Greatest invention ever made?

[Bodhi]

And I assume reading threads properly isn't one of yours. MesoAmerican cultures managed to farm quite successfully without the wheel. Food was taken to market on people's backs, on Llamas or on travois.

Yes, but in every case you have described where they have "done without the wheel successfully for year", whenever the wheel was introduced to them, they embraced it with open arms, noticing just how much easier it made life. As far as I am aware, the transition to using the wheel didn't exactly take very long. In fact I'm sure it happened something like this......

Two south american tribesman (let's call them Ig and Og to mirror their intelligence level) get ready to take their produce to market.

Ig: You ready to go?
Og: Not yet. My camel broke down, so I'm going to have to carry this dead cow all the way. Reckon you have space on your camel for a dead sheep?
Ig: No I'm full mate. Why didn't you wait and slaughter them at the market tho?
Og: Cos I'm a retarded south american tribesman, the thought didn't occur. Ah well, two trips it is.

All of a sudden, strangers from a far off land ride past, pulling their supplies behind horses in some strange new contraption with strange round things under it which made the horses's jobs infinitely easier.

Ig: You, it really would make our jobs a lot easier if we had one of those things.
Og: Bloody hell you're right. Why didn't we think of that?

And before you know it everyone in South America has adopted it. Just because certain civilisations didn't discover it doesn't mean the invention is any less important. In my opinion it reflects more on the civilisation than the invention itself tbh.

I take major issue with the classification of farming as an invention as imo, it clearly isn't. It's simply our natural hunter-gatherer instincts taken to their natural conclusion - those who are good at it hunt and gather for those not so adept. As far as I am aware, mankind has never had any strong instincts to roll (West Indian civilisations excepted of course) - the wheel was one of the first occasions mankind thought "How can we make this job easier?".

This isn't new thinking. I'm not re-inventing farming by any means. Oh wait, the phrase is re-inventing the wheel. I rest my case.

Thank you and goodnight.

 

[Bodhi]

Actually, people used ploughs, pulled along by horses, and they didn't have wheels. It was bloody hard work. The traction engine soon solved that problem.

I know? But the ploughs themselves use the principle of the wheel? Lived in a city all our lives have we?

 

[DaGaffer]

I know? But the ploughs themselves use the principle of the wheel? Lived in a city all our lives have we?

Err, no and no. Lots (e.g. most) plough designs don't have anything to do with the 'principle of the wheel'. The principle is more 'drag a blade thing in the dirt and put seeds in'

 

[DaGaffer]

Yes, but in every case you have described where they have "done without the wheel successfully for year", whenever the wheel was introduced to them, they embraced it with open arms, noticing just how much easier it made life. As far as I am aware, the transition to using the wheel didn't exactly take very long. In fact I'm sure it happened something like this......

Two south american tribesman (let's call them Ig and Og to mirror their intelligence level) get ready to take their produce to market.

Ig: You ready to go?
Og: Not yet. My camel broke down, so I'm going to have to carry this dead cow all the way. Reckon you have space on your camel for a dead sheep?
Ig: No I'm full mate. Why didn't you wait and slaughter them at the market tho?
Og: Cos I'm a retarded south american tribesman, the thought didn't occur. Ah well, two trips it is.

All of a sudden, strangers from a far off land ride past, pulling their supplies behind horses in some strange new contraption with strange round things under it which made the horses's jobs infinitely easier.

Ig: You, it really would make our jobs a lot easier if we had one of those things.
Og: Bloody hell you're right. Why didn't we think of that?

And before you know it everyone in South America has adopted it. Just because certain civilisations didn't discover it doesn't mean the invention is any less important. In my opinion it reflects more on the civilisation than the invention itself tbh.

I take major issue with the classification of farming as an invention as imo, it clearly isn't. It's simply our natural hunter-gatherer instincts taken to their natural conclusion - those who are good at it hunt and gather for those not so adept. As far as I am aware, mankind has never had any strong instincts to roll (West Indian civilisations excepted of course) - the wheel was one of the first occasions mankind thought "How can we make this job easier?".

This isn't new thinking. I'm not re-inventing farming by any means. Oh wait, the phrase is re-inventing the wheel. I rest my case.

Thank you and goodnight.

I think I said all this. I said If you take agriculture as an invention (and I also said - twice- that I didn't necessarily agree with that), then its more important the wheel, and I stand by that because its patently true. I also said that where non-wheel societies were introduced to the wheel they adopted it pretty damn quick. Still not handling that thread-reading thing too well are we?

 

[Bodhi]

Err, no and no. Lots (e.g. most) plough designs don't have anything to do with the 'principle of the wheel'. The principle is more 'drag a blade thing in the dirt and put seeds in'

If I ignore the section called Wheel Settings does it make you actually right?

I stand corrected, early ploughs didn't use the principle of the wheel (altho I am positive I saw one in the Black Country Museum that did), but the latest ones do. And the latest ones are so much more effective than the old ones. Chalk up another victory for the wheel tbh.

And I know you covered the points I did in my big post. All I did was join the dots for you as you appeared to be having difficulties.

Oh and as far as non-inventions go, shelter takes a dump on farming from a very large height. 0wned.

 

[DaGaffer]

Oh and as far as non-inventions go, shelter takes a dump on farming from a very large height. 0wned.

Oh yeah, you got me, no question about it; 'shelter' wins it. Maybe we should get a trophy made, we could share it with the bears and the squirrels

 

[Wij]

The best non-invention surely must be wanking. Possibly to jazz-cave-art.

 

[Brynn]

The best non-invention surely must be wanking. Possibly to jazz-cave-art.

jizz-cave-art?

 

[Bodhi]

Oh yeah, you got me, no question about it; 'shelter' wins it. Maybe we should get a trophy made, we could share it with the bears and the squirrels

I was merely pointing out how ridiculous it is to nominate farming as an invention by using an equally ridiculous example. I'm sure just about every animal which has taken hunting and gathering to a similar extent as us (wild cats and birds spring to mind) would agree - it's a bit silly to call it man's great invention, when most wild animals have been doing a similar thing for millions of years. They can't take it to the same scale as us granted, but the principle is very much the same.

Maybe when you're working on your lateral thinking you could learn to tell when people have their tongues wedged firmly in their cheeks aswell. Just a thought.

 

[DaGaffer]

I was merely pointing out how ridiculous it is to nominate farming as an invention by using an equally ridiculous example. I'm sure just about every animal which has taken hunting and gathering to a similar extent as us (wild cats and birds spring to mind) would agree - it's a bit silly to call it man's great invention, when most wild animals have been doing a similar thing for millions of years. They can't take it to the same scale as us granted, but the principle is very much the same.

Maybe when you're working on your lateral thinking you could learn to tell when people have their tongues wedged firmly in their cheeks aswell. Just a thought.

Show me an animal that has taken 'gathering' to the point where they prepare ground, plant seeds, harvest, crop rotate and store, and then do it again. Agriculture is about as close the casual gathering that animals do as the space shuttle is to walking. Just because it wasn't invented overnight by some prehistoric farmer palmer having a 'eureka!' moment doesn't mean it wasn't a human concept and a human creation. And unlike shelter, it had a bigger effect; in fact, constructed shelters beyond a glorifed tent almost certainly didn't appear until after the discovery/'invention' of agriculture because humans never had the time to build them and they couldn't hang around for too long. Tongue in cheek - fine, but try to get your bollocks out of there while you're talking.

 

[Bodhi]

Show me an animal that has taken 'gathering' to the point where they prepare ground, plant seeds, harvest, crop rotate and store, and then do it again. Agriculture is about as close the casual gathering that animals do as the space shuttle is to walking. Just because it wasn't invented overnight by some prehistoric farmer palmer having a 'eureka!' moment doesn't mean it wasn't a human concept and a human creation. And unlike shelter, it had a bigger effect; in fact, constructed shelters beyond a glorifed tent almost certainly didn't appear until after the discovery/'invention' of agriculture because humans never had the time to build them and they couldn't hang around for too long. Tongue in cheek - fine, but try to get your bollocks out of there while you're talking.

You miss the point. Farming is simply a mechanism where the more capable hunter-gatherers get food for the not so capable ones - such as adult birds collecting food for infant birds - preparing the ground, sowing seeds etc are no more impressive given mankind's intelligence than a cheetah skulking through the grass to make sure they don't startle their prey. It's not an invention, it's simply the human way of doing things. It's like suggesting communication was the greatest invention ever.

It's amazing how, even having my bollocks trapped in my mouth, I refrain from spewing them out for everyone else to hear. There may be a lesson in that for you. I'm not sure.

 

[DaGaffer]

You miss the point. Farming is simply a mechanism where the more capable hunter-gatherers get food for the not so capable ones - such as adult birds collecting food for infant birds - preparing the ground, sowing seeds etc are no more impressive given mankind's intelligence than a cheetah skulking through the grass to make sure they don't startle their prey. It's not an invention, it's simply the human way of doing things. It's like suggesting communication was the greatest invention ever.

If you really believe that, you are genuinely quite retarted, as witnessed by the the fact that you equate farming to an instinctive behaviour (by comparing farming to a cheetah hunting that is what you're saying) when its clearly a concious inventive process. The human way of doing things is to conciously create and invent! You can't say "Oh well it doesn't count because its just a smart version of what animals do!" Don't be ridiculous. Get something straight - farming is not 'just the human way of doing things' - for the vast majority of our history, it wasn't the way we did things, it was a discovery that was systematically copied - taught as a process to subsequent generations and improved upon. By your logic no invention has any merit because "its just what we do, innit?"

 

[Bodhi]

If you really believe that, you are genuinely quite retarted, as witnessed by the the fact that you equate farming to an instinctive behaviour (by comparing farming to a cheetah hunting that is what you're saying) when its clearly a concious inventive process. The human way of doing things is to conciously create and invent! You can't say "Oh well it doesn't count because its just a smart version of what animals do!" Don't be ridiculous. Get something straight - farming is not 'just the human way of doing things' - for the vast majority of our history, it wasn't the way we did things, it was a discovery that was systematically copied - taught as a process to subsequent generations and improved upon. By your logic no invention has any merit because "its just what we do, innit?"

Awesome 180 dude! You finally agree with me. Farming was a discovery, not an invention. That was enough to count electricity out, so I'm sorry farming has to go too.

And yes, I genuinely am retarted. I've just been to the bathroom to sort my hair and put more after shave on.

Don't use words you can't spell. Especially when one of them's retarded.

 

[Jupitus]

Keep it nice please guys... I see this one going down the shitter but there's time to save it yet.... :wub:

 

[DaGaffer]

Awesome 180 dude! You finally agree with me. Farming was a discovery, not an invention. That was enough to count electricity out, so I'm sorry farming has to go too.

And yes, I genuinely am retarted. I've just been to the bathroom to sort my hair and put more after shave on.

Don't use words you can't spell. Especially when one of them's retarded.

Ooh wow, I made a spelling mistake, sue me. Electricity was a discovery, the tools to harness electricity were inventions. The fact that seeds grow when you put them in the ground was the discovery, everything else that followed on from that discovery was an invention (as in, the organised bit, called farming). Your pedantry knows no bounds, and I didn't '180' at all, 'dude'.

 

[Damini]

In no particular order:

Microscope.

Telescope.

Antibiotic/vaccines <--- Not sure if that counts as invention or discovery really. It's artificially manipulated in order to create an immune response, but taken usually from naturally occuring event.

Plumbing.

Radio.

 

[Bodhi]

Ooh wow, I made a spelling mistake, sue me. Electricity was a discovery, the tools to harness electricity were inventions. The fact that seeds grow when you put them in the ground was the discovery, everything else that followed on from that discovery was an invention (as in, the organised bit, called farming). Your pedantry knows no bounds, and I didn't '180' at all, 'dude'.

Kind of an important one, especially when it calls into question someone else's intelligence...........


And yes, you did 180. Quite spectacularly. You went from saying "Farming teh invention is teh roxx!!!" to "It's not an invention it was a discovery." Pretty massive 180 in my book! Pretty well backed up by your last post, which agrees with everything I've been saying, except you seem to think the organisation was a new idea - it really wasn't. Gathering food has been organised since the dawn of human kind. As in the strong hunters get told to go out and hunt (or decide to do it for themselves), the weaker members of the tribe stay home and do something else. Organisation in motion.

 

[Stimpy]

Now I'm not sure whether this is a good invention for the man the woman or both but I just spotted this on a news site...

Vibrating condom is top draw at inventors' fair

A vibrating condom and an anti-haemorrhoid chair have become the stars of the show at an inventors' trade fair in Geneva.

The condom with an inbuilt vibrator created by a Taiwanese man has proved a top draw for hundreds of visitors to the fair.

 

[GekuL]

Some species of ants can be thought of as farmers, leafcutters take the leaves underground specifically to grow mould on them (which they eat). Some species also herd aphids and caterpillars (taking them to their nest over night/winter, and then returning them to their feeding ground). Once the micro-climate is altered they will move on.

 

[Tom]

And yes, I genuinely am retarted. I've just been to the bathroom to sort my hair and put more after shave on.

Don't use words you can't spell. Especially when one of them's retarded.

LOL

 

[Furr]

Some species of ants can be thought of as farmers, leafcutters take the leaves underground specifically to grow mould on them (which they eat). Some species also herd aphids and caterpillars (taking them to their nest over night/winter, and then returning them to their feeding ground). Once the micro-climate is altered they will move on.

i verify this fact with the stamp of linkage
and my vote for the greatest invention is the internal combustion engine as this has probably had the greatest impact on day to day living in comparison to most things I can think of in all its various uses such as farming engineering industry etc and not just the automobile.

 

[PR.]

Its a bit open ended really.

I mean you can say the engine is greatest invention, but the smelting facilities that melted the ore into metal to make the engine are greater because without them we would not have metal.

Then you could say the greatest invention was stone tools because without them we would not have been able to manipulate anything that was beyond the capabilities of our hands.

A TFT Screen is a great invention but its wouldn't exist without the invention of microchips and transistors or even electricity.

To sum this post was useless, as I can't nominate a greatest invention

 

[Furr]

funny you should mention that , because the other two i thought up were in fact the manipulation of metal (the complete process of creating a pure metal from an ore as a whole invention) and on a sidenote the generator in the creation of electricity in power plants

But in relation to what makes a great invention , you shouldnt class as what leads on to what as better as thats merely stating where the inventions stems from .The actual invention itself can be greater than what created it in its significance for example the making gunpowder itself although important in no way had the same impact alone on human development as the weapons that come from it .
In the same way the creation of pure metal was extremly important but I feel that this alone didnt have the same effect as the engine because the engine basically allowed for the past 100-200 years scientific activity in the ability to harness more than a few horse power ,that in turn created the greatest impact of any singular invention because of its impact in nearly every aspect of modern times

 

['Shy]

Sliced bread. Saves so much time.