[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What's the most important modern simple inve...
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Ask HN: What's the most important modern simple invention?
Not levers and wheels and gears, but Velcro and paper clips. I'd
put "modern" as after 1700, and "simple" as "you can pretty much
build it yourself", but you can argue theses (as I'm sure you will!
:-)
Author : abrax3141
Score : 106 points
Date : 2020-02-10 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
| technotarek wrote:
| Antibiotics?
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Not simple.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I don't know if it's the most important, but it's a great example
| of how a very simple innovation had huge benefits. The Fitch
| Barrier are those big orange barrels you see on the side of the
| road. They're filled with sand inside, and basically help to
| dampen the momentum of a car that veers off the road.
|
| They were invented in the 1950s by John Fitch, a Formula 1 driver
| who just came up with them as a quick and dirty way to make the
| race track safer. One afternoon's random idea has managed to save
| over 17,000 lives and billions of dollars in damage.
| csomar wrote:
| They fill them with water where I live. Seems easier to
| fill/empty but I'm not sure about the consequences on car
| collision.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I would nominate Jersey barriers as well, they're easy to mass
| produce and there are machines that lay them down. Many roads
| would be undivided if it were not for jersey barriers.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| The surface plate. Modern precision all stems from the concept of
| a flat reference. However, the technique to make a surface as
| flat as possible (which is based on simple geometry) was first
| discussed in the early 19th c.
|
| In terms of profound impact on modernity, the metal screw-cutting
| lathe.
| 6nf wrote:
| The metal lathe is not really a 'modern' invention is it?
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's an upward spiral of precision:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw-
| cutting_lathe#Modern_scr...
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| The screw cutting metal lathe is within the time frame given
| by the OP.
| jvm_ wrote:
| The 1751 Machine that Made Everything
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djB9oK6pkbA
| jedberg wrote:
| I highly recommend the podcast "50 things that made the modern
| economy".
|
| They're in season two now, with a second set of 50 things.
|
| Every podcast is about a simple invention that had a huge impact.
|
| Incidentally the Haber-Bosch Process (mentioned in this thread)
| is number two, after the diesel engine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Things_That_Made_the_Modern...
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| The latex condom.
| sedigive wrote:
| It's not the inventions that are most important but the thinking
| processes and curiosity that continue to investigate, tinker,
| design, and test new ideas and processes. Humans are problem
| solvers by nature and by survival instinct. Every invention is a
| product of the mind.
| robofanatic wrote:
| a Pen
| willvarfar wrote:
| The pencil, surely? Although you can get a long way with chalk,
| slate and charcoal, so perhaps not?
| mathgeek wrote:
| Pencils are not a modern invention [0], which is why it
| doesn't fit the question. The ballpoint pen, as an example,
| is a 19th century patent [1], so pens in general might fit.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#History [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen
| superkitty wrote:
| Amazon prime!
| dossy wrote:
| Binder clips.
|
| "The binder clip was invented in 1910 by Washington resident
| Louis E. Baltzley, who ultimately was granted U.S. Patent
| 1,139,627 for his invention."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip
| Method5440 wrote:
| Does the theory of evolution by natural selection count as an
| invention or a discovery? ;)
| superkitty wrote:
| Whatsapp!
| pyfgcrl123 wrote:
| How about electromechanical relay switch. As far as digital
| electronics goes, relay can, with some mental gymnastics, be
| considered grandfather of transistor (which, in turn, is one of
| the most important inventions of all time, but too complicated).
| lebuffon wrote:
| They were invented (I believe) to "relay" telegraph messages
| over long lines so it was indeed a digital amplifier. (Former
| Western Union employee)
| jtlienwis wrote:
| The process for making ammonia from air (nitrogen) and hydrogen.
| Allowed a huge increase in agricultural output that saved a few
| billion people from starvation. Haber-Bosch process.
| ajuc wrote:
| Basically there would be ~2 times less people on Earth and over
| half of them would work in farming if not for this one
| invention.
| etangent wrote:
| now imagine being someone who dislikes being around lots of
| people, and _especially_ dislikes being around city people...
| 6nf wrote:
| Imagine you could move to a small farm town population 62
| rriepe wrote:
| For anyone confused as to why: We (not just people but life
| on Earth) are mostly made of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and
| nitrogen. Nitrogen was something of a bottleneck because it's
| so much less ubiquitous than the other three, which are three
| of the four most common elements in the universe.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| less ubiquitous in a bio-available way. Nitrogen is most of
| the atmosphere.
| rriepe wrote:
| I meant it in an "elements occurring in the universe"
| sort of way, but this is a great point too. If we could
| get at atmospheric nitrogen naturally, there'd be no
| bottleneck.
| dnautics wrote:
| Sadly, in my professional opinion as a chemist, I would say
| that the the haber process, is not actually that simple,
| either in its original conception or as implemented now.
| ajuc wrote:
| Well it's better than Moscicki's process :)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| What a coincidence, I passed today in front of his house
| and the chemical plant he was in charge of. The whole
| area is named after him too.
|
| I did not expect to see his name in HN.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > over half of them would work in farming
|
| Why would throwing more people at the problem solve or
| mitigate lack of fertilizer?
| derefr wrote:
| More land would necessarily be farmland (i.e. there'd be
| less land "free" to dedicate to other things); so there'd
| probably need to be more farmers to work the additional
| land. Even in the modern world where a farm is mostly
| robots, one person can only manage so much land and so many
| robots (essentially the amount of land they can easily
| traverse in a few hours to check up on.)
| new2628 wrote:
| Would the state of the Earth be better or worse if not for
| this development?
| jpttsn wrote:
| Thanos, is that you?
| antepodius wrote:
| May as well just say The Earth would be better off if
| people had never existed if you're going to go that route.
|
| There's more people living better lives, so things are
| better. There are new problems caused by our previous
| success that we solve next.
| ajuc wrote:
| Grading the state of the Earth is subjective, what's good
| for plants or bacteria may be bad for mammals or fungi,
| and there's a few mass extinctions every million years
| anyway.
|
| If you don't care about homo sapiens, then global warming
| isn't really "bad" - the ecosystems will adapt.
| ajuc wrote:
| It eliminated one bottleneck (regular mass starvations) and
| allowed us to get to the next one faster (global warming).
|
| Choose your poison :) Both result in wars and death of
| millions of people.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Rivets
|
| Ingenious Mechanism + strong as hell
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivet
| [deleted]
| somberi wrote:
| For me: Electric Kettle, Umbrella and Bicycle.
|
| I have used them for the last 45 years in the same shape and
| form.
|
| If you gave me any of the "older" models from 40 years ago, the
| utility value will be similar to what I buy from the store today.
| akgerber wrote:
| The bicycle is only debatably simple, considering that it's the
| culmination of quite a few relatively-advanced technologies and
| processes: steelmaking, pneumatic tires, interchangeable parts,
| ball bearings, bowden cables, etc.
| dossy wrote:
| The incandescent light bulb.
|
| "In 1761, Ebenezer Kinnersley demonstrated heating a wire to
| incandescence."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb
| Jaruzel wrote:
| I _still_ don 't think LED (or Halogen) house bulbs are
| anywhere near as good as the classic incandescent bulb.
|
| Most LED bulbs give me a headache. Bad LED bulbs cause
| 'strobing' in my vision which is even worse.
| madhadron wrote:
| This isn't the LED itself. It's the circuitry running current
| through the light emitting material. Unlike incandescents and
| fluorescents where the medium itself smooths out poor signal
| from the circuitry, LEDs show you the quality of the signal
| going in.
|
| Then there's the question of whether the color emission mix
| is designed so that your eye perceives it as an approximation
| of a blackbody spectrum. That's an issue of matching doping
| to our biology and one of those things that I think is just
| about settled in decent quality bulbs.
|
| Once the doping mix and the quality of circuitry is fixed,
| the incandescent lightbulb is at best an historical
| curiosity.
| kick wrote:
| There are LED bulbs this doesn't apply to. The flicker is so
| intense, damaging, and nauseating that people have tried to
| make standards to help get rid of it:
|
| https://standards.ieee.org/standard/1789-2015.html
| clashandcarry wrote:
| I find Philips brand bulbs appear to have circuitry to
| "smooth out" the voltage and provide consistent light levels.
| I use my phone camera's slow motion mode to record my bulbs
| and see the flicker. Every brand I've tested via the above
| method, save for Philips, have suffered from flicker.
|
| Give Philips a try? May just be worth the premium. Hopefully
| a standard like the one mentioned in a comment below is put
| into place.
| jes5199 wrote:
| I've gotten used to LEDs but I recently picked up an
| incandescent night light bulb- 25 watts for a dim glow. It
| gets really warm! 25 watts is an absurd amount of power. And
| people light rooms with multiple 60s! That's bonkers
| tylermac1 wrote:
| Love 25W bulbs for bedrooms. Perfect amount of light to
| provide a relaxed atmosphere.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| Ah, the problem is that modern inventions are really embedded in
| a practice and theory. The invention may be simple but the
| practice and theory are not.
|
| So I would put up soap as a contender. Simple, saves hundreds of
| thousands of life, prevents diseases and so forth.
|
| But soap, as an invention, is embedded in the modern practice of
| washing, which requires our modern knowledge of germs and
| diseases, as well as our modern effective plumbing system to
| bring the clean water and dispose of the dirty water.
|
| Of course if it didn't require those it wouldn't be modern.
| [deleted]
| avian wrote:
| "The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like
| materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon." [1]
| Soap is not a modern invention and its usefulness in cleaning
| was recognized way before modern knowledge about diseases.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Ancient_Middle_East
| new2628 wrote:
| And arguably, soaps available in shops are getting worse with
| every iteration. Enter a big store in most of the developed
| world, and you can hardly find a regular soap bar anymore
| (only liquids, "hydrating bars", etc.). Craft markets still
| have them luckily.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Reminds me of Jonathan Blow's observation that knowledge
| doesn't necessarily make it to the next generation and
| progress is sometimes lost.
|
| https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk
| michaelmcmillan wrote:
| Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis on discovering the effects of washing your
| hands before operating on patients. Simple, yet highly effective.
| umvi wrote:
| His story is so sad though. He was ostracized by the other
| doctors and medical community who didn't believe him and indeed
| openly mocked him. He remained outspoken about his findings
| until a colleague forced him into an asylum where he was beaten
| by the guards and died.
| tptacek wrote:
| They didn't believe him in part because he was a notorious
| asshole, and in part because he was insistent on a root cause
| analysis of hand-washing that was clearly false. He also
| didn't "invent" handwashing, which was already the normal
| protocol by the time he began practicing; rather, his
| contribution was a particular antiseptic handwashing protocol
| (chlorinated lime).
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| How do you figure it was "clearly false"? Once his protocol
| was implemented, mortality rates from childbed fever
| plummeted. It turned out the reason so many people had been
| dying from it was that obstetricians were performing
| pathological observations on mothers who had died from it
| and then gone straight to delivering babies without
| disinfecting in between. This is readily available info on
| his wikipedia but also recently appeared in an episode of
| 99PI which is where I learned about it. I'd be interested
| to see more information presenting an alternative history.
| eecc wrote:
| Superficial, disrespectful. There might have been many
| reasons, not being in tune with the crown wasn't
| necessarily the worst of the sins.
| tptacek wrote:
| I can't tell whether you're saying Semmelweis was merely
| superficially disrespectful, or whether you're saying I'm
| being disrespectful. Can you reword this? I don't
| understand the point you're trying to make.
| glitchc wrote:
| Microwave. Self-explanatory.
| bravoetch wrote:
| The bicycle. I'm stunned it didn't come along earlier.
| nsfyn55 wrote:
| Unix Pipes - BWK pointed out in his memoir how a small piping
| implementation done in a single day changed Unix(and computing)
| forever.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| APL was around in the late '60s and is basically just pipes.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Sterilization of medical equipment. Easy to do even at home if
| you know how, probably saved hundreds of millions of lives since
| it was invented.
| nodivbyzero wrote:
| Electric battery
| abrax3141 wrote:
| As elsewhere, making a non-trivial battery ain't so simple.
| geoffreyy wrote:
| Someone has to say it... Squatty Potty
| eucryphia wrote:
| Running hot water.
| fit2rule wrote:
| The IUD.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| IUDs aren't simple. The concept of contraception is simple, and
| condoms (as mentioned elsewhere are), but both of those are
| old.
| derefr wrote:
| Apropos time to link my favorite blog:
| https://rootsofprogress.org/. It's an exploration of the things
| that helped humanity leap forward.
|
| Spoilers: empirically-informed hygiene, and textile manufacturing
| techniques.
| wincy wrote:
| Someone didn't think of putting wheels on luggage until
| relatively recently, in 1987.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05road.html
| todd8 wrote:
| A few weeks ago I was going through some stuff in our storage
| unit and found an originally very nice suitcase. It's of no
| value to me now because it has no wheels.
|
| Imagine how much more difficult air travel would be without the
| wheels!
| ryanmercer wrote:
| I don't have to imagine it. We had 2 massive suitcases when I
| was a kid that were built like tanks. You actually had to be
| pretty thoughtful when you put them into the trunk because of
| their size.
|
| But here's the thing. You pulled up to the terminal back
| then, parked, got out. Walked away from the car and checked
| your bag right there on the sidewalk if you weren't getting
| there at some weird hour and then said bye to whoever dropped
| you off and they left. You walked inside and checked into
| your flight and didn't have to think about luggage until you
| got to wherever.
|
| When you got to your destination, there were a bunch of
| luggage carts and you'd throw in 25 cents or 50 cents or
| whatever and get one, load up whatever and take it to the
| shuttle or car rental. If you were feeling rich, you'd just
| leave the cart and not worry about getting your change back.
| If you were feeling like a cheapskate you could take the cart
| to a return and get some or all of your change back.
|
| Picking someone up? You parked the car, went inside the
| airport, went through a metal detector and had your
| change/wallet/purse x-rayed and walked right up to the gate
| and waited for their plane to pull up.
|
| I remember one time we picked up my grandparents and my dad
| was a state police officer. We went through security, he put
| his gun and badge (out of uniform) on the conveyor belt, no
| one freaked out, they checked his police ID against his face,
| made me push a button on my pager to show them it was a real
| electronic device and told us keep moving. Then in that area,
| there was some smoke coming from the ceiling outside. No
| panic, no evacuation, some fire fighters pulled up outside
| and came in through a gate, poked around at the ceiling tiles
| and decided everything was ok while everyone just casually
| sat around. This would have been 1997 probably, dad died in
| early 1998 and I don't think I had the pager in 1996
| (context: my father had bought a pager and payed for service
| in advance, then as a detective the department gave him one
| so they used it to reach me when I was out and about on my
| bike or at a friend's and someone was on the internet).
|
| Different times. I'm only 34.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Makes you wonder how one bad action can just cause sweeping
| changes in surveillance, privacy, screening process, etc.
| How much of it is overreaction?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It was all a designed to create more surveillance, not to
| protect us. I don't think it's stopped any terrorist
| attacks.
| conductr wrote:
| I'd normally agree except the copy cat effect is strong
| these days. School shootings in US are the counter
| example where little changed after Columbine and now we
| have them weekly or so.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| We don't have Columbine-style school shootings every
| week. Maybe gang shootings involving students, but that's
| a separate problem with completely different cultural
| roots.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Imagine it? I've been living it and it's so much better. Try
| to get from one side of O'Hare to the other for your
| connection leaving in 20 minutes with a rolling suitcase vs
| with a comfortable medium-large backpack.
|
| Boarding flights is easier, getting around outside is easier
| (try rolling your suitcase around the cobble streets of
| Paris), fitting into tight restaurants is easier.
|
| Look into /r/onebag if you want to learn more. Check out the
| Minaal, it's literally life-changing if you travel often.
| ghaff wrote:
| Wheeled checked luggage is nice when I'm on a trip that
| requires a lot of year. (Because of outdoor activities or
| whatever.) However, for typical trips I just take a carry-
| on travel backpack and a small bag for electronics/camera
| even for trips that are 2-3 weeks. IMO, most people travel
| with way too much stuff.
| timonoko wrote:
| What? I have a large suitcase with wheels from 1979. I was
| plannig to build "portable computer" in it, but Osborne-1
| destroyed this plan.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Article notes that it was 1970 that the idea was had and patent
| application filed, not an original idea in 1987. But your point
| stands.
|
| It's a good link though, as it also tells the story of how the
| luggage-with-wheels idea was hated on by people who heard about
| it. The story here isn't that it took so long to think of the
| idea, but that it took a long time for anyone to actually want
| it.
|
| > So why did it take so long for wheeled luggage to emerge? Mr.
| Sadow recalled the strong resistance he met on those early
| sales calls, when he was frequently told that men would not
| accept suitcases with wheels. "It was a very macho thing," he
| said.
| [deleted]
| fortran77 wrote:
| One Click Ordering
| snarf21 wrote:
| 1) Indoor plumbing 2) Washing machine
| yarone wrote:
| Contact Lenses. My favorite and most day-to-day useful
| technology.
| vahid4m wrote:
| The idea of Open Source software
| TopHand wrote:
| Window screens and indoor plumbing are the 2 greatest
| improvements for our daily lives.
| allhacks wrote:
| Since OP didn't provide reasons, I will.
|
| Window screens: malaria prevention.
|
| Indoor plumbing: make sanitation so convenient that you don't
| have any reasons not to use it (vs throwing the old night
| bucket outta the window). Obviously city scale sanitation == no
| dysentery, cholera...etc.
| nickserv wrote:
| Sanitation systems are really old, though.
|
| I was impressed with the sophistication of the one present in
| Glanum, a small (but wealthy) Roman provincial town abandoned
| in the 2nd century. The sewer system runs underneath the main
| street: baths, villas, and the abatoir connect to it.
|
| To say nothing of the ones in major cities of the time.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The metric system is pretty good
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Maybe some non-device inventions: the staff system; the germ
| theory of disease; currency without a gold standard; public
| health; public education
| arbitrage wrote:
| as in musical staves? good one!
| madhadron wrote:
| Musical staves aren't after 1700, though. The five line staff
| we used today was widespread by the 16th century, and staff
| notation goes back to the 11th century.
| dnautics wrote:
| currency without a gold standard is arguably the original
| system of money (see debt: the first 5000 years)
| techbio wrote:
| I'll suggest the thermostat (and throw in the rest of control
| theory).
| kd5bjo wrote:
| The modern idea of a library catalog came around in the early
| 1800s, and probably accelerated the pace of knowledge transfer
| and acquisition quite a bit. In its original form, index cards,
| it was ubiquitous for almost 200 years before being replaced by
| computerized systems.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog
| azepoi wrote:
| More recently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum
| nathell wrote:
| Zipper (1851) and ballpoint pen (1888) would be my picks.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| The development, and successful commercialization, of the
| ballpoint pen is a really interesting hole to dive down.
|
| John Loud is like check this cool thing I made, it doesn't
| really work though. Laszlo Biro comes along and makes it
| viable, everyone tries to rip him off, then Marcel Bich comes
| along and is like "Biro, let me have that, everyone sit down
| Bic has this!".
|
| Stuff You Should Know did a podcast episode about it once. IIRC
| it was a decent listen
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXB7479t0XM
| dinjin wrote:
| Internet. I know you can't build it easy. But if the building
| blocks were in place, its straight forward.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Hand washing. Modern disease control and prevention is borderline
| magic. Hand-washing is clearly the most important lifesaving and
| disease preventing invention in modern times.
|
| Materially ... Well, "yourself" precludes anything computerized,
| unless you mean "program". It also precludes a huge range of
| materials science advances.
|
| Technically, you can make steel and concrete yourself with enough
| real-world minecrafting, and good steel or concrete is probably
| hands down the most important factor in all our chemical,
| structural, and industrial processes.
|
| Luckily there's a book with the most important inventions to re-
| engineer a complex, sustainable society called The Knowledge, and
| just about everything in there is build-able by a determined
| individual or small group (until you get to modern things). Not
| suprisingly, it mostly focuses on agriculture, medicine, steel,
| and concrete.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Hand washing
|
| Hand washing isn't modern by any stretch of the imagination.
| Promoting it is modern, though.
| ReedJessen wrote:
| Even then... Our Muslim friends have been promoting regular
| hand washing since the 600's CE.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudu
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Oops, you are correct. The modern connection to germ theory
| is most important.
| zh3 wrote:
| The drill and digger (for fossil fuel).
|
| "Important" is perhaps a loaded word in this case.
| acvny wrote:
| The greatest invention/discovery of modern times is electricity.
| It is the second fire and much much more..
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Fire is old. Electricity-- or at least it's control -- not so
| old, but I'm not sure I'd count it as simple. Making a
| functional battery or generator that doesn't just create or
| store trivial amounts energy is quite a challenge.
| rXoX wrote:
| The sail. You're welcome.
| werber wrote:
| Condoms
| jfk13 wrote:
| How modern do you think they are?
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649591/
| cuspycode wrote:
| The condition "you can pretty much build it yourself" forces me
| to exclude many things with important impact like for example
| nuclear reactors, LSD, birth control pills, and the silicon
| transistor. But I think steam engines (or Rankine cycle engines
| in general) and penicillin are simple enough to qualify.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| When I read Alexander Shulgin, the psychedelic chemist's
| biography, I was struck by the fact that when he wanted to do
| LSD with some friends, he actually synthesised it in his lab.
| cuspycode wrote:
| Yeah, Shulgin was a special case, he was a genius biochemist
| after all. And there are of course lots of people who have
| synthesized LSD using fairly standard lab equipment. But it's
| not like something anyone could do.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I thought of penicillin, too, but "build it yourself" ruled it
| out, in my view.
| cuspycode wrote:
| I was thinking that growing a penicillin producing mold
| culture (like Fleming did) is something anyone could do, but
| I have to admit that I have no clue about how much more
| processing is needed before it can be applied medically as an
| antibiotic.
| mjd wrote:
| I read "modern" as "post-world-war-II" and suggest:
|
| Drywall.
| robot wrote:
| bicycle?
| Jaruzel wrote:
| The basic internal combustion engine.
|
| Without it, we'd still be spending half our lives travelling
| places.
| zip1234 wrote:
| I would say the internal combustion engine has not meaningfully
| cut people's day to day travel. Where prevalent, many just live
| further away and travel a long time still. I understand that
| long distance travel has been revolutionized by engines (steam
| and internal combustion), but I'm not certain about day to day
| travel. Many people near me are in a car for multiple hours per
| day. I would love to see a study on average 'commute' times in
| the 17-1800s.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Important, def! But I don't think that this could count as
| "simple".
| abyssin wrote:
| Not saying it didn't have an impact, but I'm nitpicking about
| the impact it had on how we spend our time: "Marchetti's
| constant is the average time spent by a person for commuting
| each day, which is approximately one hour. [...] Ever since
| Neolithic times, people have kept the average time spent per
| day for travel the same, even though the distance may increase
| due to the advancements in the means of transportation."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant
| roosgit wrote:
| Liquid paper.
|
| Invented in 1956 by a typist, in her kitchen.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Paper
| ph4 wrote:
| I'm having trouble seeing how this even makes the top 100 list
| of "most important".
| estebarb wrote:
| 12 years ago we still relayed on notebooks and pens for
| everything. Then smartphones appear and life changed forever.
| And also devices like clocks, calculators, cameras, gps,
| planners, maps, agendas, erasers and liquid paper become
| redundant.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 12 years ago was 2008. _Most_ of us didn 't type manually
| by then. Most of us had word processors, and keyboards with
| a backspace button.
| new2628 wrote:
| I still rely on notebooks and pens for everything, yet I
| never used liquid paper. What am I missing?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Refrigeration, particularly because it has revolutionized our
| food infrastructure.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Many inventions only make sense in our specific modern context.
| Every primate that has ever lived could appreciate
| refrigeration and air conditioning.
| [deleted]
| austincheney wrote:
| The most important overlooked or ignored invention is the
| antibiotic via syringe:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Duchesne
| [deleted]
| wufufufu wrote:
| Cardboard boxes?
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Common soap bars, they weren't really a thing until the mid
| 1850's and you had to make your own soap unless you were wealthy
| prior to that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#19th_century
|
| Similarly, liquid soap which came to be around the same time.
| pppp wrote:
| Liquid soaps are a poor choice from an environmental/cost
| standpoint. Most of the soap goes down the drain and is wasted.
| Bar soap stays on your hands and last many times longer.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| That may be the case now, but liquid soaps revolutionized
| laundry when they came to be. Washing clothes with bar soap
| is a royal pain. Powdered laundry detergents really didn't
| start to catch on until the 1940's
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_detergent
|
| Also, washing machines didn't really start to catch on until
| the mid 1940's, prior to that it was still pretty much scrub
| boards. Scrub boards are bad enough with liquid soap.
| new2628 wrote:
| I found soap nuts to be the cheapest, most eco-friendly,
| and reasonably efficient detergent there is. Just drop a
| bunch of soap nuts in a cloth bag into the washing machine,
| and it produces enough foam to make everything clean.
| akeck wrote:
| Maybe not "most important", but a few dollars worth of post-it
| notes can turn any wall into a "business application" that can
| potentially cost thousands to turn into code.
| pcurve wrote:
| I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but the post it note
| meetings only provide illusion of getting things done and they
| can often be destructive if not conducted well or relied on too
| heavily. Your mileage will vary of course.
| 013a wrote:
| Though, many people say the exact same thing about Jira,
| so...
| purplezooey wrote:
| priceless comment
| abrax3141 wrote:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/ableman/sets/72157594421824427...
| davidw wrote:
| Bicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could
| 'build one yourself'.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Well, you can certainly assemble a bike from a pile of
| components, a pair of wheels, and a frame (try and do that with
| a sedan...) And it's not beyond most people to learn how to
| weld or braze a frame together from tubing (or even glue up
| carbon fiber or bamboo into a frame, at room temp). But
| smelting the steel and aluminum at home to make the parts is
| admittedly not practical.
| kqr wrote:
| Not only not practical -- essentially requires a highly
| refined metal industry to begin with, as I understand it.
|
| It's no surprise the first mass producers of bicycles were
| weapons manufacturers -- they were the ones with the high
| quality steel supplies and equipment that allowed for tight
| tolerances.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are people on youtube who refine their own ores. They
| are lucky enough to live in a place where ore is close to
| the surface - not high quality ore, but with enough that
| for a youtube video you can get a small quantity of pure
| metal out. (high quality ore is either deep in the ground
| or already mined). For iron the process is actually simple,
| knowledge of iron refining likely predated the bronze age,
| but quality iron ores were too hard to come by to make it
| useful. (bronze is in much less quantity overall, but where
| there was was easy to find)
|
| Edit: I won't discount the advances in iron refining
| though. the methods known thousands of years ago were not
| suitable to large scale production. It is hard to say if
| they would have made those advances if ore was available or
| not.
| dcuthbertson wrote:
| > try to do that with a sedan...
|
| Well, it can be done. There's a guy who rebuilt a Tesla Model
| S from a pair of junked Teslas.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfV0_wbjG8KJADuZT2ct4SA
| miguelmota wrote:
| Bicycles may seem simple but took many decades to get it right.
|
| Your comment also reminded me of this gallery of drawings from
| people attempting to create a bicycle from memory which is
| pretty funny https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-
| people-to-draw...
| blackearl wrote:
| I'd love to see some of these built out and tested. I'm
| assuming most would snap in half when riding over the first
| curb. Thanks for sharing!
| plopz wrote:
| What a frustrating article, they say its missing a key
| component but doesn't say what.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| It's the Chainstays. You need two bars connecting the
| bottom bracket to the rear hub or the rear wheel is
| extremely unstable.
|
| Most modern bikes are fundamentally 2 triangles joined at
| the base.
| davidw wrote:
| The chainstays are missing in the first image.
| arpfaust wrote:
| A bar between the axes of the pedals and the rear wheel ;)
| Jarwain wrote:
| Even the artist just says "an important part of its frame".
|
| If I had to guess, it's a bar connecting the back wheel's
| harness-thing with the gear to maintain a consistent
| distance. If someone sat on that, I think the wheels would
| flex out, the chain come loose, etc.
| notatoad wrote:
| The most astounding thing about bicycles is that we did
| actually get it right. looking at the first ~100 years of
| iteration, you'd kind of assume that it was one of those
| things that would just keep evolving forever. But then they
| found the classic diamond frame design, and bikes have been
| fundamentally the same since then.
| dharmab wrote:
| You can absolutely make arguments that bicycle design is
| unoptimized.
|
| Why use front forks when they have so many problems?
| https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/why-are-there-no-
| alter...
|
| Why haven't recumbent bicycles taken over the road bike
| market despite many advantages (hint: It has to do with
| what kinds of traffic we prioritize in cities) https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle#Compared_to_...
| davidw wrote:
| Feels kind of asymptotic to me: they got most of the basics
| right 100 years ago, but things like derailleurs are a
| pretty big improvement in terms of allowing an ordinary
| person to ride over varied terrain. Quick release skewers
| (grazie a Tullio Campagnolo), lighter materials, clipless
| pedals (for racers)... have all been incremental
| improvements. More recently, tubeless tires on mountain
| bikes are a big improvement in my enjoyment of riding off
| road.
| madhadron wrote:
| You could also argue that the political necessity in
| competitive cycling to maintain its status quo (thus not
| allowing recumbents and the like) has forced us into a
| local maximum that we cannot easily exit.
| dvirsky wrote:
| Seat-belts maybe. Not as important as the car itself obviously,
| but definitely simple and super impactful.
| acd wrote:
| Volvo opened up the patent for modern three way seat belts.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt
| https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news/volvo-trucks-magazine...
| pesfandiar wrote:
| Super impactful indeed, even though it is paradoxically
| designed to reduce the impact.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Washing Machine. Recent iterations are more complex( repair
| engineer could plug into ours and diagnose all sorts of things,
| including checking results of previous washes), however the
| principle behind it isn't that complex. It has made life easier
| for so many households.
| willvarfar wrote:
| An excellent talk on its affects by the late Hans Rosling
| https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_mac...
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Thank you for that link. Right before reading your reply I
| was trying to remember where I read about how it changed
| women's life and this is actually that talk my memory had
| remains of.
| acd wrote:
| On the number of hours saved by Washing machines and
| Dishwashers. Liberating women from having to do these tasks and
| instead contributing to the general economy instead.
| war1025 wrote:
| > the number of hours saved by Washing machines and
| Dishwashers.
|
| This is true, but to some extent over-stated I think.
|
| We have a family of five, and don't use our dishwasher. I
| just do the dishes every morning while I listen to the news
| on the radio. It takes less than an hour.
|
| As far as washing machines, I agree that they are quite
| convenient, but the truth is most clothing doesn't need to be
| washed nearly so often as people do.
|
| Without a washing machine, you would just do laundry less
| often.
|
| I think modern plumbing is the actual time saver. Not having
| to haul water from the river or the well frees up a ton of
| time. Having waste water safely disposed of is a massive boon
| to hygiene.
| wikibob wrote:
| An HOUR? To do the dishes? That seems like an enormous
| consumption of time.
|
| I would suggest that you might consider reallocating this
| time. For example, if you have three children are any of
| them old enough to help do the dishes? Initially it will
| take you more time, but children love to contribute to the
| household at first, until they are taught not to by being
| told they're doing it wrong.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > ... but the truth is most clothing doesn't need to be
| washed nearly so often as people do.
|
| Didn't exactly understand you ... I mean, I can't wear any
| shirt more than two days in a row before it picks up my
| body odour and starts stinking (India; hot climate - and
| this is after 2 baths a day too; no deodorant). So if I
| don't wash and wear it, I am pretty sure it would bother a
| lot of people. I can wear pants and trousers longer, sure,
| so they get washed less.
| war1025 wrote:
| As a counterpoint, here in the US Midwest, I currently
| have three pairs of jeans, two thermal shirts, and two
| button downs that I rotate through and wash honestly
| maybe quarterly.
|
| Other clothing items I go through more quickly, but I'm
| planning to start giving my undershirts a couple
| rotations before washing them as well. Same with socks.
|
| The main thing I've noticed is that natural fabrics don't
| pick up smells nearly as badly as synthetics.
|
| Also just letting things hang and air out seems to keep
| everything smelling pretty fresh. If I go out of town and
| leave clothes in my backpack they need washed when I get
| home whether I wore them or not.
|
| Finally, I think odors are largely based on your skin
| biome and genetic factors, and fortunately for me, I just
| don't get that smelly.
| wikibob wrote:
| Quarterly? Yikes. People can smell you, and you stink,
| they are just too polite to say anything.
|
| Ask a very trusted friend, one who does laundry
| regularly, how you smell.
| war1025 wrote:
| I assume my wife or kids would more than happily tell me.
| Particularly my kids since they find jokes about smelly
| things to be highly amusing. And they don't really
| understand the concept of being polite yet.
| godot wrote:
| I think if you spend close to an hour to wash dishes every
| morning, it's actually a good proof of how much time it
| could save you. Being able to use that hour productively
| with other means while you do it (e.g. listening to the
| news or podcasts in your case) is somewhat a separate
| topic.
|
| Loading and unloading the dishwasher for the same amount of
| dishes every day will probably take less than 30 minutes. I
| would estimate you could have a savings of 30 minutes every
| day if you used the dishwasher. Depending on how you use
| water when you hand-wash them, you may also save some water
| as well.
| war1025 wrote:
| > you could have a savings of 30 minutes every day
|
| Maybe I'm unique in this (I don't think I am), but if
| anything the curse of modern life is that we're
| absolutely awash in free time.
|
| What would I do with an extra 30 minutes? Probably check
| Hacker News or Facebook more than I already do.
|
| The actual washing of the dishes really doesn't take that
| long. Most of it is gathering everything up, rescuing the
| sink from the disaster that my wife leaves it in (i.e.
| How hard is it to actually nest the dishes instead of
| building them into some precarious tower?), and then
| washing the various big and otherwise awkward items that
| you couldn't put in the dishwasher anyway.
|
| If you want to get on the modern hype train, you can
| think of it as a "mindfulness" exercise. There is
| something therapeutic about having busy hands and letting
| the mind wander.
| dnautics wrote:
| You can get a simple one that is probably 80% of the way to a
| modern commercial washing machine, and several orders of
| magnitude better than going to a stream and washing:
|
| for example "wonderwash"
| some1else wrote:
| > A twistlock and corner casting together form a standardized
| rotating connector for securing shipping containers. The primary
| uses are for locking a container into place on a container ship,
| semi-trailer truck or railway container train, and for lifting of
| the containers by container cranes and sidelifters.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock
| dvirsky wrote:
| Actually the shipping container itself is pretty much high up
| there I guess. Pretty revolutionary for a box.
| ufmace wrote:
| I was going to post the standardized shipping container
| myself. It was apparently a massive boost to transportation
| efficiency when the industry moved to a standard container
| that a single simple crane could rapidly load and unload from
| any ship and load onto a truck or railcar. It seems that,
| before this, most goods were transported in barrels or other
| one-off small containers loaded and unloaded from ships by
| manpower. Could take weeks to load and unload a ship.
| hencq wrote:
| You might already be familiar with it, but I can heartily
| recommend the book The Box by Marc Levinson [1]. It describes
| how a simple idea of putting items in a container first,
| instead of directly on a ship, completely changed the world.
| It is for example the reason why Oakland and New Jersey
| eclipsed San Francisco and New York as ports. When Malcolm
| McLean, the inventor of the humble container, died in 2001,
| container ships all over the world, at an agreed moment,
| sounded their horns in tribute.
|
| [1] - https://g.co/kgs/vCK3nB
| PAGAN_WIZARD wrote:
| The electric motor/generator.
| adv0r wrote:
| roundabouts
| 0027 wrote:
| Modern mathematical notation, binary, or pretty much any software
| development language
| dTal wrote:
| 3D printing.
|
| I know, I know - overhyped. But you know what's a funny thing?
| It's incredibly basic tech. Stepper motors and thermoplastic. We
| could have had something like it at pretty much any time over the
| past century, and in its modern form from about 1960 or so. It
| has unquestionably revolutionized prototyping and short-run
| manufacturing, and we _just didn 't think of it_. The idea was
| just too zany and expensive - the people with enough money to
| invent a 3d printer could afford to just pay someone to make
| their prototype by hand. It's a rare modern example of the
| "ancient greek railway problem"; Hellenistic culture posessed all
| the technology to begin making crude steam trains, and almost
| certainly had the technical drive to approach making practical
| ones, if only they had thought of it or considered it a
| worthwhile thing to do.
|
| (Although there is the interesting question of data management.
| The .gcode for a small print can still run into the megabytes.
| CAD software was thin on the ground in 1970 too. So maybe therein
| lies the difficulty - what good is a 3D printer if you must
| painstakingly transcribe your blueprints into movement
| instructions _by hand_?)
| 6nf wrote:
| Plastic 3d printers are not that amazing. Sure you can
| prototype a bit faster but we have wonderful methods of mass
| producing plastic parts very cheaply and quickly. 3d printing
| of plastic is not that revolutionary for the industry.
|
| Metal 3d printing is a different story, if that gets cheap
| enough it will be a real game changer. It's very expensive to
| make metal parts from solid and you can't use casting except
| for certain metals. If you could 3d print accurate steel parts
| cheaply and quickly it could actually replace expensive
| deductive production processes.
| h2odragon wrote:
| IMO the invention of microstepping controllers made 3d printing
| possible; and when they started getting cheap enough for
| hackers to play with is when all the previous ideas became
| practical to implment, and then got patented.
|
| There's something to be said for the availability of cheap,
| high precision stepper motors: these things were a much bigger
| deal to acquire and control not that long ago.
| hooande wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. 3D printing has not lived up to its
| hype or potential. The process is slow and sensitive to
| conditions. The commercial applications are relatively limited.
| It has radically transformed rapid prototyping, which is very
| important. But it's hard to compare it to the ubiquitous daily
| utility of paperclips or even velcro.
|
| I have much more hope for the next generation of 3D printing,
| whatever that is
| romwell wrote:
| I disagree with that.
|
| It has also transformed hobby/craft markets and arts. The
| only thing stopping it is UX at this point (you still need to
| have both craft and computer skills to use them).
|
| I have very little use for paperclips, actually, but if I
| needed one, I could easily 3D print it. And that ability - to
| _imagine_ things and have them come out of the machine -
| gives the magical empowering feeling that most of the people
| still have yet to encounter.
|
| I disagree that it's a _simple_ invention, though. The
| hardware is simple, yes, but it 's nothing without software.
| And the software we need to make 3D printing less of an
| exercise in patience is simply not yet there, even now.
|
| CAD is not accessible. Slicing is not accessible (sure, Cura
| will spit G-code without you doing anything - but what do you
| do when your print fails or falls apart because one of the
| myriad settings was not set right for this particular
| print?). Mesh leveling was not a thing on consumer 3D
| printers five years ago (!). Ditto for variable-width layers.
| And no slicers have the printhead follow curves in 3D, it's
| layer by layer in everything I've used, even if the model
| allows for something more.
|
| What I'm saying is that that we don't have the software to
| utilize the existing simple hardware to its fullest
| potential. And without software, a 3D printer is a glorified
| glue gun.
|
| (Sure, we could've had "3D-printing" pens a-la 3Doodler
| decades ago. They are fun, but hardly revolutionary).
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| But it's not nearly as important in industry or manufacturing
| as say, precision machining or injection moulding.
| spacemark wrote:
| The assertion that "we just didn't think of it" is not even
| remotely correct. The late transition to the consumer market
| and the broad expansion in industry in the last 20 years has
| far more to do with the expiration of patents in the early
| 2000's than anything else. 3D printing for rapid prototyping
| has been around for decades.
| dTal wrote:
| I was not aware of that. How depressing.
|
| Still, I think some of my point can still be salvaged - this
| implies that it was patented in the early 80s, which by my
| reckoning is still _well_ after it became possible.
| spacemark wrote:
| Possible, yes. Economically viable for the vast majority of
| applications, no.
|
| In undergrad in 2001 I had a professor that had a 3D
| printed airplane model with a wingspan of ~5" that he
| thought was so damn cool (it was some now-defunct military
| airplane he helped design or something). He was also very
| fond of pointing out that the model cost his former
| employer $500 to print, so we better handle it with care.
| And rightfully so, because if we treated it like a toy it
| would have fallen apart in under a semester. Compared to
| what I print today using my MK3s for, I dunno, 50 cents,
| his $500 printed airplane was a piece of crap.
|
| Point is there have been a lot of technological advances,
| patents aside, that have made 3D printers viable for
| anything outside of extremely high-value rapid prototyping
| / mold forming / other narrow niche applications in the
| last 20 years.
| musingsole wrote:
| Further still, the control software has only recently become
| efficient enough at the same time that computation is cheap
| enough to make slicing 3D models a minutes task instead of a
| months task.
| ZguideZ wrote:
| Canning and food preservation. It used to be all about salt salt
| salt.
| leoh wrote:
| It's not as simple as you'd like, but the little known Bosch-
| Haber process, which produces ammonia for farming, staved off
| mass famines and may be why many readers of HN are alive today.
| new2628 wrote:
| Would the world be better or worse off without the population
| boom that resulted from the invention?
| ghaff wrote:
| After which, Haber went on to play a key role in helping
| Germany develop chemical weapons for World War I.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| General anaesthesia.
| juliend2 wrote:
| I would say the Telegraph.
|
| In the book [CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and
| Softwar](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-
| Softw...), Charles Petzold talks about how it's foundational to
| the eventual invention of the computer.
|
| Back then, it also meant coast to coast communications were
| almost instantaneous. And soon after, transatlantic cable-enabled
| telegraph boosted commerce between America and Europe.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Electricity: The ability to send energy down a wire, and then to
| have energy available "on tap" at any moment.
|
| Many of the inventions I see listed here rely on some form of
| electricity.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Smokeless gunpowder? It completely changed the dynamics of the
| battlefield, and you said "important" not necessarily "good"
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The telegraph and the telephone. The enabled economies of scale
| and speed of decision making that were not possible before.
| lebuffon wrote:
| I think the concept (rather than an invention) of negative
| feedback is very important. By that I mean envisioning that a
| machine can change it's own behaviour. This seems to have not
| been understood with early steam engines. People had to manually
| control valves to operate the first steam engines used as pumps
| in the U.K. James Watt and Mathew Bolton realized that coupling
| the output to the steam control valve would make it cycle
| automagically,
|
| This concept permeates modern design so we don't always see it
| for the important development that it is IMHO.
| estebarb wrote:
| "simple" is a strong requirement. I don't know how to make
| anything of most things proposed!!!
|
| If we were thrown to the Earth 10000 years ago, we would be able
| to bootstrap our current tech in less than a century?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Yes. So long as we had a few reference works, freedom from
| attack by competing tribes, and landed on productive
| agricultural land.
|
| Simple radios are very easy and allow us to stick together over
| wider ranges than the locals, knowledge of simple medical
| concepts and sanitation keeps us alive and healthy longer.
|
| Understanding how to build effective shelters and storage
| systems allows us to keep an agricultural surplus which enables
| some of us to devote our time to bootstrapping.
|
| The biggest problem would be people jockeying for short term
| power instead of pulling together for long term success.
| arbitrage wrote:
| 10,000 years? I think so. 1,000 years? Maaaaybe.
| allannienhuis wrote:
| This book is an attempt at answering that question, although
| it's not exactly step-by-step (especially as the book
| progresses), it gives the framework for rebooting civilization
| - the paths to follow.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114087-the-knowledge
|
| [edit] - actually it's answering a slightly different question
| I guess - how to reboot after a cataclysm, but the path is
| more-or-less the same I think :)
| ilamont wrote:
| Bending light (1840s)
|
| -> Fiber optics (1954)
|
| --> fast network connectivity
|
| ---> Internet
|
| ---> Telephony
|
| --> fiber optic endoscopy (1956)
|
| ---> better disease detection
|
| ---> laparoscopic surgery
| dnautics wrote:
| I love that fiber optics are really rather complex in the
| underlying theory, but they're so simple in construction (ok it
| can take some very complex machinery, but when it boils down to
| it you could easily make a functional, basic example yourself,
| useful for real purposes, say piping in sunlight to a room)
| brandav wrote:
| transistor.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Also not simple.
| metaloha wrote:
| Rice cookers. Totally ingenious.
| solarkraft wrote:
| So what am I missing using a pot on the stove?
| jfk13 wrote:
| Not much; you just have to be a bit more careful to manage
| the heat and time appropriately.
| overcast wrote:
| Most used kitchen item by far in my house, almost used daily.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Not sure this counts as "simple".
| mhh__ wrote:
| My dad still uses the family (his dad's) rice cooker from the
| mid 1950s, so they aren't that complicated, they're basically
| a heater and thermal cutoff
|
| PSA for anyone who doesn't: Wash your fucking rice
| ken wrote:
| > Wash your fucking rice
|
| Even better: use no-wash rice. It's easier for you, and
| better for the environment:
|
| > [...] believe it or not, the cloudy water consumers pour
| off when washing their rice has been identified as a
| significant source of water pollution in Japan. In the B.G.
| method [used to make no-wash rice], the bran comes out dry,
| so instead of going out with the wash water and ending up
| in rivers and streams, it can be diverted into fertilizer
| and animal feed.
|
| and:
|
| > It's considered enough of a problem that the Tokyo
| Metropolitan Government urges residents to water plants
| with their togijiru [cloudy rice water] rather than sending
| it down the sewer. And Shiga Prefecture, in an effort to
| protect Lake Biwa, has asked its citizens to switch to no-
| wash rice.
|
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/16/reference/no-
| wa...
| mhh__ wrote:
| I've literally never seen no wash rice in my life (in the
| UK)
| EL_Loco wrote:
| -> Wash your fucking rice
|
| What? Sure, if you want to remove some of the starch, but
| what if you don't? I don't really know why you should if
| you don't want to, unless it was dirty, but rice today
| comes pretty clean of debris and bugs. Plus, it's going to
| be cooked, so no problem there.
| effie wrote:
| Rice is full of arsenic. Washing it may help a little,
| but even better, use more water to cook it and then dump
| the water.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38910848
| mhh__ wrote:
| It's not for safety: it's because starchy rice sticks
| together and makes clumpy bad-tasting rice, it's also
| much more easily seasoned in my experience if you wash it
| first.
| schwap wrote:
| A basic rice cooker is a very simple device.
| btschaegg wrote:
| Then I'd like to submit the Bialetti (Mokka-)style coffee
| maker :)
| dossy wrote:
| Rice cooker = hipster Instant Pot.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Isn't that reversed? Instant Pot === hipster Rice Cooker
| coenhyde wrote:
| Well i'd say dossy is right. Because he's assigning "Rice
| cooker" to equal "hipster Instant Pot". Thus we know that
| they are the same value. You are only doing a test. We
| don't know for sure if your conditional returns true.
| jrace wrote:
| Rice cookers came out in the 1950s, instant pot was 2009
| coenhyde wrote:
| Joke
|
| ----
|
| Your head
| afarrell wrote:
| You can cook chicken in 23 minutes in a rice cooker?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I'm sure you could. Not sure why one would want to.
| hooande wrote:
| The phonograph. The idea of "record something and play it again
| later" has significantly impacted all of our lives, and was
| barely even imagined prior to invention
| divbzero wrote:
| The modern flush toilet. [1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet
|
| Technically invented in the 1500s but not widely produced until
| the 1800s.
| harryh wrote:
| Standardized shipping containers massively decreased the cost of
| global commerce which is perhaps the most important force in the
| modern world.
| mjd wrote:
| The often-overlooked Twistlock is an important part of this,
| and I think it answers the objections about the "invention"
| being only a convention.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock
|
| On review: another comment here says the same.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22291068
| riskneutral wrote:
| I've got an even simpler one: the standardized shipping pallet.
| harryh wrote:
| An excellent example of complementary goods! :)
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Nice one, but we could get into a debate on whether a
| convention counts as an invention.
| harryh wrote:
| Ya, I dunno if it counts either. Just seemed like an
| interesting answer so I threw it out there.
| ken wrote:
| Does standardization count as an invention? Then I'd put the
| metric system higher than shipping containers.
|
| I'm not sure "you can pretty much build it yourself", either.
| The actual process is pretty involved [1]. Even if each step is
| simple, it's a lot of work, and building a large 3D object to
| precise specifications is not easy.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7l6AQN1KV0
|
| On that note, though, I submit _arc welding_ as a simple modern
| invention of great importance. Living in a city, it 's rare
| that I'm not within 2 steps of some object that was joined with
| arc welding. The basic structure of an arc welder is really
| simple: an electric current, a wire feeder, and some way (like
| a noble gas) to protect it.
| jshowa3 wrote:
| scientific method
| pmdulaney wrote:
| It's kind of an oxymoron because if it were simple it would have
| been invented before modern times.
|
| But I'll say backpacks for everyday commuter use and trashcans
| with wheels (what they refer to in British TV shows as "wheely
| bins").
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Simplicity is only somewhat related to invention.
|
| The compound bow was not invented until 1966, but any
| technically-inclined person from the early-modern era would
| immediately understand how it works from a picture.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Tangential, but if you want to nerd out on bow tech, the
| slingshot channel is awesome! Rapid fire repeating bows with
| half draw-weight, all made in the classic mad inventor in a
| garage charm!
|
| A good intro https://youtu.be/f3fcNyZoEIw
| wiggles_md wrote:
| The Toyota Way. Totally transformed manufacturing.
| mongol wrote:
| Would be interesting to hear about most famous inventions in
| other countries. From Sweden, or Swedish inventors: Dynamite. The
| sun valve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_valve). The milk
| separator. Tetrahedron-shaped plastic-coated paper carton
| packaging. The self aligning ball bearing. All these were part of
| early history of what became larger companies existing to this
| day.
|
| The adjustable spanner, the zipper and the propeller are also
| sometimes mentioned in this category within Sweden, but are the
| also referring to inventors with partly Swedish origin or for
| improvements of previous designs.
| irchans wrote:
| Post-it Notes
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Doesn't that require specific adhesive (that is rather bad at
| being sticky)?
| jcranmer wrote:
| Since you've allowed modern to include the Industrial Revolution,
| I would submit the invention that _started_ it: the flying
| shuttle.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle
|
| (How did this cause the Industrial Revolution? It made weaving so
| much faster, that the spinning industry had to come up with
| machines to supply the weaving industry.)
| deepspace wrote:
| As an aside, from the Wikipedia article:
|
| > ... using treadles to raise and lower the heddles, which
| opened the shed in the warp threads. The operator then had to
| reach forward while holding the shuttle in one hand and pass
| this through the shed; the shuttle carried a bobbin for the
| weft.
|
| That is a quite a bit of industry-specific jargon packed into a
| single paragraph. Without context this could easily be mistaken
| for Star Trek jargon.
| harshalizee wrote:
| The flying shuttle is still in use in various parts of Asia,
| especially India in the manufacture of still sarees.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| This is an answer to the "most important invention" question
| I've never heard before, and it's a great answer for the
| "simple" qualifier too. I've never even heard of this device
| before.
| akgerber wrote:
| The mills at Lowell are a National Historic Park now and they
| still have a weaving line running. It's a fascinating place
| to visit.
| bachmeier wrote:
| In terms of economic importance, the assembly line was extremely
| simple yet had a massive impact.
| exabrial wrote:
| Sewers - literally prevents plagues
| jbay808 wrote:
| Deployed widely in modern times, but invented in antiquity.
| netule wrote:
| The hypodermic needle.
| gramakri wrote:
| Washing machine and dish washer
| ganzuul wrote:
| That's actually a big one because of how much time women would
| spend on these chores.
| brutt wrote:
| Software.
| rhacker wrote:
| Definitely far from simple, but definitely important.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| The idea of human rights is simple, fairly modern, and very
| important -- one of the most important today.
| fao_ wrote:
| I mean, it only takes a glance through Kenny's history of
| philosophy books to see that as a concept, it's not a very
| modern idea.
|
| It's just that it's only in the 1800s and 1900s that general
| strikes forced the idea to _actually be implemented_. Before
| industrial work, if you stopped working the land you could be
| replaced (Strikes did still happen, but they were easier to
| deal with). The introduction of industrial work makes strikes
| harder to deal with, because instead of having to come up with
| 10 or 20 men for the fields, or exerting your force over them,
| you have to come up with a couple of hundred or a couple of
| thousand men to work the factory, or find a way to exert force
| over them. And while the labour is 'unskilled', you still need
| a certain level of understanding about, say, making steel, to
| avoid killing yourself and to properly manufacture the
| materials.
|
| And then in the 20th century, globalisation -- or more
| accurately -- the resulting specialisation of facilities, made
| striking even more effective. To quote Tony Cliff:
| When 3,000 General Motors brake parts workers went on strike in
| Dayton, Ohio, in 1996, they shut down General Motors operations
| across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Over
| 125,000 General Motors workers were laid off within
| days. The strike cost the company around $45 million a
| day, and the Clinton government screamed at both sides
| to settle. When an almost general strike took
| place in Denmark, Saab was forced to stop car
| production in Sweden because it ran out of essential
| components from Danish suppliers. The assembly of Saab's
| convertible motors in Finland was also forced to stop.
| Volvo also announced that its production lines in
| Sweden and the Netherlands had been very badly
| affected. In 1988, when Ford workers in
| Britain struck, they brought the whole of Ford Europe
| to a halt within three or four days.
|
| (https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium..
| .)
|
| As I mentioned in another comment, the things that we take for
| granted: the ability for working men to vote (Something won by
| the Chartists in the 1800s), the ability for women to vote,
| human rights laws, worker's rights laws, the NHS, etc. were all
| given to us by strikes.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I think it's not such a new idea, I mean there was the Magna
| Carta
| crtlaltdel wrote:
| plastics
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Def. not simple!
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Aluminum beverage cans are an engineering marvel:
|
| https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw
| TimSchumann wrote:
| Fun fact -- 15,000+ aluminum cans are manufactured every
| second. Every. Second.
|
| Really hope Bill keeps putting out videos, but I understand how
| life gets and it's not his full time job.
| s9w wrote:
| is that right? That would be something like 5 per day per
| person on earth.
| TimSchumann wrote:
| If it's off, it's likely less than an order of magnitude
| off. It's based on the numbers in the video, which he
| states as half a trillion cans a year from 2015. If
| anything, I'd guess the number is a touch low.
| [deleted]
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| Well I just drank my daily 8 cans of Diet Pepsi.
| hackandtrip wrote:
| Isn't it 5 persons per can?
| s9w wrote:
| right, oops
| deg4uss3r wrote:
| My dad worked in a plant growing up, right before college my
| summer job was cleaning the washing ovens to "make sure I value
| my education and don't drop out." Amazing to see the aluminum
| pucks and machinery and get up close and take it apart to clean
| it, I don't think my dad was worried after the foreman asked
| him if I was going to be mechanical engineer.
| superkitty wrote:
| calculator
| maxerickson wrote:
| Wood pulp paper, dimensional lumber (and related framing
| methods), and I see someone already mentioned the AM radio.
|
| The manipulation of the aether thoroughly meets your definition
| of modernity, and the principles of _constructing_ a simple radio
| aren 't terribly complicated.
| chirau wrote:
| I'd have to say cunnilingus and fellatio. Fewer greater joys
| exist.
|
| Closely followed by the water-heater and air-conditioner. Hot
| water and temperature-control are under-appreciated.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Earplugs! Improved sleep quality can have huge health benefits
| and the world is noisier than ever.
|
| ...might have been invented before 1700 though.
| jrace wrote:
| They can cause you to become reliant on sleeping with earplugs.
| Our hearing system does not turn off at night, and by using
| earplugs you may be increasing your night time hearing
| sensitivity.
|
| I worked for almost 15 years in Audiology and saw many people
| with issues in part from sleeping with ear plugs.
|
| Most could not sleep without earplugs even in very quiet
| situations, and some even developed hyperacusis.
|
| For the prevention of hearing-loss due to noise, they have been
| excellent.
| dartdartdart1 wrote:
| They cause inner ear bacteria to quintuple overnight, shouldn't
| be a problem with a healthy immune system, but still
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I would imagine that the improvement to sleep quality
| outweighs any possible ear bacteria problems, at least in
| otherwise healthy people sleeping in noisy locations.
|
| I also question the "quadruple" claim, a quick internet
| search doesn't back that up.
| jrace wrote:
| One ear infection and you may not agree.
| jordan801 wrote:
| Try a white noise generator. I live with noisy roommates and it
| has changed my life. Ear plugs fall out, and can prevent you
| from hearing real emergencies and your alarm clock.
|
| I went from borderline psychotic from them waking me up, to
| sleeping like a rock.
| acoye wrote:
| Compressor, so we can have refrigeration and feed million of
| people safely between other things.
| slipwalker wrote:
| toilet paper, maybe ?...
| jfk13 wrote:
| Why? Cleaning with water works fine - better, in many people's
| opinion.
| rafaelvasco wrote:
| First water of course, and then paper to dry it. If any
| residue is found, repeat the process.
| powellzer wrote:
| The modern clothespin wasn't invented until 1887. It was then
| that the coiled fulcrum came into play.
| cranium wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody mentioned radio communication. The AM
| (Amplitude Modulation) transmission is even quite simple to
| understand and build.
|
| You can even create an electric arc between the ground and the
| transmitting tower as a cheap (and dangerous) receiver:
| https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw
| tgv wrote:
| I don't think a layperson can understand even the basic
| principle behind AM, let alone the actual device. It's not as
| "simple" as washing your hands.
| irchans wrote:
| I seem to recall building small AM transmitters in elementary
| school. I don't remember if I used a transistor or not. I
| think it was easy to construct the capacitor and the
| inductor. (I build it in the early 70's and don't really
| remember how.)
|
| We also made crystal diode radios, but I have no idea how to
| construct a diode from scratch, so maybe those are not
| simple.
| artificialidiot wrote:
| cat whisker detector
| mNovak wrote:
| A pencil tip touching a steel razor blade is famously a
| diode which can be used to build a "foxhole" radio [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio
| mynegation wrote:
| Important - yes, but would you consider it simple? AFAIU it
| relied on Maxwell's equations that I would not characterize as
| simple.
| salgernon wrote:
| I'd like to recommend James Burke's series "Connections"[1] and
| "The Day the Universe Changed"[2] from the late 70s early 80s.
|
| He was a bbc journalist covering NASA and doing science
| communication and one of his particular fascinations (and mine,
| having grown up with his work) is the cumulative effect of ideas
| and technology shape not only how we interact with the modern
| world, but how we perceive it.
|
| [1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/ [2]
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/?ref_=m_nm_knf_wr_t3
| ZguideZ wrote:
| Some of the greatest TV ever made. Shaped my young mind.
| hooande wrote:
| seconding this. Connections is an amazing series about this
| topic
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| He's still at it. See https://www.facebook.com/James-Burkes-
| Knowledge-Web-16366425...
| kej wrote:
| Just want to add that Connections and some of his other videos
| are available on the Internet Archive:
| https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22james+burk...
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| The sanitation system.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Ours may be more sophisticated in various ways, but sanitation
| systems were invented _long_ ago.
| https://www.harappa.com/lothal/14.html
| dotancohen wrote:
| And the roads.
| cyanbane wrote:
| Birth Control.
| RookyNumbas wrote:
| Definitely not simple. But the pill is probably the most
| important invention of the past century or two. Maybe the
| transistor comes close.
| turc1656 wrote:
| Very interesting proposal. I actually remember hearing some
| professor (of some sort of biological/sociological background)
| describe birth control as arguably creating a new species as
| far as females go because never before did they have any sort
| of reliable control over their reproduction. He actually
| believed that it was such an incredible event in human history
| that we have yet to fully understand its total impact on
| society and that we should consider modern women as
| fundamentally different now - to such a large degree that he
| considers them a new species of human females.
| heavyarms wrote:
| I'm not sure about the whole "build it yourself" part, but the
| "Bessemer process" for making steel was a simple innovation
| improving on something that existed but made it so much more
| affordable that many experts think it was a significant
| contributor to a "second" industrial revolution.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution
| octokatt wrote:
| Plastic. We're now drowning in a new problem, but plastic and its
| impact on sanitation (particularly medical sanitation, like
| disposable needles, which then supports vaccinations) has
| dramatically improved life quality and length.
|
| Losing a child to disease before the age of five is no longer a
| universal human experience, portrayed in the Robert Frost poem
| below.
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial
| ken wrote:
| Can I make plastic myself?
| arbitrage wrote:
| Simple ones, sure!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#History
| [deleted]
| puranjay wrote:
| The humble ball point pen.
|
| People forget how cumbersome and/or expensice it was to write
| before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use
| fountain pens. The cheap ones leaked and were an absolute mess to
| carry around. The ones that didn't leak were expensive.
|
| I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years and
| just stash them everywhere I want
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Haven't pencils always been inexpensive?
| inetknght wrote:
| Instead of leaking everywhere we now have a new problem: ink
| dries up before it's used and now they're landfill.
| war1025 wrote:
| > I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years
|
| I just checked and you can get a pack of 60 Bic Ballpoint pens
| for $4.50.
| ralusek wrote:
| I mean it's one banana, Michael, what could it cost...10
| dollars?
| greggyb wrote:
| And now you can get a cheap fountain pen that won't leak and
| writes delightfully.
|
| Financially, you're probably better off with hundreds of cheap
| Bics, but fountain pen ink lasts a long time.
| inetsee wrote:
| I just started exploring fountain pens (inspired by a
| previous HN posting), and the feature that appeals to me the
| most is the variety of ink colors available for fountain
| pens. Most ballpoint pens seem to have just a handful of ink
| colors, but it seems to be possible to get a lot more colors
| for fountain pens, and some of the colors are really exotic.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I think the soldering iron has to be in the hunt on all three
| (important, modern, simple) counts.
| mNovak wrote:
| Sort of implies that electricity was really the important
| innovation, to warrant the need for soldering? (Unless I'm
| totally missing the important application of soldering.)
|
| I'd argue basic electric applications are pretty simple, and
| easily made by hand.
| [deleted]
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Toothbrush.
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