Most important inventions

Not necessarily the most important, but important nonetheless...

The flushing toilet

electicity is pretty close with fire. sure you can live with out it, but think of all the good its done for research and all that to help mankind.

sliced bread

saves me loads of time when making sandwiches!

Discovery of the mould that Penicillin is derived from (invention of Penicillin in the form we are familiar with today) because it has saved millions of lives, though unfortunatly, in recent years its effectiveness has been waning due to resistant strains of bacteria.

The discovery of electricity and invention of the electric generator.
...what else are you gonna run your Mac on?

the fence...














hey, look... this piece of land is mine.

I think Newtonian Physics are right up there with fire and electricity, but as you mentioned, these are discoveries.

For inventions, it's hard to place importance, because doing so can be trivializing to modern inventions. That is, in the ever-expanding hierarchy of tools, the spear and the polished rock sit on top -- and without them humans wouldn't exist -- but they were developed out of necessity and not out of pure creativity.

I would place the purely creative inventions, like the radio, ahead of the purely necessary inventions on a list of the "best" inventions. But it's without question that the spear is the most important invention. Hell, the egyptians built the pyramids without wheels.

immunizations/ vaccines
taming childhood diseases
clean water/sanitation
prenatal and postnatal care
food production techniques
pain control
anesthesia
insulin
gunpowder
plastics
transitor
integrated circuits
franklin stove
bifocals
bow/arrow
iron/steel tools
taming the horse/ animal domestication
steel plow
steam engine
automobile
vulcanization of rubber
synthetics
drugs/ psychotropic drugs/antibiotics
aseptic technique
trade, decision theory
the battery
mathmatics/physics/ scientic theory and approach
cell theory
microscope
public education
ac current, electricity, lightbulb,
typewriter
copy machine

THE BEST ARE----
apple
ipod
macintosh
steve jobs
os X


first we had to stop running around looking for food, stay healthy, get shelter,stay safe, prevent illness, improve production of food, use of machines, then we had the surplus time and could live long enough to make discoveries and invent more things.

Fire was a discovery...

Printing press...

number one invention of all time.

well... fire isn't really a discovery. It's been there...urr... since day one, kinda.

I don't think THE WHEEL actually qualifies as an invention.


You can't patent thinks that constitute a monopoly.



My vote off hand is DOG CHOW !!!

spam, the meat, not the mail

62.5 YEAR RECIPRICATING INVENTION Timeline, for the Printing Press, the Americas, electricity, mail, telephone, light bulb...



The Printing Press is invented:
1440 - Gutenberg developes the moveable type printing press.

1440 + 62.5 = 1502.5

Discovery of the Americas, A ROUND WORLD IS INVENTED:
January 1, 1502 Portuguese navigators discover Rio de Janeiro
May 9, 1502 Columbus left Spain on his 4th & final trip to New World
May 21, 1502 Portuguese Admiral Da Nova discovers St Helena
September 18, 1502 Christopher Columbus lands at Costa Rica on his 4th & last voyage

1502.5 + 62.5 = 1565

First city established in the new world:
1565 PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES established ST. AUGUSTINE, first city in the Americas.

1565 + 62.5 = 1627.5

Registered Mail is invented:
1627, France introduces registered mail
1627, January 31, Spanish government goes bankrupt

1627.5 + 62.5 = 1690

John Lock publishes most important works:
1689/90 Locke's Two Treatises of Government published. They were probably first drafted in 1679/1680. The Two Treatises has 1690 on its cover, but it and his Letter on Toleration were both in print by the autumn of 1689. Both were published anonymously.
1690 Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding published. This work he signed.

1690 + 62.5 = 1752.5

Ben Franklin discovers electricity:
1752 June 15 Benjamin Franklin performed his kite experiment, in which he observed the electrical nature of lightning.

1752.5 + 62.5 = 1815

First locomotive engine:
1814, 25th July, - Stephenson invented the steam locomotive engine, the patent dated February 28, 1815.

1814 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was the first person to take a photograph. He took the picture by setting up a machine called the camera obscura in the window of his home in France. It took eight hours for the camera to take the picture._
1815, July 9, 1st natural gas well in US is discovered
1815 War of 1812 ends.
1815 Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.

1815 + 62.5 = 1877.5

1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
1877 The first commercial telephone is introduced and the first telephone line is installed between Charlie William's electrical shop on Court Street, Boston and his home about three miles away.

Light Bulb is invented:
1878 Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914), an English physicist, was the first person to invent a practical and longer-lasting electic lightbulb (13.5 hours).

Broadcast media goes public:
1940: U.S. gets first regular TV station, WNBT, New York; estimated 10,000 viewers.
1940: Bugs Bunny cartoons.
1940: Regular FM radio broadcasting begins in a small way.
1941: FCC sets U.S. TV standards.
1941: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor.

1940 + 62.5 = 2002.5

2001 9/11 World Trade Center Bombing.

FIRST Fuel Cell perfected for domestic use:
2003 Ballard Power Supplies ships the AirGen fuel cell generator is the world's first portable fuel cell generator for indoor operation.

OB,

MACchine has lost his mind, don't mind him...

IT DON"Ts has to be patentable to an invention, hum that sounds like a highly debatable OPINION !!!

Since a large boulder cira "The Flinstones" 2000 B.C. ...
http://i-flintstones.tripod.com/
... constitutes a wheel I find the IDEA that this REALLY was an invention hard to instantiate.

Here is another WILD and RECIPROCATING 62.5 year TIMELINE for YOU, its NOT finished YET !!!



The Revolutionary Thinking timeline ...

1666: Isaac Newton publishes his physical laws.
http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/time/1600s.html

1608 + 62.5 = 1671

The law of gravity was invented by Sir Isaac Newton, circa 1671.
http://www.tcnj.edu/~pfeiffer/AST261Chap2.html

http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/time/1700s.html
1732: In Philadelphia, Ben Franklin starts a circulating library.
1732: Franklin begins publication of Poor Richard's Almanack. It will run until 1758.


1671 + 62.5 = 1733.5

http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/time/1700s.html
1734: Age of Enlightenment begins with Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques.
http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/...ghtenment.html

The first important invention in textile production came in 1733. British inventor John Kay created a device known as the flying shuttle, which partially mechanized the process of weaving.
http://encarta.msn.com/text_76157795...evolution.html

1733.5 + 62.5 = 1796

The very beginning of the industrial revolution...
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Es.../IndustRev.htm

1793: Execution of Louis XVI (Jan 21). Reign of Terror begins under Robespierre. French government declares war on Britain (Feb 1). In America, Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, a device for separating cotton from the seed, making possible a huge rise in cotton imports from the US. Effigy of radical writer Tom Paine burned in Manchester.
http://www.cottontimes.co.uk/chrono2.html

__ Henry Ogden Holmes received a patent in 1796 for an improved gin that used saws rather than spikes to remove the fibers from the seed._ The saws were spaced on a shaft to provide openings that allowed the clean seed to drop out the bottom._ Holmes invention made ginning a continuous rather than a batch process, and greatly increased capacity._ The basic principles developed by Whitney and Holmes are used in modern gin stands, but there have been many improvements.
http://msa.ars.usda.gov/gintech/introductioncotton.htm

Whitney or Homes...
http://www.pratthistory.com/whitney_or_homes.htm

The slang term "Holmes boy" is invented !!!

1796 Smallpox vaccination Edward Jenner
http://www.fatbadgers.co.uk/Britain/inventors.htm

McIntosh Apple
The first McIntosh was a chance seedling discovered in 1796 by John McIntosh in Dundas County, Ontario.
http://inventors.about.com/library/i...potatochip.htm

1855: Henry Bessemer invents process for making cheap steel from pig iron, in response to call for guns for Crimean War.

1796 + 62.5 = 1858.5

1858: Laying of first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable.

First published in 1859, The Origin of Species (full title On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) by British naturalist Charles Darwin is one of the pivotal works in scientific history, and arguably the pre-eminent work in biology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Species

http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/time/1850s.html
1858: First effort at transatlantic telegraph service fails.
1859: Telegraph reaches from Atlantic to Pacific.


1920: In England, Marconi creates the first short wave radio connection.
1920: AT&T, GE, RCA patent agreement permits radio equipment manufacturing.
1921: Quartz crystals keep radio signals from wandering.

1858.5 + 62.5 = 1921

By 1920 Einstein was internationally renowned; he won the Nobel Prize in 1921, not for relativity but for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect.
http://www.answers.com/einstein

1922: The radio license floodgates open, but only three frequencies in U.S.


1921 + 62.5 = 1983.5

THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION CREATES GLOBALISM :

January 1983 the first human interface, the Lisa computer was introduced.

http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/time/1980s.html
1982: Return of the Jedi opens in theaters equipped for its THX sound system.
1982: Kodak camera uses film on a disc cassette.
1982: Commodore 64 introduced; popular with game players.
1982: The one-button point-and-click mouse is born.

1983: Compaq builds the first fully compatible IBM clone.

1983: Internet domains get names instead of hard-to-remember numbers.

1983: AT&T forced to break up; 7 Baby Bells are born.

1983: TCP/IP becomes standard for Internet communication between computers.

1983: In Chicago, Motorola starts testing cellphone service.

1984: Apple Macintosh and IBM PC AT are introduced.

1984: The 32-bit microprocessor.
1984: CD-ROM disk can hold 270,000 typewritten pages of data.


- Film Colorization
Invented by Canadians Wilson Markle and Brian Hunt in 1983.
http://inventors.about.com/library/i...#colorrization



2046

I predict the first practical warp drive is built, I CAN'T WAIT !!!

I don't know what the greatest invention is, but my favorite is pay at the pump.

How about moderators that keep TROLLERS in check. Does that count?

While the above inventions/discoveries are all really important. No one can argue that the most important invention (now that I type this I'm not sure this qualifies as an invention) is the Doughnut.

thank you.
flick.

MACchine, your style is... distinctive.

Full marks for making another account before you get banned, though.

Best discovery?

The thing I have that sticks out, fits nicely in the thing they have that sticks in