Top 10 Gadgets of All Time

pulski sent in MSNBC's list of the top 10 gadgets of all time. It's a fairly interesting list, although I think some of the more ancient gadgets were overlooked - cutting tools, dams and other fundamentals of civilized life.

My own top 10 list

I agree with the wheel, but NOT for the reasons given. Ancient man was =quite= capable of hauling 250 tonne granite blocks over hundreds of miles without the benefit of wheels, thank you very much. Mind you, the spinach consumption was quite high. :)

My top 10 inventions of All Time (in no particular order, historical or preferential):

1. The Wheel - because it made long-distance transport -practical-. It was already possible, with the log roller, but it was impractical for anything much more than humungous pyramids or giant stone circles. It's much more complex to carry loose grain, or water, that way.
2. Stone Flaking - because this was the first example of tool designing. Tools had been used for thousands of years, before the idea of flaking was developed, but if the materials didn't suit the job, there wasn't much that could be done beyond looking for other materials. Being able to custom-make things allowed people to escape from searching and spend more time doing. (Microsoft, take note!)
3. The Footpath - the idea that certain rights of way should be inalienable and irrevocable was one big step towards the development of the concept that people actually posessed rights, regardless of status. In England, this led to the Magna Carta, which inspired the Constitution of America.
4. Ships - these freed people from a given region or island, and allowed the exploration of new lands and new cultures. Without ships, Ancient Greece could never have become the centre of knowledge for the ancient world, and Egypt could never have developed such an extensive and powerful civilisation.
5. Writing - The introduction of the concept of encoding thoughts in a sem-permanent form brought about many revolutions in society. Computers, for example, could not exist without it, as there would be no concept of storing data, and thus no means for a computer to obtain information or an algorithm to do something -to- the data, or even return the result. Nor would there be junk mail, the loss of which would bankrupt the logging and recycling industries. (On second thoughts...)
6. The Jaquard Loom - This handy little device not only revolutionised the entire weaving industry in one fell swoop, it gave rise to the idea of programmable machines. (Clockwork machines that could be programmed had been around for some time, and IIRC were the inspiration for the Jaquard Loom, but it wasn't until the loom had been made that anyone really saw that the concept was actually -useful- for something.) The Jaquard Loom is largely responsible for the way in which early computers operated, including the use of punched cards.
7. The Watt Engine - This (IIRC) was the first attempt at making a useful steam engine. The Greeks had beaten James Watt by a few thousand years, but they regarded it as an amusing toy, and so the idea was lost. This engine allowed society to develop mobile steam power, and (later) the combustion engine and the jet engine. Further evolution led to Ram Jets and Scram Jets. But they all really follow much the same design idea as the original.
8. Gunpowder - An infamous invention of the Chinese, but not really used in a destructive way until Europeans got hold of it. After that, the world was never quite the same. (Rumours that this is when the Earth acquired it's 23.5' tilt are denied. :) This has led to the science of explosives, which in turn led to the discovery that nitroglycerine is very good for heart disease. (One assumes that, if the heart knows what's good for it, the brain won't push the button.) It's also led to rocketry, deep-space probes, and practical manned space-flight.
9. Painting - The ability to express abstract thoughts, again in a semi-permanent way, is probably a cornerstone of how humans evolved philosophy, ethics, mathematics, science and all the other wonderful (and VERY necessary) studies on which complex societies depend. This event may well also be coupled with the evolution of Self-Awareness, without which humans wouldn't be much of anything.
10. Musical Instruments - The ability to artificically produce a controllable, pre-determined sound that could not be naturally produced is a fundamental key to the imagination, and undoubtably engendered the earliest experiments with Freedom (as in Free Speech), exchanging ideas and stories, which would have grown and evolved in the ideal GPL-style setting. As with all the other things I've said, this would undoubtable have had a huge impact outside the area in which it was originally developed. For example, this would allow the development of -memorable- oral traditions, culture and early spirituality.

Gadgets for the gadgets

It's not the gadgets that are cool, but the gadgets for the gadgets that really are cool. So, here's my top ten list corollary (roughly following the original list):

1. Cruise Control
   
   Face it, we're lazy, and what better way to be lazy then to let some computer control exactly how fast our wheels spin. Not only that, but it's fun to watch people freak out when you pass them with your legs crossed on the dash.
   
   
2. The Fire Extinguisher
   
   Portable fire was great .. until it landed in the hands of the stupid person, at which point it became a weapon. At this point, luckily, someone invented the fire extinguisher, leading the most common source of damage on a freshman hall, the broken fire bubble.
   
   
3. The Walkie-talkie
   
   How did I learn Morse Code? I had one of those cheap walkie-talkies with Morse Code on it. It was so much fun pressing that little red button that made the annoying beep, so annoying in fact, that my parents will never let me near anything that makes noise again!
   
   
4. The Modem
   
   If it wasn't for this little device, Doom and deathmatch would never have become as popular they are, and id Software would never be as close as they are to world domination (move over Redhat)!
   
   
5. The Bug
   
   All right, technically, this isn't a gadget, but who would've known that an actual moth would've climbed inside one of those mothers and caused so many problems? And now, us IT professionals have yet another excuse to pull the systems offline for, what else, playing deathmatch.
   
   
6. The Walkman
   
   Leave it to the tiny transistor to allow us to have portable music. Where would America's youth be today without those headphones covering their ears and allowing them to completely drown out the wise words of their elder statesmen? They certainly wouldn't be leading the computing world, now would they?
   
   
7. Cell Phones
   
   They may not technically be radios, but certainly the idea of wireless communication culminates in those annoying little devices that give some people a reason to drive poorly and others a reason to say that everyone is going to die of brain cancer. Plus, you can play games on some of them now! Can anyone say 'deathmatch'?
   
   
8. The Nintendo
   
   Whoa Nelly! The Nintendo made console gaming fun again and gave us yet another mindless, brainless activity to do with our televisions.
   
   
9. The Palm Pilot
   
   Computers are great, but small computers are better, because they can become as portable as cell phones while becoming ten times more useful. The idea that the computer could become as important a tool for everyday life as the pen started with the idea of taking it all with you, and the Palm Pilot embodies that spirit.
   
   
10. Pants
    
    Again, technically, not a gadget, but really, when you're done with that hand-dryer thingie (which honestly, really never does work), where do you wipe your hands?
    
    NOTE: This post not for the humor (or humour) impaired.

The 1st most important gadget of all time

...has to be a cutting device that is at least 4000 years old.

It's called the "Plow".

Re:The 1st most important gadget of all time

It's called the "Plow".
Only for your farmer types. For us city folk, the can opener serves much the same purpose -- providing food -- and has the added advantage of being more portable.

Re:Beer

IANA archeologist or historian.

Actually, you're not far off. One theory wrt agriculture/civilization gaining widespread acceptance is that beer provided the impetus for organized agriculture. Flour can be made with relatively little grain, but fermentation requires significantly more. In addition to the "obvious" benefits of beer, fermentation did much to purify water for drinking. (Remember that sewer systems and water treatment plants are recent inventions.) While these ancient cultures certainly did not understand why beer was allowing them to live longer on average, it certainly provided an important evolutionary advantage to those societies which drank it in favor of water.

Re:electric hand dryers?

not to mention the fact that it is easily surpassed in usability (time to dry hands), portability, cost, and just about everything else, by a simple paper towel. Electric hand dryers are a good example of technology gone way too far. Electric HAIR dryers, OTOH (for women) have been a godsend. Now it only takes women 2 hours to get ready, instead of the pre-historic 4.

Re:Hmm. The compass and the sexton.

I can see where it was useful for church officials to have a sexton to relieve them of the onerous duties of bell ringing and grave digging, I doubt it did much to foster exploration.

A sextant, on the other hand, is useful for making astronomical observations of the sort used in navigation. If you ever try using a sextant, however, you will realize that it isn't much good without a nautical almanac or similar table of celestial positions. Back in the old days (indeed, prior to the invention of the sextant itself) one produced these using an astrolabe [m-w.com], which was a combination observing device and mechanical calculator. Apart from enabling one to produce accurate tables for navigation, it also allowed observations an calculations accurate enough to show that the planets couldn't possibly be in circular orbits about the earth, thus paving the way for the Copernican revolution and earning it its spot among my personal top 10 list of the best gadgets of all time.

-r

um - the pen ....

writing and literacy for the masses (I'm talking about the quill here) ...

But the electric hand drier? they don't even work right. Although I did once see one of those optically trigered ones with a sign "for a word from place 1$ in the slot below" .... it sounded just like him

Birth Control

I can't believe contraception was not on the list. It seems to me that birth control (specifically, the pill and other "drug" methods) freed half of the population to more reliably join the work force along with sparking the sexual revolution. I would think such an impact would qulify this. Of course, it is no electric hand dryer (which I am hoping was added as a pathetic attempt at comedy).

Jeremy

Top 10 . .you can all just . .

1) one, one 'cause you left me.
2) two two for my family.
3) three three for my heartache.
4) four four for my headache.
5) five five for my lonley.
6) six six for my sorrow.
7) seven seven no tomorrow.
8) eight eight I forget what eight was for.
9) nine nine cause I've lost god.
10) ten ten ten ten for everything everything.

_________________________

My God! We've found him!

The one person in the world that actually likes hand dryers! Clearly the man should be stuffed and put in a museum somewhere.

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Electric Hand Dryer!?

Ever try to blow your nose with one of those? A curse on bathroom designers who leave out the paper towels.

ronco, erector sets, and remote controls....

1st place and important link of the day: Anything made by Ronco [ronco.com]. The pocket fisherman, inside the shell egg scrambler, the list goes on and on. This is gadget heaven.

Erector sets [acghs.org] with motor: to heck with Mindstorms. I was building destructor the robot with this thing when I could barely walk. That was a concept ahead of it's time.
Here's a great quote [eliwhitney.org]: "The first artificial heart constructed at Yale was powered by an Erector Set motor."

The remote control [ideafinder.com]: Let's face it. We still don't need the dang thing and we couldn't live without it. It fits the definition perfectly.

What "Gadget" means.

A lot of people are missing the point here. The light bulb, the plow, birth control, etc., are important advances, inventions, discoveries, whatever, but they're not necessarily gadgets. According to Merriam-Webster [m-w.com], a gadget is "an often small mechanical or electronic device with a practical use but often thought of as a novelty". In fact, by this definition, a lot of the stuff on this list shouldn't be there -- not the wheel or the transistor, for sure.

So what does count? The hand dryer, while not one of my top choices, is definitely gadgety. The television and computer and radio have moved out of gadget status, but certainly started that way.

What else? Digital watches. Palm Pilots. Viewmaster. Gyroscopes. Those little models of the solar system which have all the planets geared so they can all rotate and revolve at the proper relative speeds.

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