Sir Jony Ive. Getty Images/Michael Kovac Thomas Edison is usually thought of as the greatest inventor ever, bringing the automatic telegraph, the phonograph, and alkaline battery into the world.

His Menlo Park, New Jersey, lab was so productive that he promised "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so."

All together, he had 2,332 patents to his name.

But according to Stephen Fry at the Telegraph, Apple chief design officer Jony Ive has been way more prolific than Edison.

You — and your friends and family — live their lives surrounded by things his inventive hands have touched. The iPhone, the iPad, the new MacBook.

"Ive's inventiveness can perhaps most starkly be expressed by revealing that he has nearly 5,000 patents to his name," Fry writes.

That's double the number of patents as Edison, who was 84 years old when he passed away.

Ive is only 48. Barring a tragedy or change of career course, he has decades left of inventing left in him.