When I was a kid, I remember very distinct heroes that were impressed upon us back in history class. There were Revolutionary War heroes, probably first and foremost. After that, the main heroes were inventors.
Sure, their inventions helped shape the course of history—but it the focus seemed to be just as much on the inventors themselves. Of course, maybe that was a needed approach to personalize history. (After all, how excited could an average 5th grader get all the excited about the cotton gin? The steam engine? Even the polio vaccine didn’t really mean anything to me But everyone likes the story of Ben Franklin flying his kite in the storm.)
I wonder if the inventor as hero is a concept we’ve moved away from. Nowadays, there seems to be more a celebration of DIY culture—of small, personal craft being done more for personal satisfaction than profit. (Or at least, huge profit; etsy is a good example of the craft industry working extremely well on a small scale.)
Perhaps there’s also the sense of invention, of really game-changing invention, requiring entire organizations rather than a single, lone inventor to which we can readily associate their discovery. From Ben Franklin and Eli Whitney, we’ve moved to NASA, where individual contributions are largely unknown.
If there are individual heroes when it comes to space exploration, they are of course the astronauts. After all, who would you rather be as a kid: Spaceman Spiff, or the guy who invented his rocket?
Bart'll Be the Scrivener 
I think there’s still a lot of mystification of inventors. I don’t know if I would call inventors heroes, especially as many discovery moments are serendipitous, but I do think those that can create a new object (that’s useful), a new way of looking at the same information, a new perception, a new mindset, etc. are held in high regard by society. Hence the plethora of overused but well-meaning cliches: “thinking outside the box” “110 percent”, and others.
That’s funny. I was going to use the example of the serendipitous discovery of a pennicilin, on the mold of a melon I think it was, as a story I remember from school. Not very heroic, though. Nothing beats Franklin in a lightning storm.
I guess I wonder if those inventors were as big of a deal during their time as they have been since, kind of like many major literary names didn’t actually become popular until after death. But I think you have a good point. What was the last major “invention” or “creation” that you can name the maker of? Does Facebook count?
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