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The most innovative inventions in history (I)

Human beings have been populating the Earth for about 200,000 years. Since then, we have gone from living in caves, gathering and hunting for food, and moving in carts pulled by animals, to living in smart buildings, shopping in supermarkets full of refrigerated food, and flying across the sky aboard complex aircraft which enable us to travel long distances in just a few hours.

None of this would have been possible were it not for our capacity for invention and innovation. The first involves the discovery of something new or something unknown, whilst the second always refers to change, with the modification of something already existing in order to improve it.

There have been a large number of visionary women and men who have been responsible for inventions that contributed to the well-being of humankind. Names like Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, or where Spain is concerned, Isaac Peral, Juan de la Cierva and Ángela Ruiz Robles, the precursor of the digital book.

In this series of articles we would like to speak about the most revolutionary inventions. Inventions that not only led to innovations but forever changed the history of mankind. Here are five of the most important.

 

The wheel

Just try for a moment to imagine the modern world without the presence of the wheel. Or would the modern world even exist without it?

There is no doubt that the wheel is one of the most important inventions in the history of the mankind, and nowadays it is used for so many different things. Here are some of the things that resulted from its invention:

  • The emergence of vehicles (from the simplest, like the wheelbarrow, to the most sophisticated)
  • Water wheels and turbines
  • Hydraulic pumps and potter's wheels
  • Pulley systems (that brought us lifts and cranes)
  • Gears (essential for washing machines, drills and mixers)

The wheel is believed to have been invented more than seven thousand years ago. It probably originated as an innovation from the idea of putting rollers under a load to be able to move it from one place to another.

The oldest wheel ever found was discovered in 2003, in a swampy area in Ljubljana (Slovenia). It was made of ash wood and experts dated it to the Neolithic era (5,350-5,100 years ago); It had a square axle hole.

During the time of the Andronovo culture (2,000 – 1,200 BC ) when the first wheels with spokes were built. Soon after (in 1,000 BC), the Celts began using metal rims around the wheels of their chariots. It was not until the early 19th century that rubber began to be used around the wheels. A Scottish engineer, Robert W. Thomson, patented the first pneumatic tyre. However, it was his fellow countryman John Boyd Dunlop who popularised it just a few years later, after winning a legal dispute over the rights to the patent.

The printing press

Human beings have always needed to tell stories and share their knowledge. In the beginning of time, this was only possible orally, but the Egyptians began to use papyrus, a support of plant origin. Centuries later, the use of parchment, of animal origin, was introduced into Europe.

Both formats coexisted for many years, until the Arabs introduced paper into Europe in the tenth century (paper was invented by the Chinese and they had been using it since the second century BC).

However it was extremely laborious to make copies of books, and regardless of the medium this was only done by copyists or scribes. This all changed with the arrival of the printing press. It had an extraordinary impact at a social level: It brought about the creation of the publishing industry and knowledge grew enormously as a result of the corresponding diffusion of culture, which was no longer exclusively in the hands of the clergy. In the second half of the 15th century alone more than six thousand works were printed.

 

"Did you know that the first printing press opened in Spain was in Valencia, in 1474?"

 

A number of nations claim to be the cradle of this revolutionary invention. But the one finally went down in history as the creator of modern printing was Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith from Germany born in the late 14th century. Gutenberg adapted a press made of wood originally used to press grapes. He created two mobile lead types and modified the ink to densify it. The first thing he printed was a 42-line copy of the Bible that is also known as the Mazarin bible.

The steam engine

Throughout the history of mankind there have been periods of profound, transcendental changes which have turned our lives around through one hundred and eighty degrees. One of those periods was during the second half of the 18th century in England, and it came to be known as the Industrial Revolution. One of the key features that caused us to leave behind agriculture as the main source of subsistence, was the steam engine. Its power, capable of driving very heavy machinery, led to the creation of the first factories and, later, promoted the development of important means of transport like the railway.

There are historical indications that Heron of Alexandria, a 1st century AD Greek mathematician, developed the first steam engine in history, known as the aeolipyle, but it was only used for entertainment. In modern times, there are three key names associated with the development of this type of machines:

  • The French physicist Denis Papin, who discovered that water decreases in volume when passing from a gaseous state to liquid.
  • The English inventor Thomas Newcomen, who developed an atmospheric steam engine in 1712.
  • Scottish engineer James Watt, who made innovations on the Newcomen machine that led to the creation of the steam engine.

Then at the end of the following century, the English engineer Charles Parsons developed the steam turbine, an invention that transforms thermal energy from water into mechanical energy and this started a real revolution in the production of electricity because it enabled it to be generated in high quantities and without high costs.

The electric battery

If the discovery of electricity and its subsequent use as a source of light were revolutionary events in the history of mankind, there is no doubt that the creation of a device capable of transporting that energy so it could be supplied to another device was also revolutionary.

Although it was the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta who invented the electric battery and presented it to society in 1800, it was his fellow countryman Luigi Galvani, a doctor and a physicist, who gave Volta the idea.

While dissecting a frog, Galvani came to the conclusion that the nervous system somehow generated electricity; probably as a result of some kind of chemical reaction.

Volta began to question Galvani's theories (both were colleagues at the University of Pavia), and that led him to develop the voltaic pile, which consisted of a number of pairs of copper and zinc discs three centimetres in diameter and separated by pieces of felt or cardboard soaked in brine.

The electric battery not only generated electricity but enabled it to be studied more precisely, and the foundations were laid for the way we manage this form nowadays.

 

"Did you know that making a battery consumes fifty times more energy than it will later produce?"

 

The telephone

In the mid-20th century no one could imagine that in the very near future, human beings would depend as much on the telephone as they do today. This device represented an undeniable innovation in human communication: oral communication available to everyone, with no effort involved; capable of transmitting the human voice without losing any of its qualities. Although it was undoubtedly the arrival of the mobile phone and then what we call smartphones (that enable the transmission of both voice and data at high speeds) that represented the real revolution in this field.

The invention of the telephone is usually attributed to the British scientist Alexander Graham Bell. But he was not the one who actually invented it, but he was the first to register the patent.

The inventor of the telephone, or the teletrophone as it was initially called, was an Italian named Antonio Meucci. This mechanical engineer built his electric telephone in 1857, to connect his bedroom with his office, since his wife suffered from rheumatism. Unfortunately he never had enough money to register the patent.

Bell later studied the teletrophone, perfected it and finally patented it in 1876.

 

"Did you know that the first words that were spoken on the phone were 'Watson come here, I want you'?"

 

The telephone soon began to be a common feature of many homes. Its main disadvantage was it depended on manually operated switchboards, where operators put users in contact through a system of plugs.

This dependence would disappear in 1889, when the American inventor Almon Brown Strowger patented the first automatic switchboard This innovation and the appearance of telephones with ten-digit pulse dialling (that is, using a dial with discs) once again revolutionised the world of telephones. Later came wireless terminals and finally mobile telephony, which in the end turned Meucci's phone into an essential feature of life in the 21st century.

In this Endesa blog we would like you, our readers, to participate actively, so we suggest you answer the following two questions: Which invention do you think is the most innovative in history? Which ones would you add to this list? We look forward to your answers!

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