PAUL KANGAS, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT ANCHOR: From black rotary phones to Blackberries, from paper checks to ATMs and from huge mainframe computers to PCs that fit in your pocket. SUSIE GHARIB, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT ANCHOR: It`s all happened in just three decades. So, tonight we`re looking at the top 30 innovations of the last 30 years.

KANGAS: There were thousands of suggestions of what should make the list, from the Internet to wheels on luggage and professors from the Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania judged the innovations.

GHARIB: So stay tuned as we count down the top 30 innovations of the last 30 years on this NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT special edition.

KANGAS: Good evening, everyone. NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year by counting down the top 30 innovations of the last 30 years.

GHARIB: Tonight, we look at the ideas and products that have had the greatest impact over the last three decades.

KANGAS: And Susie, as you know, many of the innovations on our list are things we use every day and as Dana Bate reports, often take for granted.

DANA BATE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Hi there. Welcome to the start of my day which usually involves listening to my MP3 player on the way to work to get me going and normally e I would head straight up to the office, but I actually need to get some money from the ATM today. And a lot of times if I don`t know where the nearest ATM is, I can punch up my GPS which will show me where the nearest ATM is. But today I know that my ATM is right across the street, so I`m just going to run over, grab some money and then head up to the office.

Now that I`m at the office first things first, I have to check my e- mail, see if there`s anything that will change our plans for the day, looks like we`re pretty much on schedule to do as we had planned. But I also want to take a look at the news wire service that we use, which updates us on breaking news, things that are happening on Capitol Hill. There doesn`t seem to be any breaking news. But I want to give a call to my bureau chief Darren Gersh, to see what he thinks and whether or not we`re on track for today.

Here I am in our control room and that loud sort of buzzing that you hear is actually our converter box that`s going to help us with our transition to digital television. And we also get feeds in here from all over Capitol Hill, all over Washington and actually all over the country and all over the world. But right now I have to run. I have to take our morning conference call. But I just thought I`d show you a few of the innovations that help me start my day here at NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT every day.

GHARIB: NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT viewers and knowledge at Wharton readers submitted thousands of suggestions for the top 30 innovations of the last 30 years. Wharton professors reviewed the picks and selected the winners. They used guidelines including quality of life, need, productivity and the wow factor. So, let the countdown begin. Coming in at number 30: anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS. Thirty three million people worldwide now live with HIV. ARV treatments are helping to reduce death and suffering. 29: SRAM flash memory, a chip that stores large amounts of data without a power source. 28: stents -- these small medical devices prop open arteries and improve blood flow to the heart, saving lives. 27: automatic teller machines -- a banking revolution, making the human teller near obsolete. 26: bar codes and scanners -- created to speed checkout at the grocery store, now they track all types of inventory. And number 25: bio- fuels - solid, liquid or gas-- they`re fuels made from plants or other biological waste.

KANGAS: Bio-fuels were among the energy advances in our top 30. Large- scale wind turbines and photovoltaic solar cells also made the list. NBR`s Stephanie Dhue looks at the development of these alternatives to fossil fuel and one man in whose life they`re already playing a big role.

STEPHANIE DHUE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Scott Sklar lives energy innovation. Take for example, this mini wind turbine he installed to run his home office.

SCOTT SKLAR, PRESIDENT, THE STELLA GROUP: Wind turbines are getting smaller and quieter and so we have several companies that have developed turbines that are part of the building or right next to the building.

DHUE: Sklar also uses solar energy to help power his home and office. He says there`s an easy peel- and-stick solar technology that can be added to metal roofing. And where do you see the innovation going there?

SKLAR: I think the innovation is going not only among flexible materials and nano technology kinds of films that are - go on the inside of the window, but even paints that will go on the rooftop and on the south side of the building that in the future, will be producing electricity for your home or office building.

DHUE: Sklar should know. He`s a consultant and 30-year veteran of the alternative energy business. He advises companies and governments on how to integrate cost-effective, energy-saving technologies into their plans. Sklar says nano-technology advances are making solar panels more efficient, more flexible and cheaper.

SKLAR: These are light-sensitive dyes that produce electricity. You can do them on flexible materials and these materials will be on window shades and awnings so you will be able to use them in much more elegant ways.

DHUE: Energy innovation is also moving bio-fuels to the next generation. Soon, it will no longer be a question of growing food versus fuel as bio-fuel moves from using corn to using waste materials.

SKLAR: You can`t go from Kitty Hawk to a 747 jet, so there`s a lot of learning that has to be done. But we`re making immense progress very quickly and we`re starting to see these technologies in the marketplace.

DHUE: Getting those energy innovations into the marketplace will require government help, from local governments making it easier to get building permits to state regulators making it easier to connect to the grid.

SKLAR: There are lots of different rules and regulations that can be quite cumbersome, that we need to make it easier for people to do and less expensive.

DHUE: Sklar`s ahead of his time when it comes to energy use, but he predicts the nation will catch up. He expects half the nation`s energy demand to met by renewables by the year 2050. Stephanie Dhue, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Arlington, Virginia.

GHARIB: Continuing our countdown, number 24: genetically modified plants -- imparting traits like insect resistance or specific nutrients. 23: RFID and RFID applications. Better than barcodes, they track retail and business inventory and send the data to a computer. 22: digital photography and videography -- radically changing how we capture images and distribute them. 21: the graphic user interface -- the brains behind today`s drag and drop computing. 20: social networking via the Internet. You didn`t know you had so many friends, did you, making visible the invisible social connections in our lives. 19: large-scale wind turbines -- capturing wind energy and turning it into electricity. 18: photovoltaic solar energy -- converting the sun`s energy directly to electricity. 17: micro-finance -- giving tiny loans to impoverished people, letting them create small businesses and pull themselves out of poverty. And number 16: media file compression -- from the iPod to the Zune, it`s changed the way we listen to music and watch video.

KANGAS: Media file compression is one of the latest advances in computer science. Over the last 30 years, the industry has revolutionized the way we work and play. NBR`s tech guru Scott Gurvey reports.

SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: A computer on every desktop? That`s standard today, almost as standard, an Internet connection in every pocket. But 30 years ago, information technology was quite different. Thirty years ago, most computers were huge. They filled entire rooms and were as costly as they were large. The microprocessor had been around for nearly a decade, but personal computers were mainly for hobbyists. Then a couple of Steves-- Jobs and Wozniak -- had begun selling a computer they called the Apple. The Apple II was announced in 1977. And in 1981, IBM jumped on the bandwagon with its personal computer. "PC Magazine`s" Lance Ulanoff says that was the big bang.