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List: The world’s best inventions weren’t made for profit

newsrogue.com — It's often said that reward is the motivator for innovation, but a look at history suggests that more altruistic forces have been vastly undervalued.

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  • MaxMWood, on 05/01/2008, -19/+91. The internet. (The government & Tim Berners-Lee.)

    2. Penicillin. “Florey believed it would be inappropriate to patent penicillin, but learned his lesson when some of his American collaborators did just that… Florey took no profit for himself.”
    — http://time.com


    3. AC power & modern electricity. (Tesla)
    “Yet Tesla died destitute.”
    — http://inventors.about.com

    4. Phone. “Meucci was recognized as the first inventor of the telephone by the US House.” “[He] was unable to raise sufficient funds to pay for the patent application… In 1861 his cottage was auctioned.”
    — http://en.wikipedia.org

    5. Lightbulb. “Göbel [invented] the first practical bulb… in 1854, a quarter of a century before Edison’s patent.”
    — http://en.wikipedia.org

    Yes he died pennyless too.

    6. Radio. “Tesla is now credited with inventing modern radio as well; since the Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s patent in 1943 in favor of Tesla’s earlier patents.”
    — http://inventors.about.com

    7. Almost everything else - through state funding of science & university research.

    The point? While we all love for-profit economics, let’s not exaggerate their role either. At best they tend to succeed after government acceleration of new technologies.
    • Gurette, on 05/01/2008, -5/+14Dude, you just copied the content of the entire article into your comment. What's up with that?
      • MaxMWood, on 05/01/2008, -9/+5Dude, Im trying to save people some time instead of clicking onto a crappy website when they can just read it below. Learn to think.
        • allywilson, on 05/02/2008, -0/+8Why? Most people read the article before reading the comments.
        • str1fe, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2It's in case the website suffers the Digg Effect if/when it hits the front page, though only a list of the actual inventions is necessary. i.e.:

          1. Internet
          2.Penicillin
          3. AC Power
          4. Telephone
          5. Lightbulb
          6. Radio
          7. Almost Everything Else.
    • iggy2012, on 05/02/2008, -0/+4Look at me! I can copy paste!
    • RealmDown, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2Max, I don't know why you are being dugg down. I appreciate the copy/paste, especially when the article is spread across multiple pages for the purpose of ads.
  • MarkLaymon, on 05/01/2008, -13/+1I would rather patient for profit
    • Gurette, on 05/01/2008, -2/+11Spell check was also invented for profit.
      • threemagic, on 05/01/2008, -0/+9I see no misspelled words in his ... umm...I'd say sentence but it's more like a mix of random words.
      • akkibaba, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Yup, spell check is useless in this case.
  • yellowcakewalk, on 05/01/2008, -8/+15The government funds a huge amount of research.Who pays for it? The taxpayer. Who profits? The corporations. Market marxism = socialize the costs, privatize the assets.
    • aMammoth, on 05/02/2008, -3/+6Mostly true, while its seems unfair that the corporations get the money, ultimately the taxpayer gets some benefit. But this really doesn't apply when it comes to military research.
      Down with communism.
      • coolmanmax2000, on 05/02/2008, -4/+7Military research has tons of applications for the consumer market, it just takes longer to get there.
        • yellowcakewalk, on 05/02/2008, -2/+5For the consumer MARKET. For stuff the corporations can SELL to us. See how it works?
        • masterm1nd, on 05/02/2008, -2/+3That's where most of the consumer technology we use today comes from! Yellowcake, you completely overlook the fact that advancement help the consumer plain and simple. I don't care if some guy made a buck selling me my medication if the alternative is the medication I need doesn't exist!
      • yellowcakewalk, on 05/02/2008, -4/+5Right, so the consumer pays twice. First for the research, paid for by our taxes, and then paying the corporations for the products they produce. See how corporate welfare works! Down with communism, as a previous diggoid gurgled.
      • unpolloloco, on 05/02/2008, -3/+3although without those pesky corporations, we wouldn't have the money to spend on new technology.........
        • chicofaraby, on 05/02/2008, -3/+3Yeah, because corporations give us money.... and only corporations give us money.

          Yeah.
        • Zera, on 05/02/2008, -1/+3His point is that everything is a corporation. Every Non-Profit, every Church, ever private school, every contractor you hire to fix your sink, every store you have ever been in, etc, etc, etc. Saying corporations are bad is like saying all NFL players strangle dogs.
    • Picaroon, on 05/02/2008, -4/+12On the flip side, you and I both benefit a ton from new technologies and innovation. Hint: You're using the internet right now.
      Don't demonize producers when you benefit from their production. That's like cutting of the nose to spite the face.
      • NCSUspoon, on 05/02/2008, -2/+3Well said
      • chicofaraby, on 05/02/2008, -4/+4"You're using the internet right now."

        The internet that our taxes paid for and we're all paying again to use. That's the point.
        • KSUdesigner, on 05/02/2008, -1/+3Your taxes paid for the research, sure. Your taxes did not pay for operating expenses, that is why you pay a monthly fee.
      • Zera, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2"Don't demonize producers when you benefit from their production. That's like cutting of the nose to spite the face."

        He didn't do ANYTHING of the sort. Heck, he didn't even mention the Internet, and thus couldn't have possibly demonized the producers. Sad attempt there at a straw man.
    • yellowcakewalk, on 05/02/2008, -2/+4Yes, and Verizon makes a tidy profit off the monthly charges.
      • masterm1nd, on 05/02/2008, -1/+3Dude, no one wants to make stuff and give it too you if they don't benefit in some way from it. Duh.
      • yellowcakewalk, on 05/02/2008, -1/+3And when my tax dollars go to research that ends up benefiting some corporation, I feel the same way.
        • masterm1nd, on 05/02/2008, -1/+1So you would rather no one benefit than you both benefit?
    • freexe, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2Verizon are a public company, go buy some stock in them if you think that make a tidy profit.
  • Anglemona, on 05/01/2008, -3/+4Good list thx :)
  • CaliforniaEagle, on 05/01/2008, -3/+3Love the list!
  • NightcrawlerX, on 05/01/2008, -3/+3Loved the "Almost everything else"
    • iggy2012, on 05/02/2008, -5/+2Sadly, that's BS. That's like saying bush has brains. Everything is developed to gain profit. It's a sad reality.
      • RealmDown, on 05/02/2008, -2/+1But I still admire those who tried.
    • Zera, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2LOL, Me too. That's what you do when you run out of your six examples. Hahahahaha. It's like on Fox news when you want to fudge some facts, you just say: "Some say that there are green men on the moon"

      If you leave the Government up to innovation, you get Ethanol Factories! Yay, all science has proved Ethanol from Corn is not valid, yet the government keeps building more Ethanol facilities.
  • jeffiek, on 05/01/2008, -1/+7"tend to succeed after government acceleration of new technologies"

    Apparently, the author never heard of the Wright brothers.
    • chicofaraby, on 05/02/2008, -3/+3I flew on a Wright Brothers jet last week. Oh wait, no I didn't.... It was a McDonald Douglas, a brand that the government has spent millions on over the years...
  • StingingNettle, on 05/01/2008, -0/+6". Penicillin. “Florey believed it would be inappropriate to patent penicillin, but learned his lesson when some of his American collaborators did just that… Florey took no profit for himself.”
    It wasn't just Florey who took no profit. - Penicillin comes from an actual mold used by Native Americans.
  • Aidenf77, on 05/02/2008, -0/+15The fact that these inventions didn't turn a profit for their inventors has more to do with personal convictions, or a lack of good business sense, planning, or vision (on the part of potential investors) than anything else. Furthermore, some of these were more ahead of their time than could be immediately benefited from, which necessitated society creating more of a demand before they became profitable. Some may have been more about ingenuity and creative problem solving than making a buck originally, but every single one is turning a profit for somebody now.
    • NCSUspoon, on 05/02/2008, -1/+1Good call. The lightbulb wouldn't have worked under A/C current and it was Edison who set up the power grids on A/C current then converted it to D/C when it went to people's homes.
  • RunOut, on 05/02/2008, -1/+4The Wheel
  • UltramegaOK, on 05/02/2008, -2/+6The internet should be free for everyone.

    *comcast sucks*
    • BlueSkyfish, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Remember back when Netzero gave you free dial up? You just needed to install their adware. That would be slightly more tolerable in these days of Linux and Adblock.
  • Danby123, on 05/02/2008, -3/+3To short.
  • Eslamicolt3, on 05/02/2008, -1/+14Tesla was and is one of the most important and underrated individuals of all time.
    • SeventhSon, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1I'm naming my first born child Tesla.
    • surKaz, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2not on the internet and the generally smarter group. There are more and more people becoming aware of his work..
  • Picaroon, on 05/02/2008, -0/+7These things didn't initially make a profit. That doesn't mean they weren't invented at least partially for the purpose of profit.
  • travbrack, on 05/02/2008, -0/+22What an insightful, painstakingly researched article. They were able to come up with SEVEN (count em) inventions to prove their point, and one of them is "almost everything else". The sources range from about.com to wikipedia and some of the explanations are even more than one sentence long. Way to go, author.
    • KSUdesigner, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Well at least they put the list on one page instead of seven different pages.
  • nourkah, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2johann gutenberg's printing press is generally considered the most significant invention in human history. I wonder what his motivation was???
    • RealmDown, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Advertising.
    • DRINKxREDxBULL, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3Religion. Mass produced Bibles helped bring the Protestant Revolution.
    • Chassit, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Both of the above points could be combined into one: power.
  • Leomarth, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2What the article misses is the inventors passion. I would doubt if many great inventions would have been created had not the people making them wanted to see them, for their own pleasure. That force can be greater than any altruistic intent. It is much harder to be quashed.
  • AManWithNoName, on 05/02/2008, -3/+10Buried as inaccurate...The Internet was invented by Al Gore.
    • Arcesius, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2He never actually said he invented the internet, you know. Although, I suppose this comment can be taken that way:
      "In a March 9, 1999 interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Gore stated, 'During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.'"
      Taken from the wikipedia article on Gore.
  • AManWithNoName, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1If people were to just read your comment instead of going to the website, that would stop potential viewers from visiting the site, which lowers their site traffic, which lowers their moneys. Silly MaxMWood. Haven't you seen the million comments "buried for not linking to the right site"? That's what they're talking about.
    • HotBaconSauce, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1This guy would like that, his website would be an invention not made for profit then. PAY ATTENTION.
    • KSUdesigner, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1If you used the reply feature your comment might actually make sense.
  • davidmesaaz, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2The whole assumption of the article is flawed...Universities and the Government fund research so they can make a huge profit like anyone else... Stanford made a killing on google Sun etc.
  • badassninja, on 05/02/2008, -2/+58
    Linux.
    Richard Stallmen is ***** balls to the wall awesome.
  • DaDrake, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1But it takes innovators to improve the quality of an invention and give it real marketing capabilities, which in turn brings it to the large scale.
  • bixby1, on 05/02/2008, -0/+89. whoever invented the phrase balls-to-the-wall
  • JMSantos, on 05/02/2008, -0/+9This article is stupid and here's why:

    Premise: "The world's best inventions weren't MADE for profit."

    All of the supportive arguments except for the Internet and Penicillin ended with "he died penniless because his patent was denied/rejected/overturned." While the author's conclusions may be true, just because they didn't make money from their inventions doesn't mean their inventions weren't created in the efforts to turn a profit.

    Weak, weak article and I invite anyone with the time and motivation to come forward with better researched evidence that actually proves the premise. I'd gladly digg THAT one up.
  • jjive, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Too bad digg bate stories are.
  • diggester, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1A lot of things in our life are not invented for profit.

    Mirror:
    http://www.linkinn.com/static/_The_world_s_best_in ...
  • pinkSocks, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3It doesn't matter _what_ was invented for profit. The fact of the matter is that profit motivation allows things which are discovered (despite intent) to advance and cheapen in price until they've become common goods. I don't care why the F Penicillin was invented--the fact that people could and did make money off of it is what allows me to now go to the supermarket and buy it off the shelf. If government controlled the development and production of "Almost everything" (as this article implies that it should), we wouldn't have a _fraction_ of the things we have today, and the things we do have _are_ a fraction of what they'd cost otherwise.

    The profit motive may not drive the discovery of everything--but who the hell ever said it should? It's just a fact that that that is usually the case, and that it's a perfectly valid motivation. Government control only stifles this. If you're going to create something that will save my life when I get some disease, but only because it will make you a billionaire, DO IT. If he gets rich, he was only able to do so by the success of his product, which means I'm probably still alive. The entrepreur's interest is indirectly my interest.

    Even if you are developing something amazing out of altruistic motives, in our age of scientific advances the facilities necessary to make these discoveries can only be provided by people with the cash. I.e. the ***** filthy rich, the "evil corporations." If the profit motive doesn't drive the scientiest, it Fing certainly drives the hundreds businessmen and industrialists that it takes to make that scientist's research possible.

    "“Florey believed it would be inappropriate to patent penicillin, but learned his lesson when some of his American collaborators did just that… Florey took no profit for himself.”

    Why is this considered the moral highground? Hell yes his collaborators patented Penicillin when he didn't--with the explicit purpose of selling it, i.e. making it available to you and me.

    If anyone is dumb enough to buy "Almost everything else," you're retarded.
  • Regbooker, on 05/02/2008, -0/+5The title is misleading and biased. Many of these inventions weren't ABLE to make profit. For example, it's a known fact that Tesla was desperate for investors and commercial appliances for his theories. For the case read Tesla's Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) it illustrates his struggle. The fact that he was a genius inventor but a disastrous business man doesn't mean we wasn't looking for profit, in fact, if you read his biography, it was the contrary.
  • unpolloloco, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3Motivation is secondary to results in my book. I'd much prefer penicillin plus profit over no penicillin. Penicillin minus profit is only good if there is exactly the same amount of distribution, quality control, and overall research, something that would not happen without profit
  • 3tcp, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Makes me wonder how many great ideas were ruined because the company that came up with it tried to milk it for every dime they could and ended up making it so cost-prohibitive that it never caught on.
  • mikesbaker, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2AC electricity most definitely was created to make money - Edison was giant ass hole and ***** Telsa over which is why Tesla died destitute.
    • stonebear, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1Not disputing Edison was a jerk, but Tesla's own eccentricity and naiveté had a lot to do with it. He supped regularly with the most powerful businessmen of his day, and any one of them could have mentored his affairs. Some surely must have tried to, and would have, had Tesla not been so thoroughly wrapped up in his own Promethean fantasy world.
  • blast_flame, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2Firstly all of these bar two were created to make a profit but just didn't manage to. Secondly I assure you that if the government were to stop funding research but at the sane time stopped hindering it in other ways then innovation would not slow down.
  • NonLeftistDiggr, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Yeah, but they were perfected by that motive.
  • Shawshanksr, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Little known fact: The condom was invented by Ben Franklin. He had a string tied to a kite on one end, and his penis on the other. Lightning struck the kite. Mr Franklin then decided that he should have some sort of non-conductive covering for his tallywhacker, to prevent this sort of shocking phenomenon.

    this one made me laugh
  • BlueSkyfish, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1The world's best inventions were made for war.
  • Awspire, on 05/02/2008, -1/+1Karl Marx approves this message.

    Just remember kiddies, communism kills - 50 years & 100 million dead.
  • evilcaptain, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3It wasn't the socialist part of communism that caused the millions of deaths,even a basic understanding of recent history will tell you this. Do you still believe "duck and cover" works against a nuclear attack? Maybe they lied about socialism too:(
  • stonebear, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1I see a lot of replies here that make the mistake of absolute thinking. The truth that people with strong political convictions have difficulty facing is that everyone in the argument is right, and, at the same time, wrong. It's why political arguments never go anywhere, and are rightly banned universally from dinner tables.

    This is because diplomacy is the unwelcome Siamese twin of the political beast: Sustainable political solutions are always a compromise between competing ideologies which are never sustainable in their own right. When the capitalist says inequality spurs innovation, and massed capital offers real production advantages to a society, he is correct. But the excess of inequality, and downright criminal behavior found in extravagant capitalism creates so much other trouble that the liabilities quickly exceed the benefits to become unsustainable. When the socialist claims capitalism must be regulated to make it sustainable, he is also correct. But over-regulation stifles capitalism (and therefore innovation), and forces both capital and production into the hands of the state, thus creating an unsustainable burden of unproductive capital. When the communist says capital must be distributed to make both socialism and capitalism sustainable, he is also correct. But too much equality eliminates the production advantage massed capital can offer a society, and also stifles innovation.

    So the ultimate political solution for a given society is to be found in the adjustment of various ideologies as variables to suit the common good, which is never served by the variables themselves. The way to judge effective political solutions is to ask "Cui buono?" If the answer is not everyone, then the solution is not sustainable, for well it is said "E Pluribus Unum."
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