The Most Iconic Inventions of the Past 25 Years
In 2000 TIME’s editors sat down to select three inventions of the year, one each in consumer technology, medical science, and basic industry. They found so many interesting ones along the way that they included dozens of others, from an unbreakable lightbulb to paper that was easier to recycle. It was the start of our annual hunt for the most exciting innovations changing our lives, and the future. Since then, TIME has covered hundreds of inventions, from the esoteric (clouds featured more than once) to essential, including life-changing medicines, technological breakthroughs, new foods, nearly every new Apple product category, and even a few great ideas that didn’t quite catch on. As TIME publishes the 2025 list, we’re also assembling the Best Inventions Hall of Fame: the 25 most iconic inventions we covered in the past quarter century.
2001, NuvaRing Birth Control
Almost all women in the U.S. use contraception at some point in their lives, and in 2001 a new option came on the market, the vaginal ring. As TIME wrote when including it among the year’s best inventions, “Some women hate taking pills. Others wince at the thought of implants or injections. Now there’s a new choice for long-term birth control. In early October the FDA approved use of the NuvaRing, a thin flexible plastic ring that women can flatten like a rubber band and insert once a month into the vagina.” After years of relatively little innovation in birth control, NuvaRing expanded the range of available options, soon followed by the birth control patch (on the 2002 list). Since it works longer-term, the vaginal ring eliminates some of the headache of taking a daily pill, but unlike an IUD, it is still under the patient’s control, allowing more flexibility. In 2014, Merck paid $100 million to settle lawsuits about the potential for blood clots when using the NuvaRing; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it is safe for most women, though notes it is linked to a small increased risk of blood clots, heart attack, and stroke, as are other combined hormonal birth control methods. Over two decades after its introduction, the vaginal ring is still used by many, with some 2 million prescriptions written annually in the U.S., according to ClinCalc.
Read what TIME wrote in 2001: “NuvaRing Birth Control”
2002, iRobot Roomba
The robot vacuum cleaner embodies one of the dreams of technology: automating annoying, repetitive tasks. Sure, there’s a certain satisfaction to creating order, but as TIME put it in recognizing iRobot’s Roomba in 2002, “Let’s face it, vacuuming sucks.” The disc-shaped robot vacuumed your house, guided by sensors to prevent it from crashing into furniture or other obstacles. “Running on rechargeable batteries, Roomba roams your house entirely on its own, swooping up dust bunnies and stray Cheerios and zipping under beds and couches where mere humans can’t reach.” Perhaps best of all, “When it finishes a room, Roomba beeps proudly and turns itself off.” The company has now sold over 50 million robots—TIME also recognized iRobot’s “Scooba” (2005) for mopping and scrubbing, and in 2018 a self-emptying vacuum—and inspired scores of copycats.
Read what TIME wrote in 2002: “Robot Vacuum”
2005, LifeStraw
Clean water is essential, but even today billions around the world don’t have access to safe drinking water. Eradicating the problem is a U.N. priority, but requires government action, infrastructure improvements, and more large-scale action. In 2005, LifeStraw offered a clever aid to help more people drink safe water. Looking much like a drinking straw, inside, the tool, which cost around $3 to make has seven filters, including mesh, iodine, and active carbon, “It can prevent waterborne illnesses, such as typhoid and diarrhea, that kill at least 2 million people every year in the developing world. It can also create safe drinking water for victims of hurricanes, earthquakes, or other disasters. And finally, it makes a handy accoutrement for the weekend warrior’s back-country hike.” As TIME wrote, “The price of a caffe latte–about $3–really can save a life.” Coffee prices are different 20 years later, but Lifestraw remains a low-cost tool that’s been used around the world—in 2024, the company distributed filters in the wake of Hurricane Helene and a typhoon in Vietnam among other humanitarian causes. In 2023 TIME also recognized the LifeStraw Max, a 16 lb. system that can clean 40 gal. an hour, and in 2024 the Sip.
Read what TIME wrote in 2005: “Clear Water Revival”
2006, YouTube
Videos existed on the internet, but never quite like this. In April 2005, YouTube started hosting video clips, its first 19 second upload about a trip to the zoo. By the following fall, 70,000 videos were uploaded daily. As of 2025, it’s over 20 million per day. As TIME wrote in recognizing the site as one of the year’s best inventions in 2006, shortly after it sold to Google for $1.65 billion, the founders “hacked together a simple routine for taking videos in any format and making them play in pretty much any Web browser on any computer. Then they built a kind of virtual video village, a website where people could post their own videos and watch and rate and comment on and search for and tag other people’s videos. Voilà: YouTube.” It was a moment when video tech was getting just good enough, on the crest of a wave of “self-stoking mass collaboration” sites that characterized Web 2.0, and amid a revolution in culture, TIME wrote, where “consumers are impatient with the mainstream media. The idea of a top down culture…is over.” Part of YouTube’s breakthrough was the sense people got that this was a way towards genuine connection with other humans, “The videos may not be slick, but they’re real…The yardstick on YouTube is authenticity. That’s why celebrities like Paris Hilton and P. Diddy can compete with a cute sleepy kitty and a guy doing a robot dance—and lose.” Later that year, TIME selected “You” as the Person of the Year, recognizing the extraordinary rise of user-generated content which has radically reshaped our lives. The video-sharing phenomenon has captivated billions, upending old ways of doing things, generating vast revenues, and delighting people around the world.
Read what TIME wrote in 2006: “The People’s Network”
2007, Apple iPhone
In June 2007, Apple released the iPhone, expanding its product roster from computers and iPods to touchscreens and cellular signals, and causing a frenzy as people clamored to get their hands on the device. At launch it came in 4GB ($499) or 8GB ($599). Apple’s wasn’t the first smartphone on the market, but it’s the one that changed the world, making pocked-sized computers indispensable. The year it came out, TIME named the device its invention of the year, describing it as “part of a new way of relating to computers,” and reflecting “one of [Steve] Jobs’ basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology.” Apple had sold 1.4 million phones by the time the story went to press in 2007. Now, 18 years later, it has sold 3 billion iPhones, and in 2024, Apple was the top-selling smartphone maker in the world. (Over the years Best Inventions has covered plenty more of Apple’s latest creations, including the iTunes music store, iPad, Siri, Apple Watch, and more phones and headphones.)
Read what TIME wrote in 2007: “Invention Of the Year: The iPhone”
2007, Google Maps Street View
Digital mapping services have changed how people navigate the physical world, steering traffic to the “best route” according to intricate algorithms. In 2007, Google added something new: photos of street-level views, letting anyone get a good look at where they might be going. At first, it caused both thrill at this intriguing feat, and suspicion at the privacy implications for people caught by the cameras. TIME included it as one of the year’s best inventions, writing, “Google Maps’ Street View puts on the Web dynamic 360 panoramas of New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and a dozen other cities. Enter an address, and you can take a virtual stroll past buildings, landmarks and unsuspecting passersby who were caught on the scene by the all-seeing Google camera van.” Started in select cities, it now criss-crosses the globe, spanning 12 million miles in 110 countries. When Google’s visited multiple times, users can scroll back in time to see images taken in earlier years.
Read what TIME wrote in 2007: “Take a Walk”
2008, Large Hadron Collider
Nestled around 100 meters deep underground near Geneva, the world’s largest particle accelerator whirls protons and ions around a 17-mile circumference track at close to the speed of light and crashes them into each other, all to help scientists understand the infinitesimally small building blocks that make up our world. After a decade of construction and billions of dollars, the Large Hadron Collider opened in 2008 to put theoretical predictions to the practical test, but an overheated wire led it to shut down for repairs after just 10 days. As TIME wrote, “The mammoth machine will… try to answer such deep questions as why mass exists and whether the universe has extra dimensions. If it takes a few extra months to find out, so what?” The LHC has proved its value as an example of massive international collaboration, and also to science. In 2012, it detected a particle whose existence theoretical physicists had predicted decades before, the Higgs boson, for the first time ever—the particle is what gives the universe mass, and earned those physicists a Nobel Prize. The LHC is still operating, seeking to unravel yet more mysteries about subatomic particles.
Read what TIME wrote in 2008: “The Large Hadron Collider”
2008, Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Large-scale agriculture honed efficient production of food, making it possible to feed billions of people, but it whittled the variety of fruits and vegetables, raising the risks posed by threats like disease and environment. In 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened in Spidsbergen, Norway to secure the diversity of the world’s crops. TIME included it as one of the year’s best inventions, writing, “Superman had it right: if you want to keep something safe, build a mountain fortress above the Arctic Circle. That’s the thinking—more or less—behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Almost every nation keeps collections of native seeds so local crops can be replanted in case of an agricultural disaster.” The Norwegian facility works like a bank: countries deposit a backup of their own seed collections, a repository to draw on in the future. In 2015, the Syrian civil war led to the first withdrawal, by an agriculture research organization of seeds it had stored, and just a few years later they returned the offspring of those seeds to the Arctic stockpile. It now stores over 1.3 million seed samples from some 6,000 plant species, protecting a record of biodiversity against all manner of disasters.
Read what TIME wrote in 2008: “The Global Seed Vault”
2008, 23andMe DNA test
From 1990 to 2003, international researchers deciphered nearly all the human genetic data encoded in the 23 chromosome pairs of our DNA, as part of the Human Genome Project. Those reams of data were still fresh when personal genetics firm 23andMe launched its personal DNA testing service, “a $399 saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness” as TIME wrote in 2008. “We are at the beginning of a personal-genomics revolution that will transform not only how we take care of ourselves but also what we mean by personal information. In the past, only elite researchers had access to their genetic fingerprints, but now personal genotyping is available to anyone who orders the service online and mails in a spit sample. Not everything about how this information will be used is clear yet.” The company offered insights into personal health risks of inherited conditions and into ancestry and genealogy, and also pursued scientific research using the masses of genetic information in its databases. In March, it filed for bankruptcy, and in June a judge approved its sale to a nonprofit set up by co-founder Anne Wojcicki called 23andMe Research Institute. The company has given more than 15 million people a new understanding of the genetic code that’s shaped them.
Read what TIME wrote in 2008: “The Retail DNA Test”
2008, Montreal’s Public Bike System
Many major cities now have some version of a bike- or scooter-share system, but Montreal revolutionized the trend. In 2008, when Montreal introduced its bike rental system, TIME selected it as one of the year’s best inventions, writing, “When lots of people use a communal resource—like, say, a cheap public bicycle-rental program—they tend to abuse it. So when the city of Montreal built its Public Bike System, nicknamed Bixi, the designers packed in all the technology they could find, in a desperate attempt to out-engineer human iniquity.” Equipped with solar-powered docking stations, RFID tags to make the bicycles themselves trackable, and fully enclosed parts (to resist weather, accidents, and human intervention) the bicycle-sharing system took off. Paris’ Vélib started the year earlier, and Copenhagen had started a system in 1995, but the tech behind Montreal’s scheme became the backbone for bike-sharing programs in London, New York, Chicago, and dozens of other places, turning two wheels into a genuine option for navigating cities. In 2022, Lyft Urban Solutions bought the hardware and software firm that spun out from Montreal’s bike-sharing program. In 2024 riders took over 13 million trips on Bixi bikes, and more than 180 million globally.
Read what TIME wrote in 2008: “Montreal’s Public Bike System”
2009, Dyson Air Multiplier
Vacuum titan Dyson’s “bladeless fan” debuted in 2009, promising an end to percussive buffeting of the standard electric fan. As TIME wrote, “Air is pulled in through vents in the base and then pushed out by a hidden impeller over a circular airfoil-shaped ramp that runs inside the rim of the halo, creating an uninterrupted stream of cool air.” Plus, “It looks cooler too.” What more do you need? It was only the innovative engineering firm’s second foray outside of vacuums (after the hand dryer still commonly seen in bathrooms), and led the company to become known for sleek and thoughtful consumer products, among them: in 2016, TIME recognized the supersonic hair dryer as Dyson branched into hair care, and viral success Airwrap was on the list in 2019 (“One-Step Glam”) winning over fans and launching competitors.
Read what TIME wrote in 2009: “The Bladeless Fan”
2009, Philips Electronics LED light bulb
LEDs are now the standard light bulb in the U.S., as the more efficient successor to incandescent bulbs. But not so long ago, they didn’t exist. In 2009, Philips Electronics was the first company to enter a U.S. Department of Energy competition searching for the best LED alternative to the standard 60-watt bulb. As TIME wrote, “With the flick of a switch, Philips Electronics may have just dramatically lowered America’s electric bill.” The LED bulb, TIME continued, “emits the same amount of light as its incandescent equivalent but uses less than 10 watts and lasts for 25,000 hours—or 25 times as long.” Two years later, Philips won the DOE’s $10 million prize. After another decade and a half of improvements, the LED is taking over, with its vastly lower energy use and longer lifespan.
Read what TIME wrote in 2009: “The $10 Million Light bulb”
2010, Kickstarter
“Think of Kickstarter as crowdsourced philanthropy—a website where anyone can donate any amount to a project in development, with no money changing hands until a minimum threshold has been met,” TIME wrote in 2010, naming the service as one of the year’s 50 best inventions. Asking a crowd for money to help make a project reality certainly existed long before, but Kickstarter extended the request to the whole internet. Since its launch, Kickstarter reports, 25 million people have collectively pledged more than $9 billion, launching more than 286,000 projects, including the first Peloton and Oculus Rift headsets, but also early versions of creative projects like Fleabag, a new album from TLC, and even Oscar–winning films.
Read what TIME wrote in 2010: “Kickstarter”
2011, IBM Watson
In 2011, a computer did something new. Sure, computers are always doing new things, but this was another mark in the competition between humans and their technological creations. “‘I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.’ Those were the words of 74-time Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings after IBM’s Watson computing system dismantled him and another top Jeopardy! player in a man-vs.-machine challenge last February,” TIME wrote on recognizing Watson as one of the year’s top inventions. The supercomputer, “which is the size of 10 refrigerators and performs 80 trillion operations per second,” was named for the company’s founder. Though its promise as a digital assistant didn’t quite pan out, the publicity stunt watched by millions made Watson an early star of artificial intelligence.
Read what TIME wrote in 2011: “Watson”
2011 and 2012, NASA Curiosity Rover
It’s an intricate feat to launch anything into space, let alone land delicately on another planet. The Curiosity rover took off in November 2011 and touched down the following August, set to explore Mars’s Gale crater, which, as TIME wrote in 2011, “covers an area the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined and has peaks taller than Washington’s Mount Rainier.” In 2012 TIME declared, “NASA had visited Mars but never like this. Curiosity, which landed in Gale Crater in August, is a 1-ton, SUV-size Mars car with more scientific instrumentation—10 times as much, by weight—than ever sent to the Red Planet before.” Landing with a plan for a couple years of investigation, over 13 years later the rover is still on Mars making discoveries. With 10 instruments to do things like pick up objects, and analyze rock and powder samples, Curiosity has enabled many findings, including that the planet was potentially habitable, detecting evidence of water, organic molecules, and more, and stoking interest in colonization from the likes of Elon Musk. It even sang happy birthday on the 1 (Earth) year anniversary of its landing in August 2013.
Read what TIME wrote in 2011: “The New Mars Rover” and 2012: “The Curiosity Rover”
2012, Tesla Model S
Tesla has been a leading force in the efforts to develop electric vehicles. The 2012 debut of its Model S marked a new moment, though its Roadster had been around for years (and was on TIME’s list in 2006 and 2008). Of the Model S, TIME wrote in 2012, “This electric four-door sedan has the lines of a Jaguar, the ability to zip for 265 miles (426 km) on one charge—that’s the equivalent of 89 m.p.g. (2.6 L/100 km)—and touchscreen controls for everything from GPS navigation to adjusting the suspension.” The car proved a game-changing advance for electric vehicles, expanding driving range and making them an exciting alternative to their gas-powered predecessors. Its success nudged competitors to make their own EVs more enticing, and Tesla capitalized on its head start, continuing to develop its tech and create new cars, including 2017’s Model 3, which also made TIME’s list.
Read what TIME wrote in 2012: “The Tesla Model S”
2013, The Cronut
TIME has covered many a food fad over the years. In 2013, TIME wrote, “a new fusion food joined the ranks of the ice cream cake and the turducken. The cronut—made of croissant-style pastry that’s fried like a doughnut, filled with cream and topped with glaze—transfixed foodies when New York City chef Dominique Ansel started selling it in May.” The $5 pastry prompted lengthy lines of people longing for a taste, as well as copycats and other Franken-foods. The furor has cooled since that peak intensity, but Ansel still sells the delicacies from his lower-Manhattan shop.
Read what TIME wrote in 2013: “The Cronut”
2017, Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch’s versatility helped make it stand out from its peers. As TIME wrote in 2017, “In one form, it’s a handheld tablet, allowing a single user to game on the go. In another, two controllers slide off from the sides, allowing multiple users to get in on the action. Once they get home, they can slide that tablet into a docking station and continue playing on a legitimate home console.” By that fall it had sold 7.63 million, and as of June, Nintendo sold 153 million of the original Switch, making it the third-best selling video game console ever. This year, the Switch 2 also made our list of the year’s top inventions.
Read what TIME wrote in 2017: “A Gaming Console That Lets You Play Anywhere”
2017, Fenty Beauty Foundation
Foundation is supposed to match a person’s skintone, providing a uniform base for other cosmetics. But makeup hasn’t always matched actual skin colors so well. In 2017, Fenty Beauty debuted a foundation with a huge range of hues, setting a new standard for the industry. TIME wrote, “‘Makeup is like a secret weapon,’ says pop superstar Rihanna…But for many, that secret weapon is too secret: makeup companies often cater to women with light to medium skin tones, both in products and advertising, and sideline women of color. Not so with Rihanna’s line, Fenty Beauty, which launched in September with 40 shades of foundation and a diverse array of makeup models.” Its immediate success pushed other makeup companies to be more color inclusive and create more and better options for people with darker skin tones. Rihanna continued to develop the business, growing it to a billion-dollar brand.
Read what TIME wrote in 2017: “Makeup Shades for Every Skin Tone”
2020, Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech mRNA vaccines
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world. As millions stayed home, scientific and medical researchers mounted an unprecedented response, including the remarkable development of mRNA vaccines. “A pandemic may be a tough time to test a new technology, but that’s exactly what COVID-19 vaccine experts are doing, with encouraging results,” TIME wrote in 2020. The new tech was “based on a genetic material called mRNA. This method is both fast and flexible; vaccine makers don’t need to grow or manipulate the COVID- 19 virus—all they need is its genetic sequence.” These mRNA vaccines were the result of huge effort of research and coordination, but the technology itself made the astonishing speed possible.The virus’ genetic sequence was identified and released in January; by May volunteers were receiving injections in the human trials; and in December both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines got FDA authorization. That timeline handily beat the previous record of four years to develop a new vaccine and blew a more typical development timeline of a decade or more out of the water. The companies have continued to update the shots for the latest COVID-19 variants, and expanded their focus to vaccines for a range of other viruses using mRNA technology.
Read what TIME wrote in 2020: “Faster Development”
2022, NASA James Webb Space Telescope
First proposed in 1995, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope took $10 billion and more than 20 years to complete. Launched in December 2021, the 7 ton telescope, with its 21.3-ft. main mirror, found a spot 1 million miles (1.5 million km) from Earth to get a clear look at the stars. As TIME wrote in including it as one of the year’s standout inventions, it is “a telescope able to look farther into space than any ever built before. Webb’s uniquely powerful infrared camera can peer into the universe’s infancy and has already returned a dazzling array of images, including a planet orbiting another star.” The largest telescope ever catapulted into space, it’s a technological marvel that’s allowed scientists to observe farther into the universe and in more detail than was previously possible.
Read what TIME wrote in 2022: “Window Into the Universe”
2023, Sphere
In July 2023, Las Vegas saw the opening of an intriguing new venue, Sphere. As TIME wrote when including it as one of the year’s top inventions, “Its 366-ft.-tall exterior is Earth’s biggest LED screen—a lattice of 1,230,000 pucks that can make it look like a ball or planet or … anything. Inside it boasts a 160,000-sq.-ft. curved screen and an advanced concert-grade audio system.” The $2.3 billion project has since become a symbol of Las Vegas entertainment, hosting concert series with U2, Dead & Company, and the Backstreet Boys, as well as films and sporting events (the NHL Draft and a UFC event too). In 2024, Billboard reported it was the year’s top grossing concert venue, earning $420.5 million in tickets.
Read what TIME wrote in 2023: “Otherworldly Entertainment”
2023, OpenAI GPT-4
OpenAI launched ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. By January, it had 100 million monthly users. Just a few months later, OpenAI released an updated model. And in the fall, TIME recognized the latest version as one of the year’s best inventions, writing, “Eight months on from its March release, OpenAI’s GPT-4 remains the most powerful AI model to power a chatbot accessible to the public. While its predecessor, ChatGPT, performed better than just 10% of students taking the bar exam, GPT-4 outperformed 90% of them.” The sizable jump in capability between the two helped convince the markets, and the world, that AI was on an exponential rise, which has reshaped the economy and the stock market in the scant years since.
Read what TIME wrote in 2023: “Game-changing AI”
2023, Novo Nordisk Semaglutides
In 2023, Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide drugs (including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus)—shot their way to notoriety, making the company the most valuable in the E.U. Though these treatments had been developed sometimes many years earlier, and had been created to help manage type 2 diabetes, they did that, TIME wrote, “in part by helping people shed pounds better than any previous medication and therefore control their blood sugar. But it wasn’t until recently that their weight-loss feature propelled them to be among the most in-demand prescription medications.” Their runaway success of the appetite-supppressing drugs has drastically altered conversations around weight-loss and health, challenging expectations and sparking controversy over their proper use and side effects. Though many eventually stop taking them, surveys indicate around 12% of people in the U.S. say they have tried the drugs.
Read what TIME wrote in 2023: “Pharmaceutical Sensation”
2024, Northwell Health Double Neural Bypass
Researchers are nurturing new connections between computers and humans for the sake of helping people with spinal cord injuries. In 2024, TIME included Northwell Health’s Double Neural Bypass on the list, writing “In a first-of-its-kind surgery last year, scientists implanted microchips into [a patient’s] brain to connect his thoughts to arm and hand movement, creating a two-way link—a ‘double bypass’—that allowed signals to travel in both directions. Now [Keith] Thomas [who was paralyzed in a pool accident] can open his hand, lift his arms, flex his biceps.” He can even pet his dog and feel its fur. The experimental technique is one of a series of exciting developments that are helping bridge the signal from brain to body.
Read what TIME wrote in 2024: “Forging Brain-Spine Connections”
Read this year’s list of TIME Best Inventions of 2025 here.
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