Great Innovators

The original “Renaissance man,” Da Vinci is best known for his paintings (the Last Supper, the Mona Lisa) but he was also a philosopher, engineer, and inventor. He left behind him a collection of extraordinarily prescient drawings depicting future technologies (helicopter, tank, solar power).

A great inventor, engineer, and futurist, Tesla helped develop the AC electrical delivery system. Infamous for his wild experiments and colorful personality, Tesla ‘s creative work regarding the production and transmission of power was far ahead of his time.

English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics, investigating the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He also was the first expositor of the theory of relativity in the English language.

Pursued many and varied careers in his lifetime, but all held a common challenge. As engineer, inventor, lawyer, manufacturer, horticulturist, lecturer, social theorist, philosopher or poet, he would look at the context, standing back in his imagination and asking how any given activity functioned relative to every other in the unfolding process of an emergent society. He was intrigued by novelty, not for its sake alone but always to understand its functional relation to what had gone before, was now, and might yet be. He pioneered the theory of proprietary governance and community in his book Citadel, Market and Altar.

Was an Austrian–American Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberalism and the power of consumers.

was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), one of the first free market think tanks in the United States. He wrote 29 books and numerous essays, including the well-known “I, Pencil” (1958).

was an American academic, economist and writer who was best known for founding the Institute for Humane Studies in 1961

One of the strongest cases made in history for the “power of the pen” are the collective works of Thomas Paine. Paine was born in Thetford in Norfork, England and emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin. He wrote to “The Inhabitants of America” using plain language and sound argument to encourage citizens to rise up against their English rulers. His pamphlets became the most widely read publications of his day. His pamphlet, “Common Sense”, united the colonies behind the cause of independence and his words were also on the lips of the French as they stormed the Bastille. “The American Crisis”, a series of pamphlets, gave the needed strength to the American War for Independence when it was at the point of defeat.

Thomas Paine is the author of the Declaration of Independence.

Was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics accomplished in the first decades of the twentieth century. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc², which arises from relativity theory, has been called “the world’s most famous equation”.

Was a Hungarian physician and scientist of German descent, who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures, and was described as the “saviour of mothers”. Postpartum infection, also known as puerperal fever or childbed fever, consists of any bacterial infection of the reproductive tract following birth, and in the 19th century was common and often fatal. Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of infection could be drastically reduced by requiring healthcare workers in obstetrical clinics to disinfect their hands. In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards. The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, and he published a book of his findings, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever in 1861.

Was an Italian philosopher, poet, cosmological theorist and esotericist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets (exoplanets), and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no center. he was burned alive at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science,

Was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center.

The publication of Copernicus’s model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science.

was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science. Aristotle’s views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed.

was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and Catholic theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the 14th century. He is commonly known for Occam’s razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, and also produced significant works on logic, physics and theology.

Carlson invented electrophotography (now xerography, meaning “dry writing”), producing a dry copy in contrast to the wet copies then produced by the Photostat process; it is now used by millions of photocopiers worldwide. Prior to this, office workers used carbon paper or duplicators to make multiple copies of documents. Carlson developed his ideas in his apartment in New York.

The xerographic process, which was invented by Chester Carlson in 1938 and developed and commercialized by the Xerox Corporation, is widely used to produce high-quality text and graphic images on paper.

Carlson originally called the process electrophotography. It’s based on two natural phenomena: that materials of opposite electrical charges attract and that some materials become better conductors of electricity when exposed to light. Carlson invented a six-step process to transfer an image from one surface to another using these phenomena.

First, a photoconductive surface is given a positive electrical charge. The photoconductive surface is then exposed to the image of a document. Because the illuminated sections (the non-image areas) become more conductive, the charge dissipates in the exposed areas. Negatively charged powder spread over the surface adheres through electrostatic attraction to the positively charged image areas. A piece of paper is placed over the powder image and then given a positive charge. The negatively charged powder is attracted to the paper as it is separated from the photoconductor. Finally, heat fuses the powder image to the paper, producing a copy of the original image.

The first ever data to be copied in the world was “10-22-38 Astoria.” This denoted the date followed by the name of Chester Carlson’s apartment block.

Alongside the printing press, the pen is probably the most important invention in the progress of human knowledge and communication. From the quill to the rollerball, human endeavours have been scribed since at least 800 B.C.

Despite the annals of incredible literature composed with feather quills and fountain pens, they were only reliable in the hands of skilled writers. However, the pace of life quickened with modern technology and literacy rates increased; demand arose for pens that didn’t require so much time, attention, and care.

Drawbacks to the ol’ quill and ink bottle (or even the early versions of the fountain pen) included:

• Ink needed to dry, requiring time or else the use something like sand to speed up the process
• Pens only worked on a paper writing surface
• They required hands on maintenance; from cutting a feather into shape, sharpening it, and keeping it clean
• They were really, really messy
• Great skill was needed to write consistently

The more literacy grew, the greater the demand for a writing tool that could handle writing on the go on any surface.

László Bíró is the Inventor of the first commercially successful ballpoint pen.

Building on earlier patented designs like John J. Loud

The invention of the ballpoint pen meant suddenly anyone who wanted to write or draw could at any time at any place.

Spinoza’s philosophy encompasses nearly every area of philosophical discourse, including metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. It earned Spinoza an enduring reputation as one of the most important and original thinkers of the seventeenth century. Spinoza’s philosophy is largely contained in two books: the Theologico-Political Treatise, and the Ethics.

While building electromagnets, Henry discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon of self-inductance. He also discovered mutual inductance independently of Michael Faraday, though Faraday was the first to make the discovery and publish his results. Henry developed the electromagnet into a practical device. He invented a precursor to the electric doorbell (specifically a bell that could be rung at a distance via an electric wire, 1831) band electric relay (1835). His work on the electromagnetic relay was the basis of the practical electrical telegraph, invented separately by Samuel F. B. Morse and Charles Wheatstone

known for his work on measuring the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment.

was an American scientist known for his precise and accurate measurement of the atomic weight of oxygen, and for the Michelson–Morley experiment.

Developed fundamental results in quantum theory. In particular, he is recognized for postulating the Schrödinger equation, an equation that provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. He coined the term “quantum entanglement”, and was the earliest to discuss it, doing so in 1932.

In addition, he wrote many works on various aspects of physics: statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity, and cosmology, and he made several attempts to construct a unified field theory. In his book What Is Life? Schrödinger addressed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics. He also paid great attention to the philosophical aspects of science, ancient, and oriental philosophical concepts, ethics, and religion. He also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology. In popular culture, he is best known for his “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment.

As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his studies of electricity, and for charting and naming the Gulf Stream current. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among others. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia’s first fire department.

He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. In addition, he contributed to the field of library science by devising a cataloguing system whilst working at Wolfenbüttel library in Germany.

Mathematicians have consistently favored Leibniz’s notation as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus.

was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in transforming physical chemistry into a rigorous inductive science. Together with James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann, he created statistical mechanics (a term that he coined), explaining the laws of thermodynamics as consequences of the statistical properties of ensembles of the possible states of a physical system composed of many particles. Gibbs also worked on the application of Maxwell’s equations to problems in physical optics. As a mathematician, he invented modern vector calculus (independently of the British scientist Oliver Heaviside, who carried out similar work during the same period).

Was a French mathematician best known for providing a criterion for solubility of equations by radicals. Galois theory, Galois groups, Galois extensions, and Galois fields are named after him.  His death (at the age of 20) which resulted from injuries in a dual, is one of the most tragic incidents of mathematics history.

Was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry.

In 1956, most cargoes were loaded and unloaded by hand by longshore workers. Hand-loading a ship cost $5.86 a ton at that time. Using containers, it cost only 16 cents a ton to load a ship, 36-fold savings. Containerization also greatly reduced the time to load and unload ships. McLean knew “A ship earns money only when she’s at sea“, and based his business on that efficiency.

Malcolm McLean revolutionized the maritime industry, His idea for modernizing the loading and unloading of ships, which was previously conducted in much the same way the ancient Phoenicians did 3,000 years ago, has resulted in much safer and less-expensive transport of goods, faster delivery, and better service. We owe so much to a man of vision, “the father of containerization,” 

Was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection.

Wallace describes how he discovered natural selection as follows:
It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more quickly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous to keep down the numbers of each species, since evidently they do not increase regularly from year to year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been crowded with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, why do some die and some live? And the answer was clearly, on the whole the best fitted live … and considering the amount of individual variation that my experience as a collector had shown me to exist, then it followed that all the changes necessary for the adaptation of the species to the changing conditions would be brought about … In this way every part of an animals organization could be modified exactly as required, and in the very process of this modification the unmodified would die out, and thus the definite characters and the clear isolation of each new species would be explained.

Was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.