4 ms·

Don't get me wrong, I like the article, but it dismisses a whole bunch of silicon valley stuff as "variations on a theme" of microprocessors and parsing radio s

Don't get me wrong, I like the article, but it dismisses a whole bunch of silicon valley stuff as "variations on a theme" of microprocessors and parsing radio spectrum. Fair enough but including the invention of Coca Cola and Edison opening a power plant? That's like counting "Apple starts selling iPhones in China" as an innovation. The "safety" bicycle? (the chain drive was invented in 1879) First practical street railway? (It's like a railway, on a street.) The Wall Street Journal? It's always worth putting technological progress in context. It reminds me of a 1999 WIRED article where they asked people to pick which 20th century technology would most shape the 21st century, to which one expert replied (I paraphrase), "if I weren't restricted to 20th century technologies, I'd say the telephone" (pointing out that the majority of the world's population lacked access at the time). Someone (maybe the same person) nominated the bicycle as the most important technology of the 20th century.

yahappynow 11y ago
To address one point, the safety bicycle was the point in the development of the bicycle that made it possible for women to ride while wearing long skirts. This was a huge step for women's autonomy as it allowed women a way to travel independently. So yes, the safety bicycle was a big deal, though I agree that it's nonsense to try to rank decades. http://www.annielondonderry.com/womenWheels.html http://www.annielondonderry.com/womenWheels.html
- AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
  I don't think it's really nonsense to try to rank decades, as long as you have some specified criteria. For inventions by lasting impact, some decades are clearly superior to others. The 1750s, for instance, basically had nothing. I can't find a single thing invented in the 1750s that we still use today or inspired further inventions directly. I'm sure there's a couple, but I would argue that since it's hard to find them they're relatively unimporant. The first decade of the 1800s? The first modernish battery, the arc lamp, morphine, the steam locomotive, the first automobile, the steamboat. Perhaps it's silly to rank decades, but I don't think it's nonsense.
  - abecedarius 11y ago
    Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod in the 1750s. Harrison's marine chromometer. Achromatic lenses: interestingly, they were really from the 1730s and then sat on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens. The navigational sextant: also found in Newton's unpublished writings. (But I'm disinclined to feel smug about these delays, compared to some bits of computing history.) "First high-quality cement using hydraulic lime since Roman times." The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_escapement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_escapement. Lind's treatment of scurvy, and an early attempt at vaccination. Some chemistry of practical import. So, I agree: the 1800s beat the 1750s in the invention cage-fight. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1750_in_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1750_in_science and following, from which I left out science and math discoveries.
    - AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
      I don't know how the lightning rod didn't come up in my googling! Total aside, re: the chronometer, the 1750s definitely was not when it came into existence. He may have refined the design during that time, but the H1 chronometer was completed during the 1730s. I'm not sure if there's an exact date around for its completion.
      - abecedarius 11y ago
        FWIW, I got that from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1759_in_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1759_in_science (search for "H4").
      - lmm 11y ago
        H4 was the one that was good enough, no?
        AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
        The H4 was completed in 1761.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  Sure but how is this not a "variation on a theme"? The iPod and the iPhone were hugely impactful despite, in some sense, merely being variations on a theme. I'm all for the safety bicycle being considered very significant historically, but it's no less a variation on a theme (technically or scientifically) than the iPhone or the iPod.
abecedarius 11y ago
Electric power distribution totally was significant. How could you reasonably dismiss it? Coke does seem kind of random, so I checked out the same year on Wikipedia and found Hertz's experimental confirmation of Maxwell's electromagnetic waves, the process for refining aluminum (which IIRC was a precious metal before that), and the "first practical AC transformer".
- Tloewald 11y ago
  I'm not dismissing it, just saying it's a "variation on a theme" just like the IBM PC or the smartphone or whatever. Goddard launches the first fueled rocket (1926) is the technological breakthrough. Man lands on the moon (1969) is a variation on the theme. The latter is certainly significant -- "variation on a theme" is a very arbitrary criterion to pick. Everything kind of is.
  - abecedarius 11y ago
    We can look at it that way, yeah. (I think Apollo's salient as the most spectacular example of the really large-scale planned development that was new to the mid-20th C., rather than a variation on the theme of rocketry.) On the other hand, going from the Apple ][ or even the PDP-1 to the IBM PC is not much like going from batteries, gaslights, fueled engines, and compressed air to an electricity utility. Not to argue about words, but that feels like more of a new thing to me. I'll bet it looked like a gamble at the time. Backing off from semantics, maybe we could quantify what we're looking for as something like the productivity growth rate in the world's then-current most-advanced economy? (This would try to rule out cases like postwar recovery as "not the leading economy".)
panglott 11y ago
A lot of the advances of the 1880s involve the "variations on a theme" of the widespread adoption of electric motors, which became reliable and commercially viable in the 1870s. But electrification is quite a consequential theme! The safety bicycle is a great advance: people had been experimenting with human-powered vehicles for decades before, and the safety bicycle is just a perfect expression of the human-powered vehicle. The design exploded in the 1890s and has remained essentially unchanged for more than a century. The safety bicycle will probably be around in recognizable form for centuries to come.

yahappynow 11y ago

To address one point, the safety bicycle was the point in the development of the bicycle that made it possible for women to ride while wearing long skirts. This was a huge step for women's autonomy as it allowed women a way to travel independently. So yes, the safety bicycle was a big deal, though I agree that it's nonsense to try to rank decades. http://www.annielondonderry.com/womenWheels.html http://www.annielondonderry.com/womenWheels.html

AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
I don't think it's really nonsense to try to rank decades, as long as you have some specified criteria. For inventions by lasting impact, some decades are clearly superior to others. The 1750s, for instance, basically had nothing. I can't find a single thing invented in the 1750s that we still use today or inspired further inventions directly. I'm sure there's a couple, but I would argue that since it's hard to find them they're relatively unimporant. The first decade of the 1800s? The first modernish battery, the arc lamp, morphine, the steam locomotive, the first automobile, the steamboat. Perhaps it's silly to rank decades, but I don't think it's nonsense.
- abecedarius 11y ago
  Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod in the 1750s. Harrison's marine chromometer. Achromatic lenses: interestingly, they were really from the 1730s and then sat on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens. The navigational sextant: also found in Newton's unpublished writings. (But I'm disinclined to feel smug about these delays, compared to some bits of computing history.) "First high-quality cement using hydraulic lime since Roman times." The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_escapement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_escapement. Lind's treatment of scurvy, and an early attempt at vaccination. Some chemistry of practical import. So, I agree: the 1800s beat the 1750s in the invention cage-fight. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1750_in_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1750_in_science and following, from which I left out science and math discoveries.
  - AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
    I don't know how the lightning rod didn't come up in my googling! Total aside, re: the chronometer, the 1750s definitely was not when it came into existence. He may have refined the design during that time, but the H1 chronometer was completed during the 1730s. I'm not sure if there's an exact date around for its completion.
    - abecedarius 11y ago
      FWIW, I got that from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1759_in_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1759_in_science (search for "H4").
    - lmm 11y ago
      H4 was the one that was good enough, no?
      - AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
        The H4 was completed in 1761.
Tloewald 11y ago
Sure but how is this not a "variation on a theme"? The iPod and the iPhone were hugely impactful despite, in some sense, merely being variations on a theme. I'm all for the safety bicycle being considered very significant historically, but it's no less a variation on a theme (technically or scientifically) than the iPhone or the iPod.

abecedarius 11y ago

Electric power distribution totally was significant. How could you reasonably dismiss it? Coke does seem kind of random, so I checked out the same year on Wikipedia and found Hertz's experimental confirmation of Maxwell's electromagnetic waves, the process for refining aluminum (which IIRC was a precious metal before that), and the "first practical AC transformer".

Tloewald 11y ago
I'm not dismissing it, just saying it's a "variation on a theme" just like the IBM PC or the smartphone or whatever. Goddard launches the first fueled rocket (1926) is the technological breakthrough. Man lands on the moon (1969) is a variation on the theme. The latter is certainly significant -- "variation on a theme" is a very arbitrary criterion to pick. Everything kind of is.
- abecedarius 11y ago
  We can look at it that way, yeah. (I think Apollo's salient as the most spectacular example of the really large-scale planned development that was new to the mid-20th C., rather than a variation on the theme of rocketry.) On the other hand, going from the Apple ][ or even the PDP-1 to the IBM PC is not much like going from batteries, gaslights, fueled engines, and compressed air to an electricity utility. Not to argue about words, but that feels like more of a new thing to me. I'll bet it looked like a gamble at the time. Backing off from semantics, maybe we could quantify what we're looking for as something like the productivity growth rate in the world's then-current most-advanced economy? (This would try to rule out cases like postwar recovery as "not the leading economy".)

panglott 11y ago

A lot of the advances of the 1880s involve the "variations on a theme" of the widespread adoption of electric motors, which became reliable and commercially viable in the 1870s. But electrification is quite a consequential theme! The safety bicycle is a great advance: people had been experimenting with human-powered vehicles for decades before, and the safety bicycle is just a perfect expression of the human-powered vehicle. The design exploded in the 1890s and has remained essentially unchanged for more than a century. The safety bicycle will probably be around in recognizable form for centuries to come.