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Technologies That Shaped the Last Century?
ChrisGB writes "I was watching a TV discussion in the UK this morning about people's views of what technologies have shaped the way the 20th century developed. Suggestions from the panel included atomic theory, the microprocessor and genetics. Most interesting were the reasons they made their choices. What are other people's choices for the most important technologies of the 1900s and your reasons for choosing them?" I think that the large push in communications technology in the last century were critical in getting us things we've come to depend on today...from the TV to Slashdot. What technologies developed in the last century do you think are important?
Most important development of the 20th Century? It should be fairly obvious: the transistor. Just about everything else has flowed from that.
Needless to say, there is a small electric motor with an eccentric weight attached to the shaft inside the plastic housing of all vibrators.
Well, when it comes to universities, we aren't really doing anything different than what we did 500 years ago.
The only problem is that the assembly line was invented in the 1600s, developed in the 1700s, and hit a peak in the 1800s.
Ford used existing knowledge of assembly lines to build cars. It was a no brainer because it was already an old idea, he just expanded it's use.
Can we say microwave?
*I* know that, and *you* know that, but for some reason almost noone else does. Go figure.
How about the invention of the internal combustion engined automobile as a significant invention of the last century then? To be fair Cugnot had a bigger influence on train invention that he had on the car. It sucks to be too far ahead of your time. Of course maybe Cugnot dosn't count at all because the Ancient Greeks invented the steam engine thousands of years ago?
Ummmm, the steam engine wasn't even a curiosity by 1800, damn near everyone had seen one doing practical work by then. Cugnot had even built his tractor.
Define what you mean by electricity. Franklin did his famous test in the 1700s. If you mean Maxwell, Edison, Tesla and their ilk I'll go along with you I guess, but I'll go with those that give most of Tesla's real value to the 20th century.
Ah, the safty bicycle, now you're talking near and dear to my heart. Just remeber all you people out there voting for the car that the way was paved for you, both figuratively and literally, by the safty bicycle. Most of the social effects of cheap ubiquitous transport had come about before there was a car on the road, and the roads were paved first at the insistence of the cyclists. Then you car people came around and claimed them as "yours." Bugger off.
Never underestimate how much impact the electric guitar had on the 20th Century.
1) the TV remote control and cable TV, 2) pop-top beer cans and twist off beer bottles, 3) microwave popcorn, 4) the internet and porn, 5) cheetos, 6) viagra and rogaine, 7) atari and nintendo, 8) instant replay, 9) take-out pizza and chinese food, and 10) the Wonder-Bra.
This was tough as some worthy candidates had to eliminated (like the Easy Boy recliner). But a guy must be capable of making difficult decisions.
How 'bout women getting the vote? Not really a technology, but when we're talking about including half the population in the political system it has to count for something, right?
And they are:
1) reliable refrigeration (allowing concentration of population in industrial centers);
2) electric power, widely available;
3) high-speed steel, allowing rapid milling and tooling of finished products;
4) adequate water/sewerage, preventing disease spread.
Given these, all other developments follow rapidly. ALong with the wheel and fire, these are keystone technologies, making progress both possible and inevitable.
nuff said.
Like we need higher frequency AC! We're trying for lower frequency AC here! Less spam!
Harnessing the power of the electromagnetic spectrum, to be used for wireless communications has had the greatest impact in shaping our lives today. Everything from Radio to TV to satelite communications. Even the remote controlls that we use to controll our stereos and RC toys. The transister/semiconductor is a close second, because it made the use of wireless communications more convenient, and more economical, but as they say, "necessity is the mother of invention". Going back just a little furhter, in the later 1800's, I would vote for wire-based communications of the telegraph and telephone.
You are right crappy abusive governments cause a lot of starvation for a lot of 3rd world countires. But that isn't the only issue. Managing the population of India or China in the space they have is just plain difficult - independent of the government.
I don't think the US will have a population problem anytime soon. 1) We are still growing, check census data 2) We can push automation do decrease the need for labor 3) The US for many years to come can get all the immigrants it wants. Of any and all skill/educational levels. If push came to shove and labor supply really cramped the US economically it could just open the immigaration doors.
Slothmonster
I read somewhere (not on Usenet, I'm guessing), that the Qwerty v. Dvorak tests were *sponsored* by Dvorak. If it doesn't count when MSFT sponsors the MindLab tests or whatever, it doesn't count when Dvorak sponsors a keyboard test.
I would bet that the difference between trained typists using Dvork or using Qwerty is negliable. Besides, its not just about letter frequency, its about sequences of characters, and that would depend on what you're typing.
Tesla made a number of significant early discoveries. But toward the middle of his life he became a crackpot. It's no coincidence that they always have those big thick "Tesla Invention" coffee table books at Barnes & Noble up in the discount/closeout section, near the marked down Astrology/Mysticism coffee table books.
If you want to read early Alternating Current theory, read Steinmetz. His "Alternating Current Phenomena" book is really good, and not cloaked in a lot of mysticism and superstition like poor ol' Tesla has become.
There will always be a wing of the same building that houses the Black Helicopter contingent for people who dig Tesla, of course.
All the inventions mentioned so far would be for naught if not for the assembly line. What good is the automobile (to us regular people) if no one can afford one? The assembly line has put all other inventions within reach of the common man/woman.
There's a motorized potentiometer in my new Yamaha Integrated Amplifier. I press the up or down button on the remote control, and the knob spins. I'm sure others here have similar audio gear.
1/(4 * PI * R^2)
Seeing as the distribution is in three dimensions, shouldn't that be R^3 in the above equation?
No, the 4*PI*R^2 is the surface area of the sphere consisting of all points a distance R from the origin. The signal intensity decreases because the signal has spread out over this area as it has travelled.
This post is an example of the magic of /. Not that there weren't a lot of good posts above it but this post in particular is an example of an unusual an refreshing POV. Thanks Lowther.
Also, during the World War II, it allowed the Americans to crank out lots of quality products for the war effort, without which we would not have been in the fight long enough to develop jet propulsion, nuclear power, and all of that other fun stuff we have today. Remember, we got the bomb only a fewe months before Hitler would have...
TROLL. Fortunately not a very good one.
Oh, Yas!
For the 21st century I have to say quantum remapping (a style of teleportation).
Why? Because it allows you to transport yourself into a body moving at any speed for a "small" amount of energy (i.e. you could go from 0 -> 2/3 speed of light instantly). This basically means we can explore the rest of the Solar System and pick up that Mars lander to repair its radio! n theory it allows you to teleport yourself into a body mo
Greetings Malthus,
People have been claiming that the earth is or will soon be overpopulated for centuries. But, it's just not so. While it's true that starvation exists in some parts of the world, it's not due to a lack of resources. It is more a problem of distribution, hampered by political and economic pressures. The earth contains vast quantities of resources many of which we have only begun to tap.
Pollution does pose a threat, but technological solutions are being developed, which should reduce this concern.
As for space colonies, barring a revolutionary breakthrough in transportation technology, I doubt that any colonies of significant size (more than a few hundred people) will be established for many centuries. Long before space colonization, we will see colonization of the Oceans (after all 2/3 of the Earth is covered with water) and possibly subterranean colonization.
The modern fertilizers based on fixing of nitrogen are only the tip of the pyrmid. It grew out of the fixing of nitrogen in WWI in order to make explosives. The war was expected to last at best a few months as that was all the natural components for explosives the Germans had stockpiled. The ability to create chemical transformations gave us explosives, dyes, fertilizers, many of our drugs and so on. Most of these started in the early part of the century and were based on the use of electricity, heat, and pressure to modify and combine raw mataerials into finished products.
Heinlein is similar to L Ron Hubbard in more ways than his devotees will recognize.
Hubbard and Heinlein were contemporaries in the SF scene of the 50's. Hubbard could be viewed as being more successful in leveraging his fiction into the creation of an army of fanatical followers, but Heinlein is close behind. Both were pivotal in founding quasi-religious nutcase organizations. Hubbard, of course, with the Scientologist. Heinlein's followers founded the Church of All Worlds, whose ideology one catches a whiff of in everything that Eric Raymond writes (is ESR an actual member of CAW, or is he just a fringe neopagan?)
Both writers stirred up a lot of psuedo-intellectual froth. Some would say that Heinlein was more successful, as the thugs in his cult aren't as easy to tag and dismiss as Scientologists are.
Read this quick, before it's moderated way, way down. There are a lot of Heinleinites on Slashdot.
The invention of the TV is the greatest change. Nothing means of conveying information before TV reached such a high penetration and din't didn't allow partcipants to refute the facts. ie, by word of mouth you can argue and dispute new information. With television you're a mute recepticle which expects to be told what's happening and accepting it. We no longer care to ask why because most of the time we won't get an answer...
the video footage of the elephant being electrocuted can be seen on the nine inch nails compilation video "closure". just thought you might like a firm, attainable reference.
Elvis, dead, in a cardboard box.
It's a pleasant thought, but not likely to happen.
You have to admit that radar has brought about some mighty fine changes in the way we live.
Well - changes at least, not sure about mighty fine. Because of it I have a mobile phone so I can get called up at 10pm when a server goes down, annoy everyone else on the train when it goes off and get brain cancer.
And satalite TV gives me 200 channels of crap that's not worth watching.
I thought three-phase was only most efficient for induction motors--and only when starting. Or is there additional efficiency gain when running?
While not strictly an invention, it is what has been the root behind most of them. Without it it probably would have been just another 100 years.. Most of the great technological breakthroughs of the 20th century can be traced back to the threat of world war, or the actual outbreak of one. Previous to this threat, there was pretty much nothing driving technical innovation world wide, and it united entire economies behind the development of technology. Radar, Rocket propulsion, lasers, tanks, engines, communications were all either developed for their uses in wartime or were refined significantly for this purpose. We have lost a lot with the passing of the cold war...
Says it all, really. See for yourself.
-- A. Coward
"Central Services' new duct designs are available in hundreds of designer colors to suit your individual tastes..."
Um... no. It did change how we communicate, but it wasn't in the twentieth century. And for all you smart alecks out there who want to get technical and tell me that the original question said last century and it's still the twentieth century, you know what it meant! So, instead of being geeks (normally a compliment, but not so in this case) try to answer the question with the answers its looking for, instead of making everybody else have to filter through useless garbage. This is a useless rant? Oh, sorry. Somebody had to say it.
nevermind, that was 1400s or 1500s DOH!!! My gally jee wiz. Some people just don't know their history.
If it had gone the other way, people would live much closer together, and suburbanization wouldn't have happened the way it did, which is the source of a lot of problems.
SOME YEARS AGO AN OLD MAN WHO HAD BEEN BORN IN THE I,8OOS WAS ASKED WHAT HAD BEEN THE MOST IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT IN HIS LIFETIME. TO THE SURPRISE OF MANY, HE SAID IT WAS REFRIDGERATION. AS YOU SURMISE, HAVING SAFE, FRESH FOOD READILY AVAILABLE AT ANY TIME HAS MADE THE BIGGEST SINGE CHANGE IN MODERN LIFESTYLES. IT ALSO CHANGED THE BALANCE BETWEEN CITY AND COUNTRY. BEFORE REFRIDGERATION, LIFE ON THE FARM WAS CONSIDERED HEALTHIER THAN LIFE IN TOWN PRIMARILY BECAUSE OF THE AVAILABILITY OF FRESH, SAFE FOOD. THE SAFETY FACTOR CAN'T BE OVER EMPHASIZED. PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER DIED FROM EATING CREAM AND FRUIT WHICH HAD SAT OUT IN THE SUN FOR A DAY. HIS FATE WAS QUITE COMMON BEFORE ICEBOXES. THE ONLY INVENTIONS WHICH COME CLOSE TO THE EFFECT OF REFRIDGERATION ON THE LIVES OF THE COMMON FOLK ARE THE AUTOMOBILE AND THE TELEPHONE.
you read far too much science fiction and far too little physics. Technologies that are likely to work tend to be more useful.
I REALIZE IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO DISUADE ANYONE FROM BELIEVING THIS A.C./D.C. THING, BUT HERE GOES: A.C. WAS NOT NECESSARY. IF THE TRANSFORMERS IN AN A.C. DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM ARE ALL REPLACED WITH BATTERIES OF ELECTRIC CELLS, A D.C. SYSTEM FOR MEDIUM VOLTAGE ELECTRICITY CAN BE BUILT WHICH HAS SEVERAL ADVANTAGES. TAKE A I,OOO I2O VOLT BATTERIES - ONE OUTSIDE EVERY 2 OR 3 HOMES; CONNECT THEM IN SERIES; CONNECT EACH HOME'S TAP IN PARALLEL WITH ONE BATTERY; CONNECT THE ENDS OF THIS I,OOO BATTERY LOOP IN SERIES WITH A I2O,OOO VOLT SOURCE AT A POWER STATION. WHAT YOU WILL GET IS A SYSTEM CAPABLE OF ABSORBING HIGH VOLTAGE CURRENT AND TRANSFORMING IT INTO MEDIUM VOLTAGE CURRENT FOR HOUSEHOLD AND COMMERCIAL USES. IN ADDITION, IF THE POWER STATION GOES OFF LINE OR PART OF THE SYSTEM'S WIRES GO DOWN, THIS SYSTEM WILL CONTINUE TO SUPPLY POWER FOR SOME HOURS OR DAYS - DEPENDING UPON CELL SIZE. EACH GROUP OF HOMES HAS, IN EFFECT, A BATTERY BACKUP WHICH IS ALWAYS CHARGING. THE SAME COULD BE DONE FOR TRANSFORMING MEDIUM VOLTAGE TO LOW VOLTAGE IN A COMPUTER CHASSIS. THE ONLY CAVEAT IS THAT DEVICES WHICH REQUIRE ELECTRICITY MUST BE CONNECTED TO DIFFERENT ELECTRIC CELLS; THEY CANNOT BE COMMONLY GROUNDED.
He invented AC current (without this, we'd never be able to distribute power to virtually any house in the world), but also wireless communications and this includes TV, radio, and wireless power transmition too ...
History is still very unclear about him and some of his inventions, that nobody even NOW can understand (like the tesla shield, the 'death-ray' and anything about scalar electromagnetics).
yes -- cheap, affordable housing for the masses ...
So, at the start of this century two major technolgies were the internal combustion engine, and electricity. The first part of the century was devoted to the implementation of these 19th century technologies.
In this century, we have the chemical technologies (plastics), pharmaceuticals, and electronics at the mid century. And now we are in the microprocessor/biotechnology cycle. Over the next 20-30 years these technologies will be commercialized into every niche where they can be applied.
Nanotechnology/quantum computing sare some of the areas that just starting the new cycle. These will be some of the 21st century technolgies.
Oh good. I was HOPING somebody would start yet another thread about when the decade/century/millenium really ends.
The development of Nuclear power in the 50's by the Navy gets my vote. Not to mention Hyman Rickover "The Father of the Nuclear Navy" who should have been in the top 100 people of the 20th century. As a Capt. in the 50's, Rickover was given the task of developing Nuclear Power. At the time, I beleive the only self sustaining Nuclear Reaction had been done under a pile of dirt. He was expected to fail. He didn't. Rickover not only lead the development of nuclear power but was it's leader for about 40 years. He weilded a tremendous amount of influence with Congress and was able to build our Nuclear Fleet of today. It is the Nuclear Navy that provides the "Projection of Power" which has allowed the United States to have a strong international presence. We can argue the pros and cons of nuclear power all day. Whatever your opinions, it can not be denied that nuclear power played an inportant role in the 20th century.
First, Mass Production drastically reduced the unit-cost causing purchasibility of things previously only custom-made. Second, the Integrated Circuit drastically reduced MTBF in electronic products and enabled an effective merging of electronics and machines. [Also, transistor is up there.] Third, synthetics [nylon, rayon, plastics, politicians] ...
Nitrogen based fertilizer use is one of the primary reasons why we are able to sustain the 6billion+ people on earth. Without that, things would be very different. Populatons would be smaller, and there would be less financial impetus for large scale infrastructure projects.
well, it WAS this year just passed :)
Newton figured out the theory of jet propulsion several centuries before this one.
In my opinion the word 'technology' needs to be defined before making a choice. The first problem I can see is the difference between technology and applied technology. I feel that the most basic technology are physic laws. All the rest are applied technologies and combination of technologies. Surely I can think of the LASER as a technology, but I can also say that LASER is an applied technology of optic, physic and chems laws. The engine's car is not a technology, it's the application of very basic thermodynamic laws. People often think of exiting new technologies without realizing that thos are just applied technologies of relatively simple laws.
Coming to the topic, I'd say that the most important understood technologies for this century are:
1. Quantum theory
2. Exotic matter
3. Yet-to-be-proven Universal Law
These might sounds funny points. "You just posted because they're highly cool and always on SciAm". Well, I'd respond that the rest was discovered before this century. Quantum theory is helping resolving many questions about the universe. Exotic matter in my opinion will be the base of a lot of new tools and energy sources. The Universal Law, if proven, will finally let Einstein rest in peace. He did a lot, and I think he deserve some rest now.
As for applied technology, I'd say, in no particular order:
1. Transistor
2. Laser
3. Radar/Sonar
4. The CERN
And of course, for the funny bits:
1. Home delivered Pizza
2. Remote controls
3. Air conditioning
4. TCP (with some reserves)
5. Cameron Diaz (can't we clone her?)
I like the cardboard box... But you can't leave out Elvis.
Alright, call me a troll, but he's as bad as Clarke....
Rockets ARE jet propulsion.
Road materials are cool and fascinating stuff.
I was very, very happy when I was able to locate a used copy of Highway Engineering at a local bookstore. It's got it all in that book. It's a $100 book at Barnes and Noble, well out of the reach of a dabbling geek like me.
For those who are confused, yes, geeks are interested in all sorts of technology. Not just computer stuff. Some of my best hacking is done with a wire wrap tool. What's the sense in just writing code to run on hardware someone else designed?
I think the aerospace industry has made a very big impact in the 20th century. It has made travel highly accessable and helped the US export their culture to virtually every corner of the world ;-). On a positive note, it has also allowed the great discoveries of the various space missions. Where would companies like Amazon.com be without next day air freight?
Star Wars/Star Trek, what's the difference? I get them mixed up anyway. Wasn't R2D2 originally a kitchen trash can in the galley on the USS Enterprise?
Obviously George Lucas was William Shatner's houseboy when the original series was being shot.
How do you know that "it is actually true"? Because you read it on Usenet somewhere?
I still have fond memories of a WWII era book my grandpa had in his library entitled "Tanks Are Might Fine Things."
I just checked, and yes, it's available online.
I used to love the suburbs but I moved to the city because it was close to work. Now that I live where people live closer together along with businesses (stores and restaurants) I understand how bad the suburbs are.
I'd say that the automobile affected society way more than phones, TV, internet, and other communication things in this century.
You have been decieved by the modern misconception engine. Adopting the current electricity grid and power system that we use today was perhaps one of the biggest -Blunders- ever made. The current system uses very low frequency power, making it extremely dangerous to living beings. It was adopted because it could be metered and distributed at a cost. The reasons that a 50 or 60Hz system of AC power was chosen are fairly simple: 1) If the frequency is too low, you can see the flicker in incandescent bulbs. (Not to mention that high speed steam turbines for generation won't be able to run as fast, meaning less efficiency.) 2) As frequencies increase, loss of flux in transformers (and I think AC motors too) increases, as well as resistance. For example, I have run small transformers at 4kHz and 88% efficiency, but going to 8kHz means efficiency drops by about 10%. This is extremely serious when you consider that electricity usually goes through at least four transformers on its way to your home. 3)A further problem would be that as frequencies run higher, it becomes increasingly difficult to build slow speed 3 phase AC motors. A 1500 rpm motor (that's 60 Hz AC) will use 3 coils, but if you want a 1500 rpm motor at say 6kHz, you will need 300 coils, which is damn complicated for a simple motor! There would be further problems, but in short, somewhere close to 60 or 50 Hz AC is the most economical/cheapest way to distribute power.
I used to love living in the city, being able to walk to used bookstores, the ma and pa grocery store on the corner, etc.
But I got mugged two blocks from my house. I got tired of the traffic noise at 2 in the morning, the scream of young women out on the sidewalk, etc.
I now pay about the same amount of money towards my mortgage as I did to rent a one bedroom apartment in the city. Now I have an entire second bedroom for computers and software and related books, and an entire lab downstairs for my workbench, oscilloscopes, more computers, etc. And an attached two-car garage.
In hindsight the city sucked. I only walked in to those used bookstores once a week or so, and I can drive into the 'hood if I want to visit those stores now. And there are friend ma and pa shops everywhere you go, not just in the city.
Cheap refrigorators. Something no one thinks of but has done more for quality of life than just about anything else. Come on now realy, besides keeping your beer cold, it keeps a good part of the world from getting food poisoning and dying an early death. Hint - it's also a good place to store your backups since it is kinda fireproof.
>>
Needless to say, there is a small electric motor with an eccentric weight attached to the shaft inside the plastic housing of all vibrators.
>>
... which, if the feminist applies at the right angle, eliminates the need for the man's movement.
I think this stuff is HUGE!!!
(yeah yeah, I know, this is a bit silly)
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
Actually the telegraph reshaped the world's communications in the 19th century. Once the telegraph network was in place it was possible to pass a message around the world in seconds.
Until then the fastest way send a message was by horse at maybe 100 miles/day. Think about that paradigm shift.
The internet is just improved on telegraph.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
You've taken my choice.
The washing machine and other home appliances liberated women to study, to work, to go out. And that shaped democracies and economics.
Of course, it wouldn't work without electricity.
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Birth control truly sets people free, women in particular. Think about it; without that most of you would have 7 or more children before you would reach 30. You wouldn't have time for anything but work to provide for them. I would love to say computers, or the telephone, or electricity or whatever, but nothing has had more impact on how people live than birth control has.- --------
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UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
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UNIX isn't dead, it just sme
If we've come to depend on Slashdot, then I'm not sure we've progressed at all... ;)
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
Lessee, in no special order
Internal combustion engines (gas *and* diesel)
These run not only cars, but trucks, and
(*sigh* these days, locomotives), and
generate electricity
Flight
Refrigeration (refrigerators, air conditioning - and if y'all don't think the latter is important, *you* think about going to school in TX in June...)
Antibacterials (esp. TB and polio vaccines)
Aspirin (invented in the 1890's) besides a painkiller, a febrifuge.
anaesthetics
electronic communication (radio, tv, phones)
radar and lasers
computers (of course) in particular, and electronics in general
nuclear physics (the bomb, x-ray machines, etc)
biochemistry - plastics, glues
birth control medications
medical technology (repairs and replacement)
reinforced concrete
photography (incl. films)
I think that covers it...
Before 1900 you would most likely have been born, grown up, married the girl next door, had your kids and died without ever leaving home. (This is a broad generalization) The important part of that last sentence is "married the girl next door" She would be carrying the same basic genetic info as you (genes for almnd shaped eyes if you were both asian etc...)
Now, however most people have the ability to live anywhere on the planet they choose. And many did migrate to new lands (America being the most obvious example) and interbred with people not from next door, but from the other side of the world.
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Actually, this is the exact reason that we can't really use Tesla's power distribution method. Modern electronics work mostly via a condensed matter system called a p-n junction. Under extremely high frequency fields with large amplitudes, the things break irreperably.
Vacuum tubes work, though....
Yup! Turbo washing machines in 1904...
--
" It's a ligne Maginot-in-the-sky "
By enabling cheap large-scale overland transportation of people and goods, the secular patterns of stagnating civilization that were the norm since the dawn of Humanity were irretrieavably shattered, leading to unprecedented wealth and freedom from the old demons of famin and isolation.
What? No, we're still in the XXth century, so the last century HAS to be the XIXth...
--
" It's a ligne Maginot-in-the-sky "
The first automobile was invented in 1769 (Yup! 6 years before the US Revolution) by Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot who built a crude front-wheel drive steam-powered tractor, primarly intended to haul cannons.
Unfortunately, the limitations of the technology of the times did not enable him to address the problems inherent in developping a compact-enough steam engines.
--
" It's a ligne Maginot-in-the-sky "
The idea was to have a constant voltage out of a variable one coming from the axle-driven generator. This was cool: by pushing the solenoid by hand, you could have all the lights in the car fluctuating wildly...
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" It's a ligne Maginot-in-the-sky "
Your sig is very poignant indeed, especially given the context. The phrase "For that matter, neigher did Goddard" was plain sarcasm, meaning that he never got the engineering right, and his rockets never did too much in the way of, uh, flying. Yeah, I have a time machine in my garage, too, and the Smithsonian is more than welcome to come pick it up. But does it work?
Yeah, and Da Vinci invented the first helicopter. Whether both these discoveries did anybody any good can be read in the history books. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, or in this case, the proof of the concept is in the engineering.
While Newton figured out the conservation of momentum thingie, he knew nothing of turbo pumps, or cooling technologies, or combustion. For that matter, neither did Goddard. I think the man is getting WAY too much credit for never having gotten one of his designs to work decently. Probably an American coping mechanism for the fact that rocket propulsion is the OTHER propulsion technology they missed.
While Goddard is supposed to have inspired a lot of the people that went on to develop successful designs, it was they that solved the vexing engineering problems of how to build a reliable turbo pump, how to keep the nozzle cool, and the whole guidance thing. These engineering problems can't be dismissed as mere details--a lot of people had correct notions of how to build a rocket, but very few could translate these notions into metal that flew.
But yes, in the end we're all here because we're standing on the shoulders of giants, just to keep some perspective.
Edison liked to refer to electrocution as being "Westinghoused", a clever bit of FUD that never caught on with the public.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Although this semi-educated adult has not yet learned to proof read his work.
DUH
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
At the turn of the century, running a family household required two full-time adults. One to earn the money, the other to perform household tasks.
...and at the turn of this century, running a family household requires two full time adults and a fulltime babysitter/daycare.
At least in this corner of the globe (northern canada). I have friends who are on Social Assistance because even with two full time working parents, they don't make enough money to support a family.
I'm not quibbling with the rest of your post, just this one thing.
Communication has always been the key to the scientific endevour. Science is only productive if people share their findings. Better communication leads to larger groups of people collaborating. More people collaborating leads to faster and better science, since there is less reduancy. Faster science pushs technology, which of coures feeds back into science.
I wonder what James Burke would say?
My 2,
Here are my picks of What Shaped The Century:
;)
Jet planes (airliners; flight in general)
Aritifcial fertilizer
Nuclear weapons
The Pill
Telephones
Microcomputers
I specifically exclude the following because they will only really affect the NEW century:
The Net
Gentechnology
Can't think of any more, my brain's fried.
So the year numbers are off by one. I'll go back to year 1, renumber it as 0. That makes it now 1999. Maybe it can be more easily understood then. Of course you have to renumber the centuries, too, so the first century is now century 0, and this is century 19 (less than a year to go until century 20).
... the topic ... uh ... yeah ... last century ... my vote is for the steam engine!
Of the past 2000 years, more years were celebrated with the beginning of the year being NOT january 1, but March 25. Our system of months are based on the original Roman calendar (pre-Julian), as was the beginning of the year. Christians changed that to what made sense to them, March 25 (which could be quite confusing to computers since they don't understand Christianity).
So if you are Christian, the true new year, and thus the next millennium, based on the Day of Annunciation, the conception of Jesus, is less than 2 months from now.
If you are not Christian, none of this matters. But my BIOS won't let me enter the year as 5760, or 157.
Oh
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
... made a distinct change from the rule of force that the rather nationalistic states of Europe early this century. While the UN and WTO are imperfect beasts, they have enabled countries to settle political, trade, and security issues in a more or less open forum. Violence and the abuse of private property has always lead to mass social disruptions. You can trace the emerging restraints through the British Empire (when the sacked the Summer Palace in China, the officials were amazed the barbarians would withdraw after signing a treaty (admittedly unfair take-overs of ports) unlike the usual stay and pillage) right through to today's (admittedly sometimes shakey and unenforceable) UN resolutions such as the US withholding physical invasion of Serbia when they fully expected another brutal repeat of WW2 (a la German invasion). While subtle and still easy to flout, the rule of law replaces arbitrary individual (and egoistic) decisions with principles and interpretive guidelines. One of the things that impress Chinese the most is that they are amazed that crimials have to be read their rights when arrested in US movies (not exactly a common occurance in their country). The increased communications and enforcement of legal contracts mean that quite sophisticated markets can develop (e.g. options trading) where people can be assured that counter-parties will undertake their role and be prepared to take massive losses on the chin from making awrong bet.
The legal framework is invisible, yet it gives everyone recognised rights from low to high (except maybe the president and his merry men) and a means to address grievances (though some people can sadly abuse the whole system). Why do we believe in GPL which are mere words? Because the hackers have belief in the principle of copyright that the creator of any innovative idea has the power to dispose of it as they wish, even to giving it away. And because of this common belief, the "law" reinforces our actions, ensuring a more stable and open livable society.
So beware of those that seek to corrupt the process and gain undue advantage for when laws are blindly dictated, it is up to each global citizen to understand and choose which laws are valid and thus worth obeying. The computer can be one of the harshest applications because once the creator imbrues the legal system into it (or one interpretation) and it spreads beyond the original juristiction, it will control all users forever afterwards in chains of ignorance for perpetuality.
LL
the telephone and automobiles. The telephone and more importantly the telephone keypad (best UI of the 20th century) gave us the ability to talk over great distances and was easy enough for all to use. The automobile was instrument in the expansion of the masses west early in the century. Both of these inventions gave rise to such things as suburbs, nation wide sports leagues and calling Mom on Mother's day.
Agreed. The pill and the revolution in lifestyles (not just for men but more so for women) that it created. Two-income families, ability to plan when or if to have children, made life much different for women. Women were working outside the home before the pill, but after they were able to have careers, not just jobs.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
Moderate this down if you want, but it seems that way too many people believe we are in the new millenium and 21st century now.
:)
Allright, I've told this to way too many people and I'll tell it again. The new millenium starts in 2001 as does (surprise) the new 21st century.
You want proof? Alright, count up to 10 and tell me how many numbers you get.
If you started with 0 then you get a cookie. But seeing as how most people start with a 1 we have a problem.
There has never been and never will be a year 0 (BC or AD or whatever). And quite logically, how can you have one? The whole purpose of 0 is to signify a lack of something, how can we lack time?
So using that logic we must start with 1AD after saying goodbye to 1BC. Now it shouldn't take a physics major to tell what year is exactly 2000 years after this year. (if you have no clue it is none other than 2001) So the new century also starts in 2001 not 2000! And a whisper is heard throughout the world, everyone who partied like it's 1999 realizes that they were a year too early.
Just like this century started in 1901 so too must it end 100 years later in 2001.
Now If only the stupid people who write national headline news would get this thru their head, but that's asking them to think, wouldn't want that now would we?
-My new sig-
"Goddammit! The world is just filling up with more and more idiots! And the computer is giving them access to the world! They're spreading their stupidity! At least they were contained before -- now they're on the loose everywhere!"
-- Harlan Ellison in The Onion
Is anyone else thinking about the scene from Monty Python's the Life Of Brian:
"And what have the romans ever done for us?"
cheers
Java programmers do it with
My grandmother always said running watter was the best thing that ever happened. (When the watter came to you instead of you having to go get it. Think how much time that saved).
END
My vote goes to clean water and modern sewage transports.
It's eliminated the plague, other diseases, and raised quality of life more than anything. People without electricity (meaning half the world) benefit from nothing electronic. But having clean water for use, and a way of getting rid of waste that doesn't contaminate someone else has done more than rockets, transistors, electricity, or anything else. Clean water is a necessity before you can have medical advances.
That's ^2, not ^3.
Test this with a flashlight sometime.
I think what he was trying to say was that the 20th century isn't over yet, thus the "last" century was 1801-1901 :)
And it has to be Duct Tape !
My dya could not happen if I did not have a flushable toilet, modern cities would be near impossible (imagine new york sans facilite). Also the lack of gems such as toilet humour. I belive the toilet shaped pretty much everything since its general use became popular
Two things: silicone breast implants (and cosmetic surgery in general) and an out of control legal system.
Serious.
I wonder what kind of environmental disasters that would have led to.
Though it was invented more than hundred years ago and probably doesn't count here:
The Automobile very much shaped the world. A lot of other inventions would not have been made, if there were no cars. Why use cell-phones for example? Without cars, people wouldn't roam around as much and would not need cell-phones anyway.
Besides, all those inventions made like computers, rockets, airplanes... How would anyone transport those things?
Therefore, my opinion is, that the automobile has made the biggest impact.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
Hmmmm... a Beowulf cluster of vacuum cleaners running on Crusoe chips, calculating the optimum cleaning path round your house, and showing the results dynamically in XML on the web. I'll buy that ;)
--
This comment deserved a much higher rating than a 1 in my opinion and DEFINATELY "Informative" save the 1's for the dumbasses like myself :)
Your proctologist phoned
He said he found your head -userfriendly.org
This comment deserved a much higher rating than a 1 in my opinion and DEFINATELY "Informative" save the 1's for the dumbasses like myself :)
Your proctologist phoned
He said he found your head -userfriendly.org
Indoor Plumbing, at least to the degree we see it in industrialized society today.
----
It is often easer to gain forgiveness than permission
----
It is often easer to gain forgiveness than permission
Before you guys flame me for being a bithead, remember that the invention of Diffie-Hellman was a major breakthrough in the seventies. Information warfare goes back to ancient sumeria. There was never a way to encrypt data without the need to also find a secure way to transfer the key to the recipient until PKC.
It's almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.
I have nothing add to this except a whole lot of admiration for Lowther's post. It was the most interesting post in recent memory.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
It started in the 1800's (but so did the communications revolution) but waste water removal and treatment and water treatment for safe drinking water has made our current population density possible. Major cities in the 1800's frequently lost 50K people a summer to disease.
Civil engineering has probably saved more lives over the years than all the major medical avances combined.
This allows cites to become bigger, with the more interchange of commerce and ideas that spring from this density.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Steam power is one of the most significant shaping technologies of the last century. Although the internal combustion engine was invented in the last century, it wasn't until this century that it had much impact.
Steam drove most of the world expansion that was the watchword of the nineteenth century.
Whay are we discussing the technologies of the last century?
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Prove it.
US birth rates are dropping dramatically, China also. Everywhere I look, the population is dropping.
Also, there is more then enough food for the current population, but distribution sucks (mostly because 2% of the world owns 90% of the worlds wealth, and last month I spent more on internet access then most families in the world would make in the same period of time.. And my cable access is $50 us..)
Also, the areas were there are starving people are not that way because there are too many people, but because there is a very crappy governmental system.
The problems we will be facing in the US are mostly because there aren't enough babies being born to keep the population at the same size, much less growing. Recession will come, not from overpopulation, but under.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Things like the microprocessor and TV are definitely significant, but I think the *really* important things (by nature) don't immediately occur to you.
I remember reading, years ago, a preface by Robert Heinlein to some collection of short stories, where he claimed that the premise of most good science fiction could be traced to a single idea; for example, what would the world have looked like without automobiles (I don't mean the combustion engine); North American human mating rituals would have evolved very differently...etc etc.
What about the plastic out of which most credit cards are made? (sorry, can't remember which it is) How would the world be without that? Maybe some other technology would have produced the same phenomenon, maybe not...
The obvious high-impact technologies might not really be the most significant, is my point.
cheers
Jonathan
(sorry if I misrepresented RH -- I can't remember the detail)
if we look at it the single bigest influence on the last century has got to have been printing.
with the introduction of mass education at the turn of the last century books went from being minor things to being the major information transfer tool of the century.
They influenced the take up of science and politics. and we can even see that the second world war might not have happened without the printed word. In relation to that the computer is only a minor detail. its mass use has only really taken part over the last 10 to 20% of the century.
Oh, no... not the white male in charge rhetoric. Church Burnings, discrimination in the workplace, wage discrepancy, and mysoginist language - you don't see these affecting you, so they must not exist, right?
And what exactly do you mean by "inborn abilities"? Functioning as a brood mare for the state? Being subservient to your wishes and desires... Cleaning up your crap when you forget to put the toilet seat down?
Next time think before you speak.
You can find a web version of it at:
http://theelectricchair.com/videos.htm
the realvideo version really sucks so check out the shockwave version. Its small and blurry but you can at least see whats going on.
Sounds good, but if we were all engulfed in powerful electric fields, we'd all probably have cancer by now.
It's not just the power to run it, it's also the waste heat problem. Early computers running on vacuum tubes (or valves) not only filled rooms but required tonnes of air condtionion to keep them cool. Also the useful life of vacuum tubes isn't all that great compaired to transistors. How many hours do you think you could keep a pre-transistor computer running before one of the hunderds (thousands) of the tubes burned out. Even if you've got a full time IBM customer engineer on site to change the tubes.
Give us a 10 or 20 generations and there will little evidence of racial differences. I always wonder when I see a Star Wars or Star Trek and you see obviously African, Asian, or Causcasion.
Public elections on state constitutional changes or public poles on issues can also be slanted on exactly how the proposition is worded. ie, are you in favor of the state killing people? are you in favor of punishing child killers?
Transistors and valves can be used for analog devices also, so aren't really equivalent to the relay. Try building a radio using relays...
Communications and transport seem to stand out above all to me, can't say the exact reasons, but the ability to reach the other side of the world in 1-2 days can't be a bad thing :)
I think there was a good C4 (UK TV Channel) documentary about the history of execution - wasn't the film shown on that? I've been digging around but can't find anything about it in the web (lot's of stuff about how hard done by Tesla was though).
-wibble-
You could. You can use a relay directly to demodulate the signal, and you could use high-frequency relays to build a chopper amplifier (class D). :)
Because there are thousands of technologies that have changed peoples' lives significantly, and it's impossible to really evaluate which ones were most significant, because any evaluation must be done in the context in which they exist, which is interacting with other technologies.
But my votes go for the TV remote control and electronic mail, which have together bread a geniration of people with bad speling adn grammer and appallingly short uh, inability to focus on, um, things for you know, to pay attention to stuff and be, like able to express themselves you know, eloquently n'stuff.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Designed to allow women to do more strenuous tasks without their bits flopping around (first prototype was made out of handherchiefs and string, IIRC..)
My jury is still out on the WonderBra, though... Excellent when worn, although removal can sometimes disappoint... Advertising standards, anyone?
#include "offtopic.h"
Seeing as the trained squirrels at
#include "rant.h"
Would be nice if the submission process got a reason for rejection - something like "already posted/not interesting enough/poorly worded...". I've submitted 5 stories recently, all rejected for no apparent reason. So, fuck it, I'll restrict my contribution to
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The power from a dipole antenna drops like 1/r^3.
DK-PHD
1) the TV remote control and cable TV, - to keep men occupied and out of our hair... :)
2) pop-top beer cans and twist off beer bottles, -to keep men occupied and out of our hair...
3) microwave popcorn, -to feed men so we dont have to cook
4) the internet and porn, - to keep men from bugging us in bed.
5) cheetos, to keep men fat and happy
6) viagra and rogaine, to keep us happy when we want to get rid of our heaache's and to keep them in acceptable appearance for when we DO want them
7) atari and nintendo, to keep men occupied so we dont have to listen to them
8) instant replay, to amuse their small minds
9) take-out pizza and chinese food, to feed them....
and
10) the Wonder-Bra. so we dont have to bother with intelligent conversation with the beasts...
She became a geek by absorption, one day she woke up with a bad taste in her mouth.. and knew how Linux worked
wasn't that from the 19th century though?
She became a geek by absorption, one day she woke up with a bad taste in her mouth.. and knew how Linux worked
Maybe a reduction in size, but by the very way they work they will consume LOTS of power compared to a transistor, HEAT uses power.
The Transistor, not the valve is the big breakthrough!
-- You ain't seen me, right?
Maybe oil itself is not really a technology. But the refining technologies are, and refined products changed the world. Oil had an enormous influence on our way of life, mainly trough the modes of transportation, especially when they discovered enough to make it affordable to almost everyone. Cheap energy, and easy to transport. Think of its practical uses, first (before widespread electricity networks) kerosene provided light to work longer days. Later, it made possible the internal combustion engine (which would be my second choice), which provided the propulsion for the automobile (no Tin Lizzy without petrol), larger, faster ships and airplanes. Electricity plants run on oil. Plastics are made from it. Almost everything you think of, would not be possible to produce or use at the price we are accustomed to without oil. Wars were fought over oil and lost for the lack of it, crises erupted when supply was limited. Think not only of Kuwait and the Suez crisis but also of WW2, where Hitlers decision to invade Russia was largely influenced by the lack of petrol for the war in the west (artificial petrol was in short supply), and Japan, whose attack on Indonesia was inspired by its huge oil ressources and refineries. Industrialisation would not have progressed at the pace it did. Nobody would think about computers, space travel and cellular phones. We are completely dependent on it, for the time being. For me, the 20th century is the petrol age. The information age is just beginning... My 0.02c
I would suggest the Tank. Invented 13th June 1900 by Major General Sir Ernest Swinton.
threadeds blog
I wonder what kind of better batteries...
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
I like it!
as a personal rant, I am a wee bit biased cos I just get so *bored* of all these lists - I'd rather just get on and *do* stuff - so yup, if we're going to have lists let's at least make ones we can have a chuckle at :-)
Ummmm, the steam engine wasn't even a curiosity by 1800, damn near everyone had seen one doing practical work by then. Cugnot had even built his tractor.
Well, stationary steam engines were in existance by 1800, but steam boats were not in commercial existance before the early 1800s. (Fulton had the first viable steam boat business, but some other guy (Fitch) was earlier. He went broke though.
OTOH, the steam locomotive was a creature of the 19th century. IIRC (I'm reading Asimov's history of science and discovery, but am still in the 181x's) it was invented circa 1830.
By the 1840s, steam power was at about the peak of its technology. Some other inventions, such as the Corliss steam engine (rather complex, but about as efficient a piston powered steam engine as you can get) and flash steam (no boiler, just add enough water to make enough steam for your application) came later, but all the heavy work was done.
Well, the list would go on and on, and I'm sure dozens of others will post some of the other things I think are important, so I'll go for automated telephone exchanges. Without these people would have to ring the operator every time they wanted to make a call and the vast explosion in the communication infrastructure we've seen would never have occured, and thus, no Internet.
A little reminder, the century dosn't start untill 2001. Ok you probably knew this and just miss typed it but if this were truly for "last century" I might include something old that probably made some lasting effect on us that no one remembers. Oh and for this century I would say the microchip, sice the internet isn't realy an invention I just use microship as a default.
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
There really haven't been a lot of inventions since the 1920s or so, just improvements on existing technology. I mean, dude, back in the 20s, they had airships the size of city blocks flying around and stuff. That's some real cool stuff.
But to a certain degree I'd agree with you. The Internet has shaped our forms of communication like nothing else. When you can pass a message around the world in seconds, it makes for increased cultural exchanges.
Myself personally, I look to our Biology and Medical advances we've made in the last century. Because if you look at the medical techniques that existed a little over a hundred years ago,... you'll probably see them as barbaric.
I realize that this isn't from the last century, but all inventions go back to the discovery of FIRE.
Ignore Alien Orders
This is true regardless of the century.
In this past century we can perhaps talk about unleashing the atom (although in general I am opposed to it), but prior to that we can of course talk about the guy who was able to ignite a piece of wood.
Ignore Alien Orders
Abstraction levels have gone up, we can now manufacture a new formal language, i.e. we now understand lexicography better and it has become quit popular.
Thanks to Information Technology we created an art-of-thinking (inductive reasoning) in which we try to solve core-problems instead of fighting symptoms.
I think Information Technology is one of the most important things we invented, as the consequences encapsulate all previous inventions by re-ordering topic knowledge.
Ofcourse communications play an important role here too, but it all starts with the urge for abstraction and induction.
The digital revolution isn't finished yet... :-)
Bizar technology?
I would say the greatest technological innovation in the past century was the assembly line. Good or bad, the paradigm behind the work of most of the industrialized world is the humble old assembly line as envisioned by Henry Ford. Even any group coding practices follow some of the concepts laid down by Ford. Without the assembly line, almost none of the other technological innovations mentioned would not have been feasibly produced in numbers to really effect our society the way they did.
If someone already mentioned this, please excuse its duplication - What about Alan Turing's work? Turing laid down the theoretical foundation for most of modern computing, including the concept of an infinite 'tape' of binary-based random access memory. The Turing Test, a basic subjective test for verification for artificial intelligence, is still (at least one of) the defacto standards in the field.
If any of you haven't read it, I can recommend _Alan Turing: The Enigma_ by Andrew Hodges. Although it's a bit lengthy, it gives the reader a good idea of exactly how similar Turing's ideas were relative to modern implementations.
the power drops off geometrically or polynomially, not exponentially.
this is followed closely by a steam engine, but i feel the impact of this was less far reaching.. besides.. i believe it was developed prior to this century.
LW.
The Cardboard Box.
Think about it.
Is that really a good thing? I mean, the earth is overpopulated in some areas, and even in some parts of the US it is getting that way. Humans have no natural predators outside our species, and those we kill or lock away. More people are born than die. We turn a huge portion of our energies to wiping out death, oblivious to the long term effects not just on our species but on others. If the population growth doesn't slow down soon, we will have severe problems. Advances in world peace will be shredded as we fight over arable land. Crime will rise immensely inside our cities. In short, this world will become a living hell if the population growth is not stopped, at least until space colonies become practical.
Rich
Or, more generally: semiconductor technology.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
After the cotton gin, electricity and the combustion engine there isn't so much. Babbage's work came to nothing. I think that they should concentrate on this century.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
Why did people evolve so slowly until the 1800's?
Well, as far as I know, people haven't evolved much in the last 100,000 years. Still 5 fingers, two eyes, a bit less hairy, etc. You mean the rate of progress of science.
It is actually true - Dvorak keyboards are more efficient but Qwerty keyboards slowed down typists in the days when mechanical devices couldn't keep up.
I also read another article that said using a Qwerty layout is actually bad for your hans because with most English words, the layout of keys means that you spend a lot more time on the left hand side of the keyboard, and not enough time on the 'home' row (the middle one).
They also suggested that having another layout - for example an alphabetic layout - would not be efficient either, since when people type on an alphabetic layout, they think in their head where the letter fits in the alphabet and then look for it on the keyboard. Using Qwerty is different because people don't think about where a letter occurs in relation to other letters - just it's position on the keyboard.
Videogames have become a major part of our culture. For example would high speed connections be as popular as they are today, or would we even have high speed connections if it wasn't for videogames?
Did you know the whole Pokemon craze had it's start in a small Game Boy videogame?
In Volume 2 he details the German's use of radio signals to provide a "beam" (using triangulation) directing German bombers to their targets. The English found ways to modify the beam (by putting repeaters and amplifiers of the detected signal in various locations; Churchill called this "bending the beam") and were able to throw off the bombers (who relied on the beam technology to the extent that they were not trained how to navigate by astronomical phenonmena!). Churchill says that some bombers were confused enough to land at UK airports, thinking they were in Germany! Other bombs meant for civilian populations (evil Nazism) were directed to open fields where thousands of pounds of bombs claimed the lives of 2 chickens (this was actually recorded). The worst side effect may have been the German bombing of Dublin which may have occured because the beam was bented too long away from London (Germany did not have a grievance with Ireland, who remained nuetral through, at least, 1941--I'm still reading!).
Most of our neat toys and tools for wealth were originally used to preserve our freedom (or try to take same away).
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
If there's anyone unfamiliar with the story, the qwerty was designed in the days of manual typewriters to *slow down* typists, so that the keys on their long metal arms wouldn't get stuck together.
With the advent of the electric typewriter (much less the word processor) this was no longer a concern.A. Dvorak came up with a more rational design which made some headway because of its inherently superior design, but by that time all the secretarial schools had developed 'efficient' touch-typing methods.
So there was this compatibility problem as all the typewriters out there were qwerty and it was a pain to switch back and forth... so the inferior design won out due to its pre-existing market share.
Does this sound at all familiar to anyone?
If I was a woman, I'd be bound to say that it's the increase in woman's rights. But the fact is that these whole commotions about minority rights and sexism is just way out of hand. The minorities get special scholarships and the woman can do pretty much whatever they feel like and neglect their inborn abilities. As a white male, I feel more normal than those that are "abnormal", those are the ones that are special.
Gosh, thanks for that reply on slashdot, and that comment about "Next time think before you speak", now that was downright irony. For you to treat a woman's gift of caring and sheltering a children, you're more sexist than the vilest men. I'm sure that just as many white churches are burnt as black churches, for many different reasons, just not publicised. Screw discrimination, that's a load of crap. Wage discrepancy is an honestly stupid excuse. I know a man who has made a fortune after coming to my town when he was 16 and unable to speak English. There's a reason not to pay someone very much. I won't question your intellect, because you appear to have it, but I question your judgement and your apparent lapping up of media. I bet you thought we were all going to die on Y2K. God you're full of it. Inborn abilities is a compliment, Jesse Jackson is the most racist man I know, who else tells companies that black people should be treated "specially". We're all frigging the same, we have different abilities. If men were supposed to be the ones that were all caring and crap, then they would have the babies, and don't ever treat child-rearing like some type of crap curse put on women, because it's a frigging gift and all these women think that it's not. Let me tell you something, you prejudiced loser. Where I live, there are only 15% white and 80+% black. I'm the frigging minority. But there is absolutely no racism in my country, women don't HAVE to work, they are happy for the gift of patience, and care. I live in the Bahamas, where everyone gets paid exactly what they're worth, and if you're going to tell me that it's because it's "different", then you should start to think about how much the stereotype formed by politically correct Americans affect your judgement. I pray that you're a woman, because "Oh, no... not the liberated woman being pounded upon retoric" would be what fits. Read a book, don't listen to the crap that's on TV, all reporters are full of crap, moreso than you are. Best regards, Neil
"... it can't be a bad thing?"
Ability to move across the globe quickly has led to the spreading of disease throughout the globe. Modern shipping allowed the spread of North American pests to Europe almost destroying the French wine industry. Air travel allows infected travellers to reach their destinations before symptoms are evident spreading the flu rapidly as well as more vicious diseases like hemoragic fever. Agressive brown tree snakes have spread to islands in the pacific that have never had snakes before by hitchhiking on aircraft & ships.
These are just the accidental cases. What does it do for the terrorists, "sex tourists", drug smugglers?
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
Hmm... When I decide to play that great old game of civilization, I realize that there exist many great discoveries and inventions that have rocked this world. I'll give you my view on one of the most important devolopments. You could argue that mass production started in the 1800's, with sweatshops producing cloth and manufactured items. I think that mass production is a twentieth century devolopment, and it has led to great inovations and productions in everything from computer chips to automobiles. When mass production came around, and the assembly line was implemented, the Earth found a new way of optimizing productive capacity. New things could get pushed into the market faster, making an increased supply, and dropping prices. This in turn allowed the rest of society to stay attuned the speed at which technology has devoloped. The assembly line is to item production as the printing press was to information. Many hail the printing press as one of the most important creations in the millenium. I'll take a step forward, and hail the assembly line as one of the most important devolopments of the 20th century. The assembly line has also led to a new basis of thought, allowing other technologies to benefit from the assembly line algorithm. Look at pipelining, for instance. The AMD Athlon is a fully pipelined chip, and it uses the equivilant of a digital assembly line to increase speed and efficiency. When the best innovations from the 20th century are called forth, I sure hope that the assembly line will be among them.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Representation was invented because the public was considered too unweildy to come to quick decisions. Pollsters have changed that, and it's very likely that much of their influence is utterly invisible--and would make great reading.
Of course, you're forgetting that polls are heavily influenced simply by the way their questions are worded, and that a good pollster can make the results say virtually anything based on this fact. One must find truly impartial people to develop polls in order for them to have any worth...
I see. My apologies.
1900s==1900-1999
20th century==1901-2000
We now return you to our regularly scheduled discussion.
"Genetics" started in the 19th century, with a monk called Gregor Mendel. "Genetic Engineering" and "Genetic Modification" have already begun to shape our world, but arguably they're going to go a lot further yet. Maybe you should have said "advanced genetics". BTW, does anyone think that we are going to move into germline gene therapy any time soon?
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
I'm looking forward to personal teleporters sometime in the 21st century. Yes, I know they won't work, and if you did you might have strange things like what happened in 'The Fly', or possibly telefragging, but it's nice to dream.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
Yes, but that's only the start.
Improved knowledge on the causes of disease, mass vaccination programs (like the one which wiped out small pox and the one which may currently be doing the same with polio), better surgical techniques, drugs to deal with a million non-bacterial problems, and more... It's not surprising that in the 60s and 70s there was a strong, albeit incorrect, consensus that science had got the better of disease. In another 100 years though, it's just possible that we will have done. Even old age might no longer be a threat. The world's going to change a lot, and we are also going to change - or be changed - with it. But at the same time, although this may seem paradoxical, history will continue to repeat itself.
Improved knowledge of nutrition also helped a lot, although it's interesting that the inhabitants of several 'developed' nations are eating less healthily than they were in the 50s.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
I agree that birth control is very important, but getting sick less and ageing slower do also change who we are as a species. It also should be pointed out that the pill was by no means the first effective means of birth control, and that it does have side effects. But yes, it was a significant advance on previous methods, and helped to promote more liberal attitudes on some important topics, which is a good thing (using here the real meaning of liberal).
Did you also write about this in that gadgets debate?
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
Behold it's power!!!: ~1234567890-=qwertyuiop[]\asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./
:-)
It has to be the keyboard, I mean, we wouldn't even be having this discussion if someone wouldn't have come up with this brilliant piece of equipment
Voice recognition? When "Open me an Explorer please" still leads to my computer openining the Recycle Bin, I say "Maybe later..."
Was there a Mr. Keyboard? Who actually came up with this ugly thing I'm hitting right now? And what did they use before? Cheerz, Arno
When picking the greatest technology, you only need to look at
that technology to which every new idea is compared.
Yes, that's right ...
Wait for it ...
Sliced Bread.
How could the possibly leave out all the wonderful synthetic materials that the 20th century produced?
Where would we be without polyethylene? polyester? polystyrene? nylon? PVC? (etc.)
How so? Everthing I've seen on the subject led me to believe they were developed on parallel tracks, not intercepting ones. Both systems share some of the same metallurgical needs, but IIRC the R&D programs did not overlap.
I thought rockets came before jet propulsion. There was that Goddard guy and the Chinese of course. I'd go for electricity and quantum mechanics for the 20th and probably genetics for the 21st.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
first off, 500 years ago, it was an elite system, where who your father was kinda counted, and on top of that,, you ever hear of the Scientific Method?
Now this may sound a little off, but I think the best advancement (i know, i know, it's not a technology...) that has come upon us within the last century is that of High Education. The way evolution works is that we teach our young what we know. We have gotten to the point of evolution where we super-charge our young with all++ of our knowledge, thus allowing ourselves to become a more mature race in much less time. These young in turn created the most productful century known to man. I mean, c'mon people.. we've moved from coal heating to landing on the moon, sending crafts to Mars, partially mapping the human genome, toying with super computers, find the millionth gazzilionth digit of PI; None of this could ever have been accomplished under the old means of teaching our spawnlings.. :)
Actually, one of Tesla's dreams was to provide free world-wide power. He claimed to have invented broadcastable power, and it's a reported fact that light bulbs stuck into the ground at a distance from his lab would light up, so it seems to have worked. Further, I believe him, because he was a marvellously *different* kind of human. I would vote that the Three-Phase Generator is been the most important innovation, because it drives the refrigerators, sewage and water plants, rocket facilities, and transistor-manufacturing facilities all mentioned earlier. The Three-Phase generator was primarily an innovation because it eliminated *brushes* which were an invariable (and undersirable) component of previous generators. The emphasis is wrong, however. The enabling technology was *Distributable Electricity*, and Tesla was the guy that gave us a working system. He states that his choice of voltage and frequency are as they are because 110 volts at 60 hz is easy to step up and step down to drive devices of the time. Maybe we got better stuff now, but Nikola Tesla pretty much gave us our world.
== buddha is as buddha does ==
1. The Zipper Yes, the zipper. Find how many items of clothing and baggage, you have, and find how many of them have the zipper. Dr. Gideon Sundback was the inventor. 2. Animated Cartoons - Never ceases to amuse us, don't they ? Inventor - Windsor McKay 3. Stapler 4. Birth Control Pill 5. Contact Lense
'Engines don't use refrigeration. They use radiators, an age-old cooling/heating technology...'
;) So yes, modern automobiles, at least those properly maintained, do make use of the wonders of refrigeration/refrigeration technologies.
Actually, within the radiators is a mystical/magical green (and rather tasty, or so I'm told) liquid commonly referred to as coolant, which is, by name and definition, a refrigerant.
I'm not joking. Think about what this invention did to get women out of the house and into the world. It let them be full-time participants instead of being cloistered, periodically.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
4: The transistor.
Not sure if I agree with this one. The transistor was just a new type of electronic switch, which could be used in much the same way as a valve or a relay. Without the invention (or discovery for us Roswell conspiracy nuts) of this, we would have seen the reduction of the size of the valve. So perhaps #4 should be the electronic switch (Whichever came first. Valve or relay?)
On you second birthday, your parents bought you a really wonderful present.
And you discarded it and played with thte box for the whole day
Hint - it's also a bad place to store your backups since it is kinda wet. Even the frost-free ones.
Once upon a time, agriculture was a serious business. Growing crops was easier with fertilizer; manure, or something made from manure, preferably bird manure. Once things like the Haber process came on line -- speeded up by the Kaiser's need for explosives, I will concede -- ammonia and thus nitrates could be made industrially from air, and nowadays crop failures are a minor nuisance (to industrialised societies, at least) rather than a disaster.
i think the best thing to come about in the 20th century was Ponrogrpahy in video form... gotta love it, baby!
-------------------------------------------------
the phone. changed how we communicate. changed how the world does business. change how families stay in touch.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That is what has been the back-bone of ALL industries in the last 100 years.
where would the transistor be without it? computers? manufactures? phones? pharmacuticals?
I was also thinking atomic weapons. I mean we actually created a device which made mass scale war TOO scary and dangerous to do. And survived(so far).
and then there's D&D, where would we be without that? ok, probably pretty much where we are, but I thought I'd mention it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The foremost invention of the 20th century will turn out to be the personal computer. Never before have an unprecedented number of people had such an unprecedented access to information. And yes, I'm very well aware of the fact that the internet was developed prior to the PC but the advent of PC's has made the interent what it is today.
Velox Versutus Vigilans
Think where we would be if antibiotics hadn't developed...
I suspect in a few years time - we won't have to imagine it
A basic tesla coil uses high voltage at very low current. Also he experiemented with electrical currents at higher frequencies that would travel around the body instead of through it.
Technology that DIDN'T help shape the 20th century was, oh, High-speed Internet Access for Home Computers? Yes, I've gotta say that's my answer. *Beats on his 56k modem to death*.
............ no.
Air conditioning. It's a little hard to remember in this sort of weather, but AC is my favorite invention (after fire).
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
I believe it is encription. There was a huge effort at the dawn of the computer age during WWII to decript secret German messages encripted using the Enigma machine. That pushed computing technology forward, and proved that a general purpose computer can be programmed to solve many problems. Once this was figured out, the rest of the world started take notice.
The microwave, my friends. It's the key to our existance, being the savior during short lunch breaks, and our nourishment provider during heavy hack sessions.
VELCRO, next to the walkman and Tab®, the most important inventions of the 20th century
I think it was a dog actually, and Tesla's rebuttle was to calmy sit under a tesla coil reading a book while it shot off sparks
And what about porn? Likely a far more important invention in the slashdot community.
I will now officialy reveal to you all that the greatest invention of the century has been (drums...) Sinclair C5 electric tricycle :
- cheap (5*zx spectrum+)
- environment friendly
- low power consumption (but if you're slim it helps even further)
- immensely safe (provided everyone switches over)
- lightweight (esp. without the battery in it)
- cool looking (no? OK maybe not!)
- efficient beyond belief (20miles/battery downhill)
- ultrafast (particularly on a steep slope)
Clearly ahead of its time (although behind every other vehicle on the road including golf buggies). Still can't get over why it hasn't stormed the world the way speccy didAny discussion about which ONE technology is the greatest is like discussing which one step is the greatest in a 50 mile hike. No one step is more important than any other and each step depends on the one which preceeds it ...
Definitely the printing press. Think about it, that's what set off the revolution in communications.
I know a lot of you will disagree, but I think the atomic bomb is one of the most important inventions of the last century.
For the first time in history, humans had aquired the ability to destroy themselves utterly. Since a war between nuclear powers would destroy both of them, they could not afford war any more. I think that's the main reason that we didn't have WW III yet. Instead we had the cold war, which lead to a massive increase in technology research for military reasons. In the end, the public profited of a lot of these new technologies, but it is important to remember that quite a lot of the fancy gadgeds we have today come of the arms race.
And no, I don't like atomic waepons. In fact, I'm quite a pacifist.
I dont know where it came from, only found out what it was after opening it up.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I have seen a solonoid controlled variable resistor. talk about weird :)
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I heard somebody (an English professor I believe) give an interesting take on this subject. He talked about how when he was young his mother had a couple of maids/servants to help her out with running the household so she could devote a lot of her time to doing social activities, participating in charitible organizations, etc. His point was that the rise of the easy kitchen and things that you talked about being related to the electric motor made the servants seem unneeded so his mother had to take over everything involved in running the house and was unable to do the outside things she enjoyed.
This was something I really hadn't considered before and seeing your post I thought I'd share. I'm not advocating the use of servants instead of machines or anything of the like but this man's idea was just one I thought had relevance to what you're talking about.
Nice suggestion by the way, most people just leap to big things like TV or airplanes and don't consider the "little" things that also make big changes.
The print press won, but plastics (woohoo!) is mentioned.
--
?
FOr the Millenium I would nominate the Telegraph and the Steam engine. Sure they are both mostly gone now, but they represented the first telecommunications and industrial trasportation developments.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Of course, you're forgetting that polls are heavily influenced simply by the way their questions are worded, and that a good pollster can make the results say virtually anything based on this fact. One must find truly impartial people to develop polls in order for them to have any worth...
Bottom line: Most of the establishment of this country wanted to see Clinton burn, but half of population of this country has divorced their spouses while the other half is either too young to screw or old enough to cheat.
It doesn't matter how you twisted the polls--the support just wasn't there. Period. Polls can be twisted, but at some level people in high levels of power actually have an accurate picture of what the populace wants and what the populace can be made--through twisting the words--to want.
I'm not saying that the effect of this has been necessarily positive, only that it is likely far more pervasively influential than anyone has really imagined.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
production line - Henry ford changed the way goods are manufactured. Instead of using craftsmen he harnessed the power of machines to mass produce cars.
penicillin - flory's(forget flemming) discovery revolutionised healthcare, saving millions during the war and after.
electronic computer - enabled for the first time grunt calculations to be undertaken accurately
atomic power (mentioned) - changed the way wars are fought and power can be generated, opened up nuclear medicine.
transisitor - birth of electronics.
manned space flight - forever changed mans view of earth.
personal computer - birth of home computing and brought computing power to everday mans desktop.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
The chinese where printing paper money around this time. As a side note there is a tendency for westerners (myself included) to forget a lot of things have been re-invented by other cultures. (eg: circulation of blood - william harvey?, no try the Arabs almost 1000yrs before). Now digital printing in the 20th century... well that's another story.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Most of the inventions I have seen so far improve our lives...maybe even change them to some extent but they all leave the fundamental relations between humans the same. Perhaps in 100 years after (if) we have full VR immersion and people live as brains in vats the internet will have this effect as well. But as of now these various technolgies merely allow us to do the same kind of things we did before on a larger scale and more efficently. People still buy and sell etc.. etc..
The birth control pill has changed, and is still changing, the basic way human beings relate to each other. It has allowed society to restructure away from child birth and child rearing and allowed half of the society to take a much more active role. The future effects of this invention will undoubtly be large as well.
The birth control pill is the first in a hopefully long line of advances that allow us to change who we are and reshape the human condition. Not merely get sick less or age slower actually change who we are as a species.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
...the zipper ;)
MoNsTeR
Why did people evolve so slowly until the 1800's? It's because information could not be shared. It took days, if not weeks or even months, for informatino to travel from one place to another. Why did Linux and OSS evolve so quickly? (OK, I should've come up with a better example. Space exploration? Medicine?) Because information was shared, and things grew together.
If one wizard creates something really cool but can't share it, his creation never sees light, because others always have to build on to it. In order for progress to exist, information has to be shared and exchanged. Without this, nothing else can happen. There is no progress whatsoever without the sharing of information.
Another huge accomplishment, and sort of invention? Public education. I'll let you come up with your own explanations and reasons, since I'm tired of typing and I really should go to bed.
--
Ah well, I meant the mobile steam engine, both land and sea, not the stationary beasts. Power density and efficiency were much more important to trains and especially ships :-)
Most people don't know that a lot of motorcycle development was to set bicycle records. Bicyclists were the initial impetus for paved roads, and bicycles were possibly the first mass liberator of women and the poor.
--
Infuriate left and right
I think the biggest development of the 20th Century is the development of plastics by Du Pont in the 1920's and 1930's.
Think about it: the modern computer would NOT exist if it weren't for plastics (the motherboard, small capacitors, small resistors, and IC packaging are all done in plastic). Look at your car--even the most expensive models--how much of the car is using plastic parts (the interior of most cars ARE done in plastic). Plastics has made is possible to develop food packaging so good that outbreaks of food poisoning from e.coli, salmonella and botulism are very rare events, despite what the news says. And finally, without plastics, we couldn't have lightened the weight of airplanes to the point that today's Airbus A320 jetliner burns nearly 40% less fuel per passenger mile than the Boeing 727-200, which had the same seating capacity.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Robert Heinlein wrote a story about this type of power distribution system in _Waldo and Magic, Inc._ The book actually contains two stories. "Waldo" is about a genius who is called in by the power companies to look into why they've suddenly started having catastrophic failures...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Invented by Lee De Forest in 1906. This invention moved the world into the electronic age. Amplifiers and oscillators quickly followed. The Bell System used it to amplify long distance phone calls. It was central to the development of radio technology. Much of today's electronic technology can be traced back to the invention of the Audion and the first vacuum tube circuit designs.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think that the most important development of the century was a system to bring higher math to the masses. Now every semi-educated adult knows how to calculate how long a Century and Millinnium are.
Even though they have their roots in the 19th century I think that the self-loading firearm heavily shaped the century.
The transistor, for obvious reasons.
Telephone, allowed for high speed accurate comunication to take place over greater distances than ever possible before.
Radio and television as forms of entertainment and education have shaped the century as well.
E=MC2, nuclear energy helped to end the mose destructive conflice that the planet ever saw and was an imposing spectre as it relates to being the tool used in the next war which surpasses all others.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Firstly, Tesla developed his AC generating system at the beginning of his career, BEFORE he did his work on broadcast power, so saying they picked AC over broadcast ower is simply untrue. At the time, the choice was between AC and DC.
I am aware of the fact that it was as choice between AC and DC. At the time Edison had organized at least one district to be run on DC, but it was horribly inefficient, caused fires, and had incredible maintance fees to keep it working.
At the time, Tesla's original 3-phase, 60hz AC system was exactly what was needed. Where the industry and science went wrong was stopping its research. It would not have been as difficult then to keep up with Tesla's progressing research findings as might be thought. Additionally, if power companies and corporations had seen the merit in his research, he could have been well supplied with the funds and staff necessary to go even further than he did, virtually on his own.
Many of Tesla's later experiments used current which was definately powerful enough to be deadly, like the lightning generator he made out in Colorado.
This is a bad example, the reason that it was dangerous is because it was wired into faulty systems, and Tesla overlooked the high-frequency feedback problems, starting fires at Colorado Power(not quite right?), because of improper grounding. Another thing to not forget is that he was basically unleashing all of that electricity in the open, it was entirely unguarded. In a controlled enviroment things would not have been so bad.
Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area.
Using a grid of 'boosters' a feild could be sustained over a large area. Theoretical models, where each home would have a booster, likewise, each block would have a bigger one, have been attempted on a small scale, and theoretically could work.
Lastly, even if the laws of physics didn't make broadcast power impossible, it would have been economically infeasible precisely because it couldn't be billed for in proportion to its use. Do you think kilowatt-hours grow on trees?
Actually alot of his later research was spent getting close to discovering how to use the earth as a power source I believe. This would make the production of electricity automatic in a sense. The "power companies" would simply be responsible for distributing something that already was freely available. ie. Keeping the feild equipment operational.
Hey, this is all theoretical stuff, and alot of his research was lost. We have reason to believe that he was alot closer to answering some of the problems you have raised. Unfortunatly they were all for the most part lost in the 'accidental' fire that destroyed his work.
Let me ask you this, since we can assume with for the most part little doubt, that the fire was intentionally set. Why did the arsonists go through all of that risk and trouble just to destroy a little science fiction, as you seem to think it to be? I think he had alot more going for him than we realize.
V
the transistor as the greatest invention of our time but it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this century's technology. A good deal of this century's technological feats sprouted from one of last century's technologies. In 1879 the first incandecent light bulb was produced and after that the world got addicted to electricity. Telephones, TVs, transistors all would be useless without electricity. Anyways, I think top of the list after eletricity would probably be the telephone. The telegraph was and is a good means of communication but Morse code isn't for novices, only technicians and above. The telephone was to the telegraph that Windows was to DOS. After the telephone would have to be the gasoline engine. The gasoline engine leads to my next one, powered flight. Before the gasoline engine it was nearly impossible to build a powered aircraft because the propulsion was just too darned heavy. After powered flight I would probably say television, not that it was a good invention, merely popular and major. Next on my list would easily be manned/unmanned space flight. Transistors would barely be maturing right now if it hadn't been for an agressive space program that poured billions into the industry. Then transistors and microelectronics and eventually the internet. I think networking two computers together is more of a technological achievement than e-commerce and webcams though. Maybe Twinkies should go at the top od the list, I realized today while eating some Cheetoes that if I died out in the desert somewhere that the food I was munching would outlast my carcas. Thats somethin to think about.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Cliff said: "What technologies developed in the last century do you think are important?"
The telephone.
It was developed in the 19th century. In the last century.
Because the 20th century isn't over yet, Cliff. We still have a full year ahead.
(I'm sorry, but I just had to say it.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Just think about all the things begat by the onset
of the automobile-
The industrial revolution was revised/perfected
because of the automobile. Union labor was realized as a formidable force in both the legislature and organized crime. Goodyear bought
railroads along the coast of California, ultimately destroying them, forcing people to buy cars for lack of available transportation.
Think about all the laws made as a result of automobiles in todays society, and how they restrict a persons liberty, when compared to a person who used a horse and carriage for transportation 100 years ago.
Indeed, it seems that 'The Man(TM)' found the perfect vehicle (apologies for the bad pun) to keep us in line, make us not even question being stopped, questioned and searched in the name of 'the common good'.
If you look at my statement (or maybe squint at it from an odd angle), you might see how the high-tech and networking industries are following this same model, and how someone may fear what this new technological freedom known as the internet may put the powerful automotive 'revolution' to shame.
I love ridding myself of bile like that. It makes me seem like less of an angry person if I vent on slashdot before going to work.
Thanks for lettin' me get my ya-ya's out.
I recall hearing a discussion along these lines
on NPR a while ago and although they mentioned a number or things already discussed here, including the telephone and radio, the one that most struck me was *air conditioning*.
The sphere in which a given wave is moving outwards from the source is two dimensional (most textbooks illustrate it as a plane).
Engines don't use refrigeration. They use radiators, an age-old cooling/heating technology. That's why almost all cars have heaters (that heat is waste engine heat--the passenger compartment becomes an auxiliary heater), and some don't have air conditioning. You use things like fans and radiators to bring hot items (engines or Pentiums) down to the ambient temperature, and refrigeration to bring things down below the ambient temperature. And for that matter, the "wrong end" of an air conditioner is nothing more than a radiator itself.
--The basis of all love is respect
Actual refrigeration is another matter. Refrigeration units (from dorm fridges to air conditioners) play some tricks with the pressure of the coolant, sending it from liquid to gas and back (you may be able to do this with Prestone, but it isn't easy...). What this allows you do to is to make heat "flow uphill", from a cooler spot to a warmer spot.
No radiator technology alone will make a room cooler than 95 Farenheit when it is 95 Farenheit outdoors; it takes refrigeration to do that. In contrast, you only need radiators to handle engines, because the internal temperature of an engine is several hundred degrees, warmer than any ambient weather.
--The basis of all love is respect
IIRC, it was at one of the funfairs near New York. The elephant in question had killed a couple of keepers, and so had to be put down. So they made a spectacle out of it and called in Edison to tell them how to do it. There is a gruesome bit of B&W film of the electrocution. The elephant was connected up by leg irons. You see smoke from its feet, it sways, and collapses.
Its fairly high on my list of things I rather wish I hadn't seen.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
While having unified file formats is a good thing, is there a way to specify the actual semantics of the markup and not just the syntax? That is, how does a XML user read $4711 and know anything else that it's syntactically valid and matches the string of symbols "price"?
Sure, you can write your own DTD, and others can parse and validate it, but can they understand it?
In my opinion, the kiss of death of XML is the "support" for XML file formats in Office 2000, which I've heard are just the bastardized incompatible embrace-and-extend jobs we'd come to expect from Redmond. The promise of XML was that anyone could read an XML word document and reconstruct Word's intentions from it - obviously this is not happening.
Please understand that is is just my look at things, and that I may be wrong in any number of the above assertions. These questions are not rethorical.
"The good die first." "Most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying patterns." --- MST3K
Originally it was just designed to track aircraft but then some bright psark discovered that if you help your hand in front of the radar it got hot - leading to the development of the microwave.
Research into microwaves lead to the satellite bands that are used today to bring me over 200 channels of digital TV and radio and similar bands are used in mobile phones.
So the same technology that keeps my flight on holiday away from other flights on holiday also heats my food, brings me TV and lets me check my email in the middle of a field with nothing more than a phone and a PalmIII - thats progress :O)
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Why not a list of the technologies that will shape the *next* century?
I think the problem with this is the increasing rate of technological development is leading to the future becoming more and more opaque. From what I understand, even many Science Fiction authors are upset by this, as they're realizing that it's getting to be too hard to put together both a believable future world and situations and characters peopel can understand and relate to.
Nanotechnology is one area which is going to create this obscurity. Zyvex and MIT are both predicting assemblers in the 10-15 year range now, due to the fact that progress is being made faster than anyone expected. If that alone happens, the rate at which it will mature makes it quite possible that by 2100 the world could be quite unrecognizable. And that's ignoring all the other technologies that will be developed.
Anyways, it always seems to be the tehnologies that are unexpected that make the most difference. Who in 1900 could have predicted the transistor/semiconductors would do so much to change things?
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
In no particular order:
[1] which is a pretty cool invention, BTW :)
WWTTD?
Plastics also seem to be a factor in the dropping male sperm count, and lowering of testosterone in males.. htm s /book/renewal/voices2/femn.htm
Check these links for some beginning info.
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/4_3_99/fob3
http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprint
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Antibiotics (particularly penicillin) and water purification have added 30 years of life expectancy from 1900-2000. I can't think of a bigger payoff.
(Read this article for more details. While the life expectancy improvements are partially due to a reduction in infant deaths, there's a demonstrable improvement in disease treatment affecting all age groups whose magnitude you can see by looking at the raw data of life expectancy by age in the US. Of course other factors did help besides antibiotics, such as nutrition and pollution reduction.)
--LP
..but starts with just one.
The development of jet propulsion led to rocket design with lead to geosynchronous satelittes, and in turn to the communications world we know today.
Seeing as the distribution is in three dimensions, shouldn't that be R^3 in the above equation?
-Jordan Henderson
No, I don't think that's true at all. XML formats for all Office 2000 documents does show that Microsoft is finally serious about Open Document Formats. You will be able to reconstruct documents from their XML.
The tension among the various XML supporting organizations (MS vs. the Rest Of The World) arises due to the fact that MS poured massive resources into developing their own set of DTDs and then implementing them into their products while everybody else pretty much talked about XML.
The IBMs and Suns are concerned that while XML provides an Open Document format, MS will be the the first and best to implement their formats. They are concerned that it will appear that only MS has their act together wrt XML. You see, at the same time MS was defining DTDs for a bunch of Office 2000 documents, they were also defining DTDs and schemas for a huge set of other documents, like those used for EDI. These other vendors don't want to be in the position of having to support "standards" created by MS. I'm not sure if this is embrace-and-extend, it seems like embrace-and-outcompete to me. I feel that if the other vendors really are serious about XML, they should define their own documents and start using them in products like MS. Working code beats standards body wrangling any day.
Now, a disclaimer. I am far from an expert in these areas, and I've not been privy to any XML standards bodies discussions or anything, this is my interpretation of what I've seen in the news.
Sun is a frequent detractor of MS's XML strategy, waving their hands around saying that really you don't want to be doing XML at all unless it's in Java. To hear Sun talk about it you'd think that Java was designed to work with XML. It seems to be more of the standard Sun line. They support standards only insofar as those standards are seen by the industry as being best run on Sun Hardware and Operating Systems. That's what the SCSL and Java is all about, Open Standards for the community! Especially those Open Standards that Sun controls completely.
-Jordan Henderson
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The battle between the AC and DC systems is instructive when viewing the battles between various OS today.
Eddison was adamant that the AC system was far too dangerous to use in a distribution system. He attempted to demonstrate this by publicly electrocuting and elephant in (I believe) New York using AC current (an act that eventually led to the invention of the electric chair). The fact that DC poses no less a danger apparently slipped past him.
This is an early (and desperately innefective) example of FUD.
If someone wants to fill in the gaps here, I'd be grateful.
-wibble-
Oh, no. This is going to turn into the same discussion as before, when the "Top 10 Gadgets of the years 1000-1999" news story was on Slashdot.
/., I can't wait for this rehash.
That thread turned quite off topic, with people claiming that "painting, the expression of humans using art..." was a gadget. WTF?
Anyhow, this discussion has already been done on
"No! No! The Philips Screwdriver was far more important than the microwave" etc. etc. ad infiniatum.
I'll start. New(ish) technology that will be successful this year:
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I am amazed nobody mentioned this one yet!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
RF (aka: high-frequency "electricity") can shock you. RF can burn you. Ask any broadcast engineer.
RF burns are real nasty, too. It doesn't just burn the skin. It travels right down to the marrow in your bones, dissapating large amounts of heat. You feel it for the rest of your life.
The only positive point to higher frequency AC is the ability to use smaller transformers at a similar current capability. Like the Navy does. (They run at 400Hz)
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I think advances in public health, particularly clean water supplies and childhood immunizations, are the pinacle achievement of the 20th century. They will provide the foundation for the unimaginable feats of the 21st.
m
1923 Diphtheria
1926 Pertussis
1927 Tuberculosis (BCG)
1927 Tetanus
1935 Yellow Fever
1955 Injectable Polio Vaccine (IPV)
1962 Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)
1964 Measles
1967 Mumps
1970 Rubella
1981 Hepatitis B
Taken from:
http://www.who.int/gpv-dvacc/history/history.ht
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
I assumed this was because of some sort of deep-seated fear of the future
I think it's more that people are a) afraid of change and b) people are sentimental. I don't think people are so much afraid of the future as they are afraid of how things will change and what this will mean for them - will they have to dig themselves out of their happy little rut :) How many times have you seen a program from 20-30 years ago talking about the "house of the future" or whatever, and instead nothing's changed.
Also, never underestimate the human ability to view the past through rose-tinted glasses. As we get older the things in our past which we didn't like get submerged beneath memories of the good times. Think of the popularity of old music and films - I can't remember how many 60s and 70s nights they had whilst I was at university :)
It is so easy to think of all the marvelous technical gadgets, that changes the way we *do* stuff. The pill (and education) changes the way we live our *lives*. The pill (and other contraceptives) made children something you actively decided to have as opposed to something that "just happened". Nowadays most of us get a couple of years with no obligation to our parents, no children to care for and full physical health. That is 20-30 year old men and women are living a kind of life previously only enjoyed by the old.
How many geeks would there be if you had to put food on the table for your kids everyday? Perhaps the choice between coding for fun and working the grindstone would come out different then n'est ce pas?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Actually, Napolean, around 1800, stationed soldiers every few hundred yards between Paris and Rome, and was able to send messages via visual semaphores between the two cities in a matter of hours! True.
and as a quibble to some of the other posts here: the technology did not have to be invented in the 20th century to qualify. Might be a good rule, but that's not what it says.
and, while it's fun to think about all the impacts that various technologies have, the most significant one is always going to be energy harnessing, electric or internal combustion or whatever. At the beginning of the 20th century, the vast majority of Westerners were farmers, and we still would have to be, like the Third World, if we did not have labor saving devices. Everything else will always pale in comparison to that.
Just think of America where the introduction of automobiles for the masses changed social behavior. The whole process of dating changed with ypung people having a place where they weren't constantly under the scrutiny of their parents.
On the other side the government of many a country has gone to great lengths insuring cheap individual transport for their citicens. Until today the struggle for control of the worlds oil reserves is linked to this.
A few other Points may be:
- One can live far away of his working place.
- Massive destruction of natural resources and environmental Pollution. I'm sure i could go one with this list, but i'll keep this short. Thomas
Assuming your story is true, does it suggest that an Open Source(TM) Power Delivery System would be possible?
Not easy or cheap, I figure.
But, if the AC@60Hz and similar systems are more expensive to run and more dangerous, and have, as their only fundamental advantage over some higher-frequency AC system, the ability to be more easily and reliably metered so as to charge for their use...
The other advantages of AC@60Hz (and AC@50Hz) are that there's a huge installed base of power generation, transmission, measuring, and consumption equipment (e.g. desktop computers). But those aren't fundamental advantages -- they might outweigh the appropriateness of changing now, not of having chosen the higher-frequency system in the first place.
So, would a higher-frequency-AC system be worth researching, designing, engineering, etc. within the OSS framework, with deployment initially targeted for areas with little or no installed base (such as third-world countries)?
(And, dontcha just love how I use all those cute TM's? ;-)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
The reason you don't feel electrical shock at the local Science Museum "Tessla Coil" demonstration has nothing to do with the "speed" of the electrons "passing directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react."
Yes the frequency is an issue, but the effect that prevents you from that "I'm being electrocuted" feeling, is the behavior of the electrons which travel on the surface of the conductor (you) instead of through the conductor (you and your easily excited nerve endings).
The science museum selected the demo and took the risk of presenting it in our highly litigous society to:
- Teach you a little bit about electricity, history and technology
- Excite your imagination and encourage you to study and learn more.
Well one out of two aint bad.In Nearly All Paradigms, Shift Happens.
Without a doubt the most influential technology in the last century was cheap, accessable indoor plumbing.
Who knows how many people it has saved from tragic cases of frostbite and puma attack.
Before indoor plumbing your choices were:
1)go outside
2)go in a bucket in the house
Neither are exactly conducive to a clear, uninterupted train of thought.
-corvalin
Although not actually invented in the twentieth century, i have to say that the internal combustion engine has shaped the way the world has grown. In many cases, the design of cities has been shaped by the consideration of automobile traffic. Parking lots, the unimaginable geographic spread of the population. My vote is for the engine.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Fast, cheap transport around the globe. Whether you're bringing passengers or bombs, this is what brings them.
The jet engine will also continue to play a role in how pandemics evolve; as a disease vector, the airliner has no equal.
semiconductor -> transistor -> integrated circuit
I agree that semi tech has been the greatest 'enabling' technology of the century. We had computers before we had semis, but it's because of semis that we can each have one. And the use of semis to make sensors and DSPs give computers something usefull to do. Imagine how poorly even a lowly phone line would work today if it weren't for semis. And modems would be non-existent, or at least as expensive as the computers themselves, so that only the military could afford them. Anybody else remember when you tried to use a credit card, your number had to be looked up in a "black-list book" that hung by the side of the cash register? And try to imagine what modern medicine would be like without current sensor technology and CPU power? The list goes on.
Second place would have to go to Materials Engineering, which would include plastics, teflon, unleaded gasoline, and the post-it note. I have to make this field second since it wouldn't have evolved as far as it has without Semi technology. I haven't been able to come up with a solid third place that DOESN'T rely on the first two for it's existence.
I think the truly important aspect is not solely air conditioning, but coolant systems as a whole - from personal a/c to produce refrigeration, cooling systems on engines to cooling systems in computers.
Without adequate refrigeration technologies, many of the things we take for granted would not exist, or they function in a much less dimuted fashion. With air conditioning, man can populate areas previously thought too inhospitable (at least by Western standards.) The engine would be choking on its own heat and fumes. We can transport perishable goods across thousands of miles, feeding those who may not have access to such goods. Processors could not only not be cooled - they couldn't be created. And, perhaps most importantly, our beverage of choice comes to us in a frosty mug, or brimming with ice on a hot summer day.
Refrigeration: It's not just for the kitchen anymore.
Where I am I can drive west to the other side of the Central Valley of california and pass right under giant 1million volt DC lines that go to Los Angeles. If you go to LA on I5 you will see the conversion plant on your right. It use's a special high speed switching device to turn the dc back into AC.
Only two of these were invented in the 1900's - the other two are holdovers form the 19th century that weren't widely adopted until the 20th.
1: The Telephone. I know the telephone was actually invented earlier (in fact, Bell gave his first public demo here in my town, in what is today a chi-chi restaurant), but it was in this century that telephones became ubiquitous. Automated switching was the other breakthrough that made telephones something everyone had and used. Telephones changed the nature of business by allowing practical real-time communications.
2: The automobile. Again, the first cars were introduced in the late 1800's, but they didn't become widely adopted until the Model T. The automobile made much of today's mobile society possible, by no longer requiring people to live close to their work. This helped make white-collar work more viable (by enabling companies to attract workers from a wider area) and this change directly helped create our modern economy. In the 19th century, most workers were engaged in the direct, hands-on work of making things, rather than services. White collar workers were relatively small in number. The automobile also made the suburb possible, and now most people in this country live in them.
3: The airplane: Aircraft made simple, high-speed travel between continents and within larger nations (like this one) practical for the first time. It also revolutionized the freight industry.
4: The transistor. Duh.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Steam engine
Electricity
Telegraph
Telephone
Cotton gin
Bessamer (sp?) process for steel
Camera
Safety bicycle
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Infuriate left and right
Firstly, Tesla developed his AC generating system at the beginning of his career, BEFORE he did his work on broadcast power, so saying they picked AC over broadcast ower is simply untrue. At the time, the choice was between AC and DC.
Secondly, the reason many of Tesla's experiments were safe to be around is because he was working with very low voltage (amperage?). The frequency isn't what you have to look out for. Many of Tesla's later experiments used current which was definately powerful enough to be deadly, like the lightning generator he made out in Colorado.
Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area. This is why the major radio stations in a city have to have 50,000 watt transmitters in order to send a fairly weak signal out to the suburbs.
Lastly, even if the laws of physics didn't make broadcast power impossible, it would have been economically infeasible precisely because it couldn't be billed for in proportion to its use. Do you think kilowatt-hours grow on trees?
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
You have been decieved by the modern misconception engine. Adopting the current electricity grid and power system that we use today was perhaps one of the biggest -Blunders- ever made. The current system uses very low frequency power, making it extremely dangerous to living beings. It was adopted because it could be metered and distributed at a cost.
Tesla went on to research high-frequency electricity that could be distributed -without- wiring, and most importantly, without risk to living matter. Have you ever seen what fluorescent lights do in a Tesla feild? They glow nicely, now...take the light out of the socket. Wow, it still glows and it isn't even plugged in! Now get this, take an old tube that is burned out and try the same thing...it -still- glows.
Now, try to zap yourself with this electrical source. It isn't going to happen. Why? Because the frequency rate is so high that the current passes directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react.
Why wasn't this adopted? Because the corporations were afraid of something they could not charge for. They saw BIG bucks in metered power. Having feild generators and house boosters would be impossible to meter. They could only charge a flat rate for the equipment loans at best.
You are right, Edison had it all backwards with DC, but stopping with the current AC implimentation we have today was a huge mistake. All of the lives lost to electricution, all of the power lost because of line waste, all of the light bulbs you have ever bought in your life are just a few of the reasons why this was a -blunder- not a great acheivement.
V
Think where we would be if antibiotics hadn't developed...
Their development has lead to the lengthening of the average human lifespan.
We could even go as far as to speculate whether a few of the great minds of our time would have been killed in childhood by diseases like strep.
The zinc bucket was a revolution ... carrying water in wooden buckets was a pain because the bucket was so heavy !!!
So the answer to your question depends on your point of view (and your age) ....
RFC1925
Look around. it's simple. it's sturdy. it's what a lot of your clothes, parts of your computer, furniture, cars, planes, toys, and a shitlod of other stuff is partially made of. It's polymers. plastics. a very versatile group of compounds that has had a dramatic effect on just about everyone's lives. It may not be THE most shaoing piece of tech, but it's changed the world as we know it.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
To the extent that they facilitate dissemination of the same information to a large body of people, communication technologies have been a homogenizing force. They have brought the same ideas, in the same language, to a larger audience than would have seen them otherwise.
To the extent that they facilitate one-on-one discussion, they have allowed varied interests to endure. What might have been the ideas or hobbies of isolated individuals or groups can be made more widely available.
And to the extent that they have protected communication from ourside observation or censorship, they have encouraged dissenting opinion to flourish. That protects us from tyrany from any source. I have never feared what people of good will would do with power over my communication. I have feared whose hands that power would eventually reside in.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I found it very perplexing in the last couple of years that people were looking back all the time (top people of our century, top technologies of the last millennium). I assumed this was because of some sort of deep-seated fear of the future, with the momentous occasion of the calendar shift coming up. Now we're actually in the new millennium why don't we look forward?
Use the wisdom of the past by all means (those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat the mistakes...) but let's spend time creating a fair and wonderful future rather than mythologising the past...
it feels like new years eve again... same questions. I think several sites have lists of this :-) Wasn't there such a discussion on Slashdot too.
In my opinion one of the most important ones is the transistor. It allowed an unprecedented miniaturization, with that it was the basis of alot of new technologies and services, like Slashdot.
just my 2 cents.
Use Adsense for Charity
Continental electricity grids are only possible because of transformers to step up the voltage for long distance transmission, and tansformers in turn only work with AC.
Just a comment on this... not all long distance distribution is done with AC. I think the biggest example we have is here in Brazil. OK, it does need AC in some point of the line, but most of the transmission is done with DC.
What happens here is that we have a huge hydroelectrical plant (Itaipu, the biggest in the world AFAIK) that is shared between Brazil and Paraguay. As our neighbours do not use all their energy, Brazil buys it back from them. The problem is that they use 50 Hz, and we use 60. So, what they do?
They could have transformed the AC from 50 to 60 and transmitted it as usual... but after many calculations, they found out it was more cost-effective to transmit this energy in DC (as it is a very long distance line, the added costs of having the conversion stations are covered by the savings you get from using less cables and thus having less maintenance in the transmission lines).
Alright, that doesn't cut the need for AC transformers (within cities, for example), but I think this was worth a comment. =)
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Marcelo Vanzin
Marcelo Vanzin
In terms of life as a western female, the biggest technological invention of the 20th century was the lightweight electric motor.
At the turn of the century, running a family household required two full-time adults. One to earn the money, the other to perform household tasks. As a child of the sixties, I can remember life without a refridgerator (shopping for fresh poduce daily), using primitive washing machines (wash day was Friday - all day. One adult in attendance at all times) and with no microwave or convenience foods (cooking times measured in hours, from fresh ingredients). we now have a state where one adult plus several devices is required to run a household. This has ontributed to female emancipation, allowing women to follow careers more easily. Since one compelling reason for staying together as a couple has been removed, it has also contributed to divorce, and the break-up of the 'nuclear family' and the increase of single parent families.
The liberating technologies for men have come much later in the century. In the early part of the century, conscription and advancing technology in war meant that men were massacred in millions. The first breakthrough (and some will hate me for this) was the atom bomb. This was a technology that made armies of massed numbers, and the evil , state enslavement of males called conscription, an irrelevance. Smart weapons at the end of the twentieth century mean that conscription is dead, and an army of tens can pack a devastating punch, This will be an influence in the early part of the 21st century. Metal (and silicon) will be better than meat.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
In all the analogies to the magic and the mysteries and the amazing and crazy possibilities brought by the net, I'm struck by the most obvious parallel in recent history that's conspicuously but silently been removed from the public consciousness.
Plastics.
C'mon, people. The ability to generate arbitrarily shaped substanced with (seemingly) arbitrary properties changed the shape of *everything*, from medicine to packaging to war.
The net's exciting, but imagine touching something that literally just couldn't have existed.
I find it extraordinarily interesting that nobody compares the historical excitement over plastic products has never been linked to the present Net crazes. Last I checked, of course, the Dow just had the last of the great plastic giants summarily removed in favor of some tech company(Was it Intel?). And you wonder why the Dow is raging...
That might just have something to do with it. Someone who was actually around when plastics were really huge would be really nice to reply right about now.
As for some unlikely but interesting choices...lets go beyond mass communications for a second and look at Instapolling. The effects of immediate, semi(or pseudo) unfiltered feedback has *got* to be powerful. Suddenly "the public" no longer thought whatever major newspapers reported. "The public" now thought what major newspapers asked...and what the party asked...and what the other party asked...and ya know what? Somewhere in that mass was an actual democratically representative opinion.
Representation was invented because the public was considered too unweildy to come to quick decisions. Pollsters have changed that, and it's very likely that much of their influence is utterly invisible--and would make great reading.
Something to think about.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Despite the huge technological leaps and bounds of the past seven millennia, say pollsters, the majority of humankind still use the wheel. Other ten thousand-year-old technologies such as fire and metalworking also show signs of continuing to be popular well into the supposedly technologically enlightened twenty-first century.
"I don't understand at all," said Jim Groznatz, a 20-year-old Silicon Valley multimillionaire. "I mean, we've got the internet, we've got the dotcoms, and people are still using the wheel?" Groznatz suggested that the widespread use of fire may represent "retro chic, perhaps even marketable retro chic."
In Washington, several congressional committees are now studying the disturbing technological backwardness evidenced by the continuing popularity of the wheel. "We need to let newer technologies progress to the front," said Vice President Al Gore. "The wheel is yesterday's technology; we need to look ahead to tomorrow's technology. I'm thinking fiber optics, probably."
In homes and families across America and the world, however, the wheel continues to occupy a central place. "I just put the TV table on castors last night," commented Wisconsen homeowner Jorg Ericcson. "I mean I guess the wheel is thousands of years old and all, but it still seems to work."
Mr. Ericcson may be in for a change, though. Microsoft recently announced the acquisition of Goodyear -- well known manufacturer of wheel accessories -- to produce a "new, user-friendly, proprietary wheel." The new "MS Wheels!" will feature multiple colors, a patented backing-up mechanism, and will be fully integrated into the popular Windows operating system. "We were concerned about 'Wheel piracy' initially," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, "but we re-watched Road Warrior last night and we're working on some sort of technical solution to control our intellectual property."
In the mean time, AOL and Time Warner have united to produce a new "Fire 2000" and Apple is reportedly working on a secret "eBronze" and "Opposable iThumbs" in its research labs. It's going to be an exciting century!
The key invention was the three-phase AC system by Tesla. Edison promoted the alternative DC system, with huge banks of lead-acid batteries at substations. Urgh. Continental electricity grids are only possible because of transformers to step up the voltage for long distance transmission, and transformers in turn only work with AC. If you use AC then the a three phase configuration is the most efficient.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
The contraceptive pill. Which has certainly changed the face of society. Of course us nerds might be expected to overlook that one.
Also on the social side, state funded education for all, and state funded healthcare for all are pretty big, at least on this side of the pond.
Of the previous suggestions though, I certainly have to go with plastics and antibiotics.