Contest: My top 5 Inventions of all time|| By @venon

1. Compass

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Compass is a navigational instrument for finding directions and geographic orientation, this modern invention was most likely invented by the Chinese, around 200 BC. Some were made of lodestone, which is a naturally-occurring form of the mineral magnetic iron-core, before the invention of compass during the 4th century B.C. people had to rely on other methods to get from A to B while at sea.

One of these methods was to stay close to the shoreline, others would detect prominent landmarks to determine their progress at sea, however if they sail out of the sight of land, the North Star and the sun would be used to determine the northern and southern directions during the night and day, constellations or even the directions that the birds flew and the fish swam was also used to find directions on sea.

Modern compasses now show angles in degrees; north corresponds to 0°, and the angles increase clockwise, so east is 90°, south is 180°, and west is 270°, as a surveyor a compass is my second important tool apart from GPS, it helps me determine geographic angles or orientation with extreme accuracy when taking bearings to an object, compasses are also incorporated in mobile devices now.

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2. Automobile

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Automobiles had been in the works since 1769, when Nicolas-Joseph Cugno developed the steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation.
Over the years, a large number of people imparted to the development of the automobile and its constituent parts. In the early 20th century, Henry Ford innovated mass-production techniques that allowed automobiles to become affordable to the masses.
These techniques then became standard with General Motors, and Chrysler followed suit.

The history of the automobile really reflects a worldwide evolution. The work of many people was required in order to develop the internal combustion engine and the other systems the automobile relies on.
Dozens of spin-off industries were also involved, including oil and steel.
How has automobiles benefited us:
Before automobiles were invented people had to walk long distances, ride on horses, camels and donkeys, but today people have the ability to travel hundreds of miles a day.

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3. Lightbulb

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The light we use today in our homes and offices comes from a bright idea from more than 150 years ago.
Electric lights were invented in the early 19th century by Humphry Davy, who experimented with electricity and invented an electric battery.
When he connected wires between his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon glowed, producing light. His invention was known as the electric arc lamp.
Over the next seven decades, other inventors also created “lightbulbs” but these were not capable of commercial application.
In 1850 an English physicist named Joseph Wilson Swan created a “light bulb” by enclosing carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. But without a good vacuum, his bulb had too short a lifetime for commercial use.
However, in the 1870’s, better vacuum pumps became available and Swan was able to develop a longer-lasting lightbulb.

Thomas A. Edison improved on Swan's design by using metal filaments and in 1878 and 1879 he filed patents for electric lights using different materials for the filament.

He eventually discovered that a carbonized bamboo filament could last over 1200 hours. This discovery made commercially manufactured light bulbs feasible, and in 1880, Edison’s company, Edison Electric Light Company began marketing its new product.

Before the invention of light bulbs, candles and oil lamps were all people had to light up the cities, dangerous definitely, but today incandescent bulbs, LEDs are not only very bright and safe, but also last longer.

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4. Battery

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The prehistoric battery may date back to the Parthian empire, which is around 2,000 years old. The ancient battery consisted of a clay jar filled with a vinegar solution, into which an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder was inserted.
These batteries might have been used to electroplate silver, the inventor of the first electric battery is Alessandro Volta, who developed the pile battery.
After that, in 1802, William Cruickshank invented the Trough battery, an improvement on Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile.
Batteries had a breakthrough in 1859, with the invention of the first rechargeable battery based on lead-acid by the French physician Gaston Planté. The Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) battery was introduced in 1899 by Waldemar Jungner.
Batteries play numerous important roles in everyday life, from providing the initial power to start the engines of cars, acting as a backup source of electricity in telecommunications, to providing power for residential, health and commercial facilities through the help of solar inverters.

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5. Television

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Oh yeah television! @uzoma24 I bet you're gonna love this one.
Television is a small box with the ability to convey large information and which has changed entertainment and communications forever.
The invention of television was the work of many individuals.

Although TV plays an important part in our everyday lives, it rapidly developed during the 19th and the 20th century as a result of the work of a number of people.
In 1884, a 23-year-old German university student, Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkow patented the image rasterizer, a spinning disk with a spiral pattern of holes in it, so each hole scanned a line of an image.

The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit crude images over wires to a cathode ray tube or in a receiver. But the system was not sensitive enough to allow moving images.

In the 1920s, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird used the Nipkow disk to create a prototype video system. On March 25, 1925, Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised images in motion.
On January 26, 1926, he demonstrated the transmission of an image of a face in motion using radio.
This is widely regarded as being the world's first public television demonstration.
Before the invention of TV people either worked or talked, family and friends would gather around and tell stories or talk about daily events.
At times they would find entertainment from print media. Once the radio was invented, their source of entertainment also came from that, most people relied on radios and newspapers for information. However, this form of communication was not the best solution if you’re trying to quickly obtain news.
One may have just recently heard about an earthquake in California when it actually happened days before.
The difficulty of it all changed once television was invented, they say “a picture is more than a thousand words” I wonder what a video worth’s then. You can now see live feeds of everything happening all over the world, you can watch sports, news and a lot more.

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