Invention^©

Inventing things is a domain where Jews are not generally recognized as having played a particularly significant role. Again, we would be surprised.

One source for identifying history's most significant inventions is the Encyclopedia Britannica. In its Almanac 2003, it lists 321 "Great Inventions" dating as far back as 13,000 BC.

Who would have guessed the boomerang was the first "great invention" - followed in 6000 BC by beer and in 4000 BC, by wine. The most recent "great" invention, in 1997 is, of all things, Viagra.

While others could also provide excellent lists of great inventions, this one has the benefit of being from a credible source (Encyclopedia Britannica) who presumably used experts with no particular axe to grind.

Of the 321 inventions, a good many are so old that no individual inventor can be identified (beer, wine and the boomerang for example). In other cases, the inventor is an organization (such as General Electric Corporation, inventor of artificial diamonds). When all of the organizations and unidentifiable inventors are removed, there remain 267 great inventions, credited to one or more individuals.

Predicting how many of those should have been credited to Jews, gives rise to a question about the appropriate frame of reference. One could argue that since these are the world's greatest inventions, the proper reference frame should be the world's population. Another approach would draw only on the population of the Western Hemisphere, Europe, all of Russia, Western Asia and Northern Africa. This approach involves the observation that nearly all of the great inventions have come from this, more limited, geography. And while the world population is probably the best standard, in this circumstance we provide both. Thus, if one projects the number of Jews that should be included on the list based on the world population, that number is .58 (less than one inventor). If instead, we use the more constrained geography, the number is 1.83. In fact, there are 13.7 Jews on the list. (The fractional number occurs because some inventions are attributed to more than one person. (Note the fraction following some of the names shown below.) This is twenty-three times what one would expect based on the world's population and 7.5 times what would be expected if we considered only the more limited geography. In either case, Jews perform a multiples of what one would project based on their population. The Jewish inventors honored by Encyclopedia Britannica include:

• Levi Strauss, Jeans, 1873
• Maurice Levy (1), Lipstick, 1915
• Lazlo Biro (1), Ballpoint Pen, 1938
• J. Robert Oppenheimer, et al (1), Atomic Bomb, 1945
• Edwin Herbert Land (1), Instant Photography, 1947
• Denis Gabor (1), Holography, 1948
• Peter Carl Goldmark (1), Long Playing Record, 1948
• Robert Adler (1), Television Remote Control, 1950
• Edward Teller, et al (1), Thermonuclear Bomb, 1952
• Paul M. Zoll (2), Defibrillator, 1952 and Cardiac Pacemaker, 1952
• Gregory Pincus (1/3), Contraceptives, early 1950s
• Charles Ginsburg (1), Videotape, 1950s
• Gordon Gould (1/3), Laser, 1958
• Stanley N. Cohen (1/2), Genetic Engineering, 1973
• Jason Lanier (1), Virtual Reality, 1989

Though the Britannica list is published in alphabetical sequence based on the common name of the invention, it provides some very interesting insights when re-sorted chronologically. Both approaches are included in Exhibits 5a (alphabetical) and 5b (chronological).

• Chronologically, the data show how clearly the Mid-East and eastern Mediterranean dominated early history and early inventions. Namely, of the seventeen great inventions between prehistory and the Golden Age of Greece (roughly 450 BC), twelve or thirteen were invented in the Mid-East or eastern Mediterranean. Interestingly, after the Golden Age of Greece, no further great inventions came from that part of the world.
• From the Golden Age of Greece until 1200, China was the source of most invention. Of the eleven inventions identified with that era, six came from China. This is two-thirds of the nine major Chinese inventions of which the last, the toothbrush, was invented in 1498. Nothing from China has made the list since.
• The Dark and Middle ages truly were a period of little change or invention. Of the 321 total inventions Britannica includes on their list, only ten arose in the 1345 years between 105 AD and 1450. And of those ten, only five came from Europe.

• The Renaissance marks the true beginning of the age of invention. Until 1450, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, there were only thirty-two noteworthy inventions. In the roughly 550 years since, there have been 289.

  Once Isaac Newton and Leibniz invented the calculus, the UK and France flowered, creating twenty-three of the thirty-two inventions between the 1680s and the 1830s.

• After the 1830s, the United States began to dominate. Of the 239 inventions since 1831, 151 came from Americans. *Of the 167 total U.S. inventions, 11.7 came from Jews. This is two and a half times the 4.5 expected. Even more interesting, perhaps, is that both inventions credited to Hungarians came from Jews (holography by Gabor and the ballpoint pen by Biro). And that does not count Edward Teller, a U.S. emigrant from Hungary who is credited with inventing the thermonuclear bomb.
• And last, the remarkable fact that the bulk of Jewish invention is so recent. Of the fifteen inventions by Jews, thirteen date from the end of World War II. In fact, the earliest Jewish inventor of note is Levi Strauss for his 1873 co-invention of jeans. Since World War II, Britannica counts seventy-two "Great Inventions", Jews were involved in thirteen of them, roughly one hundred times what one would expect.