A Quick Reality Check

History loves to simplify with a narrative about one hero. However, the reality is often more collaborative, less enlightened individuals. Many well-known discoveries were team accomplishments, prior innovations or borrowed concepts built upon by others. If you've fallen for one of these historical myths, don't feel too bad. We all have.

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1. The Light Bulb 

You probably learned in school that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. In reality, he improved upon a previous design and made it commercially viable. Many inventors such as Joseph Swan and Humphry Davy worked on electric light bulbs decades before Edison.

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2. The Telephone

Alexander Graham Bell did not actually invent the telephone. Antonio Meucci built a working voice communication device years before Bell ever filed his patent application. Meucci could not afford to file all the necessary legal documents to protect his invention.

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3. Theory Of Evolution

Charles Darwin gets most of the credit for discovering the theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Alfred Russel Wallace came to the same conclusion years before Darwin. Wallace even wrote up his findings and mailed his research to Darwin. Darwin managed to publish his book a few weeks before Wallace and took all the credit.

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4. Radio

Few people know that Nikola Tesla showed some of the same principles used in radio years before Marconi patented them. Tesla had patents that later helped his employees transmit radio signals. Eventually, a court upheld Tesla’s claims and he was given credit by the government. Many people are still unaware of his contribution.

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5. Discovering America

Contrary to popular belief, Christopher Columbus did not discover America. Norse explorer Leif Erikson came to North America roughly 500 years before Columbus did. While the land was already populated by numerous indigenous people, Columbus still got credit for far too long.

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6. First Airplane Flight 

The famous story of the first airplane flight goes to the Wright brothers. However, they were not the only ones working on aircraft at the time. Gustav Whitehead apparently flew his powered aircraft before the Wright brothers did. Unfortunately, Whitehead did not prove his flights were repeatable, while the Wrights did.

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7. DNA Double Helix

James Watson and Francis Crick get credit for discovering DNA. Rosalind Franklin’s data allowed Watson and Crick to uncover the mystery of DNA’s double helix. Without Franklin’s X-ray images of DNA, they might have never found the solution.

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8. The Periodic Table

The periodic table is something you probably used in chemistry class. While Dmitri Mendeleev gets credit for the periodic table, he wasn’t the only one who noticed the pattern. John Newlands and Julius Lothar Meyer noticed the patterns of elements before Mendeleev.

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9. Heliocentrism 

Nicolaus Copernicus was the man who dared to say that the Earth revolves around the sun. The ancient Greek Astronomer Aristarchus came to the same conclusion almost 2000 years earlier. Copernicus just had the benefit of more advanced math and distribution.

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10. Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson was the President’s Secretary during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. However, Jefferson was not the only person who helped to write it. He wrote the majority of it but there were several others who helped to edit it.

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11. The First Computer Programmer

Charles Babbage is credited with coming up with the idea for a computer. However, his employee Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program. She not only wrote the first computer program but explained how computers could be used to go beyond math.

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12. Electric Car

Electric cars are not a new invention as many believe. They were actually around during the late 1800s and even into the early 1900s. Someone just needed to make them commercially viable and that’s what modern companies have done.

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13. Safety Elevator

Elisha Otis is credited with inventing the elevator. However, what he really invented was a safety brake that prevented the elevator from falling if the cable broke. This one innovation is what allowed elevators to be used by the general public.

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14. Sewing Machine

Elias Howe might have been the first person to come up with the concept of a sewing machine and get a patent but he wasn’t the only one to work on a sewing machine. There were people who made designs before and after him who played a role in its development.

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15. Calculus

The popular belief is that Isaac Newton invented calculus, but he wasn’t the only one working on it. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was working on calculus at the same time as Newton. Technically they both should get credit but most people just remember Newton.

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16. First Vaccine 

When most people think of the first vaccine, they think of Edward Jenner. In Asia and Africa, people had been inoculating for centuries before Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine. What he did was refine the process and spread the idea.

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17. Thermometer

Galileo Galilei is credited with inventing the thermometer, but he actually invented the thermoscope. The thermoscope showed changes in temperature but did not have a scale with which to measure. As more scientists worked with the device, they came up with the thermometer.

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18. Printing Press 

Most people know that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Few people know that there was already a printing press in China that used movable type. Gutenberg’s contribution was adapting the printing press for mass production.

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19. The First Woman In Space Science 

Movies and books will make you believe that male scientists were responsible for getting us to space. Hundreds of women working for NASA including Katherine Johnson helped figure out how to get to space. While their work was known by some, it didn’t become popular knowledge for years.

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20. First Map of the World 

As you probably learned in school, some of the earliest world maps were created by European explorers. These maps weren’t the first to display the world as we know it. Maps from Babylon, China, and the Islamic world also displayed nearly as much information.

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