Toothbrush.
Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
211–220 of 583 posts
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#212The latex condom.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#2133D printing. 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 assertion that "we just didn't think of it" is not even remotely correct. The late transition to the consumer market and the broad expansion in industry in the last 20 years has far more to do with the expiration of patents in the early 2000's than anything else. 3D printing for rapid prototyping has been around for decades.
I was not aware of that. How depressing.
Still, I think some of my point can still be salvaged - this implies that it was patented in the early 80s, which by my reckoning is still well after it became possible.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#214Bicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could 'build one yourself'.
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...
I'd love to see some of these built out and tested. I'm assuming most would snap in half when riding over the first curb. Thanks for sharing!
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, you can certainly assemble a bike from a pile of components, a pair of wheels, and a frame (try and do that with a sedan...) And it's not beyond most people to learn how to weld or braze a frame together from tubing (or even glue up carbon fiber or bamboo into a frame, at room temp). But smelting the steel and aluminum at home to make the parts is admittedly not practical.
Not only not practical -- essentially requires a highly refined metal industry to begin with, as I understand it. It's no surprise the first mass producers of bicycles were weapons manufacturers -- they were the ones with the high quality steel supplies and equipment that allowed for tight tolerances.
There are people on youtube who refine their own ores. They are lucky enough to live in a place where ore is close to the surface - not high quality ore, but with enough that for a youtube video you can get a small quantity of pure metal out. (high quality ore is either deep in the ground or already mined). For iron the process is actually simple, knowledge of iron refining likely predated the bronze age, but quality iron ores were too hard to come by to make it useful. (bronze is in much less quantity overall, but where there was was easy to find)
Edit: I won't discount the advances in iron refining though. the methods known thousands of years ago were not suitable to large scale production. It is hard to say if they would have made those advances if ore was available or not.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#216Seat-belts maybe. Not as important as the car itself obviously, but definitely simple and super impactful.
Volvo opened up the patent for modern three way seat belts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt
https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news/volvo-trucks-magazine...
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#2173D printing. 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 assertion that "we just didn't think of it" is not even remotely correct. The late transition to the consumer market and the broad expansion in industry in the last 20 years has far more to do with the expiration of patents in the early 2000's than anything else. 3D printing for rapid prototyping has been around for decades.
Further still, the control software has only recently become efficient enough at the same time that computation is cheap enough to make slicing 3D models a minutes task instead of a months task.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#2183D printing. 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 -…
IMO the invention of microstepping controllers made 3d printing possible; and when they started getting cheap enough for hackers to play with is when all the previous ideas became practical to implment, and then got patented.
There's something to be said for the availability of cheap, high precision stepper motors: these things were a much bigger deal to acquire and control not that long ago.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#219Ah, 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…
"The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon." [1] Soap is not a modern invention and its usefulness in cleaning was recognized way before modern knowledge about diseases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Ancient_Middle_East
And arguably, soaps available in shops are getting worse with every iteration. Enter a big store in most of the developed world, and you can hardly find a regular soap bar anymore (only liquids, "hydrating bars", etc.). Craft markets still have them luckily.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?
#220Electric battery