The atomic theory of matter, because It is so foundational to the technology of the modern world. It allowed the development of modern chemistry, and with it pharmaceuticals, chemical engineering (e.g. the Haber-Bosch process), electronics/semiconductors, genomics, medical science, and more. It’s been an enormous force-multiplier to improve technologies we already had by providing prospective insight into how they work, so we can do better than iterative trial and error. Virtually everything that we touch or use in a day, from coffee to clothing to computers, was enabled or improved through knowledge of the system of atomic elements.
It’s pretty damn hard to pick just one thing, so my best-of list
There’s really basic foundational things like the wheel, cutting tools, fire (if we want to count it as an invention,) string/rope/cordage, writing, clothing, cooking, agriculture, metalworking, etc. the sort of things that are absolutely basic building blocks of civilization.
Moving a few milenia up, and in no particular order,
the Haber Process to synthesize ammonia, which allowed for the creation of synthetic fertilizers. If you’ve eaten any commercially grown food in the last century, you probably owe it to the Haber Process.
Antibiotics are another big one, as are vaccines.
Vaucason’s lathe arguably laid the foundation for a whole lot of fabrication techniques that led to the industrial revolution
Refrigeration
Steam engines and later internal combustion engines
Definitely fire, without it none of the other inventions happen afterwards; though I guess we didn’t really invent it as much as we learned to harness it.
I’m always blown away by how discoveries like antibiotics changed our lives. And writing too. Mind blowing that we can record, discern, and communicate so much information from marks on a surface
The plow. It allowed early river valley peoples to generate semi-reliable food surpluses, and those food surpluses triggered everything that came after. I can’t take credit for this argument, I first encountered it in this episode from the first season of Connections.
Writing. Being able to record facts, thoughts, and stories that can be (mostly) read thousands of miles away and thousands of years later changed civilisation.
It is crazy that. For time immemorial we used to transmit information from our mouths or using hand signals, and receive that information through eyes and ears, all in realtime.
(side thought: how awesome would it be if we had a single organ for both? e.g. communication solely through blinking)
Then suddenly we have this system where someone can code meaning onto a sheet, and we can receive entire contexts from a glance alone, purely at our leisure. Nuts.
Consider: Writing is also the closest thing to magic that we have in the real world. You make a particular pattern of markings on a piece of paper using an arcane body of knowledge, and then a wizard in a black robe with a special hammer makes an illegible squiggle on the paper in just the right spot, and it makes new things happen.
Writing, it allowed for knowledge to travel across vast distances. And for that knowledge to remain available and accurate for far longer than any oral tradition would be capable of.
The interesting thing about fire is that it is way back in human history, like, AFAIU, before our hominid species even evolved. So it’s likely intertwined with very biological being.
Another similar invention is likely language. Once the evolutionary pieces were there to get language to the ability of syntax, whoever were the people that riffed on communicating with sounds to the point of making up words and making sentences etc, they invented some ridiculously awesome shit. Like there was probably the first sharing between people of a pun, joke, or first abstraction or conceptual musing. The first argument where one person was more convincing. The first person who was naturally good at speaking and impressed others with it.
This was the topic of discussion between an historian, a mathematician and a mystic.
The historian said, “writing. The ability to put words on paper to be communicated to people who never even met the ‘speaker’, is the single greatest achievement of mankind.”
The mathematician said, “no, numbers. The ability to express and develop truly abstract concepts, which in turn leads to Incredible real applications. Numbers are the single greatest invention of mankind.”
The mystic said, “the Thermos flask.”
“The Thermos flask?”
“The Thermos flask. It keeps hot drinks hot in the winter, and cold drinks cold in the summer. But think - that little flask - how does it know?”
Hear me out:
Before the invention of the bicycle, the vast majority of the population had no means of personal transport other than their feet, and anything further away than the nearest market might as well have been in China, cause neither a farmer nor a worker with a family can just take more than a day off.
This meant that almost no one ever travelled further than 30km from their home.
With the bicycle, the world that most of humanity got to experience became 20x bigger.
People met other people further away, experienced new ideas, could travel outside of the immediate influence of their landlord or master, could marry someone who isn’t a cousin…
No other invention ever before opened up the world of the average person quite like this one.
The bicycle created demand to build a dense network of smooth roads even in the countryside, brought workers to factories, and gave women more freedom. It was one of the main factors that pushed the industrial revolution.
This is really insightful. I’d thought about how trivial travel is in our modern era but this really puts into perspective how isolating it was back then.
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The atomic theory of matter, because It is so foundational to the technology of the modern world. It allowed the development of modern chemistry, and with it pharmaceuticals, chemical engineering (e.g. the Haber-Bosch process), electronics/semiconductors, genomics, medical science, and more. It’s been an enormous force-multiplier to improve technologies we already had by providing prospective insight into how they work, so we can do better than iterative trial and error. Virtually everything that we touch or use in a day, from coffee to clothing to computers, was enabled or improved through knowledge of the system of atomic elements.
It’s pretty damn hard to pick just one thing, so my best-of list
There’s really basic foundational things like the wheel, cutting tools, fire (if we want to count it as an invention,) string/rope/cordage, writing, clothing, cooking, agriculture, metalworking, etc. the sort of things that are absolutely basic building blocks of civilization.
Moving a few milenia up, and in no particular order,
the Haber Process to synthesize ammonia, which allowed for the creation of synthetic fertilizers. If you’ve eaten any commercially grown food in the last century, you probably owe it to the Haber Process.
Antibiotics are another big one, as are vaccines.
Vaucason’s lathe arguably laid the foundation for a whole lot of fabrication techniques that led to the industrial revolution
Refrigeration
Steam engines and later internal combustion engines
Clocks
Compasses
Printing press
The telephone
Airplanes
Computers and the internet
Cameras
Refrigeration is my favourite on your list. Without it, there’s no lager.
Also it’s the one my parents talk about. They used to go out everyday and pluck food from the ground. Every day.
Fridge changed that overnight. Suddenly people had time to do other things (mostly chat with their friends in cafés)
The industrial revolution was the biggest double edged sword ever!
The washing machine was probably the next big time saver. Now we spend all our free time on the internet…
I think soap deserves an honorable mention.
I would argue fire. Its arguably the gate technology and higher brain power.
Definitely fire, without it none of the other inventions happen afterwards; though I guess we didn’t really invent it as much as we learned to harness it.
I suppose u could argue the same for any technology tho.
Antibiotics. Turned so many lethal wounds into minor cuts.
And now people use them for minor cuts and soon we will no longer have (effective) antibiotics.
I’m always blown away by how discoveries like antibiotics changed our lives. And writing too. Mind blowing that we can record, discern, and communicate so much information from marks on a surface
The plow. It allowed early river valley peoples to generate semi-reliable food surpluses, and those food surpluses triggered everything that came after. I can’t take credit for this argument, I first encountered it in this episode from the first season of Connections.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
this episode
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Writing. Being able to record facts, thoughts, and stories that can be (mostly) read thousands of miles away and thousands of years later changed civilisation.
It is crazy that. For time immemorial we used to transmit information from our mouths or using hand signals, and receive that information through eyes and ears, all in realtime.
(side thought: how awesome would it be if we had a single organ for both? e.g. communication solely through blinking)
Then suddenly we have this system where someone can code meaning onto a sheet, and we can receive entire contexts from a glance alone, purely at our leisure. Nuts.
Consider: Writing is also the closest thing to magic that we have in the real world. You make a particular pattern of markings on a piece of paper using an arcane body of knowledge, and then a wizard in a black robe with a special hammer makes an illegible squiggle on the paper in just the right spot, and it makes new things happen.
Writing, it allowed for knowledge to travel across vast distances. And for that knowledge to remain available and accurate for far longer than any oral tradition would be capable of.
Glasses. The ability to see so much better than I otherwise could leaves me astonished every time I put them on.
Lenses also gave us telescopes and microscopes. Pretty amazing discovery.
I wouldn’t have survived childhood without glasses in a pre-modern era.
Same. I would be a ditch digger or something if I had survived.
removed by mod
I’ve gotta agree, electricity is the base for the majority of technology today.
The Fast Fourier Transform.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The Fast Fourier Transform.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Technically I would say the harnessing and utilization of fire. It arguably changed our evolution requiring less energy to digest food.
Upvoted (and came to say the same)!
The interesting thing about fire is that it is way back in human history, like, AFAIU, before our hominid species even evolved. So it’s likely intertwined with very biological being.
Another similar invention is likely language. Once the evolutionary pieces were there to get language to the ability of syntax, whoever were the people that riffed on communicating with sounds to the point of making up words and making sentences etc, they invented some ridiculously awesome shit. Like there was probably the first sharing between people of a pun, joke, or first abstraction or conceptual musing. The first argument where one person was more convincing. The first person who was naturally good at speaking and impressed others with it.
Gotta be vaccines for me.
This was the topic of discussion between an historian, a mathematician and a mystic.
The historian said, “writing. The ability to put words on paper to be communicated to people who never even met the ‘speaker’, is the single greatest achievement of mankind.”
The mathematician said, “no, numbers. The ability to express and develop truly abstract concepts, which in turn leads to Incredible real applications. Numbers are the single greatest invention of mankind.”
The mystic said, “the Thermos flask.”
“The Thermos flask?”
“The Thermos flask. It keeps hot drinks hot in the winter, and cold drinks cold in the summer. But think - that little flask - how does it know?”
I was having lunch at work and this Geordie I work with pointed at my flask and said “What’s that mate?”
I said “It’s a thermos. It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold”
Next day he comes in and he’s got a brand new thermos. I asked him what he had in it.
He said “Two choc ices, a sausage roll and a cup of tea”
The bicycle.
Hear me out:
Before the invention of the bicycle, the vast majority of the population had no means of personal transport other than their feet, and anything further away than the nearest market might as well have been in China, cause neither a farmer nor a worker with a family can just take more than a day off.
This meant that almost no one ever travelled further than 30km from their home.
With the bicycle, the world that most of humanity got to experience became 20x bigger.
People met other people further away, experienced new ideas, could travel outside of the immediate influence of their landlord or master, could marry someone who isn’t a cousin…
No other invention ever before opened up the world of the average person quite like this one.
The bicycle created demand to build a dense network of smooth roads even in the countryside, brought workers to factories, and gave women more freedom. It was one of the main factors that pushed the industrial revolution.
removed by mod
what about horse carriages??? road networks were built for those way before bikes existed
This is really insightful. I’d thought about how trivial travel is in our modern era but this really puts into perspective how isolating it was back then.