10 American Inventions (We Use Every Day)

Independence Day is upon us! I’ve made a list of 10 American inventions used by Adafruit every day. Obviously, this list could number a lot more than 10 things, and it doesn’t claim to be definitive. It’s just good, clean American fun!

1. Mail Order (1744 – Benjamin Franklin) — and by extension distant, worldwide commerce on an interpersonal level. It’s the reason why someone in the Philippines can buy a clock from a company in New York City that’s made with a display which comes from a country that doesn’t even exist anymore.

2. Swivel Chair (1776 – Thomas Jefferson) — A life without a swivel chair is hardly a life at all. Adafruit has nice ones. I think Adabot picked them up at a Goldman-Sachs garage sale.

3. Refrigeration (1805 – Oliver Evans) — Keeps the beer cider cold.

4. Electric Doorbell (1831 – Joseph Henry) — The UPS man is here!

5. Vacuum Cleaner (1860 – Daniel Hess) — Adafruit has a cat, therefore Adafruit has a vacuum cleaner. This one looks like one of those squid machines from The Matrix.

6. Chewing Gum (1870 – Thomas Adams) — We buy our gum in tins. Then we throw out the gum and put electronics inside the tins. Circle of life.

7. Tape dispenser (1932 — John A. Borden) — Ensures freshness!

8. Digital Computer – (1937 — George Stibitz) — It’s a nice novelty, but it’ll never really catch on.

9. Compiler (1949 – Grace Hopper) — It’s how we tell those little chips what to do and when to do it.

10. Ctrl+Alt+Delete (1981 – David Bradley) — This doesn’t actually happen every day, but it does happen. And it’s always someone else’s fault.

Have a great 4th of July!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



7 Comments

  1. when i saw mosfet in the box i thought you were going to try the Schrödinger’s experiment

  2. Babbage designed the first digital computer but was unable to build it at the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine

    There isn’t much information on Stibitz’s electro-mechanical computers it seems. Wikipedia describes them as calculators which suggests they were not really computers in that they were not programmable. It is not clear if they were binary or decimal either.

    The German Zuse machine (1941) was programmable but could not do conditional branching so is really more of an automated calculator.

    That makes the first true computer to be built the Colossus Mark I (1944). So I think pretty much any way you look at it the first computer was British 🙂

  3. “James Watt invented the steam engine.”

  4. ha ha ha hahahahahahaha
    haha ha!

  5. I like the font of image “9. Compiler “. what name is the font?

  6. @mabian: it’s called “OCR A Std”.

  7. Kitty! Always a joy to see that head peaking around at us!

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.