The top ten greatest inventions of all time are:
1. The printing press: The greatest invention has to be the printing press, first and foremost. Where would we be without it? Information, ideas, discoveries and all other inventions and even entertainment would have ‘stood still’ for many, many more years without the aid of communication through the printing press. Books and printed page have made short-work of connections to the rest of humanity. An ingenious invention, indeed!
2. Anesthesia: Who of us does not appreciate the invention of anesthesia? A huge medical blessing. Just imagine surgery without it! Imagine having a tooth pulled, your tonsils or appendix removed without anesthesia. This invention has brought great relief to mankind’s suffering.
3. Eye glasses, hearing aids and false teeth: If you benefit from eyeglasses, hearing aids, false teeth, (myself included) certainly you are grateful for the much-improved changes it makes in our lives. We can see better, we can hear again and we can chew our food.
4. The telephone: It still amazes me that one can simply push a sequence of numbers, without giving it much thought, and you will reach your destination anywhere in the world. The arrangement of numbers, in order to reach someone, are as distinctive and unique as individual fingerprints!
5. Soap:……no need for commentary here!
6. Paint: Without paint everything from Picasso to the walls in our homes would never be the beauty for the eye that we now so pleasantly behold. A life without color? Unthinkable!
7. The butter-churner: How else would we have discovered butter and ice cream from a liquid, milk, if not for the butter churner. It has been replaced by modern equipment, but the butter churner produced mankind’s first butter and ice cream.
8. Psychology: A wonderful tool to help understand our minds and those of others. Helping people to understand each other and improve relationships is a remarkable invention. Psychology helps us in all our humaneness.
9. Recipes: An on-going invention in an attempt to improve on what sustains life….in a most delicious way! Not an important invention? Try eating oatmeal 365 days a year!
10. Mathematics: The importance of mathmatics is crucial to everything. Every house built requires math, every piece of clothing, everything requiring a measurement depends on mathematics. Did someone find them laying around the backyard one day? Seriously, try sending a spacecraft to the moon without it!
Lastly, how about the person who discovered maple syrup hiding in a maple tree? He/she discovered that only in the month of every March, in the New England area in every maple tree, if he/she drove a spout into the tree tapping the sap, he/she could boil off 40 gallons and dilute it down to one gallon of pure maple syrup.
But, since the sap was already there, Mother Nature gets the credit for this invention! Um um good!
