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Each line counts entries in the database up to each year. Switch to government types to group the same entries by the kind of government in power where and when the work was done.
Population from 1950 is the UN's World Population Prospects 2024, with its projection drawn fainter from 2024; before 1950 it is a long-run estimate within today's borders, at wide intervals before 1800. Food production is FAO's gross value of food production in constant 2014-16 international dollars. Life expectancy at birth is Our World in Data's series: the UN's figures from 1950 and historical estimates before that. Obesity is the WHO's age-standardised estimate of the share of adults with a body-mass index of 30 or more, from 1980. More on all of them on the Trends page.
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| Line | First year | Value | Last year | Value | Change |
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Main credit counts each entry once, for the country where the work was done. Any credit also counts entries a country shares with others, so those totals overlap.
With line color set to government type, each highlighted line changes color when that country's government changed. For Germany from 1949 to 1990 the color shows West Germany; East German entries are classed as communist in the government-type view.
The counts measure this database, so they also reflect how well each country's history is documented, not only what it achieved. Hover a line to read its value; click any line to highlight it.
Each entry is classed by the government in power where and when the work was done. The class comes from a timeline of each country's main regime periods, refined by the historical state named in the entry (so Soviet work counts as communist, and Venice or Florence as republics). The classes are deliberately broad:
Borderline cases follow simple rules. "Democracy" requires competitive elections with at least near-universal male suffrage, so Britain counts from 1918, the United States from 1828 and France's Third Republic from 1870; later extensions of the vote to women or minorities are not separate steps. Self-governing settler colonies such as 19th-century Australia are classed by how they were governed. Recent changes in regime quality are only coded where elections stopped being competitive. Treat the shares as approximate.
All countries
Source: World inventions and achievements database, October 2026 edition.