What is the World's Best Invention?

[roland]

What defines a great invention? Most inventions these days tend to be modifications or improvements on previous ideas.

Watching the New Inventors on ABC yields some amusing and often useful new ways of doing something, but I am challenged to actually label the presented results as true inventions.

Was the wheel an invention? Cut a tree up in small cross sections and you have wheels.

Doing a search in Google throws up notable inventions like the Light Globe, the Television, the Wheel Barrow, Glass and lenses, the transistor, paper, the automobile and other things from our past.

What truely life changing and innovative inventions (not modifications) are you able to list that have appeared in the last 20 years?

 

[condog]

Growing replacement your own human organs from your own adult stem cells for organ transplant in the USA...

Likewise Angel dust for the regenration og human limbs.....

Amazing stuff....I ashamed to admit but my wife taped Operah and it blew my mind..... In the USA they are now able to grow you a new organ, almost any small organ, eg hearts, liver , arteries etc from your own adult stme cells in as little as 3-8 weeks....

Another 70 year old bloke lost the end third of his finger in an accident....they dipped it in angel dust (some modification of stem cells) and he grew an exact replica finger within two weeks.... he has 70 year old fingers with a 2 year old finger tip in the middle.....

no rejection, no dieing on waiting lists....truly amazing......and sooon will be available mainstream.......

Without a doubt the next decades magical inventions will revolve around electronics and medical technologies....longevity looks set to exceed 120 years and the technology to support it will be amazing....

 

[So_Cynical]

What truly life changing and innovative inventions (not modifications) are you able to list that have appeared in the last 20 years?

Not quite the last 20 years but close...William Yeager invented the router in 1981 and like most great inventers didn't really know what he had, it was his work mates and later Cisco system founders Leonard Bosack and wife Sandra Lerner that saw the true potential, and provided the finishing touches and eventually sold the idea to a venture capital firm to get the router into mass production.

Cisco and the technology licences it holds are now worth billions...ill quote the Wiki for there now famous story.

By the end of 1984, Bosack and Lerner had formed Cisco Systems and begun manufacturing routers in their living room. Cisco was named after the city San Francisco. In 1986, Bosack resigned from Stanford amid allegations of impropriety to work at Cisco full time. That year, Bosack and Lerner received funding of $2.5 million from Sequoia Capital after 77 unsuccessful proposals to other venture capitalists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Yeager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bosack

 

[roland]

Growing replacement your own human organs from your own adult stem cells for organ transplant in the USA...

Likewise Angel dust for the regenration og human limbs.....

Amazing stuff....I ashamed to admit but my wife taped Operah and it blew my mind..... In the USA they are now able to grow you a new organ, almost any small organ, eg hearts, liver , arteries etc from your own adult stme cells in as little as 3-8 weeks....

Another 70 year old bloke lost the end third of his finger in an accident....they dipped it in angel dust (some modification of stem cells) and he grew an exact replica finger within two weeks.... he has 70 year old fingers with a 2 year old finger tip in the middle.....

no rejection, no dieing on waiting lists....truly amazing......and sooon will be available mainstream.......

Without a doubt the next decades magical inventions will revolve around electronics and medical technologies....longevity looks set to exceed 120 years and the technology to support it will be amazing....

I agree, amazing stuff condog, but are stem cells really an invention? If we define an invention as a new way to utilise something already in existance then the medical world certainly be right up there.

Was Aspirin an invention? The native South American's had been chewing on the same tree bark for ages to relieve head pain before the medical companies came along and squished it up in tablet form for commercialisation.

 

[roland]

Not quite the last 20 years but close...William Yeager invented the router in 1981 and like most great inventers didn't really know what he had, it was his work mates and later Cisco system founders Leonard Bosack and wife Sandra Lerner that saw the true potential, and provided the finishing touches and eventually sold the idea to a venture capital firm to get the router into mass production.

Cisco and the technology licences it holds are now worth billions...ill quote the Wiki for there now famous story.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Yeager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bosack

Is the router truely an invention? I agree a great innovation, but are we not just using semiconductors to push around electrons in a new way with the router? Wouldn't the core of this "invention" be the transistor/diode with it's gate-like (on/off or 1/0) electrical properties?

 

[J.B.Nimble]

What truely life changing and innovative inventions (not modifications) are you able to list that have appeared in the last 20 years?

The time frame is challenging - if by appear, you mean the point at which the invention/development enters popular use then mobile phones, digital photography, search engines, and the humble web browser have all made dramatic appearances in the last 20 years even though their moment of conception may have been much earlier.

 

[akkopower]

Do inventions exist, are all inventions just innovations.

The Calculus and Newtons Laws are two huge scientific breakthroughs which contributed to many forms of innovation.

 

[UBIQUITOUS]

Intelligent Fastening Technology (aussie invention).

www.tz.net

I expect it to be fully commercialized over the next few years.



Also, the safety syringe which retracts the needle into the syringe after use. There are currently about 1.5million needlestick related deaths globally each year.

www.unilife.com (another aussie company which looks like also making shareholders buckets of cash)

Disclaimer: I hold shares in both companies.

 

[UBIQUITOUS]

Just realised that the second one is infact a modification i.e of the syringe.

 

[Dowdy]

Aerogel.

Invented back in the 30s but only now starting to see how valuable it is. Once it becomes cheap and viable and they make composite materials out of it, it'll change the way things are built.

Has excellent strength to weight ratio and insulation properties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel

 

[Aussiejeff]

(1) The Computer

(2) The Stock Market

(3) The Bailout

....in that order....

 

[Mr J]

Growing replacement your own human organs from your own adult stem cells for organ transplant in the USA...

Wait, this is being practiced now? Are you sure? I thought this was probable in the near future, but are we already there?

As long as the world remains relatively stable, there's no point putting a figure on longevity. It's too bad that technology to sustain the human population hasn't kept up so far.

 

[Calliope]

Was the wheel an invention? Cut a tree up in small cross sections and you have wheels.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. The Incas, who were an advanced civilisation, never developed a wheel, for the simple reason that their rugged terrain was not suitable for wheeled vehicles. They used llamas as pack animals on mountain trails.

On the other I am sure they could have put the arch and mortar to good use in their architecture, but they never developed them.

 

[outback]

By your standards has anything been invented? Isn't everything an adaption or modification on something we already have?

 

[brty]

How about the Internal Combustion Engine.

Think about how backward the whole world would be without it, and hungry for that matter.

brty

 

[Calliope]

By your standards has anything been invented? Isn't everything an adaption or modification on something we already have?

You are right. As Isaac Newton said;

" If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."

 

[Boyou]

My nomination for Best Invention would be the internet.

And before the question is asked ..maybe it is not so much an invention, as an extension of a breakthrough that began with written communication back in pre-historic times.

The BIG conceptual leap was made with paintings on cave walls.Thus early man could record events (concepts ,really) so that later generations had records of events of that time.It was the invention of Language.
Then came formalised alphabets.Words were written laboriously ,by hand on parchment or stone.
And somewhere in the 15th Century Gutenberg invented movable type..thus making the production of books much more affordable.
The internet is an extension of that conceptual breakthrough in the caves of Prehistory.

 

[seasprite]

everyone has it in their homes and vehicles , invented by this genius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

 

[J.B.Nimble]

What truely life changing and innovative inventions (not modifications) are you able to list that have appeared in the last 20 years?

Back to our 20 year time frame... what could be more truly life changing and innovative than the sub-prime mortgage? As for being the best, well it was good for some...

 

[Largesse]

global warming