Article: Steve Jobs: Second greatest innovator of all time?

Take a look at this list. Take a very close look. This is the result of a recent survey of 16-25 year olds whom they think are the greatest innovators of all time. I'm 21, and seriously. They did not even consider Tesla? The inventor of the internal combustion engine? Transistors, circuits, heck even electricity!

The world these days....

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs ranks behind only Thomas Edison as the world's greatest innovator of all time in a survey released today on young Americans' attitudes about invention and innovation.

Jobs' innovations include the iPhone and iPad, the popular gadgets that are helping to revolutionize how we communicate with each other and sent Apple's stock to a record high Wednesday.

His second-place finish in the survey of Americans aged 16 to 25 surprised Leigh Estabrooks, the invention education officer with the Lemelson-MIT Program, which conducted the survey.

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Future of Technology - Steve Jobs: Second greatest innovator of all time?

Here is my list. Without these people, and the technical inventions they developed, we would not be using computers today.

First Thermionic Valve: John Ambrose Fleming
Enhanced Thermionic Valve (Triode):Lee De Forest
Field-Effect Transistor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
Junction Transistor: William Shockley
First Integrated Circuit: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce

Digital Logic: George Boole

I guess Steve jobs worked all by him self with no team of people who helped to devolope any of Apple's products. He is such a great man, this of course from society with a savior complex, as if one man alone has the power to create such derastic change. Whatever. Someone at my work thinks Steve jobs actually invented the smart phone. Perhaps Steve jobs has great leadership qualities, what good is a leader if no one is there to follow? It would be very lousy if Steve took all the credit and would be better to distribute that credit to his team. This is how you separate the good leaders from the bad ones.

Dwarf said:

Here is my list. Without these people, and the technical inventions they developed, we would not be using computers today.

First Thermionic Valve: John Ambrose Fleming
Enhanced Thermionic Valve (Triode):Lee De Forest
Field-Effect Transistor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
Junction Transistor: William Shockley
First Integrated Circuit: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce

Digital Logic: George Boole

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If SF had a like/recommend/AWESOME button, you, sir, deserve it x10.

Just goes to show how little people really know,or, maybe, how narrow minded so many people are these days.

Dwarf said:

Here is my list. Without these people, and the technical inventions they developed, we would not be using computers today.

First Thermionic Valve: John Ambrose Fleming
Enhanced Thermionic Valve (Triode):Lee De Forest
Field-Effect Transistor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
Junction Transistor: William Shockley
First Integrated Circuit: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce

Digital Logic: George Boole

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Pretty much on the button by my thinking plus
Michael Faraday
Clark Maxwell

Plus the shoulders they stand on.

MWRed said:

Just goes to show how little people really know,or, maybe, how narrow minded so many people are these days.

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They are talking about Innovators, not Inventors
Definition : An innovator in a general sense, is a person or an organization who is one of the first to introduce into reality something better than before. That often opens up a new area for others and achieves an innovation.

Steve Jobs made a better mobile phone, better media player, and better tablet.

It starts getting into semantics. Maybe the definition is flawed. A marketing innovator takes advantage of a scientific discovery to present a desirable product or capability. Hang on that's an engineer.

Zepher said:

MWRed said:

Just goes to show how little people really know,or, maybe, how narrow minded so many people are these days.

Click to expand...

They are talking about Innovators, not Inventors
Definition : An innovator in a general sense, is a person or an organization who is one of the first to introduce into reality something better than before. That often opens up a new area for others and achieves an innovation.

Steve Jobs made a better mobile phone, better media player, and better tablet.

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I totally agree with you.
What i'm saying is that most young people don't understand that there's more to life than their fancy little electronics. Having a 16yr old, and knowing plenty of young people his age and higher, they think the world would end without their electronics, and have no clue what it was like before them. Innovative? Sure, but of all time? Not even close.
My thought of "innovation" is based on importance, rather than want.
Innovators that improved the way we live are much more important than someone who made a better phone, media player, or laptop. Someone who vastly improved the way we were able to get/grow food, build structures, or made the idea of steam power and even vehicles is much more important and made a bigger difference than someone like Jobs.

I guess my though is ( being old enough to remember ) that, we would live just fine without an iPhone, iPod, and a tablet.

Steve Jobs

Have we all asked ourselves how many jobs Steve Jobs has provided for U.S. citizens? Very very very few.

Dwarf said:

Here is my list. Without these people, and the technical inventions they developed, we would not be using computers today.

First Thermionic Valve: John Ambrose Fleming
Enhanced Thermionic Valve (Triode):Lee De Forest
Field-Effect Transistor: Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
Junction Transistor: William Shockley
First Integrated Circuit: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce

Digital Logic: George Boole

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Don't forget Dennis Ritchie. Died the same month as Steve Jobs, but with nowhere near any of the coverage Jobs received for his death, despite being one of the most renowned computer scientists in the world.

Without Steve Jobs, we pretty much just wouldn't have any Apple products. Without Ritchie we wouldn't have Windows, Unix (Mac), C, a huge setback in computing, no generic text programming languages, and pretty much be programming computers in binary/assembly still.

Thanks Everlong for the reminder. Very good point.

Thanks for reminding me also about Ritchie.. Your summary was excellent and I have not only bookmarked it, I filed a hard copy of it. Thanks again Everlong.

Glad you found it to be of use.