Greatest human invention of all time?
 

What's your opinion on this?

My vote will be for the movable type apparatus, by Johannes Gutenburg in the 1600s. This forever changed the way people communicate.

Mine is easily controlled electricity. Just about every aspect of the modern world relies in some way in some form of electricity. Without electricity, we would have almost none of the luxuries we have today.

My runners-up are plastics and the printing press.

air conditioners and toilet paper

Re: Greatest human invention of all time?
 

internet...and all it's pieces like email, websites, streaming video...same reasons. Mr. G's was just mechanical, which is very cool.

The wheel and movable type are the first two to come to mind. I wonder if in 250 years people won't answer with the microchip.

Cheasy sounding answer, but I'd say language. We take it for granted... but it's really nothing all that simple.

Is it my imagination or didn't we allready have a thread like this?

Yup, that would be my choice as well. Without electricity, TFP wouldn't have existed.

Hmmm...Making fire. The spark.

yeah, it's this thing here - the Internet.

remote controls for TV.

Not to be a dick, but movable type was created in the late 1400's or the early 1500's.

Agriculture.

It allowed human beings to settle in one spot and spend significantly less time hunting and gatherering sustenance. This allowed humans the time to develop writing, mathematics, etc.

Had the Indians of the Americas had substantial agriculture, Europeans might very well have found cities and a society that could rival that which was in Europe.

History would have been VERY different then.

this is easy.
the printing press is without a doubt the most influential and greatest invention.
mass media.
Gutenburg struck gold with that one!

Toilet paper (how else could we, as a civilization, show our disapproval of a certain high school teacher?) and the Farenheit scale.

(What happened to the hmm smiley?)

Im still going to go with the internet, it makes getting porn so much easier

electricity begat computers, which in turn begat the internet, which in turn begat the TFP

it should be easy

Und what shall TFP beget? !

you decide

as ive said in the chat:

PLASTICS

just try to imagine our world, all of our technology without plastic....

no plastics.. no dildos... we're doomed

i must agree with you man. we'd all probably be still in caves and in loin cloths.

not to be a dick, but "During the Ch'ing-li period (1041-1048) a commoner named Pi Sheng first invented the movable type" ;)

my vote goes to language (written and spoken) first and electricity second...


the farenheit scale?? lol

I'd have to go with the wheel. Pretty much every method (except for boats) of getting anything or anybody from one place to another depends on it.

From where mass media really started
The Gutenberg Press.



But, if you are talking about modern times,

Cloning
The implications are profound

The wheel without a doubt ...

well, i'd have to opt for the orginal crude common tools, such as a rock tied together to a stick by a vine... etc

Without those, we wouldnt even be able to make the other inventions on the board. Hell, we probably would be extinct =)

Did anyone say condom yet?


With my lifestyle the condom has to be the most used thing I know of.

Fire.

Oh, and the indoor outhouse. :)

I Would have to say, The stick, yes the humble stick,
first used by primitive primates to forage insects out of mounds and logs, later to hunt small game, the first tool, the increase in protein led to increases in brain size, and as our brains evolved so did our tools, as time passed primate became man, and invented all we know today, but it all began with but a simple stick.

SWEET!

sticks wernt invented... they were here a pretty damn long time..... hehe

i think he means manmade, guys

well, electricity wasn't invented either, merely harnessed, just like
the mighty stick, 80)

Aww hell..I was gonna say the spear, but I'll go with yours.

wow u revived a dead one...

someone said the spark, but that is a discovery not an invention

I second language. Many of you said the internet, or electricity powering the internet. But the power of the net is still about communication, just on a larger scale. the internet is a tool to facilitate communication, but it still involves input by people. Put a monkey in front of a computer, and it won't communicate any better. Moveable type just allowed communication to be portable and permanent. Language allowed the spread of ideas. On a primitive level, look at the animals and insects that use communication to survive. Bees tell others in the hive where nectar is at. Ants follow each other by pheremones to food or danger. Dogs can read body language like that. Monkeys use screeches, howls, and other noises to communicate. Our brains are so highly developed to handle the ability to process verbal sounds. Some scientists believe that language caused this brain growth, not brain growth causing language. The primitives who could communicate better lived longer. Think about it. We have no claws, no sharp teeth, we are slow, our babies take years to develop, we have no prtective fur, but we dominated every environment by being able to work together and communicate.

I can't choose just one, so:

The printing press
The wheel
The telegraph
The integrated circuit
The birth control pill (Greatest invention of the 20th Century)

If you look at it, most of what we have comes from those. Right now I'm typing on a whole bunch of integrated circuits attached to a really fast telegraph.

I'll answer with that one now.

Either that, or fried chicken. Gotta love the man who came up with that.

Printing press.

Anesthesia and sterilization.

Computers would be second.

greatest invention, 'dead thread reviver'

or maybe it was the harnessing of electricity, after all. all that we know is based around elecrtricity

How come people do not know the difference between "invention" and "discovery"? Electricity, fire, and sticks were not invented, they were discovered. If you counted discoveries you would have to say food before electricity.
So for the greatest invention I will list several as they are equally, or almost equally, important:
Wheel
Computers
Telephone
Plastic (as someone mentioned above; almost all food is stored in plastic; medicine, etc.)

Isn't the obvious answer sliced bread?

Either velcro or my chipotle chicken wings. But I'm pulling for velcro.

I think Omar already said it, but the answer is 'Antiseptics'

I don't know why that's the answer, except that I remember watching a movie or something, where they a school age guy what the greatest invention of the millenium was or something like that, and the answer was antiseptics.

Before I entered the thread, my answer was the wheel.

Now that I've read the thread, my answer is language.

The sewer system greatest invention evar.

I think it's the automobile personally. Sure there were many other influential inventions out there that changed the paradigm, but could you imagine the world without cars? having to take trains to get everywhere? I for one would hate the world without cars.

The ballpoint pen.
It beats a quill, any day.


runners-up:
The abacus and weighing scales.

Mathematics.

Marconi's radio. It moved communication into the modern era. Radio, then Television, then the Internet. But i guess we have to thank Al Gore for the internet, tho.

Donnie Darko.


Agriculture, as lebell pointed out, made civilization viable. I think it could be said that if not for agriculture, most inventions wouldn't exist. It made engineering possible, since it allowed food production to be put in the hands of, relatively, small group of people. In doing so other people were freed up to pursue other things like invention.

That being said, language is pretty freaking big too.

Hmm...I'm surpprised no one picks money yet....So I'll change my mind about the stick and pick MONEY!! :D Where would be we without that precious medium of exchange?

Would you agree that it's both the cause and solution to all our problems?

Deoderant kicked some serious ass too!

I think I am gonna go with the scientific method.

The George Forman Grill.

Beer.

Hello?? the clapper!

Language.

The one and only answer.

Though, another answer most definitely could be Baileys haagen daaas ice cream.

MMmmmmm....

I'll go with Written Language

Ever heard of "wood"? :D

And I agree that farming is pretty far up there.

I'd like to say "sex", but that wasn't invented by us.

the greatest invention of humanity is easily, and obviously, the blowjob.



ok, seriously, I've always thought that the machined screw was one of the best, and yet most overlooked, inventions.

The first cave man who hit a bone on something, creating a reverberating sound, being the first drum, and the beginning of man made music.

Not so life-shattering, but my favorite invention nonetheless

Robo-Bush.

http://www.gradis.net/xray.htm

I agree with hu-man about beer.

First brewed in 10 000 BC, beer encouraged the development of agriculture and society and ended the hunter-gatherer phase of the human race. Most importantly though, we forget that for much of human history, water was a rather dangerous thing - source of dysentary and cholera. The very act of forming communties, cities and towns made water sources contaminated. Beer provided fluid sustenance and nutrition without the risk of death.

Hail the brewers who wrote the US constitution. Hail aqua vitae - the water of life.

I'm for language too. Without language, what good is the printing press (invented in Korea, BTW, and then reinvented in Europe), the telephone, or the internet without language.

Jst spent 4 years in Japan, and they have the greatest invention ever, hands down. Coffee in a can from a vending machine. You know how many times this simple little thing saved my life, or at least my paycheck, by keeping me up for the midwatch? There is nothing greater in the world.

Pornography. It keeps us single males from going insane and killing everything in sight.

Definitely the internet :D

i agree with bundy. The printing press i believe ushered in a new era of enlightenment.

edit: to all those with a "language" answer- How did anyone "invent" language? All animals have some form of communication with one another that could be termed as a language of sorts, and some of these communications are really quite complex.
Human language is merely the evolution of grunts and squacks into a greater vocabulary. I don't think any one ancestor invented language when he made up a new grunt for tree, or clouds. Language of a sort has been with up for hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps millions. (if you believe that darwinian evolution stuff)

computers/networking... can't beat that

:DEJACULATION!!!:D

Electricity by far

The greatest human invention, of all time...the sharpened stick. Without it, we never would have been able to overcome natural obstacles, like the Sabre Tooth Tiger, that had to think twice about his dining choices. It was...the first manufactured weapon.

I would have to agree with Language. Without it we would not have been able to achieve any of the other inventions/discoveries. It allowed early man to communicate so that he could share his ideas and methods.

Pasteurization...

Without it, our food sources would have such a short lifespan...

-SF

God.


Think about it.

The wheel begat kinetic energy, which begat electricity...........


the wheel = $$$

I would have to say BANANNAS... but if that doesnt count i guess i would say THE COASTER...

Got to go with electricity on this one. Without it, I haven't the slightest idea what I would be doing right now... besides sitting in the dark.

Again, distinguish between DISCOVERY (examples: electricity, gold, oil) and INVENTIONS (examples: combustible engine, computers)

The beautiful art of language... if we didn't have it, where would we be and what would we do?

if you know anything about electricity...

id say the greatest human invention of all time is the AMPLIFIER

my next vote goes for the pencil.

The Greatest human invention of all time is TV!!

ESPN Classic

speech....gotta be. without the rest o' these never happen.

OMG!!! I was thinking the same thing!! Just don't tell X-tians that...

Agreed. Almost everything is based on math.

I don't think major innovations in language ever occured out of the efforts a few individuals.

Woah...

I mean..

Woah..

Good one.

-SF

I have a hard time calling language an invention. Many other species communicate. Although our forms of communication are much more advanced than theirs, it's still a basic thing that people didn't invent, we just perfected it.

My vote goes for the harnessing electricity. No other invention had changed human life so rapidly.

Fire was great, but 150 years later we were still weak creatures that got our asses kicked on a regular basis. Same pretty much goes for the wheel.

Lol kutulu, we have in no way perfected language.... but I do agree on the point that we did not invent it either, it was yet another discovery.

electricity by far.. think where we wuold be today without it

If my wife were here, i'm sure she'd say the vibrator.

i'm going to have to say the spork

the wheel! it's what the first computers ran on :P

I'm not sure if someone said this, but women are up on my list.

I know we didn't technically invent them, but hell, I'm taking credit if they have my rib.

Writing, birth control, shoes, and the Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP. Not necessarily in that order.

High explosives.

Werd!! That would have to be the first (Bless those monks!!).

Secondly, the wheel. But remember boys and girls...the two do not mix!!