These 10 inventions are old, but we still benefit from them

We start around the year 1440. Illiteracy is widespread, books are a rarity. Then the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented it Letterpress printing with movable metal types. He forges movable letters that can be placed on a rail and painted with paint. A sheet of paper is clamped and pressed by the machine. Gutenberg produced the first printed Bible.

Simple texts suddenly become accessible to significantly more people. Literacy is gaining momentum as a result of the media revolution in Europe.

Thomas Alva Edison was a great inventor in the field of electricity and telecommunications. It was the origin of the extensive electrification of the industrialized world. Among other things, he registered the patent for his carbon filament lamp – the light bulb was born and provided light.

However, the light bulb may have existed before then. Heinrich Göbel claimed to have invented it in the 1850s, but did not register a patent. However, this cannot be proven. The claims are currently dismissed as untrue.

We stick with a product that also has multiple candidates for invention. One thing is certain: Alexander Graham Bell got the patent for it telephone 1876. He reported this two hours before Elisha Gray.

But Johann Philipp Reis was perhaps the real inventor. In 1861, he is said to have uttered the phrase “The horse won’t eat a cucumber salad” over his telephone during a demonstration for members of the Physical Society. But he lacked the money to improve the technology. Reis died bitterly in 1873.

As inventor of the Steam locomotive applies to Richard Trevithick. That was in 1802 when he mounted a high-pressure machine on a chassis. The patent for the Steam engine but James Watt registered as early as 1769.

But the steam engine was more of an invention by various tinkerers. Strictly speaking, the first versions were built by Heron in the 1st century AD. The mathematician and engineer from the Center for Greco-Roman Science built heavy doors that opened when a priest lit the sacred fire in front of the temple.

Heron heated water and created steam, which was used to move cable winches. However, the Greeks saw it more as a game. And the Romans didn’t need a steam engine either. They had slaves. Therefore, it was not until the 17th and 18th centuries that Watt and Trevithick registered their patents.

Even when it comes to powered aircraft, the famous first pilots were probably not the first inventors. Wilbour and Orville Wright, better known as the Wright brothers, graduated in 1903 in a self-built biplane.Motorized aircraft a first flight. In four attempts, the best run lasted 59 seconds, during which he flew 260 meters.

However, the German émigré Gustav Weisskopf (also Gustave Whitehead) is said to have flown two years earlier. His flight took him half a mile. There are no photos of it, but there are at least several newspaper reports. Regardless, there is still debate today about who really was first powered flight completed.

Sure, a German, on the other hand, can… motorcycle are attributed. Gottlieb Daimler invented the ‘driving car’ in 1885.

He later invented this together with his friend Wilhelm Maybach powerboat. Daimler also built the first automobile in October 1886 when he installed an engine in a carriage. But the patent on the car is not his, but…

Carl Benz patented the ‘gas-powered vehicle’ in January 1886. Today known as car. The Benz Patent-Motorwagen Number 1 was a three-wheeled vehicle that is considered the first practical passenger car.

Funny anecdote: Apparently Carl Benz was afraid of the loud, fast and smelly vehicle. His wife Berha, together with their sons Eugen (15) and Richard (13), were the first to undertake a journey of more than 100 kilometers in 1888. This trip – which her husband reportedly knew nothing about – allayed still widespread reservations and was crucial to the company’s success.

Nowadays we cannot imagine life without the Internet. This was the case World wide web only founded in 1989. Who invented it remains controversial. But without the HTML recording language developed by Englishman Tim Berners-Lee, which is used to structure most websites, the Internet would not look as we know it today.

And yes, Berners-Lee developed this at CERN in Geneva. An internal network already existed there. The world’s first website was CERN’s on Berners-Lee’s computer. In 1993, the company made the software public and the World Wide Web was born.

We also stay in Switzerland for the last two inventors. This time even with a Swiss passport. The first is by Hannes Keller, the name probably doesn’t mean anything to you. But if you work with the computer and want to write something error-free, you may have a little to thank him for.

Because Keller invented Witchpen, the first automatic spelling correction. And Witchpen was one of the first word processing programs to use real-time representation (WYSIWYG) in 1983. The user immediately saw how text was displayed. Many modern text programs have adopted features from Witchpen.

Georges de Mestral was hunting with his dog. Then he noticed that fruit from a plant was on the dog’s fur and clothing. He discovered small hooks on the plant that were connected to the fibers and hairs.

With friends from the textile industry he managed to copy these hooks. Velcro was born (composed of the French words velours (velvet) and hook (hook). We know the product as Velcro. The breakthrough for its “zipper without a zipper” was given to him by NASA, who used the Velcro closure around 1969 to fasten to the Apollo space capsule.