28 ms·
Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
Not levers and wheels and gears, but Velcro and paper clips. I’d put “modern” as after 1700, and “simple” as “you can pretty much build it yourself”, but you can argue theses (as I’m sure you will! :-)
- ImaTigger 7y agoIce making (someone else said refrigeration, but this is more specific).
- metaloha 7y agoRice cookers. Totally ingenious.
- dossy 7y agoRice cooker = hipster Instant Pot.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoIsn't that reversed? Instant Pot === hipster Rice Cooker
- coenhyde 7y agoWell i'd say dossy is right. Because he's assigning "Rice cooker" to equal "hipster Instant Pot". Thus we know that they are the same value. You are only doing a test. We don't know for sure if your conditional returns true.
- jrace 7y agoRice cookers came out in the 1950s, instant pot was 2009
- dossy 7y agoSorry, yeah, I got them mixed up in my head when I was typing it out - I think you understood what I meant, thanks for correcting. My comment got downvoted, but come on, the Instant Pot _is_ just the hipster version of the old rice cooker ... and the rice cooker is a really important but simple modern invention.
- afarrell 7y agoYou can cook chicken in 23 minutes in a rice cooker?
- kwhitefoot 7y agoI'm sure you could. Not sure why one would want to.
- dossy 7y agoI don't know about 23 minutes, but: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/218739/rice-cooker-chicken/ https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/218739/rice-cooker-chicken...
- overcast 7y agoMost used kitchen item by far in my house, almost used daily.
- abrax3141 7y agoNot sure this counts as "simple".
- mhh__ 7y agoMy dad still uses the family (his dad's) rice cooker from the mid 1950s, so they aren't that complicated, they're basically a heater and thermal cutoff PSA for anyone who doesn't: Wash your fucking rice
- ken 7y ago> Wash your fucking rice Even better: use no-wash rice. It's easier for you, and better for the environment: > [...] believe it or not, the cloudy water consumers pour off when washing their rice has been identified as a significant source of water pollution in Japan. In the B.G. method [used to make no-wash rice], the bran comes out dry, so instead of going out with the wash water and ending up in rivers and streams, it can be diverted into fertilizer and animal feed. and: > It’s considered enough of a problem that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government urges residents to water plants with their togijiru [cloudy rice water] rather than sending it down the sewer. And Shiga Prefecture, in an effort to protect Lake Biwa, has asked its citizens to switch to no-wash rice. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/16/reference/no-wash-rice-musenmai/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/16/reference/no-wa...
- mhh__ 7y agoI've literally never seen no wash rice in my life (in the UK)
- EL_Loco 7y ago-> Wash your fucking rice What? Sure, if you want to remove some of the starch, but what if you don't? I don't really know why you should if you don't want to, unless it was dirty, but rice today comes pretty clean of debris and bugs. Plus, it's going to be cooked, so no problem there.
- 7y ago
- solarkraft 7y agoSo what am I missing using a pot on the stove?
- jfk13 7y agoNot much; you just have to be a bit more careful to manage the heat and time appropriately.
- dossy 7y agoBinder clips. "The binder clip was invented in 1910 by Washington resident Louis E. Baltzley, who ultimately was granted U.S. Patent 1,139,627 for his invention." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip
- dossy 7y agoThe incandescent light bulb. "In 1761, Ebenezer Kinnersley demonstrated heating a wire to incandescence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb
- Jaruzel 7y agoI still don't think LED (or Halogen) house bulbs are anywhere near as good as the classic incandescent bulb. Most LED bulbs give me a headache. Bad LED bulbs cause 'strobing' in my vision which is even worse.
- jes5199 7y agoI’ve gotten used to LEDs but I recently picked up an incandescent night light bulb- 25 watts for a dim glow. It gets really warm! 25 watts is an absurd amount of power. And people light rooms with multiple 60s! That’s bonkers
- tylermac1 7y agoLove 25W bulbs for bedrooms. Perfect amount of light to provide a relaxed atmosphere.
- kick 7y agoThere are LED bulbs this doesn't apply to. The flicker is so intense, damaging, and nauseating that people have tried to make standards to help get rid of it: https://standards.ieee.org/standard/1789-2015.html https://standards.ieee.org/standard/1789-2015.html
- madhadron 7y agoThis isn't the LED itself. It's the circuitry running current through the light emitting material. Unlike incandescents and fluorescents where the medium itself smooths out poor signal from the circuitry, LEDs show you the quality of the signal going in. Then there's the question of whether the color emission mix is designed so that your eye perceives it as an approximation of a blackbody spectrum. That's an issue of matching doping to our biology and one of those things that I think is just about settled in decent quality bulbs. Once the doping mix and the quality of circuitry is fixed, the incandescent lightbulb is at best an historical curiosity.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoMaybe some non-device inventions: the staff system; the germ theory of disease; currency without a gold standard; public health; public education
- arbitrage 7y agoas in musical staves? good one!
- madhadron 7y agoMusical staves aren't after 1700, though. The five line staff we used today was widespread by the 16th century, and staff notation goes back to the 11th century.
- dnautics 7y agocurrency without a gold standard is arguably the original system of money (see debt: the first 5000 years)
- pmdulaney 7y agoIt's kind of an oxymoron because if it were simple it would have been invented before modern times. But I'll say backpacks for everyday commuter use and trashcans with wheels (what they refer to in British TV shows as "wheely bins").
- aidenn0 7y agoSimplicity is only somewhat related to invention. The compound bow was not invented until 1966, but any technically-inclined person from the early-modern era would immediately understand how it works from a picture.
- willvarfar 7y agoTangential, but if you want to nerd out on bow tech, the slingshot channel is awesome! Rapid fire repeating bows with half draw-weight, all made in the classic mad inventor in a garage charm! A good intro https://youtu.be/f3fcNyZoEIw https://youtu.be/f3fcNyZoEIw
- nathell 7y agoZipper (1851) and ballpoint pen (1888) would be my picks.
- ryanmercer 7y agoThe development, and successful commercialization, of the ballpoint pen is a really interesting hole to dive down. John Loud is like check this cool thing I made, it doesn't really work though. Laszlo Biro comes along and makes it viable, everyone tries to rip him off, then Marcel Bich comes along and is like "Biro, let me have that, everyone sit down Bic has this!". Stuff You Should Know did a podcast episode about it once. IIRC it was a decent listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXB7479t0XM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXB7479t0XM
- hatmatrix 7y agoMeanwhile, Levi's 501 still pretending like 1851 didn't happen
- Jaruzel 7y agoThe basic internal combustion engine. Without it, we'd still be spending half our lives travelling places.
- abrax3141 7y agoImportant, def! But I don't think that this could count as "simple".
- abyssin 7y agoNot saying it didn't have an impact, but I'm nitpicking about the impact it had on how we spend our time: "Marchetti's constant is the average time spent by a person for commuting each day, which is approximately one hour. [...] Ever since Neolithic times, people have kept the average time spent per day for travel the same, even though the distance may increase due to the advancements in the means of transportation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant
- zip1234 7y agoI would say the internal combustion engine has not meaningfully cut people's day to day travel. Where prevalent, many just live further away and travel a long time still. I understand that long distance travel has been revolutionized by engines (steam and internal combustion), but I'm not certain about day to day travel. Many people near me are in a car for multiple hours per day. I would love to see a study on average 'commute' times in the 17-1800s.
- roosgit 7y agoLiquid paper. Invented in 1956 by a typist, in her kitchen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Paper
- ph4 7y agoI'm having trouble seeing how this even makes the top 100 list of "most important".
- estebarb 7y ago12 years ago we still relayed on notebooks and pens for everything. Then smartphones appear and life changed forever. And also devices like clocks, calculators, cameras, gps, planners, maps, agendas, erasers and liquid paper become redundant.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago12 years ago was 2008. Most of us didn't type manually by then. Most of us had word processors, and keyboards with a backspace button.
- new2628 7y agoI still rely on notebooks and pens for everything, yet I never used liquid paper. What am I missing?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- akeck 7y agoMaybe not "most important", but a few dollars worth of post-it notes can turn any wall into a "business application" that can potentially cost thousands to turn into code.
- abrax3141 7y agohttps://www.flickr.com/photos/ableman/sets/72157594421824427/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/ableman/sets/72157594421824427...
- pcurve 7y agoI don't know if you were being sarcastic, but the post it note meetings only provide illusion of getting things done and they can often be destructive if not conducted well or relied on too heavily. Your mileage will vary of course.
- 013a 7y agoThough, many people say the exact same thing about Jira, so...
- purplezooey 7y agopriceless comment
- davidw 7y agoBicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could 'build one yourself'.
- miguelmota 7y agoBicycles may seem simple but took many decades to get it right. Your comment also reminded me of this gallery of drawings from people attempting to create a bicycle from memory which is pretty funny https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw-bicycle-from-memory-and-renders-results/ https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw...
- notatoad 7y agoThe most astounding thing about bicycles is that we did actually get it right. looking at the first ~100 years of iteration, you'd kind of assume that it was one of those things that would just keep evolving forever. But then they found the classic diamond frame design, and bikes have been fundamentally the same since then.
- davidw 7y agoFeels kind of asymptotic to me: they got most of the basics right 100 years ago, but things like derailleurs are a pretty big improvement in terms of allowing an ordinary person to ride over varied terrain. Quick release skewers (grazie a Tullio Campagnolo), lighter materials, clipless pedals (for racers)... have all been incremental improvements. More recently, tubeless tires on mountain bikes are a big improvement in my enjoyment of riding off road.
- madhadron 7y agoYou could also argue that the political necessity in competitive cycling to maintain its status quo (thus not allowing recumbents and the like) has forced us into a local maximum that we cannot easily exit.
- dharmab 7y agoYou can absolutely make arguments that bicycle design is unoptimized. Why use front forks when they have so many problems? https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/why-are-there-no-alternatives-to-the-telescopic-fork-front-suspension https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/why-are-there-no-alter... Why haven't recumbent bicycles taken over the road bike market despite many advantages (hint: It has to do with what kinds of traffic we prioritize in cities) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle#Compared_to_uprights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle#Compared_to_...
- dvirsky 7y agoSeat-belts maybe. Not as important as the car itself obviously, but definitely simple and super impactful.
- pesfandiar 7y agoSuper impactful indeed, even though it is paradoxically designed to reduce the impact.
- acd 7y agoVolvo opened up the patent for modern three way seat belts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news/volvo-trucks-magazine/2019/may/seatbelts.html https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news/volvo-trucks-magazine...
- some1else 7y ago> A twistlock and corner casting together form a standardized rotating connector for securing shipping containers. The primary uses are for locking a container into place on a container ship, semi-trailer truck or railway container train, and for lifting of the containers by container cranes and sidelifters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock
- dvirsky 7y agoActually the shipping container itself is pretty much high up there I guess. Pretty revolutionary for a box.
- hencq 7y agoYou might already be familiar with it, but I can heartily recommend the book The Box by Marc Levinson [1]. It describes how a simple idea of putting items in a container first, instead of directly on a ship, completely changed the world. It is for example the reason why Oakland and New Jersey eclipsed San Francisco and New York as ports. When Malcolm McLean, the inventor of the humble container, died in 2001, container ships all over the world, at an agreed moment, sounded their horns in tribute. [1] - https://g.co/kgs/vCK3nB https://g.co/kgs/vCK3nB
- ufmace 7y agoI was going to post the standardized shipping container myself. It was apparently a massive boost to transportation efficiency when the industry moved to a standard container that a single simple crane could rapidly load and unload from any ship and load onto a truck or railcar. It seems that, before this, most goods were transported in barrels or other one-off small containers loaded and unloaded from ships by manpower. Could take weeks to load and unload a ship.
- leoh 7y agoIt's not as simple as you'd like, but the little known Bosch-Haber process, which produces ammonia for farming, staved off mass famines and may be why many readers of HN are alive today.
- ghaff 7y agoAfter which, Haber went on to play a key role in helping Germany develop chemical weapons for World War I.
- new2628 7y agoWould the world be better or worse off without the population boom that resulted from the invention?
- robbrown451 7y agoBetter to whom? How do you define "better" if not relative to some entity able to appreciate the difference between good and bad?
- dredmorbius 7y agoLooking at the long-term consequences might be illuminating, though that presupposes agreement on what that long-term consequence is. If it is a high, stable, prosperous, and happy population, sustainable over the long term, arguably good. If you start deviating from these criteria, things don't look so good. H-B has given us "large. Is that population stable? Is it prosperous (and if so or if not, where and why)? Is it happy? And is it sustainable over the long term? If not, what does the end-stage look like, and how does it compare to the status quo ante*, prior to H-B? As with tackling complex projects, addressing difficult questions sometimes becomes more tractable when decomposed into sub-problems and components. As with mathematical proofs, sometimes presuming one result, then walking that to its inevitable conclusions, leads to a proof by contradiction.
- DonaldFisk 7y agoGeneral anaesthesia.
- harryh 7y agoStandardized shipping containers massively decreased the cost of global commerce which is perhaps the most important force in the modern world.
- arcturus17 7y agoNice one, but we could get into a debate on whether a convention counts as an invention.
- harryh 7y agoYa, I dunno if it counts either. Just seemed like an interesting answer so I threw it out there.
- mjd 7y agoThe often-overlooked Twistlock is an important part of this, and I think it answers the objections about the “invention” being only a convention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock On review: another comment here says the same. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22291068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22291068
- riskneutral 7y agoI’ve got an even simpler one: the standardized shipping pallet.
- harryh 7y agoAn excellent example of complementary goods! :)
- ken 7y agoDoes standardization count as an invention? Then I'd put the metric system higher than shipping containers. I'm not sure "you can pretty much build it yourself", either. The actual process is pretty involved [1]. Even if each step is simple, it's a lot of work, and building a large 3D object to precise specifications is not easy. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7l6AQN1KV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7l6AQN1KV0 On that note, though, I submit arc welding as a simple modern invention of great importance. Living in a city, it's rare that I'm not within 2 steps of some object that was joined with arc welding. The basic structure of an arc welder is really simple: an electric current, a wire feeder, and some way (like a noble gas) to protect it.
- gramakri 7y agoWashing machine and dish washer
- ganzuul 7y agoThat's actually a big one because of how much time women would spend on these chores.
- candiddevmike 7y agoAluminum beverage cans are an engineering marvel: https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw
- TimSchumann 7y agoFun fact -- 15,000+ aluminum cans are manufactured every second. Every. Second. Really hope Bill keeps putting out videos, but I understand how life gets and it's not his full time job.
- s9w 7y agois that right? That would be something like 5 per day per person on earth.
- hackandtrip 7y agoIsn't it 5 persons per can?
- s9w 7y agoright, oops
- TimSchumann 7y agoI think the number you were shooting for is 15k cans/second = roughly one can every 5 days for each person on the planet.
- TimSchumann 7y agoIf it's off, it's likely less than an order of magnitude off. It's based on the numbers in the video, which he states as half a trillion cans a year from 2015. If anything, I'd guess the number is a touch low.
- deleted 7y ago
- slipwalker 7y agotoilet paper, maybe ?...
- jfk13 7y agoWhy? Cleaning with water works fine - better, in many people's opinion.
- rafaelvasco 7y agoFirst water of course, and then paper to dry it. If any residue is found, repeat the process.
- sebastianconcpt 7y agoThe sanitation system.
- jfk13 7y agoOurs may be more sophisticated in various ways, but sanitation systems were invented long ago. https://www.harappa.com/lothal/14.html https://www.harappa.com/lothal/14.html
- sebastianconcpt 7y agoTotally.
- dotancohen 7y agoAnd the roads.
- octokatt 7y agoPlastic. We're now drowning in a new problem, but plastic and its impact on sanitation (particularly medical sanitation, like disposable needles, which then supports vaccinations) has dramatically improved life quality and length. Losing a child to disease before the age of five is no longer a universal human experience, portrayed in the Robert Frost poem below. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial
- technotarek 7y agoAntibiotics?
- abrax3141 7y agoNot simple.
- Method5440 7y agoDoes the theory of evolution by natural selection count as an invention or a discovery? ;)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- michaelmcmillan 7y agoDr. Ignaz Semmelweis on discovering the effects of washing your hands before operating on patients. Simple, yet highly effective.
- umvi 7y agoHis story is so sad though. He was ostracized by the other doctors and medical community who didn't believe him and indeed openly mocked him. He remained outspoken about his findings until a colleague forced him into an asylum where he was beaten by the guards and died.
- tptacek 7y agoThey didn't believe him in part because he was a notorious asshole, and in part because he was insistent on a root cause analysis of hand-washing that was clearly false. He also didn't "invent" handwashing, which was already the normal protocol by the time he began practicing; rather, his contribution was a particular antiseptic handwashing protocol (chlorinated lime).
- eecc 7y agoSuperficial, disrespectful. There might have been many reasons, not being in tune with the crown wasn't necessarily the worst of the sins.
- tptacek 7y agoI can't tell whether you're saying Semmelweis was merely superficially disrespectful, or whether you're saying I'm being disrespectful. Can you reword this? I don't understand the point you're trying to make.
- sixstringtheory 7y agoHow do you figure it was “clearly false”? Once his protocol was implemented, mortality rates from childbed fever plummeted. It turned out the reason so many people had been dying from it was that obstetricians were performing pathological observations on mothers who had died from it and then gone straight to delivering babies without disinfecting in between. This is readily available info on his wikipedia but also recently appeared in an episode of 99PI which is where I learned about it. I’d be interested to see more information presenting an alternative history.
- nsfyn55 7y agoUnix Pipes - BWK pointed out in his memoir how a small piping implementation done in a single day changed Unix(and computing) forever.
- abrax3141 7y agoAPL was around in the late '60s and is basically just pipes.
- ThePhysicist 7y agoSterilization of medical equipment. Easy to do even at home if you know how, probably saved hundreds of millions of lives since it was invented.
- wincy 7y agoSomeone didn’t think of putting wheels on luggage until relatively recently, in 1987. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05road.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05road.html
- todd8 7y agoA few weeks ago I was going through some stuff in our storage unit and found an originally very nice suitcase. It's of no value to me now because it has no wheels. Imagine how much more difficult air travel would be without the wheels!
- ryanmercer 7y agoI don't have to imagine it. We had 2 massive suitcases when I was a kid that were built like tanks. You actually had to be pretty thoughtful when you put them into the trunk because of their size. But here's the thing. You pulled up to the terminal back then, parked, got out. Walked away from the car and checked your bag right there on the sidewalk if you weren't getting there at some weird hour and then said bye to whoever dropped you off and they left. You walked inside and checked into your flight and didn't have to think about luggage until you got to wherever. When you got to your destination, there were a bunch of luggage carts and you'd throw in 25 cents or 50 cents or whatever and get one, load up whatever and take it to the shuttle or car rental. If you were feeling rich, you'd just leave the cart and not worry about getting your change back. If you were feeling like a cheapskate you could take the cart to a return and get some or all of your change back. Picking someone up? You parked the car, went inside the airport, went through a metal detector and had your change/wallet/purse x-rayed and walked right up to the gate and waited for their plane to pull up. I remember one time we picked up my grandparents and my dad was a state police officer. We went through security, he put his gun and badge (out of uniform) on the conveyor belt, no one freaked out, they checked his police ID against his face, made me push a button on my pager to show them it was a real electronic device and told us keep moving. Then in that area, there was some smoke coming from the ceiling outside. No panic, no evacuation, some fire fighters pulled up outside and came in through a gate, poked around at the ceiling tiles and decided everything was ok while everyone just casually sat around. This would have been 1997 probably, dad died in early 1998 and I don't think I had the pager in 1996 (context: my father had bought a pager and payed for service in advance, then as a detective the department gave him one so they used it to reach me when I was out and about on my bike or at a friend's and someone was on the internet). Different times. I'm only 34.
- vahid4m 7y agoThe idea of Open Source software
- mhh__ 7y agoThe metric system is pretty good
- Smoosh 7y agoI can't believe they never implemented metric time and dates (calendar). Now we seem to be forever* stuck with what we have - a glaring inconsistency in some fundamental units of measurement. * Forever is a long time; after several civilizations crumble and rebuild, perhaps there will be an opportunity.
- dublin 7y agoMetric time and dates notably fail to work with the observed motion of the Solar system. The time metrics we use are determined by the rhythms of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Metric time offers no benefit. (And for the record, Napoleon tried to decree decimal dates and times, but even the French weren't having any of that crap...)
- techbio 7y agoI'll suggest the thermostat (and throw in the rest of control theory).
- acvny 7y agoThe greatest invention/discovery of modern times is electricity. It is the second fire and much much more..
- abrax3141 7y agoFire is old. Electricity-- or at least it's control -- not so old, but I'm not sure I'd count it as simple. Making a functional battery or generator that doesn't just create or store trivial amounts energy is quite a challenge.
- stan_rogers 7y agoHuge powerful batteries are simple. It's making them small and lightweight that's the hard part.
- werber 7y agoCondoms
- mjd 7y agoI read “modern” as “post-world-war-II” and suggest: Drywall.
- juliend2 7y agoI would say the Telegraph. In the book [CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Softwar](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319 https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...), Charles Petzold talks about how it's foundational to the eventual invention of the computer. Back then, it also meant coast to coast communications were almost instantaneous. And soon after, transatlantic cable-enabled telegraph boosted commerce between America and Europe.
- aidenn0 7y agoSmokeless gunpowder? It completely changed the dynamics of the battlefield, and you said "important" not necessarily "good"
- estebarb 7y ago"simple" is a strong requirement. I don't know how to make anything of most things proposed!!! If we were thrown to the Earth 10000 years ago, we would be able to bootstrap our current tech in less than a century?
- arbitrage 7y ago10,000 years? I think so. 1,000 years? Maaaaybe.
- allannienhuis 7y agoThis book is an attempt at answering that question, although it's not exactly step-by-step (especially as the book progresses), it gives the framework for rebooting civilization - the paths to follow. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114087-the-knowledge https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114087-the-knowledge [edit] - actually it's answering a slightly different question I guess - how to reboot after a cataclysm, but the path is more-or-less the same I think :)
- kwhitefoot 7y agoYes. So long as we had a few reference works, freedom from attack by competing tribes, and landed on productive agricultural land. Simple radios are very easy and allow us to stick together over wider ranges than the locals, knowledge of simple medical concepts and sanitation keeps us alive and healthy longer. Understanding how to build effective shelters and storage systems allows us to keep an agricultural surplus which enables some of us to devote our time to bootstrapping. The biggest problem would be people jockeying for short term power instead of pulling together for long term success.
- war1025 7y agoThe thing you are missing, which is a massive hurdle that is underappreciated, is that you need access to raw materials. Most of the modern gadgets we use require things that you can't just find out your front door.
- 7y ago
- ZguideZ 7y agoCanning and food preservation. It used to be all about salt salt salt.
- netule 7y agoThe hypodermic needle.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- coenhyde 7y agoJoke ---- Your head
- LeoPanthera 7y agoEarplugs! Improved sleep quality can have huge health benefits and the world is noisier than ever. ...might have been invented before 1700 though.
- dartdartdart1 7y agoThey cause inner ear bacteria to quintuple overnight, shouldn't be a problem with a healthy immune system, but still
- LeoPanthera 7y agoI would imagine that the improvement to sleep quality outweighs any possible ear bacteria problems, at least in otherwise healthy people sleeping in noisy locations. I also question the “quadruple” claim, a quick internet search doesn’t back that up.
- jrace 7y agoOne ear infection and you may not agree.
- jordan801 7y agoTry a white noise generator. I live with noisy roommates and it has changed my life. Ear plugs fall out, and can prevent you from hearing real emergencies and your alarm clock. I went from borderline psychotic from them waking me up, to sleeping like a rock.
- jrace 7y agoThey can cause you to become reliant on sleeping with earplugs. Our hearing system does not turn off at night, and by using earplugs you may be increasing your night time hearing sensitivity. I worked for almost 15 years in Audiology and saw many people with issues in part from sleeping with ear plugs. Most could not sleep without earplugs even in very quiet situations, and some even developed hyperacusis. For the prevention of hearing-loss due to noise, they have been excellent.
- geoffreyy 7y agoSomeone has to say it... Squatty Potty
- fit2rule 7y agoThe IUD.
- abrax3141 7y agoIUDs aren't simple. The concept of contraception is simple, and condoms (as mentioned elsewhere are), but both of those are old.
- fit2rule 7y agoI dunno, I think Gräfenbergs Ring is pretty darn simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gräfenberg%27s_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gräfenberg%27s_ring
- TopHand 7y agoWindow screens and indoor plumbing are the 2 greatest improvements for our daily lives.
- allhacks 7y agoSince OP didn’t provide reasons, I will. Window screens: malaria prevention. Indoor plumbing: make sanitation so convenient that you don’t have any reasons not to use it (vs throwing the old night bucket outta the window). Obviously city scale sanitation == no dysentery, cholera...etc.
- nickserv 7y agoSanitation systems are really old, though. I was impressed with the sophistication of the one present in Glanum, a small (but wealthy) Roman provincial town abandoned in the 2nd century. The sewer system runs underneath the main street: baths, villas, and the abatoir connect to it. To say nothing of the ones in major cities of the time.
- phamilton 7y agoExcept window screens still aren't common in Europe.
- indentit 7y agoThat doesn't mesh with my experience. When I moved from the UK - where windows open outwards and its not really possible to have screens - to the countryside in mainland Europe where mosquitoes and flies are much more common, one can buy mosquito nets for windows from the supermarkets. I don't regret that purchasing decision at all - being able to have the window open at night in summer means I can actually get some sleep :)
- iancmceachern 7y agoRefrigeration, particularly because it has revolutionized our food infrastructure.
- jessaustin 7y agoMany inventions only make sense in our specific modern context. Every primate that has ever lived could appreciate refrigeration and air conditioning.
- turc1656 7y agoI second this. Was going to post but saw I was beaten to it already.
- wufufufu 7y agoCardboard boxes?
- ryanmercer 7y agoCommon soap bars, they weren't really a thing until the mid 1850's and you had to make your own soap unless you were wealthy prior to that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#19th_century Similarly, liquid soap which came to be around the same time.
- pppp 7y agoLiquid soaps are a poor choice from an environmental/cost standpoint. Most of the soap goes down the drain and is wasted. Bar soap stays on your hands and last many times longer.
- ryanmercer 7y agoThat may be the case now, but liquid soaps revolutionized laundry when they came to be. Washing clothes with bar soap is a royal pain. Powdered laundry detergents really didn't start to catch on until the 1940's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_detergent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_detergent Also, washing machines didn't really start to catch on until the mid 1940's, prior to that it was still pretty much scrub boards. Scrub boards are bad enough with liquid soap.
- new2628 7y agoI found soap nuts to be the cheapest, most eco-friendly, and reasonably efficient detergent there is. Just drop a bunch of soap nuts in a cloth bag into the washing machine, and it produces enough foam to make everything clean.
- cosmodisk 7y agoWashing Machine. Recent iterations are more complex( repair engineer could plug into ours and diagnose all sorts of things, including checking results of previous washes), however the principle behind it isn't that complex. It has made life easier for so many households.
- dnautics 7y agoYou can get a simple one that is probably 80% of the way to a modern commercial washing machine, and several orders of magnitude better than going to a stream and washing: for example "wonderwash"
- willvarfar 7y agoAn excellent talk on its affects by the late Hans Rosling https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_machine?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_mac...
- BrandoElFollito 7y agoThank you for that link. Right before reading your reply I was trying to remember where I read about how it changed women's life and this is actually that talk my memory had remains of.
- acd 7y agoOn the number of hours saved by Washing machines and Dishwashers. Liberating women from having to do these tasks and instead contributing to the general economy instead.
- war1025 7y ago> the number of hours saved by Washing machines and Dishwashers. This is true, but to some extent over-stated I think. We have a family of five, and don't use our dishwasher. I just do the dishes every morning while I listen to the news on the radio. It takes less than an hour. As far as washing machines, I agree that they are quite convenient, but the truth is most clothing doesn't need to be washed nearly so often as people do. Without a washing machine, you would just do laundry less often. I think modern plumbing is the actual time saver. Not having to haul water from the river or the well frees up a ton of time. Having waste water safely disposed of is a massive boon to hygiene.
- jcranmer 7y agoSince you've allowed modern to include the Industrial Revolution, I would submit the invention that started it: the flying shuttle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle (How did this cause the Industrial Revolution? It made weaving so much faster, that the spinning industry had to come up with machines to supply the weaving industry.)
- alanbernstein 7y agoThis is an answer to the "most important invention" question I've never heard before, and it's a great answer for the "simple" qualifier too. I've never even heard of this device before.
- akgerber 7y agoThe mills at Lowell are a National Historic Park now and they still have a weaving line running. It's a fascinating place to visit.
- harshalizee 7y agoThe flying shuttle is still in use in various parts of Asia, especially India in the manufacture of still sarees.
- kragen 7y agoIsn't almost all woven cloth woven with flying shuttles now?
- deepspace 7y agoAs an aside, from the Wikipedia article: > ... using treadles to raise and lower the heddles, which opened the shed in the warp threads. The operator then had to reach forward while holding the shuttle in one hand and pass this through the shed; the shuttle carried a bobbin for the weft. That is a quite a bit of industry-specific jargon packed into a single paragraph. Without context this could easily be mistaken for Star Trek jargon.
- bachmeier 7y agoIn terms of economic importance, the assembly line was extremely simple yet had a massive impact.
- exabrial 7y agoSewers - literally prevents plagues
- jbay808 7y agoDeployed widely in modern times, but invented in antiquity.
- brutt 7y agoSoftware.
- rhacker 7y agoDefinitely far from simple, but definitely important.
- say_it_as_it_is 7y agoThe idea of human rights is simple, fairly modern, and very important -- one of the most important today.
- fao_ 7y agoI mean, it only takes a glance through Kenny's history of philosophy books to see that as a concept, it's not a very modern idea. It's just that it's only in the 1800s and 1900s that general strikes forced the idea to actually be implemented. Before industrial work, if you stopped working the land you could be replaced (Strikes did still happen, but they were easier to deal with). The introduction of industrial work makes strikes harder to deal with, because instead of having to come up with 10 or 20 men for the fields, or exerting your force over them, you have to come up with a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand men to work the factory, or find a way to exert force over them. And while the labour is 'unskilled', you still need a certain level of understanding about, say, making steel, to avoid killing yourself and to properly manufacture the materials. And then in the 20th century, globalisation -- or more accurately -- the resulting specialisation of facilities, made striking even more effective. To quote Tony Cliff: When 3,000 General Motors brake parts workers went on strike in Dayton, Ohio, in 1996, they shut down General Motors operations across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Over 125,000 General Motors workers were laid off within days. The strike cost the company around $45 million a day, and the Clinton government screamed at both sides to settle. When an almost general strike took place in Denmark, Saab was forced to stop car production in Sweden because it ran out of essential components from Danish suppliers. The assembly of Saab’s convertible motors in Finland was also forced to stop. Volvo also announced that its production lines in Sweden and the Netherlands had been very badly affected. In 1988, when Ford workers in Britain struck, they brought the whole of Ford Europe to a halt within three or four days. (https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium/chap04.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium...) As I mentioned in another comment, the things that we take for granted: the ability for working men to vote (Something won by the Chartists in the 1800s), the ability for women to vote, human rights laws, worker's rights laws, the NHS, etc. were all given to us by strikes.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
- powellzer 7y agoThe modern clothespin wasn’t invented until 1887. It was then that the coiled fulcrum came into play.
- cranium 7y agoI'm surprised nobody mentioned radio communication. The AM (Amplitude Modulation) transmission is even quite simple to understand and build. You can even create an electric arc between the ground and the transmitting tower as a cheap (and dangerous) receiver: https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw
- tgv 7y agoI don't think a layperson can understand even the basic principle behind AM, let alone the actual device. It's not as "simple" as washing your hands.
- irchans 7y agoI seem to recall building small AM transmitters in elementary school. I don't remember if I used a transistor or not. I think it was easy to construct the capacitor and the inductor. (I build it in the early 70's and don't really remember how.) We also made crystal diode radios, but I have no idea how to construct a diode from scratch, so maybe those are not simple.
- artificialidiot 7y agocat whisker detector
- dublin 7y agoThis one just requires a lump of germanium and a pin or small wire.
- stan_rogers 7y agoTraditionally, one would have used galena (natural lead II sulfide) crystals. I also recall most "boys'" radios - the type you'd find in Cubs/Scouts/etc. handbooks - using a razor blade as the contact whisker, probably because it was the simplest way to get a small contact point and stiffness at the same time with materials a kid would likely have to hand.
- cyanbane 7y agoBirth Control.
- RookyNumbas 7y agoDefinitely not simple. But the pill is probably the most important invention of the past century or two. Maybe the transistor comes close.
- turc1656 7y agoVery interesting proposal. I actually remember hearing some professor (of some sort of biological/sociological background) describe birth control as arguably creating a new species as far as females go because never before did they have any sort of reliable control over their reproduction. He actually believed that it was such an incredible event in human history that we have yet to fully understand its total impact on society and that we should consider modern women as fundamentally different now - to such a large degree that he considers them a new species of human females.
- heavyarms 7y agoI'm not sure about the whole "build it yourself" part, but the "Bessemer process" for making steel was a simple innovation improving on something that existed but made it so much more affordable that many experts think it was a significant contributor to a "second" industrial revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution
- dcolkitt 7y agoI don't know if it's the most important, but it's a great example of how a very simple innovation had huge benefits. The Fitch Barrier are those big orange barrels you see on the side of the road. They're filled with sand inside, and basically help to dampen the momentum of a car that veers off the road. They were invented in the 1950s by John Fitch, a Formula 1 driver who just came up with them as a quick and dirty way to make the race track safer. One afternoon's random idea has managed to save over 17,000 lives and billions of dollars in damage.
- quickthrowman 7y agoI would nominate Jersey barriers as well, they’re easy to mass produce and there are machines that lay them down. Many roads would be undivided if it were not for jersey barriers.
- geocrasher 7y agoI owe my life to Jersey barriers. Around 1999 or 2000 I was driving an old Plymouth Barracuda (Slant 6 grandma's car, not a hemi monster) at 70 miles per hour in the fast lane on a freeway in Nevada. The car drifted to the left naturally because it needed an alignment and as I went to correct to the right nothing happened. The joint that connects the steering column to the steering gearbox had become disconnected. I didn't step on the brakes because they were also somewhat if he and might have sent me in any random direction! Had it not been for the graduating slope of the jersey barrier I would have either gone over into oncoming traffic which was also doing 70 miles per hour or more, or I would have bounced back into traffic on my own side of the freeway with random results. I would not most likely not have survived. Instead my front left tire caught the steepest graduation at the bottom of the jersey barrier which launched front left corner of the car up the barrier. But then a funny thing happened. I didn't flip over and I didn't go over it. Because the top section of the barrier is vertical I just came back down. This cycle happened several times until the car slowed down enough just to be sliding against the bottom of the barrier. At that point I was only doing about 30 miles per hour and could hit the brakes without worrying about what direction the brakes were going to take me. The car came to a stop. The only damage was a broken ball joint, a very messed up tire and wheel, and a bent fender lip! A wrecker came and got me and delivered the vehicle to my house. I horse traded that car the very next week for an old Land cruiser that tried to kill me when it lost brakes, but that's another story. I drive better vehicles these days but only barely
- jtlienwis 7y agoThe process for making ammonia from air (nitrogen) and hydrogen. Allowed a huge increase in agricultural output that saved a few billion people from starvation. Haber-Bosch process.
- ajuc 7y agoBasically there would be ~2 times less people on Earth and over half of them would work in farming if not for this one invention.
- dnautics 7y agoSadly, in my professional opinion as a chemist, I would say that the the haber process, is not actually that simple, either in its original conception or as implemented now.
- ajuc 7y agoWell it's better than Mościcki's process :)
- BrandoElFollito 7y agoWhat a coincidence, I passed today in front of his house and the chemical plant he was in charge of. The whole area is named after him too. I did not expect to see his name in HN.
- kragen 7y agoThe description on Wikipedia makes it sound trivial if you have high-pressure, high-temperature plumbing, and a lot of risk tolerance. What is it leaving out?
- plutonicks 7y agoI think those 3 things are the complexity
- 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- snarf21 7y ago1) Indoor plumbing 2) Washing machine
- dinjin 7y agoInternet. I know you can't build it easy. But if the building blocks were in place, its straight forward.
- austincheney 7y agoThe most important overlooked or ignored invention is the antibiotic via syringe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Duchesne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Duchesne
- PAGAN_WIZARD 7y agoThe electric motor/generator.
- ilamont 7y agoBending light (1840s) -> Fiber optics (1954) --> fast network connectivity ---> Internet ---> Telephony --> fiber optic endoscopy (1956) ---> better disease detection ---> laparoscopic surgery
- dnautics 7y agoI love that fiber optics are really rather complex in the underlying theory, but they're so simple in construction (ok it can take some very complex machinery, but when it boils down to it you could easily make a functional, basic example yourself, useful for real purposes, say piping in sunlight to a room)
- irchans 7y agoPost-it Notes
- UnFleshedOne 7y agoDoesn't that require specific adhesive (that is rather bad at being sticky)?
- crtlaltdel 7y agoplastics
- abrax3141 7y agoDef. not simple!
- crtlaltdel 7y agoidk...as far as complexity goes, plastics are not really all that bad. i'd argue that many machines are far more complex than a polymer when you consider what it's comprised of and how it functions.
- salgernon 7y agoI’d like to recommend James Burke’s series “Connections”[1] and “The Day the Universe Changed”[2] from the late 70s early 80s. He was a bbc journalist covering NASA and doing science communication and one of his particular fascinations (and mine, having grown up with his work) is the cumulative effect of ideas and technology shape not only how we interact with the modern world, but how we perceive it. [1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/ [2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/?ref_=m_nm_knf_wr_t3 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/?ref_=m_nm_knf_wr_t3
- ZguideZ 7y agoSome of the greatest TV ever made. Shaped my young mind.
- astrodust 7y agoFantastic and unique in that it cuts across what seem to be unrelated fields to show how one discovery, even accidental, can have enormous and profound implications.
- kej 7y agoJust want to add that Connections and some of his other videos are available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22james+burke%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22james+burk...
- DaveInTucson 7y agoMany of these are on YouTube as well, just search for "James Burke Connections"
- kwhitefoot 7y agoHe's still at it. See https://www.facebook.com/James-Burkes-Knowledge-Web-1636642569892667/#_=_ https://www.facebook.com/James-Burkes-Knowledge-Web-16366425...
- 7y ago
- jedberg 7y agoI highly recommend the podcast "50 things that made the modern economy". They're in season two now, with a second set of 50 things. Every podcast is about a simple invention that had a huge impact. Incidentally the Haber-Bosch Process (mentioned in this thread) is number two, after the diesel engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Things_That_Made_the_Modern_Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Things_That_Made_the_Modern...
- robofanatic 7y agoa Pen
- willvarfar 7y agoThe pencil, surely? Although you can get a long way with chalk, slate and charcoal, so perhaps not?
- mathgeek 7y agoPencils are not a modern invention [0], which is why it doesn't fit the question. The ballpoint pen, as an example, is a 19th century patent [1], so pens in general might fit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#History [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen
- omarhaneef 7y agoAh, the problem is that modern inventions are really embedded in a practice and theory. The invention may be simple but the practice and theory are not. So I would put up soap as a contender. Simple, saves hundreds of thousands of life, prevents diseases and so forth. But soap, as an invention, is embedded in the modern practice of washing, which requires our modern knowledge of germs and diseases, as well as our modern effective plumbing system to bring the clean water and dispose of the dirty water. Of course if it didn't require those it wouldn't be modern.
- avian 7y ago"The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon." [1] Soap is not a modern invention and its usefulness in cleaning was recognized way before modern knowledge about diseases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Ancient_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Ancient_Middle_East
- new2628 7y agoAnd arguably, soaps available in shops are getting worse with every iteration. Enter a big store in most of the developed world, and you can hardly find a regular soap bar anymore (only liquids, "hydrating bars", etc.). Craft markets still have them luckily.
- reidjs 7y agoCurious as to why you prefer regular soap bar over liquid soap?
- new2628 7y agoWith liquid soap I always feel like I can never fully remove it from my skin, no matter how long I rinse it with water afterwards. With a soap bar my hands just feel cleaner, less greasy. They also last longer and are easier to store/transport, need less packaging, etc. Also basic soap bars have two or three main ingredients whose effects are fully understood and have been used for centuries if not millenia. The list of components of the latest liquid soaps is far more obscure, no-one knows their long-term effects on us and the environment.
- kd5bjo 7y agoThe modern idea of a library catalog came around in the early 1800s, and probably accelerated the pace of knowledge transfer and acquisition quite a bit. In its original form, index cards, it was ubiquitous for almost 200 years before being replaced by computerized systems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog
- azepoi 7y agoMore recently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum
- cuspycode 7y agoThe condition "you can pretty much build it yourself" forces me to exclude many things with important impact like for example nuclear reactors, LSD, birth control pills, and the silicon transistor. But I think steam engines (or Rankine cycle engines in general) and penicillin are simple enough to qualify.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoI thought of penicillin, too, but "build it yourself" ruled it out, in my view.
- cuspycode 7y agoI was thinking that growing a penicillin producing mold culture (like Fleming did) is something anyone could do, but I have to admit that I have no clue about how much more processing is needed before it can be applied medically as an antibiotic.
- Synaesthesia 7y agoWhen I read Alexander Shulgin, the psychedelic chemist’s biography, I was struck by the fact that when he wanted to do LSD with some friends, he actually synthesised it in his lab.
- cuspycode 7y agoYeah, Shulgin was a special case, he was a genius biochemist after all. And there are of course lots of people who have synthesized LSD using fairly standard lab equipment. But it's not like something anyone could do.
- AWildC182 7y agoDepends heavily on your definition of "build yourself"... The airplane is a big one and I'm building one myself in my garage, as did the inventors of the first airplane. Hell, a solid chunk of all other inventions were created in someones garage. Compared to a full scale airplane, making nuclear reactors or transistors yourself is even easier and the transistor is easily the single biggest invention of the past century.
- robot 7y agobicycle?
- 0027 7y agoModern mathematical notation, binary, or pretty much any software development language
- dTal 7y ago3D printing. I know, I know - overhyped. But you know what's a funny thing? It's incredibly basic tech. Stepper motors and thermoplastic. We could have had something like it at pretty much any time over the past century, and in its modern form from about 1960 or so. It has unquestionably revolutionized prototyping and short-run manufacturing, and we just didn't think of it. The idea was just too zany and expensive - the people with enough money to invent a 3d printer could afford to just pay someone to make their prototype by hand. It's a rare modern example of the "ancient greek railway problem"; Hellenistic culture posessed all the technology to begin making crude steam trains, and almost certainly had the technical drive to approach making practical ones, if only they had thought of it or considered it a worthwhile thing to do. (Although there is the interesting question of data management. The .gcode for a small print can still run into the megabytes. CAD software was thin on the ground in 1970 too. So maybe therein lies the difficulty - what good is a 3D printer if you must painstakingly transcribe your blueprints into movement instructions by hand?)
- Synaesthesia 7y agoBut it’s not nearly as important in industry or manufacturing as say, precision machining or injection moulding.
- spacemark 7y agoThe assertion that "we just didn't think of it" is not even remotely correct. The late transition to the consumer market and the broad expansion in industry in the last 20 years has far more to do with the expiration of patents in the early 2000's than anything else. 3D printing for rapid prototyping has been around for decades.
- dTal 7y agoI was not aware of that. How depressing. Still, I think some of my point can still be salvaged - this implies that it was patented in the early 80s, which by my reckoning is still well after it became possible.
- 7y ago
- brandav 7y agotransistor.
- abrax3141 7y agoAlso not simple.
- puranjay 7y agoThe humble ball point pen. People forget how cumbersome and/or expensive it was to write before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use fountain pens. The cheap ones leaked and were an absolute mess to carry around. The ones that didn't leak were expensive. I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years and just stash them everywhere I want
- war1025 7y ago> I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years I just checked and you can get a pack of 60 Bic Ballpoint pens for $4.50.
- hoistbypetard 7y agoHaven't pencils always been inexpensive?
- puranjay 7y agoThen you have to carry around a sharpener with you everywhere Never seen anyone walking around with a pencil clipped to their shirt pocket.
- 7y ago
- aaronblohowiak 7y agoThe surface plate. Modern precision all stems from the concept of a flat reference. However, the technique to make a surface as flat as possible (which is based on simple geometry) was first discussed in the early 19th c. In terms of profound impact on modernity, the metal screw-cutting lathe.
- jvm_ 7y agoThe 1751 Machine that Made Everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djB9oK6pkbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djB9oK6pkbA
- 6nf 7y agoThe metal lathe is not really a 'modern' invention is it?
- maxerickson 7y agoThere's an upward spiral of precision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw-cutting_lathe#Modern_screw-cutting_lathes_(late_18th_to_early_19th_centuries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw-cutting_lathe#Modern_scr...
- aaronblohowiak 7y agoThe screw cutting metal lathe is within the time frame given by the OP.
- kragen 7y agoI think the idea of grinding three surfaces against each other to make them flat dates to the Sumerians and may have been independently discovered in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
- aaronblohowiak 7y agoPlease cite your source about the three surfaces method dating back to Sumerians.
- 7y ago
- fortran77 7y agoOne Click Ordering
- yarone 7y agoContact Lenses. My favorite and most day-to-day useful technology.
- adv0r 7y agoroundabouts
- kwhitefoot 7y agoThe telegraph and the telephone. The enabled economies of scale and speed of decision making that were not possible before.
- axilmar 7y agoThis. This is what enabled our modern world. None of what the other mentions would be possible without communications.
- wiggles_md 7y agoThe Toyota Way. Totally transformed manufacturing.
- superkitty 7y agocalculator
- danielovichdk 7y agoToothbrush.
- 0xff00ffee 7y agoThe latex condom.
- nodivbyzero 7y agoElectric battery
- abrax3141 7y agoAs elsewhere, making a non-trivial battery ain't so simple.
- rXoX 7y agoThe sail. You're welcome.
- mongol 7y agoWould be interesting to hear about most famous inventions in other countries. From Sweden, or Swedish inventors: Dynamite. The sun valve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_valve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_valve). The milk separator. Tetrahedron-shaped plastic-coated paper carton packaging. The self aligning ball bearing. All these were part of early history of what became larger companies existing to this day. The adjustable spanner, the zipper and the propeller are also sometimes mentioned in this category within Sweden, but are the also referring to inventors with partly Swedish origin or for improvements of previous designs.
- hoistbypetard 7y agoI think the soldering iron has to be in the hunt on all three (important, modern, simple) counts.
- mNovak 7y agoSort of implies that electricity was really the important innovation, to warrant the need for soldering? (Unless I'm totally missing the important application of soldering.) I'd argue basic electric applications are pretty simple, and easily made by hand.
- AWildC182 7y agoSort of implies that copper smelting was really the important innovation, to warrant the need for electricity? In all seriousness though, the printed circuit board might be a good one to bundle with that. The old methods of creating a mechanically robust compact electrical package were nowhere near as efficient. They're also very recent and very easy to make yourself, even if it's thin plywood with tinfoil glued on.
- hoistbypetard 7y agoElectricity is obviously fundamental. But I think that soldering (and the PCB, as @AWildC182 pointed out) facilitated certain widespread uses of electricity like radio and television that wouldn't have been democratized quite the way they were without it. i.e. TVs and radios would've had to hew to size and assembly labor restrictions of screw terminals and such.
- jvanderbot 7y agoHand washing. Modern disease control and prevention is borderline magic. Hand-washing is clearly the most important lifesaving and disease preventing invention in modern times. Materially ... Well, "yourself" precludes anything computerized, unless you mean "program". It also precludes a huge range of materials science advances. Technically, you can make steel and concrete yourself with enough real-world minecrafting, and good steel or concrete is probably hands down the most important factor in all our chemical, structural, and industrial processes. Luckily there's a book with the most important inventions to re-engineer a complex, sustainable society called The Knowledge, and just about everything in there is build-able by a determined individual or small group (until you get to modern things). Not suprisingly, it mostly focuses on agriculture, medicine, steel, and concrete.
- gwbas1c 7y ago> Hand washing Hand washing isn't modern by any stretch of the imagination. Promoting it is modern, though.
- ReedJessen 7y agoEven then... Our Muslim friends have been promoting regular hand washing since the 600's CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudu
- air7 7y agoAnd before them our Hebrew friends since 1000 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwashing_in_Judaism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwashing_in_Judaism
- jvanderbot 7y agoOops, you are correct. The modern connection to germ theory is most important.
- kragen 7y agoThis book should be called The Misinformation. It omits crucial safety information and other details about many of the processes it mentions, and the author doesn't maintain a public list of known errata; it's entertainment, not education. Three better alternatives: the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube, the Boy Scouts Handbook, and Wikipedia, which you can download as .zim files for offline reference. Other relevant YouTube channels include AvE, CodysLab, and Applied Science; in more specific areas you have NileRed, Abom79, Ben Eater, EEVblog, This Old Tony, GreatScott, ElectroBOOM, and NurdRage. Unlike the book you're recommending, they are by people who know how to do the things they are explaining, show their errors, and include the relevant calculations. There are other channels like How To Make Everything and King of Random which do not; they are entertaining but deadly. General-purpose know-how books have gone out of fashion, though we still have the CRC Handbook and the Machinery's Handbook. In the 19th century there were a bunch of books like Dick's Encyclopedia of practical receipts and processes (ripped off, I think, from Cooley’s, or possibly vice versa) which covers a wide range of topics at a level sufficient to enable you to practice them; you could probably build a fair bit of Victorian technology from the recipes in Dick’s. (You aren't going to get a loom out of it, though; for that, see The Mechanism of Weaving, but YouTube is far superior.) I think the equivalent is more difficult to-day.
- gwbas1c 7y agoElectricity: The ability to send energy down a wire, and then to have energy available "on tap" at any moment. Many of the inventions I see listed here rely on some form of electricity.
- hooande 7y agoThe phonograph. The idea of "record something and play it again later" has significantly impacted all of our lives, and was barely even imagined prior to invention
- dublin 7y ago^^THIS^^ is one of the best answers here. There's no doubt the ancient Greeks could have built a phonograph - the Anitkythera mechanism is proof.
- acoye 7y agoCompressor, so we can have refrigeration and feed million of people safely between other things.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pyfgcrl123 7y agoHow about electromechanical relay switch. As far as digital electronics goes, relay can, with some mental gymnastics, be considered grandfather of transistor (which, in turn, is one of the most important inventions of all time, but too complicated).
- lebuffon 7y agoThey were invented (I believe) to "relay" telegraph messages over long lines so it was indeed a digital amplifier. (Former Western Union employee)
- zh3 7y agoThe drill and digger (for fossil fuel). "Important" is perhaps a loaded word in this case.
- dublin 7y agoHoward Hughes Sr's tricone rock bit truly revolutionized the world, and made the oil and gas industry possible. It's success was staggering: only a few years after he dropped dead of a heart attack, his son Howard, Jr (the one you usually think of) took over the company and was personally making over a million dollars a day - In the depths of the Depression!
- lebuffon 7y agoI think the concept (rather than an invention) of negative feedback is very important. By that I mean envisioning that a machine can change it's own behaviour. This seems to have not been understood with early steam engines. People had to manually control valves to operate the first steam engines used as pumps in the U.K. James Watt and Mathew Bolton realized that coupling the output to the steam control valve would make it cycle automagically, This concept permeates modern design so we don't always see it for the important development that it is IMHO.
- abecedarius 7y agoGood idea, but there was feedback control in antiquity.
- chirau 7y agoI'd have to say cunnilingus and fellatio. Fewer greater joys exist. Closely followed by the water-heater and air-conditioner. Hot water and temperature-control are under-appreciated.
- icebraining 7y ago> I'd have to say cunnilingus and fellatio. Fewer greater joys exist. Neither are modern.
- chirau 7y agoWhen were they invented?
- icebraining 7y agoI doubt anyone knows, but the Kamasutra is about 2000 years old, and already described both.
- philwelch 7y agoBonobos have been observed doing both, so before the evolution of mankind most likely.
- superkitty 7y agoAmazon prime!
- superkitty 7y agoWhatsapp!
- kingkawn 7y agoRivets Ingenious Mechanism + strong as hell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivet
- somberi 7y agoFor me: Electric Kettle, Umbrella and Bicycle. I have used them for the last 45 years in the same shape and form. If you gave me any of the "older" models from 40 years ago, the utility value will be similar to what I buy from the store today.
- akgerber 7y agoThe bicycle is only debatably simple, considering that it's the culmination of quite a few relatively-advanced technologies and processes: steelmaking, pneumatic tires, interchangeable parts, ball bearings, bowden cables, etc.
- InitialLastName 7y agoDon't forget about very smooth roads, without which you would want even more technology.
- glitchc 7y agoMicrowave. Self-explanatory.
- divbzero 7y agoThe modern flush toilet. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet Technically invented in the 1500s but not widely produced until the 1800s.
- dredmorbius 7y agoAnd of limited use without something to hook it up to. The toilet itself is an input (or depending on your perspective, output) device. Without the additional process it's connected to, it doesn't buy you much. London's first flush toilets were connected to existing cesspits, in the late 19th century. Connection to the (storm-water-handling) sewers was an unauthorised hack by plumbers of the day. Tim Harford has covered this in his podcast on major inventions.
- jshowa3 7y agoscientific method
- maxerickson 7y agoWood pulp paper, dimensional lumber (and related framing methods), and I see someone already mentioned the AM radio. The manipulation of the aether thoroughly meets your definition of modernity, and the principles of constructing a simple radio aren't terribly complicated.
- sedigive 7y agoIt's not the inventions that are most important but the thinking processes and curiosity that continue to investigate, tinker, design, and test new ideas and processes. Humans are problem solvers by nature and by survival instinct. Every invention is a product of the mind.
- bravoetch 7y agoThe bicycle. I'm stunned it didn't come along earlier.
- eucryphia 7y agoRunning hot water.
- derefr 7y agoApropos time to link my favorite blog: https://rootsofprogress.org/ https://rootsofprogress.org/. It's an exploration of the things that helped humanity leap forward. Spoilers: empirically-informed hygiene, and textile manufacturing techniques.
- maxioatic 7y agoRubber o-rings, or as a generalization, rubber gaskets. They allow the use of fluids in an extremely wide range of applications. Also, unfortunately they led to the Challenger explosion in 1986.
- lninyo 7y agosoap, sanitation and germ theory of disease.
- sevilo 7y agoPads and tampons. Some argue these are environmentally unfriendly and produce too much waste, but you have to think, not everyone is privileged enough to own a washing machine in their own home, particularly those in 2nd and 3rd world countries. I genuinely believed pads and tampons allowed women to be more productive in the work force and eventually lead to more equality, just hearing my mom and grandma's story of having to hand wash your own bloody (literally) period bands gives me nightmares, that was in the 70s, not that long ago.
- lubujackson 7y agoYou could also say the bra. Less of a hygienic product for sure, bras spelled the end of corsets and really helped usher in many changes that led to a big increase in personal freedoms for women (both physically and socially).
- kingca 7y agoHey, I would love to learn more about this. How did bras usher in a bunch of physical and social changes in freedoms for women? I'm not too read-up on any of these topics but I'm incredibly interested.
- kamakazizuru 7y agoI agree with pads & tampons being a great invention. Can we however please finally stop referring to "2nd and 3rd world" countries. Get on a plane - things are more similar than different in most parts of the world, stop perpetuating dated notions.
- blompa 7y agoAs an alternative to "2nd/3rd" or "developing" countries, I really like the "Four Levels of Global Income" model[0] that Hans Rosling put forth in his book Factfulness[1] (a must-read IMO). It gives a much clearer perspective on how people live (and as you mentioned, how similarly people live across the world amongst the same income levels) [0]: https://www.gapminder.org/topics/four-income-levels/ https://www.gapminder.org/topics/four-income-levels/ [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814 https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...
- sys_64738 7y agoShoelaces. Without them we'd be tied in knots.
- fudged71 7y agoBiogas reactors Silage Pads/Tampons Wearable Pedometers and Heart Rate sensors
- callmeed 7y agoI recommend reading How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633932 https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633...
- Boll4 7y agoThe menstrual cup. It is definitely more ecological and practical, without any chemicals or fragrance that are found in tampons / pads these days. I definitely see it as a more affordable (the initial cost is higher, but think long-run) solution.
- meekaaku 7y agoNot post 1700, Luca Pacioli's double entry accounting is simple but extremly effective one.
- shubidubi 7y agoA/C Productivity, mortality and convince.
- tylerjwilk00 7y ago. Duct Tape . Bungie Straps . Zip Ties Not necessarily in that order.
- mishal153 7y agoMosquito net. Modern cities may not find use for them but there is a pretty big chunk of world's population for whom this simple item is indispensable. Its cheap. Protects against diseases like malaria, dengue etc. And definitely helps with getting a good sleep. Many villagers in India build it themselves for the community and i hope it stays that way. I know its is popular in the subcontinent (India,pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka.) Would love to know if other countries also use them
- lowdose 7y agoThe wheels under the suitcase. Somebody came up with that idea after we got a man on the moon.
- TomMckenny 7y agoThe cargo container: it has changed the entire planet culturally, economically and geopolitically. It would be hard to count the percentage of every day objects most people use world wide that owe their availability or existence to that standardized metal box.
- RandallBrown 7y agoThe invention there was more standardization than the actual box. Cargo boxes have existed as long as people have had cargo.
- philwelch 7y agoSure but having a massive steel box that can be craned onto a truck or train provides a lot of value. So does the fact that the boxes are indistinguishable and locking. Theft by stevedores used to be a massive global tax on trade.
- the_arun 7y agoThe basic ground breaking conceptual innovation is - "self serve". The innovations with respect to tools - either support or serve that basic need. All hygiene tools - Nail cutters, Contact Lenses, tooth pick, soap, tooth brush, shaving blade may fall in this category. If we step little outside - I feel bicycle is one of the biggest innovation which triggered modern day - self serve - without depending on/troubling animals.
- achenatx 7y agoplumbing and sewers increased life expectancy more than any other improvement. After that maybe the steam engine, electric generator, light bulb
- batoure 7y agoWaterless urinals
- gumby 7y agoThe limited liability corporation
- bdowling 7y agoThis. The ability for investors to fund risky business ventures without being personally liable for the debts of the venture is what enabled the industrial revolution and led to most of the other inventions on this list. Number two is casualty and other types of insurance.
- sjwright 7y agoAt the risk of being controversial, perhaps the most modern simple invention is the internet and its ability to let randoms ask a basic question and have a thousand people contribute hundreds of cumulative man-hours to answering it. (Maybe I'm being cynical, but I feel like the OP is asking this question for reasons beyond pure curiosity.)
- WalterBright 7y agoEngines - replacement of muscle power. A steam engine isn't that hard to make (I built one in high school). The Romans got pretty far without it, but it's hard to see them going further.
- ken 7y agoI disagree: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/03/history-of-human-powered-cranes.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/03/history-of-human-powe... > "There is no limit to the weight that humans can lift by sheer muscle power. Nor is there a limit to the height to which this weight can be lifted. The only advantage that [powered] cranes have brought us is a higher lifting speed." We moved to engines because they were cheaper, not because we were anywhere near the limits of muscle power.
- WalterBright 7y agoThe history of the industrial revolution since the advent of the steam engine amply makes my point.
- ken 7y agoJust because history played out one way doesn’t mean it could only have played out that way.
- WalterBright 7y agoIt played out that way in every country that adopted the steam engine, and failed to happen at all in countries that did not. As I say, the historical evidence is as compelling as it gets.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoThe reason they have a higher lifting speed is because they have more power. In a directly proportionate sense. Lifting speed is literally power divided by weight.
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- kraig911 7y agoThe invention of speech or is that to 'old'
- pgt 7y agoSoap
- DoingIsLearning 7y ago1953 -'Ambu' bags i.e. 'bag valve masks' They are as simple as it gets but have saved millions of lives. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_valve_mask https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_valve_mask
- acd10j 7y agoGeneral Purpose Computers,It single handed accelerated lots of industries.
- sunstone 7y agoThe toilet and sewer system has got to be down there somewhere.
- bouncycastle 7y agoScrews! Or more accurately, the ability to mass produce them.
- mn1024 7y agoPacifier
- mikro2nd 7y agoMains sewerage.
- awaze 7y agoEqually important is contraception and elective abortion. Being able to control the timing of raising a family allows a much higher degree of freedom and also ensures a safer and more healthy environment to raise a child. I think the most important prerequisite to being a parent is the desire to be a parent. https://www.awazeuttarpradesh.com/blog/1337x/ https://www.awazeuttarpradesh.com/blog/1337x/
- s3nnyy 7y agoWheels on suitcases (taken from antifragile by N.Taleb)
- manoj_venkat92 7y agoPrinting press. Without it, spread of knowledge would've been dwarfed and it put the industrial revolution in its full swing.
- mjd 7y agoI'm late to the party, but I think the winner is the bra. Wikipedia says: > The Dresden-based German, Christine Hardt, patented the first modern brassiere in 1899. Sigmund Lindauer from Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Germany, developed a brassiere for mass production and patented it in 1912. In the United States, Mary Phelps Jacob received a patent in 1914 for the first brassiere design that is recognized as the basis for modern bras. > A bra is one of the most complicated garments to make. A typical design has between 20 and 48 parts, including the band, gore, side panel, cup, apex, neckline, underwire, strap, ring, slider, strap join, and closure.
- Duke-Nukem-64 7y agoModern day plumbing/water/waste management. Clean water comes in, waste goes out. Don't have to give two thoughts about it.
- nojvek 7y agoBasic hygiene. Washing hands and yourself with hot water and soap. Not exchanging needles. Covering your mouth before sneezing. Tampons / pads, toilet tissue (although I prefer a faucet and doing a first pass with water. More hygienic and less tissue used. Also much better for the bottom) Vaccines, anti-biopics and good hygiene and sanitary practices have doubled our average life span. With a long life we’ve been able to achieve a lot more. Women have been more productive, we’ve created more wealth, have fewer children so each child has more resources and opportunities. The state of US healthcare really makes me sad, but I’m hopeful we’ll keep on learning more about the human body and engineer more ways of fixing it and making us all live a longer, healthier, wealthier, happier life.
- johnfisher57 7y agoWith so much of innovations in technology I feel the invention could be how organizations can safeguard their communication with a solution that encrypts communication app as well as can manage device inventory for safety. [0]https://scalefusion.com/instant-messaging-application https://scalefusion.com/instant-messaging-application