A practical choice: Indoor plumbing systems, especially domestic water and sanitary sewer.
Personal preference: Air conditioning.
Yes, it’s a pun, and a pretty good one too!
I revived this thread after reading the “Road Kill” thread and realized, without refrigeration I’d have to go kill an animal everyday to have fresh food and I don’t have time for that. Turns out it was invented for the printing press and the by-product was frozen steaks in my freezer. How cool is that?
What would the world do without standardized shipping containers? They only date back to 1956.
I often wonder what The South would be like today if A/C hadn’t been invented. Would it have stayed more agrarian? Would it run at a slower pace, where siestas are taken on huge plantation-style porches?
I’m sure there wouldn’t be large urban centers… skyscrapers would be unbearable inside.
I would offer (having been there this past June) the same would be true in New York city in the summer. And when I went to Chicago over 4th of July weekend in 2019, the temperature there was higher than it was in Tallahassee where I live. The temp at the Cubs game we attended was 99 - thank Og I was able to get tickets in the shade.
Building would be built differently if we didn’t have AC. Just like buildings in the North were built differently when we didn’t have central heat. Humans adapt.
If you take greatest to mean most important, then probably vaccines. If greatest has some notion of novelty or difficulty to the invention itself, I’m not sure. I probably am not knowledgeable enough to even have a good guess, but I doubt I would still pick vaccines. CRISPR? Semiconductors?
Gotta be this. Nearly all (nonbiological) energy production/consumption today relies on principles that were first put into large scale use with the steam engine: Potential energy is transduced to heat energy, heat energy is transduced to kinetic energy, kinetic energy does work or is transduced into some other kind of energy.
Probably the most important invention in my lifetime has been Wikipedia.
The Clapper is, without a doubt, the pinnacle of human achievement in the last 500 years. Forget electricity, the internet, or sliced bread—nothing beats the sheer power of commanding your lights with the thunderous applause of one. Clap on; clap off. Amazing!
j/k
The steam engine was undoubtedly a groundbreaking invention, laying the foundation for modern industry. But when the railroad came along, it didn’t just build on that foundation—it transformed it entirely. The railroad was more than just a technological marvel; it was a force that redefined the world as people knew it. Economically, it opened up new markets, connected distant regions, and fueled the Industrial Revolution. Socially, it shrank the world, allowing ideas, cultures, and people to mix in ways previously unimaginable. Politically, the railroad became a symbol of progress and power, influencing national policies and even the outcomes of wars. In many ways, the railroad set the stage for the interconnected world we live in now, making it one of the most transformative inventions of the last 500 years—perhaps even the greatest.
While it’s too early to fully grasp AI’s impact, its potential is clear—it could become the most transformative force in history. AI’s ability to solve complex problems and revolutionize industries could surpass even the railroad and electricity in its power to reshape our world.
AI is already beginning to change industries like healthcare, finance, and transportation, and as it advances, its influence will only grow. It could solve challenges like curing diseases and combating climate change, while also pushing the boundaries of creativity and decision-making. Beyond this, AI has the potential to bring education and healthcare to remote corners of the world and force us to rethink ethics and governance.
Looking ahead, AI might be the invention that not only changes everything but redefines the very concept of change.
…or it could be the invention that destroys us, and every other advanced civilization in the Universe before it reaches interstellar capability. This may be the answer to the Fermi paradox.
Calculus.
The Diesel Engine.
The David Gilmour Guitar Solo.
David Gilmour - Comfortably Numb Live in Pompeii 2016 (youtube.com)
I find most guitar solos annoying (though not as bad as the ubiquitous drum solo in the '60s… I mean, Cream had an entire side of their Wheels of Fire album devoted to one).
But there’s something about Gilmour’s solo on Comfortably Numb…
.
I suppose I could try to stay on-topic by broadening that to say “Popular Music”, which would include guitars and bands and rock and roll.
As a traditionalist, I will go with the internal combustion engine, to address the question posed by this thread.
As a slighty odd dad of two kids (7 and 9) I am proud to say that “popular music” is very much on my playlist; my children love it. I “hate” it.
But… the “pop” music I claim to hate is all the classic rock, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Led Zep etc, so while I pretend to hate “pop music” I actually love it.
I will be sad when they realise I have been bullshitting them for years.
I was thinking about this the other day and I realized I had to pick the microprocessor.
Obviously, the transistor had to proceed it. OK, the diode had to proceed that. But it’s the incredible tininess of microprocessors that power our entire world. Every time I look at a smartphone I’m blown away as I am by no other invention. The world in your pocket.
I love the range of choices here, though. Evidence of how much and how much diversity it takes to make that world.
I’m torn between books and the telegraph.
Watched a YouTube video which claimed that the year Guttenberg invented his press, there were somewhere around 40,000 books in the world. The year after, there were a million - knowledge was suddenly available to the masses.
For the telegraph - it took weeks or months to communicate over any significant distance. Suddenly, you could send (generally short) messages across oceans in an instant (well, probably practically an hour if you count the time to go to the telegraph office and then have it delivered on the other end). As an orders of magnitude improvement in delivery time and no ability to calculate it, I’m guessing it dwarfs even the internet.
A thousand years hence, our descendants (if they exist) will look back on the people of this millennium as barbarous, for our obsession with turning other forms of energy into heat in order to convert them to what we want. It’s almost always much more efficient to do the conversion directly, without the heat step, and if we didn’t have the steam engine, we might have come up with some large-scale way of doing that instead.
I’d argue that, long before the steam engine, our forebears had come up with a large scale way of converting other forms of energy into what they wanted without going through the heat step. That was human labor. Want to plant, tend, harvest and process huge fields of crops so you can have a “civilization”; want to quarry, cut, transport and raise huge blocks of stone to build a stone circle/pyramid/temple/Colosseum/cathedral? Just rustle together a whole lotta friends and neighbors. Not enough of those willing to get the job done? Use slaves.
And just as, as you say, our ancestors may look back on us as barbarous for our method of large scale energy transduction, we (and I use that word optimistically) look back on our forebears in the same way for the same reason.
The OP asked about “Something that really changed the world at its time.” I’d say the steam engine changed a lot in its time, and either directly brought about or made possible every significant change since, including changing the climate of our planet. Now that’s a “great” invention!