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If you delve into the history of technological advancements, it's easy to understand why experts are reluctant to use the term 'inventor.' For every person credited with an innovation, there’s always another who was ahead of them.
In some cases, it’s simply a matter of visibility. Thomas Edison often claimed to be the inventor of several groundbreaking technologies—the motion picture, the incandescent light bulb—while fully aware that others had already pioneered these ideas. The Wright brothers may not have been the first to achieve powered flight, but they were the ones with the photos to prove it.
The individuals on this list truly deserve recognition for their inventions. Perhaps, though, it's time we abandon the myth of the 'lone genius' and start acknowledging the collaborative nature of innovation.
10. Choe Yun-ui Metal Type Printing Press – 1234-1240
Nearly two centuries before Johannes Gutenberg introduced his printing press, Koreans were already producing books using movable metal type. Choe Yun-ui, a government official tasked with printing the Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun, a vast collection of legal and historical texts, is usually credited with this innovation.
So, why did Gutenberg receive all the accolades instead of Choe or his team?
One challenge was that the type used was based on Chinese characters, with thousands of symbols to choose from. While movable type reduced the workload, the process remained labor-intensive. It wasn’t until the 1440s, when the Hangul alphabet was introduced, that Korea developed a writing system more suited for the printing press. But there was more at play: isolated between China and Japan, Korea was cut off from the West. The first Europeans to stay in the country were Portuguese missionaries in the late 1500s, but it wasn't until the 1800s that regular interactions began. By then, Europeans already believed they were the masters of the world and were unimpressed by an Eastern invention from six centuries prior.
9. Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi Intercontinental Flight – 1630
In 1630, Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi is believed to have flown from Europe to Asia. The Bosphorus Strait, which separates the European and Asian sides of Istanbul, is narrow in places—less than a mile across—so this wasn't a flight from Paris to Beijing. However, considering it was 1630 and aeronautical science in Western Europe had largely stalled with Leonardo da Vinci a century earlier, it was a remarkable feat.
Sadly, the flight itself is not well documented in Ottoman records, so we can only speculate about what the glider looked like. But if Çelebi understood some basic aeronautical principles, engineers believe there's no reason he couldn’t have accomplished the flight.
What happened to Çelebi after his historic flight remains unclear, but what is known isn't promising. He was a well-regarded mathematician and scientist in Ottoman Constantinople, yet soon after his flight—whether due to the flight or another issue—he was exiled to Algeria, which, within the Ottoman Empire, was as distant as possible.
But hold on, there's more:
8. Lagâri Hasan Çelebi Rocket Flight – 1630s
Indeed, Ahmed had a brother, Hasan, and if the tales of his achievements are true, then Ahmed’s feat might seem less impressive. Just a year or two after Ahmed’s flight, Hasan reportedly soared into the heavens aboard a rocket.
As part of the festivities for the birth of the Sultan’s daughter, Hasan designed a rocket and launched it from the shore beneath the Topkapi Palace. Before we dismiss this as mere legend, a couple of facts merit attention. First, gunpowder, which was likely used in the rocket’s launch, had been in use for centuries, particularly by the Chinese for rocket-powered fireworks. While this may have provided enough force to propel the rocket skyward, another force would have been needed to keep it aloft.
Another consideration is how Hasan descended after his flight. Since both brothers were scholars with access to an extensive library of Islamic science, Hasan could have easily deduced that a parachute would be necessary. Alternatively, the rocket was said to have seven wings, which could have allowed him to steer it back down. In essence, the objective may not have been to reach the upper atmosphere but rather to demonstrate advancements in rocketry.
Like his brother, Hasan fell out of favor with the Sultan—but unlike Ahmed, Hasan was simply exiled to the Ukrainian coast, where he may have continued his experiments with rocket propulsion.
7. Ada Lovelace Computer Program – 1843
You might assume that students today have at least some knowledge of computer history—but it's surprising how many believe everything began with Bill Gates. Their astonishment is palpable when you inform them that the first computer program was written by a woman—and that it happened in 1843. And by the way, she was the daughter of Lord Byron.
The year before, Ada Lovelace’s acquaintance Charles Babbage had delivered a lecture on his “analytical engine,” a machine designed to compute logarithms and trigonometric equations. An Italian engineer, Luigi Menabrea, took notes in French and later published an article. Babbage asked Lovelace to translate it into French. In doing so, she added a series of her own algorithms, including one that calculated Bernoulli numbers, which she recognized would give the machine its functionality. This algorithm, particularly the one involving the Bernoulli numbers, would later be seen as the first computer program.
The story takes a tragic turn here. Babbage, known for his misanthropic tendencies, struggled to get along with nearly everyone. A dispute with his engineer and the refusal of various organizations to fund his work meant the Analytical Engine was never finished. Lovelace, on the other hand, contracted cancer and passed away in 1852 at just 36 years old. It wasn't until the 1950s that her writings were rediscovered, and it was then that scientists began to appreciate how remarkably advanced her ideas about computing truly were.
6. Giovanni Caselli Fax Machine – 1860
What transpired on a railway platform in Lyon just before Christmas 1874 could have been straight out of a steampunk novel. An unnamed clerk had fled from a Paris business with a bundle of cash. Thinking he had some free time, he stopped off in Lyon, only to be quickly surrounded by detectives. One detective held up a portrait of him, sent by telegraph, probably while the train was still approaching Paris.
Giovanni Caselli’s pantelegraph operated as follows: Two styli—one for the sender and one for the receiver—were controlled by electric clockwork. As the sender drew part of the image, the receiver, perhaps located in a different city, could simultaneously trace it on a disc. The pantelegraph was in use in France until 1870. The reason for its decline might be tied to the Prussian invasion that year and the siege of Paris that followed. Although the situation was resolved within a year, the real mystery is why the pantelegraph was never revived. Considering the many other technologies that emerged at the time, it's puzzling that the potential of transmitting facsimiles electronically was not realized.
5. Clément Ader Successful flight – 1890
Thirteen years before Orville made history with the Wright Flyer I, Clément Ader achieved the same milestone—a successful flight in a manned, powered, heavier-than-air aircraft—aboard the Éole.
Hundreds of inventors were working on flight technology at the time, but Ader was one of the few who earned serious recognition. Having already patented devices in acoustics and electronics, it made perfect sense for him to expand into aeronautics. On October 9, 1890, Ader successfully took off from a field and flew about 165 feet (50 meters).
However, there were issues: First, it seems there was only one witness to the event. Second, the aircraft only reached an altitude of eight inches (20 cm). And third, during another attempt a few years later, in front of officials from the Ministry of Defence, Ader’s plane was hit by a gust of wind, reportedly flew for about 1000 feet, but crashed. The officials then grumbled and walked away.
Had a photographer been there during his initial attempt, the course of history might have been rewritten. As for the altitude, well, eight inches still technically counts as airborne. Historians of flight generally agree that Ader did indeed fly in 1890. After his encounter with the bureaucrats, he seemed to lose interest in designing his own aircraft, but he continued to advocate for the cause. In 1910, he published a book, L’Aviation Militaire, in which he predicted a time when aircraft would be housed on ships and launched for short-range missions.
4. Henry Heyl Cinema – 1870
Despite what Thomas Edison may have claimed, no one single-handedly invented cinema. A series of innovations around the world led to the creation of what we know today. If one inventor truly deserves recognition in the birth of cinema, it’s Henry Heyl.
The tale is often told like this: In 1873, Muybridge captured a sequence of photos of the racehorse Occident. By 1879, he was showcasing sequences of animals in motion using a device he called the zoopraxiscope. The issue was that because the zoopraxiscope used a rotating disc to project images, Muybridge had to distort the images for them to appear naturally on screen. As a result, he couldn’t project actual photographs—and this was the challenge that other inventors attempted to solve in the following decade.
Three years before Muybridge’s famous photographs of Occident, on the evening of February 5, 1870, Henry Heyl hosted an exhibition at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, attended by around 1,600 people. The display was brief—a series of photographs showing a couple dancing for just a few seconds, projected on a screen in quick succession. Despite the short duration, it captivated journalists across the United States and was widely reported in several newspapers. Heyl called his invention the Phasmatrope. After this single exhibition, he seemingly vanished from public view.
However, that’s not the whole story. A few years later, Heyl invented something else—the stapler.
3. Hercules Florence Photography – 1830s
You may be familiar with the accepted version of the history of photography: In the 1820s, the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce created what is regarded as the world’s first photograph. The exposure time was incredibly lengthy, lasting over eight hours. Niépce eventually passed on his research to his friend Louis Daguerre, who later claimed the invention of the Daguerreotype in 1839. Meanwhile, across the English Channel, British scientists William Fox Talbot and John Herschel were developing their own photographic processes, using paper negatives that could be reproduced as positive prints.
There were unofficially several others around the same time who also claimed to have invented the medium, and many of them have a reasonable case. By the late 1830s, all the necessary knowledge to create photographs was readily available. The key challenge was simply arranging the components in the right sequence.
News spread slowly in the 1830s, particularly if you were residing in the remote river port of São Carlos in the Brazilian jungle. As a result, French expatriate Hercules Florence didn’t learn of the developments by Daguerre and Fox Talbot until some time later. In 1832, he had begun working on a photographic process involving silver nitrate and using urine as a fixer. By 1834, the method was functioning, and Florence even coined a name for his creation: photographie. He was ahead of Herschel by a few years in this regard. Although Florence published some of his findings in a local newspaper in 1839, he remained largely forgotten until the 1970s—100 years after his death in 1879.
Only two of Florence’s photographs are known to have survived: one depicting a certificate, and the other a self-portrait.
2. Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow Television – 1880s
On Christmas Eve, 1883, German physics student Paul Nipkow found himself alone at home, deep in thought about a problem. How could he enhance the electronic transmission of images? In his imagination, he envisioned something like a cross between Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope and a vinyl LP: a single groove on a disc, punctuated by regular square holes, capable of capturing an image as a series of fragmented parts.
While this might sound like the concept of pixels, it's not far from it. This innovation enabled the transmission of images from a transmitter with a Nipkow disc to a receiver containing a similar disc. A crucial element of the design were selenium cells, which could transform light into electric pulses. Though the images were small and lacked focus, the Nipkow disc remained essential in the development of television.
By the 1890s, Nipkow had shifted his focus to designing electrical components, losing interest in the potential of his earlier invention. However, in 1928, he was invited to witness the first public demonstration of television in Berlin. Watching the blurry images, he was aware of the pivotal role he had played four decades earlier in making television possible.
1. Nathan B. Stubblefield Radio – 1892
Nathan Stubblefield might be the most well-known inventor on this list. Radio and communication historians will concede that the Kentucky farmer invented a form of radio a few years before Marconi and Tesla claimed the achievement. The confusion stems from his method, which used induction instead of wireless transmission. Induction transmission involved sending radio signals between metal rods. It was effective, but only over short distances. In contrast, what we now call wireless transmission, which was on the verge of realization at that time, could send signals over vast distances.
So what if Stubblefield's invention wasn’t the major breakthrough everyone expected? What’s remarkable about him is that he had no formal background in electronics or physics. Instead, he had an extraordinary ability to solve abstract problems and develop practical solutions.
Stubblefield’s story has one of the saddest endings. He partnered with a group of businessmen more interested in promoting themselves than Stubblefield or his invention. Within a few years, he realized he was being taken advantage of from all sides. Disheartened, he withdrew to a mountain shack and lived in solitude, where he tragically starved to death in 1928—the same year NBC expanded its broadcasts coast to coast.
