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Mankind has made giant strides in the last two millennia. The journey from Neanderthal cavemen to walking on the moon has been exciting to say the least. However, any account of mankind would be incomplete if one did not give credit to the various inventions that have greatly aided this phenomenal progress.

Surveys have been carried out time and again on the most valued inventions of our time. If such a survey is done a hundred years from now, the Internet is sure to find a place for its part if making the world a smaller place and for the communication revolution that it is bringing about. However, its true impact as an invention can only be assessed after a few years, when it has become as accessible as perhaps paper is today to most people across the world.

There have been so many important inventions, that to select the topmost amongst them would be a difficult task. But that said, time and again these inventions, listed below, have topped the charts!

The printing press: The dissemination of knowledge would have been impossible without the printing press. The printing press was an invention that out into place a technology for the inexpensive, mass production of books. The biggest beneficiary from the printing press was perhaps the scientific community that was able to widely publicize its latest theories, inventions and ideas through cheaply mass produced books. Bless Johann Gutenberg for gifting us this truly miraculous invention. Life without books would be totally unimaginable. Paper incidentally also finds a top place in the most valued inventions. It was invented by the Chinese most likely in AD 105, and without it, the printing press would have been a useless invention!

The steam engine: It pioneered an entire era the Industrial Revolution was carried on the shoulder of steam power. It truly freed mankind, for the first time, from the limitation of animal power. The steam engine was the forerunner to the invention of the railroads, the ocean steamship, mining and the expansion of the European textile industry. True credit for the steam engine goes to James Watt, who in 1765 built compact steam engines that were powerful and cheap for widespread commercial use.

The computer: What the steam engine is to the Industrial Revolution, the digital computer is to the Information Age. In addition to fast and cheap worldwide communication, the computer is also responsible for a number of modern technologies like genetic engineering and perhaps even artificial intelligence. The credit for inventing this wonderful machine is split amongst various claimants such as John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, who first made a computer for the U.S. Army intelligence, Konrad Zuse, John V. Atanasoff, Clifford Berry among others.

Penicillin: Possibly the most important medical invention, this effective, non-toxic, drug is responsible for saving more lives that any other drug in the history of mankind. All credit goes to Alexander Fleming, for serendipitously inventing the drug is 1928, when he accidentally tainted a culture plate in his lab.

The light bulb: And let there be light. No, Thomas Alva Edison didn 't say these words, but he could very well have. We would be living by candle and gaslight if it weren for this important invention. Although, technically Edison didn really invent the light bulb. He merely improved on the idea of Humphry Davy, an English chemist who invented the first electric light. Edison invented a carbon filament that burned for forty hours.