The world is changing in every way, and engineers are those who would change the future and contribute to a better world. Some of them, scientists for the majority, have been true geniuses by creating absolutely incredible things while they were still young. Here are five game-changers whose inventions have gone essential for the humanity.

Louis Braille. He invented the Braille language at the age of 15. Louis Braille, born in 1809, was the inventor of the tactile writing system with raised dots commonly called Braille for blind or severely visually impaired people. He invented it when he himself became blind due to an accident while handling objects as a child.

Alexander Graham Bell. Graham Bell was the father of the first telephone. Many are those who are hooked on their smartphones but do not know the man behind this invention—the one who has revolutionized the world of telecommunications. At the age of 18, Alexander Graham Bell became a phonologist and a specialist of sound emission. Alexander created the first harmonica telegraph during his research on sound with his sidekick named Watson. His goal, at that time, was to transmit speeches throughout his country.

Philo Taylor Farnsworth. Philo Taylor was born in 1906 and created the television design at the age of 14. He came up with the idea in 1920. It is important to note that this young American did not invent television, but he was the one who created a complete television system, including transmission and reception. After a few years in the army, he returned to western Idaho through the state of Washington and Oregon where his first research was supported and funded.

Mark Zuckerberg. He developed the world's largest social network at age 21. Mark Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in New York. He was passionate about computers and gifted in programming from a very young age. At the age of 20, in 2003, he created his first social network when he entered Harvard University. In 2004, at the age of 21, Mark Zuckerberg officially launched his Facebook site—a social network initially for Harvard students’ use only, and eventually for other universities later. It was an immediate success. Gradually, he added features that could make it easy to find acquaintances and mutual friends.

Boyan Slat. While a young Dutch ecologist was studying aeronautical engineering, he wanted to clean up the oceans. He was born on July 27, 1994 and made his name when he created the OCEAN CLEAN project in 2012 at the age of 18. The aim of his project is to clean the oceans by placing floating barriers three meters deep. The barriers retain plastics and other drifting objects, then lead them to an extraction platform. The extraction platform is powered by solar energy and recovers the materials for disposal and recycling. His project has already been tested in June 2015 on the island of Chichi-Jima located between Japan and South Korea. Once popularized, the project was entitled to a two-billion-dollar crowdfunding.

Sources: Britannica, History, Biography, Computer History, Paths to Literacy, Sight Scotland, Clean Ocean