# The 16 Greatest Inventors of All Time

> Some names here hold a thousand patents. One refused to file a single one.

*By YPB Team · Published August 11, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-16-greatest-inventors-of-all-time*

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## Current results (0 votes)

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

Tags: science, tech, legends, inventors