Greatest Invention?

[rpggal she/her]

What do you think is the greatest invention?

My mother will say, air-conditional, because it makes a warm day cool.

I think the greatest invention is the internet. I so love the internet.

What about you?

[Zenith]

Electricity.

/thread (JK). But, in all seriousness, it's probably only outstripped by fire in how much it enabled us to advance.

[Zas678 he/him]

Best Invention? That's easy. The Gutenberg Press.

Random reader: The Gutenberg press? Really? Out of computers, cars, nuclear powered satellites, airdrop rovers and the internet you chose a printing press?

Yes. A printing press.

You see, the Gutenberg Press changed the world, perhaps more so than anything that has come since. The Gutenberg Press was not just a printing press- it was The printing press. It was the first printing press, and it changed information. Rather than taking being able to produce 40 pages typographically, or a handful by copying, you could make 3600 pages a day. That's almost 10,000% improvement!

The Printing Press changed the world. It allowed Martin Luther to become popular. It allowed Christopher Columbus's news of a New World to spread (yes, yes he didn't actually realize what he found, but still). It allowed the masses to become literate, promoted cultural awareness, created a middle class, and made it possible for one man's ideas to become known to hundreds of thousands of people. Even millions.

And on of the best parts? It was still the design being used for about 300 years. Benjamin Franklin used a barely modified Gutenberg printing press. The printing press the Book of Mormon was written on was a barely modified Gutenberg Printing Press. We still haven't found a blacker ink than the one Gutenberg used (though his uses lead, so maybe not the best thing).

So yes. The Gutenberg Printing Press (and his process for making reusable letters for the script) is, in my mind, the greatest invention to date.

[Zenith]

Best Invention? That's easy. The Gutenberg Press.

Random reader: The Gutenberg press? Really? Out of computers, cars, nuclear powered satellites, airdrop rovers and the internet you chose a printing press?

Yes. A printing press.

You see, the Gutenberg Press changed the world, perhaps more so than anything that has come since. The Gutenberg Press was not just a printing press- it was The printing press. It was the first printing press, and it changed information. Rather than taking being able to produce 40 pages typographically, or a handful by copying, you could make 3600 pages a day. That's almost 10,000% improvement!

The Printing Press changed the world. It allowed Martin Luther to become popular. It allowed Christopher Columbus's news of a New World to spread (yes, yes he didn't actually realize what he found, but still). It allowed the masses to become literate, promoted cultural awareness, created a middle class, and made it possible for one man's ideas to become known to hundreds of thousands of people. Even millions.

And on of the best parts? It was still the design being used for about 300 years. Benjamin Franklin used a barely modified Gutenberg printing press. The printing press the Book of Mormon was written on was a barely modified Gutenberg Printing Press. We still haven't found a blacker ink than the one Gutenberg used (though his uses lead, so maybe not the best thing).

So yes. The Gutenberg Printing Press (and his process for making reusable letters for the script) is, in my mind, the greatest invention to date.

I actually thought about that but turned it down. I didn't know the specific name before, however.

[Lady_Yasha she/her]

I think both the Gutenburg Press and electricity both have equal weight in their importance.

The electron, as we all know for being the medium through which electricity is transported, opened up science like a Christmas present. From there we discovered quantum mechanics and theory, thermodynamics, chemistry advanced like it never could without atomic study. Not to mention electricity being the forerunner to the entire electronics industry that supplies us with equipment we use daily - tools that have made our lives far more efficient than just a few decades ago.

But the Gutenberg Press is of equal importance to the process of this science. Word would get around, published papers exclusive only to those with the money to afford the scribe's time. In a sense, physics of the past would have been a very eclectic field with people paying extortionate amounts for the few texts that would be scribed.

I don't undervalue the atom, or electricity, on the purpose of necessity but yes, science needed an efficient way of printing their results and findings to the masses and the Press did just that.

EDIT: Sorry, I should clarify since the electron wasn't "invented" but the mediums of transporting and regulating it are.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Lyrebon

[Thought]

The greatest inventions of human history have been:

Spoke Language

Written Language

The Moveable Type Printing Press

The Internet

Of these, the Moveable Type Printing Press stands tallest because we understand its impacts the best (ask the question again in another couple hundred years, and the Internet might be ranked more important).

This invention didn't just fascilitate modern science, it allowed it to come about. It changed how people thought and acted on a fundamental level. Without that single invention, we'd probably still be in the Middle Ages. The entire field of physics is a fun party trick in comparison.

[Guest Odium Reigns]

Computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Oh, yeah, and pie.

(I'm only saying things others didnt.)

[EmanEmal he/him]

I am going to go with farms because they provide the food that forms the foundation for everything else.

If you have better food supplies then you can have people who do things other than go out and find food, eat that food, sleep, and find more food. (Like in that new movie the Croods)

Since people are now free to do things other than get food everything else follows, including improvements to farms which let even more people do things not related to getting/making food.

The Egyptians are a good example for this, they had the Nile which made their farms supper great so they only had to work them for half the year, after it flooded, then they could do whatever while they waited for the next flood this let them become the supper power of the ancient world for almost 4000 years.

 

Farms--->food--->not starving--->everything else

[Observer]

For the sake of originality and predictability, I pick...

 

The wheel.

[ADIMORTIS he/him]

I'll go with the spoon. The predecessor to the catapult and hence artillery.

[Shivertongue he/him]

You're all wrong.

 

Waffles are the greatest of all human ingenuity and achievement. Everything you have stated as a "great invention" has merely been an accessory to waffles. The printing press? To print waffle recipes and spread joy. Spoken language? To tell people about waffles. Fire? To make waffles.

 

I would think this would have been obvious.

[Voidus]

Waffles are great and all, but personally I'd have to say glass, or more specifically glasses, since they extended the working life of scientists and scholars by decades, helping all of these other inventions (Including waffles I'm sure)

[KChan she/her]

Anyone who has lived in Florida must, by definition, include air conditioning on this list. It doesn't have to occupy the top spot, but anyone who doesn't put AC in the top 10 is forcibly removed from the state.

[Joe ST he/him]

Anyone who has lived in Florida must, by definition, include air conditioning on this list. It doesn't have to occupy the top spot, but anyone who doesn't put AC in the top 10 is forcibly removed from the state.

no doubt after they've melted upon the pavement

[Observer]

Religion anybody? It can be either the greatest or the worst, dependin gon the viewpoint, but I'm putting it out here for consideration, even if my terminology is poor and likely to get me quasi-flamed.

[KChan she/her]

I guess that depends on what we're considering under the umbrella term of "inventions." A lot of posts so far, for example, seem to be working on the assumption that we're dealing with tangible objects of some kind, but I can see your point.

[Senor Feesh]

Religion anybody? It can be either the greatest or the worst, dependin gon the viewpoint, but I'm putting it out here for consideration, even if my terminology is poor and likely to get me quasi-flamed.

 

This is something I feel very strongly about, and as such I prefer not to have this discussion I actually had to ban this as a topic of conversation with my own father.

 

Greatest invention: Written language.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

I've just been waiting for an opportunity to post that. Everett True is the best.

[Senor Feesh]

Heh, nice one PM I'm fine to speak about religion, it's just that I'm VERY unapologetic (and often blunt) about what I believe and don't.

 

And that frequently offends people.

 

As an aside, I do find it interesting that probably all of the great inventions of mankind are inherently open to abuse and subversions, making them both great and terrible at once. But that may be worth a side-topic. Perhaps a variation of the Evil Genie?

[KChan she/her]

Courtesy and common sense, as illustrated above. I love seeing people actually exercising self-restraint on the internet.

[Observer]

Yeah, was pretty sure the concept would get that kind of reaction. Just laying it on the table where we can all see it.

 

How about steel tools?

[KChan she/her]

Tools in general, really. They don't have to be steel to be useful.

I forget. Has fire been mentioned at all?

[Observer]

I think it has, but that could be me flashbacking to my thoughts when I mentioned religion.

 

EDIT: Aaaand terrible spelling again. I have got to stop doing this in the dark.

Edited April 27, 2013 by Observer

[KChan she/her]

New nomination for best invention: Lightbulbs. Or alternatively, light-up keyboards. Dang, those things are cool.

[Observer]

I think lightbulbs fall under electricity, though I think you have to draw a line when saying it's the best because it led to everything else in existence. There needs to be some point where we stop caring what it influences, or we all just say something like "Thought" and /thread.