Who are the unsung heroes that built the world we know today?

In the books of history, there are large than life legends with names that reverberate in the annals of history – scientists, kings, revolutionists, generals and so on. However, there’s people whose names we are not familiar with but their work is what we reap its benefits in today’s society. These unprofile—those are the true inventors, employees, and dreamers who created the very foundation of society. Historically, they created structures, introduced inventions or practices, and even-dimensional sacrificed for future generation’s gains. This is their story.

The Hidden Builders Behind Ancient Wonders

What comes to one’s mind when thinking of the prehistoric era? Indeed, the sight of great pyramids, magnificent temples and world wonders. But what is least remembered most of the time are the thousands of workers and engineers who contributed to make these wonders possible. Seven marvels of the world from different eras are nowadays in existence and one among them is the great pyramid of Giza – Egypt, created by a team of nearly thousands of economic workers but the evidences of the names of those workers are scarce.

Earlier it was believed that pyramids were built by the slave but current research indicates that they were built by professionals. These workers were professional math, engineer, and architect workers. They created something so detailed you can hardly mimic by today’s technologies no matter how advanced they are. Who were these people? The people have forgotten their names, the structures they built still rise from the sands of the Egyptian desert.

In China, the story is the same as great wall built all over the world. It spans over 13,000 miles and is associated with durability, security and, therefore, it has been seen as such. But while the great building took centuries to make, millions of soldiers, peasants, and prisoners worked, sometimes under duress, to develop it. Sadly, these fascinating tales are not often remembered yet without them China would lack the fortifications that seemed to have been so instrumental in the country’s history.

Forgotten Inventors of Everyday Objects

Think about the things that people interact with on the daily basis – things that are ubiquitous to the extent that people do not even pay much attention to them. Most of these were developed by unknown persons whose names are still unknown but the impacts they had were phenomenal.

It is impossible to overestimate the role of the invention of the flushing toilet in people’s everyday life. Even though the idea was first implemented by Sir John Harrington, it was Thomas Crapper who took the idea to the modern world. His company developed the flushing mechanism and also made it more effective for use thus revolutionalising the sanitation systems. However, his contribution to the area of public health cannot be said to be lacking while the same cannot be said of the technological front where his name is often downplayed.

In the same manner, the zipper or the button which when produced in 1891 by Whitcomb Judson was the simplest yet biggest innovation in fashion and functionality of clothes makers. However, it was not until Gideon Sundback, a Swedish engineer who made changes to the design in the early part of the twentieth century that the zipper is what we know it to be today – a practical device. Sundback’s name, however, isn’t coined in most people’s lips today. How often do we give credit to this small innovation that makes our apparels and accessories work without a hitch?

The Engineers Behind the Growth of Modern Cities

For most people today, living in fast-paced megalopolises, practitioners of urban planning are out of sight and out of mind. Cloaked behind each towering structure, bridge or super highway are teams of Civil Engineers who transformed idea to reality. The book tells the story if one of the most important yet lesser known contributors to infrastructure development of the modern world, Emily Warren Roebling.

Her husband Washington Roebling was a chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge construction but he got stranded with his illness, Emily Roebling took charge of the construction project and saw it through to its completion in 1883. Although she did not have any engineering education previously, she studied higher mathematics, materials science and became self-taught civil engineer to lead one of the largest infrastructural projects that has ever attempted in the United States of America. But, her name still remains in the background as compared to other male personalities.

Likewise, urban planning has as many luminaries as Jane Jacobs who actively campaigned against such misguided ‘renewal’ programs that sought to razed down city precincts and their inhabitants. Yet there were hundreds of other less well known architects and planners that deployed the sewage networks the roads and the electric wiring that keeps most of urban existence going. Their efforts were hard and their labors obscure, but because of them our cities exist.

The Women Who Powered the War Effort

In war time people want to recall the generals and the servicemen on the firing line. However, underneath each war manufacturing, there are laborers, who for centuries have been erased from history, but whose contribution cannot be ignored, especially women who took up important positions during the World War I and II.

For instance, there are the first women who worked in factories during the Second World War, ‘Rosie the Riveters,’ who assembled planes, weapons and vehicles, so the allies would not lack the necessaries for a fight. These women labored for several hours in hazardous and risky surroundings and were very essential to the warfare. Equity or lack of it is portrayed in how these women lost their jobs, and in the return of the men from the war, their inputs were rarely pondered anymore than forgotten.

Among those was Hedy Lamarr, a star in Hollywood, as well as an inventive mind after becoming a movie star. In the war, she came up with a frequency-hopping communication, which ensured that the opposing forces could not jam torpedoes signals. Her invention also gave the basis for today’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS technology. Lamarr however got recognized more for her roles in films and her invention was not recognized for many years after it was made.

The Invisible Labor Behind Modern Technology

Now people are unable to imagine their life without computers and laptops, smart phones, and, of course, the Internet. Everyone knows about the great personalities like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates of today but who was the man behind the scene to shape the giants of technology?  

He mentioned one person and that is Ada Lovelace who is referred to as the first computer programmer in the whole world.. In the nineteenth century she collaborated with Charles Babbage on the project of the analytical engine, she wrote the first procedure intended for a machine. While it is Babbage that is believed to have originally invented the machine, Lovelace was the person who saw it to be capable of not just calculating something, but in principle of handling any information.

Also unknown to many, Grace Hopper is another hero of modern computing. Arguably one of the founding members of the field of computer science, Hopper invented the first compiler- a piece of software that translates easy to understand programming to machine code. As a pioneer in the development of programming languages, her input is as crucial to the modern software engineering as anyone’s, but her name is likely to be overshadowed by the names of some brilliant male counterparts.

The Unknown Activists Who Fought for Civil Rights

Moving through the history, people always associate social change with key leaders whom people can name, such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela. However, there is no movement without a large number of people who, often, go unnoticed but whose life was devoted to the struggle for the equality.

For example, there is a story of Claudette Colvin, a teenager who was willing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, however, she did not do so nine months before Rosa Parks’ act. It was all over when Colvin was arrested and opposed the segregation laws in court, but because of her age and pregnancy official leaders of the civil rights movement never approved her to be their symbol. The former’s action instantly catapulted her to a symbol but the latter’s brave deed was excluded in the narrative.

Likewise, I emphasize Bayard Rustin, an African American man who was moreover gay as the major activist of the Civil Rights Movement. Lewis also planned the 1963 August March on Washington which was graced by the speech of Martin Luther King Jr. , the ‘I have a dream’. Nonetheless, reflecting Rustin’s homosexuality and his previous activism with the Communists, he was marginalized—made to take a back seat most of the time, with his work being overshadowed by those of other equally qualified people.

The Uncelebrated Figures in Medicine and Health

In the field of medicine they have heard about Hippocrates, Pasteur, Fleming. But for each of those noted doctors or scientists, there are thousands of other medical workers who as caregivers performed medical miracles.

Let’s consider the nurses who worked in 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic. Due to scarce medical resources, the few hospitals were under staffed and thus the nurses were charged with the responsibility of attending to the sick. Most of them perished, including through the disease they were combatting, but their contribution and heroism has been underrated in historians’ records.

An equally important medical person was Dr. Charles Drew, who has done numerous changes in the history of blood transfusion and its preservation leading to development of modern blood storage facilities. Still, Drew experienced racism throughout his career and his impact has not been praised nearly enough.

The Invisible Hands of Agriculture

What comes to your mind when you hear a term agriculture revolution? It may relate to today’s advanced technologies and highly developed industrial farming or may not skip the first Neolithic farmers who started planting crops. As for the original inhabitants of these continents, peasants, slaves, and other tilling labour force, and scientists who changed the modes of farming?

George Washington Carver is one of such figures. He was a black man, scientist, and inventor and created from peanuts, sweet potatoes and other crops hundred of products to make crop rotation for the soil fertility. In innovations, those in sustainable farming restored farmers in the southern United States the use of their lands after decades of misuse. While in history books Carver’s name might be mentioned, people don’t always realise the full extent of his influence on agriculture.

In the same way, Norman Borlaug, known as the father of the Green Revolution brought to the world high-yield, disease resistant crop practices to feed and save over one billion people from starvation. As an agriculturist, his work could have earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, but he is not as famous as one would expect of a man who has helped feed the world in a very big sense.

But there are thousands and thousands of other unremembered actors—indigenous people who first domesticated plants such as maize and potatoes in the Americas, and enslaved people who introduced rice cultivation to the Southern United States. Thanks to them many aspects of today’s agriculture were developed but their stories are still unknown.

The Hidden Figures Behind the Industrial Revolution

The period of Industrial Revolution was a time of great revolution and it cannot be oversimplified that only James watt or Eli Whitney brought about changes for the industrial revolution.

For example, textile industry— the main driving force of the Industrial Revolution —was based on numerous nameless weavers most of them were women and children who have been squeezed into horrendous workrooms. These labourers toiling in the extended hours in perilous factories raised the capital and laid the foundation of modern societies in Europe and America. Yet these women are not mentioned in most of the historical chronicles.

There is Joseph Bazalgette, the civil engineer who has laid out sewer system that is being used by the city of London at the present. During the 1850’s London suffered cholera epidemics and “The Great Stink”, which resulted from poor sewer systems. Bazalgette constructed new sewers and solved these problems while the new sewer system itself became a model for the contemporary urban sanitation systems for the countries of the world. While there are people who remember Bazalgette, those who never known him but benefitted from his work – those who did not get sick on a large scale some of the worst diseases of the time would exclude – are probably more numerous.

In the same manner, many others who have contributed to the world of epidemiology such as John Snow, referred to as the father of modern epidemiology are sometimes not well acknowledge. Snow was the physician who proved that the cholera disease was spread through water and not through the air with the help of the observation that the water pump contaminated with cholera caused the outbreak of the disease in London. His work has greatly contributed to the development of modern day public health systems, yet his name is not very popular in the medical history.

A World Built by Many

People tend to remember history through stories of great people, which is actually not entirely true since the world is made by common men. From the builders of the pyramids to the inventors of windmills, from the wives of Newtons that fed scientific movements to a sandwich carriers who asked for a living wage, our current world is a collective product. It is a mosaic of efforts and trying to bring out the background team who toiled and sweated to make this show successful deserves their credit.

In this sense, remembering and celebrating these little-known heroic personalities make the history turn into a more splendid story and make one understand how various factors are intertwined today. 

It is ever so true that every idea, every evolution, and every revolution has a face, a name, and a race.