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20th Century's Greatest Engineering Achievements
dgw1 writes "The National Academy of Engineering has produced an ordered list of the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. I thought the articles about all of the entries were very interesting, even if I didn't agree with the order that some of the achievements were placed in. "
Nope...must disagree.
While there have been alot of proxy wars and non-proxy wars (Rwanda). Less lives have been lost in wars since 1945 than were lost between 1935 and 1945.
War by proxy was the norm in the 60s, 70s and 80s. But it's not the norm now. Look at the number of American missions abroad since 1992 (Somolia, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo) and look at the lack of foreign involvment in Afganistan now...and the lack of Western Involvment in the Central African mess. It's simply that the proxies are big enough and well equipted enough now to fight without any help. Also the biggest region of Soviet-NATO proxy fighting was the Israel-Arab conflict
...which is downright cozy these days
Apart from the use of asphalt and concrete, there's nothing involved in a highway that the Romans hadn't done thousands of years ago. The aspect of highways that require great feats of engineering, the bridges and tunnels, are projects to themselves that aren't tied intrinsically to highway engineering.
On top of all this, the highway isn't even that great a solution to basic problem of transportation.
I'm not disagreeing that Electrification belongs at #1, it does, but I'd say that the Automobile (#2), the Airplane (#3), Water Supply and Distribution (#4), Agricultural Mechanization (#7), and Highways (#11) could have been accomplished without Electrification. Steam locomotives did not even require electricity, much less electrification, and could certainly have provided the technology for several of the things I just listed. I'm taking electrification to mean practical widespread distribution of electricity, not just electricity itself. Electricity as a discovery (and some inventions using it) predates the 20th century by quite a bit, and as a discovery is also not an "engineering achievement."
Refrigeration even seems to not require electricity, much less electrification. You could build a steam powered system of pumps (for the freon) and fans to circulate air over the freon pipes. It certainly wouldn't be as practical as using electricity (generating that much heat for the steam makes it tricky to then cool something else, but if you're clever you could do it)
You could make a case that Telephone (#9) doesn't require electrification, though the telephone does itself distribute small amounts of electricty over long distances. Also worth noting, however, is that Telephone does not belong on a list of 20th century achievements at all, as it was invented in 1876! The same could be said for the automobile, but I suppose they meant to imply widespread availability of these inventions, not the invention itself.
That's all fine and good until the US:
a) builds its anti-missile defense system.
b) perfects its orbital weapons (check out the USSPACECOM websites).
Then we can "project our power" (IYKWIM-AITYD) all over the globe without fear of retaliation!
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I just calculated the per-square foot rate of my rental unit, and applied that to the two street parking spaces outside. It comes to $1425 per space per year. The government charges $40/year for a parking permit.
You're right, it would take some major economic changes to get rid of cars. The main one would be the adoption of capitalism.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Refrigeration was quite a revolutionary invention. Think of life without it-- for starters, you don't get a freezer or a refrigerator, so all food must either be preserved somehow or eaten quickly. No frozen foods at all, of course. Ice must be bought in expensive blocks at a store, who ships it in from up north (or stores it from winter). Perishable food cannot be transported far without refrigeration, so it has to be produced close to where it is eaten. This could limit the size of cities, and they would need to be ringed with farmland.
--locust
> I support huge printers (DocuTech 135 and
>6135), and recommend running them above 100
> degrees F.
Of course you recommend that!! If they didn't
overheat you'd be out of business!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Well, two out of three. This is the last year of the 20th century and the last year of the second millenium. However, we are no longer in the 90's. That naming convention is based on the numbers in the date, so it is zero-origin. So here we are in the 00's, the decade that includes two milleniums.
Refrigeration are more than just comfort.
Late last summer mine when out and my roomate opened all the windows. I was so overwhelmed by allergens, that I had a bad asthma attack. I can't live without aircondtioning.
Also when I was working at a large hospital in the middle of the winter when two of the the data room air conditioners went out. We were able to safely open several windows in sub zero weather, and channel that air with fans, but when the temp got to 100 F in the back of the room, there were several failures including a router, IIRC.
My network can't run without air conditioning.
Many of the lovely large highways we have go to places that are only habitable with air conditioning.
Also let's not forget the difficulty of supporting huge cities and far flung locals without food refrigeration. Food poisoning is no joke.
I give a big raspberry and a big snotty sneeze to all those who think Air conditioning and refrigeration are mere luxuries.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Hey,
Where is porn on that list? Camon guys, that's gotta be one of the top inventions of the 20th century.
I mean, in the 19th century. It was very hard to find porn. Now, you don't even have to go outside to get porn. Making porn easily accessibly is gotta be the top invention of the 20th century.
I think that goes under "Internet".
I prefer the cynical value of nuclear weapons: they are the first weapon that puts the wagers of war in as much, if not more, danger as the people who actually have to fight their wars. They also make the objectives of war pointless, as they exterminate most of your potential ideological converts/slaves/scapegoats, and render your enemy's resources hazardously radioactive.
Why are these list always so myopic? They always seem to list things that are new and glitzy, while ignoring the things that we tend to take for granted but really have a deeper impact on our lives.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Actually, look into old towns/old mining towns of the American West in the late 1800's, and the history of "shady ladies" (so called, because of many towns passing laws requiring "ladies of the night" to walk on the shaded sides of the street only). You will find that many of these women would pass out "invitation" cards to clients and prospective clients, that featured nude poses of various sorts (a good collection can be found in Tombstone, Arizona - none of it is hardcore. Most of the collection would look right at home in a Playboy. The pictures are quite artistic, and show a lot of skill on the parts of the photographer and "model").
I am sure porn has been around longer than that though, probably for as long as mankind could create art.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Or even earlier, what with tea from India, and coffeehouses springing up (of course, the Chinese, Ethiopeans and Arabs were indulging much before, but their not white Europeans, from which we measure all history).
Some people thought it quite the drug scourge, all these radicals clustering in dank, smoky coffeehouses, getting buzzed and plotting revolution.
Check out McKenna's Food of the Gods for a chapter on how caffeine affected society.
Also check out Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, several coffee house scenes.
George
Mechanizing agriculture was sure an important development. It freed 80% of the population to go work on something else (manufacturing) although the dislocation cost was high.
But IMHO, almost as important were the developments in agrichemicals and genetics to improve crop yields.
The same sort of thing also happened here in Australia, as this and this page imply, although I can't find any detailed documents...
Fixing copyright
More seriously though, it is debateable whether the world is really better off with cars. There are benefits (independence of travel, convenience for moving "stuff"), but the costs (accidents, pollution, time waiting in traffic jams) are pretty high. Perhaps a world with just a few cars would work better....
Fixing copyright
Infrastructure is what the bureaucrats get to create by turning the crank on the wheels of the machine once the inventors have created the machine. Until then, bureaucrats are an impediment to infrastructure creation. The worst crimes against humanity are the creation of technobureaucracies that virtually must, by their very political nature, give authority over innovation to the wrong people.
For example, the transistor got invented in spite of, not because of, Bell Labs' management.
Seastead this.
2. Automobile
Close, but Daimler just crept into the 19th.
4. Water Supply and Distribution
Like many urban Brits, my water supply (and sewerage) still runs through a system built by the 19th century Victorians.
7. Agricultural Mechanization
Eli Whitney ? Jethro Tull ? 10th Century...
Harry Ferguson was 20th, I'll grant you, but they quoted achievements in general, not enhancements.
11. Highways
Apart from motorways, most of the UK's road network is either 19th, or very late 20th
20. High-performance Materials
What about what is still our most common high performance material - cheap carbon steel, a mid-19th invention by Bessemer.
Biggest omission ? Mass production, on the Ford model.
It also listed refridgeration with air conditioning. I think they're refering to a whole range of devices, not just air conditioners. Like food storage and transport, liquid cooled supercomputers, and cold fusion. Don't these things positively effect your daily lives? Okay, so maybe not those things, but the freezing and refrideration of food has had a great impact on the development of society. Frozen food is much more resiliant to disease and easier to transport larger distances. Cheaper and More available food directly relates to an increase in population. Although debatable whether an increase in human population is good, one cannot doubt that refridgeration has significantly contributed to the development of society.
Their list seems to favor human comfort and convenience over communication. If Aristotle is correct and "man is a social animal", this ordering is not too keen.
-L
I was expecting pictures, biographies, timelines of some of the greatest engeneering feats of the 20th century. Instead, I got 20 vague categories, which would have been great for elucidating a specific invention, but not just a summary of everything that happened in that field. For example, the section on refrigeration, which is important in allowing cheap food everywhere, all the time, could have had something on the first use of ammonia as a coolant. Or on some of the great water projects that were made during the last century, such as the LA aquaduct.
Here are a few suggestions for what would be on my list of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. I know, the descriptions are vague, but they're also better than the ones on the site.
1. The Hoover Dam. Huge, will last a few thousand years with no problems, allowed a good amount of industry and agriculture in the Southern California region.
2. The Microprocessor. Without it just about everything done in the computer industry in the last 25 years wouldn't have been. Intel's 4004 is what all started it.
I know, I know, only two. Hey, this is just the start of a list. Given a few more hours, or preferably a day or two, and I could build a list that looks better, and has more technical information than the one on the site.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Unfortunately, our society is now very dependent on petroleum and its byproducts, and it's bound to get worse unless a suitable alternative is found (who among us likes paying upwards of $2 per gallon of gas?).
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
I really enjoyed reading about this. However, #20-high performance materials. Don't you think they could have been a little more specific? And highways? C'mon, there have been roads since pre-historic times. How is putting 4 lanes on a road any huge advance?
Enigma
Enigma
Looking at the list, I expected to find some specific examples of engineering. I mean, 'spacecraft'? 'Highways'? And what the fuck is a 'household appliances'?
Instead, I'd have suggested Mir and, er, a big road. And the multi-region DVD with remote control and a free copy of the Matrix.
This list, basically, covers every major engineering feat of the 20th century. I challenge y'all to come up with something that isn't in one of these categories.
What do you expect from a Michigander? =)
I'm from Canada, I live in NC now. Without the air conditioner, I simply could not survive the summers or even the spring. AC makes year-round industry, and hence industry, a feasible prospect for the US south.
Don't underestimate its importance.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Though not just for comfort.
Think about the first time you went into a room with big iron, the raised floor, the chilly air, yeap, those mainframe monsters needed cool air to run.
They wouldn't be much use if they could only run North of the Mason-Dixon line, and then only for 3 seasons.
I support huge printers (DocuTech 135 and 6135), and recommend running them above 100 degrees F.
Think about a spacecraft without air conditioning.
"Houston, it's 120 degrees in here"
"Roger, can you open a window?"
I'm not a chemical engineer, but from just browsing a few recipes, it seems that cooling a solution is a very common procedure. Hard to do without a/c.
George
I agree with this statement in general, of course there is always the possiblity of the fanatical getting hold of this kind of weapon. The reason WMD have preserved global peace so well is that national leaders realise the damage that would come in retaliation, and they care about this. But fanatics could set off one of these (easier with the advent of portable nukes) with no intention of surviving it. This is IMHO the biggest danger from the invention of this weapon.
The reason this is a problem is that the defence against this type of weapon always lags behind the offence. It is always technologically easier to destroy than it is to defend, and so there is always a period between when a weapon is invented and when its defence is invented during which the weapon is at its most dangerous. And at the moment we are in this stage, so anyone with a nuke has a lot of power.
Hey,
Where is porn on that list? Camon guys, that's gotta be one of the top inventions of the 20th century.
I mean, in the 19th century. It was very hard to find porn. Now, you don't even have to go outside to get porn. Making porn easily accessibly is gotta be the top invention of the 20th century.
-- Note: These Comments are Generated by ME! Not You! ME!
Does performance materials include plastics? Most of what we have today, we owe some debt to plastics. What about medicines? The 20th century has seen an explosion of medical technologies. I would imagine without them some of the greatest achievements would have been taken to the grave. At least in My Narrow Point of View
Where's slashdot on the list?
Well...I know I'll get flamed for this but here goes.
Actually the advent of Nuclear Weapons and MAD (and to a lesser extent the lessons learned by the Great Powers in WW1) have lead to a period of unprecidented peace in Western Europe. While there have been some clashes (Serbia, Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea) for the most part they have been scaled down because of the spectre of full scale nuclear war.
Chemical weapons havn't been used on the battlefield in large scale or with much success since the WW1, while there was the Holocaust and that did involve chemical weapons, the Germans wouldn't use gas against the Allies because of the retaliation of gas against the Germans.
So I'm of the mind that MAD is a good thing.
I agree that the placement of refrigeration (and air conditioning) is incorrect -- it is possibly the single most important engineering accomplishment of the past several hundred years, right with the printing press.
Talk all you want about internal combustion, petrochemicals, etc, they are all very important and changed the world, but they did not unquestionably and uniformly improve every aspect of our lives and our existence as a species.
Without refrigeration, we would not have any other technologies on the scale necessary for modern life. You couldn't have the current phone or electrical grid, computers and most other modern technology would have been nearly impossible to invent. Space travel would be impossible, much air travel would be as well.
Without refrigeration, our life expectancy would still be about 30-50 years because vaccines and the blood supply would be impossible to make and maintain. Our food supplies would be just as questionable as those at the turn of the last century (when food poisoning was a perfectly common way to die).
And of course without such reliable ways to safely transport food and other perishables, our economy could never grow to the scale of current urbanization.
And don't forget that "air conditioning" as it literally means, allows us to control the air in an environment. We can not only make it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, we can also control the humidity so that electronics can function properly and valuable materials are not destroyed or contaminated by water vapor.
To understand the danger of humidity, simply visit the tombs of Egypt, where humidity did not exist until the irrigation projects of the past hundred years. For thousands of years, delicate artifacts sat perfectly preserved, and in the past hundred they have literally begun to disintegrate as humidity attacks them.
Refrigeration is unquestionably one of the most significant advances in mankind's control over his environment, along with irrigation and fire.
And like many great advances, it was scorned early on by others. The New York Times (keeping in mind NY made a lot of money by shipping ice all over the country for cooling) published an editorial making fun of "some fool in Florida thinks he can make ice better than God Almighty!"...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Just think folks, 102 years ago the most that people could kill with one weapon was about a hundred people. What an enlightened time we now live in.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi