50 Things (That MIT Made)

50 Things (That MIT Made) Happy Friday! Yes, that is an Oberlin College-produced parody of Rebecca Black. And yes, that is our former Communications Director Ben Jones costarring in it! Ive been working all week rewriting some web content for the site and my brain is a bit melty. So, as a bit of a break, in the spirit (but without the inspiration) of Bens big lists, and following up on Hamsikas blog about the Boston Globe special feature on MIT and this Guardian article about inventor culture at MIT, here is the Boston Globes list of the top 50 ideas, inventions and innovators that helped shape our world and were associated with MIT. Gillette Co. the Disposable Razor Wind tunnels (invented at MIT in 1896) Radar detection/navigation (perfected at MIT durign WWII) Texas Instruments (cofounded by Cecil Green 24) Kendall Square (w/ 130 high-tech tenants) E*Trade, cofounded by MIT Sloan alum William Porter Electrical, aeronautical, and nuclear engineering, all of which were pioneered at MIT Modern urban design The theory of cosmic inflation, developed by Professor Alan Guth 69 Nuclear fission, pioneered by alumnus and Professor Manson Benedict One Laptop Per Child The Sloan Automotive Lab OpenCourseWare Zipcar PET Scans Katharine McCormick biologist, birth control pioneer, and the second woman to graduate from MIT Robert Noyce 53, cofounder of Intel inventor of the microchip Modern lithium-ion batteries Modern oil prospecting The first solar-powered house Genentech Refined oil iWalk bioprosthetics Big Dog HP, cofounded by William Hewlett 36 The Executive MBA program at Sloan The first public health school in the nation The link between cancer and genetics Reverse transcription, discovered by David Baltimore, founder of the MIT Whitehead Institute Condensed soup Technicolor (itself named after MIT!) Inertial guidance systems for aircraft RSA encryption The first air-conditioned building The memex which helped inspire the Internet conceived of by former MIT President Vannevar Bush 16 Akamai, the content delivery network that handles 30% of the worlds Internet traffic The Internet Archive, maintained by Brewster Kahle 82 The spreadsheet, designed by Dan Bricklin 73 E-ink, invented at the MIT Media Lab Former MIT Professor and Nobel Laureate Salvador Luria Ivan Getting 33 was a primer developer of GPS Bose Corporation, founded by MIT Professor Amar Bose Ellen Swallow Richards, a public-sanitation and environmental chemistry expert and the first woman to graduate from MIT iRobot, founded by MIT alumni Helen Greneir and Colin Angle The first interactive minicomputer Biogen, founded by Philip Sharp, MIT Professor (and a lot more!) since 1974 Email, invented by Ray Tomlinson 65 Transistor radio, co-invented by William Shockley 36 The Human Genome Project, for which MITs Whitehead Institute, led by Professor Eric Lander, sequenced the most genes The World Wide Web, invented by MIT Professor Tim Berners-Lee Thats a pretty epic list! What will you do to make it on the MIT 200 retrospective?