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The Most Disruptive Technology of the Last 100 Years Isn't What You Think
HughPickens.com writes: Ana Swanson writes in the Washington Post that when people talk about "disruptive technologies," they're usually thinking of the latest thing out of Silicon Valley but some of the most historically disruptive technologies aren't exactly what you would expect and arguably, the most disruptive technologiy of the last century is the refrigerator. In the 1920s, only about a third of households reported having a washer or a vacuum, and refrigerators were even rarer. But just 20 years later, refrigerator ownership was common, with more than two-thirds of Americans owning an icebox. According to Helen Veit, the surge in refrigerator ownership totally changed the way that Americans cooked. "Before reliable refrigeration, cooking and food preservation were barely distinguishable tasks" and techniques like pickling, smoking and canning were common in nearly every American kitchen. With the arrival of the icebox and then the electric refrigerator, foods could now be kept and consumed in the same form for days. Americans no longer had to make and consume great quantities of cheese, whiskey and hard cider — some of the only ways to keep foods edible through the winter. "A whole arsenal of home preservation techniques, from cheese-making to meat-smoking to egg-pickling to ketchup-making, receded from daily use within a single generation," writes Veit.
Technologies like the smartphone, the computer and the Internet have, of course, dramatically changed the ways we live and work but consider the spread of electricity, running water, the flush toilet developed and popularized by Thomas Crapper and central heating and the changes these have wrought. "These technologies were so disruptive because they massively reduced the time spent on housework," concludes Swanson. "The number of hours that people spent per week preparing meals, doing laundry and cleaning fell from 58 in 1900 to only 18 hours in 1970, and it has declined further since then."
Technologies like the smartphone, the computer and the Internet have, of course, dramatically changed the ways we live and work but consider the spread of electricity, running water, the flush toilet developed and popularized by Thomas Crapper and central heating and the changes these have wrought. "These technologies were so disruptive because they massively reduced the time spent on housework," concludes Swanson. "The number of hours that people spent per week preparing meals, doing laundry and cleaning fell from 58 in 1900 to only 18 hours in 1970, and it has declined further since then."
Smoking = carcinogens
Pickling = excessive salt
Canning = Preservatives
Refrigeration = lower temperature
I choose refrigeration .
Nothing has caused more 'disruption'....
The Most Disruptive Technology of the Last 100 Years Isn't What You Think
Don't tell me what I think. You don't know what I think.
You don't want to know what I think.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Electrification!
...and continue to consume great quantities of cheese, whiskey and hard cider.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Yes the advent of white goods and decrease in the need for manual labour had a million times more to do with changing gender roles in western societies than feminism ever did.
is fire .. eating raw meat .. munching forever .. strong digestion .. its all gone.. sniff ..
The contraceptive pill.
It's saved trillions of dollars, saved trillions of hours of work, reduced poverty, childhood deaths, and the threat of countries being invaded for their land.
the atom bomb was still pretty disruptive.
Aeroplanes. The use of aircraft in war has basically driven every other development, refrigerators included.
He did not invent the flushing toilet. Even the bloody link in the OP's click-bait "article" points this out.
For the sake of my family name, do NOT invent a disruptive technology involving fecal matter.
The entire comments section here is predictable. Clickbait sells ads, even to Slashdotters.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Agreed that the refrigerator (along with birth control) is one of the most disruptive technologies in the past 100 years. However, this is not yet the case for the world at large. Only 27% of people in India own a refrigerator. In the West we take things like refrigeration and toilets for granted...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Household mains electricity was the technology.
I believe the next step will be automated cars on tracks. The enegy and time saved would almost make our transportation systems sustainable. If the rail carried utilities such as water,sewer,electric and comunication systems, it would be sustainable.
The AK-47. Bringing armed revolution to the masses!
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Those preserving techniques provided major sources of nutrients. Sauerkraut (and other fermented vegetables) has lots of Vitamin A, C, B-6, K as byproducts of the fermentation.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Housework falls not only because of more efficient and work flows but also for many other reasons which aren't well studied. Housework continues to suffer fall off partly because, as it cannot for most households be profited by or taxed by private or public institutions, we don't include it in measurements like GDP and so we favor policies which transform time spent doing housework into time spent doing work more financally accessible to the IRS and Wall St.
No doubt certain inventions contributed to this by increasing housework productivity, but we also continue to implement social and economic policies that deprioritize housework entirely.
"... the flush toilet developed and popularized by Thomas Crapper"
No, contrary to widespread misconceptions, Crapper did not invent the flush toilet.
Via snopes and wikipedia:
Wikipedia: It has often been claimed in popular culture that the slang term for human bodily waste, crap, originated with Thomas Crapper because of his association with lavatories. A common version of this story is that American servicemen stationed in England during World War I saw his name on cisterns and used it as army slang, i.e. "I'm going to the crapper".
Snopes: Alexander Cummings is generally credited with inventing the first flush mechanism in 1775 (more than 50 years before Crapper was born), and plumbers Joseph Bramah and Thomas Twyford further developed the technology with improvements such as the float-and-valve system. Thomas Crapper, said an article in Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine, "should best be remembered as a merchant of plumbing products, a terrific salesman and advertising genius."
I guess it's too much to hope that slashdot editors do even the most rudimentary fact-checking, eh?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Since when did whiskey have to be consumed if it wasn't refrigerated? I mean any excuse will do, but I think that example is taking things a little too far.
1915-2015?
I can see the argument for refrigeration and it's interesting to contemplate, but the transistor takes the prize for "most disruptive technology" hands down. It's nice to go home and have fresh milk, veggies and leftovers in the fridge as opposed to opening a bag of flour and having a winter squash with some smoked meat, but transistors changed absolutely everything.
If medicine is considered "technology", the other major contender is antibiotics. For 100s of years, injuries and diseases which are now easily treatable were very often deadly because of bacteria. Antibiotics changed all that.
You could also make an argument for plastics if you group them all together as a single technology. After all, what would we do without the salad shooter and clamshell packaging?
Typical /. research. Refrigerator and Icebox are terms used interchangeably but technically they are vastly different.
It also changed how people socialized. Instead of popping down to the corner store where you often met people from the neighborhood, you now have mega-marts. Instead of canning parties of in-season veggies, you have frozen foods. Small truck farms were driven out of business.
Also in the field of medicine. Some medicines are very temperature sensitive, insulin comes to mind. Easier blood storage. Easier organ storage and corpse storage.
It changed so many things besides just food storage and preparation.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think they are possibly right but didn't generalize it enough. Refrigeration is fundamentally the same technology as air conditioning. Both just move heat from one room to another. (a small room in the case of refrigeration) And air conditioning is almost entirely responsible for the migration of huge numbers of people south and huge demographic changes. Same technology with different application and similarly huge results.
So the answer is correct if you include air conditioning as a subset of refrigeration (or vice-versa).
Good, now we need to find a way to reduce pregnancy period and the time needed to raise little bastards into workforce. That way moms and dads will have more time to make money and more time to spend them.
The most disruptive tech of the last 100 years was the washing machine. Because it gave women some actual time to DO something during the day. Before the washing machine, women washed clothes all day. It was the most laborious thing they did, and it was a constant process. Yes, refrigeration REALLY changed a lot of things, but it didn't make life drastically more worth living for half the population. Washing machines. No question at all. Without them, women didn't need the vote, because they didn't have time to read, or work on getting educated. We're talking about half the population becoming part of the population, as opposed to beasts of burden.
Close but incorrect.
The most disruptive technology of the last 100 years was . . .
Ta da . . .
Northern Toilet Tissue. Introduced in 1935. The very first splinter free toilet tissue.
Now that's innovation we take for granted.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
This is about as useful as arguing about the most important person of the 20th century. The refrigerator was huge. So was the mass-produced automobile, the atomic bomb, the television, the transistor, digital communications, the list goes on. And all of these things enabled and depended on each other, so singling out one as the key to everything is stupid.
I do agree that refrigeration deserves more attention, though.
I think the combine and other heavy machinery would be a contender. Heavy machinery has reduced the number of farm and construction workers by more than 90% allowing those other people to take up new jobs. The computer, the service industry, cities, etc... wouldn't exist as they are today if 90% of our workforce still worked on the farm. The article says that refrigeration and other household technologies made household work drop from 58 to 18 hours (a 69% reduction). Farm machinery has the beat by a long shot with something close to a 90% reduction in labor.
Other runner ups for other reasons would include birth control, antibiotics, plastic, the internal combustion engine, and factory automation.
I thought this would have been at the top of the list. Before street lamps people had to continually worry about their own personal illumination. That's 'torches' for those who have never seen a Hammer film. It also had a great deal of impact on the environment. Wild animals who could freely roam now had to learn new instincts and survival skills.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The television show "Dinosaurs" celebrated Refrigerator Day instead of Christmas. Apparently it ended the nomadic lifestyle that dinosaurs originally had. Although I fail to see how a nomadic population could invent a refrigerator. Except for stone and earthworks, nomadic cultures only invent what they can carry.
So, back then, because refrigerator where uncommon, people had to be creative and found various cooking techniques that improved conservation. For the same reason, local ingredients where likely to be preferred and seasons had to be observed. This resulted in a lot of diversity and interesting recipes.
The refrigerator is certainly a big advance, so are modern sterilization techniques but it also lead to the hopelessly bland diet of many people today.
Proof that disruptive isn't all good.
The most disruptive technology I recall was certainly Windows 3.1
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
So you don't like your food to taste good? Smoking and pickling can add substantial flavor to food. Jams and jellies and other products that are canned are fantastic. Canning does not require preservatives as it was developed as a way of storing foods aseptically. If you enjoy BBQ then you are enjoying the benefits of smoking. Preservation methods often have awesome side benefits in making food taste good. Cured meats, pickled vegetables, canned fruits, salting, etc all result in some pretty awesome food products. People developed those techniques out of necessity and elevated them to an art form.
Oh, and starvation is worse than any side effect of any preservation method.
The big ones include but aren't limited to:
Transistors & Integrated circuits
Refrigeration/air conditioning
Jet engines
Mass air travel
Nuclear power/weapons
Birth control pills
Antibiotics & vaccines
Genetic analysis and therapy
Telecom networks (including the internet)
Containerized shipping
Email
Lasers
Electrical grids
Superhighways
Nitrogen based fertilizers
Pesticides/herbicides
And some more I've forgotten
Can you rank these? Not meaningfully. I suppose you could study economic impact but that's going to be very imprecise and is only one measure of disruption. If I had to vote for just one it would probably be either the transistor or birth control. But it really doesn't matter.
The thermostat. It provides the feedback control system which automated everything from heating and cooling to cooking and manufacturing and chemical processing.
Ethanol! The best way to preserve your grain! (unless you know about drying and cloth bags)
The refrigerator is a great disruptive technology for the early 20th Century, here is a list of others by the century they gained wider use and what they disrupted:-
Mid 19th Century: The Flush Toilet: replaced in a stroke the use of pit drop toilets when coupled to a sewer and disrupted completely the work of Gong Scourers, who's job it was to be paid to regularly clean out cesspits, cart away the waste and sell it to market gardeners outside of the growing cities. Hence the phrase "Where there's much there's brass"
Mid to late 19th Century: Municipal long distance sewers an sewage treatment: In London UK disrupted the spread of waterborne disease and the livelyhood of any physician or peddler selling posies and possets to cover the smell on the mistaken belief that these diseases were airborne or Miasmic Diseases.
Mid 15th Century: Movable Type Printing Press: Initially disrupted the hand written indulgence business the church had going by drastically reducing the costs of buying your way out of purgatory, then disrupted practically everything to do with knowledge transfer.
That is a good start I'm sure others can continue the thread. You know there may be a book in this!
Before 2/3rds of Americans owned an icebox, we also didn't have a huge great hole in the ozone layer. Skin cancer is very disruptive, don't you know?
The Crossbow was once considered such a horrific weapon, and such a huge advance that "man might never make war again" because of sheer amount of death this device could bring to the battlefield.
So, it's all relative....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The greatest labor-saving devices generally have been devices that have directly reduced the amount of work generally considered "for women" such as the Refrigerator, Clothes Washer, and
Vacuum Cleaner, not to mention birth control pills giving women more control over their own reproduction than ever in history.
Yes curiously, women seem to bitch more than ever about how miserable they are.
-Styopa
For my money, the most disruptive technology of the last century - the one that has genuinely done THE most to change the society we live in and the lives of everyone in it - is the humble standardized shipping container. Containers and the infrastructure to handle them mean that we can now ship immense quantities of goods of all shapes, sizes and types from one side of the planet to the other, at a cost per mile per item that's so small it's barely measurable. They mean that it is, literally, cheaper now to move many manufactured goods from one side of the planet to the other, than it used to be to ship them 10 miles down the road. As a manufacturer, it means that, in principle, you can source your materials and parts from anywhere on the globe. Want to manufacture part of your product in Europe, but assemble it in Asia? Do it. Ban shipping containers tomorrow, and the global economy would grind to a shuddering halt in days. And it doesn't matter what other technology you care to point to as a candidate - it's shipping containers that make it globally available. Head and shoulders the winner.
I was just discussing something similar with a few of my tech buddies, a few weeks ago. Despite all of us working in I.T. for decades and being up on the latest trends -- we universally agreed that it feels like real innovation is slowing down. There were so many inventions in the last 100 or so years that clearly changed society, but in the last 10 or 20? Not so much. Almost everything heralded as the next big thing is really an incremental revision of existing tech, in recent years.
I mean sure, the Internet itself is a huge game-changer, but even that really goes all the way back to DARPANET, started in the early 1970's. The microcomputer is also really a child of the 70's. In fact, a lot happened in the 70's, invention-wise! The Bic disposable lighter was invented, as well as gene splicing. The VCR was invented, forever changing how people watched television. Post it notes, the laser printer, ethernet networking and cellular phones all came from the 70's too, plus the artificial heart and MRI machines.
The current generation is going to be remembered for creating a whole bunch of social media web sites that came and went and for popularizing the digital streaming of content you "rent" on monthly plans instead of buy on pre-packaged media. Oh, and multiple attempts to incrementally improve existing televisions by adding a curve to the flat panels, by adding 3D technologies to them that never really caught on, and by upping the resolutions every so often. I mean, ok ... I'm purposely being a little sarcastic here. But I think you get my point. We might still have a big game-changer on the horizon with self-driving vehicles, mind you. But this doesn't appear to be going down as a particularly trans-formative era in history.....
splinter free toilet tissue.
Not sure which is more awful, taking chances with splinters or living in Roman times and having to use a brine-soaked sponge that was fastened to a stick and used communally.
Thank god for the Africans who invented the refrigerator. Oh, wait...
The Africans who invented anaesthesia, the greatest invention ever? Nope, not Africans.
But hey, we've all got to pretend that blacks are as intelligent as whites, or get sacked from our jobs! While they flood into and thus DESTROY our countries. Aren't we lucky.
Refrigeration **is** the correct answer, at least for me, invented in the last 100 yrs.
I know this as a fact because mine broke last week and my life changed drastically.
How?
* I normally cook large dinners and either refrigerate or freeze the leftovers. Couldn't do that.
* I purchase larger-sized canned foods - open, use 1/3rd, then refrig the extras.
* when the fridge broke,it was overnight (left the freezer door open) and it was warm in the morning, but still running. Cooked the small amount of meat and eat it for b'fast and lunch.
* Every meal was impacted until I replaced the broken part. Took a few days to realize what the issue was. For 4 days, it "sorta worked", but not quite.
Had to throw out a bunch of frozen veggies and single-serve pre-made meals.
Washing machine - I use it would 2x a month. If it broke, I'd take my clothes to a laundry or laundromat. Not life changing.
Car - I haven't used a car since Sunday and I live nowhere near any public transportation. I can bike/walk to nearby food stores and/or restaurants, if needed. Actually, I can walk to 2 auto parts stores as well, though I'd hate to carry a battery back home again - need to get a little cart for next time.
Internet - that would be a terrible thing to be without for a week, but many people don't use the internet, so I suppose I could do without it for as long as necessary.
BTW, I've lived in poor countries and locations that didn't have power 24/7, no clean water from facets, and no refrigeration for most people. As a guest, the unclean water mattered the most. We dropped our laundry off for someone else to clean in the river - I have photos. Refrigeration didn't matter much - everything was freshly made and vegetarian here. Oddly, we did have hot showers available after 3pm thanks to solar heating. ;) Keep your eyes and mouth closed in the shower - that WAS hard to do.
I've been without a water heater for a few weeks once. It was uncomfortable, but not disruptive.
Phones are over 100 now. When I was growing up, we didn't use the phone much. Dad had a 5 minute rule due to the number of people in out household (9). Most of my extended family didn't get cell phones until 2006-ish. Highly disruptive, world-wide, and a major convenience. I've misplaced my cell phone for a few weeks THIS year. Didn't really change my life. You get the point.
In the mechanized world, the refrigeration matters most in the last 100 yrs. Potable water in our homes would matter more, but that was solved long ago.
In the 1920s, only about a third of households reported having a washer or a vacuum, and refrigerators were even rarer. But just 20 years later, refrigerator ownership was common, with more than two-thirds of Americans owning an icebox.
Hold on a second, so in the 1920s, fewer than 1/3 of Americans owned a refrigerator. By the 1940s, more than 2/3 of Americans owned an icebox. How many owned iceboxes in the 1920s? How many owned refrigerators in the 1940s? These items served the same purpose, but are most certainly not the same thing.
Americans no longer had to make and consume great quantities of cheese, whiskey and hard cider
No longer have to, but why would I stop?
I'll throw air conditioning in there under the heading of "refrigeration". A/C has turned baking deserts (e.g. Arizona, Saudi Arabia) and humid swamps (e.g. Florida) into popular places to live.
We've been able to generate heat since the harnessing of fire, but generating cool took a lot longer.
Oh, that was the best discovery of the last 3000 years....
Nor did Steve Jobs invent the smartphone. Yet the Crapper and Apple companies did contribute several improvements that made the product categories practical.
I was born in 1926 and well remember the ice box that really was an ice box with a good sized hunk of ice at the top and regular deliveries of ice from the ice man. We dodn'thave a refrigerator but had fresh vegetables and fresh mead from the butcher shop daily. And the toilet paper was just fine even in 1930.I lived in Brooklyn, NYC and even had an electric toaster and a well designed vacuum cleaner and a radio with Charlie McCarthy and Fred Allen and Jack Benny and the Columbia Workshop. Better than the Bulk of TV today.
The shipping container, you say? Dubious? Read Marc Levinson's excellent _The Box_
Also, maybe many don't know the distiction between BBQ and grilling. When you grill things like burgers, steaks, etc...over hot, high quick heat, that is grilling...it is NOT Barbecue.
I know the difference very well. BBQ is as your say low and slow and it routinely ALSO involves utilizing smoke. BBQ pork and one of the hallmarks can be the pink smoke ring that permeates the meat. There is little better to eat in this world than some BBQ with a nice smokey crust.
Not sure why you went off on that tangent since nothing I said had anything to do with calling grilling BBQ or vice-versa.
About the only true innovation I can see lately is in the "maker" culture. In particular, amateur 3D printing is making the average person (as in income more so than skills) create small custom parts. Likewise, cheap easy-to-program micro-controller boards (Arduino, mbed, etc.) allow small custom embedded control of stuff for the person of average means, even in these days where the individual parts are too small to easily assemble without specialized equipment.
Remember, when the refrigerator was new, people weren't exactly expecting it to cause a major change in society, so whatever might be disruptive from now might not be obvious for a few decades. And I would argue that the internet is quite valid as a candidate, even though it was "invented" in the 1970s. Refrigeration was available through the 1800s, but it wasn't until the early 20th century that average people could afford to have one at home.
The internet and mobile communications have really changed things over the past 20 years. I'm old enough to remember when TV drama plots used the lack of communication as a plot point, where a cell phone would have ended the story quickly. Now they have to use being out of range as a plot point, but you still can't justify that in a city setting.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Penicillin and antibiotics in the last hundred years basically changed the entire civilized world from "you live until you die of an infection" to "you live until you die of cancer or heart failure." Which is pretty significant.
Although it is pretty hard to argue with the refrigerator, it just gives me the cold shoulder.
The most disruptive thing man ever invented would have to be God.
Ice boxes worked fine. My father believes the most disruptive technology is closely related to refrigerators: air conditioning, which allowed the industrialization of the south, and is the enabling technology behind modern skyscrapers, especially those huge greenhouses in the middle of the desert e.g. in Dubai. We don't build huge buildings with opening windows or air shafts any more; that is kind of a major change. (An extremely energy inefficient change - build a greenhouse, then expend huge amounts of energy pumping accumulated heat out of the greenhouse.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Nothing has altered the framework of the US like the automobile. Manufacturing, finance, marketing, engineering, regulations, architecture, social mating..... All of them have undergone revolutionary transformations in the post WWII years. Only the existence of the internet has come close (and may someday surpass) to being as disruptive.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
we are just now seeing the affects of being the first generation in history to be smaller than the older ones before. Gen X. The destruction of the family and all that comes with it also come from this product. The fact it (affective practical birth control) only really exist for one gender creates many changes in the balance of power between the sexes. we are only 50 in and look at all that came form this innovation. just imagine what the world will look like in 50 more.
Bitcoin will come to the rescue of this money printing machine!
Because doesn't the definition of disruption have a negative connotation?
If you had asked me the question without prompting, it would have been a tough choice between electricity and automobiles. The fridge isn't there without reliable electricity in the home. Another guy cited the washing machine, since it saved so much labor for women. Same thing. It doesn't happen if you can't plug it in. In a world with cars but no home electric, I think life would still be pretty rough. OTOH, we build "streetcar suburbs" that ran with overhead electric, which solved transit for a lot of people. Car companies killed the street-cars, but nobody could kill electric so I'm going to go with "reliable electricity to the home" as the most disruptive technology even though electrification started well over 100 years ago. For rural people in the USA, 1930-1950 were the swing decades which puts us well in that time-frame.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I just puked in my mouth a little.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
My cheese goes bad in the refrigerator if I don't eat it fast enough. How did they manage to keep it around all winter?
Prior to the development of the sanitary napkin, most women between the ages of approximately thirteen and somewhere in their fifties had to at least partially withdraw from society on a monthly basis. Now the participation limits on women are societal norms and part of pregnancy / infancy. I suspect the societal norms are the more restrictive of the two.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Haber process - allowed mankind to quadriple the population without starving
Pickling in brine is very unhealthy as it increases sodium content of the food. Similarly smoking produces chemicals which not only control microbial growth but are harmful for human beings. Refrigeration is in fact a constructive technology. There is no benefit of labeling it as a destructive one.
Fresh mead from the butcher? That's quite medieval. Lucky guy. I have to make my own mead these days.
I remember the horrible toilet paper the schools had in the 70s. Thin, crinkly, single-ply, waxed, utterly unsuitable for its intended purpose.
The story that some guy named Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet started with Martin Gardner's monthly column in the Scientific American, when suckers failed to note that it was for the April edition. That April Fool's joke spread so fast, showing that even pre-internet people would believe pretty much anything.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Diversity, only kinda.
Before refrigeration you'd likely be stuck eating mostly the same things over and over again in cycles based on the season. Refrigeration opens up more diversity because you can eat all kinds of stuff out of season, and from other parts of the world. Of course that added diversity though is purely potential, people don't have to eat those different things, and many probably just stick to what they like best.
Haber-Bosch process for making ammonia. Without it as a fertilizer we'd still be fighting wars over bat guano while most of the human population starved to death.
Haber was also the father of chemical warfare... so that's also interesting...
That reminds me of those mimeograph copies, back before laser and jet printers. I remember getting handouts all the time at school that were copied that way, almost always having some of the pigment/paint stuff spattered at various random places on the page, and often one corner of the page wasn't aligned correctly and sort of faded away.
What makes you think government issued toilet paper is any better today? :-)
Thanks for the clue. According to wikipedia, flush toilets have been in development for several centuries. Thomas Crapper was a manufacturer of flush toilets with a number of patents to his credit that advanced the state of the art. It looks like Gardner was either ignorant or stretched the truth, but he was close enough that his story really doesn't qualify as a joke.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I have two words for you: Willis. Fucking. Carrier.
Bzzzt!
Gardner's April 1975 column came six years after the publishing of Wallace Reyburn's "Biography" of Thomas Crapper- "Flushed With Pride".
I have a First Edition, autographed.
Yes, the book was a Hoax, beloved by professional writers, like Gardner, who merrily promoted it.
In "Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments", Gardner admits to his participation.
Captcha: wiliness
1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane?
That's _Dow_ Chemical, not _Cow_ Chemical...
The VCR is a 1960s invention.
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Yeah, I guess you could say that. There was apparently a video recorder made in 1963 in the U.K, sold in kit form, that could record 20 minutes at a time in black and white. (It cost about $1,600 in today's U.S. currency too.)
But the device actually called VCR that used video cassettes was a Phillips invention sold to TV stations in 1970, and made available to consumers in 1972.
You westerners are dirty. Only water can clean ass properly.
Despite all of us working in I.T. for decades and being up on the latest trends -- we universally agreed that it feels like real innovation is slowing down.
My great grandparents saw the industrial revolution, my grandparents experienced world wars, my parents brought about social revolution and the digital age, and I played computer games and watched porn.
My kids also play computer games and are probably watching porn too. It seems we've reached a plateau in human development.
That remained an accurate description of Army toilet paper at least through the mid-90s. The contemporary euphemism for it was "John Wayne" paper, because it was "tough as nails and don't take shit off nobody".
- T
There seems to be a great deal of confusion between the terms disruptive and innovative among both the post author and commenters.
I'm not aware of any large entrenched industry that ws disrupted by the vacuum or the fridge. True, it displaced some workers, put some local businesses out of business, but added many more jobs and as mentioned, saved countless hours of domestic drudgery.
I just don't see the disruption.
I worked at Ontario's Killbear Park in the late 1970's. Campers then and for about ten years afterwards got their ice from Walt's Ice, just outside the park's gate. Mr. Walt got his ice by cutting it right out of A nearby lake in the middle of the winter and stowing it in sawdust in a cool dark place until summer. It may have been old school, but it was energy-efficient and cost effective.
I'm so confused. I like to barbecue on my grill, or a hibachi at my girlfriends house. I use hardwood briquets exclusively because they make my food taste magical. It takes about 30 mins to cook corn or these nice sausages from the butcher, less than that for fish or asparagus. I cover things so they come out tasting quite smoky.
Technically speaking, in the US what you are describing is is grilling rather than barbecue. If it doesn't take a long time at low heat it isn't technically correct to call it barbecue. But don't worry about it too much. Most people use the terms interchangeably and (almost) nobody really cares.
Interestingly the British use the term barbecue for what the Americans call broiling - high direct heat. They also use grilling as something close to a synonym. But barbecue (in the low and slow American sense) is really an American style of cooking and I think it's useful to allow for the distinction because the cooking methods are hugely different. Grilling doesn't work well for cuts of meat with a lot of connective tissue.
What am I allowed to call this? I'm scared to think about it too much, what I do now is fun, comes naturally, and tastes super amazing.
Call it whatever you want. It doesn't really matter. But if you want to be pedantic you are grilling and/or smoking.
If you trace back all the stories, they all originated with Gardener's April Fools joke. He even created a face ISBN number for a book and "quoted" from it, citing "Thomas Crapper" (a made-up name) in the book. Of course, most people never bothered to verity that the book didn't exist. Flush toilets existed more than two millenia ago.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I remember reading the original article in SciAm, and the follow-up that said "It was a joke, people." Thanks for the extra info :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.