Is Steve Jobs the 2nd Greatest Innovator of All Time?

[Arizona Kyle]

I thought Thomas Edison copied everyone's ideas. Damn it school education and internet clashing!

It's hip to bash Edison because he's American, especially nowadays.

Except that we was an asshole and a hack.
http://www.cracked.com/funny-3345-historical-figures-who-were-actually-dicks/
http://www.cracked.com/article_16072_5-famous-inventors-who-stole-their-big-idea.html

Also, Bill didn't invent MS DOS, he bought it from some Russian guy and sold it as his own product.
Steve Jobs, on the other hand, probably never even wrote a line of code in his life. All he did was leech on people smarter than him, like Edison.

I believe Xerox had the pleasure to be his first victim

This list has to be a joke? Edison in first place, followed by Steve Jobs of all people? What the fuck is wrong with people? Wait, what the hell is Zuckerberg doing there?

Bro he invented facebook man... ITS FACEBOOK!!!!
/sarcasm

 

[artanis_neravar]

If people taught history properly, Edison wouldn't even be on that list, the man was a patent troll and a thug.

Also, a list of innovators that does not include Da Vinci (or Tesla?!?). I despair!

because Da Vinci didn't build most of his idea's

and Tesla never wanted the spotlight that most inventors do... Hell tesla found out how to make electricity flow from a wireless power generator to a light bulb that he could hold in his hand....

but alas the apple-tards still view him as an "inventor"

Yeah, can someone please explain to me why everyone is bashing Edison and praising Tesla? I feel like I'm reading an Original vs. Prequel debate here

 

[Custard_Angel]

Thomas Edison - Had money. Owned a company. Took credit for other peoples work while using his resources to discredit more intelligent people (see: Nicola Tesla). Definitely does not deserve to be on the list.

Steve Jobs - Sole reason Apple exists in the world today... mostly because he revolutionised the use of buzz words to make massively overpriced hardware trendy. Greatest achievement is convincing the world that the iPad actually serves a function (I own one and it doesn't). Definitely does not deserve to be on the list.

Alexander Bell - Representing one of the original, successful pioneers in long distance communication, I suppose he can have his place.

Marie Curie - For contributing invaluable research to the field of radiation and nuclear energy, as well as being the single highest accomplishment by any female scientist, she deserves her place.

Amelia Earhart - Crashed her plane while attempting to fly around the planet. Total contribution to humanity? Not alot. Does not deserve to be on the list.

Temple Grandin - She has done some good work in improving the treatment of livestock, but her work with autism leaves me very sceptical of her worthiness to be placed on this list. Treating autism is a good thing, but she has actively opposed research towards a cure for autism. I cant support anyone who opposes the cure for an impairment.

 

[Arizona Kyle]

If people taught history properly, Edison wouldn't even be on that list, the man was a patent troll and a thug.

Also, a list of innovators that does not include Da Vinci (or Tesla?!?). I despair!

because Da Vinci didn't build most of his idea's

and Tesla never wanted the spotlight that most inventors do... Hell tesla found out how to make electricity flow from a wireless power generator to a light bulb that he could hold in his hand....

but alas the apple-tards still view him as an "inventor"

Yeah, can someone please explain to me why everyone is bashing Edison and praising Tesla? I feel like I'm reading an Original vs. Prequel debate here

in the late 1880s, Tesla and Thomas Edison became adversaries in part because of Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse. Edison was even known to of hooked an elefant up an electrical source and of shocked it to death using AC current to prove that "AC is dangerous and should not be used". Until Tesla invented the induction motor, AC's advantages for long distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. As a result of the "War of Currents", Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt, so in 1897, Tesla released Westinghouse from contract, providing Westinghouse a break from Tesla's patent royalties.

In 1900, with US$150,000 (51% from J. Pierpont Morgan who some people would refer to as the "Devil"), Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. Tesla intended the tower be used to demonstrate how electrical energy could be transmitted without the need for power lines. A story has arisen that the power consumption could not be metered and Morgan, who could not foresee any financial gain from providing free electricity to everyone, balked. Construction costs eventually exceeded the money provided by Morgan and additional financiers were reluctant to come forward (Tesla's other major financier was John Jacob Astor). In June 1902, Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street.By July 1904 Morgan (and the other investors) finally decided they would not provide any additional financing. Morgan also discouraged other investors from backing the project. The tower was dismantled for scrap during World War I. Newspapers of the time labeled Wardenclyffe "Tesla's million-dollar folly".

Various Devices that Tesla created or theorized

Various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (1882)
The Induction motor, rotary transformers, and "high" frequency alternators
The Tesla coil, his magnifying transmitter, and other means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations (including condenser discharge transformations and the Tesla oscillators)
Alternating current long-distance electrical transmission system (1888) and other methods and devices for power transmission
Systems for wireless communication (prior art for the invention of radio) and radio frequency oscillators
Robotics and the electronic logic gate
Electrotherapy Tesla currents
Wireless transfer of electricity and the Tesla effect
Tesla impedance phenonomena
Tesla electro-static field
Tesla principle
Bifilar coil
Telegeodynamics
Tesla insulation
Tesla impulses
Tesla frequencies
Tesla discharge
Forms of commutators and methods of regulating third brushes
Tesla turbines (e.g., bladeless turbines) for water, steam and gas and the Tesla pumps
Tesla igniter
Corona discharge ozone generator
Tesla compressor
X-rays Tubes using the Bremsstrahlung process
Devices for ionized gases and "Hot Saint Elmo's Fire".
Devices for high field emission
Devices for charged particle beams
Phantom streaming devices
Arc light systems
Methods for providing extremely low level of resistance to the passage of electric current (predecessor to superconductivity)
Voltage multiplication circuitry
Devices for high voltage discharges
Devices for lightning protection
VTOL aircraft
Dynamic theory of gravity
Concepts for electric vehicles
Polyphase systems

 

[Warachia]

Really? Whens the last time you bought a CD? The last time you saw a phone without a touch screen. The last time you opened an application on your computer using text based input? This guy changed everything A LOT, you can't suddenly discredit him just because you don't like Apple products.

the last time I bought a CD? I don't know, but I don't have to thank steve jobs for that since he had nothing to do with it. The last time I saw a phone without a touch screen? I don't have any that have touch screens, and steve didn't make those either. The last time I opened an application using a text based input? Probably in the 1990's, and if you want to thank the operating systems you have now, thank xerox for inventing the operating system that steve bought and took all the credit for. I don't even know why you picked those examples.

 

[Kahldris71]

Alexander Graham Bell anyone? Or what about the guys at IBM that invented a new way of recording data?

 

[Astoria]

...What. How in the hell is Zuckerberg on there? All he did was take Myspace and make it a little better. How was DaVinci not on there, and Bill Gates? Some of the others people have mentioned are lesser known names but come on everyone knows those two!

 

[Crazycat690]

Yes, let ignorant people VOTE on who is the most innovative person throughout history... I mean, it's fine to let people vote on what they like but something that's about actual facts? What next? Gonna let people vote on what was a more important invention, electricity or Coca Cola?

You know, this takes me back to those threads about "do you think you're more intelligent than the avarage person?", sometimes I think so, sometimes I start thinking "well people might be pretty smart after all..." and then stuff like this appears and I feel like a genious! Good for me but I'd like a smarter world

 

[brainslurper]

Steve Jobs was about as 'innovate' as Zynga.

Zynga didn't make the graphical interface popular.
Zynga didn't make digital distribution popular.
Zynga didn't make digital music players popular.
Zynga didn't make all-touch phones popular.
Zynga didn't make tablets popular.
Zynga made Facebook games popular. And that is all.

 

[brainslurper]

I enjoy the fact that a pilot on the list, but the inventor of the telephone, the inventor of C, and leonardo da vinci aren't.

 

[Eventidal]

I thought Thomas Edison copied everyone's ideas. Damn it school education and internet clashing!

EDIT:I remember what the book I read was going on about now. I don't think it's fair to name someone as the greatest innovator since many times in history two or more people are working on the same idea near the same time.

Not only that, but Bell wasn't the first to invent telephone technology. The original inventor, or the first who was known to have made the technology, only thought it useful as a toy. Bell had some serious balls to see that wired communication device and envision giant telephone lines crossing the landscape all over the country to make it possible. Somehow it happened, and the man is credited with the telephone's invention ever since, even though he really wasn't the first to create that technology.

 

[trooper6]

One of my pet peeves is triggered right here:
"While he did great and wonderful things, most of his work was in the 1880s."

Don't Call something the Greatest X of All Time if you only mean "of the last 50 years." And also don't call something the Greatest X of All Time when you only mean "in the US and UK."

The Greatest Songs of All Time!...are somhow only from after 1955? and almost all of them are American and British? Really?

Not true, many great bands are Canadian
Simple Plan
Sum 41
Barenaked Ladies
To name a few

As for the part about 1955, it's because that's when music started to become what we know it today.

I know there are great Canadian bands. There are great musicians from all over the world..but whenever Rolling Stone magazine makes their list of the Greatest Musicians of all time...they tend to stick with American and British bands. I think that is a problem.

Popular music started to become what we know it today in the 1890s. Heck, even if you only care about rock'n'roll...rhythm & blues and Jump Blues is doing the exact same thing as Bill Haley and Elvis in the 1940s. The 1960s British Blues bands like Led Zeppelin and the Stones did straight up covers of 1930s country blues artist Robert Johnson. Jazz artists still do covers of songs from the 1920s. Classic Pop Vocalists are still doing Tin Pan Alley songs from the turn of the century. American kids still sing minstrel songs written by Stephen Foster from the 1860s. If someone means "The Greatest Anglo-American Popular Music Songs of the Rock Era" they should say that. Not the Greatest Musician of All Time or the Greatest Songs of All Time.

When Billboard named Mariah Carey the Artist of the Millennium, I thought...so Mariah Carey is better than Beethoven? Better than Marie Lloyd? Better than Chitra or Alka Yagnik? Better than Rameau? I mean...that's just crazy.

I just want people to be accurate with what they are saying.

 

[evilives34]

fyi, steve jobs(apple) stole GUI the mouse and many other things from xerox.

but then maybe my opinion is bias cus i hate steve jobs and all apple product with a passion.

 

[acosn]

The idea that Thomas Edison can top that list and Steve Jobs is even on it while someone like Nichole Tesla isn't even mentioned is disgusting.

Apple never innovated, they just re-marketed existing technology to a largely lazy and ignorant population.

 

[Davroth]

Hey, now! "this looks better in white" and "round those edges" should count for something... XD

 

[Nami nom noms]

hahahaha! Mark Zuckerberg! oh deary me.

I needed a good laugh. Now, where's the real list?

 

[Bevin Warren]

The reason there are no innovators today as rolemodels is because anything you create while working for a company is owned buy the company not you...honestly the winner sould be the 3M company who have a policy of injecting 25% of their profits back into research... they are todays true innovators

 

[Bevin Warren]

Zynga didn't make the graphical interface popular.
- neither did apple - their is a reason Microsost had a 90% market share
Zynga didn't make digital distribution popular.
-neither did apple -you can probably thank the guys behind Steam for that
Zynga didn't make digital music players popular.
- neither did Apple - heck they still don't have a major share of the market...
Zynga didn't make all-touch phones popular.
- neither did apple
Zynga didn't make tablets popular.
- and Apples first tablets were totally ridiculed and only became popular with a small market share - laptops still sell more then IPads... even Apple recognise this
Zynga made Facebook games popular. And that is all.
and Apple has never sucessfully made a computer game...

if you want innovation in computing look at IBM, Intel, AMD, Nvidia

 

[thahat]

Hey, now! "this looks better in white" and "round those edges" should count for something... XD

dont forget 'lets sell it to tools and zombies for 40% profit. while EVERYONE AND I MEAN EVERYONE ELSE takes 8%'