It's impossible to justify something as the "greatest". There have been many great inventions that have had huge social (as mentioned, the Pill), economic (nuclear power, etc) and all great inventions seem to affect many categories.
However, none of that matters, only
A canned cheeseburger? Really?
awesome.
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Anti-biotics (no more amputations from minor infections, etc)
Easy contraception (fewer stupid babies, more educated womens)
Computers (not transistors; vacuum tubes or even purely mechanical machines can be Turing complete, which in my mind is the truly important part)
Satellites (rocketry let us bomb things from a distance, satellites greatly facilitate communication and weather monitoring)
Aircraft (smaller world and all that)
Trucks? (I don't know if automobiles were invented before the 20th century or not, but relatively low cost, rugged and powerful machines have made just about everything easier)
Plastics (lighter and cheaper then the next best thing)
Internet (so we can have these discussions)
Magnetic data storage (because punch cards really suck)
There are so many more, hard to come up with a single one especially since we're being so broad here.
1 - There's no singular plastic. Like most things plastics have been gradually invented and unlike say antibiotics, the integrated circuit or the LCD screen you can't point to one thing easily
2 - If you were to point to one thing, it would be the first plastic, celluloid. Celluloid was invented in 1855.
Interstate highways/freeways/motorways/autobahn are pretty good too. Though I guess that's not really invention so much as a large engineering project.
Instead of having to look for your parent's nudie magazines, you can just simply google boobs. I'm pretty sure 99.9% of all teenage boys were thankful for this.
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Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
It might help if for the purposes of this thread, an invention means an object or construct in its finished, usable form. Otherwise, we sit here arguing over and over which basic enabling technology is more important, walking the line between discovery and specific application.
Transistors and plastics are great, but you don't USE either. Neither affect our lives directly. It's only through the things made of plastic and transistors that our lives change. Otherwise, they're just laboratory curiosities.
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It might help if for the purposes of this thread, an invention means an object or construct in its finished, usable form. Otherwise, we sit here arguing over and over which basic enabling technology is more important, walking the line between discovery and specific application.
Transistors and plastics are great, but you don't USE either. Neither affect our lives directly. It's only through the things made of plastic and transistors that our lives change. Otherwise, they're just laboratory curiosities.
That really brings us back to, in consumer terms, The Pill and the personal computer.
EDIT: Of course the PC is really my proxy for The (modern) Internet, with the argument being that The Pill is still largely a beneficiary to the first world and was checked by the rise of HIV. Though if we wanted to go down that path, the latex condom is pretty god damn important for it's global applicability.
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
Sewer systems were instrumental in that too though. The elimination of cholera in Britain was very much associated with an effective sewer system designed to dump the water out downriver from the city.
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
140,000 where? Cholera is rampant anywhere you can't buy a legit copy of Panic! At the Disco's latest album. 140K strikes me as an underestimation...
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
140,000 where? Cholera is rampant anywhere you can't buy a legit copy of Panic! At the Disco's latest album. 140K strikes me as an underestimation...
Isn't a lot of the annoyance at Mugabe lately been because Zimbabwe is so fucked up that the cholera epidemic is spilling over the borders into their country's and now it's neighbours are pissed at it just for that?
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
Sewer systems were instrumental in that too though. The elimination of cholera in Britain was very much associated with an effective sewer system designed to dump the water out downriver from the city.
Water treatment plants are much older then the 20th century
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
Sewer systems were instrumental in that too though. The elimination of cholera in Britain was very much associated with an effective sewer system designed to dump the water out downriver from the city.
Water treatment plants are much older then the 20th century
What's I'm saying though is that the water treatment is not the operative point. It's also sensible management of waste water.
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
Yeah, it really was one of the most important public health innovations ever. The fact that many people never give it any thought made me pick it over antibiotics.
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
Sewer systems were instrumental in that too though. The elimination of cholera in Britain was very much associated with an effective sewer system designed to dump the water out downriver from the city.
Water treatment plants are much older then the 20th century
What's I'm saying though is that the water treatment is not the operative point. It's also sensible management of waste water.
The Romans were pretty good at both of those things. They were masterful civil planners considering their technology level.
Well it's entirely possible genetically engineered biological weapons or nuclear weapons will end mankind at some point, and if either of those events happen then the respective cause will have been the most important invention in mankind's history - both from the 20th century
It should be possible to roughly calculate what new technology or assemblage of different technologies actually increased global welfare and utility the most. If not plastics, I'm thinking something of agricultural importance - something that generally increases the marginal output in food production would be fundamental to improvements elsewhere in society.
It should be possible to roughly calculate what new technology or assemblage of different technologies actually increased global welfare and utility the most. If not plastics, I'm thinking something of agricultural importance - something that generally increases the marginal output in food production would be fundamental to improvements elsewhere in society.
Well if we are going by that criteria, I don't see how anyone could argue against windshield wipers.
It should be possible to roughly calculate what new technology or assemblage of different technologies actually increased global welfare and utility the most. If not plastics, I'm thinking something of agricultural importance - something that generally increases the marginal output in food production would be fundamental to improvements elsewhere in society.
These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
Plastics have done a lot, but they have had their downside. You only have to walk on, well, any shoreline on earth to find plastic debris fouling the environment, or just head out on to the water a little. Then there's the estimated 3.5 million tonnes of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Plastics have done a lot, but they have had their downside. You only have to walk on, well, any shoreline on earth to find plastic debris fouling the environment, or just head out on to the water a little. Then there's the estimated 3.5 million tonnes of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
It should be possible to roughly calculate what new technology or assemblage of different technologies actually increased global welfare and utility the most. If not plastics, I'm thinking something of agricultural importance - something that generally increases the marginal output in food production would be fundamental to improvements elsewhere in society.
These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
Antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions without exaggeration, which is not the case for dwarf wheat. Its difficult to save a billion lives from starvation in 50 years when there's little chance that many people would have died total of famine in that time frame. The "billion" figure is made up, pulled directly from the proverbial ass. The entire population of India and Mexico when dwarf wheat was introduced would have had to die to get there, and both places had access to US wheat. We're talking fifty Great Leaps Forward. We're talking theoretical famines ten to twenty times greater than what happened the previous fifty years to get to that number, and in reality if we exclude the Great Leap Forward famine rates haven't decreased noticeably. It was a big achievement but we don't need to get ridiculous. Famine over the last few centuries has more often been caused by an inability to transport food to where its needed than the inability to grow enough food.
The answer is antibiotics, which has saved hundreds of millions.
Plastics have done a lot, but they have had their downside. You only have to walk on, well, any shoreline on earth to find plastic debris fouling the environment, or just head out on to the water a little. Then there's the estimated 3.5 million tonnes of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
That's really more consumerism.
Consumerism would account for the popularity of plastic products, not their inappropriate usage and disposal. I used to think it was silly to have these movements in various places to ban plastic bags, but more and more I'm thinking its a good idea. Apparently 10% of all the plastic we produce every year ends up as trash in the Ocean, where it ends up killing marine life.
Anyhow, on topic, I'd say the greatest invention of the 20th century would be either antibiotics or vaccines. Yes, I'm aware some vaccines existed prior to the 20th century, but the 20th century saw a huge amount of advancement.
I'll go with chlorinated water. Pretty much eliminated all those nasty water borne diseases in one fell swoop.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
140,000 where? Cholera is rampant anywhere you can't buy a legit copy of Panic! At the Disco's latest album. 140K strikes me as an underestimation...
Wikipedia says globally, but those are just cases notified to the WHO. 87% of them were in Africa.
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A canned cheeseburger? Really?
awesome.
Undoubtedly the correct answer.
This, followed by the integrated circuit.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Easy contraception (fewer stupid babies, more educated womens)
Computers (not transistors; vacuum tubes or even purely mechanical machines can be Turing complete, which in my mind is the truly important part)
Satellites (rocketry let us bomb things from a distance, satellites greatly facilitate communication and weather monitoring)
Aircraft (smaller world and all that)
Trucks? (I don't know if automobiles were invented before the 20th century or not, but relatively low cost, rugged and powerful machines have made just about everything easier)
Plastics (lighter and cheaper then the next best thing)
Internet (so we can have these discussions)
Magnetic data storage (because punch cards really suck)
There are so many more, hard to come up with a single one especially since we're being so broad here.
1 - There's no singular plastic. Like most things plastics have been gradually invented and unlike say antibiotics, the integrated circuit or the LCD screen you can't point to one thing easily
2 - If you were to point to one thing, it would be the first plastic, celluloid. Celluloid was invented in 1855.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
YOU
are the Greatest Invention of the 20th Century
Instead of having to look for your parent's nudie magazines, you can just simply google boobs. I'm pretty sure 99.9% of all teenage boys were thankful for this.
Transistors and plastics are great, but you don't USE either. Neither affect our lives directly. It's only through the things made of plastic and transistors that our lives change. Otherwise, they're just laboratory curiosities.
That really brings us back to, in consumer terms, The Pill and the personal computer.
EDIT: Of course the PC is really my proxy for The (modern) Internet, with the argument being that The Pill is still largely a beneficiary to the first world and was checked by the rise of HIV. Though if we wanted to go down that path, the latex condom is pretty god damn important for it's global applicability.
Yeah, water treatment is really underappreciated for how important it really is. In 2000 there were about 140,000 cases of just Cholera, essentially all of which could have been prevented just by chlorination.
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are plastics even an invention of the 20th century? I thought they're more like about 50 years older
Sewer systems were instrumental in that too though. The elimination of cholera in Britain was very much associated with an effective sewer system designed to dump the water out downriver from the city.
It has led directly to me being able to produce an epic omelette, I'll give you that
140,000 where? Cholera is rampant anywhere you can't buy a legit copy of Panic! At the Disco's latest album. 140K strikes me as an underestimation...
Isn't a lot of the annoyance at Mugabe lately been because Zimbabwe is so fucked up that the cholera epidemic is spilling over the borders into their country's and now it's neighbours are pissed at it just for that?
Water treatment plants are much older then the 20th century
What's I'm saying though is that the water treatment is not the operative point. It's also sensible management of waste water.
Yeah, it really was one of the most important public health innovations ever. The fact that many people never give it any thought made me pick it over antibiotics.
See, that's interesting, because whenever I hear anything by P!ATD I feel like I'm dying of cholera.
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The Romans were pretty good at both of those things. They were masterful civil planners considering their technology level.
Well if we are going by that criteria, I don't see how anyone could argue against windshield wipers.
Dwarf Wheat. Ultra super awesome wheat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
That's really more consumerism.
Properly disposing of things should just be common sense
Antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions without exaggeration, which is not the case for dwarf wheat. Its difficult to save a billion lives from starvation in 50 years when there's little chance that many people would have died total of famine in that time frame. The "billion" figure is made up, pulled directly from the proverbial ass. The entire population of India and Mexico when dwarf wheat was introduced would have had to die to get there, and both places had access to US wheat. We're talking fifty Great Leaps Forward. We're talking theoretical famines ten to twenty times greater than what happened the previous fifty years to get to that number, and in reality if we exclude the Great Leap Forward famine rates haven't decreased noticeably. It was a big achievement but we don't need to get ridiculous. Famine over the last few centuries has more often been caused by an inability to transport food to where its needed than the inability to grow enough food.
The answer is antibiotics, which has saved hundreds of millions.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Consumerism would account for the popularity of plastic products, not their inappropriate usage and disposal. I used to think it was silly to have these movements in various places to ban plastic bags, but more and more I'm thinking its a good idea. Apparently 10% of all the plastic we produce every year ends up as trash in the Ocean, where it ends up killing marine life.
Anyhow, on topic, I'd say the greatest invention of the 20th century would be either antibiotics or vaccines. Yes, I'm aware some vaccines existed prior to the 20th century, but the 20th century saw a huge amount of advancement.
Wikipedia says globally, but those are just cases notified to the WHO. 87% of them were in Africa.
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That article makes me ill.
But if I had to say one thing? Penicillin.
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can we just pretend this post never happened please