Admittedly, it’s not the wheel, fire or electricity. It can’t even carry the jock of air conditioning and the doesn’t-get-enough-credit Automatic Teller Machine.

But when you start making a list of greatest inventions, be sure to keep the back-up camera on your list.

Like the DVR, it is a relatively new on the we-got-to-have-it landscape, but it has made an immediate impact. Simply put, there is no going back.

The back-up camera, also referred to as the “Back That Thang Up” camera or the “Baby Got Back-Up” camera in honor of two of the great hip-hop songs of the 1990s, is now so ensconced in our driving habits that it might as well be as elementary as the seat belt.

Once it is in your consciousness, you’ll never turn around three times and check every mirror twice ever again. Oh sure, mirrors are still necessary, but the back up camera is now your go-to information center. How many mailboxes have been avoided by this simple invention? Care to guess how many misplaced shopping carts have not been sideswiped?

And what’s even better is that they come with different angles — bottom, normal and wide-angle. God bless whoever was in charge of improving the back-up camera but adding the yellow lines projected path based on how you have the steering wheel turned. That’s like inventing apple pie and then discovering how much better it is with ice cream.

This has all been bad news for our friends at the vehicle body shop, but they hear less lies than they used to when embarrassed customers would come in and try to say they has been side-swiped by a meteorite instead of the truth, such as “I wasn’t paying attention and hit the BBQ pit.”

Some are in the dashboard, some are in the rearview mirror, but all back up cameras have made annoyance of backing up almost a thing of the past.

To whoever invented this marvelous concept, I hope you got a little something else in your check.