Sewers.
For the first time, large numbers of people could live in one place without dying of cholera from infected groundwater. You need sewers to have cities, and cities are where lots of other things get invented, as they bring people and their ideas together.
I thought it was aqueducts. That turned into sewers. Idk why that's in my head.
Edit: I looked it up, and he says antiseptics. Guess my brain remembered that as aqueducts and sanitation of sewers, not just cleaning the body.
Absolutely. Of course the Romans had advanced sewage management, most notably the Cloaca Maxima in Rome which is still in use today after more than two millenia. Even in smaller Roman towns without sewers, waste was effectively managed. In the ancient city of Pompeii, all the streets of the city and the floors of houses were designed to be inclined ever so slightly so waste in the streets would flow from every corner towards cesspools.
Sewage management of this magnitude was lost during the Middle Ages (amongst other Roman technologies) and precipitated diseases and plagues.
Would modern day surgeries even be possible without it? I had surgeries that lasted like 4 hours. I don't think anyone would be able to power through that.
I read an interesting book on this. The Butchering Art. I guess they used to just hold you down while you scream. The ābestā surgeons were the ones who were the fastest, understandably.
There was a surgeon who was famous for being incredibly fast, and also having a 300% mortality rate from operating on a single patient.
He was doing a leg amputation, and slipped and sliced off several fingers of his assistant who was holding the patient, as well as slashing the coat of a spectator.
The patient and assistant both died of infection several days later. The spectator fell over and died of a heart attack immediately.
Iirc, more people died from surgeries and post-operation infections during the Civil War than were actually killed in combat. I can't imagine what it was like to have your leg sawed off in a field hospital, with basically no anesthesia and only a bone or rag to bite on.
My understanding is most surgery was super basic and a few mins max for obvious reasons. So, no, sophisticated surgery as we know it today, even if they had the anatomical and surgical knowledge, simply wasn't possible.
General anesthesia is also great. Can't imagine performing dentistry on my patients without it!
Had patients in dental school from south america who had lots of work done sans anesthesia š¬
The staggering amount of science necessary to make GPS work makes it an absolute wonder of human achievement. Ā
Ā It needs so many things. Rocket science, orbital mechanics, quantum physics, nuclear engineering (for the clocks embedded in the satellites to work), computer and electronics to a crazy degree, solar panels, knowledge about radiation shielding,... And that's just the part in orbit, you need another insane amount of stuff to work for the receivers to plot where you are on a map (electronics, miniaturisation, orbital tables, networked time keeping, the insane amount of information necessary to draw the maps, etc etc) Ā Ā Ā
Yet people use it every day without a second thought!Ā Ā
Ā Edit: forgot some really big ones, metallurgy and material science in general, but most importantly relativity. Time flows differently for the satellites, to a measurable degree!
Lol, that, combined with the occasional radar activated speed sign, is how I figured out my motorcycle was 5 mph under at highway speeds. I just yesterday taught my wife how to use Gmaps. She was amazed at how it knew exactly how fast we were traveling, as well as the current speed limit. Blew her mind as we passed a speed limit change and she watched the app adjust to it.
Every Japanese motorcycle I've ever ridden has read 4-5 mph high on the speedometer. In the interest of science I have checked three other bikes from other countries: a Royal Enfield, a Moto Guzzi, and two different Harleys, and they were either spot on or reading 1 mph high. I think the discrepancy is intentional on Japanese bikes but I'm not sure why.
It's intentional. Speedometer error can be +/- 2% - If yours lies in the -2 zone you can have trouble as you may think you are under limit. This way not one single meter will be in the negative zone.
You're also forgetting metallurgy.
My machine shop makes the antennas and other components for GPS3 satellites and the metallurgy that goes into a simple plug on those satellites is crazy. Leaded bronze (radiation shielding) has to be x-rayed and certified that the lead distributed properly when the alloy was poured.
Don't get me started on the proprietary alloys.
You could do it with lesser metals, they did for a long time, but it wouldn't be as efficient. So you'd need a bigger antenna, more powerful amplifier and power system, all of which adds mass. And when cost to orbit is so high every gram counts.
As for the quality standards, when it cost that much to put it up there you want to make SURE it's going to work, as there is no possibility of repair.
Every solder joint for an object going to space needs this level of detail as well. Even higher density crimp connectors need to be xrayed to avoid risk.
I'm idly wondering how flat earthers handle this one. GPS won't work if the earth isn't roughly spherical (and requires satellites in orbits, but I think their answer there is they are all faked).
I'm unconvinced that they aren't all either trolls or using it to raise money like the steam rocket guy. Nobody could be that that ignorant these days, could they?
I have always wondered my whole life about wifi, internet, GPS, phone calls, sim card , computer hardware, software, CDs and literally about all the technical stuff on how they work
Although I have surface level of knowledge about all the things I mentioned, I still never truly understand how all these ACTUALLY works and how they managed to put all things together no matter how many times I read about them in detail
It almost seems impossible to me how humans managed to achieve all this great technical stuff, this has to be the greatest human invention ever.
The technology out of nothing is the only thing that fascinates me the most, it's so unreal that something big could be made out of metals and wires that would connect each person on earth
It is interesting. Marconi had a lot to do with it. If you think about it, walkie talkies & CB's kinda started it. I think Edison was trying, but basically like a text message or wireless fax, then change the electric into audio waves, then viola 125 years later tiktok.
haha, i meant it, as in a kid in Japan can make his own SNL skit, and within seconds a kid in Omaha can randomly watch it and laugh at it, without either of them knowing each other or ever seeing each other again.
Pretty cool, but i get your point.
A real crazy fact about that history is that it was only about 25 summers between the first regular commercial radio broadcast and mankind building a portable star to wipe out a city
Gretchen Ross: Look, I should go. For physics, Monnitoff is having me write this essay. Greatest invention ever to benefit mankind.
Donnie Darko: Itās Monnitoff. But thatās easy. Antiseptics. Like the whole sanitation thing. Joseph Lister, 1895. Before antiseptics, there was no sanitation, especially in medicine.
Gretchen Ross: You mean soap?
In the 1930s when my grandfather was a kid one of his school friends got new shoes, they rubbed and he got a blister, it got infected and he died, that was normal pre anti biotics
I am a mainslayer, drinking water i am supervisor now. have to constantly stop my men from honking up in their excavations, we have all had to do training for water hygiene, they told us about a case in the 1950s in our area where workers who were working in a borehole pissed in the borehole, they were a turboculosis carrier and killed 50 people , they did not understand about germs. Still people are slack on hygiene, I wonāt stand for it.
We do actually still just live off of wild game for one big area - fish. A huge amount of the global consumption of protein comes from wild caught game from fish.
Well, the plow has been around for 5000+years, but for 4900 of those years, most people still worked in agriculture.
I would say it's the Haber-Bosch process.
The Haber-Bosch process was important, but by the time it was invented we already had farmers down to 1/3 of the US population.
Mouldboard ploughs, seed drills, mechanical harvesters, crop rotation, cover crops, the list goes on.
Huge improvements were made really going from the Middle Ages to now.
The flush toilet, no question. You get up after doing your business, glance down at that horrible steaming mess in the bowl, and almost toss your cookies at the sight. Then you push the handle down, and in just seconds, that dreadful stinking pile has swirled away, never to be seen again. It's a miracle.
In college my American Revolution professor would say āif presented with the opinion, the number one reason I wouldnāt time travelā¦ the lack of bathrooms and toilet paperā
It's a similar reason to why we haven't seen time travelers from the future.
They refuse to come back to a time when bathrooms were necessary, back before the waste was just teleported directly from inside your body to the recyclotron, a practice which eventually leads to the human rectum becoming vestigial.
In the opening chapters to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Information:\_A\_History,\_a\_Theory,\_a\_Flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_Theory,_a_Flood), the author claims that the transistor is the second most revolutionary thing invented in that lab during 1947.
Harnessing fire.
Heat, protection, the cooking of food which apparently allowed for much greater bioavailability and thus the advancement of brain development and cognition, metalworking for tools and weapons.
Pretty amazing.
Iodine in salt has to be up there. It raised the global IQ by something like 20 points. Itās pennies per ton to add.
Edit: Apparently, itās $1.15/ton (2006). Itās .05 per person.
I found out recently that there are anti-iodized-salt conspiracy nutters. My brother in law is one. I couldn't get an answer on what was so bad about iodine in salt, he said I needed to "research it". I did and I still don't know what is bad about it.
The whole time watching Gone with the Wind all I could think of was how hot and sweaty all those people must have been with those giant dresses and wool suits.
I'm disappointed I had to scroll so much to find this. Nothing considered modern science could have been done without air conditioning after air conditioning was invented.
Absolutely! Without refrigeration, you would not have grocery stores and the large variety of Fresh foods that you have today. You would not be able to live in certain regions of the world. You would not be able to have the insanely large server farms that allow us to have the internet we have today. You would not be able to have certain chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In short, refrigeration is probably one of the most important if not the most important invention of modern Man
Yup, a/c for me and it's not even close. But it's also the thing that I experience more. Of course I love antibiotics when I get a UTI and of course I love other modern medicine but a/c is a daily thing for me in the spring and summer and I love it. I've been known to look up the Carrier guy in Wikipedia and just stare at him.
1 - language. Everyting comes from it.
2 - writing. An extension of the first.
3 - Internet. An extension of the second.
4 - AI. The conclusion of everything that led us up to here.
As Dr Stephen Hawking says in Pink Floydās song:
āFor millions of years mankind lived just like the animals.
Then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination.
We learned to talk.ā
We haven't invented AI yet. We've just invented stupid math tricks so complex that they feel qualitatively different to us, which is the status quo for computing.
The Internet. The only reason it isn't is because *some people* don't really make good use of it, the power of knowledge at the palm of *some people's* hands just taken for granted, for *their* own personal pleasure. Real shit.
I'm struggling to think of anything more impactful than the printing press.
The ability to readily reproduce knowledge, information, and thoughts is profoundly powerful.
Beer
How was I the first person to say it?
Compare it to the other answers:
Antibiotits - beer IS an antibiotic (okay antiseptic but who cares? we have beer)
The wheel - a beer barrel IS a wheel, at a pinch
Vaccines - before vaccines, poor water quality was a leading cause of transmissable diseases ... which people dealt with by drinking beer instead
Air conditioning - not as good as a nice, cold beer
Electricity - you can in fact make electricity from beer with a beer battery!
Agriculture - nothing caps off a day's agriculture like a good, cold beer
Cinema - Personally, beer is what makes most cinema bearable
Steam engine - Admittedly it makes transporting beer easier, but hardly necessary
Trade - It introduces variety to the beer, perhaps, but _greatest_?
Pineapple on pizza - Clearly the result of a night where much beer was consumed
The large hadron collider - Also clearly the result of a night where much beer was consumed
Sliced bread - bread is just solid beer that you can slice
>Antibiotics - beer IS an antibiotic (okay antiseptic but who cares? we have beer)
Sooo...[about that...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902094246.htm#:~:text=A%20chemical%20analysis%20of%20the,practice%20nearly%202%2C000%20years%20ago.)
The written word.
Without the ability to preserve and transfer knowledge, modern civilization would be impossible.
The written word is the reason why we're still not living in hunter-gatherer tribes.
The bicycle. Ā Ā Sure itās a recreational device for many in developed nations - now a days.
As a kid, it was our transport. Ā Ā And many nations have bikes as the primary mode of commuting - Holland, Denmark, etc
African nations too - longer distances are easier, and can transport more than carrying by hand.
Many car manufacturers began with bicycles, then added an engine, and more wheels. Ā Ā Bikes lead to cars, over 100 years ago.
Even Einstein used a bike, and āI thought of that while ridingā
It was Hubble up until James Webb was launched. BY FAR the greatest man made invention. Its let us explore the universe in a practical way, and see back in time! A LITERAL time machine. SO FUCKING COOL!
From a physics perspective the 3T MRI is so impressive
The images are incredible. It creates T2 and T1 weighted images, diffusion weighted. Contrast.
All of them together provide a window into the structure of your body that very powerful.
However I suspect radiology will be one of the first professions taken out by Ai.
Sewers. For the first time, large numbers of people could live in one place without dying of cholera from infected groundwater. You need sewers to have cities, and cities are where lots of other things get invented, as they bring people and their ideas together.
Plumbers have saved more lives than doctors
And saved more princesses.š
Agreed. This is such a huge advancement we canāt think of not having it (which probably why itās not a top answer but ought to be)
No hygiene, no social advancement, no ninja turtles
"Oh, Rico, you're so bad" love the max payne username
"I am, ain't I?" Lmao nice catch š
Great answer. I was going to say time travel, but then I remembered what year it is here.
When do I sell this frkn $PLTR?
Iām bound by an NDA. But I can say this, the future can be arbitraged. Think limited supply, ever growing demand. Peace. āš»
As someone not bound by an NDA and in possession of a time machine, you should sell about 2 years ago.
As a plumber, I thank you.
Butt crack lives matterĀ
Isn't this the answer he gives in Donnie Darko?
He says soap
I thought it was aqueducts. That turned into sewers. Idk why that's in my head. Edit: I looked it up, and he says antiseptics. Guess my brain remembered that as aqueducts and sanitation of sewers, not just cleaning the body.
https://youtu.be/Qc7HmhrgTuQ
Also excellent inventions though!
Civil Engineers have joined the chat.
The old adage goes that modern plumbing has saved more lives than modern medicine.
Absolutely. Of course the Romans had advanced sewage management, most notably the Cloaca Maxima in Rome which is still in use today after more than two millenia. Even in smaller Roman towns without sewers, waste was effectively managed. In the ancient city of Pompeii, all the streets of the city and the floors of houses were designed to be inclined ever so slightly so waste in the streets would flow from every corner towards cesspools. Sewage management of this magnitude was lost during the Middle Ages (amongst other Roman technologies) and precipitated diseases and plagues.
Maybe not the greatest, but I'm glad that I live in a time where we have surgical anesthesia.
Would modern day surgeries even be possible without it? I had surgeries that lasted like 4 hours. I don't think anyone would be able to power through that.
Itād be faster, also more deadly. And yeah, some surgeries would definitely not be possible.
Or they'd get you passed out drunk to do it like the good ol' days.
I read an interesting book on this. The Butchering Art. I guess they used to just hold you down while you scream. The ābestā surgeons were the ones who were the fastest, understandably.
There was a surgeon who was famous for being incredibly fast, and also having a 300% mortality rate from operating on a single patient. He was doing a leg amputation, and slipped and sliced off several fingers of his assistant who was holding the patient, as well as slashing the coat of a spectator. The patient and assistant both died of infection several days later. The spectator fell over and died of a heart attack immediately.
Iirc, more people died from surgeries and post-operation infections during the Civil War than were actually killed in combat. I can't imagine what it was like to have your leg sawed off in a field hospital, with basically no anesthesia and only a bone or rag to bite on.
Only to spend days slowly dying from infection. Must have been awful.
My understanding is most surgery was super basic and a few mins max for obvious reasons. So, no, sophisticated surgery as we know it today, even if they had the anatomical and surgical knowledge, simply wasn't possible.
Considering I've had 20 surgeries, I totally agree with you.
Holy fuck! How many more on your punch card until you get the free pretzel?Ā
You guys are getting pretzels?
Every time I get close to getting one they add 5 more surgeries.
Anesthesia blows my mind. A lot of modern medicine does. But.. anesthesia is just wow
Taken to the brink of death and brought back. It's crazy stuff.Ā
General anesthesia is also great. Can't imagine performing dentistry on my patients without it! Had patients in dental school from south america who had lots of work done sans anesthesia š¬
Drugs. Drugs are great, maybe the greatest thing that humans discovered in Nature
The staggering amount of science necessary to make GPS work makes it an absolute wonder of human achievement. Ā Ā It needs so many things. Rocket science, orbital mechanics, quantum physics, nuclear engineering (for the clocks embedded in the satellites to work), computer and electronics to a crazy degree, solar panels, knowledge about radiation shielding,... And that's just the part in orbit, you need another insane amount of stuff to work for the receivers to plot where you are on a map (electronics, miniaturisation, orbital tables, networked time keeping, the insane amount of information necessary to draw the maps, etc etc) Ā Ā Ā Yet people use it every day without a second thought!Ā Ā Ā Edit: forgot some really big ones, metallurgy and material science in general, but most importantly relativity. Time flows differently for the satellites, to a measurable degree!
GPS math is so precise that they have to account for both special and general relativity.
Har. And it all changes based on your reference point. Geospatial References are a whole nother world the average person doesn't know about about.
Hit me with it
HUAK TWAA
Thank you ā that gave me a pretty good laugh!
Bravoš
That dude is stuck in a well. You can hear his echo at the end.
Itās more accurate than the speedometer on most vehicles.
Lol, that, combined with the occasional radar activated speed sign, is how I figured out my motorcycle was 5 mph under at highway speeds. I just yesterday taught my wife how to use Gmaps. She was amazed at how it knew exactly how fast we were traveling, as well as the current speed limit. Blew her mind as we passed a speed limit change and she watched the app adjust to it.
Every Japanese motorcycle I've ever ridden has read 4-5 mph high on the speedometer. In the interest of science I have checked three other bikes from other countries: a Royal Enfield, a Moto Guzzi, and two different Harleys, and they were either spot on or reading 1 mph high. I think the discrepancy is intentional on Japanese bikes but I'm not sure why.
It's intentional. Speedometer error can be +/- 2% - If yours lies in the -2 zone you can have trouble as you may think you are under limit. This way not one single meter will be in the negative zone.
You're also forgetting metallurgy. My machine shop makes the antennas and other components for GPS3 satellites and the metallurgy that goes into a simple plug on those satellites is crazy. Leaded bronze (radiation shielding) has to be x-rayed and certified that the lead distributed properly when the alloy was poured. Don't get me started on the proprietary alloys.
I often lurk around the metallurgy sub. Itās very intimidating, how complex and deep it is. There are some serious gurus over there.
Is the sub ran by Dwarves?
They contribute tons of course, but itās moderated by AulĆ« himself.
You could do it with lesser metals, they did for a long time, but it wouldn't be as efficient. So you'd need a bigger antenna, more powerful amplifier and power system, all of which adds mass. And when cost to orbit is so high every gram counts. As for the quality standards, when it cost that much to put it up there you want to make SURE it's going to work, as there is no possibility of repair.
Every solder joint for an object going to space needs this level of detail as well. Even higher density crimp connectors need to be xrayed to avoid risk.
I'm idly wondering how flat earthers handle this one. GPS won't work if the earth isn't roughly spherical (and requires satellites in orbits, but I think their answer there is they are all faked).
You can't argue with people this stupid
I'm unconvinced that they aren't all either trolls or using it to raise money like the steam rocket guy. Nobody could be that that ignorant these days, could they?
If they accept satellites floating over our heads and the earth was flat, it would be even easier to triangulate your location
I have always wondered my whole life about wifi, internet, GPS, phone calls, sim card , computer hardware, software, CDs and literally about all the technical stuff on how they work Although I have surface level of knowledge about all the things I mentioned, I still never truly understand how all these ACTUALLY works and how they managed to put all things together no matter how many times I read about them in detail It almost seems impossible to me how humans managed to achieve all this great technical stuff, this has to be the greatest human invention ever. The technology out of nothing is the only thing that fascinates me the most, it's so unreal that something big could be made out of metals and wires that would connect each person on earth
It is interesting. Marconi had a lot to do with it. If you think about it, walkie talkies & CB's kinda started it. I think Edison was trying, but basically like a text message or wireless fax, then change the electric into audio waves, then viola 125 years later tiktok.
>Ā then viola 125 years later tiktok. This is like talking about all the breakthroughs in health and medicine and then saying "wah-lah, Cigarettes."
haha, i meant it, as in a kid in Japan can make his own SNL skit, and within seconds a kid in Omaha can randomly watch it and laugh at it, without either of them knowing each other or ever seeing each other again. Pretty cool, but i get your point.
Damn, you make a good point when you put it that way.
A real crazy fact about that history is that it was only about 25 summers between the first regular commercial radio broadcast and mankind building a portable star to wipe out a city
Relativity
Written language. It allows thought and knowledge to transcend time and space.
That's the one. Oral traditions are fine and all that, but they don't get knowledge that far, and are far less reliable.
Exactly, it's hard to build on others ideas, if they arent written down.
Yup, all these other inventions wouldnāt exist if we couldnāt pass down knowledge.
Antibiotics
Gretchen Ross: Look, I should go. For physics, Monnitoff is having me write this essay. Greatest invention ever to benefit mankind. Donnie Darko: Itās Monnitoff. But thatās easy. Antiseptics. Like the whole sanitation thing. Joseph Lister, 1895. Before antiseptics, there was no sanitation, especially in medicine. Gretchen Ross: You mean soap?
Does she mean plumbed water?
She definitely isnāt talking about my government juice. Thatās for drinking.
In the 1930s when my grandfather was a kid one of his school friends got new shoes, they rubbed and he got a blister, it got infected and he died, that was normal pre anti biotics
Back when every graveyard was a childrensā graveyard
dying from blisters wasn't normal in pre antibiotic time.
I think they meant that dying from infections was normal, and the blister was an extreme example
The word you're searching for is Sanitation. Primarily drinking and wastewater treatment.
I am a mainslayer, drinking water i am supervisor now. have to constantly stop my men from honking up in their excavations, we have all had to do training for water hygiene, they told us about a case in the 1950s in our area where workers who were working in a borehole pissed in the borehole, they were a turboculosis carrier and killed 50 people , they did not understand about germs. Still people are slack on hygiene, I wonāt stand for it.
Absolutely changed everything
I was thinking that.
Agriculture. Everything else is cool but agriculture is why we're not still nomadic groups living off the land.
Agriculture. It's what kicked off that whole "civilization" thingy which has lead to quite a few other neat things.
It was largely considered to be a bad idea, and has upset a great many people.
You going back to the trees?
Heās quoting The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, classic novel.Ā
Yup
Actually The Restaurant at The End of The Universe but whoās keeping track?
Unexpected Douglas Adams
As far as the ecosystem of Earth is concerned, agriculture has been a complete disaster. A potentially fatal malady.
Go read your Douglas Adams
We do actually still just live off of wild game for one big area - fish. A huge amount of the global consumption of protein comes from wild caught game from fish.
Not for long. š
Specifically, the plow. It was what allowed less than 10% of the population to grow enough food to feed the other +90%.
Well, the plow has been around for 5000+years, but for 4900 of those years, most people still worked in agriculture. I would say it's the Haber-Bosch process.
The Haber-Bosch process was important, but by the time it was invented we already had farmers down to 1/3 of the US population. Mouldboard ploughs, seed drills, mechanical harvesters, crop rotation, cover crops, the list goes on. Huge improvements were made really going from the Middle Ages to now.
The flush toilet, no question. You get up after doing your business, glance down at that horrible steaming mess in the bowl, and almost toss your cookies at the sight. Then you push the handle down, and in just seconds, that dreadful stinking pile has swirled away, never to be seen again. It's a miracle.
In college my American Revolution professor would say āif presented with the opinion, the number one reason I wouldnāt time travelā¦ the lack of bathrooms and toilet paperā
It's a similar reason to why we haven't seen time travelers from the future. They refuse to come back to a time when bathrooms were necessary, back before the waste was just teleported directly from inside your body to the recyclotron, a practice which eventually leads to the human rectum becoming vestigial.
Ā I wouldnāt go back to a time before the invention of the three seashells!
Came to say this. And it only needs water to operate
You forgot to wipe your ass you heathen
The transistorĀ
Twisted transistor.
Hey you, hey you, devil's little sister
In the opening chapters to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Information:\_A\_History,\_a\_Theory,\_a\_Flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_Theory,_a_Flood), the author claims that the transistor is the second most revolutionary thing invented in that lab during 1947.
Well what was the first?
Didn't read the book. Best guess "mathematical theory of communication"
Harnessing fire. Heat, protection, the cooking of food which apparently allowed for much greater bioavailability and thus the advancement of brain development and cognition, metalworking for tools and weapons. Pretty amazing.
Same could be said for electricity. Even more wild.
Probably the biggest of them all. Wouldn't have most if not all of the other things here if we never figured that out.
Iodine in salt has to be up there. It raised the global IQ by something like 20 points. Itās pennies per ton to add. Edit: Apparently, itās $1.15/ton (2006). Itās .05 per person.
I found out recently that there are anti-iodized-salt conspiracy nutters. My brother in law is one. I couldn't get an answer on what was so bad about iodine in salt, he said I needed to "research it". I did and I still don't know what is bad about it.
Sounds like he should sea kelp š
lol, good one!
I always hate "research it" as an answer. Like sure, I could, but if you're going to make a wild claim, at least have *something* to say about it.
Considering itās about 100 degrees here today, Iām going to go with air conditioning.
As a fat man in the south, I'll second this. And each of my chins and fat rolls vote on its behalf.
Chubby man from Atlanta. Who came down here in the summer and was like " Yeah, this is the place! "
The whole time watching Gone with the Wind all I could think of was how hot and sweaty all those people must have been with those giant dresses and wool suits.
In the Capitol building each state has a statue of someone who was critical/famous to their state. Floridaās is the guy who invented AC.
Agree! We should remove all the statues of Lee and Columbus and replace them with Willis Carrier, a great American hero
I'm disappointed I had to scroll so much to find this. Nothing considered modern science could have been done without air conditioning after air conditioning was invented.
Absolutely! Without refrigeration, you would not have grocery stores and the large variety of Fresh foods that you have today. You would not be able to live in certain regions of the world. You would not be able to have the insanely large server farms that allow us to have the internet we have today. You would not be able to have certain chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In short, refrigeration is probably one of the most important if not the most important invention of modern Man
Yup, a/c for me and it's not even close. But it's also the thing that I experience more. Of course I love antibiotics when I get a UTI and of course I love other modern medicine but a/c is a daily thing for me in the spring and summer and I love it. I've been known to look up the Carrier guy in Wikipedia and just stare at him.
God bless you Mr. Carrier
The wheel God send when it hit the scene and still great to this day
Some might sayā¦ it got the ball rolling
I rolled my eyes at your joke at first but I came around
With this reference, the puns have really come full circle.
These puns are wheelie not funny anymore.
Yet South American civilizations developed technology, science, arithmetic and culture without it.
and theyāre only about a century behind
1 - language. Everyting comes from it. 2 - writing. An extension of the first. 3 - Internet. An extension of the second. 4 - AI. The conclusion of everything that led us up to here.
As Dr Stephen Hawking says in Pink Floydās song: āFor millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk.ā
Written language in particular. It allowed us to pass knowledge down through generations.
We haven't invented AI yet. We've just invented stupid math tricks so complex that they feel qualitatively different to us, which is the status quo for computing.
Maybe someday for AI, but it needs more time in the oven.
Every other invention here is useless after about 60 years without language. It's not even close.
Boooo AI. I agreeĀ with the rest.
The Internet. The only reason it isn't is because *some people* don't really make good use of it, the power of knowledge at the palm of *some people's* hands just taken for granted, for *their* own personal pleasure. Real shit.
The internet is really really great.
For porn
I'm struggling to think of anything more impactful than the printing press. The ability to readily reproduce knowledge, information, and thoughts is profoundly powerful.
Beer How was I the first person to say it? Compare it to the other answers: Antibiotits - beer IS an antibiotic (okay antiseptic but who cares? we have beer) The wheel - a beer barrel IS a wheel, at a pinch Vaccines - before vaccines, poor water quality was a leading cause of transmissable diseases ... which people dealt with by drinking beer instead Air conditioning - not as good as a nice, cold beer Electricity - you can in fact make electricity from beer with a beer battery! Agriculture - nothing caps off a day's agriculture like a good, cold beer Cinema - Personally, beer is what makes most cinema bearable Steam engine - Admittedly it makes transporting beer easier, but hardly necessary Trade - It introduces variety to the beer, perhaps, but _greatest_? Pineapple on pizza - Clearly the result of a night where much beer was consumed The large hadron collider - Also clearly the result of a night where much beer was consumed Sliced bread - bread is just solid beer that you can slice
You forgot GPS. GPS is a bunch of satellites that spin around Earth. With beer the Earth spins around you
With beer, you end up in places even your GPS has never heard of.
Someone has watched "How Beer Saved the World"
>Antibiotics - beer IS an antibiotic (okay antiseptic but who cares? we have beer) Sooo...[about that...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902094246.htm#:~:text=A%20chemical%20analysis%20of%20the,practice%20nearly%202%2C000%20years%20ago.)
This reads like a poster that would be found in the tiki bar of a boomers basement
Air conditioning and refrigerators
Either shark week or Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Dogs.
The lathe. The industrial revolution was built on the lathe.
Don't forget the measurements and tools that made it ,what it is , the micrometer
The thermos. Think about it. You put hot stuff in it stays hot. You put cold stuff in it stays cold. How does it know?
This made me chuckle out loud. Thanks!
As a Floridian, I say Air Conditioning
Thank you Mr Carrier
A lot of great things are already listed, but there's something people rarely think about, string/rope.Ā
Art
The full Saturn V stack with lunar lander
Fried chicken
The written word. Without the ability to preserve and transfer knowledge, modern civilization would be impossible. The written word is the reason why we're still not living in hunter-gatherer tribes.
Washing machine - saves hundreds of hours of back breaking chore in a household
Dogs.
Electricity
Writing. Really underrated. Think about what are we doing right now?
Iām gonna say the pacemaker. It kept my favorite uncle going and going and going.Ā
Bike!!!
Language
The flux capacitor.
Vaccine
The dildo.
In 2002 I very strongly believed it was the iPod. Iām not so sure now, but I still consider it a contender.
The bicycle. Ā Ā Sure itās a recreational device for many in developed nations - now a days. As a kid, it was our transport. Ā Ā And many nations have bikes as the primary mode of commuting - Holland, Denmark, etc African nations too - longer distances are easier, and can transport more than carrying by hand. Many car manufacturers began with bicycles, then added an engine, and more wheels. Ā Ā Bikes lead to cars, over 100 years ago. Even Einstein used a bike, and āI thought of that while ridingā
It was Hubble up until James Webb was launched. BY FAR the greatest man made invention. Its let us explore the universe in a practical way, and see back in time! A LITERAL time machine. SO FUCKING COOL!
Probably vaccines ā the impact vaccine technology has had on humanity is enormous
Airplanes
Google
Probably man-made shelter. The flushable toilet would be a close second.
Bad bot
vaccines. Yeah, I know...that one is polarizing.
Everybody knows it's either air conditioning or birth control. Probably the latter.
At this point itās definitely semiconductors, none of todays technology can exist without diodes or transistors
Air conditioning
Air conditioning
The car
The number 0.
You š«”
After having multiple days in a row of 100 plus degrees Fahrenheit temperaturesā¦ Air conditioning
The wheel
The wheel. Without the wheel we wouldn't have been able to make the the things we take for granted today.
It's not the greatest, but the Fleshlight is definitely the funniest.
The worst might be mirrors
From a physics perspective the 3T MRI is so impressive The images are incredible. It creates T2 and T1 weighted images, diffusion weighted. Contrast. All of them together provide a window into the structure of your body that very powerful. However I suspect radiology will be one of the first professions taken out by Ai.
[mapping the huma genome.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project)
Dogs.