HA! Funny movie. Zug zug.

Sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll.
But not Smartypants.

I was going to list:
6. Gibson Les Paul

Kind of ironic, but maybe the internet would be a nice addition?

Antibiotics should probably be number one on the list. There’s not a single invention in history that’s done more to improve our quality of life. The transistor should also be pretty far up there, as should interchangeable parts and the assembly line.

Re:There’s not a single invention in history that’s done more to improve our quality of life.

Psalms 90:9,10
“For all our days have come to their decline in your fury;
We have finished our years just like a whisper.
In themselves the days of our years are seventy years;
And if because of special mightiness they are eighty years,
Yet their insistence is on trouble and hurtful things;
For it must quickly pass by, and away we fly.”

Antibiotics aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, in my opinion.

Jpad, right on about antibiotics.

How about?:

The telegraph - enabled for first time, really, the coordination of distant events & schedules/trains.

Seaworthy clocks - allowing for rationalized navigation.

There’s a BBC show that I used to watch, where this guy would take one simple “technology” (something we take for granted and see as rather mundane and obvious), and shows how revolutionary it was and how much it effected history.

The modern world is such an amazing web of such a myriad of interdependent inventions & discoveries, it’s hard to prioritize them. Take the discovery of antibiotics - I’ll bet we can name ten prior inventions/discoveries that the discovery of antibiotics depended upon - take away one of them and no antibiotics.

And that interests me too: what is the difference between a discovery or an invention? Are all inventions merely discoveries? Was the airfoil invented - or did we merely discover it in nature?

beer...

How about Pasteur?

I just thought that it was interesting that 3 out of at least the top 10 most important inventions of all time have specifically to do with typography. That means we are cool.

DanGayle,

I’d go even further: every one of them has to do with typography. That makes us supercool :-)

I second the beer, and I’d like to nominate wine and coffee.