171–180 of 583 posts
Since 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.)
Ah, the problem is that modern inventions are really embedded in a practice and theory. The invention may be simple but the practice and theory are not. So I would put up soap as a contender. Simple, saves hundreds of thousands of life, prevents diseases and so forth. But soap, as an invention, is embedded in the modern practice of washing, which requires our modern knowledge of germs and diseases, as well as our mod…
It's kind of an oxymoron because if it were simple it would have been invented before modern times. But I'll say backpacks for everyday commuter use and trashcans with wheels (what they refer to in British TV shows as "wheely bins").
Simplicity is only somewhat related to invention. The compound bow was not invented until 1966, but any technically-inclined person from the early-modern era would immediately understand how it works from a picture.
A good intro https://youtu.be/f3fcNyZoEIw
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bicycles may seem simple but took many decades to get it right. Your comment also reminded me of this gallery of drawings from people attempting to create a bicycle from memory which is pretty funny https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw...
What a frustrating article, they say its missing a key component but doesn't say what.
I know, I know - overhyped. But you know what's a funny thing? It's incredibly basic tech. Stepper motors and thermoplastic. We could have had something like it at pretty much any time over the past century, and in its modern form from about 1960 or so. It has unquestionably revolutionized prototyping and short-run manufacturing, and we just didn't think of it. The idea was just too zany and expensive - the people with enough money to invent a 3d printer could afford to just pay someone to make their prototype by hand. It's a rare modern example of the "ancient greek railway problem"; Hellenistic culture posessed all the technology to begin making crude steam trains, and almost certainly had the technical drive to approach making practical ones, if only they had thought of it or considered it a worthwhile thing to do.
(Although there is the interesting question of data management. The .gcode for a small print can still run into the megabytes. CAD software was thin on the ground in 1970 too. So maybe therein lies the difficulty - what good is a 3D printer if you must painstakingly transcribe your blueprints into movement instructions by hand?)
The process for making ammonia from air (nitrogen) and hydrogen. Allowed a huge increase in agricultural output that saved a few billion people from starvation. Haber-Bosch process.
Basically there would be ~2 times less people on Earth and over half of them would work in farming if not for this one invention.
The condition "you can pretty much build it yourself" forces me to exclude many things with important impact like for example nuclear reactors, LSD, birth control pills, and the silicon transistor. But I think steam engines (or Rankine cycle engines in general) and penicillin are simple enough to qualify.
a Pen
The pencil, surely? Although you can get a long way with chalk, slate and charcoal, so perhaps not?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#History [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen