While the original inventors get most of the credit, it is often the later improvements that transform what these inventions could do. Inventions are thought of as standing alone, but the evolution of these inventions is what makes them so helpful.
Wilbur and Orville Wright are justly credited with inventing the airplane. The incremental design improvements, however, made the airplane a viable option for mass transportation. With the invention of the jet engine by engineers in Germany and the United Kingdom, the airplane is now the most popular form of long-distance travel.
Likewise, the Z3, ENIAC and ABC were widely hailed as the first computers in their countries of origin. The inventions of the transistor, raster monitor, hard drives and microchip were crucial for changing computing into what it is today. Computers are the ultimate example of unwieldy inventions that would evolve dramatically. It is hard to believe how much faster tiny cell phones are than these early, pioneering inventions.
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