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Amazing Inventions and Scientific Phenomena That Are Taken For Granted

LunarMoon

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Everyone gawks over the Internet, black holes, and parallel universes, but what are some bizarre scientific phenomena that are really taken for granted? Case in point, the airplane. It’s a gigantic piece of metal, several tons in weight, that is generally found floating above major metropolitan areas. And yet it was invented over 100 years ago by two bicycle salesmen who dropped out of high school. The only reason people take it for granted, as they do, is because all but a handful of people throughout the entire world were born after airplanes became omnipresent. The invention of the airplane long before that of ghost paper is the most concrete proof to me that scientific and technological progress is anything but linear.
 

entropie

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Transistors. The transistor itself is a quite easy invention, what they made with them tho is quite marvellous (best example -> your computer)

800px-Transistors-white.jpg


The electromagnetic effect, which polarizes little magnets to be magnetic to the North or to the South. ( example -> your hard drive )
longitudinal-recording.jpg


The diesel engine, just marvellous, ingenious:
world-largest-diesel-engine.jpg


And not to forget: press buttons. Where would we be without them today, prolly already depleted our iron ressources to zip fasteners :D
 

Qlip

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This isn't so much taken for granted because it's a rare event, but not enough people know how cool it is, and it's unexplained:

Ball Lightning
 

Zoom

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Germ theory and the invention of antiseptics - with which it's possible for surgery to be performed safely.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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Heh, most of the stuff listed is just because the technologies have been around for a while. People used to think airplanes and pilots were crazy awesome. They've been around for a while now so they've lost some of their amazingness feel.

Really if you look back at the history of technology you'll see plenty examples of unexpected turns and amazing results. The world truely could have been a very different place today if you just remove a couple of key inventors or if they pursued different interests. By the same token there is a lot of potential today to develop new technology or science in areas that have been long neglected. The most notable inventions and discoveries did not follow a predictable trajectory. And yet that is what most inventors and scientists are trying to do today. Food for thought. ;)
 

BlueScreen

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Written language (+paper and the pen) might be the most significant thing humans have ever invented. And might still be the most significant thing we have. I couldn't imagine anyone these days looking at words and saying "wow, it's written language!". But the ability to write and draw things is the very basis of our ability to think symbolically, which is the basis of our ability to understand, solve and discover new and complex things. Before computers it was also our best way of retaining knowledge over long periods, and sharing it in a form which allowed analysis.

Really if you look back at the history of technology you'll see plenty examples of unexpected turns and amazing results. The world truely could have been a very different place today if you just remove a couple of key inventors or if they pursued different interests. By the same token there is a lot of potential today to develop new technology or science in areas that have been long neglected. The most notable inventions and discoveries did not follow a predictable trajectory. And yet that is what most inventors and scientists are trying to do today. Food for thought. ;)

Quite true. I've always wondered if the greats came about because the scene was set for them, or they are just the freak outliers in terms of ability, or got lucky, or maybe just went a direction no one else was.

If Newton became a farmer would someone have discovered things like modern calculus within the next century? Aristotle went pretty close but there were almost two millenniums between them.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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If Newton became a farmer would someone have discovered things like modern calculus within the next century? Aristotle went pretty close but there were almost two millenniums between them.

Calculus is a weird one because Leibniz developed it about the same time that Newton did. Although the tale is that Newton said something to Leibniz that got him thinking about it, so no telling if Leibniz would have thought to go in that direction without Newton. Also I believe you are thinking of Archimedes rather than Aristotle. Archimedes developed the integral side of calculus. The differential side was developed by Fermat (and maybe a couple of contemporaries). Newton's main discovery was that you could link the two parts together.
 

BlueScreen

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Calculus is a weird one because Leibniz developed it about the same time that Newton did. Although the tale is that Newton said something to Leibniz that got him thinking about it, so no telling if Leibniz would have thought to go in that direction without Newton. Also I believe you are thinking of Archimedes rather than Aristotle. Archimedes developed the integral side of calculus. The differential side was developed by Fermat (and maybe a couple of contemporaries). Newton's main discovery was that you could link the two parts together.

Yeh, I'd forgotten about Leibniz. I remember our lecturer telling us that story. Thanks for the correction also, I did mean Archimedes, not sure how Aristotle ended up there. I think it may have been cause I saw his name in the post history as I was typing it. Either way, I figure Newton was one of those guys history would have changed significantly without.

p.s. You've got pretty good knowledge on these things. Was it interest, or did you study something in the area?
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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p.s. You've got pretty good knowledge on these things. Was it interest, or did you study something in the area?

I have a MS in mathematics, but I tend to gradually gather historical details about various subjects in general.
 

LunarMoon

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Written language (+paper and the pen) might be the most significant thing humans have ever invented. And might still be the most significant thing we have. I couldn't imagine anyone these days looking at words and saying "wow, it's written language!". But the ability to write and draw things is the very basis of our ability to think symbolically, which is the basis of our ability to understand, solve and discover new and complex things. Before computers it was also our best way of retaining knowledge over long periods, and sharing it in a form which allowed analysis.
This is an interesting point that I hadn’t considered. If not for the invention of written language it would be impossible to store complex scientific, mathematical, and artistic ideas in order to transfer them between generations.

If Newton became a farmer would someone have discovered things like modern calculus within the next century? Aristotle went pretty close but there were almost two millenniums between them.
What you’ve mentioned is the debate between proponents of the Great Man Theory and the People’s History. I’d imagine that it’s a combination of the two factors, with a bias towards the unusual abilities of the person involved. It has become common in historical study to assume that if Edison, for instance, had not invented the practical light bulb, that someone else would have done so and history would be much the same. But, as you mentioned, this just doesn’t seem to be true. If the airplane had been invented by someone else just ten years later than we would have seen an extremely different World War I, if the conflict would even have occurred at all. Likewise, the 2nd World War would have ended very differently if someone other than Oppenheimer and his team had been the first to develop the atomic bomb.

You also have extremely disadvantaged individuals such as Michael Faraday and Srinivasa Ramanujan who nonetheless accomplished far more than the typical upper middle class, Harvard graduate. So it would seem strange to say that they simply became lucky.
 
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