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Slashdot Asks: What Do You Think Is The Most Influential Gadget Of All Time? (macrumors.com)
TIME has published a list ranking the 50 most influential gadgets of all time, from cameras and TVs to music players, smartphones, and drones. Can you guess what was the number one most influential gadget on the list? That's right, the Apple iPhone. "Apple was the first company to put a truly powerful computer in the pockets of millions when it launched the iPhone in 2007," according to TIME. "The iPhone popularized the mobile app, forever changing how we communicate, play games, shop, work, and complete many everyday tasks."
There's a lot of interesting gadgets on the list that have had a profound impact on mankind in some form or another, for better or worse. Do you agree with TIME's number one choice? What do you think is the most influential gadget of all time?
There's a lot of interesting gadgets on the list that have had a profound impact on mankind in some form or another, for better or worse. Do you agree with TIME's number one choice? What do you think is the most influential gadget of all time?
the gun
A Refrigerator. Next crap question.
Zune.
The sword
Air conditioning. Made possible the industrialization of the south, and the popularity of Arizona for retirees, so basically A/C has triggered mass migrations of people to hotter climates, with an accompanying huge energy cost. Also made possible modern architecture, which is basically huge glass greenhouses with no opening windows -- try working in something like that without A/C!!!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
1) handguns
2) 35mm camera
Now if you'll excuse me...
The wheel would have to be the most influential gadget of all time. Certainly more influential than some phone.
The original Gadget the atomic bomb
Hey Slashdotters!
Which is the most influential letter in the alphabet of all time? Not just the one that's had the most impact through the years, but the letter whose combination of style, utility, and inspiration will take us through the early part of the 21st century and beyond!
My pick? You might think it's going to be a vowel, but I'm going to surprise "u" and go with... "C". A little "controversial", maybe, but hey, I think it's a "classy" "choice"!
Well, now you know my pick. What's yours?!! And don't forget to tell us "y"!
Preserved food revolutionized warfare and eventually made life better for civilians as well
The HP-35, the worlds first scientific pocket calculator.
As much as I admire the quality and intentions of the iPhone, I don't see it as being that important. People were texting, calling, and (gasp!) yes, even browsing the web before an iPhone ever showed up. The locked-in experience of the time was vastly inferior to what the iPhone brought to the game, which is of course the main reason that it did so well. But, without the iPhone, the smartphone market would still have developed, and people still would be carrying tiny but powerful little computers in their pockets.
And the worms ate into his brain.
the gun
Seems to me that the printing press has probably brought down more governments and effected more change that the gun. Indeed if it had not been for the gun it would probably have done this with fewer people dying.
Glock
Although in terms of influence, Penny and her pet dog did most of the work.
Utter bullshit
The two most influential inventions that affected more people (for the positive), by far, would be indoor plumbing, and vaccines. Could argue either way which one's first.
Don't know if those are "gadgets"...
Inspector Gadget.
How about the battery, which makes all the other portable gadgets possible.
Firearms have forever changed both warfare and personal security. You can say, bow and arrow had a similarly dramatic effect — Spartans captured by Athenians 2500 years ago complained bitterly, that reed (from which arrows were made) does not distinguish between the brave and the cowards. But arrows weren't useful against fortifications and bow was not a good short-range weapon.
Now, refrigerators have dramatically altered the way we buy and prepare food... I'd nominate them if only because they tend to be underappreciated these days.
Railroads, airlines, personal cars — not sure, if you can call them "gadgets". Telegraph and telephone — sure!
And then cellular phone, followed by "smart" phone. But I think, telephones were more revolutionary than these next stages.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Plastics would have to be up there as well.
The pointy stick. Longest record of use by humanity and its predecessors (Myrs). Useful as both weapon and tool. Sharp sticks and the intelligence to use them (and later, fire) are, to a first approximation, the reason we are even a thing on this rock.
But, yeah, iPhones and drones though....
Nothing posted to
So the phrase iPhone changed how we work. Should have been
Smartphones changed our lives since it was not long after apple showcased their version that the androids were cut loose.
Let's thank them but not bow down rebel.
Duh
She said it's the Vibrator...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Try going to the little outbuilding at 2am. You'll agree.
Somehow I've gotten by without an iphone7 so far.
Indoor plumbing however changed my life.
+1
I feel like my brain just got dumber reading that list. The Wii? Fit bit? Oculus rift? Nest Thermostat? Roku Netflixs?
None of those things should even make the top 10,000 let alone the top 50. Initially I thought they were limiting it to post 1970s stuff and then they throw in an 1850s record player.
This is pointless click-bait, made even more obvious by putting iPhone on the top. Why isn't the QWERTY keyboard the most influential gadget of all time? The beloved iPhones still use QWERTY, no? Why isn't telephone itself at the top? That's what connected the world, no? How about telegram, the precursor to both internet and telephone? "Gadget" and "most influential" are both loosely defined terms. The sole purpose of this article was to somehow get iPhone to the top.
I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Are you listening?
Plastics.
Nothing posted to
Two words. Artificial Refrigeration. THAT has been the most influential gadgetry of all time. Before refrigeration much of our time was spent preserving food for lean times. Indoor plumbing would probably be second for sure.
Reduced disease and overall made our communities (at least those that have them) much better places to live. Not to mention, I can poop in the comfort and warmth of my home without is smelling!
-joe
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
The gadget that started the nuclear arms race and almost ended humanity.
Very useful to get rid of anybody. Unless you get the infamous "gatonet" in Brazil.
I'd say it was the transistor radio.
and other non-electric writing devices. These enabled records and information to be reliably kept for many years and sent great distances.
In too many surveys like this people only think about what is new/revolutionary in their lifetime and completely forget about what came before. Myopic!
Everybody knows it's the TOWEL.
:T:R:A:N:S:
1. Your fridge. You don't have to cook every day, you can store food for longer periods of time, you don't need to throw away as much food. This also applies to storing other things (not just food).
2. Sewing machine.
3. Washing machine.
You can't handle the truth.
As much as I admire the quality and intentions of the iPhone, I don't see it as being that important. People were texting, calling, and (gasp!) yes, even browsing the web before an iPhone ever showed up. The locked-in experience of the time was vastly inferior to what the iPhone brought to the game, which is of course the main reason that it did so well. But, without the iPhone, the smartphone market would still have developed, and people still would be carrying tiny but powerful little computers in their pockets.
Before the iPhone, people were lamenting several things about cell phones:
1) They all had a keypad 0-9 display. You had all sorts of features, but you had to remember which keypad number activated speaker phone, and which number sent to voice mail, and so on.
2) The carriers controlled the software with an iron fist. The industry was lamenting that it was impossible to write any programming for cell phones because you had to go through the carriers, who imposed an onerous process and only allowed applications they *thought* might sell well enough to be worth their effort. (And I remember specifically that Tetris was allowed on phones due to its popularity, and pretty-much nothing else.)
When I heard that Apple was making a cell phone, my immediate thought was "well, they'll never get the carriers to accept it". I was rather *surprised* when Apple managed to get ATT on board as a carrier, and I think a lot of other people were as well.
Then the iPhone came out and it had some features:
1) The icons changed based on circumstance. The "speakerphone" function was an icon that was indicative of its function. You no longer had to remember which number to press. A lot of people don't understand how innovative this was at the time, for phones.
2) You could download apps for all sorts of things, and you could write your own apps. This led to a wide spectrum of useful things, but it included some surprising apps such as one that identified bird species using the camera. Things that the carriers would *never* have thought of as useful or even interesting now suddenly became possible.
3) The thing worked seamlessly. You could be listening to music and when a call came in it paused the music, put it into the background, and allowed you to talk for a bit. When you hung up the music continued from where it had left off.
4) There were a bunch of other innovations too, such as the keypad expanding the key when you touched it when your finger covered the key. That made it *much* easier to use a small-display keypad.
We don't see much to recommend the iPhones nowadays because everyone and their brother is making spartphones (including, for instance Microsoft), but when you compare them to what was available at the time, they really were quite the innovation.
Probably the most influential and some would argue the worst invention of all time.
Swords?
1. Mathematics
2. Money
3. Yoga pants
Everything else starts here.
I can forgive ignoring the lighter, the bread slicer, the zipper, and the soldiering iron, but no duck tape?
My grandmother, who before passing away not too long ago at the age of 99, felt that despite seeing automobiles, computers and television all come of age, the microwave oven was the thing that made the largest impact in her life as a housewife. Her husband was a doctor, and with his irregular hours, it was nearly impossible to have a hot dinner ready for him when he got home, but the microwave changed that completely. It was a revolution in the production of hot meals, which is something most of us take for granted.
A pencil / writing stick.
All other gadgets non existence, bur for stoke of the pencil.
There's many more important tools and appliances, sure, buy my ecig is the greatest gadget i own. No fancy vaping equipment or anything dumb, just a simple nicotine flute to get me by. I'd charge it instead of my phone. So many people I know have kicked smoking after long habits like myself and even though it's often mocked to me it really is a little miracle.
Where's the GoPro? That one should rank pretty high if you ask me.
Soap.
Obviously it's James Bond's Aston Martin.
My mother would tell you it's the washing machine and the VCR
And there's the portable phone, about the only thing that no culture on earth sees as satanic. Now that's influence!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Mobile phone beats the computer. The advances of communications achieved in the poorest areas of the world is nothing short of amazing. Computers still need to achieve that kind of impact.
I am talking about personal computers of course.
I fully realize that a cell phone is a type of a computer, but if we start considering it, it will become a category of gadgets, not a gadget.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Inclined plane.
Yup, I said it.
FUCK
The iPhone ... forever changing how we ... complete many everyday tasks.
Like what? Seriously.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Vibrator
Without that, most of what we are now taking for granted and has shaped modern society wouldn't work. Now if you want to go back a lifetime or 2, then of course this answer changes. Radically.
https://web.archive.org/web/20111205021713/http://www.channel4.com:80/programmes/stephen-frys-100-greatest-gadgets/articles/the-list
During the Manhattan project, the bomb was referred to as a gadget.
You can easily debate the influence, since it only covers the mid-20th century onward; but it was actually called a "gadget".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ok, technically this isn't a pocket gadget, but it is still a gadget.
Everything is modern life is supported by electricity. iPhones, AirConditioners, Mass Transportation, Warehouse Distribution Systems, New York City, Modern Factories, and yes even the financial sector.
Electricity is supported by the steam engine (and lot's of copper wire).
Whether it be coal fired, natural gas fired, oil fired, or a nuclear powered electric plant these are nothing more than giant steam engines. We boil water with coal, gas, oil, and nuclear fission to heat water to make steam to turn a turbine to make electricity. Yes, steam power supports modern life and even modern warfare. Thomas the Tank Engine lives on in our modern steam turbine systems even in aircraft carriers.
I wish I could say the most important gadget of all time was the hybrid nuclear/lithium ion battery that could power my city for 1 year on a single charge or solar power, wind power, or hydroelectric power, but alas it is not.
Unfortunately we need to dig stuff up and burn it, which over the long term of the planet isn't a sustainable concept. Eventually we will run out of things to dig up and burn, but I guess would genetically engineer trees to grow really fast and switch to wood/charcoal power.
I will give the final word to CIV4.
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
Soap.
Gretchen Ross: Look, I should go. For physics, Monnitoff is having me write this essay. Greatest invention ever to benefit mankind. Donnie Darko: It’s Monnitoff. But that’s easy. Antiseptics. Like the whole sanitation thing. Joseph Lister, 1895. Before antiseptics, there was no sanitation, especially in medicine. Gretchen Ross: You mean soap?
Why is this shit in every thread?
That was just lame. Right up there with the click bait at the bottom of the screen, lol.
The little tiny LED flashlight on my keychain has had more effect than an iPhone for me, so meh.
The shaped flint?
Well, I can't say I'm surprised that they omitted "the red pen" from their list.
Why is this shit in every thread?
Because you haven't cleaned your glasses?
The iPhone was a total joke when it came out. It was pretty and different, but there were no applications for it other than what it came with (!), you couldn't even download files or copy and paste text. It was a few years before it got within reach of the capability of the Treo 650 I had at the time, which was my second smartphone more capable than the original iPhone and not even the best smartphone available at the time. Even then, the iPhone was and remains a toy to enable consumption, not a real computer. A real computer puts you in control of what it can do, allowing you to write and run your own programs on the device and download and run applications at will.
The iPhone's success damaged computing itself more than any device or event in history by popularizing curated computing in place of general-purpose computing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Wouldn't that be the wheel? Or if it has to be something that is used standalone, one of the other simple machines invented in ancient times: the inclined plane (including screws) or the lever (mostly construction and cargo cranes in modern times).
We are the 198 proof..
I'm sorry but PalmOS and even Windows Mobile did all of this way before the iPhone even hit the drawing board. There were even mobile phone versions in the the form of the Treo and Tungsten C.
The only revolutionary thing about the iPhone is it broke out of the techie niche that previous devices had been trapped in and brought it mainstream, but I suspect the biggest reason for that is fashion rather than technical.
Exactly. Multi-touch aside, the iPhone wasn't particularly innovative technologically, but it was the first mainstream non-techie smart phone.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The slap chop! It has saved me countless minutes from my food prep!
Having browsed at 0 and seeing many items far more influential noted - I'd note that most of the items proposed hardly qualify as a gadget.
Aside from prototype nuclear weapons, I can't see a circumstance where I'd accept 'gadget' as a descriptive of an item which couldn't be held in the hand... "Hand me that gadget over there", pointing in the direction of a hair dryer / cell phone / power drill / etc, sounds reasonable to me, while "Haul that gadget over here", pointing at a chain engine hoist / deep freezer / electron microscope / etc, sounds bloody odd / incorrect.
None of this is to say that I agree with the iphone as a choice... I don't. I just don't think an airplane or printing press qualifies as a 'gadget'... A gun, however, might.
Most people can't comprehend or ponder periods of time greater than their own life span.
And this period is getting shorter and shorter. So for some, this can be just a few years or even a few seconds.
Now, what was I saying?
Penis.
The plough was a lot more influential than the wheel. Without the plough we would never have progressed far enough to need the wheel. It provided the surplus which all over advances depend on.
In the last 100 years the most influential gadget is the washing machine. It released women from the home into the workplace, transforming society. The computer probably ranks second in importance in last 100 years but if the computer/internet combo had done as much good as one would hope then we would be a lot smarter than we are and the given answers would be less ridiculous.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Plough, spear, cooking pot, shoe, clothing, stirrup, wheel, compass, boat, sail, steam engine, sextant, knife, lightbulb, refrigeration, fishing hook, vacuum cleaner, broom, roof, walls, toothbrush, doors, scissors, calculator, windows, saw, axe, lathe, printing press, telescope, telegraph, slide rule, mirrors, drill, screw, radio, TV, to name a few.
I was reading for example that the bicycle literally changed the DNA of England in a measurable way when people could now find mates a few villages over. The train would have had a similar type impact but might not qualify as a gadget.
As for the iPhone (which I have one of) they will be something quaint we find in yard sales in 10 years. Basically like having a kickass VCR in 1982.
I would say that the iPhone mostly just shook up the complacency of the telcos more than anything else. The iPhone was one of these technological developments that was inevitable. Just like ever improving battery technology makes the electric car inevitable. Tesla may very well move things along a bit more quickly but the electric car pretty much completely depends upon modern processors, batteries, and brushless motors.
Raspberry Pi, Perl, or the Apple ][ ?
Computing logic to the masses !
The number "zero" was pretty big too....
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
Not the wheel, soap, firearm, electricity, etc.
Second, the list seems the be heavily weighted in current technology, kind of understandable to make people care, but the google glass of today is the Nintendo VR of the 90’s or the nest, or the rift, or segway, or 3d printer, 20 years these may be a joke
Do I really need to explain why?
Assuming gadgets are smaller things, the most influential of all time (excluding future gadgets) must be the stick. Where would we be today without the stick? A wheel is just a round thing that rolls away from you and falls over, unless you have a stick. A nail is just something that hurts to step on until you can hit it with a metal coated stick. And of course, sticks let you poke things. You'd never know that hungry lion was dead until you poked it with a stick and it didn't move. Imagine if early man didn't have poking sticks. They'd play dead until they actually died because they'd never know when it was safe to move again. Without the stick, our whole species would have died out.
If that's a bit too early for you, then lets jump ahead to Facebook. Facebook needs the stick. Facebook wouldn't exist without the stick. Emails? Who reads those things. But a poke, well, you have to respond to a poke. Facebook got around by poking everybody. You can't ignore a poke. But without the stick there would be no poking, Facebook wouldn't have been able to touch you. Facebook would have stayed an online yearbook, never reaching its full potential.
So yeah. Without the stick we wouldn't have social media, we'd all be stuck with AOL and MySpace accounts, we wouldn't have straight pretzels, and we'd all starve to death as kids because we'd never be able to walk away from that road kill.
The stick gets my vote for the most influential gadget of all previous times and I hope you'll comment on TIME's site about their serious lack of respect for the awesome, the wonderful, the worthy yet humble stick.
By not defining "gadget" clearly enough, they opened the List to mere "Inventions", and as most Posts so far in this thread show, people have difficulty distinguishing the two.
If we go by the American Heritage Dictionary:
"n. A small specialized mechanical or electronic device; a contrivance."
Emphasis on "small".
Things like Refrigeration, the Printing Press, and the Nuclear Bomb just don't qualify. Just making something smaller is iterative.
On the list, three clearly stand out- the Regency Transistor Radio, The Record Player, and the Brownie Camera, and only one of those was totally New- the Phonograph. Not only did nothing exist like it ever before, it introduced the concept of Time-Shifting; no longer was a Performance an ephemeral thing. Something could be recorded once, and played back indefinitely. That very concept made later Moving Pictures, Radio, TV, Walkman/CD/DVD, etc. comprehensible. It also, for the most part, killed off the "Home Music" Entertainment Industry; why bother learning how to play a Piano if one wanted Music in their life, whenever wanted?
The Brownie would be next, and it also introduced a new Concept. Instead of dealing with Chemicals, and Plates, and fuss, one merely snapped a picture into a cheap, simple box, and sent the box off, and later get the box back, with a handful of Snapshots. Photography became a household hobby; even Dad could do it.
The Regency Radio was iterative; it took something big, boxy, fussy, and expensive, and turned it into something cheap that could be slipped into a pocket. But it also introduced a new concept called "Teen- Agers". They didn't want to be stuck at home listening to Mitch Miller on the Family Magnavox; they wanted their music Portable, and _without_ Parental Supervision. "Going Mobile: Beep-Beep!"
A fourth could be added, and it too introduced an entirely new yet subtle Concept- Accurate Time. Even when first introduced, the Harrison H4 Chronometer had limited applicability. _Very_ few people had the need to know Time to the nearest second back then. And BTW, which Time? London Time, Paris Time, New York Time? Even today, while most people happily use a pocket GPS without a fucking clue, they have no grasp of the basic Concept behind it- Accurate Universal Time.
Captcha: miracle
#1 Gadget that changed the world.
Radio.
90% of everything you use today depends on that first radio invention that was a gadget and curiosity.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My name is ozymandias. King of Kings. Look at my works ye mighty and despair.
It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.
But, how does it know?
I agree with most of the posters here that things like refrigeration and air-conditioning are among the most influential "gadgets" of all time - or, at least for the period of post World War II. The modern world would bit a lot different without them.
However, using the original article's limited sense of reference I would consider the (original) iPod to be far more influential than the iPhone (you could swap them around in Time's rankings); looking back, the original iPod's release really did start a small, personal revolution in our pockets: the iPhone just built on that.
At Spencers gift stores everywhere.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I vote CowboyNeal
The first lamps were a candle or something. These days, electric with LED lights or whatever, but either way: light when you want it, not just when the sun is up? Light where you want it... for example, in a cave, or in a building? Pretty huge.
Does "lamp" qualify as a gadget? From TFS:
Huh, all their choices were brand name items and all recent technological items.
Okay, more influential than anything else on their list: the original Apple ][ computer, which (combined with VisiCalc) jump-started the personal computer revolution. It deserves a place on that list more than whatever fine model of ThinkPad they picked, more than Raspberry Pi, more even than the Commodore 64.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I've always considered the iPhone to be a step back from the Palm Pilot. The Palm Pilot actually allowed you to have your information in your hand. The iPhone just opened a hand held gateway to the internet. I'd question what the iPhone has over the Palm Pilot that makes it more of an important gadget.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The ones that you have highlighted are definitely worthy of making the list. But most of the others are not. Colour television yes, but why the Sony TV which came out 14 years after colour tv was released.
If you want to go small electronic item, the home wifi router should be in that list long before lots of other things.
It's a 412MHz ARM11 with 128MB RAM from 2007.
What about the 624MHz ARM powered iPAQ's with 128MB RAM from 2004?
The H4 clock developed by John Harrison in the 1760's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It was the most accurate portable timepiece yet developed and revolutionized ocean travel since it allowed ships to accurately determine their precise location and thus made reliable ocean commerce possible.
With only two exceptions everything in TIME's list is less than 50 years old, most of it less than 30. Really a bit narrow for a list that is supposed to be "of all time".
And yes, the wheel, pendulum clock and lever should be on that list too.
Clock.
Astrolab
And no portable typewriter?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Duh!
Or ball point pen
Without low cost paper of consistent quality, none of the other gadgets could have been designed.
My first choice would have been the pencil, but I thought again and realized that pencils are not very useful without good paper.
Without it, we wouldn't be working or doing much else after sunset.
Because now I don't have to deal with the sh!t non-unicode love of slashdot
The common element in most of the 0 items on the Time Magazine Gadget List is all the items use directly or indirectly electricity from a public utility generating station.
Here is what I am urging you to see: Most of these gadgets one way or another add a human value of hours of attention to hours of electricity.
In the early 980's I got advertising rates and the promised audience from a TV station and I compared that with the total kilowatt hours likely to be used by the same audience powering their TV set to watch the same hours of TV as was sold by the TV station to a broadcaster. At that time, putting on a TV show resulted in "selling" many more dollars of electricity than the dollars spent to purchase TV time.
All modern gadgets and even huge structures such as the physical internet are still doing essentially the same thing. Let me say this more precisely; as the gadgets are driven to do interesting things, the gadgets claim our attention.
From this angle, the winner of the "most interesting gadget of all time" might be determined as being the gadget that has diverted more human hours of attention
than any other gadget. Perhaps we should change the spelling from "gadget" to "getget" to emphasize the devices are getting something from us.
as it meant we could develope matches to easily burn all the holy books!
Electricity
The laser has to be the most important gadget of modern times. Without lasers we wouldn't have cell phones, computers or anything made by lithography. We use it to measure temperatures and distances. Lasers are used in missile guidance systems. Even my smartphone uses a laser for the camera focus.
By creating an accurate, mobile timepiece, the chronometer made it possible to accurately chart one's longitude from a central point thereby creating accurate maps of the world (surveying chronometers), accurate navigation of seagoing vessels and increased trade between countries. (Note: I may be a bit biased in this because I just bought a wonderful Hamilton 21 Chronometer, which is widely believed to be the most accurate mechanical mobile timepiece ever constructed).
Secondly, the Telegraph. Known as the "Victorian Internet", it connected countries and the world at a speed never seen before. Please look up the book "The Victorian Internet" to see it's affects.
Gordon
Everything on that list requires them. Can you imagine an iPhone made with vacuum tubes?
It led the way in hardware and features with the iPhone playing catch-up.
I was reading for example that the bicycle literally changed the DNA of England in a measurable way when people could now find mates a few villages over.
Quick question: how does an object literally change the deoxyribonucleic acid of a country?
or Reed pens, maybe Papyrus
That's a no-brainer. The Fleshlight.
If the printing press isn't a gadget, then the laser printer certainly is. Maybe the listed bubblejet printer counts, too.
However the whole list falls apart on the semantics of "gadget". Time seem to have warped the definition to mean small (-ish) pop-culture commercial product. Thus limiting the scope to stuff produced within the past 50 years, with very, very few exceptions (box brownie camera and wind-up record player).
I would suggest that in its time, the lever counted as a gadget, as does the medical syringe, adding machine, clock / watch, slide rule, vacuum cleaner and electric torch. Maybe even a bicycle, too. You could probably have an entire article on the top 50 kitchen "gadgets" - most of which have been more influential than a lot of the media-orientated ones in this list.
But as others have alluded, Time has to pander to both its advertisers and its audience. So it will inevitably be hugely biased in favour of an amercian, middle-aged consumer.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
wow... Apple iPhone :))
I agreee ...
According to Steven Fry;
"They invented it so early that it was a disadvantage. It held back the course of Chinese history."
and:
"Glass. With glass came lens grinding, came telescopes and microscopes, and through spectacles, intellectuals and scientists had an extra twenty years of reading and active life, and further, all the way through to the invention of medical science, flasks, beakers, retorts . . . Because it's chemically neutral, glass, doesn't react to anything that's in it. And the Chinese had no glass made in all of China from the fourteenth century right up to the nineteenth century. "
and....
"And therefore no mirrors. So, in fact, just because they were satisfied with the tea cup and didn't bother . . . This incredibly ingenious race who would have otherwise invented so many other things, and did invent so many other things, were . . . the one thing they couldn't do. And electronics used glass for valves and so on. "
QI Transcript
Why is this shit in every thread?
Because we still have AC posting.
Because without it we'd of proven Malthus right a long time ago.
I had a PDA back in those days. It was obvious to most everyone (except Microsoft, who completely missed the boat) that PDAs and phones were going to converge. The only question was if PDAs were going to pick up phone capability, or if phones were going to pick up PDA capability. Microsoft was in a position to make the former happen - they had vanquished Palm and controlled most of the PDA market with Windows CE/Mobile/their name of the year. But even when HP tried to make a WinCE PDA which could also make phone calls, Microsoft didn't lift a finger to help them.
Blackberry ended up taking the first step to adding general-purpose computing to a phone. Once they opened that floodgate, it was a race to see who could make their phone the most general general-purpose computer (except Microsoft, even though that was exactly what they were trying to do with PDAs - trying to port the Windows API to PDAs).
The only real contributions of the iPhone was lack of a physical keyboard - everyone else (except LG) was using a Blackberry-style keyboard, or a sliding keyboard, or a Palm Graffiti-style writing space. That was a huge bet by Apple, and the iPhone served as the proof of concept which green-lighted everyone else's touch-only on-screen keyboards most of them were already playing with in R&D. (The app ecosystem - instead of a handful of apps baked into the phone by the manufacturer - came later). A lot of the form and functionality people attribute to the iPhone actually came out first in the LG Prada, indicating the industry was already moving in that direction even when the iPhone hadn't yet seen the light of day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Dialectician. Archology.
Obviously the most influential items are stone knives and bear skins, from which you can build a duotronic circuit to access your tricorder, and decide the entire course of 20th century history.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The Colt Single Action Army Revolver.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Clearly it's the dildo.
I was reading for example that the bicycle literally changed the DNA of England in a measurable way when people could now find mates a few villages over. The train would have had a similar type impact but might not qualify as a gadget..
Tinder has to top all of those then :)
C, D and O outrank our entire industry.
Does not need to be a smart one :P :)
but it has to tell time
Knife.
spear
This. Spear is the thing that lifted us to the top of the food pyramid.
Best thing ever, at least within the Linux world!
Of course!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
the internal combustion engine has had a LOT of influence. the ICE's need for fuel has driven wars. the acquisition of the fuel has poisoned towns/villages, caused earthquakes, wiped out sea life in the gulf. the ICE's burning of fuel is melting the polar ice caps, altered the weather, made the sea more acidic and despite knowing that, it still threatens the future of the human race.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Ah, but this is a list of 'gadgets'.
I.e. electronic devices targeted to solving 1st world problems, not real ones. That cuts stuff like 'refrigerator' or 'combustion engine' right out of the contest.
I guess that fridges, combustion engines etc might be out (a bit big to be a "gadget")? However I think that mobile phones in generally would certainly count and you certainly can't have an iPhone without first having had a cellular/mobile phone...
I seem to recall that the most important gadget of the 20th century was the washing machine, as it freed women from their house duties enough to realize that their lot in life was crap, and (together with WW2) led to the Women's suffrage movement and other important advances in equality.
Or, you know, an iPhone...
Its the pen, hands down.
Screws. Invented about 1060 to keep visors and helmets together on armour.
Now, try to find a gadget that doesn't have this gadget. Remove all the screws from your gadget and ghen discuss influence and prevalence.
Not my pick BTW. im indebted to the author commissioned in 2000 to write a book about the most influential tool of the past millenium. its a good book!
...for it contains only stuff that matters!
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
What a retarded piece of contemporary fluff bullshit. Surely people of the past thought the same thing about horseless carriages, pocket watches and clocks accurate enough for navigation, the compass, the sextant, cargo ships, railroads, TNT, the fucking wheel, portable fire sticks, airplanes, radio, all sorts of farming equipment, the telegraph and the telephone, operational amplifiers, general purpose computers, vacuum tubes, semiconductors, etc. etc.
The iPhone is just a polished consumer device that presents a variety of previously existing technologies in an appealing way to technopeasant masses. In no way do high volume sales translate to relevant influence on humanity. Go research Tulip Mania and I'm sure TIME would have presented the tulip as one of the most influential investment strategies of all time.
In reality this meaningless shit will be forgotten about in 5 generations, just like TIME and all the other dinosaurs that failed to make the leap from dead-tree media to the Internet.
Portable, personal, transformative, and with a legacy that changed (and terminated, at time) many lives.
Oh boy. I bet you're a millenial who thinks the world started in 2007 when St Jobs stood on stage with his overpriced copy of plenty that had gone before but with added fanboy fairy dust?
This is where I become tedious and irritating by pointing out something totally outside the scope of the article, which I have honoured by not reading it. To me there is no doubt that the humble knife is the most influential gadget of all time. Invented something like 2 million years ago, it is still one of the most universally useful tools around - cutting edge, as it were. It probably originated by accident from when the hammerstones that our ancestors would have used to crack nuts (like our cousins, the chimpanzees and others still do) broke and formed a sharp edge, and although we use different materials now, it is remarkable how little it has fundamentally changed over the eons. How many smartphones will be around in two million years?
No, respectfully not a troll. I do appreciate that "the wheel" might be stretching the definition of "gadget", but on the other hand just think what that humble invention has enabled is to do...
Thank you.
I'm not sure that the Home Wifi Router qualifies; it just eliminates one cable. Instead of being limited by the length of Ethernet cables, one is limited by the range of Wifi. One is still tethered.
Again, sticking with the strict definition of a small self-contained "Gadget" that utterly changes the way Life is lived thereafter, I would also list:
Eyeglasses
Amalgam Fillings
Elastic Underwear (Don't laugh; when was the last time that you saw Garters on a Man? (Dad wore them; I'm old.))
Cylinder Locks
Thermometers
When it comes to Electronics, pretty much all of it is iterative; even the Walkman was a shrunk-down version of portable Cassette Decks already available. The handheld GPS depends on a huge Infrastructure already in place. LED Lighting is already huge, but is hobbled by preconceptions about how Lighting is done.
The DMM is pretty close, because it packs in so much more functionality than an old Simpson 260 VOM, which at one time only a Professional could afford.
The Pocket Calculator- Hell Yes! We now have more than two Generations of Engineers and Students who lack an intuitive sense of Math. (The most common mistake seems to be being wrong by exactly an order of Magnitude.)
The Digital Laser Level. In just a few years, I saw an entire Surveying Group replaced by these handy little Gadgets, much like our Professional Photography Group was replaced by any Experimenter with a Digital Camera. I don't count Digital Cameras in the same Class, because they are iterative in nature, and Camera Optics has a long way to go to catch up with the Sensors. The Digital Laser Level was New.
In fact, I have a Beef with Digital Cameras. They are just _wrong_ in concept. We _don't_ live in a RGB World. We are just constrained to that Concept by Biology.
Imagine, if you will, a Sensor design that counts every Photon coming in, and when appropriate, sums those counts for intensity. Each photon also gets measured for energy; UV is higher energy than IR for instance. To eliminate all Optics issues, the Sensors are bundled together in a Sphere, with each individual "Pixel" Collimated; it only sees the photons that it is directly aimed at, and irrelevant photons are discriminated against by Coincidence techniques.
These Cameras exist, in an inside-out manner, starting with HERA back in the Eighties, moving on to GAMMASPHERE now, and GRETA is next. Oh, they are Sensitive only to Gamma Rays at present, but the Principle is the same; Photons are Photons.
In fact, for Visual Photons, such a Camera would be quite compact. Unfortunately, processing images obtained this way is currently impractical.
Captcha: metrical
... is not as good as Ask Slashdot.
The Gadget
The BBC used to run a documentary - "Electric Dreams" - about a family that lived like people did in each decade of the past century. It clearly showed that the washing machine was the real life changer, the number one reason running a family no longer was an actual full time job. It should without any doubt be on the top of this list, well above the refrigerator.
To myself, the cellphone would be the number one life changer, not the smartphone. It's not so much carrying a computer around that makes the huge difference, it's being able to communicate with anybody at all times. I find it almost inconveivable how much time we used to spent making appointments and waiting for each other at meeting points. Going into town or to a concert of festival used to start with making appointments. Now you just go there and meet up. Even though we now do all that using smart phone features, it was the cell phone that was the game changer.
0x or or snor perron?!
Those young'uns have just short memories.
What were we talking about, again?
Knife is number one - in multitude of forms over time is the most interesting "wearable" gadget. ... it changed drastically history many times. True disruptive technology.
and
"beware the Ides of March."
Hands down!
It's less a list of "influential gadgets" and more a list of "junk that middle-class suburban manchildren with too much money on their hands have bought"
The Palm Pilot did all the things the iPhone did long before the iPhone.
Plow
Spear
The Knife and Sword
Fire
Cloth
A House
The Bed
Bandages
The Refrigerator
Hammer, Anvil, and Chisle
The Saw, Hewn, Chisel, and Plane
Bow and Arrow
Matches and Lighter
Spinning Wheel
Button and Zipper
Toothbrush, Toothpaste, and Floss
Cotton Gin
The Grain Mill
The Compass
The Pen, Paper, and Pencil
The Boat and Ship
Steam Engine and Locomotive
Penicillin
Generator/Alternator
Electric Light Bulb
The Microwave Oven
Gas and Diesel Engines
The Umbrella
The Washing-machine and Dryer
Bicycle
The Internet
Telephone
Record Player
Television
The Personal Computer
The Motorcycle and Automobile
The Airplane
The Rocket
The Neodymium Magnet
The Space Shuttle
The Integrated Circuit
The Transistor, Capacitor, Inductor, Wire, and Printed Circuit Boards
Currency
The Light Emitting Diode
The Cellphone
The Amplifier and Speaker
Gadgets by definition are supposed to be things we don't need.
To state that there's an important gadget is a contradiction.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
1. Bow drill for making fire.
2. Soap
3. Plow
Penis.
The Fleshlight.
Paper
Initially I thought they were limiting it to post 1970s stuff and then they throw in an 1850s record player.
Dude! That's the only way to listen to vinyl. If you're not going to use that record player in the article, you might as well just buy a CD or an MP3. You guys are so behind the times here.
The 7 basic machines
fire
the printing press
I think Gutenberg changed it all.
Well if we exclude inventions, a gadget would be the last thing you remove before getting naked.
Trouble is Time mucked it up by including things like a TV set - an appliance not a gadget.
A good gadget is also breakable, and you might fret if you loose it.
1) Wedding Ring. Women know the value of this, and marking the man as ' owned'
2) Reading Glasses
3) Watch, and quartz watch to pre-mobile phone days. Calculator watch for nerds
4) Compact with mirror and lipstick - every women packs one but not all women have iPhones.
5) Before dentistry, false teeth
6) Till 1900, everyone packed a pocket or knife.My first pocketknife.
7) Biro - Bic pen - Fountain pen, and before that quill and ink
8) Can opener
9) remote control or keys - because prior to 1920 keys were not universal.
Now the iPhone is a gadget + wealth/status symbol plus a gossip pocket-knife + a brain for dummies
This comment section is pretty much just a contest to see who can be the most pedantic pedant to ever pedant.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
The transistor and the atom bomb.
I'd go with agriculture first, then literacy. Then there's the clock perhaps. The light bulb (perhaps electrical generator and/or transformers).
This is no different than those articles that run in Rolling Stone every few years listing the "greatest guitarists of all time" where whatever flavor of the week guitar hero is near the top of the list and in the next list is either gone or way at the bottom.
Hell, the fact that the Segway even is on this list shows what a joke it is.
None. Not one.
followed by the glasses and the pen. I use the three of them daily.
Needed for building all these things in the first place.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Please. There's been so many things that were invented since the dawn of time that it's an irrelevant question.
The most enduring important invention, in my opinion, was the printing press. When information could be mass produced and distributed the world got a lot smaller. Of course there's been problems with information control for as long as people have communicated but this was the huge step.
We asked a group of elderly relatives what they considered the invention that created the biggest change in their lives and their answer was the telephone. Being able to communicate over distance was an incredible change. To be able to contact someone immediately is something we take for granted.
Electronics are nifty but it all seems to come down to the ability to communicate in better ways.
Including the 'needles' made of plant spines other sharp objects. Without this we wouldn't have been able to stitch pelts together to make clothing and clothing allowed us to live in nearly every environment.
My list also includes the knife. Early ones were made from stone, such as flint, by striking the flint with another stone shaping it into a hand held gadget with a cutting edge. It's the direct ancestor of my pocket knife. It provided a simple tool that was used to shape things such as pelts, branches, etc. Must be older than the needle.
Last, but definitely least, I'd say the fire kit which would consist of a stick of hardwood that could be made to rotate fast using the hands or a small bow onto a softer wood. Friction would create hot wood power that was used to start fires. Fire gave access to food which needed to be cooked such as roots and tubers and food which was better cooked such as meat. Our ancestors also used fire to manipulate their environment to their benefit.
Most of the gadgets in the article are not available to many or most of the earth's population but a cutting gadget, sewing gadget, and control of fire shaped provided for our species survival.
Nate
The plow.
It's obviously the mobile phone. Smart phones are just addenda because almost anyt problem you can solve with a smart phone, you could call someone and figure out. But my favorite invention is the bicycle.
The battery powered dildoe
Nothing here older than 40 years. What about the telephone, by Alexander Bell?
Go get a three inch deck screw and drive it into a piece of wood with a hand screwdriver.
You can't. You certainly can't all day long.
One might think this makes the screwgun (drill) the most important, but it's not, it's the battery that makes that possible.
The things that change the world are ALWAYS the things that allow you to store energy and use it later. The bow and arrow, dynamite, the internal combustion engine, the clock spring, hell, the weights on a cuckoo clock. If you can do work when it's easy and spend it when it's hard, you are winning at life.
Gadgets: printing press; electric light bulb; internal combustion engine; battery; telegraph; telephone; cathode ray tube; telescope; microscope; transistor; integrated circuit; (and many more)
Tech: steam power; A/C current & long-distance electrical xmission (Tesla); assembly line; hydroelectric; automobiles; rockets; satellites; nuclear fusion; many more
Achievements: controlled use of fire; flint; stone tools; spear; wheeled transportation; smelting; agriculture; hybridization; domestication of animals; controlled fermentation; throwing clay; mud brick construction; thatched roof; organised communities; cave painting; heiroglyphs; alphabit; written word; diversification of language; boats; navigation by stars; Stonehenge observatory; sextant; philosophic inquiry; library; scientific method; pasteurization; germ theory; medicinal use of plants; synthetic meds; sterilization; surgery; and so on.
Out, by some definitions of "gadget":
blacksmith {tongs, bellows, hammer, anvil}. Tongs are listed by the ancient Rabbis (Pirkei Avot, Chapter 5, Mishna 8) as first being made by God, because blacksmiths need a set of tongs to make new ones.
sewing needle
spinning wheel
screwdriver, hammer, pliers
knife
Allowed, by all:
toaster
clocks & watches, including sundials
spirit level
lock washer
laser pointer
safety razor
electric shaver
pencils (wooden, mechanical)
pens (fountain, ball point, etc.)
Whiteboard markers
mop, broom, dustpan, vacuum cleaner
sponge, scotchbrite pads
Norelco Philips Carrycorder 150 (Cassette)
ratchet {screw or socket} driver
Vice Grip Pliers
Hand Egg Beater
Coffee Grinder
Coffee Maker {Percolator, French Press, Mr. Coffee, siphon / vacuum}
vegetable peeler
can opener
Slide rule {especially circular}
international power socket adapter (with or without a transformer)
would you rather have GNAA/goatse/or golden girls?
I chose this one because I saw a cartoon of Leonardo da Vinci in his lab with a TV set, holding the power plug he says to his assistant, "Now I have to invent the electric receptacle, the antenna, and God knows what else."
mfwright@batnet.com
Paper's ability to copy almost anything by pressing into it and rubbing graphite, is the most substantial I think.
I feel like my brain just got dumber reading that list. The Wii? Fit bit? Oculus rift? Nest Thermostat? Roku Netflixs?
None of those things should even make the top 10,000 let alone the top 50. Initially I thought they were limiting it to post 1970s stuff and then they throw in an 1850s record player.
nobody mentioned the nose hair trimmer.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The big rock to smash things with. That started everything. Without it we'd still be lemurs.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
the chromosome, or the mitochondrion.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
People mated typically within a reasonable walk of their village. With a bike that range increased. These villages were old and a bit inbred. Bikes then stirred the DNA pot.
Check out this list of 50 most influential gadgets.
You won't believe what #1 is.
Tell us what you think in the comments.
What about the refrigerator. It has revolutionized how we have lived for the last 50 years.