85 Big Ideas that Changed the World

ccnull writes "Forbes just put out its well thought-out list of 85 breakthroughs since 1917 (sneakers) that have revolutionized the way we live. This is interesting on a number of levels -- crazy trivia (the microprocessor and the answering machine invented in the same year!?), a reminder of the past (the modem: 1962), and a frightening realization that not much of interest has come out of the last 10 years (a whopping 4 of the 85 ideas). Easily digestible and worth discussing."

Yeah, but

[Geaus]

New ideas are born out of necessity. The transistor was invented because vacuum tubes weren't going to cut it at any level with computers. They simply werent fast enough or reliable enough. So the transistor comes along and its one of the best inventions of the 20th century.

However we have been improving on this, and other ideas, for the last half century. Miniturization may not be a new idea or invention, but the continued process of improving an idea is just as important as the first step. Moores Law is starting to run out with computer chips, you can expect the search for quantum computing to become all the more critical when it does.

We haven't had many new ideas lately, maybe just because we are still working on the old ones?

Re:Anyone know

[KirkH]

Sometime between 1912 and 1928 [foodreference.com]. By 1928 one was made that could slice and wrap.

I actually saw some Food Network show that mentioned it. It was a really big deal at the time, although I can't remember why. Probably because kids could no longer whine: "Waa! You cut him a bigger piece!"

Re:Anyone know

[uberslack]

1928 [cbc4kids.cbc.ca]

1921 - Tetraethyl Lead

[damieng]

"Thomas Midgely adds lead to gasoline to stop power-draining knocking."

As if burning fuel wasn't bad enough already add a toxic metal to it to really juice things up. It's already banned in many countries including the USA and UK.

This site [uh.edu] has further commentary and also covers his discovery of Freons that later helped damage the ozone layer including how his final invention killed him.

Surely the whole idea of such an article is to choose the inventions with the benefit of hindsight.

tetraethyl lead

[misfit13b]

tetraethyl lead? This did not "change the way we live".

Sure it did! It "lead" the way for all of those "Unleaded Fuel Only" stickers that almost all of us have on our dashboards. I dunno about you, but I sure sleep better at night knowing that's there.

;^)

Mozilla 1.3 users

[mao che minh]

For the slide show on the Forbes web page, you have to hit "next" like 3 or 4 times until it starts showing up. In other words, it does work.

TelStar

[DankNinja]

They screwed up by saying TelStar was launched in 1954...it was launched in 1964...duh!

Re:Exactly

[WolfWithoutAClause]

No it really did. Without that car engines run rough as hell; these days we know more ways to avoid premature ignition, but back in those days, there was only one, and he found it.

Without this, motor cars wouldn't have been practical. And frankly the replacements don't work as well- lead protects valve seats far, far better.

The Day the Universe Changed

[jlazzaro74]

If you like this sort of thing, check out James Burke's "Connections", "Connections2", and "The Day the Universe Changed". They show just how closely related and interdependent histories greatest inventions are. They should be considered mandatory viewing for any geek.

Multiplane Camera

[MamasGun]

However, the credit for the Multiplane Camera was given to Walt Disney, not to its true inventor, Ub Iwerks. That guy got ZERO respect from Disney. Walt also took credit for the final design for Mickey Mouse...guess what? Iwerks drew that. According to animation historians, Disney couldn't draw to save his own life. He relied on Iwerks to take his scribbles and scrawls and turn them into something that actually LOOKED GOOD.

start here

[e40]

this [forbes.com] is better than the link given.

Re:Recent Ideas

[Library Spoff]

I know here in the UK BT have taken away a lot of phone boxes cause the demand isn't there due to cell phones.

dunno what superman will do tho...

Re:Tetraethyl lead

[dhogaza]

A major motivation was to improve gas mileage. By allowing for higher compression, more efficient engines gas mileage was improved by something like 30%.

Today gas is so cheap and our standard of living so high that most people aren't terribly concerned about the amount of money they spend on gasoline.

This wasn't true in the early days of the automobile and the significant boost in mileage and the corresponding lowering of the cost of operating a car was considered important.
.

Re:BUSINESS breakthroughs

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, they are listing the 85 innovations since their start 85 years ago. Seeing as how relativity predates 1917, it doesn't count.

Re:BUSINESS breakthroughs

[WEFUNK]

Yeah, the theory of relativity has a lot of meaning to the world at large. That lead to the invention of the.. oh, wait. It didn't lead to jack shit.

In addition to the rather obvious example of nuclear technology, the theory of relativity is necessary for the functionality of satellites and therefore essential to our modern communications infrastructure, GPS systems, and the many derivative technologies that depend on these systems.

Along with the discovery, development, and application of quantum mechanics, the application of Einstein's theories play an important role in the economy. I've seen studies (I really wish I had the references handy) that estimate the percentage of the US economy dependent on Quantum Mechanics and Relativity at anywhere from 30% to 75% of GDP. The higher percentages probably include indirect benefits from semiconductors, communications, as well as applications that led from derivative research.

As previously mentioned, the only reason it wouldn't have been included directly was that the list celebrates ideas since Forbes magazine began 85 years ago, not from the turn of the century when the basis for these ideas were first established.

Re:BUSINESS breakthroughs

[reverseengineer]

Because fast clocks run slow. For an operation like Global Positioning, the GPS receiver needs to know how long it took a signal from the satellites to arrive. A GPS receiver needs several satellites in order to pinpoint a location through triangulation. Given the distance that the signal has to travel, if the time calculated for the signal is inaccurate, the postion could be off by several kilometers. In order to maintain accuracy, each satellite contains an atomic clock (which employs QM- hyperfine transitions are definitely not a classical effect). All well and good- the expensive atomic clocks on the satellites keep time for much less expensive GPS recievers (which contain a quartz clock) by resetting them with a radio signal. However, orbital satellites move at a relativistically significant velocity. Left uncorrected, the atomic clocks on the GPS sats will lose about a microsecond a day. Without Einsteinian relativity, we'd have no idea why this occurred, and thus going about correcting it would be a shot in the dark. Since do we know what the time dilation equations are, we can just redefine the number of Cs-133 transitions that make up a second for the atomic clocks on the sats, so that seconds effectively tick away faster, and thus keep excellent time with ground clocks, and allow GPS to determine positions with a very high level of accuracy. Relativity has a number of other uses- gravitational lenses have allowed astronomers to see objects are too distant to be seen even with the most powerful telescopes.

As for the contributions of Quantum Mechanics on daily life, well, theory helps lead to invention. The idea of a "laser" becomes a lot more obvious if a theory of stimulated emission exists. The idea of using atoms to tell time becomes a lot more reasonable if you know that their behavior is quantized. It became a lot easier to develop new superconductive alloys once the BCS theory took scientists past the "guess and check" approach. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and its well-known cousin MRI depend on quantized nuclei spins. Throw most other forms of spectroscopy in with that- the Raman effect, for instance is quantum mechanical. Scanning tunneling microscopes depend on the tunneling properties of electrons- and those couldn't have possibly have been developed without knowledge of QM. And really, QM is just starting to take center stage- in the next few years, you'll start to see quantum computing, molecular machines that take advantage (or are plagued by) quantum effects, and no doubt a bunch of stuff that hasn't been thought of yet.