Post-it Notes
Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
151–160 of 583 posts
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#152Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#153Bending light (1840s) -> Fiber optics (1954) --> fast network connectivity ---> Internet ---> Telephony --> fiber optic endoscopy (1956) ---> better disease detection ---> laparoscopic surgery
I love that fiber optics are really rather complex in the underlying theory, but they're so simple in construction (ok it can take some very complex machinery, but when it boils down to it you could easily make a functional, basic example yourself, useful for real purposes, say piping in sunlight to a room)
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#154Software.
Definitely far from simple, but definitely important.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#155plastics
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#156Maybe some non-device inventions: the staff system; the germ theory of disease; currency without a gold standard; public health; public education
currency without a gold standard is arguably the original system of money (see debt: the first 5000 years)
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#157I’d like to recommend James Burke’s series “Connections”[1] and “The Day the Universe Changed”[2] from the late 70s early 80s.
He was a bbc journalist covering NASA and doing science communication and one of his particular fascinations (and mine, having grown up with his work) is the cumulative effect of ideas and technology shape not only how we interact with the modern world, but how we perceive it.
[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/ [2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/?ref_=m_nm_knf_wr_t3
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#158Washing Machine. Recent iterations are more complex( repair engineer could plug into ours and diagnose all sorts of things, including checking results of previous washes), however the principle behind it isn't that complex. It has made life easier for so many households.
You can get a simple one that is probably 80% of the way to a modern commercial washing machine, and several orders of magnitude better than going to a stream and washing:
for example "wonderwash"
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#159I'm surprised nobody mentioned radio communication. The AM (Amplitude Modulation) transmission is even quite simple to understand and build. You can even create an electric arc between the ground and the transmitting tower as a cheap (and dangerous) receiver: https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw
I don't think a layperson can understand even the basic principle behind AM, let alone the actual device. It's not as "simple" as washing your hands.
I seem to recall building small AM transmitters in elementary school. I don't remember if I used a transistor or not. I think it was easy to construct the capacitor and the inductor. (I build it in the early 70's and don't really remember how.)
We also made crystal diode radios, but I have no idea how to construct a diode from scratch, so maybe those are not simple.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#160Since you've allowed modern to include the Industrial Revolution, I would submit the invention that started it: the flying shuttle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle (How did this cause the Industrial Revolution? It made weaving so much faster, that the spinning industry had to come up with machines to supply the weaving industry.)
This is an answer to the "most important invention" question I've never heard before, and it's a great answer for the "simple" qualifier too. I've never even heard of this device before.