To date, what do you think is the greatest invention or discovery and why?
To date, what do you think is the greatest invention or discovery and why?
Mine is the computer. I continue to be amazed at what we can do with them.
The plow. It allowed early river valley peoples to generate semi-reliable food surpluses, and those food surpluses triggered everything that came after. I can't take credit for this argument, I first encountered it in this episode from the first season of Connections.
I'm always blown away by how discoveries like antibiotics changed our lives. And writing too. Mind blowing that we can record, discern, and communicate so much information from marks on a surface
Writing, it allowed for knowledge to travel across vast distances. And for that knowledge to remain available and accurate for far longer than any oral tradition would be capable of.
It's pretty damn hard to pick just one thing, so my best-of list
There's really basic foundational things like the wheel, cutting tools, fire (if we want to count it as an invention,) string/rope/cordage, writing, clothing, cooking, agriculture, metalworking, etc. the sort of things that are absolutely basic building blocks of civilization.
Moving a few milenia up, and in no particular order,
the Haber Process to synthesize ammonia, which allowed for the creation of synthetic fertilizers. If you've eaten any commercially grown food in the last century, you probably owe it to the Haber Process.
Antibiotics are another big one, as are vaccines.
Vaucason's lathe arguably laid the foundation for a whole lot of fabrication techniques that led to the industrial revolution
Refrigeration
Steam engines and later internal combustion engines
Clocks
Compasses
Printing press
The telephone
Airplanes
Computers and the internet
Cameras
This was the topic of discussion between an historian, a mathematician and a mystic.
The historian said, "writing. The ability to put words on paper to be communicated to people who never even met the 'speaker', is the single greatest achievement of mankind."
The mathematician said, "no, numbers. The ability to express and develop truly abstract concepts, which in turn leads to Incredible real applications. Numbers are the single greatest invention of mankind."
The mystic said, "the Thermos flask."
"The Thermos flask?"
"The Thermos flask. It keeps hot drinks hot in the winter, and cold drinks cold in the summer. But think - that little flask - how does it know?"
In Electronics world? Bipolar junction Transistors. Easily.
This led into having portable devices we have today.
Back then people used vacuum tubes for switching and amplification; of which were very expensive to run (used a lot of power when idle, while having a very short lifespan of less than 48 hrs).
I mean, vacuum tubes where phenomenal when they came, allowed first long distance calls in 1915.
Look at my phone now, fits on my hands, and has billions of transistors!
Post script: lately I've been thinking, what if we remove cell towers as middle men? Because nowadays privacy is somewhat dead. People have been using radio frequency for walkie-talkies even before 1st generation communication (1G) was a thing.
This video enlightened my day 😊
It's just a matter of time now
Soap easily. God the lives it saved and continues to save easily makes it the best invention imo
The atomic theory of matter, because It is so foundational to the technology of the modern world. It allowed the development of modern chemistry, and with it pharmaceuticals, chemical engineering (e.g. the Haber-Bosch process), electronics/semiconductors, genomics, medical science, and more. It's been an enormous force-multiplier to improve technologies we already had by providing prospective insight into how they work, so we can do better than iterative trial and error. Virtually everything that we touch or use in a day, from coffee to clothing to computers, was enabled or improved through knowledge of the system of atomic elements.
Electricity specifically generating/controlling it.
For the entirety of human existence and before humans even existed, electricity shaped our world and even kicked off the "spark" that allowed dna to propagate and exist from ~2billion years ago until today. But literally only ~200years ago, were we finally able to understand and create it.
Probably the steam engine as far as actual innovation and all but my answer is air conditioning
Anesthetics. Yeah, vaccines are cool, but given the choice of a world without vaccines and a world without anesthetic I'm ditching vaccines every time.
Gotta be vaccines for me.
Didn't see it in the thread, but aqueduct are pretty fire. They allowed empires to grow large and far away from a source of drinking water. Also improved sanitation allowing people to live longer and healthier.
The bicycle.
Hear me out:
Before the invention of the bicycle, the vast majority of the population had no means of personal transport other than their feet, and anything further away than the nearest market might as well have been in China, cause neither a farmer nor a worker with a family can just take more than a day off.
This meant that almost no one ever travelled further than 30km from their home.
With the bicycle, the world that most of humanity got to experience became 20x bigger.
People met other people further away, experienced new ideas, could travel outside of the immediate influence of their landlord or master, could marry someone who isn't a cousin...No other invention ever before opened up the world of the average person quite like this one.
The bicycle created demand to build a dense network of smooth roads even in the countryside, brought workers to factories, and gave women more freedom. It was one of the main factors that pushed the industrial revolution.
Language. The ability to communicate advanced concepts is what has enabled us invent/discover a lot of things, including the computer.
Printing Press
I have a list of things that transcend invention and are actually some of humans greatest achievements:
- The bicycle
- The piano
- The internet
- Saturn V
Photography! I'm not even into it, but when I look at an old picture it always amazes me we're able to freeze moments in time.
At first I thought you were talking about dating lmao
Hmm I definitely agree that computers, and especially smartphones, are pretty damn amazing inventions.
But I agree with another poster when it comes to the greatest invention. When we invented the printing press, it allowed our species to develop much quicker because we were able to share information/education much better.
It's hard to choose, but I would say the Haber-Bosch process for ammonia production. It's a miracle of chemistry that almost single-handedly vaporized the population doomers. As much as half of the nitrogen in your body comes from Haber-process-derived synthetic fertilizer!
Soap
Cordage/string. Way more useful than fire and arguably predates it.
Screw the running water and antibiotics. I don't need no machinery or amenities, give me cheese!
Computers are cool though
I don't know if this counts, but I'd say the Enlightenment. It was a discovery in that we discovered a new way to interpret the world.
I think there is kind of a glass ceiling when you talk about fire, plumbing, electricity and so on. Each one was a necessary stepping stone to get us where we are, but without any one of them, we wouldn't be here.
The Enlightenment gave us a brand new sense of autonomy as a species, which in turn has given us a greater amount of control over "Destiny."
I'm not sure about the greatest invention but the second greatest is sliced bread!
The breeding of semi-dwarf, disease-resistant wheat, Sonora 63, Sonora 64, Lerma Rojo 64, Mayo 64 and Norlin 10.
BILLIONS of lives were saved in Mexico, India & Pakistan.
[ Norman Borlaug
Not the just important invention, but definitely the best invention: plumbing.
Y'all try going a week without running water and wiping with leaves or newspaper and you'll quickly see that while other things are definitely important, plumbing is the best to have
Written language. It lets us speak to people across time.
The Tamagotchi - for obvious reasons.
I believe argiculture and trade were massive parts of history
The ability to shape steel. Sounds basic but blacksmiths make the tools for everything else.
Electricity
Microwave. Being able to heat up a hot pocket in just minutes is legendary.
Electricity
Literature, Writing, Written Word. If we couldn't document and share ideas, we'd be nowhere.
The printing press. It allowed us for the first time to share knowledge at a scale we only dreamed of.
Medicine. Would be right fucked without it
The wheel and the derivatives of the circular shape in general; they powered all human innovations from abstract mathematics to real life applications and everything in between.
Spray cheese
Central air
Irrigation. But Iron Working and Celestial Navigation are good shouts too.
Surely it has to the FRIDGE?
The dishwasher. Washing up is not fun, especially in summer.
The time machine.
Writing or agriculture. Both were incredibly important in developing society.
Civ players:
My time to shine!
I'll say the electrical power grid. I can think of nothing else that separates modern life from ancient times in such a clear cut way and that the loss of would be insurmountable.
Fire