Technology writers like Herb Brody (Microsoft Encarta Yearbook 1999) used certain criteria to select the 10 most important inventions in the last thousand years. Criteria were: First, the invention either drew up ways of doing an important task drastically different from how it was done before, or they made possible tasks that were previously not thought of; second, the larger portion of humanity eventually, if not immediately, felt its impact; third, these very inventions paved the way for significant new innovations and discoveries in science and technology; and lastly, the invention should have a lasting effect on our lives. If 10 inventions that met these criteria were to be placed on a timeline, Brody identified them in this order: compass, the mechanical clock, the glass lens, the printing press, the steam engine, electric power, the telegraph, wireless communications, antibiotics, and the transistor. No toothbrush.
Brody gives brief accounts of each landmark invention. He thinks that the compass was already widely used in China toward the end of the 1300s and believes it to have been invented there. It changed the way and the lengths people navigated to explore new terrain. The mechanical clock was invented in Europe in the 14th century and synchronized the pace of the human world. The glass lens may have started with the invention of spectacles in Italy in the late 13th century although again, other versions may have already been around in China earlier, and then later on paved the way for telescopes and microscopes. The printing press believed to have been born in some form much earlier in China, around 2nd century A.D., and later on in Europe with the movable metal type, the Gutenberg Printing Press in 1450, finally made literature more widely available and what now makes accessible this column that you read. The steam engine which was patented by James Watt in 1769, developed from earlier "adventures" in steam power by Savery and Newcomen, paved the way for what are now powered by electricity and internal combustion, such as cars and airplanes, and factories. Electricity, i.e., the way to generate it and distribute it widely, finds its early sparks in the lightning rod of Benjamin Franklin which, of course, opened doors for Edison’s incandescent bulb. The telegraph, which involves electrical impulses transmitted to relay messages, is the precursor of the telephone and Brody thinks of the Internet as well. Wireless communications make use of radio waves that enable instantaneous broadcast of information around the world. In 1928, the first of what was to be called "antibiotics," penicillin, was invented by Alexander Fleming and led to the further development of other kinds and drastically improved the resistance of humans to diseases. Lastly, the transistor is the device that controls the flow of electric current, in fast-paced on-off switching, transmitting the flow of information you now see in your computers. This is why the computer was not one of the "Great Ten": the transistor was at the heart of the computer’s power and it was already invented in 1948 by physicists at Bell Laboratories.
I still do not know why the American survey showed the toothbrush as the most important invention of all. But the survey made me think of what other people in other parts of the world think are the most important inventions in human history. I think what will come out is an indication of our awareness of connections in the natural world, in history and how far we can make these connections meaningful in our personal lives. And I think to a certain extent, it will also reveal a deliberate attempt on our part to make personal, such an "impersonal" larger than life concept such as that of an "invention," especially when it refers to the great ones.
An eight-year-old girl I adore skated around me as I asked her what she would invent if she had a chance. This girl has lived in three different countries already at her tender age. She was keen on two things: One, she would invent kids’ food in gum form, from tomato soup to roast beef, since she said kids are picky eaters but the gum format would take care of that. Second, she wanted all families to live in "turbo lifts" that serve both as their home and their car ("but it flies," she qualified, because "we all have to move"). Most important of all, she said, after considering what her 10-year-old sister calls the "state of the world affairs," the "turbo lifts" would, when being fired at by bombs, would be capable of sending the bombs "where they came from," not blowing up there but just going back home from where they came. Now, I was told later that the "turbo lift" idea is actually a spin-off from a later-shown episode of Star Wars but she maintained that the "homing bomb" twist is an original. Now that would be a landmark invention.