Inventions and Discoveries Developed Simultaneously Throughout History

In 1922, a pair of Columbia University sociologists named William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas published a paper entitled “Are Inventions Inevitable?” which stated that Ogburn and Thomas discovered 148 examples of documented simultaneous invention. This phenomena occurred in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed for a patent for the telephone on the same day with Bell’s unit having a separated listening and talking piece whilst Gray’s unit having a single listening and talking unit built into a conical structure. Other notable examples include Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace who came up with the Theory of Evolution simultaneously, Carl Scheele and Joseph Priestly who discovered oxygen at the same time, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz who discovered and developed calculus at the same time, Dmitri Mendeleev and Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois who discovered and developed the periodic table at the same time, and Orville and Wilbur Wright and Samuel Langley who invented the airplane during the same period of time. Knowing this, it would seem that the phenomena of simultaneous invention and discovery seems to be exceedingly common for human beings throughout history

The Industries Disrupted by U.S. Entrepreneur Steve Jobs and U.S. Inventor Thomas Edison

Steve Jobs affected and subsequently disrupted the computer industry, the motion picture industry, the music industry, and the telecommunucations industry, all within a single lifespan. This achievement places Jobs at the status of a world renowned icon, a person like Thomas Edison who affected all of the same industries as well, swapping only the computer industry for the electric industry. Edison invented the incandescent light bulb for the electric industry, the phonograph for the music industry, and the motion picture camera for the film industry, and improved the telegraph and telephone for the telecommunications industry. Jobs developed the Macintosh computer for the computer industry, the animation studio Pixar for the film industry, the iPod and iTunes for the music industry, and the iPhone for the telecommunications industry

The First Industrial Revolution, Second Industrial Revolution, and Impending Third Industrial Revolution

Industrial revolutions require 3 key components to occur, 3 defining technologies which emerge and converge to create the catalyst needed to usher in a new era of human achievement and progress. The first component is new methods of communication technologies to make communication more efficient and to manage economic and social life (e.g. video conferencing), the second is new sources of energy to more efficiently power economic and social life as well as governance (e.g. renewable energy technologies), and the third is new modes of mobility and logistics to more efficiently move economic and social life as well as governance (e.g. on demand ride sharing). The First Industrial Revolution was caused by the discovery of a new source of energy; coal. Coal powered the new communications medium, the steam powered press, and a new logistics structure via the locomotive railway. When these 3 technologies converged, much of the world (e.g. the whole of Europe) changed seemingly overnight. As a direct consequence of the First Industrial Revolution, business models moved toward market capitalism and major city hubs began developing ushering in the modern world format. The Second Industrial Revolution occurred in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th century with the advent of the telephone in the late 19th century, and the advent of radio and television in the early and mid 20th century. At approximately the same time that the telephone and telecommunications networks were being developed, the U.S found a new source of energy which was oil in Texas, United States of America. Henry Ford compounded this discovery by producing a cost effective combustion engine, powered by oil which provided new logistics and mobility technology. The Second Industrial Revolution however is now fading away due to the impact it has had upon the Earth’s climate and humanity is now upon the precipice of a Third Industrial Revolution. The internet has become the new communication medium, millions of people are now adopting renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal etc.) and it is predicted that when autonomous vehicles connect to smart roads, the last piece of this puzzle will be complete, thrusting humanity into its 3rd epic epoch

The Fatal Flaw of Home Security Systems

Intruders can take down virtually any home security system, and older commercial security systems because they all have one fatal flaw in common; each are based upon and run off of an existing home telephone line. If the intruders cut the home phone, the security system is rendered effectively non-existent