Posted on 09/04/2022 9:39:15 AM PDT by gunsequalfreedom
While the Internet and the World Wide Web have certainly impacted the lives of many millions of people it is certainly not the greatest invention of the past millennium, in fact it might not even make the the top ten.
#1 Air conditioning
Exactly
George Westinghouse should get 100% credit for the lights we used today, since Edison made mistakes with his electric light and promoted it by showing how he can make electric chairs for prisoners. Westinghouse successfully powered the 1893 World’s Fair which promoted electric lights around the world.
Best invention ever: steam engine.
It has only been 200+ years or so since big changes started.
That was because the United States was created and people were free to do what they wanted to do which ended up benefiting all of mankind.
In all the thousands of years before hardly any changes happened. A horse and wagon and stone or straw or mud brick home was all you would have had. A struggle to get clean water and good food and live a long life.
Now we complain if the a/c is not just right in our car and home or the internet is a bit slow today.
Hopefully the dark ages do not descend again.
The Viterbi decoder and stochastic gradient decent optimization are amongst my favorite inventions, but hey, that’s just me. Linear predictive coding and the Kalman filter are also high on my list.
Monostable multivibrator.
I also read that the mechanical TV was large and heavy, the size of a refrigerator.
You appear very knowledgeable about the subject, did you study it in a college course or pick it up from general interest?
Just too much time on my hands I suppose.
“The development of Nitrogen fertilizer. Kept the world from starving.”
That’s considered a bad thing now..
That goes back more than 1000 years: disqualified. ;-D
These date back more than 1000 years, making them invalid responses. ;-D
OK, but calculus at least, is not that old.
That is the case; however, it seems the Egyptians and the Babylonians used a precursor similar to the trapezoidal rule.
Stephen Fry takes a look inside the story of Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the world's first printing press in the 15th century, and an exploration of how and why the machine was invented.How The Printing Press Revolutionized The World
The Machine That Made Us | Timeline
August 25, 2018 | Timeline - World History Documentaries
The modern flush toilet by itself is no big deal, they used to use a constantly running open trough to get rid of sewage.
Those running troughs dumped the sewage directly into the closest stream, river, lake, or the street gutter outside your home.
Read about JOHN SNOW’S investigation into the CHOLERA outbreak in London in 1854.
What is a big deal from a health and sanitary standpoint is MODERN SEWAGE TREATMENT methods.
Closed systems that don’t allow polluted water to enter your drinking water system.
Most folks have never seen a surface cesspond, I have, very disgusting and smells just like you think.
Refrigeration, although probably not top 10, certainly has been important to modern society.
My favorite though, is the automatic water heater!
All hail Willis Carrier.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
