• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Inventions that have changed human existence

gmanontario said:
William Lyman

Invented and patented the can opener. What else is more important? :D
Click to expand...
Interestingly, this occurred about 12 years AFTER the canning process was invented. Prior to that, I think they used rocks...or just left it in the can to rot until it exploded.
 
I'll bet the most important inventions were probably in this order:

1) Tools - spear, chipped stone knife, hoe, etc.
2) Agriculture
3) Written language (symbols were mentioned, but I mean an organized alphabet)
4) Math (specialized use of symbols)

Without 1 & 2 we'd still be digging for grubs with our fingers. Without 3, we wouldn't have laws to form large societies, so we'd still be at the "clan" or "tribe" level; and without 4, most of the other inventions mentioned above wouldn't exist. :)
 
Re OP: A reasonable sewerage system (various inventors at various times).

Before sewerage, in most civilisations, disease was rampant, and they were struggling to move forward in more than small increments. Afterwards, people became healthier, lived longer and more productive lives, had more offspring surviving, did more "stuff" and things moved forward in bigger jumps.

The ancient Egyptian towns had sewerage of sorts, as did some South American cultures. The Romans had the first lavatory as we know it. I'm sure many people can point to good examples of this through time.
 
Freakshow said:

Refrigeration (think of preserving food here, not just being comfortable with AC): Various (Many people claim it).
Click to expand...

And preserving blood and certain medicines!

Ah, but you all missed the most important one. Eyeglasses - thus allowing people over 40 to rule the world. MWHAHAHAHAHA
 
Darat said:
Electric motor
Click to expand...

Yes, let's hear it for poor old Nikola Tesla. AC power would have come along eventually, but he made it happen neatly and efficiently. (Tesla also had priority in inventing radio. He once said, "Marconi is a fine fellow. He's using twelve of my patents." )

Tesla came closer to being an honest-to-pete mad genius than anybody I know of -- not very close, of course, but he put on a good show. It's too bad that he loved to showboat so much, and he lacked some vital training, but what a guy all the same!
 
nimzov said:
Reading glasses by Salvino D'Armate.


and chocolate.

nimzo
Click to expand...

Chocolate wasn't invented. It is one of the great discoveries, however.

As one of the bifocal brigade, I have to agree with the reading glasses as right up there with air-conditioning.
 
Snooze alarm!

It might not belong in this thread, but I've always wanted to know who invented the

snooze alarm?

perhaps there should be a thread for the trivial invention we'd least want to do without?!
 
snooze alarm

A friend where I worked before I retired at 55, did not understand the need for a snooze alarm. She says you should just get out of bed and get it over with. :rolleyes:

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Paulhoff said:
snooze alarm

A friend where I worked before I retired at 55, did not understand the need for a snooze alarm. She says you should just get out of bed and get it over with. :rolleyes:

Paul

:) :) :)
Click to expand...

Sounds like they never had a bad hangover :bricks:

not that I've had one of those in a long time! :)
 
There are lots of other inventions people don't think about which were, at the time, quite transformative. For example, powdered milk was actually an incredibly important invention. It's a non-trivial problem to dehydrate milk without carmelizing it (too much heat) or having it spoil (too slow). And back when a lot of people depended on milk as a nutritional source of calcium, particularly for children, powdered milk suddenly meant you didn't need to worry about freshness. Major implications for urbanization in the pre-refrigeration days.

Other inventions are also amazingly important and still in use continually, but their inventors are forgotten and they've become so ubiquitous nobody even thinks about it. For example, the screw: anybody actually know the history of it? I don't, but I know it's a lot more recent than the nail, and it's a major improvement. Actually, come to think of it, the nail was a pretty important invention too. Made construction a lot easier.

Or what about the plow, or the loom? How's that for transformative inventions?
 
Re: Snooze alarm!

NoviceCrackPot said:
perhaps there should be a thread for the trivial invention we'd least want to do without?!
Click to expand...

I can't decide if this is trivial or not - soap.

I once rode a tram from a beach in the Netherlands and at that point I thought long and hard about the usefulness of soap. From the necessity of surgeons washing up to the simple pleasure of washing up after working in the garden or in the garage.

Wait, the soap story just reminded me of another important invention - topless beaches. Waycool.
 
Beanbag said:
Funny how everyone forgets the vacuum tube when it comes to major developments in electronics. Almost EVERY major analog circuit was developed first with vacuum tubes before they were translated to solid-state devices.

What I like about vacuum tubes is that they can be produced using relatively low-tech equipment (a vacuum pump and hand tools). If any end-of-the-world scenarios played out, leaving mankind with a lower technology capability, then vacuum tubes would be produced long before the transistor. There are examples I've read about early radio amateurs making their own tubes using filaments from light bulbs, glass tubes, rubber stoppers, and sealing wax.

You could make the case that the light bulb is more important, because vacuum tubes grew out of research into some strange phenominon observed in the early light bulbs.

Beanbag
Click to expand...


Ooh! I am guilty of forgetting the vacuum tube.

However it ties in nicely with my suggestion of the electric guitar. Overdriven tubes are irreplacable for tone in a good distorted guitar tone...:D
 
Soap!

Ladewig said:
I can't decide if this is trivial or not - soap.

I once rode a tram from a beach in the Netherlands and at that point I thought long and hard about the usefulness of soap. From the necessity of surgeons washing up to the simple pleasure of washing up after working in the garden or in the garage.
Click to expand...
The invention of a way to cheaply produce SOAP was anything but trivial.

I, personally, consider it to have had more of a profound effect on society than any other invention of the 2nd Millennium. And that's with gunpowder and penicillin taken into account.

It happened in Paris in 1791. Nicholas LeBlanc invented a way to make sodium carbonate out of ordinary sodium chloride (table salt). It was sodium carbonate, also known as "washing soda" or "soda ash", that was the most expensive component of soap production prior to that time. Before LeBlanc, soap was a luxury novelty. After LeBlanc, everybody could afford soap.

The difference that widely-available soap made in ones chance of surviving to adolescence, due to the vastly improved sanitary conditions it allowed (not to mention its action as a minor disinfectant) was astounding. The all-encompassing lifestyle change that came with soap was so profound that unless you're living in a 4th-world country as you read this, you probably can't even imagine life without it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom