Top 25 American Tech Inventions For AMERICA 250!!!

Happy AMERICA 250!!!

In honor of this great holiday I will be ranking the top 25 tech inventions the United States has produced! While doing research for this article I realized the United States had produced A LOT of tech so compressing this into a list of top 25 was hard. I hope to include things that are often overlooked as well.

25. Credit Card Networks
A source for economic growth (and debt). The credit card had been invented in the 1950s but employees would have to physically call the bank until the 1970s when the first electronic credit card network based on a proprietary WAN (wide area network) that used leased lines to connect you to a data center in California launched in 1970!! True American ingenuity!

24. Barcode
Unless you go to Hobby Lobby retail employees use this. It is one of the coolest inventions ever that is kind of complicated to understand. It was invented in 1952!!! Far before we had fast computers and it did not take until the 1970s for it to make its way into grocery stores. Now it is one of the most impactful inventions of all time.

23. Microwave
Raytheon the defense contractor helped to make the microwave. So freaking cool that we can literally cook food with rays. Nothing more American than a machine made by a defense contractor being used to make stuff faster.

22. Yellow Line (Football Broadcast Graphics)
What could be more American than a football game (that’s our sport now not baseball) and the yellow line that indicates where the first down should be. The impact that we see in the sport today with lines to indicate the line of scrimmage and animated characters has really changed the way we watch sports today.

21. Laser
Let there be LIGHT!! The LASER invented in 1960 is used in so many things from barcode scanners to measuring the distance of the Earth to the Moon to surgery. One of the most useful lights on Earth.

20. PC-Based Video Editors
From expensive rigs to systems like the Video Toaster to now TikTok and Instagram edits in the palm of your hand we have come a long way and millions of people can create short home movies and become stars on the internet because of this software.

19. Word Processor / Office Software
Word processors have transformed the world basically spurring America into the computer era making computers seem useful. They allow you to type and edit something without needing white out not needing carbon paper to distribute copies being able to drag and drop text and images eventually evolving and splitting off into desktop publishing software.

18. Escalator
Unless you live in Wyoming you have most likely rode an escalator which when it debuted was actually an amusement park ride. Now it is in every mall in America.

17. USB
Imagine needing 3 different ports to get access to data connect to a monitor needing a CD or a floppy drive to access data. USB and its offshoots have changed data transfer and charging forever.

16. Electric Washing Machine
Need I say more. Imagine having to physically wash clothes by cranking it by hand. Would be unbearable and shaves hours of time a week.

15. Podcast
Everyone has one. People parody them to point out funny stuff but they truly have transformed culture. Instead of six or 7 radio stars now we have millions of podcasts of course (PULSE The Heartbeat of America is the best podcast) launching in 2000 with RSS feeds now have tuned into the radio and TV of the 2020s.

14. QB Earpiece
I think radio communication spy tech and the like is very interesting and back when the Browns were good Paul Brown invented the helmet receiver which transformed the game of football for the better.

13. Telestrator
This has improved America’s sport (football not baseball) by allowing commentators to draw on the screen and break down plays and led to the more advanced VFX tech that we see on television today.

12. Generative Pretrained Transformer
Developed in 2017 we took literally the Earth’s knowledge spammed it into a GPT and now the information of the world a better search engine friend research tool coding tool sit in the power of our hands in just 5 short years!!

11. Digital Cameras
These have transformed photography which had existed for over 100 years before then and made it easier. Going from a process which took buying a camera getting film and taking a few photos then waiting to get them developed or have them print on an instant camera to being able to get a photo on a 30 dollar kids smartwatch from 2016 (shout out the VTech Kidizoom I bought after the SpyNet watch).

10. TV
TV has transformed the world and basically created a new industry from satellite to cable TV actors expanded news and entertainment access.

9. Phone / Smartphone
We love to pretend to hate them but the phone has revolutionized America. Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone in 1876 and the technology that was created from the result of that was amazing eventually creating the cellphone and the smartphone. As phones became more popular connecting Washington to New York we could finally communicate with voice from sea to shining sea in a (very expensive) minute however these lines were used for something more useful as well as people created attachments like credit card lines that we talked about for T1 networks fax machines and later computers which laid the groundwork for the internet. This basically grew the telecommunications industry. Then American inventors wanted to grow and expand make life better merging the personal digital assistant with the new technology of the cellphone and the fledgling internet and over time we have pocket computers that are more powerful than the desktop computers of the 90s that can show you the position of anyone on Earth allow you to communicate with anyone run AI models offline and have transformed the world FOR THE GOOD and helped to grow America’s economy.

8. C Programming Language
Created in the 1970s it is still in use today with the kernels of Android and Windows and many more operating systems and apps still using it or its derivatives such as C++.

7. Apollo Guidance Computer
Truly THE American achievement was the 1st moon landing in 1969. I was watching a video about the ‘Minecraft computer’ which is impressive as it uses the game’s ‘redstone’ connector to create a game already mind-blowing. Now rewind half a century before and we have a surprisingly modern looking computer whose memory was literally SEWN BY HAND and landed man on the moon calculating what needed to be done to conserve fuel fly the craft and LAND MAN ON THE MOON another being in outer space.

6. Airplane
This invention connected the United States making it possible to go from sea to shining sea in less than a quarter of a day. It allows us to visit family connect with others travel for a very low price. American ingenuity and great inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright defied the people who said that powered flight was impossible including the New York Times that cited a scientist who said human flight would not happen in one million to 10 million years. This article was printed in 1903 which was the year of the airplane (though to be fair to the Times the viral headline is fake but the quote is real).

5. Air Conditioning (AC)
One of America’s greatest inventions that really embodies the spirit of America. In the 1800s with our Manifest Destiny we tamed the wild land and wilderness and now we are essentially taming the wild weather of the United States which vastly improves people’s comfort and in some cases their lifetime.

4. GUI (Graphical User Interface)
An important piece of technology that started getting developed around the 60s and really helped to spur the advancement of computers from being very technical based to now the systems that we use today that even the everyday man can use a teen can use for entertainment and a mom can use for research and it helped boost the economy and many companies such as Microsoft who created Windows and then other companies such as Google and Apple created Android and iOS GUIs for smartphones.

3. Transistor
A switch… not just any switch but a transistor which enabled our computers to get smaller and smaller and not be the size of a room. An amazingly essential piece of technology.

2. GPS
Created as a Defense Department invention now we can find our place all over the world and many great applications have been created because of this awesome technology including Google Earth and Maps Uber and Lyft geocaching and entire new industries and sports open up because of this tech. Not to mention it is used to keep us safe with precision guided missiles used by the military.

1. Internet
The internet is amazing created out of the government network ARPANET out of fear that data needed to be transmitted if the Soviets attacked. This technology powers the modern world today. Though many people discredit it or whine that life would be better without it being able to research anything and communicate with anyone is one of the most amazing things that we can do. Figuring out how to make computers ‘talk’ to each other and learning about the early days of the internet is one of the most interesting things to read about and it has made so many millionaires billionaires (and trillionaires) right here in the United States of America in the past 26 years. Truly a force for growth in the world and as disruptive as the atomic bomb.