My Top Ten Inventions of All Time list:
1. Language
I’m going to class this as a human invention, since we’re all surely arrogant enough to agree that we invented it. What a great invention! The furtherance of communication has not seen the like since…. well, it may well be the best thing to happen to communication ever. Not even the iPhone can touch it!
2. The Wheel
Very handy, and it keeps cropping up everywhere you look. Transportation, clock-making, electricity generation, motion picture photography…. What endeavor or industry does NOT make use of this ingenious wonder?
3. Moveable Type
Wicked laborious work making books before this, eh? Hats off to Bi Sheng of 11th Century China! Now we can have all the Danielle Steele books and TiVO programming manuals (in mulitple languages!) we could possibly want!
4. The Clarinet
Now if that ain’t a sexy sounding musical instrument, I don’t know what is. Especially in the low resiter. Oh my! I can blush just thinking about it! What a sound!
5. The Bicycle
I get SUCH a kick out of self-powered transportation, and other than walking, I think biking is the bee’s knees. I am permanently enamored of this devilishly clever device (which owes much to the wheel, of course!) and enjoy bicycles as much for their aesthetic appeal as for their functionality. What a thrill to shoot down a hill at 50 MPH on two skinny tires! And have you SEEN some of the gorgeous road bikes coming out these days?
6. Photovoltaic Modules (aka Solar Panels)
Electricity from sunlight! No moving parts! Lasts a lifetime! It’s a technology trifecta! Sure, present-day efficiencies for commercially available models top out at about 19% at present. Who cares? The energy source (sunlight) is FREELY AVAILABLE (except in Seattle) and modules made by serious manufacturers are warrantied to produce within 80% of their rated power output for 20-25 YEARS! So you can bet they’ll last longer than that! The first silicon PV cell ancestor to the basic design still in use today (Bell Labs, 1954) is STILL capable of producing energy!
7. Shoes
Really, imagine life without shoes. If you didn’t live on a small South Pacific island with soft, sandy beaches, or indoors all day (no offense to shut-ins, but that would SUCK!), a shoeless life would be miserable! Shoes rock! Can I get a whoop-whoop?
8. In-advance flight check-in over the net and curbside baggage check
Okay, that’s two things, but they’re closely related and together they make flying soooo much easier to bear.
9. Radio
Hey, internet is nice and all, but let’s get serious here for a moment. Some dude/dudes figured out how to send information and music and stuff INVISIBLY through the air! through walls! through space! That is just plain COOL. Give ’em their props!
And finally, the pinnacle of human achievement, the top of the heap, the apex of inventiveness, the piece de resistance!
10. The Salad Spinner
What better expression of simple technology can there be? With this amazingly clever offshoot of wheel technology, you can wash your lettuce leaves clean (no head lettuce, please! Ick.) and quickly and efficiently dry them off so your salad dressing can stick to them- without using paper towels! Brilliant!
