Free Sample Essays > Computer Science
American Ingenuity and Invention
The American experience is not complete without inventions and how they affect man kind. The age of ingenuity has many parts to it including: the inventors and what they invented, parallel world events and leaders, and legal issues that tie the inventors to their inventions. America prospered from the age of invention through a gradual increase of success. Alexander Graham Bell told it better when he said, “The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion…” (Brainy).
There are many great inventors, but few American inventors stood out from the crowd. The inventors Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Orville and Wilbur Wright developed revolutionizing products that changed the world forever. Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocals in 1784, which helped correct multiple sight problems without having to change glasses. Franklin is also famous for his ingenious lightning rod that he invented in 1752, which saved many lives that would have been struck by lightning. About one hundred years later, in 1877, Thomas Alva Edison came along and invented the phonograph, which was the first successful vocal recorder, and a couple years later designed and built the first reliable light bulb, which changed how people live and work. A few inventors who also changed how people live and work were Orville and Wilbur Wright, born in 1871 and 1867 respectively, who became the fathers of flight after they successfully flew over 120 feet in their air plane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. Despite Wilbur’s thoughts on the project when he said, “I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years”(Next) they still managed to fly two years later. Inventions were not only occurring in America, there were many inventors around the world that helped make the world what it is today.
Some of the foreign inventors that changed the world are: Michael Faraday, Alexander Graham Bell, and Sir Alexander Flemming. The British physicist and chemist Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1831. This is a great invention because without the electric motor we would not have many common household appliances. Sir Alexander Flemming, the Scottish bacteriologist, invented penicillin in 1928. Thanks to Flemming’s invention, penicillin, more lives have been saved than the amount of people lost in all of the wars combined. Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish inventor, invented the telephone in 1876. The telephone is the first form of long range communication and to many people it is the most valuable patent. Another person attempted to take Bell’s telephone patent as their own.
On March 10, 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. A few hours after Bell patented the telephone Elisha Gray applied for a caveat on the telephone. Bell and Gray went to court to settle who gets the patent, and since Bell was applying for a patent and not a caveat he was able to keep the patent. This [next page]