20 Famous Achievements Often Attributed to the Wrong People

You probably learned in school that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. In reality, he improved upon an earlier design and made it commercially viable. Many inventors, such as Joseph Swan and Humphry Davy, had been working on light bulbs for several decades before Edison.

Alexander Graham Bell did not, in fact, invent the telephone. Antonio Meucci built a working voice communication device years before Bell filed his patent application. Meucci could not afford to file all the legal documents necessary to protect his invention.

Charles Darwin is widely recognized for discovering the theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Alfred Russel Wallace had reached the same conclusion years before Darwin. Wallace had even written up his findings and sent his research to Darwin. Darwin managed to publish his book a few weeks before Wallace and took all the credit.

Few people know that Nikola Tesla demonstrated some of the same principles used in radio years before Marconi patented them. Tesla held patents that later helped his employees transmit radio signals. Eventually, a court upheld Tesla’s claims, and he was recognized by the government. Many people are still unaware of his contribution.

Contrary to popular belief, Christopher Columbus did not discover America. The Norse explorer Leif Erikson arrived in North America about 500 years before Columbus. Although the region was already inhabited by many Indigenous peoples, Columbus was nonetheless credited with this discovery for far too long.

The famous story of the first airplane flight is attributed to the Wright brothers. However, they were not the only ones working on airplanes at the time. Gustav Whitehead apparently flew his powered airplane before the Wright brothers did. Unfortunately, Whitehead did not prove that his flights were reproducible, unlike the Wright brothers.

James Watson and Francis Crick are credited with discovering DNA. Rosalind Franklin’s data enabled Watson and Crick to unravel the mystery of the DNA double helix. Without the X-ray images of DNA taken by Franklin, they might never have found the answer.

The periodic table is something you’ve probably used in chemistry class. Although Dmitri Mendeleev is credited with creating the periodic table, he wasn’t the only one to have noticed the patterns among the elements. John Newlands and Julius Lothar Meyer had observed these patterns before Mendeleev.

Nicolas Copernicus was the man who dared to claim that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The Greek astronomer Aristarchus had reached the same conclusion nearly 2,000 years earlier. Copernicus had simply benefited from more advanced mathematics and wider dissemination of knowledge.

Thomas Jefferson was the president’s secretary when the Declaration of Independence was drafted. However, Jefferson was not the only person who contributed to its drafting. He wrote most of it, but several other people helped revise it.

Charles Babbage is credited with the idea of a computer. However, it was his employee, Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer program. Not only did she write the first computer program, but she also explained how computers could be used beyond the field of mathematics.

Contrary to what many people think, electric cars are not a recent invention. They already existed in the late 19th century and even in the early 20th century. They simply needed to be made commercially viable, and that is what modern companies have done.

Elisha Otis is credited with inventing the elevator. However, what he actually invented was a safety brake that prevented the elevator from falling if the cable broke. It was this innovation that made it possible for elevators to be used by the general public.

Elias Howe may have been the first to conceive of the idea of a sewing machine and to obtain a patent for it, but he was not the only one working on a sewing machine. Others before and after him designed models that played a role in its development.

It is commonly believed that Isaac Newton invented calculus, but he was not the only one working on it. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was working on calculus at the same time as Newton. Technically, both of them should be credited, but most people only remember Newton.

When most people think of the first vaccine, they think of Edward Jenner. In Asia and Africa, people had been practicing vaccination for centuries before Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine. What he did was refine the process and spread the idea.

Galileo Galilei is credited with inventing the thermometer, but he actually invented the thermoscope. The thermoscope indicated changes in temperature but did not have a scale to measure them. As other scientists worked with this device, they developed the thermometer.

Most people know that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Few people know that a printing press using movable type already existed in China. Gutenberg’s contribution was to adapt the printing press for mass production.

Movies and books would have you believe that it was male scientists who made it possible for us to go into space. Hundreds of women working for NASA, including Katherine Johnson, helped find a way to go into space. While some people were aware of their work, it didn’t become widely known until years later.

As you probably learned in school, some of the earliest maps of the world were created by European explorers. These maps were not the first to depict the world as we know it. Maps from Babylon, China, and the Islamic world also contained nearly as much information.