How We Invented the World What are the inventions that have defined the modern era; the things that without our world would be utterly different? How We Invented the World looks at the four inventions that have had the most influence on the way we live now: mobile phones, skyscrapers, cars and aeroplanes. Each of these was not a thing in itself, created from nothing; but a series of connections, separate discoveries that came together to form the final product. Take the car: Henry Ford’s adoption of the assembly line; Dunlop's invention of the pneumatic tyre and William Burton’s extraction of gasoline from oil. We examine these connections and the people who made them possible