By directing the interest for the phenomenon of long waves, the paper considers, after the explication of the stance that technological innovation represents a key cause of the long term wave movement of a market-based economy, the inventions that enabled such movement and makes an attempt to recognize the spatial and time coordinates of their creation and wide market valorization. The beginning stance is that the market-based economy in its genesis has passed through five decade cycles that have been marked by the leading technology of its time and that is currently at the beginning of the sixth long cycle that is designed with the quality by the advances in the field of nanotechnology.