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Asked by to Bethany, Hannah, Keith, Peter, Ramya on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Peter Elliott answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Well if we are strictly talking about actual inventions, like Bell’s telephone or da Vinci’s flying machine, then there is only one invention – the Einstein fridge. A much more eco friendly version compared to today’s models. Having been ignored for many years it is now being considered as a way of providing affordable fridges in poorer countries.
However, Einstein made huge leaps in scientific principles that has helped develop new technologies and increase our understanding of the universe around us. Most famously his theory of relativity which we use for many modern day applications including gps systems.
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Bethany Dearlove answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Peter is right – if you’re thinking about invention in the usual sense, then Einstein only invented the Einstein fridge. Apparently, he was inspired to make it after hearing the story of a family who died when toxic fumes escaped from a broken seal in their fridge. Einstein and his student Leó Szilárd designed a fridge with no moving parts as they thought it’d reduce the chance of the seal failing again.
The distinction that Peter and I are making is that most of the ‘inventions’ credited to Einstein, such as the atomic bomb, were actually just based on his theories, and not invented by Einstein himself. He laid the foundations, on which other people could build.
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Keith Grehan answered on 18 Jun 2014:
Peter and Bethany have given great answers. So really just repeating their answers I suppose Einstein’s real brilliance was in “inventing” new ideas 😉
It’s interesting that even though he is most famous for his theory of general relativity and for demonstrating that energy and mass (e=MC ²) can be thought of as the same thing, Einstein’s Nobel prize was actually for his work on the photoelectric effect.
This work eventually gave us quantum physics which is an incredibly complicated but amazing area of modern physics that has really changed the way we look at the universe and some day we may have computers that rely of quantum physics to give us processors thousands of times faster than we currently have. So it just proves Bethany’s point that Einstein was laying the foundations for a lot of modern physics, and his fridge might now be helping people gain access to fresher safer food, that’s a pretty good result for any scientist 🙂
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