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T E C H N O L O G Y

The 50 GreatestBreakthroughs Since theWheelWhy did it take so long toinvent the wheelbarrow?Have we hit peakinnovation? What our listreveals about imagination,optimism, and the nature ofprogress.

JAMES FALLOWS NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/innovations-list/309536/#list 2019-02-19, 12@47 PM of 78

because no answer is right;the payoff comes from therange of attempts. Sevenyears ago, The Atlanticsurveyed a group of eminenthistorians to create a rankedlist of the 100 people whohad done the most to shapethe character of modernAmerica. The panelistsagreed easily on the top fewnames—Lincoln,Washington, Jefferson, inthat order—but then begandiverging in intriguing waysthat reflected not simplytheir own values but also thevaried avenues towardinfluence in our country.Lewis and Clark, or HenryFord? Thomas Edison, orMartin Luther King? Theresult was of course notscientific. But the exercise ofasking, comparing, andchoosing helped usunderstand more about


what these historical figureshad done and about theareas in which Americansociety had proved most andleast open to the changeswrought by talented,determined men andwomen.

Now we turn to technology.The Atlantic recentlyassembled a panel of 12scientists, entrepreneurs,engineers, historians oftechnology, and others to

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assess the innovations thathave done the most to shapethe nature of modern life.The main rule for thisexercise was that theinnovations should havecome after widespread useof the wheel began, perhaps6,000 years ago. That ruledout fire, which our forebearsbegan to employ severalhundred thousand yearsearlier. We asked eachpanelist to make 25selections and to rank them,despite the impossibility offairly comparing, say, theatomic bomb and the plow.(As it happens, both of thesemade it to our final list: thediscovery and application ofnuclear fission, which ledto both the atomic bomband nuclear-power plants,was No. 21 of the top 50,ahead of the moldboardplow, which greatly


expanded the range of landthat farmers could till, at No.30.) We also invitedpanelists to addexplanations of theirchoices, and I followed upwith several of them andwith other experts ininterviews.

One panelist ranked hischoices not by importancebut by date of invention,oldest (cement) to newest(GPS satellites). Someemphasized the importancenot of specificbreakthroughs but of broadcategories of achievement.For instance, Joel Mokyr, aneconomic historian atNorthwestern, nominated inhis top 10 “modularity.” Bythat he meant therefinements in industrialprocesses that allowed high-


volume output offunctionally identical parts.This enabled massproduction and the HenryFord–style assembly line(49 on The Atlantic’s list),and the profound shift fromhandmade to volume-produced versions ofeverything. Modularitydidn’t make it onto our finallist; the adoption ofstandardized shippingcontainers, which extendedthe same logic in a differentrealm, just missed the cut.

In short, these scientists andcreative types decided toanswer the question theywanted us to ask, rather thanthe exact one we posed. Wehave new sympathy forpeople attempting tomanage universities andR&D labs. But in the end wehad enough comparable and


overlapping suggestions,from enough people, withenough spelled-outexplanations, and enoughforce of experience andinsight behind them, to becomfortable presenting TheAtlantic’s survey ofhumanity’s 50 mostimportant technicalbreakthroughs since thewheel. We converted all theresponses into values wecould enter on aspreadsheet; we weighted,as reasonably as we could,the intensity and breadth ofsupport; we watched thecombined rankings go upand down as each newresponse arrived; and wecame up with the finalranking you see here.

One aspect of the results willbe evident as soon as youstart looking through them:


the debatability of thechoices and rankings onceyou move beyond the firstfew. For instance,anesthesia (46), which, onits debut in 1846, began todistinguish surgery fromtorture, barely made the top50, and that was onlybecause one panelist pushedit hard. If I were doing theranking, it would be in thetop 10, certainly above thepersonal computer (16 onour final list). In this case thetest for me is: Which would Imiss more if it didn’t exist?(Our panelist John Doerr, awell-known technologyinvestor, said he worked hisway through his own top‑25list using a similar set of“pairwise comparisons,”asking which technology hewould miss more.) I rely onpersonal computers, but Igot along fine before their


introduction; I stillremember a dentalprocedure in England whenthe National Health Servicedidn’t pay for novocaine.

Less evident from the finallist is what I was fascinatedto learn from my talks withmany of the panelists. Thatis the diversity of viewsabout the types of historicalbreakthroughs that matter,with a striking consensus onwhether the long trail ofinnovation recorded here isnow nearing its end.

Innovation: ATaxonomyThe clearest example ofconsensus was the first itemon the final compilation, theprinting press. Ten of the12 people who submittedrankings had it at or near the


top. To draw another parallelto our Influential Americanssurvey, the printing presswas the counterpart toAbraham Lincoln as theclear consensus for the topchoice. And just as thatprevious exercise revealedthe major patterns throughwhich historical figures hadexerted influence—aspolitical leaders in times ofcrisis, as industrial pioneers,through pop culture ordesign—a set of categoriesemerged from the individualnominations. One of ourpanelists, Leslie Berlin, ahistorian of business atStanford, organized hernominations not as anoverall list but grouped intofunctional categories. Fromour panelists’ nominations,a similar but slightly broaderset of categories emerges.Here is my adaptation of


Berlin’s useful scheme:

Innovations that expand thehuman intellect and itscreative, expressive, andeven moral possibilities.This group includes theprinting press (1) and alsopaper, (6) and now ofcourse the Internet, (9) thepersonal computer, (16)and the underlyingtechnology for the moderndata age, semiconductorelectronics (4), plusphotography (29). CharlesC. Mann, the science writerand frequent Atlanticcontributor, put writingthird, behind fire andagricultural improvements,including the domesticationof animals. Walter Isaacson,the biographer of Steve Jobs,Albert Einstein, andBenjamin Franklin, rankedas his top three innovations


items from this category:alphabetization, paper, andthe printing press.

Innovations that are integralto the physical and operatinginfrastructure of the modernworld. George Dyson, thetechnology writer, said thatcement, which in the endranked 37th, was a crucialearly innovation, “at thefoundation of civilization aswe know it—most of whichwould collapse without it.”Three of the top five choicesfrom John Doerr were in thiscategory: electrical systemswere first, indoor plumbingwas second, and filtrationsystems to create potablewater were fifth. (Onepanelist mentionedaqueducts.) Doerr said thatin much of today’s poorworld, “the payoff of cleanwater, in terms of


community prosperity,” is atleast 20‑to-1. In our ranking,electricity was No. 2 andsanitation systems wereNo. 12. Through the past halfcentury, air-conditioning(44) played a major role inAmerica’s expansion acrossthe Sun Belt. Air-conditioning is now having asimilar effect in China,India, the Gulf states, andelsewhere. Our panelist JoiIto, the head of the MediaLab at MIT, said that air-conditioning “was famouslyidentified by Lee Kuan Yewof Singapore as thetechnology that allowedresidents to have white-collar work, and thatempowered populationsliving in temperateclimates.”

Innovations that enabled the


Industrial Revolution and itssuccessive waves ofexpanded material output.These include the steamengine (10), industrialsteelmaking (19), and therefining and drilling of oil(35 and 39, respectively). Acentury ago, a comparablelist would have had toinclude the use of coal,which does not appear here,although it is still the mostwidely used fuel for electric-power plants.

Innovations extending life, touse Leslie Berlin’s term. Thisbroad group includes thesuccessive agriculturalrevolutions that now let theEarth support its billions ofpeople: nitrogen fixation(11), notably the Haber-Bosch process, about acentury old, which mademodern ammonia-based


fertilizers possible and, bymaking more nitrogenavailable to plants, lifted apreviously unbreakable limiton crop yields. (That sameprocess led to modernexplosives and the poisongas used during World WarI.) Also, the greenrevolution (22); themoldboard plow (30);Archimedes’ screw (31),which drew water fromstreams and canals toirrigate fields; andscientific plant breeding(38). This group alsoincludes the advances inmedical knowledge andtreatment that predate ourcurrent genomicsrevolution: No. 3, penicillin(nearly a century old); No. 8,vaccination (a few hundredyears old); and No. 20, thepill (half a century old). Oneof our panelists suggested


“the germ theory ofinfectious disease” as one ofhumanity’s top 10breakthroughs. A list made50 years from now, or maybeonly five, wouldundoubtedly emphasize therevolutionary potential ofgenomics, but as yet it didnot make our cut. The life-extending category alsoincludes the public-healthmeasures that haveadvanced in parallel withimproved medicaltreatment: sanitationsystems (12) andrefrigeration (13).

After penicillin, the highest-ranked item from thiscategory was opticallenses, at No. 5. I am gladthey were mentioned byseveral panelists, becausetheir inclusion illustrates theunderappreciated ripple


effects of certaintechnologies. Before theadvent of corrective lenses,people with imperfect visioncould be vulnerable toenemies or predators inhumanity’s early hunter-warrior stages, and laterintellectually handicappedby their simple inability tosee letters or numbers asclearly as others. None ofour panelists put it this way,but I have always believedthat the adoption ofcorrective lenses amountedto the largest onetime IQboost in human history, byexpanding the pool ofpotentially literate people. Itwas also one of severalpuzzlingly “late”innovations, occurring manylong centuries after theRomans and othersdiscovered the opticalproperties of lenses. A


similar puzzle, according toJoel Mokyr, involves thedelayed appearance of thewheelbarrow. “It is about assimple a labor-saving deviceas you can think of,” he toldme, “but it doesn’t seem tohave occurred to anyone forthousands of years after thewheel, and it took about athousand years longer tooccur to anyone in Europeafter its first use in China.”

Innovations that allowed real-time communication beyondthe range of a single humanvoice. The Internet (9)obviously brings new scaleand speed tocommunication, but the realleap beyond previouslimitations occurred in themid‑1800s, with thedevelopment of thetelegraph (26), followed by


the telephone (24) and thenradio (28). As Joel Mokyrput it, before the telegraph,“with few exceptions,information could move nofaster than a man onhorseback. Smoke signals,homing pigeons, and thesemaphore telegraph all hadvery little bandwidth andwere unreliable. Thetelegraph made it at least inprinciple possible forinformation to move at thespeed of light, and thusvastly improved long-distance communicationsand hence command andcontrol over much largerterritories.”

Considering how often themodern era has been calledthe “television age” andhow much time people nowspend before a variety ofscreens, it is notable that


television comes in only atNo. 45. Many years fromnow, perhaps people willregard the second half of the20th century as the briefmoment when broadcast TVcould seem a dominanttechnology. With itsobvious-in-retrospectlimitations, like one-wayinformation flow rather thaninteractivity, anddependence on heavyhardware for best display,maybe TV was bound to be atransition to some othersystem more tailored toindividual tastes. Or maybeour panelists wereembarrassed to vote for it.

Innovations in the physicalmovement of people andgoods. Through the past 150years, the internalcombustion engine (7)made possible the social,


economic, political, andenvironmental effectsbrought on by the age of theautomobile (18). Withvariations in propulsionsystems (and later theemergence of jet-turbineengines), this sameinnovation made possiblethe airplane (15). Why is theairplane ahead of the car?Presumably becauseautomobile travel sped upthe land journeys people hadlong made by other means,whereas the airplane madepossible an entirely newform of human movement—and, perhaps as important,an unprecedented way ofseeing and understandingthe Earth. Until the first,tentative balloon flights inthe late 1700s, humanbeings had never viewed thelayout of their environmentfrom an elevation higher


than that of a treetop or amountain. In the age of20th-century powered flight,they could see forthemselves the naturalcontours and man-madefeatures they hadapproximated on maps.

Starting in the 1700s, thesteam engine (10) enabledgrowth of the railroad—which, like the bicycle,presumably would havecome near the top of acomparable survey a centuryago. Even now railroadscarry far more freight in theUnited States than dotrucks, barges, or any otherform of transport; they arethe backbone of passenger-travel systems in Europe;and they account for moreof China’s infrastructureinvestment than airports orroads. But not everything


could make the final cut!Also in this category are No.40, the sailboat (with thesextant at No. 23 and thecompass at No. 17), and No.41, rocketry (“our only wayoff the planet—so far,” inGeorge Dyson’s words).

Organizational breakthroughsthat provide the software forpeople working and livingtogether in increasinglyefficient and modern ways.Linda Sanford, a senior vicepresident for enterprisetransformation at IBM,picked the Gregoriancalendar (34) as her veryfirst item, ahead of hersecond choice, paper. Theimportance ofalphabetization (25) is easyto overlook until youconsider the challenges ofindexing, arraying, andretrieving knowledge that


arise in non-alphabeticlanguages, notably Chinese.

Finally, and lessprominently than we mighthave found in 1950 or 1920—and less prominently than Iinitially expected—we haveinnovations in killing,including gunpowder (14)and nuclear fission (21).The machine gun, whichreceived only onenomination, would havedominated in this category100 years ago. Nor didanyone bring up drones, orchemical or biologicalweapons, or terrorism orguerrilla warfare. But onreflection, our panelistsprobably got it right. Exceptfor the atomic bomb,breakthroughs in weaponrymatter less than the cultureand temperament of humanconflict.


ANY COLLECTION OF 50BREAKTHROUGHS mustexclude 50,000 more. Whatabout GPS systems, onwhich so many forms ofmovement now depend, andwhich two panelistsrecommended? What aboutthe concept of the numberzero, as suggested byPadmasree Warrior, thechief technology andstrategy officer at Cisco?(She did not rank her 25items, but 18 of themshowed up among the final50; Michelle Alexopoulos,an economics professor atthe University of Toronto,had 21, and Walter Isaacsonhad 25 of the 26 hesubmitted.) In addition tocoal, how can no one havementioned paved roads? Orthe discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA?Landing on the moon? Or


the mathematics of calculus,on which space flight and somuch else depended? Themore questions anddiscussions our rankingprovokes, the moresuccessful the endeavor willhave been.

We notice that innovationmay be less personalizedthan we assume. OurInfluential Americanssurvey was all about specificpeople who made adifference, though in somecases—Elizabeth CadyStanton, Martin Luther King—the difference they madewas to persuade large groupsto work toward a commonend. In this survey, it isremarkable how few world-changing breakthroughs canbe tied directly to a single,heroic, Nobel Prize–worthyinnovator. Pasteurization


(33) is the only one of the top50 to be named for a person,unless you count theGregorian calendar orArchimedes’ screw. Otherpeople made othercelebrated advances, fromJohannes Gutenberg toAlexander Graham Bell, butoverall these are theachievements of groups ofpeople who built on oneanother’s efforts, sometimesover spans of many years.

We learn, finally, whytechnology breedsoptimism, which may be themost significant part of thisexercise.

The FuturePopular culture oftenlionizes the stars ofdiscovery and invention. Acentury ago, this meant theWright brothers, Edison,


and the auto pioneers; in theEisenhower years, JonasSalk and Wernher vonBraun; and in the pastgeneration, first Bill Gatesand then Steve Jobs. Butabout technology’s onrushin general, cultural andpolitical attitudes have beenmixed at best. For eachwriter or thinker orgovernment leader who hasenthusiastically welcomedwhatever changestechnology might bring,there has been a counterpartwarning of its dangers. FromBlake to Dickens, fromMetropolis to Blade Runner,from Upton Sinclair toRachel Carson, and througha long list of similar pairings,the culture of a technology-driven era has continuallyplayed catch-up to correctmodernity’s destructive anddehumanizing effects.


For our era, the majorproblems that technologyhas helped cause, and thatfaster innovation may ormay not correct, areenvironmental,demographic, andsocioeconomic.Environmental challenges,because of theunsustainable burden beingplaced on the world’soceans, skies, soils, andnonhuman life-forms;demographic, becauseadvances in medicine andpublic health are rapidlypushing up the median agethroughout the developedworld; and socioeconomic,because a globalized, high-tech economy is wideningthe gap between rich andpoor everywhere.

Perhaps I should not havebeen surprised that people


who have thought deeplyabout innovation’s sourcesand effects, like ourpanelists, were aware of theharm it has done along withthe good. I found it notablethat the technologists Ispoke with volunteered listsof innovation-enhancedperils. “Does innovationraise the wealth of theplanet? I believe it does,”John Doerr, who has helpedlaunch Google, Amazon,and other giants of today’stechnology, said. “Buttechnology left to its owndevices widens rather thannarrows the gap between therich and the poor.” Despitethe prospects for innovationthat excite him, he said, “Idon’t think there is anyreason to assume there willautomatically be enough‘good’ jobs, for enoughpeople, in the long run.” Joel


Mokyr pointed out thatinnovation has always doneboth good and harm. “Youlook at antibiotics,insecticides, transportation—every time we solve oneproblem, a new one comesup,” he said. “Eachinvention relies onsubsequent inventions toclean up the mess it hasmade.”

Please stop to think aboutthis: Outside of the sciencesand technology, and apartfrom the legacies created ineach family, humanity isstruggling today for a senseof cumulative achievement.Are today’s statesmen animprovement over those ofour grandparents’ era?Today’s level of publicdebate? Music, architecture,literature, the fine arts—these and other


manifestations of worldculture continually change,without necessarilyimproving. Tolstoy andDostoyevsky, versuswhoever is the best-sellingauthor in Moscow rightnow? The original, elegantPenn Station, versus itswarehouse-likereplacement?

A central question fortechnologists is whetherinnovation in the materialand productive realms canbe sustained—or whether wemight, on the contrary,already be entering anotherof the long, stagnant erasthat have marked much ofhuman history, includingthe ones after times of rapidadvance. Amid today’sonslaught of the new-and-improved, a slowdown ofany sort might seem


improbable—but possiblydesirable. The argumentthat a slowdown mighthappen, and that it would beharmful if it did, takes threemain forms.

The first is historical. Somesocieties have closedthemselves off and stoppedinventing altogether:notably China after itspreeminence in the Mingera, and much of the ArabIslamic world starting justbefore the EuropeanRenaissance. By failing tomove forward, theyinevitably moved backwardrelative to their rivals and tothe environmental andeconomic threats they faced.If the social and intellectualclimate for innovation sours,what has happened beforecan happen again.


The second draws from thevisible slowdown in the paceof solutions that technologyoffers to fundamentalproblems. Between 1850 and1950, life expectancy nearlydoubled in the UnitedStates, thanks to thecombined effects ofantibiotics, immunization,and public-health measures.Since then, it has only creptup. Between 1920 and 1970,improvements in cars,roads, airplanes, and evenrailroads made travel faster,cheaper, safer, and morecomfortable. Since then,travel in the developedworld has improved slowlyat best. Crop yields per acredoubled within a generationof the green revolution buthave not doubled again.

The third and broadest formof the argument is that a


slowdown in, say, cropyields or travel time is partof a general pattern of whateconomists call diminishingmarginal returns. The easyimprovements are, quitenaturally, the first to bemade; whatever comes lateris slower and harder.

The most systematic recentpresentation of this view hascome from the economistRobert J. Gordon, ofNorthwestern, who hasargued that America’shistory as a nation happensto coincide with a raremoment in technologicalhistory now nearing its end.“There was virtually noeconomic growth before1750,” he writes in a recentpaper. This, he said, leftopen the possibility that“the rapid progress madeover the past 250 years could


well be a unique episode inhuman history rather than aguarantee of endless futureadvance at the same rate.”Tyler Cowen, an economistat George Mason University,says in The Great Stagnationthat America’s longcenturies of rapid growthamounted to harvesting the“low-hanging fruit” of openland, cheap energy, andindustrial-era breakthroughs—harvesting that could notbe sustained.

Everyone I spoke with wasfamiliar with suchcautionary analyses; nonedismissed them out of hand.But when pressed, every oneof them said they expectedthe pace of usefulinnovation to speed up, notslow down. Again, theirexplanations took threemain forms.


First, and reassuringly,whatever field a panelistknew most about, he or sheconsidered most promising.John Doerr emphasized thetransformative potential ofradically cheaper and moreefficient batteries, which inturn are a crucial element ofa cleaner-energy economy.(Wind turbines, solar panels,and other renewable sourcesdon’t produce power on aschedule that matches thegrid’s demands. Modernbatteries cost too much, andstore too little energy, to beuseful in bufferingundersupply. See"Technologies to Bet On" inthis issue.) Others I spokewith saw similar prospects inother fields. Elon Musk, notofficially one of ourpanelists, is perhaps thisera’s most ambitiousinnovator. He


simultaneously heads acompany building rocketships, SpaceX; anothermaking a popular electriccar, Tesla; and another thatis a leading provider of solarpower, SolarCity. When Iasked him what innovationhe hoped to live long enoughto see but feared he mightnot, he said, “Sustainablehuman settlements onMars.”

Most of these U.S.-basedtechnologists thoughtprospects for innovationremained brighter in theUnited States thananywhere else. And thisjudgment came from peoplefully aware of the continuederosion of basic-researchfunding and otherchallenges. “We can beconcerned about the last 1percent of an environment


for innovation, but that isbecause we take everythingelse for granted,” LeslieBerlin told me.

Second, many pointed outthat ever cheaper, everfaster computing powercould in itself promoteinnovation in all other fields—much as steam-poweredengines did in the 19thcentury and electricity in the20th. For one example: EricS. Lander, the director of theBroad Institute for medicalresearch in Cambridge,Massachusetts (also not onour panel), pointed out thatin the past 12 years, the costof sequencing human DNAhas fallen to one one-millionth of its previouslevel. This reduction in cost,he says, means that the nextdecade should be a time of“amazing advances in


understanding the geneticbasis of disease, withespecially powerfulimplications for cancer.”

Finally, the people I spokewith said that the veryconcept of an end toinnovation defiedeverything they understoodabout human inquiry. “Ifyou look just at the 20thcentury, the odds againstthere being anyimprovement in livingstandards are enormous,”Joel Mokyr told me. “Twocatastrophic world wars, theCold War, the Depression,the rise of totalitarianism—it’s been one disaster afteranother, a sequence thatcould have been enough tosink us back into barbarism.And yet this past halfcentury has been the fastest-ever time of technological


growth. I see no reason whythat should be slowingdown.”

George Dyson put it adifferent way, in a sense themost optimistic of all. “I ama technologicalevolutionist,” he said. “Iview the universe as aphase-space of things thatare possible, and we’redoing a random walk amongthem. Eventually we aregoing to fill the space ofeverything that is possible.”

What innovation did Dysonmost hope to see during histime in the phase-space ofthe living? He had obviouslythought about this before,and answered immediately:“The return of sailing shipsas a commercially viabletransport system.” Even inthe days of cloth sails and


hemp rope, he said, clipperships could convert 60percent of the raw energy ofthe wind into useful work.With modern materials anddesign, they could capturemore energy than they useden route. “When a fleet ofships got to port, they couldnot only deliver cargo buteven put energy into thegrid.” This is how innovatorsthink.

The ListThe Atlantic asked adozen scientists,historians, andtechnologists to rank thetop innovations since thewheel. Here are theresults.

You can also choose yourown top five innovations,and see how the readers'


choices stack up againstthe Atlantic experts'.

1. The printing press,1430s

The printing press wasnominated by 10 of our 12panelists, five of whomranked it in their top three.Dyson described itsinvention as the turningpoint at which “knowledgebegan freely replicating andquickly assumed a life of itsown.”

2. Electricity, late 19thcentury

And then there was light—


and Nos. 4, 9, 16, 24, 28, 44,45, and most of the rest ofmodern life.

3. Penicillin, 1928

Accidentally discovered in1928, though antibioticswere not widely distributeduntil after World War II,when they became the silver


bullet for any number offormerly deadly diseases

4. Semiconductorelectronics, mid-20thcentury

The physical foundation ofthe virtual world

5. Optical lenses, 13thcentury


Refracting light throughglass is one of those simpleideas that took amysteriously long time tocatch on. “The Romans hada glass industry, and there’seven a passage in Senecaabout the optical effects of aglass bowl of water,” saysMokyr. But it was centuriesbefore the invention ofeyeglasses dramaticallyraised the collective humanIQ, and eventually led to thecreation of the microscopeand the telescope.

6. Paper, second century

“The idea of stamping


images is natural if you havepaper, but until then, it’seconomically unaffordable.”— Charles C. Mann

7. The internalcombustion engine, late19th century

Turned air and fuel intopower, eventually replacingthe steam engine (No. 10)

8. Vaccination, 1796


The British doctor EdwardJenner used the cowpoxvirus to protect againstsmallpox in 1796, but itwasn’t until Louis Pasteurdeveloped a rabies vaccinein 1885 that medicine—andgovernment—began toaccept the idea that makingsomeone sick could preventfurther sickness.

9. The Internet, 1960s

The infrastructure of thedigital age

10. The steam engine,1712


Powered the factories,trains, and ships that drovethe Industrial Revolution

11. Nitrogen fixation, 1918

The German chemist FritzHaber, also the father ofchemical weapons, won aNobel Prize for hisdevelopment of theammonia-synthesis process,which was used to create a


new class of fertilizerscentral to the greenrevolution (No. 22).

12. Sanitation systems,mid-19th century

A major reason we live 40years longer than we did in1880 (see “Die AnotherDay”)

13. Refrigeration, 1850s

“Discovering how to makecold would change the waywe eat—and live—almost asprofoundly as discoveringhow to cook.” — GeorgeDyson


14. Gunpowder, 10thcentury

Outsourced killing to amachine

15. The airplane, 1903

Transformed travel,warfare, and our view of theworld (see No. 40)

16. The personalcomputer, 1970s


Like the lever (No. 48) andthe abacus (No. 43), itaugmented humancapabilities.

17. The compass, 12thcentury


Oriented us, even at sea

18. The automobile, late


19th century

Transformed daily life, ourculture, and our landscape

19. Industrialsteelmaking, 1850s

Mass-produced steel, madepossible by a method knownas the Bessemer process,became the basis of modernindustry.


20. The pill, 1960

Launched a social revolution

21. Nuclear fission, 1939

Gave humans new power fordestruction, and creation


22. The green revolution,mid-20th century

Combining technologies likesynthetic fertilizers (No. 11)and scientific plant breeding(No. 38) hugely increasedthe world’s food output.Norman Borlaug, theagricultural economist whodevised this approach, hasbeen credited with savingmore than 1 billion peoplefrom starvation.

23. The sextant, 1757

It made maps out of stars.

24. The telephone, 1876


Allowed our voices to travel

25. Alphabetization, firstmillennium B.C.

Made knowledge accessibleand searchable—and mayhave contributed to the rise


of societies that usedphonetic letters over thosethat used ideographic ones

26. The telegraph, 1837

Before it, Joel Mokyr says,“information could move nofaster than a man onhorseback.”

27. The mechanized


clock, 15th century

It quantified time.

28. Radio, 1906

The first demonstration ofelectronic mass media’spower to spread ideas andhomogenize culture

29. Photography, early19th century


Changed journalism, art,culture, and how we seeourselves

30. The moldboard plow,18th century

The first plow that not onlydug soil up but turned itover, allowing for thecultivation of harderground. Without it,agriculture as we know itwould not exist in northernEurope or the AmericanMidwest.


31. Archimedes’ screw,third century B.C.

The Greek scientist isbelieved to have designedone of the first water pumps,a rotating corkscrew thatpushed water up a tube. Ittransformed irrigation andremains in use today atmany sewage-treatmentplants.

32. The cotton gin, 1793

Institutionalized the cottonindustry—and slavery—inthe American South

33. Pasteurization, 1863


One of the first practicalapplications of LouisPasteur’s germ theory, thismethod for using heat tosterilize wine, beer, andmilk is widely considered tobe one of history’s mosteffective public-healthinterventions.

34. The Gregoriancalendar, 1582


Debugged the Juliancalendar, jumping ahead 10days to synchronize theworld with the seasons

35. Oil refining, mid-19thcentury

Without it, oil drilling (No.39) would be pointless.

36. The steam turbine,1884


A less heralded cousin ofsteam engines (No. 10),turbines are the backbone oftoday’s energyinfrastructure: they generate80 percent of the world’spower.

37. Cement, firstmillennium B.C.


The foundation ofcivilization. Literally.

38. Scientific plantbreeding, 1920s

Humans have beenmanipulating plant speciesfor nearly as long as we’vegrown them, but it wasn’tuntil early-20th-centuryscientists discovered aforgotten 1866 paper by theAustrian botanist GregorMendel that we figured outhow plant breeding—and,later on, human genetics—worked.

39. Oil drilling, 1859


Fueled the moderneconomy, established itsgeopolitics, and changed theclimate

40. The sailboat, fourthmillennium B.C.

Transformed travel,


warfare, and our view of theworld (see No. 15)

41. Rocketry, 1926

“Our only way off the planet—so far.” — George Dyson

42. Paper money, 11thcentury

The abstraction at the coreof the modern economy

43. The abacus, thirdmillennium B.C.

One of the first devices to


augment human intelligence

44. Air-conditioning,1902

Would you start a businessin Houston or Bangalore


without it?

45. Television, early 20thcentury

Brought the world intopeople’s homes

46. Anesthesia, 1846

In response to the firstpublic demonstration ofether, Oliver Wendell


Holmes Sr. wrote: “Thefierce extremity of sufferinghas been steeped in thewaters of forgetfulness, andthe deepest furrow in theknotted brow of agony hasbeen smoothed for ever.”

47. The nail, secondmillennium B.C.

“Extended lives by enablingpeople to have shelter.” —Leslie Berlin


48. The lever, thirdmillennium B.C.

The Egyptians had not yetdiscovered the wheel whenthey built their pyramids;they are thought to haverelied heavily on levers.

49. The assembly line,1913

Turned a craft-basedeconomy into a mass-


market one

50. The combineharvester, 1930s

Mechanized the farm,freeing people to do newtypes of work

Our Panel of ExpertsThe scientists, historians, andtechnologists we consulted tomake this list.

Michelle AlexopoulosProfessor of economics, Universityof Toronto


Leslie Berlin Historian of business andtechnology, Stanford; author, TheMan Behind the Microchip: RobertNoyce and the Invention of SiliconValley

John Doerr General partner, Kleiner PerkinsCaufield & Byers

George DysonHistorian of technology; author,Turing’s Cathedral and DarwinAmong the Machines

Walter Isaacson President and CEO, the AspenInstitute; author, Steve Jobs ,Einstein: His Life and Universe, andBenjamin Franklin: An American Life

Joi Ito

Director, MIT Media Lab

Alexis Madrigal Senior editor, The Atlantic; author,Powering the Dream: The History andPromise of Green Technolog y


Charles C. Mann Journalist; author, 1491: NewRevelations of the Americas BeforeColumbus and 1493: Uncovring theNew World Columbus Created

Joel Mokyr Professor of economics and history,Northwestern University

Linda Sanford Senior vice president for enterprisetransformation, IBM

Astro Teller Captain of moonshots, Google[x];co-founder, Cerebellum Capitaland BodyMedia

Padmasree Warrior Chief technology and strategyofficer, Cisco Systems

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