their vehicle.
In fact Dean Kamen never claimed to be the inventor, his own patent application acknowledged the previous Japanese patent, thought Kamen’s representative stated that the Segway PT was so different being produced 15 year later that there was no need to change their belief that the Segway PT was invented by DEKA and Dean Kamen.
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