Of currently dead inventors, my favorite is ...
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Thomas Jefferson! (Score:3, Insightful)
fine, I'll give some text in order to get past the filter... anyways, yeah, Jefferson had a bunch of cool inventions from the hideaway bed to the double-faced clock to all sorts of other random stuff
Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:5, Interesting)
A comic on this very subject!
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla [theoatmeal.com]
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Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus he invented the glass armonica, a musical instrument played by Mozart, Beethoven, Handel and even Marie Antoinette among others. Perhaps the enlightenment-era equivalent of Richard Feynman.
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Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:5, Funny)
You can't Haendel the truth!
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...Or, alternatively he realized that lightning was not only electricity, but also that it was 1.21 gigawatts of electrical power and with a flux capacitor and 88mph he could travel through time.
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Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention his skills as a statesman, convincing France to support the 13 colonies in the American Revolution through all-night, wine-soaked, multi-course meals with French royalty/politicians. And the patent system which, far from its current incarnation, was originally intended to protect inventors from having their ideas stolen by rich asshats and without which there would be no Tesla or Edison. Plus, he had to have had balls of steel to experiment with lightening in an era where disease was still treated with leeches and accusations of witchcraft were taken seriously. Franklin was Mark Twain, Tony Stark, and John F. Kennedy rolled into one.
Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:5, Interesting)
Gov’r. Thomas was so pleas’d with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin’d it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
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ahh, but did he forgo sex to be a better inventor?
No, that was long before the invention of Slashdot.
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A comic on this very subject! http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla [theoatmeal.com]
A clear and concise refutation of this very argument! http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/ [forbes.com]
Last seen this morning on Slashdot.
Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:5, Informative)
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A comic on this very subject! http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla [theoatmeal.com]
A clear and concise refutation of this very argument! http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/ [forbes.com] Last seen this morning on Slashdot.
There is also a response from theoatmeal to that article: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response [theoatmeal.com]
This dream I had (Score:5, Funny)
My first thought was "I need to go get a job quick, because people who don't work starve in 1890!"
My second thought was "I need to plot the murder of Thomas Edison!"
When I woke up, I agreed with my subconscious. Does that make me crazy?
Re:Thomas Jefferson! (Score:4, Informative)
Uhhh... the one who never existed? (Score:5, Funny)
Aryabhata (Score:4, Informative)
You know, the person who had knowledge of the decimal place value system, deduced the value of pi (and maybe concluded it was irrational), algebra and determined the radius of the Earth among other things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata
Re:Aryabhata (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nope, radius and volume of the earth were first determined by Aryabhata.
Really? And what about Eratosthenes of Cyrene?
IKB (Score:5, Informative)
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
There can be no other choice.
Remember, it was his ship 'The Great Eastern' that laid the first Transatlantic Cable.
The design of the railway bridge of the thames at Maidenhead is also a marvel of engineering. Most of his peers said it would fall down. It is still in use today carrying 125mph trains.
Then his father pioneered the Shield Method of tunnelling when building the first tunnel under the Thames.
Hero of Alexandria (Score:5, Interesting)
Steam engine (although very rudimentary), vending machine, some impressive automata, etc.
And all of this about 2000 years ago.
You can read more here: Hero of Alexandria [wikipedia.org]
Imhotep (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the idea, but I'd go even farther than that: Imhotep.
For a high priest of Ra, the guy wrote a thoroughly secular first medicine manual ever. As in, unlike even later texts from the same area, this guy doesn't do healing with prayers, amulets, etc, and just deals with stuff like washing and bandaging a wound, or extracting medicine from plants.
Also came up with an irrigation system that fed a whole lot of people.
And with the first pyramid. Though that actually doesn't do justice to his contribution to architecture. When you look at the complex of buildings around it, the guy was a frikken genius for that time. E.g., to support some tremendously heavy ceiling blocks, he used the first columns we know of in Egypt AND he figured out anchoring them to the walls for extra strength.
And actually he wrote the first manual of architecture too, which was used by Egyptians a long time after his death.
And arguably, if the pyramids were an early welfare system, in which people could volunteer to pull some blocks for a huge monument in exchange for a wage, this guy pretty much invented welfare.
And all that was happening in 2600 BC. I mean, even Hero was working in the Greek culture which was pretty scientific, and he had some giants on whose shoulders to stand. Imhotep was doing his stuff back when anything even resembling a scientific method OR philosophy wouldn't be discovered for another 2000 years.
It's really a shame that most people probably only know him as the magic-wielding undead villain of The Mummy. The guy really didn't deserve that.
Un-dead? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, I wanted to vote for Zombie Tesla, but he's ineligible.
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Currently dead?
Yes, currently. Presumably the greatest inventor among them also invented respawn, and is just waiting for the spawn point to be clear of campers.
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Obviously: Zuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Konrad Zuse
Inventor of the Computer
Jagadish Chandra Bose (Score:3, Informative)
My alternative suggestion would have to be Joseph Whitworth [slashdot.org] - creator of standards that became to basis for great engineering feats.
Mass Communications (Score:5, Interesting)
Guglielmo Marconi [wikipedia.org] and Philo Farnsworth [wikipedia.org] probably deserve some mention, but I clicked on Tesla anyway. ;^)
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Philo Farnsworth [wikipedia.org]
Didn't he invent two-way video communicators? Their intercontinental range was utterly impressive, but I venture to guess that the reason they didn't do so well in the market was because they only had one ringtone.
Oh, and while we're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dennis Ritchie [wikipedia.org] also deserves some mention. He didn't die too long ago, so it's a little hard to think of him in these terms.
Juan de la Cierva (Score:3)
Missing option: (Score:2, Funny)
CowboyNeal, of course!
Inventor of the Beowulf cluster, robotic overlords, Natalie Portman, hot grits, Soviet Russia, insensitive clods, Goatse and the first post. ;]
No other has such a diverse portfolio
John Ericsson (Score:3, Informative)
Inventor of
The surface condenser
The hot air engine
The world's first monitor, USS Monitor, was both designed and built by Ericsson for the Union Navy in the American Civil War
Torpedo technology, especially Destroyer, an advanced torpedo boat
The solar machine, using concave mirrors to gather sun radiation strong enough to run an engine.
USS Princeton (1843)
Hoop gun construction
The Propeller
Gyro Gearloose. (Score:2)
:)
No Alan Turing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously?
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Meh, Baggage only iterated on the works of Archimedes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism [wikipedia.org]
Sir Isaac Newton (Score:5, Funny)
Apart from the laws of motion and calculus and all that, he also invented the cat-flap door so he wouldn't have to manually let his cat in or out.
Ok, he probably wasn't the first to cut a hole in a door for cats, be he is apparently the first to be documented doing it. Funnily enough, when his cat had kittens, he cut a separate smaller hole for them, apparently not realizing that they could (and probably would) just follow the mother through her larger door.
Archimedes (Score:2)
...because I like screws.
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Also, who can forget his last-minute combination with Socrates to win the International Philosophy match [youtube.com]?
Da Vinci was an artist (Score:2)
Leonardo da Vinci wasn't an inventor, he was a scifi artist. None of his 'inventions' actually worked.
Re:Da Vinci was an artist (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's what I love about the guy and the reason I voted for him in the poll.
I can't disagree with your sentiment, I like Leonardo da Vinci, too. However, as for being an inventor, Tesla is much better than da Vinci. Still, it's an opinion poll, so your choice is a good one, too. Just as long as it's not Edison. :)
Re:Da Vinci was an artist (Score:5, Informative)
Louis Pastuer (Score:5, Insightful)
Inventor of germ theory, vaccines to prevent disease.
James Watt (Score:2)
Re:James Watt (Score:4, Interesting)
James Watt and his sidekick, Matthew Boulton held back the Industrial Revolution for years due to their patents on the Steam Engine.
His engines were very innefficient and anyone who tried to improve it was persued
Sounds familiar eh?
This article sums it all up.
http://mises.org/daily/3280 [mises.org]
James Watt: The first monopolist!
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Louis Pasteur (Score:2)
Who invented methods for purifying yeast strains for breweries, and some other minor things. :)
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Has to be Tesla (Score:2)
Our modern world would not be possible without the genius of Nikola Tesla.Just take a look.AC power,radio,(Yes Marcorni finally got discredited) and many others.The truth of what Tesla did is just now coming out.
Lazarus (Score:2)
If they're "currently dead", am I supposed to infer that at some point we'll be able to resurrect them?
Are "currently alive" inventors working on this problem?
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Abraham Darby (Score:2)
Abraham Darby for starting the industrial revolution.
From Wikipedia
In 1709, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, England, Abraham Darby began to fuel a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal.
His new process made lots of cheap good quality cast iron, used for pots and pans, fire grates, and bridges! This lead to massive expansion of transport (lots of heavy iron to move), and could be said to have started "consumerism", with barges moving vast quantities of iron goods along the canals.
Ben Franklin! (Score:2)
...because he was not only a great scientist, inventor, publisher, and politician, but also a great guy to party with!
Nikola Tesla (with some difficulty) (Score:2)
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Missing option (Score:2)
Steve Jobs.
He invented everything. The air we breath, the water we drink. He even invented Chuck Norris. How can you surpass that!
Claude Shannon (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm casting my vote for Claude Shannon whose inventions included a unicycle with an off-center wheel for juggling purposes. Because it's insanely fun inventions like that that allow one to come up with modern information theory.
Al Gore, of course (Score:5, Funny)
... his internet is the reason that I can post this!
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Charles Steinmetz (Score:3)
Very true (Score:3)
Also worth mentioning are guys like Ferraris (3-phase), Ferranti (transformers) and Dolivo-Dobrovsky (first complete AC demo system). In practical terms there's also Decker (who built a commercial AC system in Calfiornia before Tesla/Westinghouse's Niagara facility) and WenstrÃm (who built one in Sweden before Niagara and founded ASEA, now ABB - the world's biggest manufacturer of power-transmission systems).
It's rather ironic that there's this cult of Tesla that's arisen around the myth that he's an u
Ben Franklin Was Underrated (Score:2)
Will Ferrell (Score:2)
Brunel (Score:2)
He was a miracle, a mastermind, a great engineer and he changed the way Britain looked in the 19th century.
Edwin Land (Score:3)
"It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas. "
"Marketing is what you do when your product is no good."
Tesla is awesome, but Franklin is the man! (Score:5, Insightful)
He's basically the patron saint of the modern open source and collaboration movement. He refused to patent, writing in his autobiography, "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
Franklin is THE Slashdot hero! His inventions spanned many different areas and he was a politician, not to mention one with great ideas and his goal truly was the betterment of mankind. He was willing to prove it.
Re:Tesla is awesome, but Franklin is the man! (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike most of the others on the list he also wasn't crippled with personality disorders. Quite the opposite. He strived to be happy, healthy, and a valuable companion and friend. He had a hugely positive impact on the world in a number of disciplines, and was recognized for his greatness in his own time.
Of everyone on the list, Franklin is the one I'd most like to live my life like.
Mod parent up! (Score:5, Interesting)
I couldn't agree with you more.
The more I read about Franklin, the more I like about him. There's a lot that went on even in his personal life, like his relationship with his son who was loyal to the British Crown that he attempted to stay on good terms with despite the fact etc... etc... etc... that cause me to respect the man more.
Franklin was a model human being the rest of us should attempt to emulate.
Hero of Alexandria (Score:2)
For the first-recorded steam engine, 2,000 years prior to the industrial revolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria [wikipedia.org]
Hedy Lamarr (Score:2)
COWBOY NEAL!! (Score:4, Funny)
I must be getting old
Imhotep (Score:3)
Algore (Score:2)
"Currently" dead? o_O (Score:4, Funny)
Is their status of not being alive expected to change?
Wells and Verne (Score:3)
Jules Verne and H G Wells invented Science Fiction, which is where most invenventions come from.
Hedy Lamarr (Score:3)
Exited Germany to get away from the Nazis, a drop dead gorgeous actress who co-invented the technology now used in mobile phones.
What more can you ask for?
Cave man.. (Score:3)
My vote goes to that long forgotten caveman inventor that picked up that first rock/stick/legbone to bash dinner over the head with. If it wasn't for him we would have no internet today.
Here's to you long forgotten monkey man.
Gutenberg (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Edison??? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure Edison is the Cowboyneal option.
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Re:OMG (Score:5, Informative)
Edison was an patent factory. FTFY
There is a big difference between being the real inventor and filing the patent for the invention. Edison, is more like Steve Jobs....find something techy, convince people they need it, make some minor improvements to crap that was already out there, and then simultaneously smear your competition and make "exclusivity" agreements to make it so people can't change once they've locked into your crap.
About the only difference is Edison publicly electrocuted puppies as a PR stunt, I think Jobs probably just did it in private for his own shits-n-giggles.
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Edison was a sleaze and a con man.
He's the kind of capitalist that Marxists whine about when they talk about exploitation of those that actually labor.
The only people that would vote for him probably have a picture of Bill Gates in their wallet.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Funny)
You do realize that Bill Gates stole all his inventions from the late Steve Jobs, right? Same as all inventions claimed by Google, Sun, Oracle and Xerox: all can ultimately be traced back to Jobs. Look at all court cases and press of the last 30 years, that should clearly prove my point.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, all the inventions were really put together by the great innovator Darl McBride.
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Last 30 years? I think Steve invented the lightbulb way before he was born. He just told Humphry Davy how to make the thing.
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BOOM! Instant hatred
No, just curiosity. When did Gates die?
Hint: it's a poll for your favorite dead inventor.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator [wikipedia.org]
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The act of inventing is one thing. The act of inventing AND bringing the new product to the marketplace so it can benefit humanity is completely different, and substantially harder.
The Wrights are rightly celebrated because they did both. Pearse could have birthed the aviation industry in New Zealand, but didn't.
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Nuclear Fission Inventor
+1.
+2, +4, +8... :)
Shouldn't that be 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 .....?
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What about Hedy Lamarr? [wikipedia.org]
You can gawk at Archimedes if you want ....
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I'll see your Rube Goldberg and raise you a Heath Robinson! :-)