The first transistor was created in 1947 at Bell Labs, an American scientific research and development company. With the size of your iPod classic, transistors are considered the father of all great technology. Without this invention, it would be impossible to create any other electronic equipment. The hearing aid is a valuable device for people with hearing loss.
It was invented in 1902 by Miller Reese Hutchinson, an inventor from Alabama. The first electric hearing aid was called Akouphone and used a carbon transmitter so that the hearing aid could be portable. The carbon transmitter was used to amplify sound by taking a weak signal and using electrical current to convert it into a strong signal. The past half-century has produced some of the most important and amazing inventions ever developed in human history, and many notable ones emerged in the United States.
From advances in computing to fundamental innovations in our medicine cabinets, many of the American inventions on this list play a role in our daily lives, while others have had a broader impact on society as a whole. However, they are all exclusively American creations. Apple, IBM, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are well-known names in the world of technology these days, but a relatively unknown man named John Blankenbaker is credited with inventing the world's first personal computer. Blankenbaker pioneered the frontier of computing when he built the Kenback-1 digital computer in his California garage.
In 1971, the athletics coach and co-founder of Nike, Bill Bowerman, was looking for a lightweight, cleat-free sneaker that would have a good grip on various surfaces. One morning, he poured rubberized liquid into his wife's waffle maker and the waffle sole was born. The shoe was so successful that Nike still sells Waffle Trainers to this day. As a young student at the University of Illinois in 1971, Michael Hart changed the world forever with the invention of the e-book.
Hart came up with the innovative idea after finding a physical copy of the Declaration of Independence, which he decided to write and send to other users of the university's network. The Gutenberg Project, one of the largest collections of free e-books online, was another of Hart's many achievements. From Atari and Intellivision to Nintendo and today's impressive web-based video games, gamers around the world need to thank Ralph Baer for his love. Baer invented the Magnavox Odyssey, the world's first home video game console, after realizing that television, which was common in 1972, had more to offer.
Nowadays, in virtually every office in the United States, you can find small squares of brightly colored paper temporarily glued to surfaces. In 1974, Arthur Fry and Spencer Silver, colleagues from 3M, invented the well-known Post-it Note: the first created paper and the second developed glue. In 1975, the first nail was stuck in the movie camera casket when Eastman Kodak engineer Steven Sasson invented the digital camera. The 24-year-old from Brooklyn was the first to use a new technology called digitalization to capture images.
Four decades later, we carry his invention in the pockets of our phones. Adobe Photoshop is so basic for image editing that, when an image appears manipulated, it is common to say that it has been retouched with Photoshop, even if the image was edited with a different program. However, the word didn't exist before 1987, when the Knoll brothers, Thomas and John, developed the first version of the software, which was initially bought by another company before Adobe realized its incredible potential. In 1988, Northrop-Grumman introduced a superaircraft that he had been building for nearly a decade.
The B-2, better known as a stealth bomber, was a huge and deadly aircraft with a design that evaded radar and made it almost undetectable even by the most advanced anti-aircraft systems. In 1992, a professor at the University of Buffalo, Jerome Schentag, and the president of Gastrotarget, David D'Andrea, invented the smart pill. The smart pill, a revolutionary medical advance, is a medical device encapsulated in the form of a pill and controlled by a computer. When patients swallow the pill, they swallow the device.
In 1993, Ashok Gadgil invented a lightweight, easy-to-use, and inexpensive device that used UV light to purify water. It could process four gallons per minute at a cost of 5 cents per thousand gallons. The product, which can supply clean water to remote rural areas, has become vital after hurricanes and other natural disasters, and is one of many American inventions that have helped save lives. Wi-Fi is a fundamental ingredient for daily life in the digital age.
Although the government had been using Wi-Fi before 1999, that was the year it was released to the public, but not before a major naming war and the fight to create compatible devices by several rival companies. During the last year of the 20th century, Apple began adding Wi-Fi slots to all of its laptops. When scientists Francis Collins and Craig Venter began working on mapping the human genome in the early 1990s, the government had already used a much slower and more expensive method to sequence the 3 billion base pairs of the human genome. By developing a cheaper and faster method, Collins and Venter completed the project two years earlier and published their results in 2001, ushering in a new era in the effort to prevent and cure diseases.
Although other companies had launched their own MP3 players, Apple's introduction of the iPod in 2001 revolutionized portable music and set the tone for how people would interact with their devices in the digital age. It also positioned Apple as the dominant force in technological hardware for the next decade. Hailed by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2001, the bioartificial liver brought new hope to patients around the world. Kenneth Matsumura, the bioartificial liver, used both the patient's blood and living rabbit cells to mimic the natural organ's blood-cleansing process.
YouTube is the world's most popular video sharing site. Developed by PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, the site's user-friendly and shareable format has been a key factor not only in American culture, but also in global events, from the Arab Spring uprisings to the rise of Justin Bieber. To see more American inventions and innovators looking to make a difference in the world, check out 26 companies that are doing good deeds with their money. The United States has been a hotbed of innovation since its founding.
From the 18th century to the present day, waves of immigration have brought people and ideas into close contact. The resulting cross-pollination has produced a style of American innovation that is different from others around the world. After World War II, the United States took the global lead in public and private spending on research and development, and the government often also acted as the first major buyer of inventions still experimental in electronics, telecommunications and biomedicine. At the same time, a large middle class emerged that was able to buy and soon demanded innovative goods and services.
Throughout this history, a distinctive culture developed, characterized by a high tolerance for failure, structural support for intellectual property, financial support ranging from venture capital to public stock offerings, and a drive for novelty in visual arts, music, food and technology. Without this political commitment to the supremacy of techno unleashed by Cold War rivalry, it is unlikely that the United States would have built the most formidable engine of innovation the world has ever seen or that innovation would have found such a special place in the national psyche. The United States is a nation that celebrates its foundation in individual freedom and the fight against oppressive belief systems. There's the phone, the Ford Model T and even social media.
The United States of America has been promoting innovative technology since the 18th century. In my opinion, it stems from the idea that Americans value individual achievement above all else, which is a common presumption of what the United States fundamentally represents. In today's United States, success is usually not meritocratic; instead, it is more often based on undeserved privileges (monetary or otherwise), scandal and impact, or on a willingness to exploit others. A key element of American frontier culture was barn farming, the idea that a newcomer could wait a day's work from neighbors to build their barn, and that he or she was expected to respond in turn to the next newcomer.
The chocolate chip cookie was deliberately invented by American chef Ruth Graves Wakefield and chef Sue Brides in 1938. First, let me state that American culture is the only absolute advantage that the nation continues to enjoy in a world that has recognized the competitive importance of innovation. It's no coincidence that all four are Americans, and three of them were created in the heart of Silicon Valley, perhaps the reigning symbol of American innovation. China and India are investing considerable resources in building innovation centers, and new configurations of innovation networks are emerging with different ways of supporting and maintaining cultures of innovation. American innovation is based on running the risk of failure, trying new things, and taking things back to the beginning when things go wrong.
This barn spirit is alive and well in the spotlight of American innovation, where newcomers are supported, connections are established, and the whole remains much more than the sum of its parts. . .
