Essay greatest invention ever



Ask a young Egyptian, Tunisian or Libyan to name the greatest invention, and they might well choose the world wide web. Go into the kitchen and find a chopping board, a tomato—not too ripe—and your favourite knife. To be sure that the knife is sharp, run the tip of your finger down the edge and feel it catch the tiny ridges on your skin. Place the tomato on the board and draw the blade across it. At first, you will sense the surface resistance, then a slight give as blade eases through flesh to the board beneath, like the keel of a boat running into the sand.

The stainless-steel blade in your hand barely differs from the sharp-edged flint and obsidian that our ancestors knapped from a core of rock two or three million years ago. The first flints were scrapers and knives for skinning and butchering animals. Larger stones, fixed to wooden handles, served as axes for chopping and adzes for smoothing rough wood. The smallest became arrowheads and spear-tips.


From the beginning, technology both brought life and took it away. The blade is so familiar that we tend to overlook its technical refinement. Pressure equals force divided by area: the thin surface at the cutting edge concentrates moderate forces into extreme pressures. By minimising the area, the teeth of a serrated blade concentrate the force still further. With a blunt knife, you have to exert a large force to make a cut—and you have a squashed tomato. Some technologies, like steam-power and the candle, have come and mostly gone.

Others have been optional—the Incas, Aztecs and Native Americans got by without the wheel. Only the blade has been with people everywhere and throughout history. In fact, as the first tool, the blade opened a new world bursting with unimagined possibilities—and we are not done exploring them yet. Elegant and enduring, the blade was the breakthrough on which everything else is built. All great inventions rest on understanding how things work. To gain meaningful insights into the scheme of things, logic has to be accompanied by asking probing questions of nature.

To advance understanding, we need to devise rational conjectures and probe them to destruction through controlled tests, precise observations and clever analysis. The upshot is an unending dialogue between theory and experiment. Nor is it a brainwave like the non-geocentric universe, the Indo-Arab counting system or the theory of evolution.

It is a fecund way of thinking on which the modern world rests.

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In relatively few generations, the rigorous application of the method has bootstrapped modern society through a non-linear accumulation of both knowledge and technology. Its impact on everyday life is ubiquitous and indisputable, even though a surprising number of people, including some senior politicians, have only a feeble grasp of its significance.


This invention, like nearly all others, is inconceivable without the scientific method, in this case the insights that it gives into the process by which the Sun and other stars transmute matter, transforming hydrogen into helium to release astounding amounts of energy. The scientific method has changed life, culture and everything, and set the stage for a reassessment of our place in the universe. It is the mother of all invention.

The greatest invention of all must surely be writing. It is not just one of the foundations of civilisation: it underpins the steady accumulation of intellectual achievement. By capturing ideas in physical form, it allows them to travel across space and time without distortion, and thus slip the bonds of human memory and oral transmission, not to mention the whims of tyrants and the vicissitudes of history. Its origins are prosaic: it was invented by accountants, not poets, in the 4th millennium BC, as a spur of the counting system with which farming societies kept track of agricultural goods.

At first transactions were recorded by storing groups of shaped clay tokens — representing wheat, cattle or textiles — in clay envelopes.

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But why use tokens when pressing one into a tablet of wet clay would do instead? These impressions, in turn, were superseded by symbols scratched or punched into the clay with a stylus. Tokens had given way to writing. As human settlements swelled from villages to the first cities, writing was needed for administrative reasons.


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Each generation could build on the ideas of its forebears, making it possible for there to be species-wide progress in philosophy, commerce, science and literature. The amazing thing about writing, given how complicated its early systems were, is that anyone learned it at all. The greatest invention of all is the transistor radio and radio wave signals , first developed by Bell Laboratories in the s. I admire straightforward technology that solves complex, human problems. Where there are still holes in the web, radio waves travel powerfully around the world.

And one of the wonderful things about the transistor is that it is portable. Spreading conversations to improve access to knowledge and quality of life is a huge task. Information opens the mind and motivates the spirit. A more informed person can make a better choice. Radio is the only way to reach so many people at the same time with the same information. It made news instant. It changed the way we listened to music. It spoke the language of the people. In rural Africa, where I live, radio is still the most pervasive, accessible, affordable and flexible mass medium.

It gives people a louder voice to air and solve agricultural problems, improve farm production, strengthen specialist knowledge in their communities, protect their health and reduce poverty.

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Radio is sustainable, interactive and inclusive. Even illiterate smallholder farmers can suddenly be both heard and informed. People tend to relate to information best when it originates from their own communities. I was inspired to launch a network that gives poor rural farmers, especially women, daily access to information on crop production, livestock rearing, soil management, national and international markets. This information is used to negotiate with traders, to decide whether to go to market, and which market to visit or supply.

Many people consider the computer to be a once in a lifetime invention. Almost everywhere one goes and looks, there is always a computer. They are found in basically every household in America.

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  7. It is such a powerful device that it changes the way people run their lives. The question is, are computers all good or are there some downfalls to this incredible gadget? In order to answer this question, it is best for one to know the history, components, careers, and the dark side of computers. Computer is the greatest invention, which be applied in many ways fields such as mechanical, electronics, robotics etc. Computers serve to help people and make their life easier and their activity more productive, but there has appeared a problem of the computer addiction or dependency, especially among the young people.

    Computers are convenient devices that many of us use daily. They have become an integral part of our lives, allowing us to work from home, stay in contact with friends. In daily lives, people are facing many challenges about mental and physical.

    Many scientists invention many machines to help the people to live well. Medical science is the best accomplishment in the world to assist people and live well.

    After his invention day by day radiology has become improved. The Internet is the greatest invention of the 20th Century because it changed the course of humanity. It literally has impacted us all in very beneficial ways. It connects billions of devices worldwide. Why is the Internet so great? Well, it has for one thing impacted education in an enormous way.

    Education is now the fundamental skill for life. Television is seen as something good or evil depending on the people and circumstances. Some parents consider television to be one of the worse technological inventions of all times, while others find it to be one of the most beneficial inventions ever created. I personally feel that television forms part of a big role in children's development whether it is used adequately or not, and the real effects on how it affects children are still.

    They may picture someone in iron clad with a giant sword and shield on his trusty steed.