What Are The Top Five Inventions?

[omin]

What are the top five inventions of all time? Put ten or more if you like.

Here is my top five list.

1. The Clock
2. Indo-Arab Counting System
3. Energy storage
4. Universal Education
5. The Atomic Bomb

 

[Evo]

The lightbulb

electricity is not an invention, but the ability to harness it

combustion engines

the phonograph

radio

television

the internet

batteries

transistors, I remember when radios and tvs had tubes that needed to warm up first.

 

[arildno]

Where's the wheel, damn it??

 

[Evo]

Where's the wheel, damn it??

Good one.

 

[Evo]

toilet paper

 

[check]

1. Vaccination
2. The Wheel
3. The Clock
4. Plastics
5. The Transistor

 

[arildno]

toilet paper

Even better!

 

[pace]

Condom, or p-pills. Can't believe why no one has said Contraceptives yet. It's basically the thing that's going to keep this world in numbers and thus in balance.

 

[Artman]

Method of starting fires
Wheel
Lever
mathematics (including numbers, concept of zero and negative numbers)
Algebra
Calculus
Gas powered Automobile
Airplane
Digital Computer

 

[BobG]

1. Written language - Numbers were most likely the first written language. Legends can be passed on orally and a little variation by the storyteller is as likely to add quality to the story as to detract from it. A little variation in recounting business deals gets people mighty unhappy.

2. Printing press - Communication allows one to build on the ideas of others. Example, after Rene Descartes invented the Cartesian coordinate system, both Newton and Leibniz quickly invented Calculus independently of each other.

3. Radio - Same reason as above.

4. Computers & Internet - Same reason as above, except even more so. The rapid spread of information probably prevents anyone being seen as the equivalent of Newton or Einstein, since almost no one develops new ideas alone from start to finish, anymore.

5. Railroads - The first rapid transportation accelerated the industrial age. Transportation was so important that railroads drove the development of the first standardized time zones.

OH, and slide rules, of course. Well, at least Napier's method of logarithms was pretty important, which is the principle that slide rules are based on.

 

[Gokul43201]

Math-Science
Engineering
Art & Language
Money & Trade
Law

Ha ha, I cheated !

 

[kcballer21]

Public sanitation systems,

Haven't any of you seen 'Donnie Darko'?

 

[jimmy p]

1./ Sliced Bread
2./ TV
3./ Xbox
4./ George Foreman's Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine... so good he puts his NAME on it!
5./ Fire

 

[Ivan Seeking]

4./ George Foreman's Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine... so good he puts his NAME on it!

I bought one of those for Tsu and she looked at me like I had given her a set of wrenches; until she used it once. They really are pretty handy, especially for little spraymaster skunks it turns out...oh wait...I mean chickens.

Some may recall that a large group of experts from many fields of study voted that the printing press is the most significant invention of the last 1000 years. This made most other advancements possible.

I will pick five based on the next 100 years.

Gene splicing
Quantum computers
Space elevator
LASER and directed energy weapons
Internet II

 

[Entropy]

1. Toliet Paper
2. Pancakes
3. The Spork (spoon and fork as one!)
4. Family Guy
5. Preparation-H

 

[Averagesupernova]

Hmmmmmm. Not one of you has mentioned synthetic rubber. Can you imagine our transportation system as well as MANY other things without synthetic rubber?

 

[Crumbles]

Whisky and Wine! How can we forget these!

 

[zoobyshoe]

1.)Cutting tools

2.) Pounding tools

3.) Firemaking

4.) The wheel

5.) the screw


Edit: The lever should really displace the screw on this list, but the screw is probably the most underrated invention in history, and is a kind of lever anyway.

 

[Gokul43201]

I recall arguing that the knife was probably a more "useful" invention than mathematics. I don't believe there was a specially warm response to that idea. This was over at the Gen Math Forum !

 

[Gokul43201]

1.)Cutting tools

2.) Pounding tools

3.) Firemaking

4.) The wheel

5.) the screw


Edit: The lever should really displace the screw on this list, but the screw is probably the most underrated invention in history, and is a kind of lever anyway.

I can't see why you would put pounding tools at #2 ?

 

[Janitor]

I'll go with Ivan on the space elevator.

Also, cold fusion, and that magnet that they sell on late night TV, the one that you stick on your carburetor--it improves engine performance and gas mileage. And last but not least, those therapeutic healing magnets that you put under your mattress. They are supposed to be good for arthritis and kidney stones, and chasing away that old devil.

 

[Gokul43201]

"Whisky and wine" - and might I add, beer.

That's a winner wot ?

 

[Evo]

I'd like to add the top five convenience inventions, in no particular order.

portable hair dryer

safety razor

deodorant/antiperspirant

refrigerator

airconditioning

AND

indoor plumbing, a BIGGIE (but goes back to ancient rome)

 

[zoobyshoe]

I can't see why you would put pounding tools at #2 ?

You mean because they were obviously invented first?

 

[Gokul43201]

No I don't think they're nearly as useful as the others in your list...and another reason that I''ll save for if you raise a certain point.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I recall arguing that the knife was probably a more "useful" invention than mathematics. I don't believe there was a specially warm response to that idea. This was over at the Gen Math Forum !

You can't sheer or butcher a sheep with a Lorentz Contraction equation. This is why early Homo Mathematicus died out, hungry, cold and naked.

 

[Gokul43201]

y keyoard's roken...i'll resond later

 

[zoobyshoe]

No I don't think they're nearly as useful as the others in your list...and another reason that I''ll save for if you raise a certain point.

I included them on the basis that pounding tools were probably the very first tools, which I base on the fact that present day great apes use them to open nuts and crack open dead logs for the grubs. In addition to their use in getting to food, they were probably the first weapons (a la 2001: A Space Odyssey) whereby we killed enemies and dangerous beasts. I included them because there was a huge amount of time in our development when the club and the rock were the only game in town when it comes to "inventions". I put them at #2 because they're a little too obvious to merit placement above cutting tools, which, as far as we know, were the first skilled inventions. Stone flaking is really quite difficult and takes a while to learn.

 

[Artman]

I included them on the basis that pounding tools were probably the very first tools, which I base on the fact that present day great apes use them to open nuts and crack open dead logs for the grubs. In addition to their use in getting to food, they were probably the first weapons (a la 2001: A Space Odyssey) whereby we killed enemies and dangerous beasts. I included them because there was a huge amount of time in our development when the club and the rock were the only game in town when it comes to "inventions". I put them at #2 because they're a little too obvious to merit placement above cutting tools, which, as far as we know, were the first skilled inventions. Stone flaking is really quite difficult and takes a while to learn.

And also requires a pounding tool to do.

 

[zoobyshoe]

And also requires a pounding tool to do.

Actually you're right. The creation of the first cutting tools required the skilled use of the pounding tool!
I should have made it #1.