12 Small Inventions That Changed the World
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We often feel that what we do is insignificant, especially compared to large-scale discoveries that are impossible for us ordinary people to accomplish. But never be discouraged. It turns out that there are many little discoveries that often go unnoticed that make our lives better.
Here are 12 little discoveries that have turned the world into what we know it today.
1. Duct tape
Initially, duct tape was invented during World War II by researchers at Johnson & Johnson to help military personnel carry equipment and ammunition to the front lines.
After the war, many of these soldiers switched professions and worked in construction. They recommended the duct tape as a multipurpose adhesive tape. The color is then adjusted to a silver so that it matches the color of the adhesive tape in general.
Duct tape is one of the most common objects we can find everywhere today. It is difficult to imagine life without it.
2. Potato Chips
If there was a contest about what snacks people liked the most in the world, maybe the potato chip would be one of the winners.
Potato chips were invented in 1853 by a chef in New York named George Crum. At that time, one of his customers kept complaining about his mushy fries. From here came the idea to thinly slice the potatoes and fry them.
The rest is, well, history.
3. Nails
These small and essential objects are used by humans on a daily basis for everything from hanging photos to building houses and various other construction jobs.
It's a little hard to believe that nails have been around since 3400 BC. There are certain geometric patterns used so that they can join hard objects such as planks to planks, planks against walls, and so on. And since the early 1900's, most of the nails have been made of metal.
- Post-It Notes
This is an example of how an accident can revolutionize the world. Post-It Notes originated from the discovery of a chemist named Spencer Silver who worked for the adhesive company 3M.
He created a less sticky adhesive that could be used to stick something light like paper and could be peeled off without damaging the surface or tearing the paper.
The product did not sell well.
But then Silver's colleague named Art Fry got the idea to create a bookmark using the invention. So the Post-It Notes were born.
5. Paperclip
Nearly all great inventions arise out of necessity. The same thing happened to a man named Samuel Fay who lived in the 1800's. At that time he was trying to stick a ticket on the cloth. He didn't want to break the cloth so that he couldn't use the needle.
So he took a rather thick used wire and made an x using the stem. Then he used this first version of the paperclip to attach the ticket to the cloth.
6. Rubber Band
It’s another thing that we take for granted (until we need it), but it is useful and is one of the things that every home has.
In 1923, William H. Spencer obtained rubber inner tubes from Goodyear and cut them in the basement of his home by hand. In that place, a large company called the Alliance Rubber Company would be established. This company would produce rubber bands. Rubber bands were first patented in England on March 17, 1845 by a Stephen Ferry.
7. Stapler
Apart from paper and stationery, what other items that you can find in every office? It’s the stapler.
According to historical records, the stapler originated in 18th century France. At first the stapler was made by hand for King Louis XIV. The word stapler itself appeared for the first time in an advertisement in the magazine American Munseys in 1901 to describe a thin metal device that could hold paper together.
8. Microchip
At first it was called the Integrated Circuit (IC) and then as technology developed and the size of this object continued to shrink, in the end it became more popularly known as a microchip. This invention took humans from 7 miles per hour over fields to 70 miles per hour across space in less than 50 years.
The microchip appeared for the first time in 1959 and was the brainchild of two scientists who were separately looking for an answer to the same problem. Now all modern electronic equipment from charger heads to space satellites work by utilizing components no bigger than a baby's fingernail.
9. Guitar PickUp
Music concerts in the past always relied on room acoustics so that the sound of the instruments could reach the rear seats. Likewise, a non-electric musical instrument, without the help of acoustics from the body, might not be audible.
Although the pickup principle has been around for years, it was not until 1924 when a technician from Gibson named Lloyd Loar designed a pickup for the guitar, that the world of music changed.
This tool makes use of Faraday's law principles and uses a magnet wrapped around a wire to pick up vibrations from the strings. This vibration will be converted into an alternating electric current which can be passed through the cable to the amplifier and converted into sound by the speakers.
The use of pickups for guitars grew with the emergence of thin and compact guitars by Leo Fender. This guitar, named the Fender Telecaster, is a pioneer of the modern electric guitar.
One of the advantages that popularized guitar pickups is that the sound can be changed by adding effects, distortions, loops, reverbs, and so on.
10. Laser
For ordinary people, the laser is identical to the war weapon in the film that shoots a deadly red beam. But their use is much wider than sci-fi story material.
The name which is actually an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation was the work of Theodore H. Maiman in 1960. He constructed a device that could produce light concentrated on one thin line based on the theory of several other scientists including Albert Einstein.
Recently, lasers have been applied to many equipment including optical drives class I) to heavy industrial machines and light shows (laser class IV).
11. Flash Memory Card
Approximately 45 years ago, the largest data capacity that could be stored on a portable data storage (called the 8-inch floppy disk) was less than 80 kilobytes. And a few years earlier, data was stored on punched cards and had to be read on a computer in the size of a football field.
Today, anyone can buy a flash drive with a capacity of 1 Terabyte or more. Without needing to explain how flash drives work, we all know that all modern electronic equipment from smart watches to servers in the cloud take advantage of this data storage technology.
Using a comparison of the physical size and the amount of data that can be stored, the flash drives available today can store nearly 16 billion times as much data as a floppy disk.
12. Internet
Before anyone argues that the internet is no small invention, let’s look at the internet from another perspective: its weight.
A YouTuber named VSauce asked a question: how heavy is all the data on the internet today? We won't go into details about how to calculate this, but it does involve the amount of electric power, the mass of electrons, and the number of electrons.
The result: the weight of the 8 billion electrons that make up the internet, which contains all the 5 million terabytes of information in the form of text, image, video, and sound files, is only 50 grams.
And the total mass: 0.2 millionths ounces.
How Small Is Your Contribution To The World?
Whatever your answer is, it doesn't matter. Because all contributions, big and small, will still make a difference to the world.
Never stop creating and innovating. Because achieving something extraordinary, even though it may seem implausible at first, starts with small things.
