by Bob Duden

Created on: December 09, 2010   Last Updated: December 11, 2010

Since the dawn of mankind, straight from the stone age so to speak, the human race has sought to improve its lot in life.  To do so often meant the creation of something quite simple but, something that made life easier. That is the root of all invention, the ability to make a tool, something that would improve the standard of living.  Something that advanced Neanderthal man into civilized man was the Mother of all Invention. 

To comprise such a list of those greatest inventions is to chronicle mankind's growth on Planet Earth.  It's taken thousands of years to reach this point in time and over those eons man attained several stepping stones, points in time where an invention changed everything.  Most of those points in time are relatively recent in the age of man and that's primarily because the invention differs greatly from the discovery.  Smelting, the process of creating metal out of ore, is over 8000 years old.  This gave man money and weapons, two of the roots of all evil, but that wasn't an invention.  Gunpowder was another discovery.  Alchemists combined nitrates and sulfur to create an explosive that was first designed to thrill the populous with fireworks but soon became just another way that humans learned they could kill each other, hardly an invention.

The first real invention was the wheel.  Somewhere in time, someone noticed that if you rolled something it took a lot less work.  The principle was refined and an axle was added and with the taming of beasts of burden, a form of transportation was created.  The chariot and then the wagon, were basic forms of transportation for thousands of years.  And then, an engine was added.  First it was powered by steam, and then the combustion engine was created.  Combine those two inventions, the engine and the wheel, and the earth was no longer such a vast  uncharted place.  Trains crossed continents and automobiles took us places our ancestors never dreamed of going.  

For all of time, man looked up to the sky at the birds and wondered how they flew.  The invention of the airplane solved that dilemma.  It was the idea of lift under a fixed wing that gave birth to the invention of the airplane.  Add the engine that man had already created and there is the third of man's greatest feats.  If man never learned to fly, he never would have reached the moon.  And, as engines have become so much

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