Steve Jobs: The Thomas Edison of Our Era

Edison also greatly influenced the infrastructure for electricity, commonly known today as the electric grid.

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Oh, and he invented the movie camera. And devices for recording sound. And the Phonograph.

Is Steve Jobs in the category of a Thomas Edison? You bet.

The Mac, iPod

Jobs' invention of the Apple Mac computer and operating system is enough to put him in the exemplar class, which is a fancy way of saying he is a leader in his field.

But then in January 2001 came the iPod, which helped speed the digitization of and portablization of music. 

Sure, it was easy to categorize the iPod as a play thing for the younger crowd, but it quickly became a music device favorite among the not-so-young-crowd, too, and its iTunes store surged to stellar levels of success.

Jobs' next invention/project, the iPhone smartphone, released in June 2007, left no doubt about his unique status. Greeted with skepticism in many circles, the iPhone has become the leader in multi-media enabled smartphones and an "app" (short for software application) winner: it greatly expanded mobile technology use across society.

The iPad: How Did We Live Without It?

The above inventions are more than enough for one lifetime, but of course Jobs' next invention, the iPad, would further cement his status as a transformative figure of our time. The iPad has brought us that much closer to the "anything, everywhere" era.