# What is the greatest invention of the 1870s?

> A single decade gave us recorded sound, the electric lamp and a phone call, plus a few humbler ideas that quietly changed how people worked, fenced land and got dressed.

*By YPB Team · Published October 11, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-greatest-invention-of-the-1870s*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Incandescent light bulb** — score 1000/1000
   Thomas Edison's long-lasting carbon-filament lamp of 1879, which made electric light practical for homes.
2. **Telephone** — score 970/1000
   Alexander Graham Bell's 1876 patent for transmitting speech over wires, which put a voice at the end of every line.
3. **Cash register** — score 582/1000
   James Ritty's 1879 'Incorruptible Cashier', built in a Dayton saloon to stop staff pocketing the takings.
4. **Phonograph** — score 582/1000
   Edison's 1877 tinfoil cylinder machine, the first device that could record sound and play it back.
5. **Four-stroke engine** — score 513/1000
   Nicolaus Otto's 1876 internal combustion engine cycle, the basis of almost every car engine since.
6. **Penny-farthing** — score 434/1000
   The high-wheel 'ordinary' bicycle of the early 1870s, the first machine to be called a bicycle and a symbol of the Victorian era.
7. **Electric railway** — score 434/1000
   Siemens & Halske's 1879 Berlin locomotive, the first electric passenger train, ancestor of trams and metros.
8. **Blue jeans** — score 233/1000
   Copper-riveted denim work pants patented by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss in 1873, the ancestor of every pair of jeans worn today.
9. **Carbon microphone** — score 233/1000
   The carbon transmitter developed by Hughes, Berliner and Edison in 1877-78 that made telephone calls loud and clear.
10. **Gramme dynamo** — score 233/1000
   Zenobe Gramme's 1871 generator, the first to produce smooth direct current on an industrial scale.
11. **QWERTY typewriter** — score 0/1000
   The Sholes and Glidden typewriter sold by Remington from 1874, which introduced the QWERTY keyboard still on our screens.
12. **Barbed wire** — score 0/1000
   Joseph Glidden's 1874 twisted-wire fencing that closed the open range of the American West.

Tags: inventions, 19th century, 1870s