What did Gregor Mendel invent?

Gregor Mendel became famous for his discovery of the basic principles of heredity. He performed his experiments on pea plants.

Gregor Mendel is often hailed as being the father of genetics. He was an Austrian monk who was born in 1822 and ran experiments on the plants in his garden. His experiments focused on the hereditary traits of pea plants and he came to the conclusion that specific traits were handed down to offspring from the parents. To be sure his results were accurate, Mendel ran his experiments for up to eight years and used tens of thousands of plants. He chose to run his experiments on pea plants because of their distinct varieties.