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Comment by karmacondon | Hacker News Reader

No phonograph or light bulb on the original list? How odd.

Neither is the transistor, laser, integrated circuit, microscope (or indeed optional lenses), or many other very significant inventions. So it's really a sample, rather than a systematic coverage.

The point is, lots of inventions are not mentioned. This makes the sample size taken, too small. So, the conclusion made in this article might not be accurate.

The inventions mentioned by perlgeek and karmacondon don't change things much: transistor (Bardeen 39, Brattain 47); laser: (Townes 43, Shawlow 37); IC (Kilby 34); microscope (unknown). Telescope (Lippershey 38). Phonograph (Edison 30); light bulb (Swan 32). The mean is 37.5.

I thought I'd also see how my own, admittedly very minor, inventions (http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/Patents.html) fit into the pattern. Patents were filed when I was 32, 36, 36, 39, 44, and 55. So, 40.3, and that can only change upwards.

Arguably the first US patent for a transistor, specifically the field effect transistor, was awarded in 1926 to Julius Lilienfeld, though the invention was not implemented back then. The later developers of transistors (Shockley, et.al.) built model devices using the ideas in these patents though never referenced or credited Lilienfeld's work. However, the later work was taken in a different direction and avoided conflict with the earlier patents.

Lilienfeld went on to invent the electrolytic capacitor in 1931 when he was 51 years old. He was 44 years old when he patented the FET. This is very much in line with the other data.

But adding those will you get into the whole argument about whether Edison was an inventor or a relentless taker of other people's credit

Deciding who invented what is not always straightforward. The best you can do is give credit to whoever filed the patent first. Also, inventions don't often happen without the prior inventions which make them possible (lens -> telescope, thermionic valve + semiconductors -> transistor), and the social changes which make them inevitable.

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