Tampons.
Doh!
Teach me to post before reading more than three of the responses. Oh well, It’s still the most important invention.
Well if you don’t count donuts…
Hmm, donuts.
lighters (cough, cough, hack…)
The remote control.
Salad Shooter
Doughnuts (But only the chocolate covered kind…Mmmm…Chocolate covered doughnuts…)
I really don’t think that the invention of the printing press in the middle of the 15th Century affected the lives of ordinary people all that much. The Gutenberg press was a hand powered, low production affair. The majority of people remained illiterate for a couple of centuries after that. With the invention of the modern presses powered by steam and later by electricity produced by dyanamos powered by steam, the printed word was at last cheap enough to begin to affect the lives of the masses.
Production of goods, which had been almost flat for centuries, practically since the fall of Rome, exploded within a couple of decades of the invention of the Watt engine. That was a mere two centuries ago.
The thermos.
Why?
In the summer, it keeps my juice cold, and in the winter it keeps my coffee hot.
Isn’t that what a thermos is supposed to do? Keep hot things hot, and cold things cold?
Yes, but how does it know?
I love old jokes.
I can see your point(s), but am now wondering what effect the proliferation of knowledge via the printed word had on industry in general and the Watt engine in particular.
Maybe the original question is too exclusive? I’m starting to think that each important “invention” is just a significant modification of an earlier invention…and that I need to study quite a bit more history.
Guns and antibiotics are probably not the most important inventions/discoveries, but they’re up there with the rest.
Funny, nobody has said religion.
There was a religous leader much more influential than Jesus…think about it.
The Pill
Number Six wrote
I suspect you may be referring to the book “The 100 : A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History” by Michael H. Hart. It’s one of my favorites.
Minor correction: In it, Muhammad is ranked #1, Jesus #3, and Ts’ai Lun #7.
Well, if you’re playing Civ II it’s the one imaginatively called “Invention” that bridges you into the modern age. Seriously though, I would say the transistor. Computers have been around a long time, but transistors made them practical for widespread use. The next big invention may be carbon nanotube manufacturing, but we’ll see. Nanotubes have the potential to provide everything from tiny, powerful computers to huge but lightweight and strong building materials.
Originally posted by osweetman
Originally posted by even sven
:D:D:D:D
The keeper and Exedrin Migraine.
And Roundup.
The Telephone.
Instantaneous international communication revolutionised the world, and caused all cultures to sit up and take notice of the rest of the world. It led to television, radio, the internet…
Actually, radio may have been before telephones. Not sure.
In fact they use different principles, but anyhoo…
At this site, http://www.edge.org/documents/Invention.html#Blakemore, there is a post which says it better than I:
“For me, the steam engine was the most important invention in the past two thousand years. The steam engine freed man and beast from physical labor. No other invention had so many different and versatile uses. Man could cut down entire forests to feed sawmills to build cities, quarry stone, propel trains and ships to make the world a smaller place, power factories, and generate electricity. Agrarian society was over and industrialism reigned. Most importantly, the steam engine created more leisure time for mankind. No longer was leisure a pastime for the idle rich. The pursuit of leisure and the changes it created in society far outstripped the first 18 centuries. Without the steam engine, our society would be radically different from today.”
I concur with galen on the importance of the steam engine.
However, I’m going to go wayyyyyy back to the very first time a rock was shaped into a tool in order to do a task more efficiently.
