Best Engineering in the Past 100 years

[DennisN]

I vote for the transistor.

If you hadn't mentioned the transistor, I would . It was first demonstrated in 1947 and here's a page about it: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/transist.htm (San José State University).
The development of the transistor has had an incredible impact on our society;

• Personal computers, smartphones and calculators all use transistors. As do internet routers, gateways, radios, standard music- and audio equipment, digital cameras, video cameras, and a lot of various electronic scientific equipment etc.
• Moon landing etc: The computers in the Apollo command and landing modules were based on transistors.

Edit:
And Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain got a well-deserved Nobel Prize for it:
"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1956 was awarded jointly to William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect.""
Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1956/summary/

 

[D_Scullion]

Can't argue with any of those top spot suggestions so will maybe throw in a few runner up suggestions:

Formula 1 cars - Peak performance for their application, listed because of the amount of engineering that has gone into their evolution over 3 quarters of a century. No other (commercial) engineering feat has consistently sat right at the cutting edge of current technology for so long - engineered to perfection.

The widget - the little nitrogen filled ball inside my can of Guinness that delivers a quite acceptable glass of draught Guinness in the comfort of my sitting room.

Recent advances in prosthetic's - genuinely life changing

Remote central locking on a car - it's the simple things! . . . just waiting on someone developing remote central locking for my house! . . . Ill throw the remote control for the TV in there too.

Agricultural machinery - I'm a small time farmer who relies on a lot of old machinery and enjoys restoring vintage machinery but also a design engineer who has worked for a company designing new agricultural machinery - the contrast and the advancements are really something to stand back and admire.

The fridge!

 

[jim hardy]

Has high-level computer programming language been mentioned?
I don't know what was the first one, probably a precursor to Fortran.

Were we still bumping along with machine specific 0's and 1's we'd have no internet, no AI,
and half the word would live like Bob Cratchit tabulating columns of figures for the financiers likely with mechanical adding machines.

It's changing the language .

 

[tech99]

I would like to propose the building of the Worldwide telecommunications backbone. Without this we would not have the Web and we would not even be talking to one another. Just think of the collosal network infrastructure under every city, the millions fibre cables linking switches and servers in every centre. Man's absolute ingenuity in integrating new voice, data and mobile services, and the task of forging international agreement on every detail on how it should be done. And at the same time keeping abreast of the rapid development of ideas and diverging opinions. Thank you, ITU.

 

[DaveC426913]

I would like to propose the building of the Worldwide telecommunications backbone.

Hm. I'd say the personal computer is more fundamental than the internet.
You can have a useful computer without the internet**, but you can't have the internet without (>1) computers.

** Yes, you young whippersnappers. There were quite a few decades of good computing done before the internet came along.

 

[PAllen]

It seems LIGO has not been mentioned (might have missed it, but I checked). Given the number of extreme precision engineering challenges, it must be among the top few.

 

[osilmag]

The operational amplifier is one of the most common ICs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_amplifier

 

[256bits]

Remote central locking on a car - it's the simple things! . . . just waiting on someone developing remote central locking for my house! . . . Ill throw the remote control for the TV in there too.

Remotes - nice one. don't forget the garage door opener!

 

[256bits]

You can have a useful computer without the internet**, but you can't have the internet without (>1) computers.

Made me think of the lost art of writing a letter, post cards, going to the library for research and just to browse around, and all that jazz before the internet.

 

[scottdave]

Use of microwave energy for:
communication
RADAR and it's uses: weather, navigation, tracking, distance and speed measuring.
And of course cooking

 

[scottdave]

Use of microwave energy for:
communication
RADAR and it's uses: weather, navigation, tracking, distance and speed measuring.
And of course cooking

To add on to this, I'd recommend this book. Eight Amazing Engineering Stories by Bill Hammack https://www.amazon.com/dp/0983966133/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[atyy]

Use of microwave energy for:
communication
RADAR and it's uses: weather, navigation, tracking, distance and speed measuring.
And of course cooking

To add on to this, I'd recommend this book. Eight Amazing Engineering Stories by Bill Hammack https://www.amazon.com/Eight-Amazing-Engineering-Stories-Extraordinary/dp/0983966133/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547929765&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=eight+engineering+stories&dpPl=1&dpID=41WOw0yU8+L&ref=plSrch

A book about radar I enjoyed was Buderi's "The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technical Revolution" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684835290/?tag=pfamazon01-20

In my own field, I always find it fascinating that Alan Hodgkin contributed to the wartime radar effort, before his famous post-war work on the action potential. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lloyd_Hodgkin

 

[diogenesNY]

Although it was only really important and useful for a fairly short period of time, it is hard to overstate the cleverness and importance of the _reverse_ engineering of the Enigma Machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

diogenesNY

 

[jim hardy]

it is hard to overstate the cleverness and importance of the _reverse_ engineering of the Enigma Machine.

WW2 gave birth to modern control theory, too.

http://www.ieeecss.org/CSM/library/1995/dec1995/05-BellLabsnAutoCtrl.pdf

 

[anorlunda]

Moderator's note: A slightly-morbid and semi-serious sub-thread on parachutes was cleaned up.

 

[BWV]

Speaking of WW2, how about the T-34 tank?

The T-34 was the most advanced and lethal tank of its time. Its sloped armor, mobility and for the time powerful armament made it far superior to any tanks early in the war. It was far more important to the defeat of Nazi Germany than Enigma