Greenlight Institute
Inventions that Changed the World

Module 10 of 25 · Essential Knowledge

Inventions that Changed the World

And some that should have

III

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”

— CiceroOrator
Plate X · Inventions that Changed the World

Module

10 of 25

Runtime

~32 min

Branch

Essential Knowledge

Taught by

William Burch

The argument

Inside this module.

Humans are a creative species. A large brain, an opposable thumb, and an index finger have allowed us to invent and use tools with more dexterity than any other animal. We explore the fundamental inventions on which more complex technologies were built — the wheel, the screw, the magnifying glass, the compass, concrete, the internal combustion engine — and a few that were buried before they could change the world.

What you’ll walk away with

  • A large brain, an opposable thumb, and an index finger have allowed us to invent and use tools with more dexterity than any other animal.
  • We explore the fundamental inventions on which more complex technologies were built — the wheel, the screw, the magnifying glass, the compass, concrete, the internal combustion engine — and a few that were buried before they could change the world.

Taught by

William Burch.

William Burch

Energy & water-treatment engineer

Bill is a consulting engineer in global oil & gas operations and managing director of his consulting firm based in Houston, Texas. He holds US patents in water treatment and hydrogen production. In 2023, Bill also campaigned and ran for executive office in the US state of Texas.

  • Engineering
  • Energy
  • Patents

Same branch

More from Essential Knowledge.

What a curriculum should cover and somehow doesn't. Money, philosophy, geography, China, A.I., the institutions that shape daily life.

On the air · Awakening in Health

The same voices, long-form.

Many of the contributors have sat down with Dennis O'Connor on Rumble to talk these subjects through for an hour at a time. The Library holds 25 of those conversations.

Episode · Awakening in Health1:21:04 · 2026-07-27Secret Underworld: a 60,000-Year-Old Civilization Beneath Austria
The Greenlight frontispiece: pyramid and eye in a zodiac wreath

Frontispiece · Vol. I

Price
$285 once
Modules
Twenty-five
Duration
Six months
Cohort I
2 March 2026

One module a week. Twenty-five Mondays.

One payment, one parent, one teenager, and twenty-five weeks of subjects the school timetable never reaches. Module 1 is free to watch before you decide.