The Greatest Invention of Mankind

WAF&T

Ask your friends what they think is the invention of mankind that has had the most impact on the human species and you will get a variety of answers. I shall present three of them here.

(1) Fire

Humans did not invent fire; this earth was born of a fiery nature some four billion years ago as gravity accumulated gobs of dust around the sun, but fire-as-we-know-it cannot have arrived on the scene until the earth had oxygen, and roughly speaking the earth had to wait for land plants and photosynthesis to get enough oxygen to smoke a cigarette. Still, fire arrived, closely followed by bush-fires, and then primitive man (some of whom were filmed in “2001”) and shortly after that, humans started using fire, and then learned how to start fire (flint and stone, two sticks and so on) rather than depending on good fortune.

Humans can be said to have devised a method for starting fire where there had been no fire. And with that came cooking and accelerated digestion of meat protein.

Fire was used in metallic technology (swords, knives, and atomic bomb casings) and fire features prominently in YouTube moon launches.

No doubt about it, control of fire was a biggie. And no other form of animal life controls fire

(2) Agriculture

But then we have agriculture, but like fire, plant life was getting along just fine without humans, without primates even. Indeed, remove all forms of animal life from the face of the earth and plant life will continue to breed and evolve. Plants are self-sufficient.

Agriculture however meant that humans had the option of staying in one place and growing crops rather than roaming over a wide area continually looking for fruit and nuts. Sadly, once humans exercised the option of staying in one place and growing crops, they lost that option, for now humans were tied to their plots of land and stores of food. You can’t just up and load your house and your year’s supply of corn and walk to the next valley. You have to stray put and make more swords for a bigger army to defend you house, your home, your hearth and your hoard; as well as your horde.

(3) The Wheel

The wheel is responsible for YouTube, for without videos of British Steam Locomotives there would be little need for YouTube. (Just kidding). The wheel made it possible to send out soldiers with swords to raid other settlements and bring back grain. Then humans worked out how to turn chariots upside-down to create the belt-driven lathe. Then came perfectly formed wooden poles and the next day, spears.

Once things had calmed down, the wheel made modern (as in “stagecoach”) transport available, also coal-mining with pit-ponies hauling wagons underground, and then the wheels atop the coalmines hauled coal up to the surface and the coal could be burned (with “fire”) to cook the food (from “agriculture”), so you can see that everything is interconnected.

Now humans can stay here or go there; humans can eat meat or vegetables; what a wonderful life we have.

So which invention of mankind do you think has had the most impact on the human species?

Is it one of those three, or do you think that some other invention had the most impact on the human species? And if so, which invention?

Ask me what I think is the invention of mankind that has had the most impact on the human species and I will claim that it is the telephone, the Alexander Graham Bell invention of 1876, not the telegraph of Morse in 1844, that has made the biggest leap for humans.

Why so?

The electrical telegraph, like the semaphore and similar manual telegraph systems that preceded it, was a four-stage process. You wrote your message on a telegraph form and handed it to an operator who used a key to send a series of electrical pulses along a wire to the third person - the operator at the other end - who wrote the message on a form and delivered it to a fourth person. The telegraph was sped-up postal mail.

The telephone was a system in real time and - the telephone made a direct link between two brains. We are used to the idea now. I do not find it strange that my brain can have a real-time dialogue with Tom, who lives half a mile away, and neither of us has to leave his cozy cottage to discuss the world crisis brought about by a tennis-jock who has not yet grasped the concept of “return”.

I have read that in the early days, some people could not believe that Harold was in Boston. He was, surely, in the next room. Go and tell Harold to come in here Right Now; I want to talk to him properly. Granny was quite right in her supposition, for in the past the only way to have a real-time conversation (a dialogue) with another human being was to be within arms reach of them. Or at most, from the stage to the rear of the auditorium.

For the first time ever, a human brain could be separated from its human body. Not surgically, of course. That is another ten years off, but for the first time ever, it was not necessary to carry the body (by wheels, fire etc) to Boston to ask Harold what he wanted for his birthday.

For the first time ever, two human brains were not separated by distance.

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