Top 14 Discoveries and inventions that Revolutionized the World

Here is a list of the top discoveries and inventions that revolutionized human lives:

Computers

Computers are, by far, the most important invention of all time, which finds some application in every aspect of human life. A computer is a machine that can be instructed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations automatically via computer programming. Modern computers have the ability to follow generalized sets of operations, called programs. These programs enable computers to perform an extremely wide range of tasks. A "complete" computer including the hardware, the operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment required and used for "full" operation can be referred to as a computer system. This term may as well be used for a group of computers that are connected and work together, in particular a computer network or computer cluster.

Computers are used as control systems for a wide variety of industrial and consumer devices. This includes simple special purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls, factory devices such as industrial robots and computer-aided design, and also general purpose devices like personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones. The Internet is run on computers and it connects hundreds of millions of other computers and their users.

Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) microprocessor, along with some type of computer memory, typically MOS semiconductor memory chips. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored information. Peripheral devices include input devices (keyboards, mice, joystick, etc.), output devices (monitor screens, printers, etc.), and input/output devices that perform both functions (e.g., the 2000s-era touchscreen). Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source and they enable the result of operations to be saved and retrieved.

Penicillin

penicillin core

Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. People began using it to treat infections in 1942. Its a group of antibiotics, derived originally from common moulds known as Penicillium moulds. Penicillin antibiotics were among the first medications to be effective against many bacterial infections caused by staphylococci and streptococci. They are still widely used today, though many types of bacteria have developed resistance following extensive use.

Radioactivity

Radioactivity refers to the spontaneous emission of energy and subatomic particles by certain types of matter. It was discovered in 1896 by the French scientist Henri Becquerel, while working with phosphorescent materials. These materials glow in the dark after exposure to light, and he suspected that the glow produced in cathode ray tubes by X-rays might be associated with phosphorescence. He wrapped a photographic plate in black paper and placed various phosphorescent salts on it. All results were negative until he used uranium salts. The uranium salts caused a blackening of the plate in spite of the plate being wrapped in black paper. These radiations were then given the name "Becquerel Rays". 

Radioactive decay is a property of several naturally occurring elements as well as of artificially produced isotopes of the elements. The rate at which a radioactive element decays is expressed in terms of its half-life, that is, the time required for one-half of any given quantity of the isotope to decay. The product of a radioactive decay process—called the daughter of the parent isotope—may itself be unstable, in which case it, too, will decay. The process continues until a stable nuclide has been formed.

Hook-and-loop Fasteners(Velcro)

Hook-and-loop fasteners consist of two components: typically, two lineal fabric strips which are attached (sewn or otherwise adhered) to the opposing surfaces to be fastened. The first component consists of tiny hooks and the second component features smaller loops. When these two are pressed together, the hooks catch in the loops and the two pieces fasten or bind temporarily. When separated, by pulling or peeling the two surfaces apart, the strips make a distinctive "ripping" sound.

The original hook-and-loop fastener was conceived in 1941 by Swiss engineer George de Mestral. The idea came to him one day after returning from a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. He took a close look at the burs of burdock that kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur. He examined them under a microscope, and noted their hundreds of "hooks" that caught on anything with a loop, such as clothing, animal fur, or hair. He saw the possibility of binding two materials reversibly in a simple fashion if he could figure out how to replicate the hooks and loops. Hook-and-loop is viewed by some like Steven Vogel or Werner Nachtigal as a key example of inspiration from nature or the copying of nature's mechanisms (called bionics or biomimesis).

The Artificial Cardiac Pacemaker

St Jude medical pacemaker in hand

A cardiac pacemaker is a medical device that generates electrical impulses delivered by electrodes to cause the heart muscle chambers (the upper, or atria and/or the lower, or ventricles) to contract and therefore pump blood; by doing so this device replaces and/or regulates the function of the electrical conduction system of the heart.

The princaipal purpose of a pacemaker is to maintain an adequate heart rate, either because the heart's natural pacemaker is not fast enough, or because there is a block in the heart's electrical conduction system. Modern pacemakers are externally programmable and allow a cardiologist, particularly a cardiac electrophysiologist to select the optimal pacing modes for individual patients. A specific type of pacemakers called defibrillator combines pacemaker and defibrillator functions in a single implantable device, which should be called only defibrillator, for clarity. Others, called biventricular pacemakers have multiple electrodes stimulating differing positions within the lower heart chambers to improve synchronization of the ventricles, the lower chambers of the heart.

The first clinical implantation into a human of a fully implantable pacemaker was in 1958 at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden, using a pacemaker designed by inventor Rune Elmqvist and surgeon Åke Senning (in collaboration with Elema-Schönander AB, later Siemens-Elema AB), connected to electrodes attached to the myocardium of the heart by thoracotomy. The device failed after three hours. A second device was then implanted which lasted for two days. The world's first implantable pacemaker patient, Arne Larsson, went on to receive 26 different pacemakers during his lifetime. He died in 2001, at the age of 86, and most interestingly, outliving the inventor as well as the surgeon!

Saccharin

Sodium Saccharin

Saccharin was produced first in 1879, by Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist working on coal tar derivatives in Ira Remsen's laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Fahlberg noticed a sweet taste on his hand one evening, and connected this with the compound benzoic sulfimide on which he had been working that day. Fahlberg and Remsen published articles on benzoic sulfimide in 1879 and 1880. In 1884, then working on his own in New York City, Fahlberg applied for patents in several countries, describing methods of producing this substance that he named saccharin. Two years later, he began production of the substance in a factory in a suburb of Magdeburg in Germany. 

Sodium saccharin (benzoic sulfimide) is an artificial sweetener with effectively no food energy. It is about 300–400 times as sweet as sucrose but has a bitter or metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. 

Although saccharin was commercialized not long after its discovery, until sugar shortages during World War I, its use had not become widespread. Its popularity further increased during the 1960s and 1970s among diet maintainers, since saccharin had little to no calories unlike sugar. In the United States, saccharin is often found in restaurants in pink packets; the most popular brand is "Sweet'n Low".

Because of the difficulty of importing sugar from the West Indies, the British Saccharin Company was founded in 1917 to produce saccharin at its Paragon Works near Accrington, Lancashire. Production was licensed and controlled by the Board of Trade in London. Production continued on the site until 1926.

Microwave Ovens

Microwave Oven

Microwave ovens, these days are pretty common in home kitchens and are popular for reheating previously cooked foods and cooking a variety of foods. They are also useful for rapid heating of otherwise slowly prepared foodstuffs, which can easily burn or turn lumpy when cooked in conventional pans, such as hot butter, fats, chocolate or porridge. In restaurants, a considerable number of food items are prepared with the help of microwave.

A microwave oven, or simply a microwave, is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the frequency range of microwaves. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce thermal energy in a process known as dielectric heating. Microwave ovens heat foods quickly and efficiently because excitation is fairly uniform in the outer 25–38 mm (1–1.5 inches) of a homogeneous, high water content food item.

American engineer Percy Spencer is generally credited with inventing the modern microwave oven after World War II from radar technology developed during the war. Named the "Radarange", it was first sold in 1946. Raytheon later licensed its patents for a home-use microwave oven that was first introduced by Tappan in 1955, but these units were still too large and expensive for general home use. Sharp Corporation introduced the first microwave oven with a turntable between 1964 and 1966. The countertop microwave oven was first introduced in 1967 by the Amana Corporation. After Sharp introduced low-cost microwave ovens affordable for residential use in the late 1970s, their use spread into commercial and residential kitchens around the world. In addition to their use in cooking food, microwave ovens are used for heating in many industrial processes.

Teflon

A non-stick Pan

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), commonly known as teflon, is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene that has numerous applications. The well-known brand name of PTFE-based formulas is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off from DuPont, which originally discovered the compound in 1938. Another popular brand name of PTFE is Syncolon by Synco Chemical Corporation.

PTFE is used as a non-stick coating for pans and other cookware. It is nonreactive, partly because of the strength of carbon–fluorine bonds, and so it is often used in containers and pipework for reactive and corrosive chemicals. Where used as a lubricant, PTFE reduces friction, wear, and energy consumption of machinery. It is commonly used as a graft material in surgical interventions. It is also frequently employed as coating on catheters; this interferes with the ability of bacteria and other infectious agents to adhere to catheters and cause hospital-acquired infections.

PTFE is a fluorocarbon solid, as it is a high molecular weight compound consisting wholly of carbon and fluorine. PTFE is hydrophobic: neither water nor water-containing substances wet PTFE, as fluorocarbons demonstrate mitigated London dispersion forces due to the high electronegativity of fluorine. PTFE has one of the lowest coefficients of friction of any solid.

Vulcanized Rubber

Natural rubber extracted from trees in the form of latex is soft and has less desirable properties. When natural rubber undergoes vulcanization it hardens and develops desirable properties making it ideal for various applications.Vulcanization  refers to a range of processes for hardening rubbers. The term originally referred exclusively to the treatment of natural rubber with sulfur, which remains the most common practice; however, it has also grown to include the hardening of other (synthetic) rubbers via various means. Examples include silicone rubber via room temperature vulcanizing and chloroprene rubber (neoprene) using metal oxides.

Vulcanization can therefore be defined as the curing of elastomers; with the terms 'vulcanization' and 'curing' sometimes used interchangeably in this context. It works by forming cross-links between sections of polymer chain which results in increased rigidity and durability, as well as other changes in the mechanical and electrical properties of the material. 

The word vulcanization is derived from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and forge.

Bakelite

Bakelite Products

Bakelite, a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from a condensation reaction of phenol with formaldehyde was the first plastic made from synthetic components. It was developed by the Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland in Yonkers, New York, in 1907.

Bakelite was patented on December 7, 1909. The creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewelry, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms.

It finds a variety of applications, especially in the manufacture of electrical switches and other non-conducting devices. It is also used to make bottles, plastic dishes, etc.

Corn Flakes

Corn Flakes

Corn flakes, or cornflakes, is a breakfast cereal made by toasting flakes of corn (maize). The cereal was created by William Kellogg in 1894 for his brother John Kellogg. John Kellogg wanted a food that would be healthy for the patients of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan where he was superintendent. The breakfast cereal proved popular among the patients, but Will Kellogg wanted to add sugar to increase the popularity. However, John Kellogg did not approve  this, so Will Kellogg started his own company-Kellogg Company to produce corn flakes for the wider public. A patent for the process was granted in 1896, after a legal battle between the two brothers.

With corn flakes becoming popular in the wider community, a previous patient at the sanitarium, C. W. Post, started to make rival products. Kellogg continued to experiment and various ingredients were added and different grains were used. In 1928, he started to manufacture Rice Krispies, another successful breakfast cereal.

There are many generic brands of corn flakes produced by various manufacturers. As well as being used as a breakfast cereal, the crushed flakes can be a substitute for bread crumbs in recipes and can be incorporated into many cooked dishes.

Cyanoacrylate (Super Glue)

Super Glue

Cyanoacrylates are a family of strong fast-acting adhesives with industrial, medical, and household uses. They are various esters of cyanoacrylic acid. The acryl groups in the resin rapidly polymerize in the presence of water to form long, strong chains. They have some minor toxicity.Cyanoacrylates are mainly used as adhesives. They require some care and knowledge for effective use: they do not bond some materials; they do not fill spaces, unlike epoxies, and a very thin layer bonds more effectively than a thicker one that does not cure properly; they bond many substances, including human skin and tissues. They have an exothermic reaction to natural fibres: cotton, wool, leather, see reaction with cotton below.

Cyanoacrylate glue has a veryr low shearing strength, which has led to its use as a temporary adhesive in cases where the piece needs to be sheared off later. Common examples include mounting a workpiece to a sacrificial glue block on a lathe, and tightening pins and bolts. It is also used in conjunction with another, slower, but more resilient adhesive as a way of rapidly forming a joint, which then holds the pieces in the appropriate configuration until the second adhesive has set.

Cyanoacrylate-based glue has a weak bond with smooth surfaces and as such easily gives to friction; a good example of this is the fact that cyanoacrylates may be removed from human skin by means of abrasives (e.g. sugar or sandpaper).

Glass

Glassware

Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent amorphous solid, that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. It finds a variety of applications from the ancient times. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of the molten form; some glasses such as volcanic glass are naturally occurring. The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of manufactured glass are "silicate glasses" based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand. Soda-lime glass, containing around 70% silica, account for around 90% of manufactured glass. The term glass, in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, although silica-free glasses often have desirable properties for applications in modern communications technology. Some objects, such as drinking glasses and eyeglasses, are so commonly made of silicate-based glass that they are simply called by the name of the material.

Naturally occurring obsidian glass was used by Stone Age societies as it fractures along very sharp edges, making it ideal for cutting tools and weapons. Glass-making dates back to at least 6000 years, long before humans had discovered how to smelt iron. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first true synthetic glass was made in Lebanon and the coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid third millennium BCE, were beads, perhaps initially created as accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing. Early glass was rarely transparent and often contained impurities and imperfections. During the Late Bronze Age there was a rapid growth in glassmaking technology in Egypt and Western Asia. Archaeological finds from this period include coloured glass ingots, vessels, and beads. Much early glass production relied on grinding techniques borrowed from stone working meaning that glass was ground and carved in a cold state.

Insulin

Human Insulin

Insulin is a peptide hormone that is secreted by beta cells of the pancreatic islets. It is considered to be the main anabolic hormone of the body, which regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats and protein by promoting the absorption of glucose from the blood into liver, fat and skeletal muscle cells. Circulating insulin also affects the synthesis of proteins in a wide variety of tissues. It is therefore an anabolic hormone, promoting the conversion of small molecules in the blood into large molecules inside the cells. Low insulin levels in the blood have the opposite effect by promoting widespread catabolism, especially of reserve body fat.

Beta cells are sensitive to blood sugar levels so that they secrete insulin into the blood in response to high level of glucose; and inhibit secretion of insulin when glucose levels are low. Insulin enhances glucose uptake and metabolism in the cells, thereby reducing blood sugar level. 

Decreased or loss of insulin activity results in diabetes mellitus, a condition of high blood sugar level (hyperglycaemia). 

The human insulin protein is composed of 51 amino acids. It is a heterodimer of an A-chain and a B-chain, which are linked together by disulfide bonds. Insulin's structure varies slightly between species of animals. Insulin from animal sources differs somewhat in effectiveness (in carbohydrate metabolism effects) from human insulin because of these variations. Porcine insulin is especially close to the human version, and was widely used to treat type 1 diabetics before human insulin could be produced in large quantities by recombinant DNA technologies.

Insulin was the first peptide hormone discovered. Frederick Banting and Charles Herbert Best, working in the labaratory of J.J.R. Macleod at the University of Toronto, were the first to isolate insulin from dog pancreas in 1921. Frederick Sanger sequenced the amino acid structure in 1951, which made insulin the first protein to be fully sequenced. Insulin is also the first protein to be chemically synthesised and produced by DNA recombinant technology. It is on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, the most important medications needed in a basic health system.

Coca Cola

A can of Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by The Coca-Cola Company. It is one of the most common soft drinks in the present day. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton and was bought out by businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coca-Cola to its dominance of the world soft-drink market throughout the 20th century. The drink's name refers to two of its original ingredients: coca leaves, and kola nuts (a source of caffeine). The current formula of Coca-Cola remains a trade secret; however, a variety of reported recipes and experimental recreations have been published.

The Coca-Cola Company produces concentrate, which is then sold to licensed Coca-Cola bottlers throughout the world. The bottlers, who hold exclusive territory contracts with the company, produce the finished product in cans and bottles from the concentrate, in combination with filtered water and sweeteners. The bottlers then sell, distribute, and merchandise Coca-Cola to retail stores, restaurants, and vending machines throughout the world. The Coca-Cola Company also sells concentrate for soda fountains of major restaurants and foodservice distributors.

Quinine

Quinine Hydrochloride Tablets

Quinine is a medication used to treat malaria and babesiosis. This includes the treatment of malaria due to Plasmodium falciparum that is resistant to chloroquine when artesunate is not available. Malaria resistance to quinine occurs in certain areas of the world. Quinine is also the ingredient in tonic water that gives it its bitter taste.

Quinine was first isolated in 1820 from the bark of a cinchona tree, which is native to Peru. Bark extracts had been used to treat malaria since at least 1632 and it was introduced to Spain as early as 1636 by Jesuit missionaries from the New World. Quinine is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system. 

Common side effects include headache, ringing in the ears, trouble seeing, and sweating. More severe side effects include deafness, low blood platelets, and an irregular heartbeat. Use can make one more prone to sunburn. While it is unclear if use during pregnancy causes harm to the baby, treating malaria during pregnancy with quinine when appropriate is still recommended. Quinine is an alkaloid, a naturally occurring chemical compound. How it works as a medicine is not entirely clear.