Life-Changing Inventions From the Year You Were Born
It’s not possible to reinvent the wheel, but it is possible to invent products that change the world, in their own way.
From gadgets that have paved the way for major technological breakthroughs to everyday items that make life a lot easier, these inventions will remind you how far we’ve come.
And make you wonder, what does the future hold?
1950: Zenith Lazy Bones TV Remote Control
Inventor: Zenith
Country: United States
Initial cost: $30
Trivia: "Consumers didn’t like it for a few reasons; firstly because it wasn’t particularly practical, and secondly because they kept tripping over it." —Ransom Spares, 2013
Bottom line: The Zenith Lazy Bones, the first commercially successful TV remote control, was a handheld device that plugged into the box.
The Lazy Bones wasn’t entirely pain-free – viewers weren’t fans of the trailing wire – but it paved the way for wireless options, which came five years later.
1951: Portable Cooler
Inventor: Richard Laramy
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: "This design proved so useful that it went virtually unchanged until the mid 90’s." —Quirky, 2017
Bottom line: In 1951, Richard Laramy filed the first patent for a "portable ice chest." He later sold the rights to Coleman, which developed a cooler to keep food and beverages chilled.
Aside from making picnics more pleasurable, the portable cooler has helped save millions of lives by transporting vaccines, organs and other essential medical supplies.
1952: Mr. Potato Head
Inventor: George Lerner
Country: United States
Initial cost: $0.98
Trivia: Canada’s version of Mr. Potato Head is Monsieur Patate and is sometimes missing a tooth.
Bottom line: Mr. Potato Head got a reboot with a new generation in "Toy Story," but he has an impressive resume that dates back to 1952.
George Lerner created him to give kids a toy with flexibility, and the first model, produced by Hasbro, encouraged children to actually use a potato or other fruit or vegetable for his head.
Mr. Potato Head got his plastic head in 1964, but he’s never lost his charm.
1953: Polio Vaccine
Inventor: Jonas Salk
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921, at the age of 39.
Bottom line: In 1953, a year after polio killed 3,000 people in the U.S., Jonas Salk officially announced a vaccine for the life-threatening disease.
Clinical trials started in 1954, and the vaccination was administered to U.S. school kids shortly afterward.
By 1979, polio was completely eradicated in the U.S.
1954: Solar Cell
Inventors: Calvin Souther Fuller, Daryl Chaplin and Gerald Pearson
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The first solar-powered battery had the ability to power a 21-inch Ferris wheel.
Bottom line: In April 1954, executives from the famous Bell Laboratories presented a solar-powered battery to the press, using a solar-powered radio transmitter to broadcast voice and music to America's top scientists gathered at a meeting in Washington, D.C.
Today, solar and wind energy provides almost 10 percent of total electrical generation in the U.S.
1955: Pocket-Sized Transistor Radio
Inventor: Sony
Country: Japan
Initial cost: 19,900 yen (about $186 at the time)
Trivia: In 1973, physicist Leo Esaki received a Nobel Prize for his work on the TR-55.
Bottom line: Sony’s TR-55 was a first for many reasons: the (brand-new) company’s first transistor radio, the first to be made in Japan, and the first transistor radio small enough to fit in your pocket.
Another completely new feature was the speaker grill made of punched aluminum. Incidentally, Sony wasn’t even called Sony at that point.
The company was known as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo and didn’t change its name until 1958.
1956: Hard Drive
Inventor: IBM
Country: United States
Initial cost: Leased for $750 per month
Trivia: An operating, restored actuator and disk stack is on display in the Memory and Storage Gallery of the Computer History Museum, which is located in Silicon Valley. Where else?
Bottom line: IBM invented the first commercial hard drive in 1956.
Compatible with the 305 RAMAC system, it was the size of two refrigerators, weighed about a ton and consisted of 50 24-inch diameter disks stacked on a spindle that rotated at 1200 rpm and stored the equivalent 3.75MB of data.
1957: Birth Control Pill
Inventor: Gregory Goodwin Pincus
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Many people consider the birth control pill to be the greatest scientific invention of the 20th century.
Bottom line: The birth control pill was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1957, although only for severe menstrual disorders and not as a contraceptive.
In 1960, the pill was approved as birth control, and after two years, 1.2 million American women were taking it to prevent pregnancy.
1958: The Internal Pacemaker
Inventor: William Greatbatch
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Worldwide, around 600,000 internal pacemakers are implanted every year.
Bottom line: In 1950, Canadian electrical engineer John Hopps invented the first pacemaker device, but it was too large to be used internally.
Eight years later, another electrical engineer, William Greatbatch from the U.S., invented the first implantable cardiac pacemaker, plus the pacemaker batteries it needed to function.
1959: Modern Seat Belt
Inventor: Nils Bohlin
Country: Sweden
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Around 5,000 lives a year are still lost due to Americans not wearing seat belts.
Bottom line: Swedish cars were the first to include the modern three-point seat belt, invented by Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin.
Using earlier patents as a starting point, Bohlin tweaked the existing design to let the driver strap in with one hand without sacrificing protection in the event of a collision.
By 1963, Bohlin’s seat belt was standard in modern cars.
1960: Laser
Inventor: Theodore Maiman
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: At least 10 Nobel Prize winners’ work was made possible by lasers.
Bottom line: The first laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) was built in 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories in California.
He made it work by shining a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod with silver-coated surfaces.
When the news was shared with the media, it caused quite a stir, even leading to headlines about death rays.
1961: Cordless Power Tools
Inventor: Black & Decker
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: "Cordless tools are one of the greatest tools to have come to the trade because of their eases of use." —The History Engine
Bottom line: Cordless power tools date back to 1961, when Black & Decker unveiled the first models – not NASA, which is sometimes mistakenly credited for this invention.
However, the national space program did hire the tool company to develop a wrench for the Gemini project that would work in zero gravity without spinning the astronaut.
1962: Cassette Tapes
Inventor: Phillips
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: By 1966, more than 250,000 cassette recorders had been sold in the U.S. alone.
Bottom line: Phillips invented the first compact cassette tapes in 1962, and they quickly became more popular than vinyl records. The tapes were portable, and the sound quality was superior.
Cassette tapes also offered a more efficient, less expensive alternative to reel-to-reel recorders, allowing anyone to make recordings without having technical skills.
1963: Touch-Tone Telephone
Inventor: John E. Karlin, Bell Labs
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Karlin was also a professional violinist.
Bottom line: On Nov. 18, 1963, the first electronic push-button system with touch-tone dialing was commercially offered by Bell Telephone to customers in Pennsylvania.
Aside from being easier on the finger than rotary dial telephones, touch-tone telephones let users dial a long-distance number directly without going through an operator.
1964: Picture phone
Inventor: Bell Labs
Country: United States
Initial cost: $16 for a three-minute call
Trivia: In today’s money, the first picture phone call costs $121.
Bottom line: Bell Telephone’s Picturephone went on display at the 1964 World’s Fair and went into actual commercial use later that year.
From a booth set up in Grand Central Terminal, a person could talk to a friend (who was in an identical booth) in Chicago or Washington, while also seeing them on a small video screen.
1965: Astroturf
Inventor: James Faria and Robert Wright, Monsanto Industries
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The 1980 World Series was the first to be entirely played on Astroturf, and the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Kansas City Royals in six games.
Bottom line: It was called "ChemGrass." In 1966, Astroturf was renamed after it was used in the Houston Astrodome stadium – where the painted ceiling created a glare that gave real grass no chance of survival.
Monsanto Industries' James Faria and Robert Wright invented the synthetic grass, but it was an employee named John A. Wortmann who gave it the name Astroturf.
1966: Mammography Machine
Inventor: Robert Egan, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The American Cancer Society says all women should begin having yearly mammograms by age 45.
Bottom line: Following years of research, the first dedicated mammography machine was introduced to Europe in 1966.
By pressing down on breast tissue, doctors were able to detect microcalcifications and tumors better.
Modern mammography machines are far more sophisticated, and while they can’t prevent cancer, early detection can greatly reduce the risk of dying from the disease.
1967: ATM
Inventor: John Shepherd-Barron
Country: United Kingdom
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The world’s first ATM was built and installed in London.
Bottom line: The ATM proves that you don’t need to be in the office or the boardroom to come up with the best ideas.
Inventor John Shepherd-Barron reportedly came up with the idea for the world’s first automatic teller machine (ATM) in the bathtub.
His pitch to the British bank Barclays was a success.
1968: Video Game Console
Inventor: Ralph Baer and colleagues, Sanders Associates, Inc.
Country: United States
Initial cost: $100
Trivia: Baer also created the light gun, which was used in the popular Nintendo Entertainment System game Duck Hunt.
Bottom line: The first home video game console, called Brown Box, was developed by Ralph Baer and his colleagues at Sanders Associates, Inc. in 1968.
The goal was simple: Players had to have fun. In an interview, Baer said, "The minute we played ping-pong, we knew we had a product. Before that, we weren’t too sure."
1969: The Beginning of the Internet
Inventor: The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by British scientist Donald Davies and Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory.
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The first message text sent across the ARPANET was meant to be the word "login," but only the "L" and "O" were transmitted before the system crashed.
Bottom line: On Oct. 29, 1969, the first message was sent across the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the progenitor of the internet, between the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Stanford Research Institute.
The first-ever computer-to-computer link was declared "operational" in 1975.
Today, 4.1 billion people (more than half the world’s population) use the internet.
1970: Fiber Optics
Inventor: Corning Glass Works research scientists
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Without fiber-optic technology, broadband communications over the internet wouldn’t be possible.
Bottom line: Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Charles K. Kao made a major breakthrough in fiber optics in 1966 when he worked out how to send light over long distances using optical glass fibers, which could transmit light signals much faster than radio waves or copper wires.
The first ultrapure fiber was created in 1970 by research scientists working for Corning Glass Works.
It was a whole new to transmit information.
1971: Intel 4004
Inventor: Stanley Mazor, Federico Faggin and Ted Hoff
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Mazor, Faggin and Hoff went on to earn the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and also were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Bottom line: In 1971, computer company Intel released the first programmable, single chip microprocessor to the market. It was the dubbed the Intel 4004 and changed life as we know it forever.
By placing all the parts that made a computer think (i.e., central processing unit, memory, input and output controls) on one small chip, it made programming intelligence into inanimate objects possible.
1972: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Inventor: Raymond V. Damadian
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: In 1977, Damadian created the first whole-body human scanner.
Bottom line: In 1972, Damadian filed for a patent for the use of nuclear magnetic resonance to scan the human body.
He hadn’t yet worked out precisely how to achieve a scan, or how to generate pictures from one, but his invention paved the way for MRI machines, which create three-dimensional images of the area being scanned to identify disease and measure thought activity in the brain.
1973: Cell Phone
Inventor: Martin Cooper
Country: United States
Initial cost: $3,995
Trivia: The first cell phone was more than a foot long, weighed almost two and a half pounds, and its battery drained in a mere 20 minutes.
Bottom line: The first person to invent a cell phone, senior Motorola engineer Martin Cooper, created the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x.
To mark the occasion, Cooper called rival telecommunication company Bell Laboratories to tell them they were speaking via a mobile phone.
If you think your years-old iPhone takes a while to charge, the DynaTAC 8000x took 10 hours.
1974: Rubik's Cube
Inventor: Erno Rubik
Country: Hungary
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: It’s estimated that only one in 20 people who have a Rubik’s Cube can solve it.
Bottom line: In 1974, Hungarian sculptor and architect Erno Rubik introduced the Rubik's Cube to the world.
The 3-D combination puzzle might feature on several "best toy" lists, but Rubik never intended it to be for kids. He wanted a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry.
Unfortunately, he realized he couldn’t actually solve the puzzle himself – and he’s not the only one.
1975: Digital Camera
Inventor: Steven Sasson
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Sasson wasn’t allowed to publicly talk about his digital camera or show his prototype to anyone outside Kodak.
Bottom line: Steven Sasson invented the world's first digital camera while working at Eastman Kodak in 1975.
Weighing around eight pounds and shooting a mere 0.01 megapixels, it’s on display today at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
In 2009, Sasson was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
1976: Word Processing
Inventor: Michael Shrayer
Country: United States
Initial cost: $150.00 for the disk version, $99.95 for the cassette version
Trivia: Software pirates targeted Electric Pencil. It’s estimated that 10 copies were pirated for every legitimate copy sold.
Bottom line: In 1976, Altair programmer Michael Shrayer created the first PC word processing software, Electric Pencil.
The first commercially successful word processing program, WordStar, came three years later, and Microsoft 1.0 hit the market in 1983.
Since then, hundreds of other word processing programs have been created.
1977: In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)
Inventors: Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards
Country: United Kingdom
Trivia: IVF birth rates range from 7 percent to 30 percent per embryo transferred, depending on the woman's age.
Bottom line: When the first IVF procedure took place in 1977, it was super controversial. In 1978, the world’s first "test-tube baby," Louise Brown, was born.
The freezing technique developed in the mid-1980s let doctors implant only one or two embryos and freeze others for future use, which saved women going through the invasive egg removal process again.
1978: Email
Inventor: V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The true inventor of email is up for debate. The credit often goes to computer programmer Ray Tomlinson, who used text-based messaging on computers via ARPANET with the "@" symbol.
Bottom line: The first copyright for software known as "EMAIL" is held by V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai.
He claims he invented an electronic-messaging platform in 1978, when he was a 14-year-old research fellow at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey.
Technology developed by Ayyadurai eventually formed the basis of EchoMail, a service used by several large companies.
1979: Compact Disc
Inventor: James Russell
Country: United States
Initial cost: From $14
Trivia: The world’s first pop music CD was the ABBA album "The Visitors," released in 1982.
Bottom line: In 1979, the first prototype compact disc (CD) was unveiled in Europe and Japan.
A year later, electronics companies Philips and Sony joined forces to create a CD for public use.
The result was a very thin, shiny, circular disc that could store around 80 minutes of music and be played in a CD player.
1980: Modern Fax Machine
Inventors: NTT and KDDI
Country: Japan
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The history of the basic fax machine goes all the way back to 1843, when Scottish inventor Alexander Bain successfully projected an image to and from a cylinder.
Bottom line: After more than 100 years of trial and error, the first modern fax machine arrived in 1980.
The ITU G3 Facsimile Standard (the so-called "one-minute fax") was developed by Japanese telecoms giant NTT and overseas telecom firm KDDI.
The rest is communications history.
1981: Space Shuttle
Inventor: NASA
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Three Space Shuttle orbiters are now in operation: Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.
Bottom line: On April 12, 1981, Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-1), the world’s first reusable spacecraft, left NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
The Space Shuttle didn’t only transport astronauts and researchers into space. It allowed them to carry out a number of experiments to give us a deeper knowledge of the universe.
1982: Permanent Artificial Heart
Inventor: Robert Jarvik, M.D.
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The first artificial heart was made of aluminum and polyurethane and connected to a 400-pound air compressor.
Bottom line: The first artificial heart was placed inside a human in 1969, but it was only a temporary measure.
In 1982, in the University of Utah Hospital, the Jarvik-7 artificial heart was implanted into a man named Dr. Barney Clark, and it kept him alive for another 112 days.
1983: Consumer Camcorder
Inventor: Sony
Country: Japan
Initial cost: $1500
Trivia: One of the main advantages of video over film was instant playback, but the BMC-100 couldn’t play back its own recordings.
Bottom line: In 1983, Sony introduced the Betamovie BMC-100, which recorded on Betamax tapes and allowed users to capture up to three and a half hours of footage.
Unfortunately, its heyday was short-lived. The very same year, camcorders using VHS tapes were released and quickly became more popular.
1984: Apple Macintosh Computer
Inventor: Apple
Country: United States
Initial cost: $1,995 to $2,495
Trivia: The Apple Macintosh launched to more than 90 million viewers of the Super Bowl in a $1.5 million, 30-second commercial.
Bottom line: When Apple introduced its Macintosh computer in 1984 it was a game-changer in the computer industry – the first personal computer to feature a graphics-based user interface.
It also used the window-and-mouse system that Apple co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs had seen during a visit to Xerox.
1985: Microsoft Windows
Inventor: Microsoft
Country: United States
Initial cost: $99
Trivia: To help users get used to the mouse input system, Microsoft included a game, Reversi that relied on mouse control instead of the keyboard.
Bottom line: Windows 1.0 was different from previous operating systems because it relied heavily on the use of a mouse, rather than a keyboard, to input information.
Windows 1.0 was also Microsoft’s first true attempt at a graphical user interface in 16-bit.
1986: Single-Use Camera
Inventor: Fujifilm
Country: Japan
Initial cost: $6
Trivia: To date, QuickSnap boasts global sales of more than 1.7 billion units.
Bottom line: The FUJICOLOR QuickSnap quickly captivated the world, selling more than one million units in its first year, and rival companies like Canon, Kodak and Nikon soon released their own versions.
The disposable camera was revolutionary because at the time, regular cameras were expensive and complicated.
1987: Disposable Contact Lenses
Inventor: Acuvue
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: In the early 16th century, Leonardo Da Vinci invented a glass lens with a funnel on one side that you wore on your head – the first type of contact lens.
Bottom line: In 1987, Acuvue released the first disposable contact lenses. These were revolutionary for users for a number of reasons.
They saved time by cutting out daily cleaning, spare pairs could be carried to save trips home, and they helped some people with eye allergies because there was less time for deposits to build up behind and around the lenses.
1988: RU-486
Inventor: Georges Teutsch
Country: France
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: In the U.S., the FDA didn’t approve the RU-486 until 2000.
Bottom line: The RU-486 pill signaled a revolution in women’s reproductive health. It facilitates a medical abortion by preventing uterine implantation of a fertilized egg.
First approved for use in France in 1988, it’s inexpensive, can be administered without a doctor, and is less invasive than surgical abortion techniques.
1989: The World Wide Web
Inventor: Tim Berners-Lee
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Alternative names for the World Wide Web included "The Information Mesh" and "The Mine of Information."
Bottom line: In 1989, the World Wide Web began as a CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) project called ENQUIRE, spearheaded by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee.
The same year, AOL launched its Instant Messenger chat service, welcoming users with the iconic greeting "You’ve got mail!"
1990: Adobe Photoshop
Inventor: Thomas and John Knoll
Country: United States
Initial cost: $895
Trivia: The original source code for Adobe Photoshop 1.0 was donated to the Computer History Museum in February 2013.
Bottom line: After noticing the absence of photo-editing features on personal computers, brothers Thomas and John Knoll decided to create their own.
Adobe Photoshop 1.0 was initially released for the Apple Mac only. The Microsoft Windows version came the following year.
1991: Linux
Inventor: Linus Torvalds
Country: Finland
Initial cost: N/A
Fun fact: Torvalds originally named his computer program "Freaks," but his coworker changed it to Linux without asking him.
Bottom line: University of Helsinki student Linus Torvalds’ original goal was to build a new operating system for his Intel PC.
Wat he produced would one day become one of the biggest online platforms for the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google.
1992: Text Messaging
Inventor: Matti Makkonen
Country: Finland
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Engineer Makkonen first started developing the concept of SMS in 1984.
Bottom line: On Dec. 3, 1992, British engineer Neil Papworth sent the first text message.
Back then, mobile phones didn’t have keyboards, so Papworth typed "Merry Christmas" on a PC and sent it to the Orbitel 901 mobile phone belonging to Vodafone director Richard Jarvis.
The Nokia 1011, released the following year, was the first mobile phone to support SMS text messaging.
1993: GPS for the Masses
Inventor: Bradford Parkinson
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Each GPS satellite weighs around 3,000 to 4,000 pounds (1,361 to 1,814 kilos).
Bottom line: On June 26, 1993, the U.S. Air Force launched the 24th Navstar satellite into orbit, marking the completion of the network of 24 satellites known as the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Today, practically everyone with a smartphone has GPS, which lets you know your location on the planet (latitude, longitude and altitude) to within a few hundred feet.
1994: Sony PlayStation
Inventor: Engineer Ken Kutaragi and his team at Sony
Country: Japan
Initial cost: 39,800 yen (about $360 at the time)
Trivia: Rare variations on the PlayStation included a limited-edition midnight blue edition to celebrate 10 million sales.
Bottom line: Sony released the first PlayStation in Japan on Dec. 3, 1994, and it was an instant hit, quickly surpassing the Walkman as the company’s most important product.
It was the first game console to ship more than 100 million units. When it launched in the U.S. in September 1995, it was equally successful.
Today, the PlayStation division remains Sony’s most profitable.
1995: DVD player
Inventor: Toshiba released the first model
Country: Japan
Initial cost: $600 plus
Trivia: By the end of 1999, more than 100 million DVD discs had been shipped, representing about 5,000 titles.
Bottom line: It’s all about digital downloads and streaming these days, but let’s not forget about the Digital Video Disk (DVD), which was developed in 1995.
When DVD players (the first being Toshiba’s SD-3000) came out in 1996, they cost more than $600.
1996: Nintendo 64
Inventor: Shigeru Miyamoto
Country: Japan
Initial cost: $199
Trivia: Several celebrities, including Steven Spielberg and Matthew Perry, asked Nintendo if they could jump the queue when the Nintendo 64 came out.
Bottom line: On June 23, 1996, Nintendo 64 launched in Japan, becoming the first home console to feature an analog stick as its primary control.
Within the first 24 hours, all 300,000 units had been snapped up. By September that year, N64 made its way to the U.S.
The console was a major breakthrough in the gaming industry, due to its unprecedented level of precision and control.
1997: Prius
Inventor: Toyota
Country: Japan
Initial cost: $20,450
Trivia: The Prius won the 1997 New Car of the Year and the 1997-1998 Car of the Year Japan.
Bottom line: As the first mass-produced hybrid car (using both gasoline and electricity), the Toyota Prius caused a stir in the motor industry.
It was first launched in Japan in 1997 and introduced around the world in 2001.
The Prius is considered to be the best-selling hybrid, but it’s never been produced as a fully electric model.
1998: Google
Inventor: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Country: United States
Initial cost: Free
Trivia: Google was developed in Page and Brin’s friend Susan Wojcicki’s garage.
Bottom line: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in 1995 at Stanford University, and within a year, they were writing a program for a search engine called Backrub.
In 1997, they registered the domain name Google.com, and the company behind the world’s biggest search engine was officially incorporated in September 1998.
1999: Napster
Inventor: Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning
Country: United States
Initial cost: Free
Trivia: When TV host Jimmy Fallon asked Parker and Fanning how they met, Parker replied: "We were basically cybercriminals."
Bottom line: The idea behind Napster, created by Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning in 1999, was peer-to-peer file sharing, and it quickly became the go-to for digital MP3 music files.
But its popularity was short-lived. By 2001, it had to shut down after musicians and music companies started litigation against the founders and some of the platform’s users.
2000: Camera Phone
Inventor: Samsung
Country: South Korea
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Two years after the SCH-V200, Samsung introduced a rotating model (the SCH-X590), which let users take pictures from the front and rear of the phone.
Bottom line: You’d struggle to find someone who has a smartphone without a camera these days. But it wasn’t until 2000 that the first cell phone with a camera was introduced.
The SCH-V200 had a built-in digital camera capable of taking 20 photos at 350,000-pixel resolution (0.35-megapixels), although you had to connect it to a computer to get your photos.
2001: Segway Scooter
Inventor: Dean Kamen
Country: United States
Initial cost: $4,950
Trivia: The Woz Challenge Cup, an international segway polo tournament (like regular polo, except the players ride Segways instead of horses) started in 2006.
Bottom line: The Segway’s first public appearance was a long time coming.
Dean Kamen's concept for the two-wheeled self-balancing scooter originated in the mid-90s, but it wasn’t until 2001 that it was unveiled on an episode of "Good Morning America."
It became a hit with tour groups in large cities, but it wasn’t cheap. The first models on Amazon.com cost almost $5,000.
2002: Date-Rape Drug Detector
Inventor: Francisco Guerra
Country: United States
Initial cost: 40 cents a coaster
Trivia: A survey from Alcohol.org found that 56 percent of women and 44 percent of men said their drinks were spiked without their knowledge.
Bottom line: Francisco Guerra had a very personal reason for developing a coaster that could test for date-rape drugs – his friend had been attacked by a man who may have spiked her drink.
Users dropped liquid from their drink onto the coaster and waited a few minutes to see if it turned blue. If it did, the drink contained gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) or ketamine.
Today, test strips are available that work in a similar way.
2003: Apple iTunes Music Store
Inventor: Apple
Country: United States
Initial cost: No subscription fees
Trivia: In 2001, Steve Jobs said, "There is a music revolution happening right now." He was right.
Bottom line: On April 28, 2003, two years after the release of the first iPod, Apple launched the groundbreaking iTunes music store. Users could download a song for 99 cents, with no limit to how many devices could store it.
There were no subscription fees, and users could choose from more than 200,000 songs from music companies like iBMG and Sony Music.
Today, the iTunes library has 60 million songs.
2004: Facebook
Inventor: Mark Zuckerberg
Country: United States
Initial cost: Free
Trivia: As of the first quarter of 2020, Facebook had over 2.6 billion monthly active users.
Bottom line: What started in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room in 2004 as an online social-networking site for his fellow students turned into the world’s biggest social media network.
Facebook (originally known as "The facebook") quickly expanded beyond Harvard, initially to other universities around the world before being made available to all.
2005: YouTube
Inventor: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim
Country: U.S.
Initial cost: Free
Trivia: Every minute, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.
Bottom line: The size of YouTube can’t be overestimated. More video content is uploaded to the video-sharing platform over a 60-day period than the three major U.S. TV networks made in 60 years.
YouTube started in 2005, the brainchild of former PayPal colleagues Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, and 15 years later, it has more than 2 billion users.
2006: Nintendo Wii
Inventor: Shigeru Miyamoto
Country: Japan
Initial cost: $250
Trivia: The Wii earned Miyamoto a spot on Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential list in 2007.
Bottom line: Launched in 2006, the Nintendo Wii was a gaming console like no other.
It enabled players to get physically involved in their gaming experience, through games like Wii Sports (which came with the console and included baseball, boxing, tennis, golf and bowling) and "Mario Kart."
This unique premise made the Wii popular with people who had never considered themselves to be "gamers."
2007: iPhone
Inventor: Apple
Country: U.S.
Initial cost: $499
Trivia: By 2017, Apple had sold over 1 billion iPhones.
Bottom line: Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, describing it as a "revolutionary" product to attendees at Macworld in San Francisco.
Such is the "iPhone effect" that millions of people use it as their only computer.
The original iPhone had no third-party apps, GPS or video recording, but it still reinvented the phone, just like Jobs predicted.
2008: Consumer DNA Test
Inventor: Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey
Country: United States
Initial cost: $399
Trivia: Genetic testing services have helped police solve major cold cases, such as the Golden State Killer.
Bottom line: Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey founded 23andMe, a genetic testing company, in 2008, selling a saliva test that could tell people about their genetic predisposition to disease.
The company is now FDA-approved to test for a variety of illnesses, including Parkinson’s and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
2009: Smart Thermostat
Inventor: Seth Frader-Thompson
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: The EnergyHub Dashboard "is something I saw demonstrated earlier this year and it blew me away," wrote Lev Grossman, a senior writer at Time, in 2009.
Bottom line: Inspired by the screen on his Prius that told him, in real time, what gas mileage he was getting, Seth Frader-Thompson created the EnergyHub Dashboard, the first smart thermostat.
It can talk wirelessly to the furnace and other appliances, letting the consumer know exactly how much electricity or gas each one is using, and how much it’s costing.
2010: Siri
Inventor: Adam Cheyer, Dag Kittlaus, and Tom Gruber
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Siri means "beautiful woman who guides you to victory" in Norwegian.
Bottom line: The original artificial intelligence agent Siri may have been developed by Apple, but it was actually created by Adam Cheyer, Dag Kittlaus, and Tom Gruber from the Stanford Research Institute.
According to Kittlaus, they designed the virtual assistant, which has been answering questions, bringing up a song and finding lost parked cars since 2010, with "dry wit."
2011: Postmates
Inventor: Sam Street, Sean Plaice and Bastian Lehmann
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: By 2016, Postmates was making 1.3 million deliveries a month in 40 cities.
Bottom line: Co-founded by Sam Street, Sean Plaice and Bastian Lehmann in 2011, Postmates was the first delivery service for anything, from any store or restaurant.
The company connects customers with local couriers to get their must-haves to them in a matter of minutes.
2012: Body Armor for Women
Inventor: U.S. military
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Trivia: Body armor for women was first tested by the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade 2012 deployment to Afghanistan.
Bottom line: Military body armor for women was seriously flawed for a long time: too loose and too long, it left gaps that might increase a woman’s vulnerability to attack.
When the U.S. military finally realized that women are not simply smaller versions of men, it created new body armor, especially designed for a woman’s body.
2013: The Argus II
Inventor: Dr. Mark Humayun
Country: United States
Initial cost: Around $150,000
Trivia: The Argus II is the first and only retinal implant to have market approval in the European Economic Area, the U.S. and Canada.
Bottom line: In 2013, the FDA approved the Argus II for public use – the first device to restore partial vision to those who have severe retinitis pigmentosa, which can lead to blindness.
The following month, a scientific paper showed that it could do more than give people a basic form of sight back. In some cases, it could help them read.
2014: Alexa
Inventor: Rohit Prasad and Toni Reid
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Review: As of March 2020, Alexa has more than 100,000 skills.
Bottom line: In 2014, Alexa was to the home what Siri was to the smartphone.
As Amazon’s smart home assistant, Alexa made it easier to control compatible electronic devices, provide results for web searches, order products from Amazon and share everything from recipes to weather forecasts.
Alexa came with the Amazon Echo, the retail giant’s first smart speaker.
2015: Period-Proof Underwear
Inventor: Miki Agrawal, Radha Agrawal and Antonia Dunbar
Country: United States
Cost: From $32
Trivia: Former CEO Miki Agrawal left the company after being accused of sexual harassment.
Bottom line: Yes, underwear can be life-changing.
After decades of only bulky, costly pads, tampons and liners to avoid leaks and stains during menstruation, women were introduced to Thinx, a line of "period-proof" thongs and panties.
Co-founded by twin sisters Miki and Radha Agrawal and Antonia Dunbar, the entire range is washable, reusable and equipped with four layers of moisture-wicking, antimicrobial fabric.
2016: Silk Food Wrap
Inventor: Tufts University researchers led by Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto
Country: United States
Initial cost: N/A
Need to know: The silk wrap can preserve fruit for more than a week and has overall toxicity levels below that in drinking water.
Bottom line: For years, scientists have been developing various eco-friendly alternatives to Saran Wrap and other plastic wraps.
In 2016, a team of biomedical engineers came up with a technique to allow food to be coated with a practically invisible layer of fibroin, a protein found in silk.
2017: eSight 3
Inventor: eSight
Country: Canada
Initial cost: $9,995
Trivia: Time called them "the world’s most powerful pair of glasses."
Bottom line: For centuries, people with impaired vision have relied on support canes and guide dogs to navigate the world. In 2017, eSight 3 was introduced, and it was revolutionary.
When wearing the device, users could see enough to let them take part in a range of activities, including sports, that would otherwise be impossible.
2018: Self-Emptying Vacuum
Inventor: Massachusetts Institute of Technology roboticists
Country: United States
Cost: From $349.99
Trivia: According to the iRobot store, "it does a fine job for an area that does not have big traffic and any build up of pet hair."
Bottom line: The novelty of a robotic vacuum might wear off when you realize you still have to get rid of the dirt yourself. Step forward iRobot’s Roomba i7+, the first robotic vacuum that completed the task.
The makers promise that customers "don’t have to think about vacuuming for weeks at a time," thanks to the technology that automatically empties the dirt into an enclosed bag that holds 30 robot bins.
2019: A Smart Cane
Inventor: Kursat Ceylan
Country: Turkey
Cost: $500
Trivia: In the future, WeWALK will integrate with public transport, ride-sharing apps and smart cities.
Bottom line: Kursat Ceylan’s personal experience of being a visually impaired person led him to co-develop the WeWALK.
This smart cane detects objects above chest level, uses vibration as a warning signal and pairs with apps like Google Maps to help people with visual impairment get wherever they need to go – without having to worry about a smartphone.