Discussion on:

Major innovations that have changed history

Bricks... Just so everyone will understand I'm not just talking about "high tech" innovations, I though a good place to start would be bricks.

They (and dressed stone) were the fundamental material which allowed the creation of large public structures... The Mayans built incredibly intricate palaces and roads, the Egyptians built the great pyramids (which BTW, we can't reproduce either the Mayan roads or the Pyramids to those tolerances with our current technology)... bricks were the key issue that cause the Hebrews to revolt from the Pharoh in Egypt... the Romans used bricks and stone to build roads and aqueducts which allowed them to conquer most of the known world at the time... which in turn spread a common language to the peoples who were conquered (Koine Greek)... which in turn provided a vehicle for the spread of Christianity...

And eventually, with the advent of the F4 Phantom in the 1960's, we proved that with enough power, even a brick can fly :^O

What innovations do you feel are significant?

cement or concrete whatever you may call it, is right up there with bricks.the romans were instumental in the creation of the stuff and now we can't get enough of the stuff. In the area I am in it is up to almost $100 a cubic yard which is absolutely unbelievable.

We can match the egyptyians in quality and tolerances, the problem we have is that we can't enslave thousands of skilled craftsmen to get it done.

I almost included it in my post as it was essential for the Roman aquaducts... and as to the tolerances, if you include the accuracy of the compas alignment, we can't reproduce what the egyptians did, and one of the Mayan roads has such small tolerances in the joints that it (supposedly per the discovery channel) can't be duplicated today...

Negative numbers are fairly obvious to anyone in debt or extending credit, or anyone trying to describe both an aqueduct (or anything below ground) and a building (or anything else above ground) to the same emperor (or fellow highwayman). But the idea of symbolically representing the absence of value made all of quantitative science possible.

where gunpowder was used for fireworks.

Marco brought gunpower back to the west, where it was used as a weapon, thus enabling various European countries to colonise and plunder half of the known and unknown world.

If the early settlers in America had only the same weapons as the indigenous peoples, then the injuns might just have kept the cowboys at bay.

Great discussion topic, by the way.

I think this one will be fun if we get a lot of participation

I am not at all convinced that the Great Pyramids could have been built with the known technology and available materials of the time, nor could they be reproduced today without the original as a guide.

It is not widely known that the Great Pyramid was originally finished in polished stone to reflect the sun. Regrettably all but a small portion of the outer casing was removed and used for building other structures.

Here is a little information about the Great Pyramid.

http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/pyramid.html

It gave me my job Computing has moved us forward more in the past 50 years than any other innovation!

On that note: Why does it seem like only dead white guys invent anything?

the abacus.

Seems the Chinese were a very inventive people.

He invented the Sewing Machine which while he was a black person from the deep south of the USA meant that he didn't get the credit or money for his invention his owner got it all.

But there is one Dead Black guy who invented something that is impossible to do without today!

Col

Military commanders had been complaining since the Napoleonic Wars about the problems of giving orders on a battlefield that was swathed in thick smoke from the gunpowder used by the guns. In 1886 Paul Vieille invented a smokeless gunpowder called Poudre B. Made from gelatinized nitrocellulose mixed with ether and alcohol, it was passed through rollers to form thin sheets, which were cut with a guillotine to flakes of the desired size. Vielle's powder was used in the Lemel rifle that was adopted by the French Army in the late 1880s.

The French Army was the first to use Poudre B but it was not long before other European countries followed their example. Vieille's powder revolutionized the effectiveness of small guns and rifles. Firstly because practically no smoke was formed when the gun was fired and secondly because it was much more powerful than gun powder, giving an accurate rifle range of up to 1000 yards.

In 1887 Alfred Nobel also developed a smokeless gunpowder. This eventually became known as cordite, a powder easier to handle and more powerful than Poudre B.

This smokeless powder was evenutally used in the old west, first by law men. It aided in a great many shoot outs and gave those who had it a great advantage. They could hide behind objects and their would be no smoke to give away their location. However with the onset of technology and the telegraph, also came the first "hackers". Much information was sent through the telegraph line, such as the codes of safes being shipped and the trains personal safe code. Bandits would tap into the line, decode the info and then just show up at the Train depot and walk in show them that they had received the telegraph and could open the safes, and they would just take everything and wal out. Kind of funny, the old west.

:^O

But I also love the History & Discovery channels.

I rarely watch anything else... except football and drag racing sometimes

Why do you enjoy watching drag queens race?

(I dissed you prtty good in the what fads would you like thread... I know you haven't seen it... 'cause you will definately have to respond :^O)

"I dissed you prtty good in the what fads would you like thread"
Oh yeah? No, I haven't seen it yet. I'll have to hop on over there and see what that's all about and decide if it's worth my precious time to respond to it. It probably isn't! haha

to warrant the use of your precious time for a reply hahaha :^O

those drag Q's can really get a swish on at high speed :^O

Perfectly great engineering.

When I build a motor I expect it to live for a few hours not a few minutes.

I've only ever built one engine for a Drag car and when it was finished it was matt Black so it could dissipate as much heat as possible. Of course when I saw it latter before the first meeting all the black had been removed and everything including the oil Cooler was chrome plated. So I gave the guy an Oil Temp Gauge one of those VDO units with a little red button on it that kept the highest reading that it displayed. He was rapt but not quite so happy when half way down the first run the engine destroyed itself. He had quite a lot to say about the poor quality of the engine building and when I went to the Oil temp Gauge and pushed the red button and saw that the Oil temp was off the scale which ended at 180 C I suggested that maybe he had a lubrication problem and not an engine problem as I've yet to run across any lubricant that works at that temp.

One engine for that so called sport was 25 too many.

And I will not mention how he attempted to get hold of the motor without paying for it after he lost his sponsor.

Col

those were very useful inventions, though the first mention of a compass comes from around 3000 BC in China (though theirs pointed south) it was not widely put to use until this past millenium. Most sailors believed it worked by black magic.

Without them the Sextant would be useless as there is no way of knowing what the GMT was so that the Longitude could be calculated.

At least if memory serves me correctly they where Known as The Harrison time Pieces all 3 are currently on display in the UK now and where the first time pieces that attempted to keep correct time while at sea. Only the third one worked properly but the first two where remarkable pieces of engineering.

And all where made by a Carpenter with no training in clock making.

Col

From what I understand, King George III helped Harrison get funding from Parliament and personally assisted in the testing of the time pieces, according to a documentary I saw about it. It is good to have friends in high places.

From the Admiralty not Parliament and that was for the third time piece something like a large Fob Watch. Even then the money allocated was an advance on the Prize for being able to come up with a device that allowed you to establish Longitude.

On the first sea trial of the original time piece the Admiral had a sailor hung for keeping a dead reckoning of their actual position which was dramatically different to what the Admiral insisted the fleet was at and coincided with Harrison's position. It placed them extremely close to rocks which would have sunk the entire fleet luckily they managed to save the fleet but the sailor was still dead. It kind of reminds me of the guy from HHGTTG who invented the Infinite Improbability Drive after all the top scientists in the universe had proved that it couldn't be done he was awarded his prize and then strung up by his fellow scientists and hung on the gates to his research establishment which just proves "No One Likes A Smart A#S!"

Actually if I remember correctly Harrison never received the prize I seem to remember that he had died when it was accepted that what he had managed to do was correct and because he was a carpenter with no education everything was done to prevent him from succeeding even with King Georges help the best that he ever achieved while alive was to get some money for all the work that he had put in and even when the Admiralty came to collect their property they brought a unsprung waggon to carry the time pieces in and actually managed to break the glass of the enclosures on the original two pieces. It must have been the ultimate insult that they didn't accept that these things which where the basis for such an advancement where not considered as important enough to actually look after.

Col

"No One Likes A Smart A#S!"

But I do have a good memory. Once I see something I tend to remember it if it interests me.

Incidentally being called a Smart A#S is much better than being called a Know It All Barsteward.

I've been called both quite often and I much prefer the former to the latter. :^O

Col

I don't think a day goes by that i'm not called a smart a#s. Especially by my mother.

My mother calls me far worse than any of those things and means it as well. It doesn't matter that she's now 76 and keeps telling me that she's booked herself into a nursing home.

She's just got her Letters from Trinity College so she can now officially Teach Speech & Drama and is constantly insisting that I address her properly and when I say she should be calling me Dr she just laughs and says something about bringing me into this world so she can treat me as she likes.

But I still get called over there at any hour to change a toner in her new photocopier as she hasn't managed to master that one yet. With the last photocopier she could empty the new toner into the copier but was unable to remove the empty bottle so I had to go over there and remove it every time that she was doing something for the Local Speech & Drama Teachers Association. While I haven't pulled this stunt with the new copier I used to say that I now had grounds for having her put away and I could get my house back while she was locked away in a nursing home drugged to the eyeballs so she didn't create any trouble. After all she only had that photocopier for 5 years and it was exactly the same as the previous one as far as refilling the toner which she had for 5 -6 years and she couldn't remember how to remove the empty bottle. It really looked funny seeing the copier working its little heart out with an empty toner bottle stuck on the top right hand side. :^O

I haven't rubbished her about the new one as she broke it on the very first time that she used it and I put the old one back into service as she had only run through 200 odd copies out of several thousand. But I did get a good laugh last time she ran out of Black Toner she followed the destructions by opening the cover then opening the Toner cover and then she tried to pull the drum which is in a totally different part of the machine, but I suppose it's under the same cover. That is the main one and the only one that she can open. It will be interesting when it eventually runs out of staples as she currently insists that she knows exactly how to replace the empties but can not even remember that they are in the finisher and she constantly opens the photocopier to show me where she needs to put the staples.

Col

Sounds like it came directly from the encyclopedia.

I edited it and added my own comments.

a walking encyclopedia

She is interested in such esoteric stuff.

I'm something, but I don't think it's "perfect".

Thanks though, it's nice to feel special, well.. the good kind of special.

Without which, you wouldn't have many of these other innovations.

My personal favorite......The printing press!

Is that b/c you read so much?

Thank you for noticing.

:^O

At my job, we reinvent the wheel all the time.

And even before the wheel, control of fire, and the written word, what about the spoken word? Language? Without communication that was understood by everyone, nothing could have been invented.

And next to language, mathematics, or at least what passed for math at first -- measurement, I daresay -- but what later developed into mathematics.

And reasoning. Put 'em both together, and that's what they become. Reasoning and logic.

G

You watched that Doco on the Star Disk didn't you? Well it should be obvious from that Doco that painting was the first big achievement that started everything else.

Col

Yes, I did watch it, Col, and I'm still reeling. I mean seriously.

What stunned me the most was not the disk itself, which was fairly straightforward in its interpretation once it was explained, but the AGE of it. 'Time can't be faked', was the comment of one of the experts on the show, and I tend to agree, especially after all those tests.

I thought it was a great doco all round, and I intend to discuss it with my archaeology and history class, because I got 'em all to watch it too, but I just can't believe 16,000 years!

That was still during the last ice age, for heavens' sake, and humanity hadn't even moved into cities. And, as you say, painting, a forerunner of 'picture writing', was probably the only real way of communicating ideas other than the spoken word, probably at a very rudimentary stage at that time.

On the other hand, the whole star disk episode pointed to a very sophisticated culture indeed, so what are we meant to believe now? That humanity's a helluva lot older than we realised, or civilisations are or what?

Col, do me a favour and knock me on the head with a brick and hessian! It's bad news to get me going on one of my hobby horses!!

G

It would have been on the BBC over here as they commission all of the Horizon stuff.

I saw a documentary early last year about a gold-inlaid bronze disc found in Germany that showed a picture of the night sky but they dated that to 1,600BCE, ie 3,600 years ago. The excitement was over where it was found as Germany was generally regarded as being pretty primitive in those times.

It must be the same documentary as I remember the "Time can't be faked" quote.

Neil