Inventions of the Year

By Barrett Seaman

The process of invention is an endless churn of activity that has little respect for the calendar. But in an effort to celebrate what has become a binge of industrial and scientific creativity around the world, the editors of TIME have locked the creative achievements of the year 2000 into freeze-frame and selected three Inventions of the Year. They are from the areas of CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY, MEDICAL SCIENCE and BASIC INDUSTRY.

We define an invention as something new, created by human ingenuity. It is not a discovery of a natural phenomenon that already exists. It is not merely a product of convergence, technology's latest buzz word used to describe the combining of existing technologies. Yet as our first two choices illustrate, the art of making two or more technologies work together often requires a new invention--even if it is just a complex line of computer code.

The course of invention, from concept to commercial use, almost always runs over many years, so we limited our list of candidates to products that have become available to their ultimate users during the calendar year 2000. Many of these were granted patents several or more years ago. Some fascinating products that are already demonstrably successful nonetheless missed the cut because they won't reach consumers until early 2001. Because the yield from our survey was far more than these three inventions, we are including a gallery featuring dozens of other products, devices and ideas. Some are serious in their impact; some are just fun. Most are available now, but others are still just a few steps short of making their debut.

Which is all the more reason for us to do this again next year.

--By Barrett Seaman