The 10 Inventions that Brought Us Together

Ideas from different cultures can be shared and new lands explored, thanks to the tireless work of innovators and inventors with the determination and foresight to dream of a brighter future. Here are our choices for the Ten Most Important Inventions that have made the world a smaller place. 

Boat – Pre-history

Boats were the earliest form of man-made transport, having been around since prehistoric times. Primitive ‘dugout’ canoes formed out of tree trunks have been used to navigate local waters and to go fishing since before the dawn of recorded history. Historians suggest that stronger sea-worthy vessels must also have been around since around 50,000 BC, since they would have been needed to carry the original settlers of Australia from South-East Asia. Of course, the boat has evolved considerably over the millennia: from ancient galleys, Phoenician sailing ships, the Caravels of Portuguese explorers, up to the giant warships and cruise ships of today.

Wheel - 5,000 BCE

If you wanted to transport something overland in prehistoric times, you would either have to haul it yourself or else get an animal to do the heavy lifting for you. It is believed that the wheel, as a method to aid transport, was invented in the area of the Middle East around 5,000 BC, spreading to Europe in the following centuries. The wheels on the most expensive cars in the world today are still basically the same as the wheels used to haul supplies around behind donkeys thousands of years ago, which shows you just what a pivotal development that this was in the history of human civilisation.

Train - 1784

Although transport systems using railway systems had been around for hundreds of years, it was not until the end of the 18th century that a self-propelled vehicle was created. Previously, wagons had been hauled along rails by humans or animals, but the invention of the steam train was a great leap forward. Scottish inventor James Watt is widely credited as the inventor of the steam engine, with George Stephenson and his ‘Rocket’ being the first passenger-carrying train. Railway lines would prove to be a vital way to connect people living on giant land masses like the United States, Russia and Europe.

Telephone - 1876

As with any major invention, the person who is generally regarded as the inventor of the telephone really just provided the final piece of the puzzle. So, while Alexander Graham Bell is credited with the invention, a host of less famous names can lay claim to important work which led to the moment when Bell obtained his patent in 1876. Like Ford and his cars, Bell was able to make the telephone a commercially viable product. In the UK, the telephone was initially seen as a business tool, but the onset of WW1 made communication a priority, and phones started appearing in private homes. The shape of the phone has certainly changed over the years, from the original ‘candlestick’ style upright phones to the streamlined mini-computers we carry about in our pockets today. Regardless of appearance, the telephone’s importance in connecting people remains the same.

Car - 1885

The first question to consider when asking who invented the car is: ‘What is the definition of a car?’ As early as 1770 in France a Monsieur Cugnot invented a steam-powered tractor, and British inventors had come up with similar steam-powered vehicles by the end of that century. In fact, steam-powered vehicles were being mass-produced in the UK by the early 1800s, but public fear of these dangerous boheomoths led to a law requiring them to be preceded down the road by a man waving a red flag. That finished the automobile industry in Britain, but in Germany, in 1885, Karl Benz invented the first mass-produced petrol-fuelled automobile. The success of this vehicle has meant that Benz is now widely considered to be the inventor of the car, although it was American Henry Ford who manufactured the first commercially practical cars and thus is at least an equally important figure in the history of the automobile.

Radio - 1897

The invention of the radio owes a lot to that of both the telephone and the telegraph, as many of the technologies were the same. As the man to file the patent, Guglielmo Marconi is credited as the inventor of the radio, although Nikola Tesla made a very significant contribution in terms of the technology it used and, in many eyes, deserves at least as much credit. Marconi foresaw radio as a way for ship-to-shore communication, and never imagined the impact it would have as a broadcasting medium. By the 1910’s anyone who could get their hands on a transmitter was broadcasting, and it wasn’t until the ‘20s that organised radio stations came into being. For decades, radio became the main way that information was sent and received around the world, bringing up-to-the-minute reports across hundreds and thousands of miles. Not until the rise of the television would the radio lose its place as the number one broadcaster in the world.

Airplane - 1903

The longing for flight has existed for as long as people have stared up at the birds in the sky above. Kites and hot air balloons were among the early ways in which man took to the air, but the quest for ‘heavier than air’ flight took a lot longer to accomplish. The flights of Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903 are recognised as being the first ‘sustained and controlled heavier-than-air flights’. These bicycle-shop owners from Ohio made their breakthrough on a cold December day, when they managed to take to the air in the Wright Flyer 1. With many people around the world working on powered flight, innovations and adjustments came quickly. As is so often the case, war led to rapid innovations, and these continued after WW1 to the point where planes were a major feature of combat during the Second World War. Today, planes have become a fact of life, to the point where at any given moment there are between 6,000 and 10,000 planes in the sky.

Television - 1925

The invention of the television is another which is very hard to pin down. Dozens of people, working alone or in groups all over the world, contributed to the development of the television set. Credit is often given to Scottish inventor John Logie Baird as the person who brought various technologies together and gave the first public demonstration of moving televised images. This new invention was to provoke consternation and curiosity in equal measure, and a new vocabulary had to be invented. Not just the word ‘television’, but also what to call the people who watched these moving images which spoke. Lookers, perceptors, and audivists were all tried out for size before ‘viewers’ became the common term to use. Television changed the way people saw the world and how they lived their lives. It was a seismically important invention, but perhaps the next one on our list has been even more impactful.    

Internet – 1990

Pinning down the exact date that the internet came into being is harder than you may imagine. It traces its roots to the 1960s when the US military tried to find a way to connect supercomputers located around the country. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1990, marking the beginning of the internet's widespread accessibility to the public. Now the internet has become an incredible repository of information for the human race, a resource next to which the famous Library of Alexandria pales into insignificance. The internet has connected people from across the world in so many different ways, and has grown to such an extent that many of us spend hours every day in this virtual environment.

Social Media - 1997

One of the principal ways in which people use the internet is to access various social media accounts. Andrew Weinreich is not a name many people have heard of, but he was a lawyer who developed the very first social media site: Six Degrees. This site was a forerunner to Facebook and Myspace, and although it only lasted a few short years, it paved the way for the more successful sites which were to follow. Today, social media plays a crucial role in the way we communicate with each other, bringing together childhood friends who had lost touch and people living on the other side of the world. At its best, social media allows people to share ideas, learn about different cultures and enter a global conversation about the issues of the day.

All the inventions on our list have a common goal. They were created to bring people closer together while also allowing them to travel further away. The internet allows us to speak with friends on the other side of the planet, while at the same time, it opens a window on places that we would never otherwise have seen. To a lesser degree, the wheel, the car, the television and every other invention on the list accomplish the same thing. Mark Zuckerberg talks about social media being a way for people to connect and communicate more easily. Certainly, in one sense, ‘we’, as in ‘humanity’, have never been closer since so much of what was private is now publicly shared. On the other hand, there is the danger that our social media personas are just a stylised version of how we would like to be, hiding the real person behind carefully constructed images and painstakingly over-worked phrases.

Let’s hope that the creators of social media continue to succeed in their stated vision to bring people closer together and to act as a positive rather than a negative influence on our daily lives. The rate of innovation is such that it won’t be long before another invention will need to be added to our list; who knows what the future will bring?

Sources:

www.wikipedia.org
https://www.loc.gov
https://www.thoughtco.com
https://www.brainyquote.com
https://www.webdesignerdepot.com
www.wright-brothers.org
www.history.com