How many unique things have humans made?

Factual Questions
21

I doubt it.

an estimated 117 billion humans have lived. Two trillion would mean that each person would invent 17 unique things, on average. And since until fairly recently the majority of people died in infancy, you would need at least double that for each person that reached adulthood.

Can you name 34 unique things that you invented?

I’d like to suggest a definition which the OP may accept or reject as they wish. A thing is unique if it was patented, or if it could have been patented, had current laws existed at the time.

The number of patents granted each year since patents began is a matter of record. It could be plotted on a graph, and then extrapolate the graph backwards, and get a reasonable estimate for the number of inventions per year before that.

22

Are the 2010 Chevy Corvette Grand Sport convertible and the ZR1 coupe separate things? How much variation is needed to distinguish unique items?

23

Link to US patent data since 1790:

US Patents granted, some to foreign residents
1790 3
1840 458
1890 25,310
1940 42,237
1990 90,365
2020 325,066

I count 10,836,573 patents, 1790-2020 in the US. This is a severe underestimate, since books are not patented, lots of manufactured goods aren’t patented, and patent activity has a wobbly and growing link with objects created. We’re going to need a bigger spaceship.

24

Photographs (displayed in a museum or the walls of my house) would measure in the billions; quite capable of being mass produced.

25

Excellent username/post combo (obviously picked for the reference, but still!)

26

OK.

This is a Pez dispenser, in the shape of the popular Pokemon character Pikachu.

The two in the picture are identical. They cannot be easily distinguished from one another. I assume they count as one thing.

But different styles of Pikachu Pez dispensers were made.

Is “Pikachu Pez dispenser” one thing, or is “laughing Pikachu Pez dispenser” one thing, separate from “winking Pikachu Pez dispenser” as a different thing?

Here are several clearly different Batman Pez dispensers.

Do we count these as six things, reflecting the identifiable styles, or as one thing?

How granular are the divisions we will accept? Because there are lots and lots of these:

A dedicated collector can distinguish between a Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser manufactured in Austria in 1984 from a Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser manufactured in 1985 in Hungary. The design and the molds are the same and the two objects appear identical at a glance, but the serial numbers on the bottoms will be different and the collector will want to have one of each. Are those two different things?

I’m not trying to be annoying or difficult or persnickety; I agree that this an interesting thought experiment, and it’s fun trying to draw reasonable boundaries in order to make the question at least vaguely answerable while preventing oneself from disappearing down endless ratholes. It’s just that simply asking the question invites more questions, the answers to which invite even further questions. That’s the fun part, for me anyway.

27

Some more interesting points. As people have suggested, there are a few definitions we could use to define a unique “thing”, some that are probably more strict then others:

  1. It’s a unique thing if it can be patented.
  2. It’s a unique thing if someone selling the thing would count them as the same thing (e.g. each slight variation of a 2005 Toyota Camry wouldn’t count as a separate thing).
  3. It’s a unique thing if a collector could differentiate it from other things.
    Whilst there is probably some ambiguousness in each definition, these definitions seem slightly more answerable. Honestly, I really want to know the answer to number 3, but it’s probably the hardest one to answer!
28

Thanks! I wondered if anyone would pick up on that :joy:

29

Do the first edition, later reprints, the hardback, and paperback versions of a book count as separate things? What about books that change their title for UK and USA publication? Is the Philosopher’s stone the same as the Sorcerer’s Stone?

I own 2 copies of ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’. One of them has swear words censored and a few other edits that were required for original publication. The other is a ‘Directors Cut’ version that reverts back to what Orwell wanted to publish. Are they 2 items?

Just taking books into account, it gets silly very quickly. I hope the alien museum has lots of Billy Bookcases from ikea.

30

This whole inquiry sounds like a Borges story.

31

Exactly.

With coordination and relative clauses you can make sentences that never end. You’ll never encounter one in the wild, but theoretically, they’re possible.

32

On thinking about my criterion some more… You probably wouldn’t ever see a car dealer charging different prices for two cars that are identical in all ways except color. However… when I bought the mouse I use on my work computer, Staples had the exact same model in two different colors, except the pink one was a dollar cheaper than the black one. So in that case, the seller clearly did consider them to be two different products.

33

There are infinite numbers. Each number has a different name. Thus, there are infinite words. Just keep counting, boring as it may be.
But as sentences are not physical things, never mind.

34

AFAIK, every entity that issues paper/plastic currency includes some sort of serial number, different on each single bill. So, how many dollars/euros/yen/marks/whatever have been issued in total? Your aliens are going to have to gather up every single bit of paper money ever printed.

And, oh man!, think of all the lottery and raffle tickets that have been created!

35

I yield on the math of sets, which was my weak point 50 years ago and hasn’t gotten better with age.

OTOH, Books I know. And I can jump all over Trazyn number 3.

I collect Gnome Press books, the seminal small-press science fiction publisher. It only published 86 titles but they were by Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and their fellow Big Names, for some reason including Robert E. Howard.

To have a complete collection you need to have more than the 86 titles. Gnome put out over 70 variants. (More keep being found.) To have a complete Foundation trilogy you need nine books.

And then there’s I, Robot, which Gnome released in 1950. The next five years alone saw a cheap American knockoff, American and English book club editions, and hardbacks in England, Germany, Sweden, and Spain, plus a German trade paperback. Then, finally in 1956, a publisher thought that a paperback might be a good idea. Ever since then, hundreds of editions have been published in every format and a million languages. Shoot me before I ever become an Asimov completist.

129,864,880, the number Google put out in 2010, is the most bullshit exact number in human history. (Does that make it unique?) It’s not even the number they use in their own account of how they got 129,864,880. “Counting only things that are printed and bound, we arrive at about 146 million.” Some of the books they count include variants. Few, if any, of the variants I collect in Gnome would be thought of as separate by them. But you can’t have it both ways.

2010 was also before the flood of self-published ebooks that alone hit several million a year just in English. Are they books? Lots of individual titles are only as long as chapters in ordinary books, but Amazon lists them separately.

The world is full of fuzzy gray lines. You don’t want to wade in that swamp and sort the muck on the bottom.

36

So this Vsauce video (3079) How Many Photos Have Been Taken? - YouTube mentions an estimation of 3.5 trillion photos ever taken (and that was in 2012, presumably there are far, far more now). So its definitely right to say that if my alien archivist was to collect every unique thing humanity has ever made (every photo, note, stone tool, painting etc), the number would soon rise to the hundreds of trillions, quadrillions or maybe higher.

Even sticking to mass-produced things (which should be a much lower number of things to collect, as you wouldn’t need every copy of the Lord of the Rings, just one), is still hard to estimate. As Exapno_Mapcase demonstrates with their books, the size of the collection varies greatly depending on whether you include every edition, language etc. Or like Cervaise said, would you include one pez dispenser as the representative of all pez dispensers, or would a pikachu pez dispenser be its own thing? What about different variant pikachus? It’s all arbitrary based on how specific you’re being.

Is there any variant of this question that is even remotely answerable? Or anyway to get even a very rough estimate? I feel like there must be someway of getting a working definition of a “unique thing” is, one that is somewhat arbitrary but is consistent, that could be applied to all manner of items, and from that get a very rough estimate (what order of magnitude of number anyway, an estimate besides “Lots”). But at the moment I’m a bit stumped.

37

Dang. The rules keep changing. I can’t keep up.

38

It’s beginning to sound like we’re not discussing an alien archivist, but rather an alien collector. Brrrr.

Proposal:

3a. It’s a unique thing if it’s listed as a discrete object in a catalog, or would be if the catalog existed. Our alien has access to a universal AI model. It abstracts from condition.

So if Pez collector catalogs distinguish between different Batman dispensers, then our alien will need one of each. If there’s a classified ad that distinguishes between I Robot American editions in 1953 and 1954, then our alien will need one of each. If there’s no classified ad that distinguishes between the 6th and 7th printing of the 1953 edition, then one copy will cover both of them.

Used car ads routinely list the color of the car, so by this criteria our alien will need one example of every color. To narrow that down we’ll want to modify 3a in ad hoc ways. For example, maybe the alien can only collect something if they leave at least one other copy behind for the earthlings.

39

Three mass-produced everyday items that have significant multiples recognised both by collectors, who might be looking at otherwise inconsequential variations [as the Pez dispensers were] and more general variation that affects or directs their use in daily life, that need to be added to whatever total emerges.

  1. Postage stamps - estimates online of 500,000+ varieties. Some of these are only known by a single example, so the aliens might need to employ some persuasion [or perhaps a brain-control parasite] to let their current owner part with them. In addition to the printed varieties, collectors will also distinguish their condition, whether used or mint, whether in singles, pairs, block or sheet and so on.

  2. Music - Discogs - as the main global listing of music in its collectable forms - claims 16 million distinct pieces. While a lot of it is different formats and local releases of the same album, there is a lot of distinguishing by minor collectable variations like pressing codes or cover art.

  3. Bottles and containers - much more variation than you’d imagine. Constantly changing labelling regulations, often varying by state or year, tweaking of package art, production marking and codes. Also the endless search for cheaper packaging means the same cereal box might be constructed in numerous different ways. No sense of what numbers that would be but probably once again in the majillions.

40

Does each of the different roles Majillion played on Star Trek count as a distinct thing?