The greatest Innovations of all time.
In a recent conversation with my son, which developed into an argument, he used an exaggerated claim to win the argument. This is not unusual in our family as we are all very used to expressing our opinions emphatically, even if they’re wrong or exaggerated. Hyperbole and generalisations are the norms in our household, particularly where an argument needs to be won.
The argument was about cryptocurrency values; he did a quick mental calculation and was wrong (as I pointed out to him) by a considerable margin, a factor of ten. So, I removed the zero and adjusted the claim, and, of course, won the argument.
However, the point here is not the exaggeration and generalisation; the point here is that without zero, I would have no easy way to calculate or adjust the numbers. A zero, or a nothing, is critical to our ability to calculate anything with ease (let alone win an argument). For example, try multiplying MDLXI by XXXVII without converting it into “normal” numbers and use a zero (which doesn’t exist in Roman numerals! Almost impossible.
Zero is arguably the most important innovation of all time. Yet, in the West, we only got hold of it in numbers in early 13th century thanks to a young innovator called Leonardo da Pisa, better known to us as Fibonacci (“son” of Bonacci).
Fibonacci published his Liber Abaci in 1202 and developed and innovated many other things with mathematics, including the number sequence known as the Fibonacci sequence and the so-called Golden Ratio, which occurs in nature in everything from succulents to sunflowers.
The Classical World and early medieval Christendom had to get by with w system that made multiplication almost impossible, algebra unthinkable and very basic accounting (the accounting dual entry system came later with Luca Pacioli in 1494).
However, Fibonacci was only the messenger, not the inventor. The origins of numbers have a journey that takes them from India through to the middle east and then brought back to Pisa and dispersed through other Italian city-states to the rest of the world.
Fibonacci was the child of a diplomatic representative of Pisa. He accompanied his father from Pisa to Bugia, a north African Port, and imported wool, cloth, timber and iron whilst exported silk, spices, beeswax and leather. Whilst there, he learnt Arabic and, most notably, the system of counting and the use of zero. The Arab style of counting had been borrowed from India and was far more practical and adaptable than Roman Numerals for two significant reasons:
The position of the number in a sequence indicates its size, so 50 is bigger than 5, whereas, in Roman Numerals, V always means five no matter where it’s placed.
Something stands for zero, i.e. something stands for nothing.
It may seem counterintuitive to have something representing nothing; it’s not something we use in our everyday lives. For example, we don’t buy zero vegetables. So having something that quantifies the concept of nothing was utterly revolutionary in calculation and sequencing.
“Zero turns numbers from adjectives into nouns and becomes a number in its own right”.
Matt Ridley
This innovation had massive, far-reaching consequences yet involve no technology; it’s purely conceptual. A concept that changed the world.
The new “Arabic” numbers allowed for far more complex calculations and springboarded trade for the Italian City-States. At the same time as Richard, the Lion Heart was beginning his fourth crusade, Genghis Khan was advancing his Mongol empire. But it was the merchants that best realised the benefit of a number system that allowed them to quickly calculate how to scale their trade and leverage profit and quantity.
The origins and provenance of almost all innovations and inventions are always messy, complex and very rarely happens in isolation. Fibonacci was the messenger and populariser of Arabic Numbers. He came from a long line of innovators and passed the baton to the following innovators and popularisers. Innovations do not come from nowhere (Zero?); nothing come from nothing.
The Italian City-States were primed and ready to take on board this innovation and thrive because there was a desire and a need.
Innovation, and invention, is never the result of just one person. Innovations don’t happen in isolation. Innovations are of their time, not always embraced, often opposed, but always arriving because of their provenance and their need (even if that need isn’t acknowledged yet!)
Vaccines.
Like Fibonacci, Lady Mary Wortley Montague saw something that was timely and of profound benefit. However, she is rarely quoted as the initiator or innovator of vaccines. However, she saw the potential benefit and had the grit to persuade others of its efficacy.
In the early 1700s, whilst in Turkey, Wortley Montague observed women performing something she called “engrafting”. The women took pus from the boils of someone infected with smallpox, opened a vein with a needle and introduced the pus, thereby immunising the patient from smallpox, even though they suffered a little with some discomfort.
She was so convinced about the efficacy of this treatment of smallpox that she performed the procedure on her son.
On her return to London, she championed this treatment despite opposition, horror and objections from the medical profession and the public. Thus, effectively distributing the first immunisation of vaccine in the West.
Inoculation, the engrafting procedure she had seen in Turkey, called at the time variolation, eventually got replaced by vaccination which was then accredited to Edward Jenner. In 1796, to prove the efficacy of vaccination, Jenner infected an eight-year-old boy with cowpox from a blister he extracted from a milkmaid who had caught the cowpox from a cow called Blossom. The boy survived and was proven to be immune to smallpox.
Jenner is generally accredited with the invention of the vaccine, but as we can see, this is not the whole story. The procedure had existed in Turkey and was brought to the UK by Lady Mary Wortley Montague and then passed to Jenner, who showed the “right” people that the treatment was effective.
Interestingly, as a result of Jenner’s findings, Napoleon, despite being at war with Britain, vaccinated his armies and said that Jenner was one of the greatest benefactors of humankind.
While the origins of innovation are complex and messy, champions drive their ideas or products forward and bring them into widespread use.
The diverse and complex routes that innovations take go some way to explaining why, as often happens, some innovations and inventions see the light of day in different places, but at the same time. There is a “need”, there is the relevant technology (at least to get started), there is always some precedent and provenance, there is an element of chance, some collaboration (often a lot) and indeed some recombination. It is the creative minds of the individuals who can associate and assemble all these elements that create the beginnings of an innovation.
Nothing ever starts in its completed state. Look at cars, look at communications, look at how food production can produce more with less land and fewer resources. All innovations are based on previous innovations and are tinkered with and developed to suit our changing needs.
Fibonacci or Jenner did not stand alone in discovering “Arabic” numbers and Vaccines. Their innovations were based on previous innovations and are taken forward by others. You only have to look at what has happened recently within the vaccine world to see that innovation stands on the shoulders of (previous) giants.