What do you think is one of the greatest inventions?
Asked by
chyna (
51628
)
January 20th, 2021
from iPhone
I’m going to have to say flip top lids. I spent at least 10 minutes yesterday looking for the lid from my maple syrup. I dropped it in a junk drawer.
The toothpaste flip top lid is a miracle! I used to spend hours looking for it, then would just give up and let the top layer of toothpaste dry out.
What invention has made your life easier, or easier to be lazy?
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26 Answers
The timer on the coffee maker is one of my favorite convenience inventions, having hot coffee waiting the minute I appear in the morning is so lovely!!!
The german invention of the Computer.
@ragingloli: The British Ada Lovelace would only partially agree with you.
I say the World Wide Web — developed by the (also British) Tim Berners Lee and CERN in Switzerland. Built upon the Internet, which was an offshoot of the ARPANET (originally designed for military purposes).
I remember reading some place that the flush toilet and sanitary plumbing were considered the best inventions of the last 200 years because they saved so many people from getting disease.
Hard to say just one.
For 35 years my answer was tampons.
Washing machine is a really big deal also.
We can’t forget penicillin.
DVR is right up there too for me, but mostly my mind does not go to electronics (unless you classify a washing machine as electronic).
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Simple wedge shaped jar opener. No moving parts. There are times that using it is the only way to unscrew the top of a bottle.
The transistor. Without the transistor your smart phone would be the size of an 18 wheeler. An Apple 11 Pro Max has 8.5 billion transistors.
Saran wrap.
(And a big high five to anybody who gets that joke without looking it up)
@ragingloli You’re too young to understand it.
OK. I’ll explain. In the 1960s, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner did a bit called the 2000 Year Old Man. Mel Brooks was the 2000 year old man, and Carl Reiner interviewed him. Mel Brooks said the greatest invention was Saran Wrap. (At the very end, 11:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI7wDpBRqjo
Oh, the guy who perpetrated Spaceballs.
No wonder I did not laugh.
I’m literally lost without a GPS.
From years ago. The safety pin.
I find the GPS or GPS app on the phone (Waze) to be incredibly miraculous. I remember when I was little, my mom would be planning a trip by looking at the atlas or large maps. Sometimes people would give directions which had to be written down diligently, and any deviating from the plan meant figuring out how to get back to the original way. Now, with Waze or GPS, there’s a minimal of planning and stress.
@jca2 I remember one trip to Pennsylvania where my wife and I were hopelessly lost. Every time we wanted to make a U-turn on the freeway by exiting the freeway (my California indoctrination shows through!), we would end up on another freeway!
@cookieman In school I wrote an essay on Ada Lovelace. Bittersweet.
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