Are there any truly revolutionary inventions / discoveries?

Great Debates
21

…Actually, evidence now suggests that Peruvians were the first to have manned flight period, let alone via hot air baloons.

On a Peruvian desert plain between the Nazca and Inca valleys, there is an area about 37 miles long and 15 miles wild that forms perfectly straight lines in a bird pattern with perfectly straight lines. You cannot see these lines on the ground. That is why it took untill the 1930s to discover them, when aiplanes were more abundent. Considering how perfect it was, there was no way for them to be able to make something so perfect without being able to see it. In 1975, a scientest by the name of Woodman duplicated fabric found on the remains of a pre-Columbian Nazcan. The result? On November 28, the balloon took flight. (and yes, the Peruvians knew about the lines… it was on artifacts and things of the sort…)

I do not know the date, just that it was “centuries” before 1783… so in order to answer your question Martin, no its not complicated…

22

I’ve heard the theory about the Nazca lines being built with the help of balloons, but I’m not sure that this theory is very widely accepted, or is it? Even if they had the technology to build hot-air balloons, I doubt that it would have been a lot of help in actually making the pictures – that would still be mostly a matter of standard geometry techniques, first making a small-scale version of the picture and then finding a way to accurately map it onto the landscape. At most, the balloons could be used to verify the work. But it’s certainly an intriguing idea.

23

How about a term like individual achievement. I’m not sure that’s good enough either. But I think I understand what you are looking for. If we had a more definitive term for the lone crackpot working years ahead of his time, then we might stop confusing the very few times this actually occurs with those times where the invention is simply the state of the art.

24

this was the first thing that popped into my head when reading the OP. there were many people who were involved in the special theory of relativity. maxwell was already mentioned, but most of the ideas behind it belong to poincare, and einstein is the one who took the ideas and developed an elegant, axiomatic theory. in fact, there was an irish guy who sent a letter to a prominent scientific journal at the time, suggesting the results of the michelson-morley experiment might be because distances become shorter at higher velocities. he didn’t know his letter was published until years later, and neither did very many others, including lorentz, who said the same thing. but without the michelson-morley experiment, no one would have any reason to develop relativity. and i don’t know that the experiment would’ve been done by anyone else in a reasonable time frame then. so i think the fact that light’s velocity is independent of the motion of the reference frame is a truly revolutionary discovery.

to add, i think the quantum model must count as revolutionary. i’m not sure why something has to have one distinct inventor or discoverer to count here, so i’ll posit that there are plenty of experiments that were done around the time that indicated something was very strange, but the development of the model was done, considering how vastly different it painted the world, virtually overnight.

as for calculus, the ideas behind both integral and differential calculus go back at least as far as archimedes, who came up with the idea of using shapes of known area to measure the area of arbitrary shapes, and also developed a method for finding the tangent of a spiral.

so, to summarize my position, there have been many truly revolutionary ideas, the most revolutionary (in my opinion), at least in recent years, was the development of the quantum model. i don’t think an idea had to have been developed by one person shouting eureka! to be considered revolutionary.

25

There have been a few cases of revolutionary ideas that were “ahead of their time”. The theory of Plate Tectonics was as revolutionary as the theory of quantum mechanics, but Plate Tectonics was rejected and openly ridiculed for decades. It wasn’t until discovery of sea-floor spreading that geologists started taking the theory seriously.

26

Wasn’t there a similar story about the discovery of bacteria or viri that cause ulcers? The lone champion of the idea sort of tale?

27

What continually amazes me is the ‘duh’ factor; an invention or process that once made known causes people to slap their foreheads and remark on the ‘obviousness’ of the thing.

A case in point: I learned about bi-metal strips many years ago in high school and was told that the most common use for them was in thermostats. Made sense, but other than that, it was more of a curiosity than a ground breaking development. That is, until i read last year of a gentleman named Steven Phillips who had the bright idea of using a bi-metal strip for the mainspring in a watch. An accomplished watchmaker (see his fine timepieces Here) he assembled such a watch and without winding it, left it on a table. Four hours later, it started ticking. Now, immediately upon reading the article, i thought, “Genius,” but later on i began to wonder why nobody had thought of it before. Surely the properties of bi-metallic strips have been known for a very long time and it seems so ‘obvious’ that a mainspring would be a perfect item to take advantage of said properties. What it boils down to is not necessarily the time being right, but more an individual looking at the obvious in a different way. I can’t remember when or where, but i once heard this referred to as ‘looking sideways’ at a problem.

There are numerous examples of such minor things (to mention another, the quartz movement for accurate timekeeping or, in a more esoteric vein, the Atmos clock by Jaeger-Lecoultre that runs on minute fluctuations of atmospheric pressure) that seem to have been just begging to be invented. It just takes that special individual, regardless of the times, to see the obvious.

I admit that it seems rather strange that my examples so far have all been about timepieces, especially as i am not a horologist, nor do i own any expensive examples of the watchmaker’s art, these were just the ones that came readily to mind.

Too, there are those inventions that put people to scratching their heads and may be considered ‘ahead of their time’. If recollection serves, the laser, though big on the wow factor, didn’t have any immediate uses outside the lab. Of course time took care of that it’s hard to imagine a world without lasers today.

I don’t necessarily believe that, though it is inevitable that a discovery be made, there isn’t a huge impact dependent on when it is made. The most glaring example is nuclear energy; here’s a fine example of an idea that was ahead of its time and suffered nearly irreparable damage as a result. I won’t argue the pros and cons of nuclear power as they are not germane to the discussion, the point being that, hadn’t the whole nuclear energy debacle been foisted upon the public in the most high-handed manner, there may be more support for its development. As it is, too many people get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

The Sci-Fi/Fantasy sections of bookstores are rife with ‘alternate history’ novels predicated on such things as ‘what if x developed y before z did’. In reality, z always develops y and that is why the world is as it is. If x really did develop y, then the whole quantum mechanics thing kicks in and we’d be living on some ‘earth prime’ and everything would be exactly as it was supposed to be and we’d be reading alternate history books about what if z developed y before x did.

Don’t waste your time thinking about it, it just gets worse from here…

28

I’d say “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter! / You got your peanut butter on my chocolate!” certainly qualifies.

29

Ramanujan: as I said, I agree that ‘revolutionary’ is not really the word I was looking for. ‘Ahead of its time’ comes close, except that such things as penicillin, the hot-air balloon and the use of bi-metal strips for watch springs could be argued to have been ‘behind their time’: there seems to be no reason why they could not have been discovered / invented earlier.

‘Predictable’ maybe? That’s not quite it either. There is no obvious reason why the second half of the 19th century was the right time for the discovery of evolution through natural selection, but the fact that Wallace came up with the same thing at the same time suggests that there was something ‘in the air’, so to speak. Even without both Darwin and Wallace, speculation about Lamarck’s wrong but promising ideas would eventually have lead to the truth.

I’m not sure that I agree that other than Michelson and Morley, nobody else would have done the same experiment around that time. Once the idea of light as a stream of particles was there, and the technology to measure its speed, would it not have been relatively obvious to try and measure that speed relative to the movement of the earth?

WereOtter: if the theory of Plate Tectonics was not taken seriously until evidence became available, and once that evidence was available the theory was quickly accepted, does that not strengthen my point? Once the time was ripe for it, the concept would have been discovered anyway. Before that time, it could not be more than a crackpot hypothesis.

Bryan: huh? Are you talking about the chance discovery of some breakfast delicacy unknown to this European?

30

Chocolate and peanut butter. mmmmmm

31

Reese’s peanut butter cups are small cupcake-like candies made up of a highly sweetened preanut butter coated in chocolate. In the 1970s there was a fairly relentless ad campaign showing two people, one eating chocolate and one eating peanut butter (!, but I have to admit I’ve done the same at times) bumping into each other and voicing the mutual accusations I cited earlier, then discovering that the combined taste is extra yummy.

32

Chocolate and peanut butter. mmmmmm

sorry

33

In my opinion, an discovery or invention can be regarded revolutionary by someone if it’s the first time he hears of it. For example, America was discovered before Columbus did, but we know of Columbus first, therefore he was the revolutionary one, because he renewed the picture we had of the world. It’s irrelevant if someone else discovers it before or afterwards, it’s revolutionary to us the moment we know it. If someone else gets it, we can say, ‘oh, you discovered it, too?’ but it wouldn’t be revolutionary anymore.
Secondary, it’s important if its new or an improvement. If it’s an improvement, we call it such. At least we should, the advertising companies don’t. That means, when the basics of the computer were invented, it was revolutionary. Making it smaller is an improvement which can be owed to other revolutions in other areas affecting the production mechanism, but is not revolutionary in itself. The next really revolutionary step in this example would be the invention of quantum computers.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the term ‘ahead of it’s time’ is somewhat misleading, because it seems to suggest that there was not enough information to invent it so it is miraculous that someone invented it at all before the time was ripe. Although, if used in the sense ‘there was enough information, but the people were to stupid/busy to find out’ it would make sense.

34

Well said.

‘Too stupid’ is a bit harsh, but otherwise that is indeed what I meant.

Columbus is another interesting case. As far as I am aware, nobody else was seriously considering going westward to Asia, so maybe without Columbus, it may have taken another century or so for the Europeans to discover the New World. If that is so, then the discovery was indeed revolutionary in every sense of the word.

35

[Nitpick]
The Altair is not the first hobbyist computer, there’s one predated it, based on the i8008.[/Nitpick]

36

That’s because pistols require advances in metallurgy that the West happened to made first.

You see, discoveries and inventions depend largely on luck. For example, Flemming’s discovery of penicillin or 3M’s invention of Post-It™ notes.

Of course, Flemming was very observant and had the curiosity of a scientist, since it is very likely that the same thing had been observed before.

37

It seems very common that several inventors are working on the same thing at the same time, each trying to produce the invention ahead of the other(the radio - Marconi and Tessla)

The notable exception is Tom Edison.

Edison was working on things that no one else was. The light bulb, motion pictures, phonograph, etc.

Edison truely invented things way ahead of anyone else and on things that no one else was really trying very hard at. Not only that , but the sheer volume of unique inventions that only he produced, and the huge change it made in all societies of the world - e.g light bulb.

38

Ahead of its time: means that the world is not ready for it, like the guy that invented silicon in the 1800’s, which was totally useless for a hundred years.

Or roller blades inline roller skates, invented long before anybody wanted them, and the inventor did not get rich from an idea that was hugely popular and sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth eventually.

39

The other problem with asking about “revolutionary” inventions is that some smart-arse always says “The wheel. That’s really revolutionary, isn’t it? Heh, heh…”

40

Ah, I didn’t know that. I thought that around that time, Chinese metallurgy was ahead of the West.

Those are certainly valid examples, but I wonder if such stories are not the exception rather than the rule, and stand out exactly because of their being exceptional.

Certainly. In fact, at the time when he made his discovery he was actually looking for things that could be used as antibacterial medicine. He was growing bacteria cultures as part of that research, and while he was doing so he discovered that one of his Petri dishes had been contaminated with mold and the mold had killed the staph bacteria on the dish.

As I noted in an earlier post, Tyndall had remarked on the same thing some 50 years earlier, but had not realised the medicinal applications of the fact. Fleming did, but even then it took another ten years for the realisation to spread through the medical community.