2026年7月3日 / 美国东部时间上午9:24 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
作者：路易斯·希拉尔多（Luis Giraldo）
将美国推升至世界超级大国地位的美国创新，几乎触及了现代生活的方方面面。
从电灯到飞机，从医学突破到互联网时代，过去250年的历史由美国人无畏的智慧所定义。
但史密森尼学会美国历史国家博物馆莱默尔森发明与创新研究中心的历史学家埃里克·S·辛茨（Eric S. Hintz）表示，在所有发明背后，有一项创新催生了其他所有发明：美国专利制度。
“它打造了一个既利于个人，也利于国家的体系，”辛茨说道。
美国专利制度
美国宪法于1788年确立了知识产权条款，乔治·华盛顿于1790年签署了首部专利法案，建立了一套体现民主理想的制度。
“首部专利法真正有趣的一点在于，它规定专利将授予首位且真正的发明者，”辛茨说，“早在女性获得投票权、早在我们废除吉姆·克劳种族隔离制度之前，女性就可以申请专利，自由黑人也可以申请专利。”
截至2026年，美国专利商标局官网数据显示，该局已颁发超过1265万项专利。该机构会在发明者完成发明注册后的一段时间内为其提供政府保护，保护期结束后，该发明将进入公共领域，允许其他人在此基础上进行再创作。
“专利文件是一套关于如何制造该物品的说明，”辛茨说。
依托专利制度，美国创新者在多个领域蓬勃发展。
农业
美国的专利制度推动农业创新蓬勃兴起，并催生了首批美国专利。
欧洲殖民者在美洲原住民种植的作物基础上进行改良，并引入了棉花等新作物。一旦农民看到盈利前景，创新便接踵而至。
伊莱·惠特尼（Eli Whitney）发明的轧棉机使分离棉花与棉籽的过程变得轻松，19世纪每十年的原棉产量都翻了一番。
随后是织布机。弗朗西斯·卡伯特·洛厄尔（Francis Cabot Lowell）借鉴英国的技术智慧，研发出实用的动力织布机，这让马萨诸塞州洛厄尔市成为了先锋纺织重镇，鼎盛时期拥有约8000名工人——其中大部分是女性和女童。
在弗吉尼亚州，赛勒斯·霍尔·麦考密克（Cyrus Hall McCormick）为公众制造出了世界首台机械收割机，这台由马匹牵引的机器可以同时完成收割、脱粒和捆扎谷物的工作。
“回到1776年，你可能只有一头骡子、一把犁和一把斧头，在田里开荒，”辛茨说。
农业后来还受益于弗雷德里克·麦金利·琼斯（Frederick McKinley Jones）获得专利的卡车制冷系统，该系统使得牛奶等易腐食品能够被运往更远的地区。
![弗雷德里克·麦金利·琼斯肖像，他正与冷藏铁路车厢模型合影。他为卡车设计的便携式冷却装置后来被适配到火车上。Bettmann/Getty Images]
交通
1776年时，美国人主要依靠步行、乘坐马车或帆船出行。
“如果你走水路，顺流而下很容易，但逆流而上却很困难，”辛茨说。获得蒸汽船专利的两位竞争发明家约翰·菲奇（John Fitch）和詹姆斯·鲁姆西（James Rumsey）研发出了一套解决方案，通过以火产生蒸汽的机制推动船只逆流而上。
通常被误记为蒸汽船发明者的罗伯特·富尔顿（Robert Fulton）将该船只商业化，到19世纪，美国邮政服务开始借助蒸汽船运输邮件。
“想想看，从新奥尔良出发，沿着密西西比河和俄亥俄河航行，你可以一路抵达匹兹堡，”辛茨说。
![罗伯特·富尔顿的“克莱蒙特号”蒸汽船在纽约哈德逊河上驶向奥尔巴尼。Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images]
到19世纪50年代，美国铁路网络蓬勃发展，总里程接近3万英里，19世纪70年代实现了跨大陆贯通。
1903年，美国迎来航空时代，威尔伯·莱特（Wilbur Wright）和奥维尔·莱特（Orville Wright）成功试飞了1903款“莱特飞行器”。
“他们意识到，要保持升空状态，就需要加装动力装置，”辛茨说，“他们 actually 写信给史密森学会……询问美国哪些地方风力最强？”
“正是通过这种方式，他们从位于代顿的自行车作坊所在地俄亥俄州，前往了北卡罗来纳州的基蒂霍克——那里是外滩群岛的沿海小镇，常年风力强劲，”辛茨说，“他们是非常严谨的实验主义者。”
莱特兄弟在这场彻底改变航空旅行的事业中，还有一位极少被美国教科书提及的重要合作者。
他们的妹妹凯瑟琳·莱特（Katherine Wright）同样在研发过程中发挥了关键作用。
“正如一位历史学家所说，没有凯瑟琳·莱特，就不会有基蒂霍克的试飞，”哥伦比亚广播公司新闻高级记者诺拉·奥唐奈（Norah O’Donnell）说道。奥唐奈今年早些时候出版了《我们，女性》一书，讲述美国历史上被忽视的女性贡献。
![威尔伯·莱特与妹妹凯瑟琳，摄于1909年。Historica Graphica Collection/Herite Images/Getty Images]
奥唐奈表示，莱特兄弟在1908年遭遇了一场悲剧性事故，正是凯瑟琳帮助他们重新回到正轨。她还担任过兄弟俩的首席运营官和首席营销官。
后来威廉·霍华德·塔夫脱（William Howard Taft）总统为莱特兄弟颁发国会金质奖章时，曾称凯瑟琳是家族中最重要的成员，但嘉奖令中并未提及她的名字。
这一疏漏在美国历史上并不罕见，凸显了尽管众多女性对美国的发展做出了至关重要的贡献，却仍被排除在历史记录之外。
“朱莉（朱莉·莫尔斯·戈夫）和我在研究这本书的过程中，发现了太多在学校里从未被教导过的女性事迹，”奥唐奈说。
“在我们的书中，讲述的都是那些具有爱国精神的女性变革者、革命者，她们在国家发展的每一个阶段都在推动进步，践行‘人人生而平等，享有生命、自由和追求幸福的不可剥夺权利’这一重要理念。”
凯瑟琳·莱特同时也是一名活动家和女权倡导者，她正是这些理念的化身。
电力
18世纪，美国人依靠日出日落安排生活，直到电力为人们照亮了更多可能。
“我们不再受困于太阳的节律，”辛茨说。
当查尔斯·F·布拉什（Charles F. Brush）在克利夫兰公共广场安装弧光灯时，他开创了世界上首个成功投入使用的电动街道照明系统。
![俄亥俄州克利夫兰公共广场，查尔斯·F·布拉什在此展示了世界上首批成功的电动街灯之一。The Print Collector / Getty Images]
“当你能够照亮环境时，街道会更安全，你会更安心地在夜间出行，还能开展娱乐活动，比如去剧院看戏，工厂也可以实行三班倒、24小时运转，”辛茨说。
辛茨表示，电力或许是美国最重要的发明，许多美国人也认同这一点。最近的哥伦比亚广播公司新闻民调问道：“美国最伟大的发明是什么？”
“电灯/照明”以14%的支持率位居第二，仅次于“民主/自由”。
这可能让托马斯·爱迪生（Thomas Edison）成为美国最重要且最多产的发明家。
“他拥有数不胜数的创新成果，”辛茨说，“其中很多都与电力及其应用方式有关。”
到1879年，爱迪生推出了白炽灯泡，但辛茨指出，爱迪生的贡献远不止于此，他完善了整个发电流程。
“还包括输电线路、各种电表，以及所有围绕照明的创新体系，”他说。
即时通信
爱迪生在亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔（Alexander Graham Bell）的电话发明基础上进行改进，进一步推动了即时通信技术发展。贝尔的电话曾在费城百年博览会展出。
![这款壁挂式电话使用了托马斯·阿尔瓦·爱迪生发明的炭精送话器，爱迪生在亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔发明电话后不久对其进行了重新设计。Science & Society Picture Librar]
爱迪生的电报工作经验帮助他改进了贝尔的电话发射器，提升了通话清晰度和音量，并在此基础上于1877年发明了留声机。到20世纪，贝尔及其助手托马斯·A·沃森（Thomas A. Watson）已经测试了长途通话。
“这些例子说明，你可以基于一项发明，结合其他发明者的工作持续对其进行改进，并围绕它构建一系列创新，最终得到一套切实可行的解决方案，”辛茨说。
制造业
美国的制造业以蒸汽和其他创新技术为动力，即使在没有水车的地区也能建立工厂，最终发展成为庞大的经济体，从小型手工匠艺作坊转型为规模化生产企业。
“如果你需要一把枪，你会去找枪匠，他们会为你定制一把枪，从枪机、枪身到枪管，每一个零件都是手工打造，”辛茨说，“他们会制作出枪的每一个部件。”
这种陈旧的生产方式可能需要花费一个月的时间，直到制造业在城市地区兴起——那里更容易招募到劳动力，手工制作体系也逐渐转变为美国式的制造业体系。
正是在这一时期，小伊莱·惠特尼（Eli Whitney Jr.）获得了政府武器制造合同，并与塞缪尔·柯尔特（Samuel Colt）合作生产出了首批柯尔特左轮手枪。
![塞缪尔·柯尔特上校获得专利的原版柯尔特左轮手枪。Hulton Archive / Getty Images]
“不再以定制方式生产每一把枪，而是打造一个标准化的模板，比如扳机，我要制作10个完全相同的扳机，”辛茨说，“通过让所有单个部件都保持一致且可互换，实现了劳动分工。”
辛茨表示，这种劳动分工理论催生了装配线，也推动了纺锤和打字机按键的生产，随后是自行车，最终催生了亨利·福特（Henry Ford）的T型车——首批大规模生产的汽车之一。
![位于密歇根州高地公园的福特高地公园工厂内，等待进一步组装的福特T型车底盘。Keystone View Company / Archive Photos / Getty Images]
“成千上万的汽车从生产线上源源不断地驶下，每几秒钟就有一辆下线，”辛茨说。
能源燃料
福特的汽车使用汽油作为燃料，这也追溯到美国创新的另一个领域。
1859年，埃德温·德雷克（Edwin Drake）在宾夕法尼亚州泰特斯维尔钻出了美国第一口油井，深度达69.5英尺，开启了美国的“石油时代”，据美国石油与天然气历史学会资料显示。
![埃德温·L·德雷克发现了美国第一口具有商业开采价值的油井。Bettmann]
“我们在德克萨斯州、俄克拉荷马州、加利福尼亚州等地都发现了石油，”辛茨说，并补充道，美国对石油的依赖至今仍是政治和全球事务的焦点。“我们仍在担忧霍尔木兹海峡问题、石油进出口问题。”
辛茨表示，50年前对石油的重视推动了核能的创新，如今人们对风能、太阳能和地热能的试验也越来越多。
“但石油和天然气很难被取代，我们仍在大量开采天然气，燃烧大量煤炭，”辛茨说，“回到1776年，你基本上只能砍伐树木燃烧木材，但到19世纪20年代，煤炭开始普及。”
医学
全球医学创新让美国人的寿命更长、死亡率降低、预期寿命延长，也让人类对自身身体有了更深入的了解。
19世纪50年代，德国科学家罗伯特·科赫（Robert Koch）通过炭疽杆菌实验确立了“病菌理论”，随后法国的路易·巴斯德（Louis Pasteur）开始发展他的免疫理论。
“你会开始看到狂犬病、霍乱、伤寒等疾病的疫苗，”辛茨说，随着第二次世界大战的进行，美国和英国合作研发出了青霉素以杀灭细菌，最终在伊利诺伊州皮奥里亚实现了大规模生产。
此后不久，更多挽救生命的医疗方法相继问世，包括脊髓灰质炎疫苗、手术创新、制药技术、口服避孕药和节育措施，以及超声波、核磁共振成像和正电子发射断层扫描等影像技术。
医学创新至今仍在持续，包括快速研发新冠疫苗，挽救了数千人的生命。
![2021年1月13日，在佛罗里达州肯德尔市，安东尼奥·卡斯特罗从沃尔格林药房领取辉瑞-生物科技新冠疫苗。Miami Herald]
“我们研发药物和手术技术、修复各类损伤、切除癌症的能力，已经带来了变革性的改变，如今人们的寿命更长，生活也更健康，”辛茨说。
计算机技术
美国每十年进行一次人口普查，随着美国人寿命延长、家庭规模扩大，普查系统亟需找到跟上数据增长的方法。
“到19世纪70年代和80年代，人口普查工作变得异常艰难，”辛茨说。正是在这一时期，赫尔曼·霍勒瑞斯（Herman Hollerith）使用打孔卡片设计出了一台统计人口普查数据的机器。
计算机数据处理在第二次世界大战期间也变得至关重要，用于计算射击射程。战争结束后不久，宾夕法尼亚大学研制出了电子数值积分计算机（ENIAC），这台计算机占据了一整个房间，重达30吨，包含“运算、存储和控制单元”。
“后来他们用这台计算机预测了广岛和长崎之后的核武器当量，”辛茨说。
到20世纪30年代，国际商用机器公司（IBM）借助其技术帮助社会保障管理局实现了薪资系统自动化。如今，IBM仍在量子计算和人工智能领域取得突破。
德州仪器的杰克·S·基尔比（Jack S. Kilby）推出集成电路后，计算机的体积和性能发生了翻天覆地的变化，使得这项技术得以小型化。
“它的体积小得多，产生的热量更少，所需的能源也更少，”辛茨说，“这推动了20世纪80年代的个人电脑革命。”
从那以后，苹果电脑、微软应用程序和视频游戏机迅速普及，在全球接入互联网后，随着iPhone的发明，计算技术实现了移动化。
![苹果首席执行官史蒂夫·乔布斯于2007年1月推出iPhone。Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images]
“如今，你把各种各样的工具都装进了一个小小的设备里，”辛茨说，并补充道，社交媒体和视频平台如今让人们能够留存自己的记忆。“这是一项极其强大的创新。”
影像与视听
在摄影和电影出现之前，美国的场景只能通过静态绘画和肖像来记录。
“随着时间推移，它还成为了警方和检察官的视觉证据，”辛茨说，“摄影成为了一种证据形式。”
后来，摄影师埃德沃德·迈布里奇（Eadweard Muybridge）将一系列连续运动的图像投影出来，这促使他与托马斯·爱迪生会面。根据美国国会图书馆的资料，爱迪生指派助手威廉·肯尼迪·劳里·迪克森（William Kennedy Laurie Dickson）研发电影摄影机。
![摄影先驱埃德沃德·迈布里奇制作的男子表演杂技的照片拼贴画。Eadweard Muybridge / Hulton Archive / Getty Images]
1930年费罗·法恩斯沃思（Philo Farnsworth）发明电视后，电视拥有量激增，根据人口普查数据，从1950年的500万台增长到1970年的6060万台。到20世纪60年代，美国电话电报公司（AT&T）发射了“电星一号”卫星，为全球电视节目转播铺平了道路，彻底打破了时空限制，辛茨说。
![副总统林登·约翰逊观看通过美国发射入轨的“电星一号”卫星从法国传来的首次电视转播。]
为了理解美国创新的巨大影响，辛茨设想了一个场景：在美国崛起之前，外星人俯瞰地球。
“那时地球一片黑暗，”辛茨说，“再想想1776年，你的生活完全顺应自然的节律。”
“电力的意义极其重大……它带来了光明、热量和动力，也改变了交通方式。”
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The inventions that tell the story of America, and the 1 innovation that made them possible
July 3, 2026 / 9:24 AM EDT / CBS News
By Luis Giraldo
The American innovations that catapulted the U.S. into a world superpower touch almost every facet of modern life.
From the lightbulb to the airplane, to medical breakthroughs and the internet age, the past 250 years have been defined by America’s intrepid intellect.
But beyond the inventions themselves, there is one innovation that gave way to all the others: The United States patent process, said Eric S. Hintz, a historian at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
“It creates a system that’s good for the individual and good for the country,” Hintz said.
U.S. patent system
The U.S. Constitution established an intellectual property clause in 1788 and George Washington signed the first patent statute in 1790, establishing a system that would embody democratic ideals.
“One of the things that’s really interesting about the first patent law is that it says the patent shall go to the first and true inventor,” Hintz said. “So long before women can vote, long before we’ve gotten rid of Jim Crow, women could get a patent, free Blacks could get a patent.”
By 2026, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued more than 12,650,000 patents, according to its website. The office grants government protection for inventors during a period of time after their invention’s registration, and when that expires, it enters the public domain, allowing others to potentially build off that creation.
“It’s a series of instructions of how to build the thing,” Hintz said.
With the patent system in place, American innovators fostered in multiple sectors.
Agriculture
America’s feudal system allowed for agricultural innovation to blossom and led to some of the first U.S. patents.
European settlers built on the crops established by indigenous people in America and introduced new ones, such as cotton. Once farmers saw profitability, innovation followed.
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, which made it easy to separate the crop from its seeds, doubled raw cotton production each decade of the 19th century.
Looms then followed. Francis Cabot Lowell drew on British ingenuity to develop a practical power loom, which made Lowell, Massachusetts,a pioneering textile town with an estimated 8,000 workers — mostly women and girls.
In Virginia, Cyrus Hall McCormick created the world’s firstmechanical reaper for the public, a machine that could cut, thresh and bundle grain while being pulled by horses.
“You go back to 1776, maybe you have a mule and a plow, you have an ax, you’re clearing a field,” Hintz said.
Agriculture would later benefit from Frederick McKinley Jones’ patentedrefrigeration system for trucks, which enabled the transportation of perishable foods, such as milk, to more distant places.
Portrait of American inventor Frederick McKinley Jones as he poses with a model of a refrigerated railroad car. His portable cooling units for trucks were later adapted for trains. Bettmann/Getty Images
Transportation
By 1776, Americans were walking, using horse-drawn carriages or sailing to move around.
“If you think about using waterways, it’s easy to go downstream but hard to go upstream,” Hintz said. Rival inventors who were granted patents for the steamboat, John Fitch and James Rumsey, developed a way to fix that by creating mechanisms to move vessels upstream using fires to produce steam.
Robert Fulton, who is often miscredited as the steamboat’s creator, commercialized the vessel, and by the 19th century, provided a way for the U.S. Postal Service to transport mail.
“If you think about starting in New Orleans, you can get all the way up to Pittsburgh, if you follow the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,” Hintz said.
Robert Fulton’s Clermont steamboat sailing on the Hudson River in New York at Albany. Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
By the 1850s, railroad tracks boomed in the U.S., spreading across almost 30,000 miles and reaching coast-to-coast coverage by the 1870s.
In 1903, America grew wings, when Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully tested their 1903 Wright Flyer.
“They realized, we need to add power in order to stay aloft,” Hintz said. “They actually write to the Smithsonian … and they say, what are some of the windiest places in the U.S.?”
“That’s how they find out how to get from Dayton, Ohio, where their bicycle shop is based, to get down to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where it’s a coastal town in the Outer Banks and the wind is constantly blowing,” Hintz said. “They were very precise experimentalists.”
The Wright brothers had another co-pilot on board for their mission to revolutionize air travel who seldom gets her due in America’s textbooks.
Their sister, Katherine Wright, was also instrumental in their process.
“As one historian has said, there would have been no Kitty Hawk without Kitty Wright,” said CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell, who wrote a book, We The Women, about overlooked contributions of women in American history earlier this year.
Wilbur Wright and his sister, Katherine, in 1909. Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images
The Wrights faced a tragic mishap in 1908, and it was Katherine who helped get them back on track, O’Donnell said. She was also their chief operating officer and chief marketing officer, O’Donnell said.
When President William Howard Taft later awarded the Wright brothers the Congressional Gold Medal, he said Katherine was the most important member of the family, but she was not included in the citation.
The blunder is common in American history, highlighting how many women were excluded from records despite their undoubtedly crucial contributions to America’s evolution.
“As Julie (Morse Goff) and I were going through researching this book, we uncovered so many women that we were not taught about in school,” O’Donnell said.
“In our book, it’s all about patriotic women who were change makers, who were revolutionaries, who pushed at every step throughout our country’s journey to live up to that important phrase that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
Katherine Wright, who was also an activist and suffrage advocate, embodied those ideals.
Electricity
In the 18th century, Americans relied on the sunrise and sunset to determine life’s beat until electricity lit the way to more.
“We’re no longer trapped by the rhythms of the sun,” Hintz said.
When Charles F. Brush installed an arc lamp to illuminate Cleveland’s Public Square, he marked the first successful use of an electric street-light system in the world.
Public Square in Cleveland, Ohio, where Charles F. Brush demonstrated one of the world’s first successful electric streetlights. The Print Collector / Getty Images
“When you can light things, your streets are safe, you feel comfortable walking around at night. You can have entertainment. You can go out to the theater. You can run a factory with three shifts, 24 hours,” Hintz said.
Hintz says electricity is likely America’s most vital invention, and many Americans agree. A recentCBS News poll asked, “What is America’s greatest invention?”
“Light bulb/lighting” was the second most common answer, with 14% of respondents choosing it, behind only “Democracy/freedom.”
That may makeThomas Edison the most important and prolific U.S. inventor.
“He has all kinds of innovations,” Hintz said. “Many of them have to do with electricity and ways to apply it.”
By 1879, Edison had introduced the incandescent light bulb, but Hintz said he was behind the entire process of generating power.
“It’s also the transmission lines, and it’s all of the meters, and it’s the whole system of innovations that go into lighting,” he said.
Instantaneous communications
Edison also contributed to instantaneous communication by building onAlexander Graham Bell’s phone innovation, which was exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.
This wall telephone uses the chalk receiver invented by Thomas Alva Edison, who redesigned the telephone shortly after its invention by Alexander Graham Bell. Science & Society Picture Librar
Edison’s experience with the telegraph helped him improve Bell’s telephone transmitter by enhancing call clarity and increasing volume, which led to the creation of the phonograph in 1877. By the 20th century, Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson had tested long-distance calls.
“Those are some examples of how you can take one invention, continuously improve it with the work of other inventors, and you build a series of innovations around it so that you have a solution that works,” Hintz said.
Manufacturing
America’s manufacturing, powered by steam and other innovations that enabled factories in places without water wheels, grew into a massive economy that pivoted from small artisanal craft to scaled-up operations.
“If you needed a gun, you went to a gunsmith, and they made you a bespoke gun, lock, stock and barrel,” Hintz said. “They made every piece of it.”
The antiquated method could take a month until manufacturing came along in urban areas, where labor was easier to find, moving from an artisanal system to the American system of manufacturers.
That’s when Eli Whitney Jr. secured a government contract to manufacture weapons, and collaborated with Samuel Colt to produce the first Colt Revolvers.
The original Colt Revolver as patented by Col. Samuel Colt. Hulton Archive / Getty Images
“Instead of building every gun in a bespoke way, you create like a platonic master, here’s the trigger and I’m gonna make 10 of these all exactly the same,” Hintz said. “By making all the individual components to look exactly the same and interchangeable, you do division of labor.”
Hintz says that labor theory led to the assembly line and to the manufacture of spindles and typewriter keys, then bicycles and ultimately cars, likeHenry Ford’s Model T, one of the first mass production vehicles.
Ford Model T automobile chassis awaiting further assembly at the Highland Park Ford Plant in Highland Park near Detroit, Michigan. Keystone View Company / Archive Photos / Getty Images
“It’s just thousands and thousands of cars coming off the line, one every few seconds,” Hintz said.
Fuel
Ford’s cars utilized gas, which harkens back to another element of American innovation.
Edwin Drake launched the first American oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, at a depth of 69.5 feet, ushering in America’s”petroleum age,”according to the American Oil & Gas Historical Society.
The first productive oil well in the United States was discovered by Edwin L. Drake. Bettmann
“We discovered oil in all kinds of places – Texas, Oklahoma, California,” Hintz said, adding that America’s reliance on oil is still center stage in politics and global affairs. “We’re still worrying about the Strait of Hormuz and oil imports and exports.”
Hintz said oil matters from 50 years ago drove innovation in nuclear energy, and now there’s more experimentation with wind, solar and geothermal energy.
“But oil and gas is really hard to dislodge. We still pump a lot of gas, and we still burn a lot of coal,” Hintz said. “If you go back to 1776, you’re pretty much chopping trees down and burning wood, but in the 1820s, coal kind of takes off.”
Medical
Global medical innovation led to Americans living longer, lowering mortality rates, expanding life expectancy and improving the understanding of the human body.
After Germany’s Robert Koch established “germ theory” in the 1850s through experiments with anthrax, France’s Louis Pasteur began developing his theories of immunity.
“You start seeing vaccinations for things like rabies, cholera, typhoid,” Hintz said, and as World War II raged on, the U.S. and the U.K. worked together to produce penicillin to kill bacteria, eventually scaling its production in Peoria, Illinois.
More life-saving medical methods emerged soon after, including the polio vaccine, innovations in surgery, pharmaceuticals, oral contraceptives and birth control, and imaging techniques like the ultrasound, MRIs and PET scans.
Medical innovation persists to this day, including the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines that saved thousands of lives.
Antonio Castro receives the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from a Walgreens Pharmacy in Kendall, Florida, on Jan. 13, 2021. Miami Herald
“Our ability to develop medicines and surgical techniques, to repair different injuries and remove cancers, it’s been transformative and people live much longer, healthier lives now,” Hintz said.
Computing
The U.S. census system, which counted the growing number of Americans every decade, sought ways to keep up as Americans lived longer and grew their families.
“By the 1870s and 1880s, it’s getting really hard to count the census,” Hintz said. That’s when Herman Hollerith used punch cards and designed a machine to tally census data.
Computing data also became vital during World War II to determine firing ranges, and shortly after the conflict ended, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, which occupied a massive room, weighed 30 tons, and included “arithmetic, memory and control elements,” was constructed at the University of Pennsylvania.
“They later use it to forecast some of the yields of the atomic weapons that came later after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Hintz said.
By the 1930s, International Business Machines helped automate the Social Security Administration’s payroll system with its technologies. IBM is still making breakthroughs in quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
The computer’s size and might changed drastically after Jack S. Kilby at Texas Instruments debuted an integrated circuit that enabled the technology to become more compact.
“It’s way smaller and it doesn’t produce as much heat and it doesn’t require as much energy,” Hintz said. “So that kind of drives the personal computing revolution in the 1980s.”
Since then, Apple’s computers, Microsoft applications and video game consoles have erupted in popularity, and after the world connected to the internet, computing became mobile with the invention of the iPhone.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in January 2007. Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images
“Now, you’ve got all kinds of tools in one little device,” Hintz said, adding that social media and video platforms now allow people to preserve their memories. “It’s a hugely powerful innovation.”
Video
American scenes were confined to still paintings and portraits until the advent of photography and motion pictures.
“It also becomes, as you fast forward, visual evidence for police and prosecutors,” Hintz said. “Photography becomes a form of evidence.”
Later, photographer Eadweard Muybridge projected a series of images in successive phases of movement, which led to a meeting with Thomas Edison, who charged his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, to invent a motion picture camera, according to the Library of Congress.
A photo-montage by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge of a man performing acrobatics. Eadweard Muybridge / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
After Philo Farnsworth invented the television in the 1930s, television ownership exploded, growing from 5 million in 1950 to 60.6 million in 1970, according to census data, and by the 1960s, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) launched the Telstar, which paved the way for beaming television programs across the world, annihilating space and time, Hintz said.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson watches the first television transmission from France via the Telstar satellite launched into orbit by the United States.
To understand the vast impact of U.S. innovation, Hintz paints a picture of aliens looking down at Earth before America evolved.
“It would be dark,” Hintz said. “So think about that again, 1776, your life is attuned to the rhythms of nature.”
“Electricity is huge. … It’s light, it’s heat, it’s power, and it’s transportation.”
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