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 "What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage, … for the bad that his colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been favored."
 American writer Mark Twain (1835−1910)
German inventions and discoveries are ideas, objects, processes or techniques invented, innovated or discovered, partially or entirely, by Germans. Often, things discovered for the first time are also called inventions and in many cases, there is no clear line between the two.
Germany has been the home of many famous inventors, discoverers and engineers, including Carl von Linde, who developed the modern refrigerator. Ottomar Anschütz and the Skladanowsky brothers were early pioneers of film technology, while Paul Nipkow and Karl Ferdinand Braun laid the foundation of the television with their Nipkow disk and cathode-ray tube (or Braun tube) respectively. Hans Geiger was the creator of the Geiger counter and Konrad Zuse built the first fully automatic digital computer (Z3) and the first commercial computer (Z4). Such German inventors, engineers and industrialists as Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Otto Lilienthal, Gottlieb Daimler, Rudolf Diesel, Hugo Junkers and Karl Benz helped shape modern automotive and air transportation technology, while Karl Drais invented the bicycle. Aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun developed the first space rocket at Peenemünde and later on was a prominent member of NASA and developed the Saturn V Moon rocket. Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's work in the domain of electromagnetic radiation was pivotal to the development of modern telecommunication. Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the phased array antenna in 1905, which led to the development of radar, smart antennas and MIMO, and shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Guglielmo Marconi "for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". Philipp Reis constructed the first device to transmit a voice via electronic signals and for that the first modern telephone, while he also coined the term.
Georgius Agricola gave chemistry its modern name. He is generally referred to as the father of mineralogy and as the founder of geology as a scientific discipline, while Justus von Liebig is considered one of the principal founders of organic chemistry. Otto Hahn is the father of radiochemistry and discovered nuclear fission, the scientific and technological basis for the utilization of atomic energy. Emil Behring, Ferdinand Cohn, Paul Ehrlich, Robert Koch, Friedrich Loeffler and Rudolph Virchow were among the key figures in the creation of modern medicine, while Koch and Cohn were also founders of microbiology.
Johannes Kepler was one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays. Albert Einstein introduced the special relativity and general relativity theories for light and gravity in 1905 and 1915 respectively. Along with Max Planck, he was instrumental in the creation of modern physics with the introduction of quantum mechanics, in which Werner Heisenberg and Max Born later made major contributions. Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg and Born all received a Nobel Prize for their scientific contributions; from the award's inauguration in 1901 until 1956, Germany led the total Nobel Prize count. Today the country is third with 115 winners.
The movable-type printing press was invented by German blacksmith Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. In 1997, Time Life magazine picked Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium. In 1998, the A&amp;E Network ranked Gutenberg as the most influential person of the second millennium on their "Biographies of the Millennium" countdown.
The following is a list of inventions, innovations or discoveries known or generally recognised to be German.
References.
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