The 16 Greatest Inventors of All Time
Some names here hold a thousand patents. One refused to file a single one.
1Benjamin Franklin
Invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove and swim fins, and patented none of them.
2Thomas Edison
Held over a thousand US patents, including the practical incandescent lamp and the phonograph.
3Nikola Tesla
Engineer behind the alternating-current induction motor and much of modern power transmission.
4Leonardo da Vinci
Renaissance painter whose notebooks sketched flying machines, gears and diving suits centuries early.
5Alexander Graham Bell
Patented the telephone in 1876 and spent decades on hearing, flight and hydrofoils.
6James Watt
His separate-condenser steam engine made industrial power efficient enough to change economies.
7Johannes Gutenberg
Brought movable-type printing to Europe and made books cheap enough to spread ideas.
8Marie Curie
Pioneered radioactivity research and developed mobile X-ray units used in the field.
9George Washington Carver
Agricultural scientist who developed hundreds of uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes.
10Archimedes
Greek engineer credited with the screw pump, compound pulleys and the principle of buoyancy.
11The Wright Brothers
Built and flew the first controlled, powered aeroplane at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
12Hedy Lamarr
Film star who co-patented a frequency-hopping system that anticipated modern wireless.
13Tim Berners-Lee
Wrote the specifications for the World Wide Web and released them without charge.
14Nikolaus Otto
Built the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine in 1876.
15Grace Hopper
Computer scientist who built the first compiler and shaped early programming languages.
16Guglielmo Marconi
Turned radio waves into a working long-distance telegraph and won a Nobel for it.
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