It was an invention that changed the world – or, at least, one portion of it – when a brilliant young American by the name of Samuel Simon devised the radio. He received a patent for his radio the very next day, and within two years the Simon Electric Magnetic Generator had become the center of worldwide publicity. The Magnetic Power Generator, as it was called, changed the way people thought about renewable energy, and within a few more years it had reached the point of popularity that it has enjoyed ever since. Now, fifty years after its birth, the Magnetic Power Generator is still in use, and it has been responsible for helping to reduce the amount of natural resources that are burned by electricity-generating power plants.
Samuel Simon might have been a little too lucky. He was so far ahead of his time that many of his ideas got the experimental stamp of approval long before they got a chance to see much actual use. For instance, he was a believer in the theories of black holes, and in 1950 he invented the first black hole detector. Although this little-known invention may have been responsible for nailing down the beginning of the famous space war, it also may have prevented it from being the bloodbath that it turned out to be. After all, if black holes existed in space, it would have been impossible to detect them using radar or satellites.
Of course, many major inventions have come and gone without receiving any credit, and the Magnetic Power Generator is probably fit in that category. But there are many other great stories of how people came up with ideas that later found application in modern technology. For instance, the radio did not become popular until radios became ubiquitous, and airplanes did not find uses in World War II until the air force began making radio transmissions. So if you’re wondering what might be called an “inspiration” that turned into a major piece of technology, you might want to think about the Magnetic Power Generator. It may not be the most popular invention of all time, but it was certainly one that changed the world as we know it.