The Student Room Group

Best invention in your opinion?

We spoke about this the other day and so or too many to choose from.
Computers, mobiles, medicine, heating, transport, etc.
Whatever was the first invention or discovery made by man has to be the best invention or discovery ever, because every invention builds on, or is made possible by, the one that came before it. For example, the internet would not have come into being without the computer. Also, the computer would not have been created without the discovery of how to produce electricity. See what I mean?

This is why it is also a most silly pastime and exercise in futility to debate who is the greatest ever in any field, be it sports, entertainment etc. The present always builds on the past. End of story.
Reply 2
I'm going to say glass and with it the invention of the lens for seeing and observing.
Reply 3
Guinness
Original post by osasman
Whatever was the first invention or discovery made by man has to be the best invention or discovery ever, because every invention builds on, or is made possible by, the one that came before it. For example, the internet would not have come into being without the computer. Also, the computer would not have been created without the discovery of how to produce electricity. See what I mean?

This is why it is also a most silly pastime and exercise in futility to debate who is the greatest ever in any field, be it sports, entertainment etc. The present always builds on the past. End of story.


Original post by Djtoodles


Thanks bro/sis. You must be a smart person yourself. intelligence detects and respects intelligence. Game recognises game.
Two things in my view: the steam engine, as this invention led to the industrial period and the internet what in turn initiated a digital period. They enabled big steps in human's history.
Original post by Kallisto
Two things in my view: the steam engine, as this invention led to the industrial period and the internet what in turn initiated a digital period. They enabled big steps in human's history.


I understand where you're coming from, but would any of those inventions have been possible without the discovery of how to smelt iron, how to create steel, or the invention of silicon chips?
Reply 8
Original post by osasman
I understand where you're coming from, but would any of those inventions have been possible without the discovery of how to smelt iron, how to create steel, or the invention of silicon chips?


But this is just an irreligious argument from necessity, it does not really need to include value. In contrast, asking what is the 'best' is asking for a value judgement, of which necessity might be (and then, ironically, not necessarily!) but one factor of many.
Original post by osasman
I understand where you're coming from, but would any of those inventions have been possible without the discovery of how to smelt iron, how to create steel, or the invention of silicon chips?

From this point of view, you can even go back to the period of time in which humans began to become settlers and discovered the agriculture. What would the mankind have been in the future without it?
Original post by Kallisto
From this point of view, you can even go back to the period of time in which humans began to become settlers and discovered the agriculture. What would the mankind have been in the future without it?


Exactly! We should even go further back, to the discovery of how to make fire. That's why I have come to consider such "greatest" debates as moot and exercises in futility.
It's got to be the plane..

Although if we go back long enough, I would say the fire!
(edited 1 year ago)
Original post by sisisimoore
It's got to be the plane..

Although if we go back long enough, I would say the fire!


The fire is rather a discovery and not an invention to me. Because the fire already exist before the people learn how to use it.

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