The irony of human progress


STOLEN

Famous inventors that stole their big idea: Einstein (relativity), Bell (phone), Edison (light bulb), Galileo (telescope), Fleming (penicillin).


FEUDS

Progress held back by petty feuding in the areas of: HIV, electricity, hygiene, navigation, evolution, paleontology, tectonics,


DICKS

Complete dicks that invented: RIAA payment letters (2003), reality TV (1988), the sub prime mortgage (1700s), auto-tune (1998), spam (1973), call centers, and the infomercial.


JACK

Guys that got nothing for inventing: Tetris, zombies, the most famous drum break of all time, the AK-47, Karaoke and the smiley face.


UNPLANNED

Orville Wright, who invented the airplane, lived to see the atomic bomb destroy Hiroshima, The guy that invented the LP, because 78's were too scratchy, lived to see DJ's scratching the shit ouf records, the guy that invented television as a force for peace, dialogue and education device lived to see dancing cigarette package ads and Gilligans Island, the woman that invented the bra as a freedom from corsets lived to see it become a symbol of opression, the guy that invented the open-concept office lived to see cubicle farms. Alfed Nobel who invented dynamite as a safer form of mining explosives saw it used for war.


MORONS

Thought to be morons in the own time, the discoverers of: genetics (Mendel), washing hands before surgury (Semmelweis), Quarks (Zweig), the cosmological constant (Einstein) and atoms (Boltzmann).