Best Commodity/invention?

[Eagler]

toilet paper

[SFRT - Frenchy]

Originally posted by miko2d
SFRT - Frenchy: ...then I though:"Boy! am I lucky not to have to walk, only 30 miles, but it would take me for ever.

 Don't you think the fact that you have to work 30 miles drive from where you live may have resulted from the availability of cars and highways in the first place?

 miko

I remember my grand father telling me that he had to leave at 6am to be for lunch at his uncle's house on the other side of the hill. Or my grand mother, explaining her daily task, one being to carry 2 buckets of waters from the town whel being a couple of miles away.

As far as I'm concerned, I love to visit, travel. The car is saving me a lot of time, thus I can "see more". It's like the communications, I'm not looking foward to the good old time of the mail having to ride the mule from El Paso to Boston, then embark on a bucket to England... Now I can click and insult Swoop within a second.

From my car braking down, my electricity cut, my water cut, my cell phone cut, in an order of importance I would say:

Car
Water
Electricity
Cell phone

Then again, in USA it's not like in Europe, you "need" a car.

[ra]

1) the airplane
2) television
3) noodle reduction surgery

[myelo]

The corn dog. You take pork by-products and extrude it into a wiener shape. Coat it with batter and fry it in fat. Then put it on a stick.

Sheer genius.

[Gadfly]

Cement.

[Engine]

Bacon

[davidpt40]

Cars could be replaced by bicycles.  Added benefit would be less pollution and less fat people.

[Leslie]

The most important inventions:


1.  printing press

2.  optics for reading print




Les

[Estes]

washing machine, water heaters

[Lance]

antibiotics.

[hawk220]

actually..


the most influential invention was the flint cutting tool fashioned by early man.. it allowed not only the cutting of meat but skins could be made into clothing. man was able to withstand harsher temps and the nutrition from the meats boosted man's overall health and productivity. the early flint cutting tool led to all other inventions.

[Dnil]

nm

[guttboy]

Number one BEER

Number two ASPIRIN

[Bluedog]

The wheel.

Without it, there is no such thing as machinery of any kind, bar electronic.....as far as that goes, I doubt that any electricity gets produced without a wheel being a crucial part of the process.

note that by 'wheel', I mean any circular, rotating object with a central axis...ie cogs and gears, not just tyres and rims on cars.

Well...OK, they probably are two differant things, so I'll just say both of 'em...the wheel, and the gear/ cog.

[Leslie]

Originally posted by Bluedog
The wheel.

Without it, there is no such thing as machinery of any kind, bar electronic.....as far as that goes, I doubt that any electricity gets produced without a wheel being a crucial part of the process.

note that by 'wheel', I mean any circular, rotating object with a central axis...ie cogs and gears, not just tyres and rims on cars.

Well...OK, they probably are two differant things, so I'll just say both of 'em...the wheel, and the gear/ cog.

I remember seeing on TV or reading somewhere, the wheel was first used as decoration...the same way we hang pictures on the walls of our houses, or wear jewelry.  Ancient civilizations knew about the wheel, but didn't utilize it until years later.  It was mostly a symbol, though I don't know what it meant.  

The first practical wheels were probably logs to transport large blocks of quarried stone, possibly used by the Egyptians to transport the building blocks of the pyramids during certain legs of the trip.  Some scholars claim the Egyptians knew nothing about the mathematical properties of the circle, though they used a wheel to measure the bases accurately.   Another account holds the ancient Cretes or Greeks applied wagon wheel knowledge to moving carts along roads with ruts purposely made for the carts to follow a specific route, like our railroad tracks.

But one thing is for sure.  The wheel was recognized for what it was, many years before it was used for modern technological purposes.  It was a matter of making tools to make a wheel, that posed the challenge.







Les