The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel (NOVEMBER 2013)

theatlantic.com ^ | NOVEMBER 2013 | James Fallows

[bitt]

some questions you ask because you want the right answer. Others are valuable because no answer is right; the payoff comes from the range of attempts. Seven years ago, The Atlantic surveyed a group of eminent historians to create a ranked list of the 100 people who had done the most to shape the character of modern America. The panelists agreed easily on the top few names—Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, in that order—but then began diverging in intriguing ways that reflected not simply their own values but also the varied avenues toward influence in our country. Lewis and Clark, or Henry Ford? Thomas Edison, or Martin Luther King? The result was of course not scientific. But the exercise of asking, comparing, and choosing helped us understand more about what these historical figures had done and about the areas in which American society had proved most and least open to the changes wrought by talented, determined men and women.

Now we turn to technology. The Atlantic recently assembled a panel of 12 scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, historians of technology, and others to assess the innovations that have done the most to shape the nature of modern life. The main rule for this exercise was that the innovations should have come after widespread use of the wheel began, perhaps 6,000 years ago. That ruled out fire, which our forebears began to employ several hundred thousand years earlier. We asked each panelist to make 25 selections and to rank them, despite the impossibility of fairly comparing, say, the atomic bomb and the plow. (As it happens, both of these made it to our final list: the discovery and application of nuclear fission, which led to both the atomic bomb and nuclear-power plants, was No. 21 of the top 50, ahead of the moldboard plow,

[bitt]

jump straight to the list:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/innovations-list/309536/#list

[mass55th]

I don’t see government sanctioned voter fraud on that list.

[SAMWolf]

What ? No sliced bread or the 30 round magazine!!

[Mean Daddy]

Ironically, the printing press is #1. I wouldn’t wrap fish guts using the NY Times.

[EvilCapitalist]

Yoga pants, for ladies with a nice ass should be on the list.

[JoeVortex]

I stopped reading and hit the back button the second I saw the source.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The Constitution of the United States of America. Should be #1 now and forever.

[Leep]

Please tell me transexuals, gay marriage or democracy are not on the list.

[EvilCapitalist]

And probably would be if this were a Patriotic website, but considering it’s “The Atlantic,” you know how lefties hate the Constitution.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

26. The telegraph, 1837
Before it, Joel Mokyr says, “information could move no faster than a man on horseback.”

Mr. Mokyr is wrong. He needs to read "A Thread Across the Ocean."

French Semaphore Telegraph

During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars communication systems were pretty basic, mainly relying upon mounted despatch riders, although in 1793 a Frenchman came up with a suggestion that would transform long-distance communications.

Claude Chappe's semaphore telegraph took quite some time to be accepted by revolutionary officials, but once the teething problems had been ironed out it was rapidly adopted. By 1794 communications towers within line-of-sight of each other allowed the French to send a signal from Paris to Lille - a distance of some 191 kilometres - in five minutes. The success of the system meant new tower lines were constructed reaching out from Paris to Dunkirk, Brussels, Boulogne, Antwerp, Metz, Lyon, Milan, Venice and Mantua. A message could be sent to Venice in six hours!

Chappe's telegraph was a small tower upon which stood a black 9-metre mast with a moving wooden cross-piece, measuring 30cm by 4.5 metres. This regulator, as it was known, had a 1.8 metre indicator at each end and had four basic positions - horizontal, vertical or at 45-degree angles. When not in operation the indicators were left as horizontal extensions of the regulator and these would then be moved in seven combinations of angles at 45-degree tilts.

All up the Chappe semaphore tower had 196 combinations known as signs and would be worked by a series of pulleys and levers. Under a good operator three signs could be sent in a minute - providing the visibility was good - although turning the signs into code would further speed a message's journey.

The French spent some time trying to develop a wagon-mounted version of the Chappe system, but funding for research was limited.

[JJBookman]

I golfed with #22, Norman Borlaug and his son Bill when I lived in Tucson in the late 90s. I didn’t know who he was until I happened to see his obituary about 10 year later and looked him up. He was a very down to earth fellow (with a terrible swing) and a pleasure to play along with. I think I peeled off from them after a few holes because they were playing to slowly. Rest in peace Norm!

[Borges]

It was a poll of notables from IBM, Cisco, MIT etc

[Borges]

It’s a poll of various technical people. Look at the source.

[DenntOR]

I wonder how many of these inventions that have a specific known inventor or inventors were invented by white males.

[Steve_Seattle]

And Joe Biden had a hand in all of them!

[catnipman]

among the many firsts in the unabridged version of “The Count of Monte Cristo”,is the first hack of high tech communications employed to manipulate securities markets, namely the Count pays off one of the tower operators of Claude Chappe’s semaphore telegraph to send the opposite information than was actually supposed to be transmitted, so that Spanish bonds collapsed when the false news reached Paris that the Spanish government had collapsed ... the Count bought the collapsing bonds for pennies on the dollar, bankrupting one of his foes in the process, and then turned around and sold the bonds for a massive gain when it was discovered a couple of days later that the news was false and that all was well with the Spanish government ...

btw, the unabridged (Penguin version) of “The Count of Monte Cristo” is the greatest novel ever written ...

[ModelBreaker]

They missed the innovation that has and will change the world more than any of the listed ones.

The Birth Control Pill.

I has already started a massive demographic crash across the entire world that will depopulate the world, changed the relationship between the sexes in unknown and bizarre directions, and forever altered politics by altering marriage and separating recreational sex from reproduction. Mankind evolved in a world where sex and reproduction were linked. Our physical differences, chemical differences, and emotional differences are tied to those millions of years of evolution.

The world will still be adapting to the changes fomented by the pill centuries from now.

Maybe not a great invention. But the one that has changed things forever.

[Bonemaker]

[catnipman]

“I wonder how many of these inventions that have a specific known inventor or inventors were invented by white males.”

close to 100% ...