Greatest invention of all time? Teabags!

ASK the British to name the most important inventions of all time and you can rely on them agreeing on one answer in particular.

Taking its place in the top ten alongside such essentials as the wheel, the clock and penicillin is ... the teabag.

Little wonder, perhaps, in a nation so addicted to the cuppa that we are said to brew 60billion a year.

Also on the list, which has been compiled in no particular order, are the plough, armour, sewers, light bulbs, the fridge and the internet.

The list was released by English Heritage, which surveyed 2,000 people and asked them to name the most innovative products from human history.

Matt Thompson, head collections curator at English Heritage, said: ‘History has been built on ingenious inventions, big and small, and it’s fascinating today to hear what people find ingenious. The teabag was invented by accident but has stood the test of time.’

Indeed, the first teabags were created in 1908 when New York tea merchant Thomas Sullivan sent samples to his customers in small silken bags. It was only after they told him that the gauze was too fine that Sullivan realised they had placed the bags in their pots, rather than empty out the tea first. He then began refining the bags.

By the 1920s the teabag was being commercially produced in the US, with the silk replaced by paper and coming complete with a length of string and tab. Little has changed since, apart from some now being round or pyramid shaped.

The oldest invention on the list is the wheel. Originally hewn from wood, it was used on carts as far back as 3500BC and is thought to have been part of potters’ equipment before that.

English Heritage has asked visitors to vote for their favourite invention from the top ten. The charity is staging a nationwide exhibition, called Ingenious!, featuring some of the 100,000 artefacts it holds at more than 400 locations across the country.

They range from ground-breaking Roman armour at Corbridge Roman Town in Northumberland to a state-ofthe-art 1930s vacuum cleaner at Eltham Palace in South-East London.

With the research revealing that the Victorian age is seen as the most inventive, the displays also include an icecream maker from the era at Brodsworth Hall in South Yorkshire and the Bell telephone at Queen Victoria’s Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.