Knobs beat them all!
clothing zippers were also a very big deal. vast improvement over buttons.
refrigerators and modern stoves powered by gas or electricity are much more important than any stinkin internet. Just go visit a poor country where houses/homes do not have refrigerators.
Or how about if your power is our for 5 days or months. There goes any refrigeration.
The modern electric grid is more important than computers, internet, DVD players, 50” flat screen TVs and so on
That era begins with a lifestyle not much different than the previous 5000, with horse travel and sailing ships being the fastet travel. Most things were done with human manual labor. In 1830 there were almost no roads in the modern sense, just trails. You were born in a town, never travelled more than about 50 miles from where you were born, and died there. Homesteading in a different place, say moving from New York to California, risked your life on a year long journey.
In the next 110 years, steam power replaced horses and human labor, revolutionizing travel and creating modern industry. Electricity continued replacing human labor, and oil and rail made the world much smaller. By the end of that century in 1945, was the beginning of the atomic age, the jet age, worldwide communications, computers, and the beginnings of space travel.
From 1945 until now, the changes are nowhere as great. We have far more in common with a person from 1945 than a person from 1945 has with someone from 1845.
Stupid leftard article.
What's the biggest thing to hit media since Gutenberg? ... Duh! You're using it!
buttons — that was a distraction for me during the film ‘Gladiator’.
The actor Oliver Reed had on a shirt with buttons. They were used in the far past as decorations on clothing, but not as fasteners until the early Renaissance.
Ooops!
Full title:
Why buttons changed the world more than the internet: Forget today’s marvels – a new book hails the power of far humbler inventions
Air conditioning changed the way people interact.
Before that people were outdoors more in hot weather. Sitting on porches, taking walks and talking with neighbors and people they met.
After A/C people didn’t have the same opportunity to interact with each other.
We began to loose the skills of civil, verbal social communication.
Now it is not uncommon for people, even entire families, to be in the same room and communicate via text rather than the spoken word.
For me the most important invention was indoor plumbing..I remember chamber pots under beds at grandma’s farm...You just hoped you were the first to use it....kids were 3 to a bed....
Typical Daily Mail BS. The the other day they had a ridiculous article about a “newly discovered” 100 year old ghost town in Tennessee (complete with stainless steel door knobs and sky lift):
Tell the Amish about that. They get along just fine without buttons.
Just ask George Jetson. All he did all day was push buttons for Mr. Spacely at Spacely Sprockets.
bump for later
In a similar vein I have often thought how little (mechanically)would have been possible without the ‘spring’.
Elastic.
Paper.
Fascinating article as it causes us all to ponder history, both known and unknown. The most important advance in human development, I believe, was our ancestors’ observations of nature and how to gather seeds for cultivation and to domesticate animals for food supplies. Fire and cooking of course were huge - then harnessing the power of horses, water and wind. (Not those damn wind farms!!!!!). None of our modern inventions would have been possible without the knowledge collected from basic living functions.
As for modern medicine - my rural aunts and uncles avoided doctors and are living or lived into their 90’s.
Thanks for a great thread WF;)