they say great minds think alike but only the greatest Minds make today's list in 1898 an unusual experiment took place in Teslas laboratory welcome to watchmojo.com and today we're counting down our picks for the top 10 famous inventors before Alfred Nobel for blasting people used black powder what we call gunpowder which was very unstable and you could only ignite it with a fuse you could not control very well when it ignited or the pattern of the explosion that was generated for this list we've looked at those inventors that have had the most important most popular
most definitive effect upon the modern world we're interested in those responsible for the inventions without which modern life would be very different to my utter amazement Watson had heard me the machine had worked number 10 gulo Marone gilo Marone was an Italian inventor and the father of long-distance radio transmission and winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize for physics he was not the first person experimenting with wireless technology but Marone can be credited with turning the idea of radio waves into a commercial practical reality Marcone remodeled Wireless apparatuses throughout his early career lengthening the distance between
which messages could be sent and received like many physicists of his day Marone thought that electromagnetic waves traveled like light in a straight line what would happen he wondered when sending a signal thousands of miles Beyond the Horizon best known for being the first person to successfully send a transatlantic message marone's radio was also crucial in monitoring the 1912 sinking of the Titanic and saving at least some survivors indeed in 1912 it was the SOS from the Titanic's Marone room that brought the carp paus steaming to the 705 survivors number nine James Watt watt obtained
a job at the University of Glasgow repairing astronomical instruments and set up a small Workshop there a steam power Pioneer James wattsw work became a foundation for the Industrial Revolution which swept across the UK and the US in the 18th and 19th centuries and eventually reached the entire planet when watt was a young man the nukan engine was used by most major factories but he realized that that system was wasting large amounts of energy Q endless experimentation until eventually watt developed an efficient method for continuous rotary motion and unprecedented power a rise of the Machines
magnificently followed in 1781 after much financial hardship and struggle watt patented a steam engine that produced continuous rotative motion number eight Benjamin Franklin a founding father of the United States Benjamin Frank Franklin was a master of many trades inventing wise his efforts were widespread but his most famous experiment centered around his casting a kite into a lightning storm drawing electrical charge and subsequently developing the lightning rod as a means of ensuring safety in tall buildings Franklin suggested that during a storm a wooden Sentry box be placed at top a hill or inside a steeple with
a pointed Rod attached to the roof if a man inside the Box held a wire touching the rod Franklin predicted he would see a shower of Sparks when lightning struck the rod other inventions that can be attributed to Franklin include a glass harmonica bifocal ey glasses and a urinary catheter with added flexibility as we said his efforts were widespread but many of Benjamin Franklin's contributions are still used today so if you wear bifocals or talk about electric charge or survive a thunderstorm don't forget to get out a $100 bill thank you Grandpa nerd number seven
the right Brothers Orville and Wilbur for one pair of Ohio Brothers s it took a little Ingenuity passion and determination to turn their dream of flight into reality Orville and Wilbur Wright are probably the most important names in the history of Aviation and heavier than air flight in the very early 1900s inventors Across America and the world were racing to develop a reliable and practical machine in which human beings could controllably fly the Wright brothers won that race although the rights had managed to lift off on the Beach of Kittyhawk North Carolina they hadn't found
a way to stay in the air for more than a minute but that was about to change their invention of a three AIS control enabled multi-dimensional movement on a fixed wi aircraft far outstripping any innovation of their peers from there the sky really was the limit its powerful engine and 40ft wingspan could carry pilot and passenger over 50 mi in the relative comfort of padded seats as a Model B lands on the White House lawn flight becomes the American dream number six John loie beard this apparatus was shown to members of the Royal Institution and
others on January 27th 1926 and showed true television images in light and shade for the first time one of many great minds associated with the development of Television John loie beard seemed always prominent when the most most significant advances were made many historians credit him with being the first to produce a live moving grayscale TV image Did It Really Work originally he could show just basically a black cross if a bit flickery and a bit wobbly and he could just about with some special focusing just about get a white blob of a face and he's
also noted as the man behind the first publicly demonstrated color TV system transmitted on July 3rd 1928 a similar figure to maronian radio Barrett also worked to lengthen the distances between which TV could be broadcast leading the way for the international applications that it has today it is now 12 years ago since I produced the first little flickering television image today we have in London a regular television service twice daily with thousands of Lookers in number five Archimedes as scientists work to recover the text from this fragile document they discovered in that Archimedes was further
ahead of his time than they had ever believed of course inventors were inventing things in ancient times as well and none more so than Archimedes the brains behind the self-titled and still widely used Archimedes screw a device enabling efficient pumping of water the ancient Greek engineer is probably best remembered as a mathematician he is the most famous of the ancient mathematicians and the first to discover the value for pi the ma mathematical equivalent of inventing the wheel the most famous Archimedes anecdote involves his creating a method to measure the volume of an irregularly shaped object
perhaps he was sitting in the bath house one day wondering how a heavy bathtub can float when inspiration came to him upon working it out in the bath he ran down the street naked shouting Eureka which is now The Unofficial catchphrase of inventors everywhere Eureka did you build the smelloscope no I remembered that I built one last year number four Leonardo da Vinci he's well known as a great artist but in fact he also made great contributions to foundations of science another indisputable genius Leonardo da Vinci's inventions are often overlooked or at least overshadowed because
of his legendary artwork leardo was among the most important painters of the Italian Renaissance and the father of the high Renaissance style but Da Vinci was more than just the Mona Lisa in fact many of his ideas were so Advanced they weren't physically possible for hundreds of years after his death within his designs a helicopter a calculator and even suggestions of solar power his Technical and anatomical drawing was also largely unrivaled he was more than outside of the box he was intellectually a drift from the entire human race but to understand how scientifically brilliant and
Innovative he was we got to understand what was going on during his time and 1400s when Leonardo was coming up as a young artist Europe was essentially devoid of most real science in the modern sense number three Nicola Tesla the archetypal mad scientist throughout much of the 20th century Nicola Tesla's work went a little underappreciated these things never quite work as you expect them to Mr angia that's one of the principal beauties of science but in recent times efforts have been made to better preserve his story and the impact he had on electrical engineering especially
Tesla was most taken with the idea of Wireless technology and he's best known for his work on alternating current electricity the enduring images are those of him sitting and studying within highly charged Laboratories cleverer and crazier than almost anybody else that ever lived Thunder is good Thunder is impressive but it is lightning that does the work number two Alexander Graham Bell so the story I will tell you begins when I was just a boy the telephone is one of the Cornerstone inventions of modern existence and Alexander Graham Bell was the man who made it possible
what if you could send the sound of a human voice so that one person could simply speak to another even if they were far away starting out his professional Life by working with the deaf and heart of hearing B harbored a lifelong fascination with sound and speech when I wasn't thinking about machines or working on my ideas I taught deaf children just like my father did he first began working on the telephone in the early 1870s and the first successful by directional transmission of clear speech was conducted on March 10th 1876 when Belle called his
colleague to say Mr Watson come here I want to see you that first phone call was actually conducted through this wire Alexander Graham Bell supposedly said over the telephone to Watson Mr Watson come here I want you before we unveil our number one pick here are some honorable mentions morse's idea is simple by turning a switch on and off you can send a series of electrical impulses across a wire to a distant receiver if you create a pattern or code you can send a message this new explosive became what we now know as Dynamite which
Alfred Nobel invented in 1866 late in the 16th century Galileo developed a geometric and Military Compass used by surveyors and Gunners Galileo constructed a thermometer comprised of a sealed glass cylinder containing a number of objects inside a clear liquid the varying densities of the objects caused them to rise or fall depending on changes in temperature but you might also have found another less well-known face here he was not a philosopher or poet but an inventor and he almost started an industrial revolution 2,000 years ago then in 1450 an invention changed the world in the German
city of MZ Johannes Guttenberg invented the technique of printing with movable type number one Thomas Edison the phenomenally prolific American inventor Thomas Edison the holder of an incredible 1,93 us patents Thomas Edison was an extreme inventor there were other great great inventors then there was Edison he understood that inventing is not just having an idea and so he made Edison a name to be reckoned with a real ragster richest story he's probably best known for his ultimate and original light bulb moment Edison worked to install his electric light into towns and cities across the globe
demonstrating a knack for big business as well the photograph was also his creation the alkaline storage battery he screened early Motion Pictures and he even Drew up ideas for an electric car if Edison thought about it he did it and he usually did it well the storage battery the motion picture projector the motion picture camera the photograph or record players we would call it nowadays do you agree with our list who's your favorite famous inventor for more pioneering top 10s published every day be sure to subscribe to watchmojo.com here he could see his futuristic ideas
appearing on the screen but his ideas were only accepted in science fiction movies and magazines [Music]
