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Technology

Technologies That Shaped the Last Century? 283

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-to-think-about dept.
ChrisGB writes "I was watching a TV discussion in the UK this morning about people's views of what technologies have shaped the way the 20th century developed. Suggestions from the panel included atomic theory, the microprocessor and genetics. Most interesting were the reasons they made their choices. What are other people's choices for the most important technologies of the 1900s and your reasons for choosing them?" I think that the large push in communications technology in the last century were critical in getting us things we've come to depend on today...from the TV to Slashdot. What technologies developed in the last century do you think are important?
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Technologies that Shaped the Last Century? More

Technologies that Shaped the Last Century?

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  • Re:I'm sorry! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You have been decieved by the modern misconception engine. Adopting the current electricity grid and power system that we use today was perhaps one of the biggest -Blunders- ever made. The current system uses very low frequency power, making it extremely dangerous to living beings. It was adopted because it could be metered and distributed at a cost. The reasons that a 50 or 60Hz system of AC power was chosen are fairly simple: 1) If the frequency is too low, you can see the flicker in incandescent bulbs. (Not to mention that high speed steam turbines for generation won't be able to run as fast, meaning less efficiency.) 2) As frequencies increase, loss of flux in transformers (and I think AC motors too) increases, as well as resistance. For example, I have run small transformers at 4kHz and 88% efficiency, but going to 8kHz means efficiency drops by about 10%. This is extremely serious when you consider that electricity usually goes through at least four transformers on its way to your home. 3)A further problem would be that as frequencies run higher, it becomes increasingly difficult to build slow speed 3 phase AC motors. A 1500 rpm motor (that's 60 Hz AC) will use 3 coils, but if you want a 1500 rpm motor at say 6kHz, you will need 300 coils, which is damn complicated for a simple motor! There would be further problems, but in short, somewhere close to 60 or 50 Hz AC is the most economical/cheapest way to distribute power.

  • Re:Atuomobiles for the masses (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to love living in the city, being able to walk to used bookstores, the ma and pa grocery store on the corner, etc.

    But I got mugged two blocks from my house. I got tired of the traffic noise at 2 in the morning, the scream of young women out on the sidewalk, etc.

    I now pay about the same amount of money towards my mortgage as I did to rent a one bedroom apartment in the city. Now I have an entire second bedroom for computers and software and related books, and an entire lab downstairs for my workbench, oscilloscopes, more computers, etc. And an attached two-car garage.

    In hindsight the city sucked. I only walked in to those used bookstores once a week or so, and I can drive into the 'hood if I want to visit those stores now. And there are friend ma and pa shops everywhere you go, not just in the city.

  • Re:Theres several... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cheap refrigorators. Something no one thinks of but has done more for quality of life than just about anything else. Come on now realy, besides keeping your beer cold, it keeps a good part of the world from getting food poisoning and dying an early death. Hint - it's also a good place to store your backups since it is kinda fireproof.
  • >>
    Needless to say, there is a small electric motor with an eccentric weight attached to the shaft inside the plastic housing of all vibrators.
    >>

    ... which, if the feminist applies at the right angle, eliminates the need for the man's movement.
  • I think this stuff is HUGE!!!

    (yeah yeah, I know, this is a bit silly)
  • But to a certain degree I'd agree with you. The Internet has shaped our forms of communication like nothing else. When you can pass a message around the world in seconds, it makes for increased cultural exchanges.

    Actually the telegraph reshaped the world's communications in the 19th century. Once the telegraph network was in place it was possible to pass a message around the world in seconds.

    Until then the fastest way send a message was by horse at maybe 100 miles/day. Think about that paradigm shift.

    The internet is just improved on telegraph.

    ...richie

  • You've taken my choice.

    The washing machine and other home appliances liberated women to study, to work, to go out. And that shaped democracies and economics.

    Of course, it wouldn't work without electricity.
    --
  • Birth control truly sets people free, women in particular. Think about it; without that most of you would have 7 or more children before you would reach 30. You wouldn't have time for anything but work to provide for them. I would love to say computers, or the telephone, or electricity or whatever, but nothing has had more impact on how people live than birth control has.
    ------------------------------------------------ --------
    UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
  • If we've come to depend on Slashdot, then I'm not sure we've progressed at all... ;)

    "Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
    "Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
  • Lessee, in no special order

    Internal combustion engines (gas *and* diesel)
    These run not only cars, but trucks, and
    (*sigh* these days, locomotives), and
    generate electricity

    Flight

    Refrigeration (refrigerators, air conditioning - and if y'all don't think the latter is important, *you* think about going to school in TX in June...)

    Antibacterials (esp. TB and polio vaccines)

    Aspirin (invented in the 1890's) besides a painkiller, a febrifuge.

    anaesthetics

    electronic communication (radio, tv, phones)

    radar and lasers

    computers (of course) in particular, and electronics in general

    nuclear physics (the bomb, x-ray machines, etc)

    biochemistry - plastics, glues

    birth control medications

    medical technology (repairs and replacement)

    reinforced concrete

    photography (incl. films)

    I think that covers it...
  • Actually you can make the argument that the development of faster forms of travel has changed the human species genetically.
    Before 1900 you would most likely have been born, grown up, married the girl next door, had your kids and died without ever leaving home. (This is a broad generalization) The important part of that last sentence is "married the girl next door" She would be carrying the same basic genetic info as you (genes for almnd shaped eyes if you were both asian etc...)
    Now, however most people have the ability to live anywhere on the planet they choose. And many did migrate to new lands (America being the most obvious example) and interbred with people not from next door, but from the other side of the world.

    Hooptie

  • Actually, this is the exact reason that we can't really use Tesla's power distribution method. Modern electronics work mostly via a condensed matter system called a p-n junction. Under extremely high frequency fields with large amplitudes, the things break irreperably.

    Vacuum tubes work, though....
  • Actually, you could see in turn-of-the-century catalogs examples of washing machines that were powered by a garden-hose...

    Yup! Turbo washing machines in 1904...
    --
    " It's a ligne Maginot [maginot.org]-in-the-sky "

  • The development of railroads in the XIXth century certainly did the most for Mankind.

    By enabling cheap large-scale overland transportation of people and goods, the secular patterns of stagnating civilization that were the norm since the dawn of Humanity were irretrieavably shattered, leading to unprecedented wealth and freedom from the old demons of famin and isolation.

    What? No, we're still in the XXth century, so the last century HAS to be the XIXth...
    --
    " It's a ligne Maginot [maginot.org]-in-the-sky "

  • Er, sorry to burst your bubble, but the automobile was not invented in the XIXth century, but a good 100 years earlier than that.

    The first automobile was invented in 1769 (Yup! 6 years before the US Revolution) by Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot [britannica.com] who built a crude front-wheel drive steam-powered tractor, primarly intended to haul cannons.

    Unfortunately, the limitations of the technology of the times did not enable him to address the problems inherent in developping a compact-enough steam engines.
    --
    " It's a ligne Maginot [maginot.org]-in-the-sky "

  • Was that a "Carbon pile" voltage regulator? For years, railroad passenger cars used an incredible contraption to regulate voltage: a "variable relay" where a varying control voltage applied through a solenoid exerced a variable mechanical pressure on a pile of carbon, thus varying it's resitance and allowing a crude regulation...

    The idea was to have a constant voltage out of a variable one coming from the axle-driven generator. This was cool: by pushing the solenoid by hand, you could have all the lights in the car fluctuating wildly...
    --
    " It's a ligne Maginot [maginot.org]-in-the-sky "

  • Your sig is very poignant indeed, especially given the context. The phrase "For that matter, neigher did Goddard" was plain sarcasm, meaning that he never got the engineering right, and his rockets never did too much in the way of, uh, flying. Yeah, I have a time machine in my garage, too, and the Smithsonian is more than welcome to come pick it up. But does it work?
  • Yeah, and Da Vinci invented the first helicopter. Whether both these discoveries did anybody any good can be read in the history books. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, or in this case, the proof of the concept is in the engineering.

    While Newton figured out the conservation of momentum thingie, he knew nothing of turbo pumps, or cooling technologies, or combustion. For that matter, neither did Goddard. I think the man is getting WAY too much credit for never having gotten one of his designs to work decently. Probably an American coping mechanism for the fact that rocket propulsion is the OTHER propulsion technology they missed.

    While Goddard is supposed to have inspired a lot of the people that went on to develop successful designs, it was they that solved the vexing engineering problems of how to build a reliable turbo pump, how to keep the nozzle cool, and the whole guidance thing. These engineering problems can't be dismissed as mere details--a lot of people had correct notions of how to build a rocket, but very few could translate these notions into metal that flew.

    But yes, in the end we're all here because we're standing on the shoulders of giants, just to keep some perspective.
  • Edison liked to refer to electrocution as being "Westinghoused", a clever bit of FUD that never caught on with the public.
  • Although this semi-educated adult has not yet learned to proof read his work.

    DUH

    LK

  • The atomic bomb (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know a lot of you will disagree, but I think the atomic bomb is one of the most important inventions of the last century.

    For the first time in history, humans had aquired the ability to destroy themselves utterly. Since a war between nuclear powers would destroy both of them, they could not afford war any more. I think that's the main reason that we didn't have WW III yet. Instead we had the cold war, which lead to a massive increase in technology research for military reasons. In the end, the public profited of a lot of these new technologies, but it is important to remember that quite a lot of the fancy gadgeds we have today come of the arms race.

    And no, I don't like atomic waepons. In fact, I'm quite a pacifist.
  • I dont know where it came from, only found out what it was after opening it up.
  • I have seen a solonoid controlled variable resistor. talk about weird :)
  • I heard somebody (an English professor I believe) give an interesting take on this subject. He talked about how when he was young his mother had a couple of maids/servants to help her out with running the household so she could devote a lot of her time to doing social activities, participating in charitible organizations, etc. His point was that the rise of the easy kitchen and things that you talked about being related to the electric motor made the servants seem unneeded so his mother had to take over everything involved in running the house and was unable to do the outside things she enjoyed.
    This was something I really hadn't considered before and seeing your post I thought I'd share. I'm not advocating the use of servants instead of machines or anything of the like but this man's idea was just one I thought had relevance to what you're talking about.
    Nice suggestion by the way, most people just leap to big things like TV or airplanes and don't consider the "little" things that also make big changes.
  • Ars Technica's Technological Innovation of the Millennium [arstechnica.com].

    The print press won, but plastics (woohoo!) is mentioned.

    --

  • FOr the Millenium I would nominate the Telegraph and the Steam engine. Sure they are both mostly gone now, but they represented the first telecommunications and industrial trasportation developments.
  • Of course, you're forgetting that polls are heavily influenced simply by the way their questions are worded, and that a good pollster can make the results say virtually anything based on this fact. One must find truly impartial people to develop polls in order for them to have any worth...

    Bottom line: Most of the establishment of this country wanted to see Clinton burn, but half of population of this country has divorced their spouses while the other half is either too young to screw or old enough to cheat.

    It doesn't matter how you twisted the polls--the support just wasn't there. Period. Polls can be twisted, but at some level people in high levels of power actually have an accurate picture of what the populace wants and what the populace can be made--through twisting the words--to want.

    I'm not saying that the effect of this has been necessarily positive, only that it is likely far more pervasively influential than anyone has really imagined.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
    • manned flight - allows people to cheaply travel vast distances in a short time.
      production line - Henry ford changed the way goods are manufactured. Instead of using craftsmen he harnessed the power of machines to mass produce cars.
      penicillin - flory's [almaz.com](forget flemming) discovery revolutionised healthcare, saving millions during the war and after.
      electronic computer - enabled for the first time grunt calculations to be undertaken accurately
      atomic power (mentioned) - changed the way wars are fought and power can be generated, opened up nuclear medicine.
      transisitor - birth of electronics.
      manned space flight - forever changed mans view of earth.
      personal computer - birth of home computing and brought computing power to everday mans desktop.

  • The chinese where printing paper money around this time. As a side note there is a tendency for westerners (myself included) to forget a lot of things have been re-invented by other cultures. (eg: circulation of blood - william harvey?, no try the Arabs almost 1000yrs before). Now digital printing in the 20th century... well that's another story.
  • Most of the inventions I have seen so far improve our lives...maybe even change them to some extent but they all leave the fundamental relations between humans the same. Perhaps in 100 years after (if) we have full VR immersion and people live as brains in vats the internet will have this effect as well. But as of now these various technolgies merely allow us to do the same kind of things we did before on a larger scale and more efficently. People still buy and sell etc.. etc..

    The birth control pill has changed, and is still changing, the basic way human beings relate to each other. It has allowed society to restructure away from child birth and child rearing and allowed half of the society to take a much more active role. The future effects of this invention will undoubtly be large as well.

    The birth control pill is the first in a hopefully long line of advances that allow us to change who we are and reshape the human condition. Not merely get sick less or age slower actually change who we are as a species.
  • ...the zipper ;)

    MoNsTeR
  • It's not so much that the transistor did things individually that tubes, valves, and relays couldn't - it wansn't that big a deal by the standards of what transistors alone could do. But the transistor made possible:

    -sufficiently miniaturized componentry and a low enough cost to enable much smaller and cheaper electronic equipment (remember transistor radios?)

    -the microprocessor - not to mention Moore's law!

    Ultimately, electronics existed before the transistor did, but it took the invention of the transistor to enable all the revolutions that followed. Imagine if my slick new Palm Vx used vacuum tubes!

    - -Josh Turiel

  • Hmm... (Score:2)

    by pen ( 7191 )
    I can't quite put my finger on it, especially since the printing press was invented earlier than 1900, but it is some other invention(s) that help spread information fast. The radio, the fax machine, the copy machine, and (duh) the Internet are on the list. Why?

    Why did people evolve so slowly until the 1800's? It's because information could not be shared. It took days, if not weeks or even months, for informatino to travel from one place to another. Why did Linux and OSS evolve so quickly? (OK, I should've come up with a better example. Space exploration? Medicine?) Because information was shared, and things grew together.

    If one wizard creates something really cool but can't share it, his creation never sees light, because others always have to build on to it. In order for progress to exist, information has to be shared and exchanged. Without this, nothing else can happen. There is no progress whatsoever without the sharing of information.

    Another huge accomplishment, and sort of invention? Public education. I'll let you come up with your own explanations and reasons, since I'm tired of typing and I really should go to bed.

    --

  • Ah well, I meant the mobile steam engine, both land and sea, not the stationary beasts. Power density and efficiency were much more important to trains and especially ships :-)

    Most people don't know that a lot of motorcycle development was to set bicycle records. Bicyclists were the initial impetus for paved roads, and bicycles were possibly the first mass liberator of women and the poor.

    --
  • I think the biggest development of the 20th Century is the development of plastics by Du Pont in the 1920's and 1930's.

    Think about it: the modern computer would NOT exist if it weren't for plastics (the motherboard, small capacitors, small resistors, and IC packaging are all done in plastic). Look at your car--even the most expensive models--how much of the car is using plastic parts (the interior of most cars ARE done in plastic). Plastics has made is possible to develop food packaging so good that outbreaks of food poisoning from e.coli, salmonella and botulism are very rare events, despite what the news says. And finally, without plastics, we couldn't have lightened the weight of airplanes to the point that today's Airbus A320 jetliner burns nearly 40% less fuel per passenger mile than the Boeing 727-200, which had the same seating capacity.

  • I've heard it suggested (and am tempted to agree with) that the development of nuclear weapons has effectively prevented any large wars from taking place.

    Thus removing the single most effective population control mechanism, resulting in the ever-worsening overpopulation problem we are now experiencing.

    D.

  • ..what technologies have shaped the way the 20th century developed..

    I reckon that the car and the telephone are kind of fundamental to the way we live our lives today.

    On the global stage, the development of nuclear weapons is no doubt significant - without 'em the Cold War could have been very different.

    D.

  • Robert Heinlein wrote a story about this type of power distribution system in _Waldo and Magic, Inc._ The book actually contains two stories. "Waldo" is about a genius who is called in by the power companies to look into why they've suddenly started having catastrophic failures...
  • Invented by Lee De Forest in 1906. This invention moved the world into the electronic age. Amplifiers and oscillators quickly followed. The Bell System used it to amplify long distance phone calls. It was central to the development of radio technology. Much of today's electronic technology can be traced back to the invention of the Audion and the first vacuum tube circuit designs.
  • I think that the most important development of the century was a system to bring higher math to the masses. Now every semi-educated adult knows how to calculate how long a Century and Millinnium are.

    Even though they have their roots in the 19th century I think that the self-loading firearm heavily shaped the century.

    The transistor, for obvious reasons.

    Telephone, allowed for high speed accurate comunication to take place over greater distances than ever possible before.

    Radio and television as forms of entertainment and education have shaped the century as well.

    E=MC2, nuclear energy helped to end the mose destructive conflice that the planet ever saw and was an imposing spectre as it relates to being the tool used in the next war which surpasses all others.

    LK
  • Firstly, Tesla developed his AC generating system at the beginning of his career, BEFORE he did his work on broadcast power, so saying they picked AC over broadcast ower is simply untrue. At the time, the choice was between AC and DC.

    I am aware of the fact that it was as choice between AC and DC. At the time Edison had organized at least one district to be run on DC, but it was horribly inefficient, caused fires, and had incredible maintance fees to keep it working.

    At the time, Tesla's original 3-phase, 60hz AC system was exactly what was needed. Where the industry and science went wrong was stopping its research. It would not have been as difficult then to keep up with Tesla's progressing research findings as might be thought. Additionally, if power companies and corporations had seen the merit in his research, he could have been well supplied with the funds and staff necessary to go even further than he did, virtually on his own.

    Many of Tesla's later experiments used current which was definately powerful enough to be deadly, like the lightning generator he made out in Colorado.

    This is a bad example, the reason that it was dangerous is because it was wired into faulty systems, and Tesla overlooked the high-frequency feedback problems, starting fires at Colorado Power(not quite right?), because of improper grounding. Another thing to not forget is that he was basically unleashing all of that electricity in the open, it was entirely unguarded. In a controlled enviroment things would not have been so bad.

    Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area.

    Using a grid of 'boosters' a feild could be sustained over a large area. Theoretical models, where each home would have a booster, likewise, each block would have a bigger one, have been attempted on a small scale, and theoretically could work.

    Lastly, even if the laws of physics didn't make broadcast power impossible, it would have been economically infeasible precisely because it couldn't be billed for in proportion to its use. Do you think kilowatt-hours grow on trees?

    Actually alot of his later research was spent getting close to discovering how to use the earth as a power source I believe. This would make the production of electricity automatic in a sense. The "power companies" would simply be responsible for distributing something that already was freely available. ie. Keeping the feild equipment operational.

    Hey, this is all theoretical stuff, and alot of his research was lost. We have reason to believe that he was alot closer to answering some of the problems you have raised. Unfortunatly they were all for the most part lost in the 'accidental' fire that destroyed his work.

    Let me ask you this, since we can assume with for the most part little doubt, that the fire was intentionally set. Why did the arsonists go through all of that risk and trouble just to destroy a little science fiction, as you seem to think it to be? I think he had alot more going for him than we realize.
  • the transistor as the greatest invention of our time but it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this century's technology. A good deal of this century's technological feats sprouted from one of last century's technologies. In 1879 the first incandecent light bulb was produced and after that the world got addicted to electricity. Telephones, TVs, transistors all would be useless without electricity. Anyways, I think top of the list after eletricity would probably be the telephone. The telegraph was and is a good means of communication but Morse code isn't for novices, only technicians and above. The telephone was to the telegraph that Windows was to DOS. After the telephone would have to be the gasoline engine. The gasoline engine leads to my next one, powered flight. Before the gasoline engine it was nearly impossible to build a powered aircraft because the propulsion was just too darned heavy. After powered flight I would probably say television, not that it was a good invention, merely popular and major. Next on my list would easily be manned/unmanned space flight. Transistors would barely be maturing right now if it hadn't been for an agressive space program that poured billions into the industry. Then transistors and microelectronics and eventually the internet. I think networking two computers together is more of a technological achievement than e-commerce and webcams though. Maybe Twinkies should go at the top od the list, I realized today while eating some Cheetoes that if I died out in the desert somewhere that the food I was munching would outlast my carcas. Thats somethin to think about.
  • Yes, the guy who originally submitted the question got it right. It was Cliff that didn't. That's why I addressed Cliff.
  • Cliff said: "What technologies developed in the last century do you think are important?"

    The telephone.

    It was developed in the 19th century. In the last century.

    Because the 20th century isn't over yet, Cliff. We still have a full year ahead.


    (I'm sorry, but I just had to say it.)
  • Just think about all the things begat by the onset
    of the automobile-

    The industrial revolution was revised/perfected
    because of the automobile. Union labor was realized as a formidable force in both the legislature and organized crime. Goodyear bought
    railroads along the coast of California, ultimately destroying them, forcing people to buy cars for lack of available transportation.
    Think about all the laws made as a result of automobiles in todays society, and how they restrict a persons liberty, when compared to a person who used a horse and carriage for transportation 100 years ago.

    Indeed, it seems that 'The Man(TM)' found the perfect vehicle (apologies for the bad pun) to keep us in line, make us not even question being stopped, questioned and searched in the name of 'the common good'.

    If you look at my statement (or maybe squint at it from an odd angle), you might see how the high-tech and networking industries are following this same model, and how someone may fear what this new technological freedom known as the internet may put the powerful automotive 'revolution' to shame.

    I love ridding myself of bile like that. It makes me seem like less of an angry person if I vent on slashdot before going to work.

    Thanks for lettin' me get my ya-ya's out.
  • I recall hearing a discussion along these lines
    on NPR a while ago and although they mentioned a number or things already discussed here, including the telephone and radio, the one that most struck me was *air conditioning*.
  • The sphere in which a given wave is moving outwards from the source is two dimensional (most textbooks illustrate it as a plane).
  • Does this sound at all familiar to anyone?

    It'll certainly sound familiar to anyone schooled in endlessly recycled urban legends!
  • Engines don't use refrigeration. They use radiators, an age-old cooling/heating technology. That's why almost all cars have heaters (that heat is waste engine heat--the passenger compartment becomes an auxiliary heater), and some don't have air conditioning. You use things like fans and radiators to bring hot items (engines or Pentiums) down to the ambient temperature, and refrigeration to bring things down below the ambient temperature. And for that matter, the "wrong end" of an air conditioner is nothing more than a radiator itself.
  • A lot of things use coolants, fluids good at carrying thermal energy (heat) from one spot to another. This is a good way to dump heat from something especially hot to a cooler area; this is what auto and home radiators do.

    Actual refrigeration is another matter. Refrigeration units (from dorm fridges to air conditioners) play some tricks with the pressure of the coolant, sending it from liquid to gas and back (you may be able to do this with Prestone, but it isn't easy...). What this allows you do to is to make heat "flow uphill", from a cooler spot to a warmer spot.

    No radiator technology alone will make a room cooler than 95 Farenheit when it is 95 Farenheit outdoors; it takes refrigeration to do that. In contrast, you only need radiators to handle engines, because the internal temperature of an engine is several hundred degrees, warmer than any ambient weather.

  • No, they really did electrocute an elephant.

    IIRC, it was at one of the funfairs near New York. The elephant in question had killed a couple of keepers, and so had to be put down. So they made a spectacle out of it and called in Edison to tell them how to do it. There is a gruesome bit of B&W film of the electrocution. The elephant was connected up by leg irons. You see smoke from its feet, it sways, and collapses.

    Its fairly high on my list of things I rather wish I hadn't seen.

    Paul.

  • XML (Could be the year it explodes)
    Could someone please explain to me all the hype behind XML and why it's supposed to change anything? They way I see it, it's nothing except SGML light. Though SGML gave us HTML, a good thing, I don't see anyone hyping that old workhorse as Our Next Savior.

    While having unified file formats is a good thing, is there a way to specify the actual semantics of the markup and not just the syntax? That is, how does a XML user read $4711 and know anything else that it's syntactically valid and matches the string of symbols "price"?

    Sure, you can write your own DTD, and others can parse and validate it, but can they understand it?

    In my opinion, the kiss of death of XML is the "support" for XML file formats in Office 2000, which I've heard are just the bastardized incompatible embrace-and-extend jobs we'd come to expect from Redmond. The promise of XML was that anyone could read an XML word document and reconstruct Word's intentions from it - obviously this is not happening.

    Please understand that is is just my look at things, and that I may be wrong in any number of the above assertions. These questions are not rethorical.

  • You have to admit that radar has brought about some mighty fine changes in the way we live.

    Originally it was just designed to track aircraft but then some bright psark discovered that if you help your hand in front of the radar it got hot - leading to the development of the microwave.

    Research into microwaves lead to the satellite bands that are used today to bring me over 200 channels of digital TV and radio and similar bands are used in mobile phones.

    So the same technology that keeps my flight on holiday away from other flights on holiday also heats my food, brings me TV and lets me check my email in the middle of a field with nothing more than a phone and a PalmIII - thats progress :O)

  • On the global stage, the development of nuclear weapons is no doubt significant - without 'em the Cold War could have been very different.

    I've heard it suggested (and am tempted to agree with) that the development of nuclear weapons has effectively prevented any large wars from taking place. That the reason that, say, the US and USSR never got into any actual war was because each country knew that it would likely lead to nuclear war, and that nobody really wanted to destroy most of civilization.

    It's interesting to think that the same devices that caused so many people to live in fear for so long may have been the same ones that helped to keep people from getting killed.
    ---
  • Why not a list of the technologies that will shape the *next* century?

    I think the problem with this is the increasing rate of technological development is leading to the future becoming more and more opaque. From what I understand, even many Science Fiction authors are upset by this, as they're realizing that it's getting to be too hard to put together both a believable future world and situations and characters peopel can understand and relate to.

    Nanotechnology is one area which is going to create this obscurity. Zyvex and MIT are both predicting assemblers in the 10-15 year range now, due to the fact that progress is being made faster than anyone expected. If that alone happens, the rate at which it will mature makes it quite possible that by 2100 the world could be quite unrecognizable. And that's ignoring all the other technologies that will be developed.

    Anyways, it always seems to be the tehnologies that are unexpected that make the most difference. Who in 1900 could have predicted the transistor/semiconductors would do so much to change things?
    ---

  • In no particular order:

    • Automobiles: the whole road infrastucture has changed because of cars and trucks. Even more important: our lives have become dependant on that kind of transport. Just think about the fact that most stores have a small stock of everything and they rely on the fact that it's cheaper to order on the fly.
    • Telecommunication and mass media: TV and radio have made the world news more accessible to the common man. People actually gained access to things that happened outside of their village. (Even if they only heard some part of the whole story, it was still more than before.)
    • Electronics: I suppose that most of us use some kind of electronic equipment every day, ranging from a digital watch [1] to a state of the art computer.

    [1] which is a pretty cool invention, BTW :)

  • Plastics also seem to be a factor in the dropping male sperm count, and lowering of testosterone in males.
    Check these links for some beginning info.
    http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/4_3_99/fob3. htm
    http://www.scitec.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints /book/renewal/voices2/femn.htm
  • Antibiotics (particularly penicillin) and water purification have added 30 years of life expectancy from 1900-2000. I can't think of a bigger payoff.

    (Read this article [jsonline.com] for more details. While the life expectancy improvements are partially due to a reduction in infant deaths, there's a demonstrable improvement in disease treatment affecting all age groups whose magnitude you can see by looking at the raw data of life expectancy by age [infoplease.com] in the US. Of course other factors did help besides antibiotics, such as nutrition and pollution reduction.)

    --LP
  • ..but starts with just one.

    The development of jet propulsion led to rocket design with lead to geosynchronous satelittes, and in turn to the communications world we know today.

  • True, but it took the theroy of jet propulsion to allow people to figure out how to get a rocket that could break out of the atmosphere.
    • 1/(4 * PI * R^2)

    Seeing as the distribution is in three dimensions, shouldn't that be R^3 in the above equation?


    -Jordan Henderson

    • In my opinion, the kiss of death of XML is the "support" for XML file formats in Office 2000, which I've heard are just the bastardized incompatible embrace-and-extend jobs we'd come to expect from Redmond. The promise of XML was that anyone could read an XML word document and reconstruct Word's intentions from it - obviously this is not happening.

    No, I don't think that's true at all. XML formats for all Office 2000 documents does show that Microsoft is finally serious about Open Document Formats. You will be able to reconstruct documents from their XML.

    The tension among the various XML supporting organizations (MS vs. the Rest Of The World) arises due to the fact that MS poured massive resources into developing their own set of DTDs and then implementing them into their products while everybody else pretty much talked about XML.

    The IBMs and Suns are concerned that while XML provides an Open Document format, MS will be the the first and best to implement their formats. They are concerned that it will appear that only MS has their act together wrt XML. You see, at the same time MS was defining DTDs for a bunch of Office 2000 documents, they were also defining DTDs and schemas for a huge set of other documents, like those used for EDI. These other vendors don't want to be in the position of having to support "standards" created by MS. I'm not sure if this is embrace-and-extend, it seems like embrace-and-outcompete to me. I feel that if the other vendors really are serious about XML, they should define their own documents and start using them in products like MS. Working code beats standards body wrangling any day.

    Now, a disclaimer. I am far from an expert in these areas, and I've not been privy to any XML standards bodies discussions or anything, this is my interpretation of what I've seen in the news.

    Sun is a frequent detractor of MS's XML strategy, waving their hands around saying that really you don't want to be doing XML at all unless it's in Java. To hear Sun talk about it you'd think that Java was designed to work with XML. It seems to be more of the standard Sun line. They support standards only insofar as those standards are seen by the industry as being best run on Sun Hardware and Operating Systems. That's what the SCSL and Java is all about, Open Standards for the community! Especially those Open Standards that Sun controls completely.


    -Jordan Henderson

  • While Newton figured out the conservation of momentum thingie, he knew nothing of turbo pumps, or cooling technologies, or combustion. For that matter, neither did Goddard.
    If you go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, you will see one of Goddard's rockets on display. It has turbopumps in it. It definitely used combustion. I'd have to check, but I'm sure Goddard used regenerative cooling too.
    --
  • The battle between the AC and DC systems is instructive when viewing the battles between various OS today.

    Eddison was adamant that the AC system was far too dangerous to use in a distribution system. He attempted to demonstrate this by publicly electrocuting and elephant in (I believe) New York using AC current (an act that eventually led to the invention of the electric chair). The fact that DC poses no less a danger apparently slipped past him.

    This is an early (and desperately innefective) example of FUD.

    If someone wants to fill in the gaps here, I'd be grateful.
  • Oh, no. This is going to turn into the same discussion as before, when the "Top 10 Gadgets of the years 1000-1999" news story was on Slashdot.
    That thread turned quite off topic, with people claiming that "painting, the expression of humans using art..." was a gadget. WTF?

    Anyhow, this discussion has already been done on /., I can't wait for this rehash.

    "No! No! The Philips Screwdriver was far more important than the microwave" etc. etc. ad infiniatum.
  • Why not look to this new year? I propose that Slashdot creates a thread on what technology is going to be the technology of the year. Then in a year, we can all look back at this thread and laugh.
    I'll start. New(ish) technology that will be successful this year:
    • Crusoe
    • XML (Could be the year it explodes)
    • Beowulf (Could also be the year every big company in the world tries it. I know I will!)
    • Internet on every household appliances (I don't think so!)

  • I heard another 100 year old lady in an interview saying that the best invention was the washing machine. Remember people use to wash their clothing with cold water and that was a nightmare in winter. Hot water was too expensive at that time (I sound like gran-pa simpson). She also mentioned that the dish-washer was completely useless.

  • I am amazed nobody mentioned this one yet!
  • Now, try to zap yourself with this electrical source. It isn't going to happen. Why? Because the frequency rate is so high that the current passes directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react.

    RF (aka: high-frequency "electricity") can shock you. RF can burn you. Ask any broadcast engineer.

    RF burns are real nasty, too. It doesn't just burn the skin. It travels right down to the marrow in your bones, dissapating large amounts of heat. You feel it for the rest of your life.

    The only positive point to higher frequency AC is the ability to use smaller transformers at a similar current capability. Like the Navy does. (They run at 400Hz)


    --

  • I think advances in public health, particularly clean water supplies and childhood immunizations, are the pinacle achievement of the 20th century. They will provide the foundation for the unimaginable feats of the 21st.

    1923 Diphtheria
    1926 Pertussis
    1927 Tuberculosis (BCG)
    1927 Tetanus
    1935 Yellow Fever
    1955 Injectable Polio Vaccine (IPV)
    1962 Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)
    1964 Measles
    1967 Mumps
    1970 Rubella
    1981 Hepatitis B

    Taken from:

    http://www.who.int/gpv-dvacc/history/history.htm

  • I assumed this was because of some sort of deep-seated fear of the future

    I think it's more that people are a) afraid of change and b) people are sentimental. I don't think people are so much afraid of the future as they are afraid of how things will change and what this will mean for them - will they have to dig themselves out of their happy little rut :) How many times have you seen a program from 20-30 years ago talking about the "house of the future" or whatever, and instead nothing's changed.

    Also, never underestimate the human ability to view the past through rose-tinted glasses. As we get older the things in our past which we didn't like get submerged beneath memories of the good times. Think of the popularity of old music and films - I can't remember how many 60s and 70s nights they had whilst I was at university :)

  • Got to speak for you here.
    It is so easy to think of all the marvelous technical gadgets, that changes the way we *do* stuff. The pill (and education) changes the way we live our *lives*. The pill (and other contraceptives) made children something you actively decided to have as opposed to something that "just happened". Nowadays most of us get a couple of years with no obligation to our parents, no children to care for and full physical health. That is 20-30 year old men and women are living a kind of life previously only enjoyed by the old.

    How many geeks would there be if you had to put food on the table for your kids everyday? Perhaps the choice between coding for fun and working the grindstone would come out different then n'est ce pas?

  • Until then the fastest way send a message was by horse at maybe 100 miles/day. Think about that paradigm shift.

    Actually, Napolean, around 1800, stationed soldiers every few hundred yards between Paris and Rome, and was able to send messages via visual semaphores between the two cities in a matter of hours! True.

    and as a quibble to some of the other posts here: the technology did not have to be invented in the 20th century to qualify. Might be a good rule, but that's not what it says.

    and, while it's fun to think about all the impacts that various technologies have, the most significant one is always going to be energy harnessing, electric or internal combustion or whatever. At the beginning of the 20th century, the vast majority of Westerners were farmers, and we still would have to be, like the Third World, if we did not have labor saving devices. Everything else will always pale in comparison to that.

  • I know the automobile is not truly invented in the 20th Century, but mass Production of Automobiles changed whole societies.

    Just think of America where the introduction of automobiles for the masses changed social behavior. The whole process of dating changed with ypung people having a place where they weren't constantly under the scrutiny of their parents.

    On the other side the government of many a country has gone to great lengths insuring cheap individual transport for their citicens. Until today the struggle for control of the worlds oil reserves is linked to this.

    A few other Points may be:

    - One can live far away of his working place.

    - Massive destruction of natural resources and environmental Pollution. I'm sure i could go one with this list, but i'll keep this short. Thomas

  • Why wasn't this adopted? Because the corporations were afraid of something they could not charge for. They saw BIG bucks in metered power. Having feild generators and house boosters would be impossible to meter. They could only charge a flat rate for the equipment loans at best.

    Assuming your story is true, does it suggest that an Open Source(TM) Power Delivery System would be possible?

    Not easy or cheap, I figure.

    But, if the AC@60Hz and similar systems are more expensive to run and more dangerous, and have, as their only fundamental advantage over some higher-frequency AC system, the ability to be more easily and reliably metered so as to charge for their use...

    ...then, isn't that kind of like the differences between closed source and Open Source(TM) software?

    The other advantages of AC@60Hz (and AC@50Hz) are that there's a huge installed base of power generation, transmission, measuring, and consumption equipment (e.g. desktop computers). But those aren't fundamental advantages -- they might outweigh the appropriateness of changing now, not of having chosen the higher-frequency system in the first place.

    So, would a higher-frequency-AC system be worth researching, designing, engineering, etc. within the OSS framework, with deployment initially targeted for areas with little or no installed base (such as third-world countries)?

    (And, dontcha just love how I use all those cute TM's? ;-)

  • Now, try to zap yourself with this electrical source. It isn't going to happen. Why? Because the frequency rate is so high that the current passes directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react.

    The reason you don't feel electrical shock at the local Science Museum "Tessla Coil" demonstration has nothing to do with the "speed" of the electrons "passing directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react."

    Yes the frequency is an issue, but the effect that prevents you from that "I'm being electrocuted" feeling, is the behavior of the electrons which travel on the surface of the conductor (you) instead of through the conductor (you and your easily excited nerve endings).

    The science museum selected the demo and took the risk of presenting it in our highly litigous society to:

    • Teach you a little bit about electricity, history and technology
    • Excite your imagination and encourage you to study and learn more.
    Well one out of two aint bad.

  • Without a doubt the most influential technology in the last century was cheap, accessable indoor plumbing.
    Who knows how many people it has saved from tragic cases of frostbite and puma attack.

    Before indoor plumbing your choices were:
    1)go outside
    2)go in a bucket in the house

    Neither are exactly conducive to a clear, uninterupted train of thought.

    -corvalin
  • Although not actually invented in the twentieth century, i have to say that the internal combustion engine has shaped the way the world has grown. In many cases, the design of cities has been shaped by the consideration of automobile traffic. Parking lots, the unimaginable geographic spread of the population. My vote is for the engine.
  • Fast, cheap transport around the globe. Whether you're bringing passengers or bombs, this is what brings them.

    The jet engine will also continue to play a role in how pandemics evolve; as a disease vector, the airliner has no equal.
  • semiconductor -> transistor -> integrated circuit
    I agree that semi tech has been the greatest 'enabling' technology of the century. We had computers before we had semis, but it's because of semis that we can each have one. And the use of semis to make sensors and DSPs give computers something usefull to do. Imagine how poorly even a lowly phone line would work today if it weren't for semis. And modems would be non-existent, or at least as expensive as the computers themselves, so that only the military could afford them. Anybody else remember when you tried to use a credit card, your number had to be looked up in a "black-list book" that hung by the side of the cash register? And try to imagine what modern medicine would be like without current sensor technology and CPU power? The list goes on.
    Second place would have to go to Materials Engineering, which would include plastics, teflon, unleaded gasoline, and the post-it note. I have to make this field second since it wouldn't have evolved as far as it has without Semi technology. I haven't been able to come up with a solid third place that DOESN'T rely on the first two for it's existence.
  • I think the truly important aspect is not solely air conditioning, but coolant systems as a whole - from personal a/c to produce refrigeration, cooling systems on engines to cooling systems in computers.

    Without adequate refrigeration technologies, many of the things we take for granted would not exist, or they function in a much less dimuted fashion. With air conditioning, man can populate areas previously thought too inhospitable (at least by Western standards.) The engine would be choking on its own heat and fumes. We can transport perishable goods across thousands of miles, feeding those who may not have access to such goods. Processors could not only not be cooled - they couldn't be created. And, perhaps most importantly, our beverage of choice comes to us in a frosty mug, or brimming with ice on a hot summer day.

    Refrigeration: It's not just for the kitchen anymore.
  • Where I am I can drive west to the other side of the Central Valley of california and pass right under giant 1million volt DC lines that go to Los Angeles. If you go to LA on I5 you will see the conversion plant on your right. It use's a special high speed switching device to turn the dc back into AC.

  • Here's my four (Score:3)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @03:00AM (#1335437) Homepage Journal
    Only two of these were invented in the 1900's - the other two are holdovers form the 19th century that weren't widely adopted until the 20th.

    1: The Telephone. I know the telephone was actually invented earlier (in fact, Bell gave his first public demo here in my town, in what is today a chi-chi restaurant), but it was in this century that telephones became ubiquitous. Automated switching was the other breakthrough that made telephones something everyone had and used. Telephones changed the nature of business by allowing practical real-time communications.

    2: The automobile. Again, the first cars were introduced in the late 1800's, but they didn't become widely adopted until the Model T. The automobile made much of today's mobile society possible, by no longer requiring people to live close to their work. This helped make white-collar work more viable (by enabling companies to attract workers from a wider area) and this change directly helped create our modern economy. In the 19th century, most workers were engaged in the direct, hands-on work of making things, rather than services. White collar workers were relatively small in number. The automobile also made the suburb possible, and now most people in this country live in them.

    3: The airplane: Aircraft made simple, high-speed travel between continents and within larger nations (like this one) practical for the first time. It also revolutionized the freight industry.

    4: The transistor. Duh.

    - -Josh Turiel

  • Last century? You mean the 19th century? (Score:3)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @03:52AM (#1335438)
    Steam engine

    Electricity

    Telegraph

    Telephone

    Cotton gin

    Bessamer (sp?) process for steel

    Camera

    Safety bicycle

    --

  • You are mistaken. (Score:3)

    by Thag ( 8436 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @07:26AM (#1335439) Homepage
    Firstly, Tesla developed his AC generating system at the beginning of his career, BEFORE he did his work on broadcast power, so saying they picked AC over broadcast ower is simply untrue. At the time, the choice was between AC and DC.

    Secondly, the reason many of Tesla's experiments were safe to be around is because he was working with very low voltage (amperage?). The frequency isn't what you have to look out for. Many of Tesla's later experiments used current which was definately powerful enough to be deadly, like the lightning generator he made out in Colorado.

    Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area. This is why the major radio stations in a city have to have 50,000 watt transmitters in order to send a fairly weak signal out to the suburbs.

    Lastly, even if the laws of physics didn't make broadcast power impossible, it would have been economically infeasible precisely because it couldn't be billed for in proportion to its use. Do you think kilowatt-hours grow on trees?

    Jon Acheson

  • I'm sorry! (Score:3)

    by StarFace ( 13336 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @06:32AM (#1335440) Homepage
    You have been decieved by the modern misconception engine. Adopting the current electricity grid and power system that we use today was perhaps one of the biggest -Blunders- ever made. The current system uses very low frequency power, making it extremely dangerous to living beings. It was adopted because it could be metered and distributed at a cost.

    Tesla went on to research high-frequency electricity that could be distributed -without- wiring, and most importantly, without risk to living matter. Have you ever seen what fluorescent lights do in a Tesla feild? They glow nicely, now...take the light out of the socket. Wow, it still glows and it isn't even plugged in! Now get this, take an old tube that is burned out and try the same thing...it -still- glows.

    Now, try to zap yourself with this electrical source. It isn't going to happen. Why? Because the frequency rate is so high that the current passes directly through your body before the neurons in your system can even react.

    Why wasn't this adopted? Because the corporations were afraid of something they could not charge for. They saw BIG bucks in metered power. Having feild generators and house boosters would be impossible to meter. They could only charge a flat rate for the equipment loans at best.

    You are right, Edison had it all backwards with DC, but stopping with the current AC implimentation we have today was a huge mistake. All of the lives lost to electricution, all of the power lost because of line waste, all of the light bulbs you have ever bought in your life are just a few of the reasons why this was a -blunder- not a great acheivement.

  • Re:You are mistaken. (Score:3)

    by spectecjr ( 31235 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @07:52AM (#1335441) Homepage
    Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area. This is why the major radio stations in a city have to have 50,000 watt transmitters in order to send a fairly weak signal out to the suburbs.

    Specifically, it drops off following the formula:

    1/(4 * PI * R^2), where R is the distance from the source. There's some other constants in there too, but they're not that important.

    (to be honest, neither is the 4*PI bit).

    There's a more important reason why "Tesla field" energy distribution wouldn't work though - namely interference. I don't think many computers could be happily powered off it...

    Simon

  • Antibiotics (Score:3)

    by Josh Guffin ( 43687 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @03:03AM (#1335442) Homepage
    Think where we would be if antibiotics hadn't developed...

    Their development has lead to the lengthening of the average human lifespan.

    We could even go as far as to speculate whether a few of the great minds of our time would have been killed in childhood by diseases like strep.

  • The zinc bucket ....? (Score:3)

    by geirt ( 55254 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @03:01AM (#1335443)
    In an interview of a 100 year old lady, she answered your question like this:

    The zinc bucket was a revolution ... carrying water in wooden buckets was a pain because the bucket was so heavy !!!

    So the answer to your question depends on your point of view (and your age) ....

  • What I think is a big thing (Score:3)

    by radja ( 58949 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @05:11AM (#1335444) Homepage
    Look around. it's simple. it's sturdy. it's what a lot of your clothes, parts of your computer, furniture, cars, planes, toys, and a shitlod of other stuff is partially made of. It's polymers. plastics. a very versatile group of compounds that has had a dramatic effect on just about everyone's lives. It may not be THE most shaoing piece of tech, but it's changed the world as we know it.

    //rdj

  • Radar, and what it brought (Score:3)

    by cmuncey ( 66980 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @03:25AM (#1335445)
    I just finished Robert Buderi's The Invention that Changed the World and I will nominate the British invention of the cavity magnetron around the start of WWII and the MIT Radiation Lab's work on microwave radar. Why?
    • It was one of the main (in some people's opinion, the main) war-winning technologies of WWII. Providing critical early warning, air and sea navigation, gunlaying, bombing guidance and bomb fusing capabilities, the Allies having effective S and X band radars was a critical edge. One adage in '45 was "the a-bomb ended the war, but radar won it." The disclosure of Ultra/Enigma modifies that IMHO, but it still was of critical importance, especially early on and in the u-boat war.
    • Wartime radar researchers, using all that surplus equipment, largely invented radio/radar astronomy after the war.
    • Searching for a practical amplifier for shorter and shorter microwave wavelengths, the maser was developed, and from that the laser. (And from that, the CD player . . . )
    • Investigating silicon/crystal rectifier technology that was critical to wartime radar, a team at Bell Labs developed the transistor, and from that, solid state electronics.
    • The role that codebreaking had in early computer development has gotten a lot of (deserved) attention lately, but the creation of the computer industry is due in large part to the combination of early computers, radar, and early networks in SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment), the first large US cold war early warning system. (The Computer Museum in Boston has a SAGE display, IIRC.) One example: the modem was (allegedly) first created to move radar information over early network lines to computers.
    • Can you imagine the modern air travel system without radar. And if you could, would you want to? (Air travel is too much like Quake with a carry on bag now, as it is .)
    • The Radiation Lab at MIT was a major model (along with Los Alamos and Bell Labs) for the modern research organization, and it, or its former staff members were critical in the history of such organizations as Lincoln Laboratories, MITRE, Raytheon, BBN, Digital and many other organizations.
    • And last, but not least, it gave us the microwave oven . . .

  • Communications (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @04:09AM (#1335446)
    Many of the technologies that have radically changed society, reshaping every institution have been communication technologies:

    • The printing press
    • Telegraph
    • Telephone
    • Radio
    • Television
    • Computer networking
    • Public key encryption


    To the extent that they facilitate dissemination of the same information to a large body of people, communication technologies have been a homogenizing force. They have brought the same ideas, in the same language, to a larger audience than would have seen them otherwise.

    To the extent that they facilitate one-on-one discussion, they have allowed varied interests to endure. What might have been the ideas or hobbies of isolated individuals or groups can be made more widely available.

    And to the extent that they have protected communication from ourside observation or censorship, they have encouraged dissenting opinion to flourish. That protects us from tyrany from any source. I have never feared what people of good will would do with power over my communication. I have feared whose hands that power would eventually reside in.

  • Why not look forwards? (Score:3)

    by fantomas ( 94850 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @02:54AM (#1335447)
    I find it very interesting (and a little sad) that people are still focussing on the past. Why not a list of the technologies that will shape the *next* century?

    I found it very perplexing in the last couple of years that people were looking back all the time (top people of our century, top technologies of the last millennium). I assumed this was because of some sort of deep-seated fear of the future, with the momentous occasion of the calendar shift coming up. Now we're actually in the new millennium why don't we look forward?

    Use the wisdom of the past by all means (those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat the mistakes...) but let's spend time creating a fair and wonderful future rather than mythologising the past...

  • Transistors (Score:3)

    by Raindeer ( 104129 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @02:41AM (#1335448) Homepage Journal
    it feels like new years eve again... same questions. I think several sites have lists of this :-) Wasn't there such a discussion on Slashdot too.

    In my opinion one of the most important ones is the transistor. It allowed an unprecedented miniaturization, with that it was the basis of alot of new technologies and services, like Slashdot.

    just my 2 cents.

  • Re:Three-phase electricity distribution (Score:3)

    by vanza ( 125693 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @06:35AM (#1335449)

    Continental electricity grids are only possible because of transformers to step up the voltage for long distance transmission, and tansformers in turn only work with AC.

    Just a comment on this... not all long distance distribution is done with AC. I think the biggest example we have is here in Brazil. OK, it does need AC in some point of the line, but most of the transmission is done with DC.

    What happens here is that we have a huge hydroelectrical plant (Itaipu, the biggest in the world AFAIK) that is shared between Brazil and Paraguay. As our neighbours do not use all their energy, Brazil buys it back from them. The problem is that they use 50 Hz, and we use 60. So, what they do?

    They could have transformed the AC from 50 to 60 and transmitted it as usual... but after many calculations, they found out it was more cost-effective to transmit this energy in DC (as it is a very long distance line, the added costs of having the conversion stations are covered by the savings you get from using less cables and thus having less maintenance in the transmission lines).

    Alright, that doesn't cut the need for AC transformers (within cities, for example), but I think this was worth a comment. =)


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin

  • The men's movement and the feminist angle (Score:4)

    by Lowther ( 136426 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @05:07AM (#1335450)
    In terms of life as a western female, the biggest technological invention of the 20th century was the lightweight electric motor.

    At the turn of the century, running a family household required two full-time adults. One to earn the money, the other to perform household tasks. As a child of the sixties, I can remember life without a refridgerator (shopping for fresh poduce daily), using primitive washing machines (wash day was Friday - all day. One adult in attendance at all times) and with no microwave or convenience foods (cooking times measured in hours, from fresh ingredients). we now have a state where one adult plus several devices is required to run a household. This has ontributed to female emancipation, allowing women to follow careers more easily. Since one compelling reason for staying together as a couple has been removed, it has also contributed to divorce, and the break-up of the 'nuclear family' and the increase of single parent families.

    The liberating technologies for men have come much later in the century. In the early part of the century, conscription and advancing technology in war meant that men were massacred in millions. The first breakthrough (and some will hate me for this) was the atom bomb. This was a technology that made armies of massed numbers, and the evil , state enslavement of males called conscription, an irrelevance. Smart weapons at the end of the twentieth century mean that conscription is dead, and an army of tens can pack a devastating punch, This will be an influence in the early part of the 21st century. Metal (and silicon) will be better than meat.

  • An Obvious Parallel and and Unlikely Choice (Score:5)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @03:13AM (#1335451) Homepage
    In all the analogies to the magic and the mysteries and the amazing and crazy possibilities brought by the net, I'm struck by the most obvious parallel in recent history that's conspicuously but silently been removed from the public consciousness.

    Plastics.

    C'mon, people. The ability to generate arbitrarily shaped substanced with (seemingly) arbitrary properties changed the shape of *everything*, from medicine to packaging to war.

    The net's exciting, but imagine touching something that literally just couldn't have existed.

    I find it extraordinarily interesting that nobody compares the historical excitement over plastic products has never been linked to the present Net crazes. Last I checked, of course, the Dow just had the last of the great plastic giants summarily removed in favor of some tech company(Was it Intel?). And you wonder why the Dow is raging...

    That might just have something to do with it. Someone who was actually around when plastics were really huge would be really nice to reply right about now.

    As for some unlikely but interesting choices...lets go beyond mass communications for a second and look at Instapolling. The effects of immediate, semi(or pseudo) unfiltered feedback has *got* to be powerful. Suddenly "the public" no longer thought whatever major newspapers reported. "The public" now thought what major newspapers asked...and what the party asked...and what the other party asked...and ya know what? Somewhere in that mass was an actual democratically representative opinion.

    Representation was invented because the public was considered too unweildy to come to quick decisions. Pollsters have changed that, and it's very likely that much of their influence is utterly invisible--and would make great reading.

    Something to think about.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • Y2K and we're still using the wheel?! (Score:5)

    by The G ( 7787 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @05:52AM (#1335452)
    Despite the huge technological leaps and bounds of the past seven millennia, say pollsters, the majority of humankind still use the wheel. Other ten thousand-year-old technologies such as fire and metalworking also show signs of continuing to be popular well into the supposedly technologically enlightened twenty-first century.

    "I don't understand at all," said Jim Groznatz, a 20-year-old Silicon Valley multimillionaire. "I mean, we've got the internet, we've got the dotcoms, and people are still using the wheel?" Groznatz suggested that the widespread use of fire may represent "retro chic, perhaps even marketable retro chic."

    In Washington, several congressional committees are now studying the disturbing technological backwardness evidenced by the continuing popularity of the wheel. "We need to let newer technologies progress to the front," said Vice President Al Gore. "The wheel is yesterday's technology; we need to look ahead to tomorrow's technology. I'm thinking fiber optics, probably."

    In homes and families across America and the world, however, the wheel continues to occupy a central place. "I just put the TV table on castors last night," commented Wisconsen homeowner Jorg Ericcson. "I mean I guess the wheel is thousands of years old and all, but it still seems to work."

    Mr. Ericcson may be in for a change, though. Microsoft recently announced the acquisition of Goodyear -- well known manufacturer of wheel accessories -- to produce a "new, user-friendly, proprietary wheel." The new "MS Wheels!" will feature multiple colors, a patented backing-up mechanism, and will be fully integrated into the popular Windows operating system. "We were concerned about 'Wheel piracy' initially," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, "but we re-watched Road Warrior last night and we're working on some sort of technical solution to control our intellectual property."

    In the mean time, AOL and Time Warner have united to produce a new "Fire 2000" and Apple is reportedly working on a secret "eBronze" and "Opposable iThumbs" in its research labs. It's going to be an exciting century!

  • Three-phase electricity distribution (Score:5)

    by Paul Johnson ( 33553 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @02:46AM (#1335453) Homepage
    My vote has got to be for the modern electricity distribution network. Electric power was avaliable in prototype form around the turn of the century, but it was very rare. Ordinary homes were lit by gas and heated by coal.

    The key invention was the three-phase AC system by Tesla. Edison promoted the alternative DC system, with huge banks of lead-acid batteries at substations. Urgh. Continental electricity grids are only possible because of transformers to step up the voltage for long distance transmission, and transformers in turn only work with AC. If you use AC then the a three phase configuration is the most efficient.

    Paul.

  • Here's one no-one's mentioned. (Score:5)

    by teraflop user ( 58792 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2000 @03:20AM (#1335454)
    The contraceptive pill. Which has certainly changed the face of society. Of course us nerds might be expected to overlook that one.

    Also on the social side, state funded education for all, and state funded healthcare for all are pretty big, at least on this side of the pond.

    Of the previous suggestions though, I certainly have to go with plastics and antibiotics.

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