The Unknown Innovators

There should be a special chapter in every history book devoted to unknown geniuses. By and large, most everything we use to make our lives easier or more enjoyable, has an origin that can be traced. 

However, there are some everyday items, like glass for example, that most amazing of materials, that just showed up one day in ancient Mesopotamia, and/or spontaneously in China and other areas of the world, without a word written as to who made the discovery.

It staggers me to think no one thought to record who it was that discovered glass. In my mind, if someone were to walk up to me and present a transparent material that could hold the most corrosive liquids and yet be so fragile as to shatter when dropped from waist height, I would immediately pull out a chisel and carve into rock who that person was along with every single detail of the event.

"Dear Diary: Today, Argus of Sentha came to me with a magical bowl. I could see right through it! It was filled with water from the mother river, which by the way is filthy, and I could see the water through the vessel! It was a miracle!"

There are a number of important inventions, or developments, or discoveries, that have absolutely no attribution. 

Some of that is attributive to the fact that written language had yet to develop, things such as the discovery of fire or how to determine if a particular sea creature was edible. But a lot of the common, ordinary things we use everyday that were put in use after written languages were developed, are of unknown origin. 

Written language itself, for instance. If you came up with a method of recording spoken communications, wouldn't one of your first missives have been "Today, I Torrquag made symbols that directly relate to the sounds made when people grunt to each other."

Numbers share the same fate as language. Historians write that numbers originated with Mathematicians on the Indian sub-continent, but they cannot narrow it down to the one person who looked at his or her hands and started touching fingers for each goat in the herd. This person had to have walked up to someone else and said, "I touched all of my fingers on both hands 4 times, and then the first 3 fingers on my right hand, so that means I have 23 goats." That other person must have looked at his or her own hands, then the other persons goat herd, and said, "Whoa."

My top ten list of inventions/discoveries/developments/innovations that have no attribution:

1) Glass

2) The Level ( Supposedly, someone in Egypt came up with this, though there is still tons of contention).

3) The fork (Some people still do not understand that the fork was an improvement on the stick. Go to any Sushi joint and you will witness people still trying to pick up food with sticks. It's actually quite funny.) 

4) The drum

5) Filtering Water (The first city on the planet known to have filtered water was Paisley, Scotland ( a suburb of Glasgow these days) - it boggles the mind that not one person in 1804 thought to write down who it was who came up with the idea and put it in operation).

6) The broom (I imagine this sprung from the brain of the first neat freak. Somebody who looked at the remains of a tribal get-together and said, "Man, there has got to be a way I can sweep all this up into a pile") 

7) The hammer. This is one of the more universal inventions - it is used to build everything from homes to ships, artwork to shoes. Yet, the first person to use a hammer is unknown. How is that possible? I'm thinking that somewhere, probably in a cave, there is the inscription  "My name is Yhang. Today I secured a rock to a stick, and it made a fantastic tool, or mighty weapon if you're one of those stay-in-the-trees freaks."

8) The hook. Somebody, somewhere, thought to create the hook. That made fishing quite a bit easier. Much, much easier.

9) The Chair ( Think about it. No matter where you are, the seat of your chair is 17 to 18 inches from the ground. And it allows you to eat, sip, work, or converse comfortably. Genius).

10) Ice Scraper. Those of you who live in southern climes will have no idea why this device is so highly rated, but the first time you walk out to your car after the 15th of October north of the Tropic of Cancer, you will grasp it's significance and send silent praise to the unknown genius who created the first one.