John Brown more important than ML King, as is Rosa Parks.
Who invented the cotton gin? That had more of an impact on America than Edison, and Edison was equaled by men like Tesla, Westinghouse and Siemens. Moreover the man who funded Edison was far more important than Edison — and that would be JP Morgan.
Samuel Colt, Eli Whitney, Jack St. Clair Kilby, the Wright Brothers, John Roebling, Robert Oppenheimer, Clarence Birdseye — many American inventors equaled in impact on America Edison’s work.
Still, the Wright Brothers stand above the rest, so I say.
In the end lists like this are silly and myopic. Faddish.
But the list from the high schoolers shows clearly an abysmal US History education.
A useful post.
The airplane would have come sooner or later since the power plant was already invented.
You might look at a little known inventor who helped industry more than others: John Hall
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_John_H._Hall
John Moses Browning.
Morgan also funded Tesla. The difference was Edison made money, while Tesla lost it all, while acting weird. Tesla should have stuck to inventing, rather than trying to keep up with Edison in the business world.
You had the answer in your post -- Eli Whitney, who also made popular the idea of interchangeable parts for weapons.
Both ideas revolutionized the country. Whitney failed to benefit from either. Great mind, poor businessman.
> Still, the Wright Brothers stand above the rest, so I say.
Except they didn’t invent the aeroplane. Richard Pearse did, half the world away and a couple years prior, in New Zealand.