THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL INVENTORS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

Frederick Sanger was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry twice: once in 1958 and again in 1980 (shared
with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert) for his pioneering
work unraveling the mysteries of DNA.

the Inventors

This book recognizes not only the inventors whose work
changed the course of human life, but also those whose
ideas paved the way for future generations of inventors. In
the mid 1800s, mathematician Charles Babbage developed
a model for an automatic computing engine, but he never
built his device. A century later, Babbage’s idea that a
machine could perform scientific computations reemerged,
and today the computer is recognized as one of the most
revolutionary inventions in history.
The vast majority of the inventors who have been
included in these pages lived during the 19th and 20th
centuries, which should come as no surprise considering
that this was the time period in which the modern scientific
age began. However, that is not to say that the many
inventors who came before that period were any less
important. Cro-Magnons’ stone tools were a technological
feat. The Archimedes screw water pump, invented in the
3rd century BCE, is still in use today. Recorded history
would not have been possible without Cai Lun’s invention
of paper in 105 CE.
There was no lack of invention before the 19th century;
it was just the pace of invention that sped up significantly
after that time. When Charles Duell, head of the U.S.
Patent Office, famously declared, “Everything that can be
invented has been invented,” in 1899, how wrong he was.
In 2008 alone, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
granted more than 185,000 patents for new inventions.