The Most Famous

INVENTORS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Inventors. The pantheon dataset contains 426 Inventors, 118 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Inventors.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Inventors of all time. This list of famous American Inventors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Inventors.

1. Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931)

With an HPI of 89.06, Thomas Edison is the most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 181 different languages on wikipedia.

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory. Edison was raised in the American Midwest. Early in his career he worked as a telegraph operator, which inspired some of his earliest inventions. In 1876, he established his first laboratory facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where many of his early inventions were developed. He later established a botanical laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida, in collaboration with businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone, and a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, that featured the world's first film studio, the Black Maria. With 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as patents in other countries, Edison is regarded as the most prolific inventor in American history. Edison married twice and fathered six children. He died in 1931 due to complications from diabetes.

2. Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

With an HPI of 78.77, Henry Ford is the 2nd most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 146 different languages.

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911 he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Model T and other automobiles. Ford was born in a farmhouse in Springwells Township, Michigan, and left home at the age of 16 to find work in Detroit. It was a few years before this time that Ford first experienced automobiles, and throughout the later half of the 1880s, he began repairing and later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with a division of Edison Electric. He founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 after prior failures in business, but success in constructing automobiles. The introduction of the Ford Model T automobile in 1908 is credited with having revolutionized both transportation and American industry. As the sole owner of the Ford Motor Company, Ford became one of the wealthiest persons in the world. He was also among the pioneers of the five-day work-week. Ford believed that consumerism could help to bring about world peace. His commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system, which allowed for car dealerships throughout North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford was known for his pacifism during the first years of World War I, although during the war his company became a major supplier of weapons. He promoted the League of Nations. In the 1920s Ford promoted antisemitism through his newspaper The Dearborn Independent and the book The International Jew. He opposed his country's entering World War II, and served for a time on board of the America First Committee. After his son Edsel died in 1943 Ford resumed control of the company, but was too frail to make decisions and quickly came under the control of several of his subordinates. He turned over the company to his grandson Henry Ford II in 1945. Upon his death in 1947 he left most of his wealth to the Ford Foundation, and control of the company to his family.

3. Samuel Morse (1791 - 1872)

With an HPI of 76.24, Samuel Morse is the 3rd most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 91 different languages.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of Morse code in 1837 and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.

4. Samuel Colt (1814 - 1862)

With an HPI of 70.63, Samuel Colt is the 4th most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 66 different languages.

Samuel Colt (; July 19, 1814 – January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, and businessman who established Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and made the mass production of revolvers commercially viable. Colt's first two business ventures were producing firearms in Paterson, New Jersey, and making underwater mines; both ended in disappointment. His business affairs improved rapidly after 1847, when the Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the American war with Mexico. Later, his firearms were used widely during the settling of the western frontier. Colt died in 1862 as one of the wealthiest men in America. Colt's manufacturing methods were sophisticated. His use of interchangeable parts helped him become one of the first to use the assembly line efficiently. Moreover, his innovative use of art, celebrity endorsements, and corporate gifts to promote his wares made him a pioneer of advertising, product placement, and mass marketing.

5. Steve Wozniak (b. 1950)

With an HPI of 69.99, Steve Wozniak is the 5th most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 82 different languages.

Stephen Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American technology entrepreneur, electrical engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Computer with his early business partner Steve Jobs. Through his work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he is widely recognized as one of the most prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution. In 1975, Wozniak started developing the Apple I: 150 into the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs first began marketing it the following year. He was the primary designer of the Apple II, introduced in 1977, known as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers, while Jobs oversaw the development of its foam-molded plastic case and early Apple employee Rod Holt developed its switching power supply. With human–computer interface expert Jef Raskin, Wozniak had a major influence over the initial development of the original Macintosh concepts from 1979 to 1981, when Jobs took over the project following Wozniak's brief departure from the company due to a traumatic airplane accident. After permanently leaving Apple in 1985, Wozniak founded CL 9 and created the first programmable universal remote, released in 1987. He then pursued several other businesses and philanthropic ventures throughout his career, focusing largely on technology in K–12 schools. As of June 2024, Wozniak has remained an employee of Apple in a ceremonial capacity since stepping down in 1985. In recent years, he has helped fund multiple entrepreneurial efforts dealing in areas such as GPS and telecommunications, flash memory, technology and pop culture conventions, technical education, ecology, satellites and more. Stephen Gary Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California.: 18 : 13 : 27 His mother, Margaret Louise Wozniak (née Kern) (1923–2014), was from Washington state, and his father, Francis Jacob "Jerry" Wozniak (1925–1994) of Michigan,: 18 was an engineer for the Lockheed Corporation.: 1 Wozniak graduated from Homestead High School in 1968, in Cupertino, California.: 25 Steve has one brother, Mark Wozniak, a former tech executive who lives in Menlo Park. He also has one sister, Leslie Wozniak. She attended Homestead High School in Cupertino. She is a grant adviser at Five Bridges Foundation, which helps at-risk youths in San Francisco. She once said it was her mother who introduced activism to her and her siblings. The name on Wozniak's birth certificate is "Stephan Gary Wozniak", but his mother said that she intended it to be spelled "Stephen", which is what he uses.: 18 He has mentioned the surname "Wozniak" being Polish.: 129–130 In the early 1970s, Wozniak's blue box design earned him the nickname "Berkeley Blue" in the phreaking community. Wozniak has credited watching Star Trek and attending Star Trek conventions while in his youth as a source of inspiration for his starting Apple Computer. In his autobiography, iWoz, he also credits the Tom Swift Jr. books as an inspiration for becoming an engineer. In 1969, Wozniak returned to the San Francisco Bay Area after being expelled from the University of Colorado Boulder in his first year for hacking the university's computer system. He re-enrolled at De Anza College in Cupertino before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971.: 1 In June of that year, for a self-taught engineering project, Wozniak designed and built his first computer with his friend Bill Fernandez.: 1 Predating useful microprocessors, screens, and keyboards, and using punch cards and only 20 TTL chips donated by an acquaintance, they named it "Cream Soda" after their favorite beverage. A newspaper reporter stepped on the power supply cable and blew up the computer, but it served Wozniak as "a good prelude to my thinking 5 years later with the Apple I and Apple II computers". Before focusing his attention on Apple, he was employed at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where he designed calculators. It was during this time that he dropped out of Berkeley and befriended Steve Jobs. Wozniak was introduced to Jobs by Fernandez, who attended Homestead High School with Jobs in 1971. Jobs and Wozniak became friends when Jobs worked for the summer at HP, where Wozniak, too, was employed, working on a mainframe computer. We first met in 1971 during my college years, while he was in high school. A friend said, 'you should meet Steve Jobs because he likes electronics, and he also plays pranks.' So he introduced us. Their first business partnership began later that year when Wozniak read an article titled "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" from the October 1971 issue of Esquire, and started to build his own "blue boxes" that enabled one to make long-distance phone calls at no cost. Jobs, who handled the sales of the blue boxes, managed to sell some two hundred of them for $150 each, and split the profit with Wozniak. Jobs later told his biographer that if it had not been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple." In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. He was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 (equivalent to $686 in 2023) for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, by using RAM for the brick representation. The fact that this prototype had no scoring or coin mechanisms meant Woz's prototype could not be used. Jobs was paid the full bonus regardless. Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 and that Wozniak's share was thus $350 (equivalent to $2,400 in 2023).: 147–148, 180 Wozniak did not learn about the actual $5,000 bonus (equivalent to $34,300 in 2023) until ten years later. While dismayed, he said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.: 104–107 In 1975, Wozniak began designing and developing the computer that would eventually make him famous, the Apple I. With the Apple I, Wozniak was largely working to impress other members of the Palo Alto–based Homebrew Computer Club,: 35–38 a local group of electronics hobbyists interested in computing. The club was one of several key centers which established the home hobbyist era, essentially creating the microcomputer industry over the next few decades. Unlike other custom Homebrew designs, the Apple had an easy-to-achieve video capability that drew a crowd when it was unveiled. Wozniak designed Apple's first products, the Apple I and II computers and he helped design the Macintosh — because he wanted to use them and they didn't exist. Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person. Everything I did at Apple that was an A+ job and that took us places, I had two things in my favor ... I had no money [and] I had had no training. By March 1, 1976, Wozniak completed the basic design of the Apple I computer.: 5–6 He alone designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system for the computer. Wozniak originally offered the design to HP while working there, but was denied by the company on five occasions. Jobs then advised Wozniak to start a business of their own to build and sell bare printed circuit boards of the Apple I.: 4–6 : 35–38 Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandchildren that they had had their own company. To raise the money they needed to build the first batch of the circuit boards, Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator while Jobs sold his Volkswagen van.: 4–6 : 35–38 On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed the Apple Computer Company (now called Apple Inc.) along with administrative supervisor Ronald Wayne, whose participation in the new venture was short-lived. The two decided on the name "Apple" shortly after Jobs returned from Oregon and told Wozniak about his time spent on an apple orchard there. After the company was formed, Jobs and Wozniak made one last trip to the Homebrew Computer Club to give a presentation of the fully assembled version of the Apple I.: 39–40 Paul Terrell, who was starting a new computer shop in Mountain View, California, called the Byte Shop, saw the presentation and was impressed by the machine.: 66–67 Terrell told Jobs that he would order 50 units of the Apple I and pay $500 (equivalent to $2,680 in 2023) each on delivery, but only if they came fully assembled, as he was not interested in buying bare printed circuit boards.: 7 : 66–67 Together the duo assembled the first boards in Jobs's parents' Los Altos home; initially in his bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in the garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and computer games that he had developed. The Apple I sold for $666.66. Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the number and the mark of the beast, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits". They sold their first 50 system boards to Terrell later that year. In November 1976, Jobs and Wozniak received substantial funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product marketing manager and engineer named Mike Markkula.: 10 At the request of Markkula, Wozniak resigned from his job at HP and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Wozniak's Apple I was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially available microcomputer, except the Apple I had no provision for internal expansion cards. With expansion cards, the Altair could attach to a computer terminal and be programmed in BASIC. In contrast, the Apple I was a hobbyist machine. Wozniak's design included a $25 CPU (MOS 6502) on a single circuit board with 256 bytes of ROM, 4K or 8K bytes of RAM, and a 40-character by 24-row display controller. Apple's first computer lacked a case, power supply, keyboard, and display—all components that had to be provided by the user. Eventually about 200 Apple I computers were produced in total. After the success of the Apple I, Wozniak designed the Apple II, the first personal computer with the ability to display color graphics, and BASIC programming language built in. Inspired by "the technique Atari used to simulate colors on its first arcade games", Wozniak found a way of putting colors into the NTSC system by using a US$1 chip, while colors in the PAL system are achieved by "accident" when a dot occurs on a line, and he says that to this day he has no idea how it works. During the design stage, Jobs argued that the Apple II should have two expansion slots, while Wozniak wanted eight. After a heated argument, during which Wozniak threatened that Jobs should "go get himself another computer", they decided to go with eight slots. Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II at the April 1977 West Coast Computer Faire. Wozniak's first article about the Apple II was in Byte magazine in May 1977. It became one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers in the world. Wozniak also designed the Disk II floppy disk drive, released in 1978 specifically for use with the Apple II to replace the slower cassette tape storage. In 1980, Apple went public to instant and significant financial profitability, making Jobs and Wozniak both millionaires. The Apple II's intended successor, the Apple III, released the same year, was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1984. According to Wozniak, the Apple III "had 100 percent hardware failures", and that the primary reason for these failures was that the system was designed by Apple's marketing department, unlike Apple's previous engineering-driven projects. During the early design and development phase of the original Macintosh, Wozniak had a heavy influence over the project along with Jef Raskin, who conceived the computer. Later named the "Macintosh 128k", it would become the first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. The Macintosh would also go on to introduce the desktop publishing industry with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics. In a 2013 interview, Wozniak said that in 1981, "Steve [Jobs] really took over the project when I had a plane crash and wasn't there." On February 7, 1981, the Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC which Wozniak was piloting (and not qualified to operate) crashed soon after takeoff from the Sky Park Airport in Scotts Valley, California. The airplane stalled while climbing, then bounced down the runway, broke through two fences, and crashed into an embankment. Wozniak and his three passengers—then-fiancée Candice Clark, her brother Jack Clark, and Jack's girlfriend, Janet Valleau—were injured. Wozniak sustained severe face and head injuries, including losing a tooth, and also suffered for the following five weeks from anterograde amnesia, the inability to create new memories. He had no memory of the crash, and did not remember his name while in the hospital or the things he did for a time after he was released. He would later state that Apple II computer games were what helped him regain his memory. The National Transportation Safety Board investigation report cited premature liftoff and pilot inexperience as probable causes of the crash.: 28–30 Wozniak did not immediately return to Apple after recovering from the airplane crash, seeing it as a good reason to leave. Infinite Loop characterized this time: "Coming out of the semi-coma had been like flipping a reset switch in Woz's brain. It was as if in his thirty-year old body he had regained the mind he'd had at eighteen before all the computer madness had begun. And when that happened, Woz found he had little interest in engineering or design. Rather, in an odd sort of way, he wanted to start over fresh.": 322 Later in 1981, after recovering from the plane crash, Wozniak re-enrolled at UC Berkeley to complete his Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences degree that he started there in 1971 (and which he would finish in 1986). Because his name was well known at this point, he enrolled under the name Rocky Raccoon Clark, which is the name listed on his diploma, although he did not officially receive his degree in electrical engineering and computer sciences until 1987. In May 1982 and 1983, Wozniak, with help from professional concert promoter Bill Graham, founded the company Unuson, an abbreviation of "unite us in song", which sponsored two US Festivals, with "US" pronounced like the pronoun, not as initials. Initially intended to celebrate evolving technologies, the festivals ended up as a technology exposition and a rock festival as a combination of music, computers, television, and people. After losing several million dollars on the 1982 festival, Wozniak stated that unless the 1983 event turned a profit, he would end his involvement with rock festivals and get back to designing computers. Later that year, Wozniak returned to Apple product development, desiring no more of a role than that of an engineer and a motivational factor for the Apple workforce.: 323–324 Starting in the mid-1980s, as the Macintosh experienced slow but steady growth, Apple's corporate leadership, including Steve Jobs, increasingly disrespected its flagship cash cow Apple II series—and Wozniak along with it. The Apple II division—other than Wozniak—was not invited to the Macintosh introduction event, and Wozniak was seen kicking the dirt in the parking lot. Although Apple II products provided about 85% of Apple's sales in early 1985, the company's January 1985 annual meeting did not mention the Apple II division or its employees, a typical situation that frustrated Wozniak. Even with the success he had helped to create at Apple, Wozniak believed that the company was hindering him from being who he wanted to be, and that it was "the bane of his existence". He enjoyed engineering, not management, and said that he missed "the fun of the early days". As other talented engineers joined the growing company, he no longer believed he was needed there. By early 1985, Wozniak left Apple again and sold most of his stock. Media coverage attributed his departure to disagreements with Apple management, quoting his statement that Apple had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years", but Wozniak later objected to this portrayal and stated that he left primarily because he was excited to start CL 9 and recapture the fun of developing a new technology.: 266 The Apple II platform financially carried the company well into the Macintosh era of the late 1980s; it was made semi-portable with the Apple IIc of 1984, and was extended, with some input from Wozniak, by the 16-bit Apple IIGS of 1986, and was discontinued altogether when the Apple IIe was discontinued on November 15, 1993 (although the Apple IIe card, which allowed compatible Macintosh computers to run Apple II software and use certain Apple II peripherals, was produced until May 1995). After his career at Apple, Wozniak founded CL 9 in 1985, which developed and brought the first programmable universal remote control to market in 1987, called the "CORE". Beyond engineering, Wozniak's second lifelong goal had always been to teach elementary school because of the important role teachers play in students' lives. Eventually, he did teach computer classes to children from the fifth through ninth grades, and teachers as well. Unuson continued to support this, funding additional teachers and equipment. In 2001, Wozniak founded Wheels of Zeus (WOZ) to create wireless GPS technology to "help everyday people find everyday things much more easily". In 2002, he joined the board of directors of Ripcord Networks, Inc., joining Apple alumni Ellen Hancock, Gil Amelio, Mike Connor, and Wheels of Zeus co-founder Alex Fielding in a new telecommunications venture. Later the same year he joined the board of directors of Danger, Inc., the maker of the Hip Top. In 2006, Wheels of Zeus was closed, and Wozniak founded Acquicor Technology, a holding company for acquiring technology companies and developing them, with Apple alumni Hancock and Amelio. From 2009 through 2014 he was chief scientist at Fusion-io. In 2014 he became chief scientist at Primary Data, which was founded by some former Fusion-io executives. Silicon Valley Comic Con (SVCC) is an annual pop culture and technology convention at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The convention was co-founded by Wozniak and Rick White, with Trip Hunter as CEO. Wozniak announced the annual event in 2015 along with Marvel legend Stan Lee. In October 2017, Wozniak founded Woz U, an online educational technology service for independent students and employees. As of December 2018, Woz U was licensed as a school with the Arizona state board. Though permanently leaving Apple as an active employee in 1985, Wozniak chose to never remove himself from the official employee list, and continues to represent the company at events or in interviews. Today he receives a stipend from Apple for this role, estimated in 2006 to be US$120,000 per year. He is also an Apple shareholder. He maintained a friendly acquaintance with Steve Jobs until Jobs's death in October 2011. However, in 2006, Wozniak stated that he and Jobs were not as close as they used to be. In a 2013 interview, Wozniak said that the original Macintosh "failed" under Steve Jobs, and that it was not until Jobs left that it became a success. He called the Apple Lisa group the team that had kicked Jobs out, and that Jobs liked to call the Lisa group "idiots for making [the Lisa computer] too expensive". To compete with the Lisa, Jobs and his new team produced a cheaper computer, one that, according to Wozniak, was "weak", "lousy" and "still at a fairly high price". "He made it by cutting the RAM down, by forcing you to swap disks here and there", says Wozniak. He attributed the eventual success of the Macintosh to people like John Sculley "who worked to build a Macintosh market when the Apple II went away". At the end of 2020, Wozniak announced the launch of a new company helmed by him, Efforce. Efforce is described as a marketplace for funding ecologically friendly projects. It used a WOZX cryptocurrency token for funding and blockchain to redistribute the profit to token holders and businesses engaged on the platform. In September 2021, it was reported that Wozniak was also starting a company alongside co-founder Alex Fielding named Privateer Space to address the problem of space debris. Privateer Space debuted the first version of its space traffic monitoring software on March 1, 2022. Wozniak is listed as the sole inventor on the following Apple patents: US Patent No. 4,136,359: "Microcomputer for use with video display"—for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. US Patent No. 4,210,959: "Controller for magnetic disc, recorder, or the like" US Patent No. 4,217,604: "Apparatus for digitally controlling PAL color display" US Patent No. 4,278,972: "Digitally-controlled color signal generation means for use with display" In 1990, Wozniak helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, providing some of the organization's initial funding and serving on its founding Board of Directors. He is the founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. Also since leaving Apple, Wozniak has provided all the money, and much onsite technical support, for the technology program in his local school district in Los Gatos. Un.U.Son. (Unite Us In Song), an organization Wozniak formed to organize the two US festivals, is now primarily tasked with supporting his educational and philanthropic projects. In 1986, Wozniak lent his name to the Stephen G. Wozniak Achievement Awards (popularly known as "Wozzie Awards"), which he presented to six Bay Area high school and college students for their innovative use of computers in the fields of business, art, and music. Wozniak is the subject of a student-made film production of his friend's (Joe Patane) nonprofit Dream Camp Foundation for high-level-need youth entitled Camp Woz: The Admirable Lunacy of Philanthropy. In March 2015, Wozniak stated that while he had originally dismissed Ray Kurzweil's opinion that machine intelligence would outpace human intelligence within several decades, Wozniak had changed his mind: I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently. Wozniak stated that he had started to identify a contradictory sense of foreboding about artificial intelligence, while still supporting the advance of technology. By June 2015, Wozniak changed his mind again, stating that a superintelligence takeover would be good for humans: They're going to be smarter than us and if they're smarter than us then they'll realise they need us ... We want to be the family pet and be taken care of all the time ... I got this idea a few years ago and so I started feeding my dog filet steak and chicken every night because 'do unto others'. In 2016, Wozniak changed his mind again, stating that he no longer worried about the possibility of superintelligence emerging because he is skeptical that computers will be able to compete with human "intuition": "A computer could figure out a logical endpoint decision, but that's not the way intelligence works in humans". Wozniak added that if computers do become superintelligent, "they're going to be partners of humans over all other species just forever". Wozniak signed a 2023 open letter from the Future of Life Institute calling for "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4". In an interview to the BBC in May 2023 Wozniak said that AI may make scams more difficult to detect, noting that "AI is so intelligent it's open to the bad players, the ones that want to trick you about who they are". Wozniak lives in Los Gatos, California. He applied for Australian citizenship in 2012, and has stated that he would like to live in Melbourne, Australia in the future. Wozniak has been referred to frequently by the nickname "Woz", or "The Woz"; he has also been called "The Wonderful Wizard of Woz" and "The Second Steve" (in regard to his early business partner and longtime friend, Steve Jobs). "WoZ" (short for "Wheels of Zeus") is the name of a company he founded in 2002; it closed in 2006. Wozniak describes his impetus for joining the Freemasons in 1979 as being able to spend more time with his then-wife, Alice Robertson, who belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star, associated with the Masons. He was initiated in 1979 at Charity Lodge No. 362 in Campbell, California, now part of Mt. Moriah Lodge No. 292 in Los Gatos. Today he is no longer involved: "I did become a Freemason and know what it's about but it doesn't really fit my tech/geek personality. Still, I can be polite to others from other walks of life. After our divorce was filed I never attended again but I did contribute enough for a lifetime membership." Wozniak was married to slalom canoe gold-medalist Candice Clark from June 1981 to 1987. They have three children together, the youngest being born after their divorce was finalized. After a high-profile relationship with actress Kathy Griffin, who described him on Tom Green's House Tonight in 2008 as "the biggest techno-nerd in the Universe", Wozniak married Janet Hill, his current spouse. On his religious views, Wozniak has called himself an "atheist or agnostic". He is a member of a Segway Polo team, the Silicon Valley Aftershocks, and is considered a "super fan" of the NHL ice hockey team San Jose Sharks. In 1998, he co-authored with Larry Wilde The Official Computer Freaks Joke Book. In 2006, he co-authored with Gina Smith his autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. The book made The New York Times Best Seller list. Wozniak has discussed his personal disdain for money and accumulating large amounts of wealth. He told Fortune magazine in 2017, "I didn't want to be near money, because it could corrupt your values ... I really didn't want to be in that super 'more than you could ever need' category." He also said that he only invests in things "close to his heart". When Apple first went public in 1980, Wozniak offered $10 million of his own stock to early Apple employees, something Jobs refused to do. He has the condition prosopagnosia (face blindness). Wozniak has expressed support for the right to repair movement. In July 2021, he made a Cameo video in response to right to repair activist Louis Rossmann, in which he described the issue as something that has "really affected me emotionally", and credited Apple's early breakthroughs to open technology of the 1970s. In November 2023, Wozniak suffered a minor stroke while preparing to speak at a conference in Mexico City. He was hospitalized briefly before returning home. Wozniak became a Serbian citizen in December 2023. He said that he and his wife Janet, who is also getting a passport, will from now on ″promote″ Serbia while living in the U.S. Because of his lifetime of achievements, multiple organizations have given Wozniak awards and recognition, including: In 1979, Wozniak was awarded the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award. In 1985, both he and Steve Jobs received the National Medal of Technology from US President Ronald Reagan, the country's highest honor for achievements related to technological progress. Later he donated funds to create the "Woz Lab" at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1998, he was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for co-founding Apple Computer and inventing the Apple I personal computer." In 2000, Wozniak received the American Computer & Robotics Museum's George R. Stibitz Computing and Communications Innovator Award "for inventing the Apple I & Apple II computers & for co-founding of the Apple Computer Company." In 2022, Wozniak received the museum's Lifetime Achievement award for his role in the invention of the Apple I & II computers and the co-founding Apple. He has also personally signed and donated an Apple I to the museum, and is listed as one of the museum's "founders" level donors for this donation. In September 2000, Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and in 2001 he was awarded the 7th Annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. The American Humanist Association awarded him the Isaac Asimov Science Award in 2011. In 2004, Wozniak was given the 5th Annual Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology. He was awarded the Global Award of the President of Armenia for Outstanding Contribution to Humanity Through IT in 2011. On February 17, 2014, in Los Angeles, Wozniak was awarded the 66th Hoover Medal from IEEE President & CEO J. Roberto de Marca. The award is presented to an engineer whose professional achievements and personal endeavors have advanced the well-being of humankind and is administered by a board representing five engineering organizations: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the American Society of Civil Engineers; the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers; and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The New York City Chapter of Young Presidents' Organization presented their 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award to Wozniak on October 16, 2014, at the American Museum of Natural History. In November 2014, Industry Week added Wozniak to the Manufacturing Hall of Fame. On June 19, 2015, Wozniak received the Legacy for Children Award from the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. The Legacy for Children Award honors an individual whose legacy has significantly benefited the learning and lives of children. The purpose of the Award is to focus Silicon Valley's attention on the needs of our children, encouraging us all to take responsibility for their well-being. Candidates are nominated by a committee of notable community members involved in children's education, health care, human and social services, and the arts. The city of San Jose named a street "Woz Way" in his honor. The street address of the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose is 180 Woz Way. On June 20, 2015, The Cal Alumni Association (UC Berkeley's Alumni Association) presented Wozniak with the 2015 Alumnus of the Year Award. "We are honored to recognize Steve Wozniak with CAA's most esteemed award", said CAA President Cynthia So Schroeder '91. "His invaluable contributions to education and to UC Berkeley place him among Cal's most accomplished and respected alumni." In March 2016, High Point University announced that Wozniak will serve as their Innovator in Residence. Wozniak was High Point University's commencement speaker in 2013. Through this ongoing partnership, Wozniak will connect with High Point University students on a variety of topics and make campus-visits periodically. In March 2017, Wozniak was listed by UK-based company Richtopia at number 18 on its list of the 200 Most Influential Philanthropists and Social Entrepreneurs. Wozniak is the 2021 recipient of the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award "for pioneering the design of consumer-friendly personal computers." For his contributions to technology, Wozniak has been awarded a number of Honorary Doctoral degrees, which include the following: University of Colorado Boulder: 1989 North Carolina State University: 2004 Kettering University: 2005 Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale: 2005 ESPOL University in Ecuador: 2008 Michigan State University, in East Lansing 2011 Concordia University in Montreal, Canada: June 22, 2011 State Engineering University of Armenia: November 11, 2011 Santa Clara University: June 16, 2012 University Camilo José Cela in Madrid, Spain: November 8, 2013 Lincoln Law School in San Jose, California: May 19, 2023 Wozniak has been mentioned, represented, or interviewed countless times in media from the founding of Apple to the present. Wired magazine described him as a person of "tolerant, ingenuous self-esteem" who interviews with "a nonstop, singsong voice". Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015) Camp Woz: The Admirable Lunacy of Philanthropy – a 2009 documentary Geeks On Board – a 2007 documentary The Secret History of Hacking – a 2001 documentary film featuring Wozniak and other phreakers and computer hackers. Triumph of the Nerds – a 1996 PBS documentary series about the rise of the personal computer. Steve Wozniak's Formative Moment – a March 15, 2016, original short feature film from Reddit Formative Moment 1999: Pirates of Silicon Valley – a TNT film directed by Martyn Burke. Wozniak is portrayed by Joey Slotnick while Jobs is played by Noah Wyle. 2013: Jobs – a film directed by Joshua Michael Stern. Wozniak is portrayed by Josh Gad, while Jobs is portrayed by Ashton Kutcher. 2015: Steve Jobs – a feature film by Danny Boyle, with a screenplay written by Aaron Sorkin. Wozniak is portrayed by Seth Rogen, while Jobs is portrayed by Michael Fassbender. 2015: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates: The Competition to Control the Personal Computer, 1974–1999: Original film from the National Geographic Channel for the American Genius series. TechTV – The Screen Savers 2002-09-27 (Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick a convicted hacker) Featuring an interview with Adrian Lamo After seeing her stand-up performance in Saratoga, California, Wozniak began dating comedian Kathy Griffin. Together, they attended the 2007 Emmy Awards, and subsequently made many appearances on the fourth season of her show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. Wozniak is on the show as her date for the Producers Guild of America award show. However, on a June 19, 2008, appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Griffin confirmed that they were no longer dating and decided to remain friends. Wozniak portrays a parody of himself in the first episode of the television series Code Monkeys; he plays the owner of Gameavision before selling it to help fund his next enterprise. He later appears again in the 12th episode when he is in Las Vegas at the annual Video Game Convention and sees Dave and Jerry. He also appears in a parody of the "Get a Mac" ads featured in the final episode of Code Monkeys second season. Wozniak is interviewed and featured in the documentary Hackers Wanted. Wozniak competed on Season 8 of Dancing with the Stars in 2009 where he danced with Karina Smirnoff. Though Wozniak and Smirnoff received 10 combined points from the three judges out of 30, the lowest score of the evening, he remained in the competition. He later posted on a social networking site that he believed that the vote count was not legitimate and suggested that the Dancing with the Stars judges had lied about the vote count to keep him on the show. After being briefed on the method of judging and vote counting, he retracted and apologized for his statements. Though suffering a pulled hamstring and a fracture in his foot, Wozniak continued to compete, but was eliminated from the competition on March 31, with a score of 12 out of 30 for an Argentine Tango. On September 30, 2010, he appeared as himself on The Big Bang Theory season 4 episode "The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification". While dining in The Cheesecake Factory where Penny works, he is approached by Sheldon via telepresence on a Texai robot. Leonard tries to explain to Penny who Wozniak is, but she says she already knows him from Dancing with the Stars. On September 30, 2013, he appeared along with early Apple employees Daniel Kottke and Andy Hertzfeld on the television show John Wants Answers to discuss the movie Jobs. In April 2021, Wozniak became a panelist for the new TV series Unicorn Hunters, a business investment show from the makers of the series The Masked Singer. Apple IIGS (limited edition case molded with Woz's signature) Group coded recording (encoding methods for representing data) Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984 book) Information Age (which Wozniak and Jobs helped pioneer) Woz Challenge Cup (segway polo world championship) Official website Steve Wozniak discography at Discogs Steve Wozniak at IMDb Steve Wozniak at Andy Hertzfeld's The Original Macintosh (folklore.org)

6. Eli Whitney (1765 - 1825)

With an HPI of 69.43, Eli Whitney is the 6th most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 44 different languages.

Eli Whitney Jr. (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the cotton gin in 1793, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the United States and prolonged the institution. Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost much of his profits in legal battles over patent infringement for the cotton gin. Thereafter, he turned his attention to securing contracts with the government in the manufacture of muskets for the newly formed United States Army. He continued making arms and inventing until his death in 1825.

7. George Westinghouse (1846 - 1914)

With an HPI of 69.35, George Westinghouse is the 7th most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 53 different languages.

George Westinghouse Jr. (October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914) was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age of 19. Westinghouse saw the potential of using alternating current for electric power distribution in the early 1880s and put all his resources into developing and marketing it. This put Westinghouse's business in direct competition with Thomas Edison, who marketed direct current for electric power distribution. In 1911 Westinghouse received the American Institute of Electrical Engineers's (AIEE) Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system". He founded the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1886.

8. Robert Fulton (1765 - 1815)

With an HPI of 69.17, Robert Fulton is the 8th most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 62 different languages.

Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the world's first commercially successful steamboat, the North River Steamboat (also known as Clermont). In 1807, that steamboat traveled on the Hudson River with passengers from New York City to Albany and back again, a round trip of 300 nautical miles (560 kilometers), in 62 hours. The success of his steamboat changed river traffic and trade on major American rivers. In 1800, Fulton had been commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, leader of France, to attempt to design a submarine; he then produced Nautilus, the first practical submarine in history. Fulton is also credited with inventing some of the world's earliest naval torpedoes for use by the Royal Navy. Fulton became interested in steam engines and the idea of steamboats in 1777 when he was around age 12 and visited state delegate William Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who was interested in this topic. Henry had learned about inventor James Watt and his Watt steam engine on an earlier visit to England. Robert Fulton was born on a farm in Little Britain, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1765. His father, Robert Fulton, married Mary Smith, daughter of Captain Joseph Smith and sister of Col. Lester Smith, a comparatively well off family. He had three sisters, Isabella, Elizabeth, and Mary, and a younger brother, Abraham. For six years, he lived in Philadelphia, where he painted portraits and landscapes, drew houses and machinery, and was able to send money home to help support his mother. In 1785, Fulton bought a farm at Hopewell Township in Washington County near Pittsburgh for £80 (equivalent to $13638 in 2018), and moved his mother and family into it. In early 1786, Fulton developed symptoms of tuberculosis and was advised by an eminent doctor to take an ocean voyage for the benefit of his health. Fulton traveled to Europe, where he would live for the next twenty years. He left for England in the autumn of 1786, carrying several letters of introduction to Americans abroad from prominent individuals he had met in Philadelphia. He already corresponded with artist Benjamin West; their fathers had been close friends. West took Fulton into his home, where Fulton lived for several years and studied painting. Fulton gained many commissions painting portraits and landscapes, which allowed him to support himself. He continued to experiment with mechanical inventions. Fulton became caught up in the enthusiasm of the "Canal Mania". In 1793 he began developing his ideas for tugboat canals with inclined planes instead of locks. He obtained a patent for this idea in 1794, and also began working on ideas for the steam power of boats. He published a pamphlet about canals and patented a dredging machine and several other inventions. In 1794, he moved to Manchester to gain practical knowledge of English canal engineering. While there he became friendly with Robert Owen, a cotton manufacturer and early socialist. Owen agreed to finance the development and promotion of Fulton's designs for inclined planes and earth-digging machines; he was instrumental in introducing the American to a canal company, which awarded him a sub-contract. But Fulton was not successful at this practical effort and he gave up the contract after a short time. As early as 1793, Fulton proposed plans for steam-powered vessels to both the United States and British governments. The first steamships had appeared considerably earlier. The earliest steam-powered ship, in which the engine moved oars, was built by Claude de Jouffroy in France. Called Palmipède, it was tested on the Doubs in 1776. In 1783, de Jouffroy built Pyroscaphe, the first paddle steamer, which sailed successfully on the Saône. The first successful trial run of a steamboat in America had been made by inventor John Fitch, on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787. William Symington had successfully tried steamboats in 1788, and it seems probable that Fulton was aware of these developments. In Britain, Fulton met the Duke of Bridgewater, Francis Egerton, whose canal, the first to be constructed in the country, was being used for trials of a steam tug. Fulton became very enthusiastic about the canals, and wrote a 1796 treatise on canal construction, suggesting improvements to locks and other features. Working for the Duke of Bridgewater between 1796 and 1799, Fulton had a boat constructed in the Duke's timber yard, under the supervision of Benjamin Powell. After installation of the machinery supplied by the engineers Bateman and Sherratt of Salford, the boat was duly christened Bonaparte in honour of Fulton having served under Napoleon. After expensive trials, because of the configuration of the design, the team feared the paddles might damage the clay lining of the canal and eventually abandoned the experiment. In 1801, Bridgewater instead ordered eight vessels for his canal based on Charlotte Dundas, constructed by Symington. In 1797, Fulton went to Paris, where he was well known as an inventor. He studied French and German, along with mathematics and chemistry. Fulton also exhibited the first panorama painting to be shown in Paris, Pierre Prévost's Vue de Paris depuis les Tuileries (1800), on what is still called Rue des Panoramas (Panorama Street) today. While living in France, Fulton designed the first working muscle-powered submarine, Nautilus, between 1793 and 1797. He also experimented with torpedoes. When tested, his submarine operated underwater for 17 minutes in 25 feet of water. He asked the government to subsidize its construction, but he was turned down twice. Eventually, he approached the Minister of Marine and, in 1800, was granted permission to build. The shipyard Perrier in Rouen built it, and the submarine sailed first in July 1800 on the Seine River in the same city. In France, Fulton met Robert R. Livingston, who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to France in 1801. He also had a scientifically curious mind, and the two men decided to collaborate on building a steamboat and to try operating it on the Seine. Fulton experimented with the water resistance of various hull shapes, made drawings and models, and had a steamboat constructed. At the first trial the boat ran perfectly, but the hull was later rebuilt and strengthened. On August 9, 1803, when this boat was driven up the River Seine, it sank. The boat was 66 feet (20 m) long, with an 8-foot (2.4 m) beam, and made between 2+1⁄2 and 3+1⁄2 knots (5 and 6 km/h) against the current. In 1804, Fulton switched allegiance and moved to Britain, where he was commissioned by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger to build a range of weapons for use by the Royal Navy during Napoleon's invasion scares. Among his inventions were the world's first modern naval "torpedoes" (modern "mines"). These were tested, along with several other of his inventions, during the 1804 Raid on Boulogne, but met with limited success. Although Fulton continued to develop his inventions with the British until 1806, the crushing naval victory by Admiral Horatio Nelson at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar greatly reduced the risk of French invasion. Fulton was increasingly sidelined as a result. In 1806, Fulton returned to the United States. In 1807, he and Robert R. Livingston built the first commercially successful steamboat, North River Steamboat (later known as Clermont). Livingston's shipping company began using it to carry passengers between New York City and up the Hudson River to the state capital Albany. Clermont made the 150-nautical-mile (280 km) trip in 32 hours. Passengers on the maiden voyage included a lawyer Jones and his family from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His infant daughter Alexandra Jones later served as a Union nurse on a steamboat hospital in the American Civil War. The Clermont was the first successful steamboat in America. While it was being built people called it "Fulton's Folly". The Clermont had sails as well as a steam engine. At each end of the boat was a short mast with a small square sail that could be unfurled when needed. The engine was in the center of the boat and was surrounded by cord wood. The engine was 24-horsepower. Above the engine was a tall and slender smoke stack. On each side was a big paddle wheel that was open and uncovered. The diameter of the paddle wheels was 15 feet (4.6 m). The boat itself was 136 feet (41 m) long and 18 feet (5.5 m) wide. Its displacement was 160 tons. Fulton received two patents for his steamboat, one in 1809 and the other in 1811. From 1811 until his death, Fulton was a member of the Erie Canal Commission, appointed by the Governor of New York. Fulton's final design was the floating battery Demologos. This, the first steam-driven warship in the world, was built for the United States Navy for the War of 1812. The heavy vessel was not completed until after Fulton's death and was named in his honor. From October 1811 to January 1812, Fulton, along with Livingston and Nicholas Roosevelt (1767–1854), worked together on a joint project to build a new steamboat, New Orleans, sturdy enough to take down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, Louisiana. It traveled from industrial Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it was built, with stops at Wheeling, West Virginia; Cincinnati, Ohio; past the "Falls of the Ohio" at Louisville, Kentucky; to near Cairo, Illinois, and the confluence with the Mississippi River; and down past Memphis, Tennessee, and Natchez, Mississippi, to New Orleans some 90 miles (140 km) by river from the Gulf of Mexico coast. This was less than a decade after the United States had acquired the Louisiana Territory from France. These rivers were not well settled, mapped, or protected. By achieving this first breakthrough voyage and also proving the ability of the steamboat to travel upstream against powerful river currents, Fulton changed the entire trade and transportation outlook for the American heartland. Fulton was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814. Prior to his marriage in 1808, Robert Fulton had a variety of homosexual and polyamorous relationships. Famous among them was a ménage à trois with noted philanthropist couple Ruth and Joel Barlow while living in Paris with them for six years. Letters between them reveal a sexual relationship among all three, including notes from American Revolutionary and patriot Joel Barlow requesting in baby-talk language for him "to have a wonderful summer of sexual pleasure with his wife" while he was away, and, importantly, that "he must not let...his beautiful body be deranged, and if he does anything wrong, he'll come and cut off his penis." After he left Paris, he lived for two years at the castle of William Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon, a known homosexual, although there is no confirmed epistolary evidence of an explicit sexual relationship between them On January 8, 1808, Fulton married Harriet Livingston (1783–1826), the daughter of Walter Livingston and niece of Robert R. Livingston, prominent men in the Hudson River area, whose family dated to the colonial era. During his marriage, he proposed a foursome with himself, his wife, and Ruth and Joel Barlow in Washington, DC, but Harriet rejected the offer. Harriet, who was nineteen years his junior, was well educated and was an accomplished amateur painter and musician. Together, they had four children: Robert Barlow Fulton (1808–1841), who died unmarried. Julia Fulton (1810–1848), who married lawyer Charles Blight of Philadelphia. Cornelia Livingston Fulton (1812–1893), who married lawyer Edward Charles Crary (1806–1848) in 1831. Mary Livingston Fulton (1813–1861), who married Robert Morris Ludlow (1812–1894), parents of Robert Fulton Ludlow. Fulton died in 1815 in New York City from tuberculosis (then known as "consumption"). He had been walking home on the frozen Hudson River when one of his friends, Thomas Addis Emmet, fell through the ice. In rescuing his friend, Fulton got soaked with icy water. He is believed to have contracted pneumonia. When he got home, his sickness worsened. He was diagnosed with consumption and died at 49 years old. After his death, his widow remarried to Charles Augustus Dale on November 26, 1816. He is buried in the Trinity Church Cemetery for Trinity Church (Episcopal) at Wall Street in New York City, near other notable Americans such as former U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin. His descendants include Cory Lidle, a former Major League Baseball pitcher. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania donated a marble statue of Fulton to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol. Fulton was also honored for his development of steamship technology in New York City's Hudson-Fulton Celebration of the Centennial in 1909. A replica of his first steam-powered steam vessel, Clermont, was built for the occasion. Five ships of the United States Navy have borne the name USS Fulton in honor of Robert Fulton. Fulton Hall at the United States Merchant Marine Academy houses the Department of Marine Engineering and included laboratories for diesel and steam engineering, refrigeration, marine engineering, thermodynamics, materials testing, machine shop, mechanical engineering, welding, electrical machinery, control systems, electric circuits, engine room simulators and graphics. Bronze statues of Fulton and Christopher Columbus represent commerce on the balustrade of the galleries of the Main Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. They are two of 16 historical figures, each pair representing one of the 8 pillars of civilization. The Guatemalan government in 1910 erected a bust of Fulton in one of the parks of Guatemala City. In 2006, Fulton was inducted into the "National Inventors Hall of Fame" in Alexandria, Virginia. Many places in the U.S. are named for Robert Fulton, including: Fulton, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio 20th Century-Fox's 1940 film, Little Old New York, based on a 1920 play by Rida Johnson Young, is a fictionalized version of Fulton's life from his arrival in New York to the first sailing of Clermont. British actor Richard Greene starred as Fulton with Brenda Joyce as Harriet Livingston. Alice Faye and Fred MacMurray played wharf friends who help Fulton overcome problems to realize his dream. A fictionalized account of Fulton's role was produced by BBC television during the 1960s. In the first serial, Triton (1961, re-made in 1968), two British naval officers, Captain Belwether and Lieutenant Lamb, are involved in spying on Fulton while he is working for the French. In the sequel, Pegasus (1969), they are surprised to find themselves working with Fulton after he changed sides. In the 1961 series, Fulton was played by Reed De Rouen, in the 1968 and 1969 series he was played by Robert Cawdron. A Robert Fulton cartoon character appears in the 1955 Casper the Friendly Ghost short film Red, White, and Boo. Author James McGee used Fulton's experiments in early submarine warfare (against wooden warships) as a major plot element in his 2006 novel Ratcatcher. Invasion (2009), the tenth novel in the "Kydd" naval warfare series by Julian Stockwin, uses Fulton and his submarine as an important plot element. Until 2016, Disney Springs at Walt Disney World had a restaurant named Fulton's Crab House with a building in the shape of a steamboat. Torpedo war, and submarine explosions published 1810. A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation Archived 2004-12-31 at the Wayback Machine, 1796. From the University of Georgia Libraries in DjVu & layered PDF Archived 2006-08-24 at the Wayback Machine formats. A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation 1796. From Rare Book Room. Experiment (horse powered boat) Old Steamboat Days on The Hudson River (1909) Sutcliffe, Alice Crary (1909). Robert Fulton and the "Clermont". New York : The Century Co. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fulton, Robert" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Robert Fulton Birthplace Photos of Fulton's Birthplace Phair, Montgomery. "Robert Fulton and the Secret War of 1812". Casebook: The War of 1812. Archived from the original on October 2, 2006. Chapter XIII: Robert Fulton in Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made (1871), by James D. McCabe Jr., Illustrated by G. F. and E. B. Bensell, a Project Gutenberg eBook. Harvey, W.S.; Downs-Rose, G. (1980). "William Symington". Archived from the original on February 16, 2002. Buckman, David Lear (1907). Old Steamboat Days on The Hudson River. The Grafton Press. Archived from the original on August 26, 2010. Examples of art by Robert Fulton at the Art Renewal Center Thurston, Robert H. "Chapter V: The Modern Steam Engine". A history of the growth of the steam-engine. Archived from the original on 2012-02-21. Archived from the original. Iles, George (1912), Leading American Inventors, New York: Henry Holt and Company, pp. 40–75 Booknotes interview with Kirkpatrick Sale on The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream, November 25, 2001. Collection of Robert Fulton manuscripts Archived 2016-01-01 at the Wayback Machine – digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library

9. Ruth Handler (1916 - 2002)

With an HPI of 68.28, Ruth Handler is the 9th most famous American Inventor. Her biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

Ruth Marianna Handler (née Mosko; November 4, 1916 – April 27, 2002) was an American business magnate and inventor. She is best known for inventing the Barbie doll in 1959, and being co-founder of toy manufacturer Mattel with her husband Elliot, as well as serving as the company's first president from 1945 to 1975. The Handlers were forced to resign from Mattel in 1975 after the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the company for falsifying financial documents. Handler was prominently characterized in the 2023 film Barbie. Ruth Marianna Mosko was born on November 4, 1916 in Denver, Colorado, to Polish-Jewish immigrants Jacob Moskowicz, a blacksmith, and Ida Moskowicz, née Rubenstein. She was the youngest of ten children. When she was six months old, her parents sent her to live with her older sister Sarah. She stayed with Sarah until she was 19 and developed an enthusiasm for business by working at Sarah’s drugstore/soda fountain. In 1932, Ruth fell in love with Izzy Handler, an art student. The summer of her sophomore year at University of Denver, she went to Los Angeles and landed a job at Paramount Studio. Ruth and Izzy married in 1938 in Denver. Returning to California, Ruth encouraged her husband to become known by his middle name, Elliot. Ruth returned to work at Paramount and Elliot was employed as a lighting fixture designer. Elliot became interested in furniture-making, and decided to make furniture from two plastics, Lucite and Plexiglas. At Ruth's suggestion, they started a furniture business where Ruth was in charge of sales, and she landed contracts with businesses such as Douglas Aircraft Company. Business executive Harold "Matt" Matson joined the Handlers' company, which they renamed Mattel by combining "Matson" and "Elliot". (Elliot later said that they were unable to think of a way to include Ruth's name.) When sales fell during World War II, Mattel began making toy furniture. Its success spurred the company's transition to toy manufacturing. Observing her daughter Barbara and friends having fun with paper dolls and role-play adult scenarios, Ruth noticed a market void. Dolls available at that time were mainly babies and toddlers; no dolls were available that resembled adults. During a trip to Europe in 1956 with Barbara and her son Kenneth, Ruth came across Bild Lilli, a German doll. In an interview with Mary G. Lord, author of Forever Barbie, Handler said that she saw the doll in Lucerne, Switzerland. However, the book points out that on other occasions Handler said that she saw it in Zürich or Vienna. The adult-figured doll was exactly what Ruth had in mind. She purchased three, gave one to her daughter, and took the others to Mattel. The Lilli doll was based on a popular character in a satirical comic strip drawn by Reinhard Beuthin for the newspaper Bild. The Lilli doll was first sold in 1955 in Germany, and although initially sold to adults, it became popular with children who enjoyed dressing it in outfits that were available separately. On return to the US, Handler redesigned the doll with help from local inventor-designer Jack Ryan. She named the doll Barbie after her daughter Barbara, and said that Barbie was from Willows, Wisconsin. Premiering on March 9, 1959 at the American International Toy Fair in New York City, the first Barbie doll cost $3 and was an instant hit. In its first year, 300,000 were sold. The Handlers and Mattel later added a boyfriend for Barbie, named Ken after the Handlers' son. Eventually a huge range of Barbie dolls was released, portrayed with more than 125 careers, and Barbie became known for her versatility and fashion. The Handlers added cars, sports gear, clothes, and doll furniture to their Barbie products. Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970. She had a modified radical mastectomy, which was often done at the time to combat the disease. She spent less time at Mattel to focus on improving her health. Her loss of self-esteem affected her leadership, and she lost control of her business. In a 1980 interview, she said: "When I conceived Barbie, I believed it was important to a little girl’s self-esteem to play with a doll that [had] breasts. Now I find it even more important to return that self-esteem to women who have lost theirs.” Due to difficulties in finding a good breast prosthesis, Handler decided to make her own. With the help of new business partner Peyton Massey, and under her new company, Ruthton Corp., she manufactured a more realistic version of a woman's breast called Nearly Me, aiming to boost women's confidence regardless of their health. The invention became quite popular; first lady Betty Ford was fitted for one after a mastectomy. Handler received various awards for her philanthropy and business activities. She was chosen Woman of the Year in Business by the Los Angeles Times, inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame by the Toy Manufacturers of America, received the Volunteer Achievement Award from the American Cancer Society, and was the inaugural Woman of Distinction of the United Jewish Appeal. Following several investigations into fraudulent financial reports, Handler resigned from Mattel in 1975. Investigations continued, and she was charged with fraud and false reporting by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She pleaded no contest and was fined $57,000 (equivalent to $270,000 in 2023) and sentenced to 2,500 hours of community service. She blamed her illness for making her "unfocused" on her business. Handler died on April 27, 2002 in California from complications during surgery for colon cancer. She was 85. Handler is portrayed in the 2023 film Barbie by actress Rhea Perlman. In the film, the ghost of an elderly Handler resides in an office on the 17th floor of Mattel headquarters in Los Angeles. There she meets the movie's stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie). Later, while advising Barbie, Handler tells her about her creation and how it related to her daughter, Barbara. Barbie then takes the name "Barbara Handler" as her own. The film stirred a wave of media coverage of Handler. Forman-Brunell, Miriam. "Barbie in" LIFE": The Life of Barbie." Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2.3 (2009): 303-311. online Gerber, Robin. Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her. Harper/Collins, 2008. Weissman, Kristin Noelle. Barbie: The Icon, the Image, the Ideal: An Analytical Interpretation of the Barbie Doll in Popular Culture (1999). Wepman, Dennis. "Handler, Ruth" American National Biography (2000) online Ruth Handler at IMDb doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1002288

10. Jimmy Wales (b. 1966)

With an HPI of 68.20, Jimmy Wales is the 10th most famous American Inventor. His biography has been translated into 177 different languages.

Jimmy Donal Wales (born on August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales as a user of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, is an Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the non-profit free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and the for-profit wiki hosting service Fandom (formerly Wikia). He has worked on other online projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and WT Social. Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, where he attended the Randolph School. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in finance from Auburn University and the University of Alabama, respectively. In graduate school, Wales taught at two universities; he departed before completing a PhD to take a job in finance and later worked as the research director of Chicago Options Associates. In 1996, Wales and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal known for featuring erotic photographs. Bomis provided the initial funding for the free peer-reviewed encyclopedia Nupedia (2000–2003). On January 15, 2001, with Larry Sanger and others, Wales launched Wikipedia, a free open-content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity. As its public profile grew, Wales became its promoter and spokesman. Though he is historically credited as a co-founder, he has disputed this, declaring himself the sole founder. Wales serves on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, the charity that he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. For his role in creating Wikipedia, Time named him one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2006.

People

Pantheon has 131 people classified as American inventors born between 1742 and 1997. Of these 131, 20 (15.27%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American inventors include Steve Wozniak, Jimmy Wales, and Bob Kahn. The most famous deceased American inventors include Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Samuel Morse. As of April 2024, 14 new American inventors have been added to Pantheon including George Devol, Jacob Perkins, and Orville Gibson.