Ask HN: What's the most important modern simple invention? - <AUTHOR> Not levers and wheels and gears, but Velcro and paper clips. I'd put "modern" as after 1700, and "simple" as "you can pretty much build it yourself", but you can argue theses (as I'm sure you will! :-) <comment><USER2> Pads and tampons. Some argue these are environmentally unfriendly and produce too much waste, but you have to think, not everyone is privileged enough to own a washing machine in their own home, particularly those in 2nd and 3rd world countries. I genuinely believed pads and tampons allowed women to be more productive in the work force and eventually lead to more equality, just hearing my mom and grandma's story of having to hand wash your own bloody (literally) period bands gives me nightmares, that was in the 70s, not that long ago.

<comment><USER3> I live in New York and the majority of my friends do not have washing machine in their home. In fact, it's a luxury to have one. In contrast, I'm originally from Ukraine where not having a washing machine is weird to say the least. There are many things that would make me call US a 2nd world country, so I'm having a hard time understanding which countries are 1st world countries.

<comment><USER4> Wow. I've lived in the US all my life and I've never heard of a majority of anyone's social group not having a washing machine.

Have others experienced this? If so, in what city?

<comment><USER5> I live New York. 5/7 years I've been here I haven't had a wash.

In my experience, an apartment with in-unit goes for 10% more than one without. My rent is 1850/mo and my local friendly laundromat does wash-and- fold for $0.90/lb. The math works out that an in-unit wash just isn't worth it to me.

Even if you're lucky enough to afford rent in New York you probably can only afford one or two luxuries. For me I've chosen living alone and windows that get sunlight over things like square footage, location, or a wash.

<comment><USER6> The time savings from using a wash and fold service aren't to be denied, either. You just drop off a huge sack of laundry once every week or two before work, and you pick it up on the way home nicely washed and folded, better than I, at least, would have done it. By the time you buy detergent and fabric softener and dryer sheets, and factor in the time derping around waiting for it to do its thing, especially in a sketchy coin-op laundry or a dank shared basement washroom, it's a little silly to do it yourself.

Speaking of course as a bachelor. When you are coupled up, or especially when children are involved, dirty laundry production escalates exponentially and wash-and-fold becomes prohibitively expensive and the capital investment in laundry equipment reduces in importance.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I had to use a service for a few years (no laundramats within walking distance) and while it was definitely more expensive than doing it myself, it was pretty great. I was always amused by getting my clothes back in this perfectly rectilinear package. My main complaint was that the service insisted on a pick up/drop off time that was like 7am and I lived on a 4th floor walk up, so I have a lot of memories of getting jolted out of a sound sleep and having to schlep a heavy bag up or down a bunch of stairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The process for making ammonia from air (nitrogen) and hydrogen. Allowed a huge increase in agricultural output that saved a few billion people from starvation. Haber-Bosch process.

<comment><USER9> Basically there would be ~2 times less people on Earth and over half of them would work in farming if not for this one invention.

<comment><USER10> Would the state of the Earth be better or worse if not for this development?

<comment><USER11> May as well just say The Earth would be better off if people had never existed if you're going to go that route.

There's more people living better lives, so things are better. There are new problems caused by our previous success that we solve next.

<comment><USER12> > May as well just say The Earth would be better off if people had never > existed if you're going to go that route.

No, that most certainly doesn't follow. It's entirely usual and normal for an amount of something in a system to be fine but then an excess of the same thing to be not fine. This is a very common situation in medicine, for example.

<comment><USER13> We only care about the state of the system as it relates to humans.

<comment><USER11> That's certainly not true for a sizeable number of environmentalists. Have you never heard the 'humanity is a virus on the planet' take?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to recommend James Burke's series "Connections"[1] and "The Day the Universe Changed"[2] from the late 70s early 80s.

He was a bbc journalist covering NASA and doing science communication and one of his particular fascinations (and mine, having grown up with his work) is the cumulative effect of ideas and technology shape not only how we interact with the modern world, but how we perceive it.

[1] [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/) [2] [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/?ref_=m_nm_knf_wr_t3](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/?ref_=m_nm_knf_wr_t3)

<comment><USER15> Just want to add that Connections and some of his other videos are available on the Internet Archive: [https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22james+burk...](https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22james+burke%22)

<comment><USER16> Many of these are on YouTube as well, just search for "James Burke Connections"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since you've allowed modern to include the Industrial Revolution, I would submit the invention that _started_ it: the flying shuttle.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle)

(How did this cause the Industrial Revolution? It made weaving so much faster, that the spinning industry had to come up with machines to supply the weaving industry.)

<comment><USER18> As an aside, from the Wikipedia article:

> ... using treadles to raise and lower the heddles, which opened the shed in > the warp threads. The operator then had to reach forward while holding the > shuttle in one hand and pass this through the shed; the shuttle carried a > bobbin for the weft.

That is a quite a bit of industry-specific jargon packed into a single paragraph. Without context this could easily be mistaken for Star Trek jargon.

<comment><USER19> Any woman born in England between 1200 and 1800 would have known all of these words except for being a bit nonplussed by "operator". Most of the men, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hand washing. Modern disease control and prevention is borderline magic. Hand- washing is clearly the most important lifesaving and disease preventing invention in modern times.

Materially ... Well, "yourself" precludes anything computerized, unless you mean "program". It also precludes a huge range of materials science advances.

Technically, you can make steel and concrete yourself with enough real-world minecrafting, and good steel or concrete is probably hands down the most important factor in all our chemical, structural, and industrial processes.

Luckily there's a book with the most important inventions to re-engineer a complex, sustainable society called The Knowledge, and just about everything in there is build-able by a determined individual or small group (until you get to modern things). Not suprisingly, it mostly focuses on agriculture, medicine, steel, and concrete.

<comment><USER19> This book should be called The Misinformation. It omits crucial safety information and other details about many of the processes it mentions, and the author doesn't maintain a public list of known errata; it's entertainment, not education.

Three better alternatives: the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube, the Boy Scouts Handbook, and Wikipedia, which you can download as .zim files for offline reference. Other relevant YouTube channels include AvE, CodysLab, and Applied Science; in more specific areas you have NileRed, Abom79, Ben Eater, EEVblog, This Old Tony, GreatScott, ElectroBOOM, and NurdRage. Unlike the book you're recommending, they are by people who know how to do the things they are explaining, show their errors, and include the relevant calculations. There are other channels like How To Make Everything and King of Random which do not; they are entertaining but deadly.

General-purpose know-how books have gone out of fashion, though we still have the CRC Handbook and the Machinery's Handbook. In the 19th century there were a bunch of books like Dick's _Encyclopedia of practical receipts and processes_ (ripped off, I think, from Cooley's, or possibly vice versa) which covers a wide range of topics at a level sufficient to enable you to practice them; you could probably build a fair bit of Victorian technology from the recipes in Dick's. (You aren't going to get a loom out of it, though; for that, see _The Mechanism of Weaving_ , but YouTube is far superior.) I think the equivalent is more difficult to-day.

<comment><USER20> Very good references! Thank you!

I do think the author tried to relay concepts and hints, rather than recipes. Given the compactness, a group of people starting largely from scratch and taking the book on faith could figure out a lot of stuff.

<comment><USER19> If they took the book on faith they would halt progress until they all died of methanol poisoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The humble ball point pen.

People forget how cumbersome and/or expensive it was to write before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use fountain pens. The cheap ones leaked and were an absolute mess to carry around. The ones that didn't leak were expensive.

I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years and just stash them everywhere I want

<comment><USER22> How do you learn writing?

In Germany, as far as I know, everyone learns writing with foundation pens. You can search for images with "Schreiblernfüller" to get an idea how they look.

<comment><USER23> In the US ive never used or even seen anyone use a fountain pen, although ive heard of enthusiasts for them here.

<comment><USER24> I have a friend who's into fountain pens and for a while worked for a company that sells really nice ones. In that capacity he came to know some people who collect pens.

You'd be amazed. One guy I heard of -- not-famous founder of a very famous brand -- was so into it he'd spent tens of millions building his collection, but outside the world of serious pen enthusiasts it wasn't "worth" anything near that much.

A lot of the pens one collects are very limited editions but otherwise unremarkable: say a really good pen that would cost $500 but in a different color and they only make a thousand of them in that color and it costs $10,000. (Made-up numbers but $10K is not that much in the pen-collecting world.)

<comment><USER25> [https://xkcd.com/1095/](https://xkcd.com/1095/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis on discovering the effects of washing your hands before operating on patients. Simple, yet highly effective.

<comment><USER27> His story is so sad though. He was ostracized by the other doctors and medical community who didn't believe him and indeed openly mocked him. He remained outspoken about his findings until a colleague forced him into an asylum where he was beaten by the guards and died.

<comment><USER28> They didn't believe him in part because he was a notorious asshole, and in part because he was insistent on a root cause analysis of hand-washing that was clearly false. He also didn't "invent" handwashing, which was already the normal protocol by the time he began practicing; rather, his contribution was a particular antiseptic handwashing protocol (chlorinated lime).

<comment><USER29> How do you figure it was "clearly false"? Once his protocol was implemented, mortality rates from childbed fever plummeted. It turned out the reason so many people had been dying from it was that obstetricians were performing pathological observations on mothers who had died from it and then gone straight to delivering babies without disinfecting in between. This is readily available info on his wikipedia but also recently appeared in an episode of 99PI which is where I learned about it. I'd be interested to see more information presenting an alternative history.

<comment><USER28> Antiseptic handwashing wasn't false. His theory for why it worked was; that theory was that "cadaveric particles" \--- literally, corpse particles, and very specifically not a more general concept of microscopic infectious agents --- were to blame for ailments, and that chlorinated lime was the only way to get rid of them. Other doctors noted things like ailments in patients with no plausible contact with cadavers, to no avail: Semmelweis was insistent.

Semmelweis is, to me, an interesting story about how it's not all that useful to be right if you're unable to persuade, and Semmelweis' difficulties with persuasion have little to do with his adversaries bloody-mindedness and much to do with his.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't know if it's the most important, but it's a great example of how a very simple innovation had huge benefits. The Fitch Barrier are those big orange barrels you see on the side of the road. They're filled with sand inside, and basically help to dampen the momentum of a car that veers off the road.

They were invented in the 1950s by John Fitch, a Formula 1 driver who just came up with them as a quick and dirty way to make the race track safer. One afternoon's random idea has managed to save over 17,000 lives and billions of dollars in damage.

<comment><USER31> I would nominate Jersey barriers as well, they're easy to mass produce and there are machines that lay them down. Many roads would be undivided if it were not for jersey barriers.

<comment><USER32> I owe my life to Jersey barriers. Around 1999 or 2000 I was driving an old Plymouth Barracuda (Slant 6 grandma's car, not a hemi monster) at 70 miles per hour in the fast lane on a freeway in Nevada. The car drifted to the left naturally because it needed an alignment and as I went to correct to the right nothing happened. The joint that connects the steering column to the steering gearbox had become disconnected. I didn't step on the brakes because they were also somewhat if he and might have sent me in any random direction!

Had it not been for the graduating slope of the jersey barrier I would have either gone over into oncoming traffic which was also doing 70 miles per hour or more, or I would have bounced back into traffic on my own side of the freeway with random results. I would not most likely not have survived.

Instead my front left tire caught the steepest graduation at the bottom of the jersey barrier which launched front left corner of the car up the barrier. But then a funny thing happened. I didn't flip over and I didn't go over it. Because the top section of the barrier is vertical I just came back down. This cycle happened several times until the car slowed down enough just to be sliding against the bottom of the barrier. At that point I was only doing about 30 miles per hour and could hit the brakes without worrying about what direction the brakes were going to take me. The car came to a stop. The only damage was a broken ball joint, a very messed up tire and wheel, and a bent fender lip!

A wrecker came and got me and delivered the vehicle to my house. I horse traded that car the very next week for an old Land cruiser that tried to kill me when it lost brakes, but that's another story. I drive better vehicles these days but only barely

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Washing Machine. Recent iterations are more complex( repair engineer could plug into ours and diagnose all sorts of things, including checking results of previous washes), however the principle behind it isn't that complex. It has made life easier for so many households.

<comment><USER34> On the number of hours saved by Washing machines and Dishwashers. Liberating women from having to do these tasks and instead contributing to the general economy instead.

<comment><USER35> > the number of hours saved by Washing machines and Dishwashers.

This is true, but to some extent over-stated I think.

We have a family of five, and don't use our dishwasher. I just do the dishes every morning while I listen to the news on the radio. It takes less than an hour.

As far as washing machines, I agree that they are quite convenient, but the truth is most clothing doesn't need to be washed nearly so often as people do.

Without a washing machine, you would just do laundry less often.

I think modern plumbing is the actual time saver. Not having to haul water from the river or the well frees up a ton of time. Having waste water safely disposed of is a massive boon to hygiene.

<comment><USER36> I think if you spend close to an hour to wash dishes every morning, it's actually a good proof of how much time it could save you. Being able to use that hour productively with other means while you do it (e.g. listening to the news or podcasts in your case) is somewhat a separate topic.

Loading and unloading the dishwasher for the same amount of dishes every day will probably take less than 30 minutes. I would estimate you could have a savings of 30 minutes every day if you used the dishwasher. Depending on how you use water when you hand-wash them, you may also save some water as well.

<comment><USER35> > you could have a savings of 30 minutes every day

Maybe I'm unique in this (I don't think I am), but if anything the curse of modern life is that we're absolutely awash in free time.

What would I do with an extra 30 minutes? Probably check Hacker News or Facebook more than I already do.

The actual washing of the dishes really doesn't take that long. Most of it is gathering everything up, rescuing the sink from the disaster that my wife leaves it in (i.e. How hard is it to actually nest the dishes instead of building them into some precarious tower?), and then washing the various big and otherwise awkward items that you couldn't put in the dishwasher anyway.

If you want to get on the modern hype train, you can think of it as a "mindfulness" exercise. There is something therapeutic about having busy hands and letting the mind wander.

<comment><USER37> > _If you want to get on the modern hype train, you can think of it as a > "mindfulness" exercise. There is something therapeutic about having busy > hands and letting the mind wander._

I don't mean to be gatekeepery here, but aren't "mindful" and "letting the mind wander" pretty much opposites?

" _Wash every bowl, every dish as if you are bathing a baby - breathing in, feeling joy; breathing out, smiling. Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute. Where do you seek the spiritual? You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there. With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual._ " \- Thich Nhat Hanh, in "How to Eat".

" _Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes._ " \- Alan Watts.

It sounds more like the modern "productivity" hype train than the mindfulness one; "do two things at once, and distract yourself from life, if your eyes are busy, fill your ears, fill all your senses all the time".

> the disaster that my wife leaves it in (i.e. How hard is it to actually nest > the dishes instead of building them into some precarious tower?),

mindfully criticising your wife in public for a cheap laugh. :eyes:

<comment><USER35> I will admit I don't really know where you're going with this since the two quotes you just gave line up pretty well exactly with what I thought I said.

Seems like you aren't so much responding to what I said as to what you wish I had said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The surface plate. Modern precision all stems from the concept of a flat reference. However, the technique to make a surface as flat as possible (which is based on simple geometry) was first discussed in the early 19th c.

In terms of profound impact on modernity, the metal screw-cutting lathe.

<comment><USER39> The metal lathe is not really a 'modern' invention is it?

<comment><USER40> There's an upward spiral of precision:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw- cutting_lathe#Modern_scr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw- cutting_lathe#Modern_screw- cutting_lathes_\(late_18th_to_early_19th_centuries\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm surprised nobody mentioned radio communication. The AM (Amplitude Modulation) transmission is even quite simple to understand and build.

You can even create an electric arc between the ground and the transmitting tower as a cheap (and dangerous) receiver: [https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw](https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw)

<comment><USER42> I don't think a layperson can understand even the basic principle behind AM, let alone the actual device. It's not as "simple" as washing your hands.

<comment><USER43> I seem to recall building small AM transmitters in elementary school. I don't remember if I used a transistor or not. I think it was easy to construct the capacitor and the inductor. (I build it in the early 70's and don't really remember how.)

We also made crystal diode radios, but I have no idea how to construct a diode from scratch, so maybe those are not simple.

<comment><USER44> cat whisker detector

<comment><USER45> This one just requires a lump of germanium and a pin or small wire.

<comment><USER46> Traditionally, one would have used galena (natural lead II sulfide) crystals. I also recall most "boys'" radios - the type you'd find in Cubs/Scouts/etc. handbooks - using a razor blade as the contact whisker, probably because it was the simplest way to get a small contact point and stiffness at the same time with materials a kid would likely have to hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Someone didn't think of putting wheels on luggage until relatively recently, in 1987.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05road.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05road.html)

<comment><USER48> A few weeks ago I was going through some stuff in our storage unit and found an originally very nice suitcase. It's of no value to me now because it has no wheels.

Imagine how much more difficult air travel would be without the wheels!

<comment><USER49> Imagine it? I've been living it and it's so much better. Try to get from one side of O'Hare to the other for your connection leaving in 20 minutes with a rolling suitcase vs with a comfortable medium-large backpack.

Boarding flights is easier, getting around outside is easier (try rolling your suitcase around the cobble streets of Paris), fitting into tight restaurants is easier.

Look into /r/onebag if you want to learn more. Check out the Minaal, it's literally life-changing if you travel often.

<comment><USER50> Wheeled checked luggage is nice when I'm on a trip that requires a lot of year. (Because of outdoor activities or whatever.) However, for typical trips I just take a carry-on travel backpack and a small bag for electronics/camera even for trips that are 2-3 weeks. IMO, most people travel with way too much stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The modern idea of a library catalog came around in the early 1800s, and probably accelerated the pace of knowledge transfer and acquisition quite a bit. In its original form, index cards, it was ubiquitous for almost 200 years before being replaced by computerized systems.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog)

<comment><USER52> More recently [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Bicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could 'build one yourself'.

<comment><USER54> 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...](https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw-bicycle- from-memory-and-renders-results/)

<comment><USER55> What a frustrating article, they say its missing a key component but doesn't say what.

<comment><USER56> It's the Chainstays. You need two bars connecting the bottom bracket to the rear hub or the rear wheel is extremely unstable.

Most modern bikes are fundamentally 2 triangles joined at the base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The greatest invention/discovery of modern times is electricity. It is the second fire and much much more..

<comment><AUTHOR> Fire is old. Electricity-- or at least it's control -- not so old, but I'm not sure I'd count it as simple. Making a functional battery or generator that doesn't just create or store trivial amounts energy is quite a challenge.

<comment><USER46> Huge powerful batteries are simple. It's making them small and lightweight that's the hard part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> 3D 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 people with enough money to invent a 3d printer could afford to just pay someone to make their prototype by hand. It's a rare modern example of the "ancient greek railway problem"; Hellenistic culture posessed all the technology to begin making crude steam trains, and almost certainly had the technical drive to approach making practical ones, if only they had thought of it or considered it a worthwhile thing to do.

(Although there is the interesting question of data management. The .gcode for a small print can still run into the megabytes. CAD software was thin on the ground in 1970 too. So maybe therein lies the difficulty - what good is a 3D printer if you must painstakingly transcribe your blueprints into movement instructions _by hand_?)

<comment><USER59> I respectfully disagree. 3D printing has not lived up to its hype or potential. The process is slow and sensitive to conditions. The commercial applications are relatively limited. It has radically transformed rapid prototyping, which is very important. But it's hard to compare it to the ubiquitous daily utility of paperclips or even velcro.

I have much more hope for the next generation of 3D printing, whatever that is

<comment><USER60> I disagree with that.

It has also transformed hobby/craft markets and arts. The only thing stopping it is UX at this point (you still need to have both craft and computer skills to use them).

I have very little use for paperclips, actually, but if I needed one, I could easily 3D print it. And that ability - to _imagine_ things and have them come out of the machine - gives the magical empowering feeling that most of the people still have yet to encounter.

I disagree that it's a _simple_ invention, though. The hardware is simple, yes, but it's nothing without software. And the software we need to make 3D printing less of an exercise in patience is simply not yet there, even now.

CAD is not accessible. Slicing is not accessible (sure, Cura will spit G-code without you doing anything - but what do you do when your print fails or falls apart because one of the myriad settings was not set right for this particular print?). Mesh leveling was not a thing on consumer 3D printers five years ago (!). Ditto for variable-width layers. And no slicers have the printhead follow curves in 3D, it's layer by layer in everything I've used, even if the model allows for something more.

What I'm saying is that that we don't have the software to utilize the existing simple hardware to its fullest potential. And without software, a 3D printer is a glorified glue gun.

(Sure, we could've had "3D-printing" pens a-la 3Doodler decades ago. They are fun, but hardly revolutionary).

<comment><USER61> > I have very little use for paperclips, actually, but if I needed one, I > could easily 3D print it.

Out of curiosity, how good would a 3D printed paperclip be compared to the metal ones I am used to? I suspect the performance would be significantly worse due to material properties.

<comment><USER19> You could make it stronger and more durable, but it will definitely be larger and heavier if you make it out of PLA, and more expensive than a bit of bent wire if you FDM it.

<comment><USER60> >and more expensive than a bit of bent wire if you FDM it

Yeah, but the whole point of 3D printing is that you can make small-scale custom runs that would be exorbitantly expensive with traditional manufacturing.

You can have paperclips that double as markers/tags/have your name on them/send a message, e.g.[1].

Same goes for other things. 3D printing is a way to make custom things at small scale on demand, but automating away most of the steps after the design stage.

[1][http://www.mkrclub.com/2016/02/make-football-paper-clip- fast...](http://www.mkrclub.com/2016/02/make-football-paper-clip-fast- useful-3d.html)

<comment><USER19> CNC wire bending is a lot better than 3-D printing for small-scale custom runs of custom things at small scale on demand, automating away most of the steps after the design stage. But the sets of designs you can make with the two processes are almost disjoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Maybe not "most important", but a few dollars worth of post-it notes can turn any wall into a "business application" that can potentially cost thousands to turn into code.

<comment><USER63> I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but the post it note meetings only provide illusion of getting things done and they can often be destructive if not conducted well or relied on too heavily. Your mileage will vary of course.

<comment><USER64> Though, many people say the exact same thing about Jira, so...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Rubber o-rings, or as a generalization, rubber gaskets.

They allow the use of fluids in an extremely wide range of applications.

Also, unfortunately they led to the Challenger explosion in 1986.

</comment><comment><USER66> I highly recommend the podcast "50 things that made the modern economy".

They're in season two now, with a second set of 50 things.

Every podcast is about a simple invention that had a huge impact.

Incidentally the Haber-Bosch Process (mentioned in this thread) is number two, after the diesel engine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Things_That_Made_the_Modern...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Things_That_Made_the_Modern_Economy)

</comment><comment><USER67> The most important overlooked or ignored invention is the antibiotic via syringe:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Duchesne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Duchesne)

</comment><comment><USER68> Aluminum beverage cans are an engineering marvel:

[https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw](https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw)

<comment><USER69> Fun fact -- 15,000+ aluminum cans are manufactured every second. Every. Second.

Really hope Bill keeps putting out videos, but I understand how life gets and it's not his full time job.

<comment><USER70> is that right? That would be something like 5 per day per person on earth.

<comment><USER69> If it's off, it's likely less than an order of magnitude off. It's based on the numbers in the video, which he states as half a trillion cans a year from 2015. If anything, I'd guess the number is a touch low.

<comment><USER71> Well I just drank my daily 8 cans of Diet Pepsi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Window screens and indoor plumbing are the 2 greatest improvements for our daily lives.

<comment><USER73> Since OP didn't provide reasons, I will.

Window screens: malaria prevention.

Indoor plumbing: make sanitation so convenient that you don't have any reasons not to use it (vs throwing the old night bucket outta the window). Obviously city scale sanitation == no dysentery, cholera...etc.

<comment><USER74> Sanitation systems are really old, though.

I was impressed with the sophistication of the one present in Glanum, a small (but wealthy) Roman provincial town abandoned in the 2nd century. The sewer system runs underneath the main street: baths, villas, and the abatoir connect to it.

To say nothing of the ones in major cities of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I would say the Telegraph.

In the book [CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Softwar]([https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Softw...](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Software/dp/0735611319)), Charles Petzold talks about how it's foundational to the eventual invention of the computer.

Back then, it also meant coast to coast communications were almost instantaneous. And soon after, transatlantic cable-enabled telegraph boosted commerce between America and Europe.

</comment><comment><USER76> I think the concept (rather than an invention) of negative feedback is very important. By that I mean envisioning that a machine can change it's own behaviour. This seems to have not been understood with early steam engines. People had to manually control valves to operate the first steam engines used as pumps in the U.K. James Watt and Mathew Bolton realized that coupling the output to the steam control valve would make it cycle automagically,

This concept permeates modern design so we don't always see it for the important development that it is IMHO.

<comment><USER77> Good idea, but there was feedback control in antiquity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Seat-belts maybe. Not as important as the car itself obviously, but definitely simple and super impactful.

<comment><USER34> Volvo opened up the patent for modern three way seat belts. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt) [https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news/volvo-trucks- magazine...](https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news/volvo-trucks- magazine/2019/may/seatbelts.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Mosquito net. Modern cities may not find use for them but there is a pretty big chunk of world's population for whom this simple item is indispensable. Its cheap. Protects against diseases like malaria, dengue etc. And definitely helps with getting a good sleep. Many villagers in India build it themselves for the community and i hope it stays that way. I know its is popular in the subcontinent (India,pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka.) Would love to know if other countries also use them

</comment><comment><USER80> Maybe some non-device inventions: the staff system; the germ theory of disease; currency without a gold standard; public health; public education

<comment><USER81> as in musical staves? good one!

<comment><USER82> Musical staves aren't after 1700, though. The five line staff we used today was widespread by the 16th century, and staff notation goes back to the 11th century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> > A twistlock and corner casting together form a standardized rotating > connector for securing shipping containers. The primary uses are for locking > a container into place on a container ship, semi-trailer truck or railway > container train, and for lifting of the containers by container cranes and > sidelifters.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock)

<comment><USER78> Actually the shipping container itself is pretty much high up there I guess. Pretty revolutionary for a box.

<comment><USER84> You might already be familiar with it, but I can heartily recommend the book The Box by Marc Levinson [1]. It describes how a simple idea of putting items in a container first, instead of directly on a ship, completely changed the world. It is for example the reason why Oakland and New Jersey eclipsed San Francisco and New York as ports. When Malcolm McLean, the inventor of the humble container, died in 2001, container ships all over the world, at an agreed moment, sounded their horns in tribute.

[1] - [https://g.co/kgs/vCK3nB](https://g.co/kgs/vCK3nB)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> The telegraph and the telephone. The enabled economies of scale and speed of decision making that were not possible before.

<comment><USER86> This. This is what enabled our modern world. None of what the other mentions would be possible without communications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> The cargo container: it has changed the entire planet culturally, economically and geopolitically. It would be hard to count the percentage of every day objects most people use world wide that owe their availability or existence to that standardized metal box.

<comment><USER88> The invention there was more standardization than the actual box. Cargo boxes have existed as long as people have had cargo.

<comment><USER89> Sure but having a massive steel box that can be craned onto a truck or train provides a lot of value. So does the fact that the boxes are indistinguishable and locking. Theft by stevedores used to be a massive global tax on trade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> The incandescent light bulb.

"In 1761, Ebenezer Kinnersley demonstrated heating a wire to incandescence."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb)

<comment><USER91> I _still_ don't think LED (or Halogen) house bulbs are anywhere near as good as the classic incandescent bulb.

Most LED bulbs give me a headache. Bad LED bulbs cause 'strobing' in my vision which is even worse.

<comment><USER92> I find Philips brand bulbs appear to have circuitry to "smooth out" the voltage and provide consistent light levels. I use my phone camera's slow motion mode to record my bulbs and see the flicker. Every brand I've tested via the above method, save for Philips, have suffered from flicker.

Give Philips a try? May just be worth the premium. Hopefully a standard like the one mentioned in a comment below is put into place.

<comment><USER91> I will, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> It's not as simple as you'd like, but the little known Bosch-Haber process, which produces ammonia for farming, staved off mass famines and may be why many readers of HN are alive today.

<comment><USER10> Would the world be better or worse off without the population boom that resulted from the invention?

<comment><USER94> Better to whom? How do you define "better" if not relative to some entity able to appreciate the difference between good and bad?

<comment><USER95> Looking at the long-term consequences might be illuminating, though that presupposes agreement on what that long-term consequence is.

If it is a high, stable, prosperous, and happy population, sustainable over the long term, arguably good.

If you start deviating from these criteria, things don't look so good.

H-B _has_ given us "large _. Is that population stable? Is it prosperous (and if so or if not, where and why)? Is it happy? And is it sustainable over the long term? If not, what does the end-stage look like, and how does it compare to the_ status quo ante*, prior to H-B?

As with tackling complex projects, addressing difficult questions sometimes becomes more tractable when decomposed into sub-problems and components.

As with mathematical proofs, sometimes presuming one result, then walking that to its inevitable conclusions, leads to a proof by contradiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> The condition "you can pretty much build it yourself" forces me to exclude many things with important impact like for example nuclear reactors, LSD, birth control pills, and the silicon transistor. But I think steam engines (or Rankine cycle engines in general) and penicillin are simple enough to qualify.

<comment><USER97> When I read Alexander Shulgin, the psychedelic chemist's biography, I was struck by the fact that when he wanted to do LSD with some friends, he actually synthesised it in his lab.

<comment><USER96> Yeah, Shulgin was a special case, he was a genius biochemist after all. And there are of course lots of people who have synthesized LSD using fairly standard lab equipment. But it's not like something anyone could do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Rivets

Ingenious Mechanism + strong as hell

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivet)

</comment><comment><USER99> Ah, 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 modern effective plumbing system to bring the clean water and dispose of the dirty water.

Of course if it didn't require those it wouldn't be modern.

<comment><USER100> "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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Ancient_Middle_East)

<comment><USER10> 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.

<comment><USER23> Many of those are likely detergents rather than soaps because it is less harsh on your skin and thus easier to market and sell.

I hate moisturizers and greasy bullshit or whatever else in soap though which is a lot of liquid soaps.

<comment><USER12> Detergent is _more_ harsh on your skin than (real) soap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Refrigeration, particularly because it has revolutionized our food infrastructure.

<comment><USER102> Many inventions only make sense in our specific modern context. Every primate that has ever lived could appreciate refrigeration and air conditioning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Zipper (1851) and ballpoint pen (1888) would be my picks.

<comment><USER104> The development, and successful commercialization, of the ballpoint pen is a really interesting hole to dive down.

John Loud is like check this cool thing I made, it doesn't really work though. Laszlo Biro comes along and makes it viable, everyone tries to rip him off, then Marcel Bich comes along and is like "Biro, let me have that, everyone sit down Bic has this!".

Stuff You Should Know did a podcast episode about it once. IIRC it was a decent listen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXB7479t0XM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXB7479t0XM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> The basic internal combustion engine.

Without it, we'd still be spending half our lives travelling places.

<comment><USER105> Not saying it didn't have an impact, but I'm nitpicking about the impact it had on how we spend our time: "Marchetti's constant is the average time spent by a person for commuting each day, which is approximately one hour. [...] Ever since Neolithic times, people have kept the average time spent per day for travel the same, even though the distance may increase due to the advancements in the means of transportation."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant)

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> How about electromechanical relay switch. As far as digital electronics goes, relay can, with some mental gymnastics, be considered grandfather of transistor (which, in turn, is one of the most important inventions of all time, but too complicated).

<comment><USER76> They were invented (I believe) to "relay" telegraph messages over long lines so it was indeed a digital amplifier. (Former Western Union employee)

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> Unix Pipes - BWK pointed out in his memoir how a small piping implementation done in a single day changed Unix(and computing) forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> APL was around in the late '60s and is basically just pipes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Binder clips.

"The binder clip was invented in 1910 by Washington resident Louis E. Baltzley, who ultimately was granted U.S. Patent 1,139,627 for his invention."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip)

</comment><comment><USER108> I think the soldering iron has to be in the hunt on all three (important, modern, simple) counts.

<comment><USER109> Sort of implies that electricity was really the important innovation, to warrant the need for soldering? (Unless I'm totally missing the important application of soldering.)

I'd argue basic electric applications are pretty simple, and easily made by hand.

<comment><USER110> Sort of implies that copper smelting was really the important innovation, to warrant the need for electricity?

In all seriousness though, the printed circuit board might be a good one to bundle with that. The old methods of creating a mechanically robust compact electrical package were nowhere near as efficient. They're also very recent and very easy to make yourself, even if it's thin plywood with tinfoil glued on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> Sterilization of medical equipment. Easy to do even at home if you know how, probably saved hundreds of millions of lives since it was invented.

</comment><comment><USER112> Standardized shipping containers massively decreased the cost of global commerce which is perhaps the most important force in the modern world.

<comment><USER113> Nice one, but we could get into a debate on whether a convention counts as an invention.

<comment><USER112> Ya, I dunno if it counts either. Just seemed like an interesting answer so I threw it out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> I'm late to the party, but I think the winner is the bra.

Wikipedia says:

> The Dresden-based German, Christine Hardt, patented the first modern > brassiere in 1899. Sigmund Lindauer from Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Germany, > developed a brassiere for mass production and patented it in 1912. In the > United States, Mary Phelps Jacob received a patent in 1914 for the first > brassiere design that is recognized as the basis for modern bras.

> A bra is one of the most complicated garments to make. A typical design has > between 20 and 48 parts, including the band, gore, side panel, cup, apex, > neckline, underwire, strap, ring, slider, strap join, and closure.

</comment><comment><USER115> The modern flush toilet. [1]

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet)

Technically invented in the 1500s but not widely produced until the 1800s.

<comment><USER95> And of limited use without something to hook it up to.

The toilet itself is an input (or depending on your perspective, output) device. Without the additional process it's connected to, it doesn't buy you much.

London's first flush toilets were connected to existing cesspits, in the late 19th century. Connection to the (storm-water-handling) sewers was an unauthorised hack by plumbers of the day. Tim Harford has covered this in his podcast on major inventions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> I'm not sure about the whole "build it yourself" part, but the "Bessemer process" for making steel was a simple innovation improving on something that existed but made it so much more affordable that many experts think it was a significant contributor to a "second" industrial revolution.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution)

</comment><comment><USER117> Equally important is contraception and elective abortion. Being able to control the timing of raising a family allows a much higher degree of freedom and also ensures a safer and more healthy environment to raise a child. I think the most important prerequisite to being a parent is the desire to be a parent. [https://www.awazeuttarpradesh.com/blog/1337x/](https://www.awazeuttarpradesh.com/blog/1337x/)

</comment><comment><USER118> The idea of Open Source software

</comment><comment><USER119> General anaesthesia.

</comment><comment><USER120> The basic ground breaking conceptual innovation is - "self serve".

The innovations with respect to tools - either support or serve that basic need.

All hygiene tools - Nail cutters, Contact Lenses, tooth pick, soap, tooth brush, shaving blade may fall in this category.

If we step little outside - I feel bicycle is one of the biggest innovation which triggered modern day - self serve - without depending on/troubling animals.

</comment><comment><USER121> Smokeless gunpowder? It completely changed the dynamics of the battlefield, and you said "important" not necessarily "good"

</comment><comment><USER104> Common soap bars, they weren't really a thing until the mid 1850's and you had to make your own soap unless you were wealthy prior to that. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#19th_century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#19th_century)

Similarly, liquid soap which came to be around the same time.

<comment><USER122> Liquid soaps are a poor choice from an environmental/cost standpoint. Most of the soap goes down the drain and is wasted. Bar soap stays on your hands and last many times longer.

<comment><USER104> That may be the case now, but liquid soaps revolutionized laundry when they came to be. Washing clothes with bar soap is a royal pain. Powdered laundry detergents really didn't start to catch on until the 1940's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_detergent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_detergent)

Also, washing machines didn't really start to catch on until the mid 1940's, prior to that it was still pretty much scrub boards. Scrub boards are bad enough with liquid soap.

<comment><USER10> I found soap nuts to be the cheapest, most eco-friendly, and reasonably efficient detergent there is. Just drop a bunch of soap nuts in a cloth bag into the washing machine, and it produces enough foam to make everything clean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> Canning and food preservation. It used to be all about salt salt salt.

</comment><comment><USER124> At the risk of being controversial, perhaps the most modern simple invention is the internet and its ability to let randoms ask a basic question and have a thousand people contribute hundreds of cumulative man-hours to answering it.

(Maybe I'm being cynical, but I feel like the OP is asking this question for reasons beyond pure curiosity.)

</comment><comment><USER125> Washing machine and dish washer

<comment><USER126> That's actually a big one because of how much time women would spend on these chores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> I read "modern" as "post-world-war-II" and suggest:

Drywall.

</comment><comment><USER127> Would be interesting to hear about most famous inventions in other countries. From Sweden, or Swedish inventors: Dynamite. The sun valve ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_valve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_valve)). The milk separator. Tetrahedron-shaped plastic-coated paper carton packaging. The self aligning ball bearing. All these were part of early history of what became larger companies existing to this day.

The adjustable spanner, the zipper and the propeller are also sometimes mentioned in this category within Sweden, but are the also referring to inventors with partly Swedish origin or for improvements of previous designs.

</comment><comment><USER128> The metric system is pretty good

<comment><USER129> I can't believe they never implemented metric time and dates (calendar). Now we seem to be forever* stuck with what we have - a glaring inconsistency in some fundamental units of measurement.

* Forever is a long time; after several civilizations crumble and rebuild, perhaps there will be an opportunity.

<comment><USER45> Metric time and dates notably fail to work with the observed motion of the Solar system. The time metrics we use are determined by the rhythms of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Metric time offers no benefit. (And for the record, Napoleon tried to decree decimal dates and times, but even the French weren't having any of that crap...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER130> I'll suggest the thermostat (and throw in the rest of control theory).

</comment><comment><USER131> Engines - replacement of muscle power. A steam engine isn't that hard to make (I built one in high school).

The Romans got pretty far without it, but it's hard to see them going further.

<comment><USER132> I disagree: [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/03/history-of-human- powe...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/03/history-of-human-powered- cranes.html)

> "There is no limit to the weight that humans can lift by sheer muscle power. > Nor is there a limit to the height to which this weight can be lifted. The > only advantage that [powered] cranes have brought us is a higher lifting > speed."

We moved to engines because they were cheaper, not because we were anywhere near the limits of muscle power.

<comment><USER131> The history of the industrial revolution since the advent of the steam engine amply makes my point.

<comment><USER132> Just because history played out one way doesn't mean it could only have played out that way.

<comment><USER131> It played out that way in every country that adopted the steam engine, and failed to happen at all in countries that did not.

As I say, the historical evidence is as compelling as it gets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> Birth Control.

<comment><USER134> Very interesting proposal. I actually remember hearing some professor (of some sort of biological/sociological background) describe birth control as arguably creating a new species as far as females go because never before did they have any sort of reliable control over their reproduction. He actually believed that it was such an incredible event in human history that we have yet to fully understand its total impact on society and that we should consider modern women as fundamentally different now - to such a large degree that he considers them a new species of human females.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The phonograph. The idea of "record something and play it again later" has significantly impacted all of our lives, and was barely even imagined prior to invention

<comment><USER45> ^^THIS^^ is one of the best answers here. There's no doubt the ancient Greeks could have built a phonograph - the Anitkythera mechanism is proof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> Rice cookers. Totally ingenious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure this counts as "simple".

<comment><USER128> My dad still uses the family (his dad's) rice cooker from the mid 1950s, so they aren't that complicated, they're basically a heater and thermal cutoff

PSA for anyone who doesn't: Wash your fucking rice

<comment><USER136> -> Wash your fucking rice

What? Sure, if you want to remove some of the starch, but what if you don't? I don't really know why you should if you don't want to, unless it was dirty, but rice today comes pretty clean of debris and bugs. Plus, it's going to be cooked, so no problem there.

<comment><USER128> It's not for safety: it's because starchy rice sticks together and makes clumpy bad-tasting rice, it's also much more easily seasoned in my experience if you wash it first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER137> Plastic. We're now drowning in a new problem, but plastic and its impact on sanitation (particularly medical sanitation, like disposable needles, which then supports vaccinations) has dramatically improved life quality and length.

Losing a child to disease before the age of five is no longer a universal human experience, portrayed in the Robert Frost poem below.

[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home- burial](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial)

<comment><USER132> Can I make plastic myself?

<comment><USER81> Simple ones, sure!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#History)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER138> Apropos time to link my favorite blog: [https://rootsofprogress.org/](https://rootsofprogress.org/). It's an exploration of the things that helped humanity leap forward.

Spoilers: empirically-informed hygiene, and textile manufacturing techniques.

</comment><comment><USER139> The sanitation system.

<comment><USER140> Ours may be more sophisticated in various ways, but sanitation systems were invented _long_ ago. [https://www.harappa.com/lothal/14.html](https://www.harappa.com/lothal/14.html)

<comment><USER139> Totally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER141> I recommend reading _How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World_

[https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now- Innovations/dp/1594633...](https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now- Innovations/dp/1594633932)

</comment><comment><USER40> Wood pulp paper, dimensional lumber (and related framing methods), and I see someone already mentioned the AM radio.

The manipulation of the aether thoroughly meets your definition of modernity, and the principles of _constructing_ a simple radio aren't terribly complicated.

</comment><comment><USER142> In terms of economic importance, the assembly line was extremely simple yet had a massive impact.

</comment><comment><USER143> Not post 1700, Luca Pacioli's double entry accounting is simple but extremly effective one.

</comment><comment><USER144> Compressor, so we can have refrigeration and feed million of people safely between other things.

</comment><comment><USER145> 1953 -'Ambu' bags i.e. 'bag valve masks'

They are as simple as it gets but have saved millions of lives.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_valve_mask](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_valve_mask)

</comment><comment><USER146> It's kind of an oxymoron because if it were simple it would have been invented before modern times.

But I'll say backpacks for everyday commuter use and trashcans with wheels (what they refer to in British TV shows as "wheely bins").

<comment><USER121> Simplicity is only somewhat related to invention.

The compound bow was not invented until 1966, but any technically-inclined person from the early-modern era would immediately understand how it works from a picture.

<comment><USER147> Tangential, but if you want to nerd out on bow tech, the slingshot channel is awesome! Rapid fire repeating bows with half draw-weight, all made in the classic mad inventor in a garage charm!

A good intro [https://youtu.be/f3fcNyZoEIw](https://youtu.be/f3fcNyZoEIw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER148> The menstrual cup.

It is definitely more ecological and practical, without any chemicals or fragrance that are found in tampons / pads these days. I definitely see it as a more affordable (the initial cost is higher, but think long-run) solution.

</comment><comment><USER149> For me: Electric Kettle, Umbrella and Bicycle.

I have used them for the last 45 years in the same shape and form.

If you gave me any of the "older" models from 40 years ago, the utility value will be similar to what I buy from the store today.

<comment><USER150> The bicycle is only debatably simple, considering that it's the culmination of quite a few relatively-advanced technologies and processes: steelmaking, pneumatic tires, interchangeable parts, ball bearings, bowden cables, etc.

<comment><USER151> Don't forget about very smooth roads, without which you would want even more technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER152> "simple" is a strong requirement. I don't know how to make anything of most things proposed!!!

If we were thrown to the Earth 10000 years ago, we would be able to bootstrap our current tech in less than a century?

<comment><USER85> Yes. So long as we had a few reference works, freedom from attack by competing tribes, and landed on productive agricultural land.

Simple radios are very easy and allow us to stick together over wider ranges than the locals, knowledge of simple medical concepts and sanitation keeps us alive and healthy longer.

Understanding how to build effective shelters and storage systems allows us to keep an agricultural surplus which enables some of us to devote our time to bootstrapping.

The biggest problem would be people jockeying for short term power instead of pulling together for long term success.

<comment><USER35> The thing you are missing, which is a massive hurdle that is underappreciated, is that you need access to raw materials. Most of the modern gadgets we use require things that you can't just find out your front door.

<comment><USER85> That's why it takes a hundred years. You first have to create the infrastructure that allows you to free up people to prospect and mine. However if we concentrate on energy first then most of the materials one needs to get started are indeed just outside one's front door. All you need for an electronics industry is glass and metal. We can use valves until we have a supply of indium, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER153> Liquid paper.

Invented in 1956 by a typist, in her kitchen. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Paper)

<comment><USER154> I'm having trouble seeing how this even makes the top 100 list of "most important".

<comment><USER152> 12 years ago we still relayed on notebooks and pens for everything. Then smartphones appear and life changed forever. And also devices like clocks, calculators, cameras, gps, planners, maps, agendas, erasers and liquid paper become redundant.

<comment><USER155> 12 years ago was 2008. _Most_ of us didn't type manually by then. Most of us had word processors, and keyboards with a backspace button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER156> Contact Lenses. My favorite and most day-to-day useful technology.

</comment><comment><USER157> Electricity: The ability to send energy down a wire, and then to have energy available "on tap" at any moment.

Many of the inventions I see listed here rely on some form of electricity.

</comment><comment> Duke-Nukem-64 Modern day plumbing/water/waste management. Clean water comes in, waste goes out. Don't have to give two thoughts about it.

</comment><comment><USER158> Printing press. Without it, spread of knowledge would've been dwarfed and it put the industrial revolution in its full swing.

</comment><comment><USER159> Earplugs! Improved sleep quality can have huge health benefits and the world is noisier than ever.

...might have been invented before 1700 though.

<comment><USER160> They cause inner ear bacteria to quintuple overnight, shouldn't be a problem with a healthy immune system, but still

<comment><USER159> I would imagine that the improvement to sleep quality outweighs any possible ear bacteria problems, at least in otherwise healthy people sleeping in noisy locations.

I also question the "quadruple" claim, a quick internet search doesn't back that up.

<comment><USER161> One ear infection and you may not agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER162> Internet. I know you can't build it easy. But if the building blocks were in place, its straight forward.

</comment><comment><USER163> The idea of human rights is simple, fairly modern, and very important -- one of the most important today.

<comment><USER97> I think it's not such a new idea, I mean there was the Magna Carta

</comment></comment><comment><USER164> The modern clothespin wasn't invented until 1887. It was then that the coiled fulcrum came into play.

</comment><comment><USER165> The wheels under the suitcase. Somebody came up with that idea after we got a man on the moon.

</comment><comment><USER166> Sewers - literally prevents plagues

<comment><USER167> Deployed widely in modern times, but invented in antiquity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER168> The limited liability corporation

<comment><USER169> This. The ability for investors to fund risky business ventures without being personally liable for the debts of the venture is what enabled the industrial revolution and led to most of the other inventions on this list.

Number two is casualty and other types of insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER170> Bending light (1840s)

-> Fiber optics (1954)

\--> fast network connectivity

\---> Internet

\---> Telephony

\--> fiber optic endoscopy (1956)

\---> better disease detection

\---> laparoscopic surgery

<comment><USER171> I love that fiber optics are really rather complex in the underlying theory, but they're so simple in construction (ok it can take some very complex machinery, but when it boils down to it you could easily make a functional, basic example yourself, useful for real purposes, say piping in sunlight to a room)

</comment></comment><comment><USER172> Modern mathematical notation, binary, or pretty much any software development language

</comment><comment><USER173> Ice making (someone else said refrigeration, but this is more specific).

</comment><comment><USER174> The drill and digger (for fossil fuel).

"Important" is perhaps a loaded word in this case.

<comment><USER45> Howard Hughes Sr's tricone rock bit truly revolutionized the world, and made the oil and gas industry possible. It's success was staggering: only a few years after he dropped dead of a heart attack, his son Howard, Jr (the one you usually think of) took over the company and was personally making _over a million dollars a day_ \- In the depths of the Depression!

</comment></comment><comment><USER175> scientific method

</comment><comment><USER176> Toothbrush.

</comment><comment><USER177> General Purpose Computers,It single handed accelerated lots of industries.

</comment><comment><USER178> The bicycle. I'm stunned it didn't come along earlier.

</comment><comment><USER179> The toilet and sewer system has got to be down there somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER180> Basic hygiene. Washing hands and yourself with hot water and soap. Not exchanging needles. Covering your mouth before sneezing. Tampons / pads, toilet tissue (although I prefer a faucet and doing a first pass with water. More hygienic and less tissue used. Also much better for the bottom)

Vaccines, anti-biopics and good hygiene and sanitary practices have doubled our average life span.

With a long life we've been able to achieve a lot more. Women have been more productive, we've created more wealth, have fewer children so each child has more resources and opportunities.

The state of US healthcare really makes me sad, but I'm hopeful we'll keep on learning more about the human body and engineer more ways of fixing it and making us all live a longer, healthier, wealthier, happier life.

</comment><comment><USER181> Wheels on suitcases (taken from antifragile by N.Taleb)

</comment><comment><USER182> The invention of speech or is that to 'old'

</comment><comment><USER183> plumbing and sewers increased life expectancy more than any other improvement.

After that maybe the steam engine, electric generator, light bulb

</comment><comment><USER184> A/C Productivity, mortality and convince.

</comment><comment><USER185> Screws!

Or more accurately, the ability to mass produce them.

</comment><comment><USER186> Electric battery

<comment><AUTHOR> As elsewhere, making a non-trivial battery ain't so simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER187> Mains sewerage.

</comment><comment><USER188> 1) Indoor plumbing 2) Washing machine

</comment><comment><USER189> The electric motor/generator.

</comment><comment><USER190> roundabouts

</comment><comment><USER191> Biogas reactors

Silage

Pads/Tampons

Wearable Pedometers and Heart Rate sensors

</comment><comment><USER192> Microwave. Self-explanatory.

</comment><comment><USER193> The hypodermic needle.

</comment><comment><USER194> Running hot water.

</comment><comment><USER195> One Click Ordering

</comment><comment><USER196> Waterless urinals

</comment><comment><USER197> Cardboard boxes?

</comment><comment><USER198> . Duct Tape

. Bungie Straps

. Zip Ties

Not necessarily in that order.

</comment><comment><USER199> Shoelaces. Without them we'd be tied in knots.

</comment><comment><USER43> Post-it Notes

<comment><USER200> Doesn't that require specific adhesive (that is rather bad at being sticky)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER201> Antibiotics?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER202> transistor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also not simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER203> Pacifier

</comment><comment><USER204> Soap

</comment><comment><USER205> Whatsapp!

</comment><comment><USER206> bicycle?

</comment><comment><USER207> Software.

<comment><USER208> Definitely far from simple, but definitely important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER209> The IUD.

<comment><AUTHOR> IUDs aren't simple. The concept of contraception is simple, and condoms (as mentioned elsewhere are), but both of those are old.

<comment><USER209> I dunno, I think Gräfenbergs Ring is pretty darn simple:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gräfenberg%27s_ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gräfenberg%27s_ring)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER210> Condoms

<comment><USER140> How modern do you think they are?

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649591/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649591/)

<comment><USER210> wow, awesome source, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER211> toilet paper, maybe ?...

<comment><USER140> Why? Cleaning with water works fine - better, in many people's opinion.

<comment><USER212> First water of course, and then paper to dry it. If any residue is found, repeat the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER205> calculator

</comment><comment><USER213> a Pen

<comment><USER147> The pencil, surely? Although you can get a long way with chalk, slate and charcoal, so perhaps not?

<comment><USER214> Pencils are not a modern invention [0], which is why it doesn't fit the question. The ballpoint pen, as an example, is a 19th century patent [1], so pens in general might fit.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#History) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER215> plastics

<comment><AUTHOR> Def. not simple!

<comment><USER215> idk...as far as complexity goes, plastics are not really all that bad. i'd argue that many machines are far more complex than a polymer when you consider what it's comprised of and how it functions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER216> The Toyota Way. Totally transformed manufacturing.

</comment><comment><USER217> The latex condom.

</comment><comment><USER205> Amazon prime!

</comment><comment><USER218> Someone has to say it... Squatty Potty

</comment><comment><USER219> It's not the inventions that are most important but the thinking processes and curiosity that continue to investigate, tinker, design, and test new ideas and processes. Humans are problem solvers by nature and by survival instinct. Every invention is a product of the mind.</comment>


Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v._NSA <comment><USER2> If you're interested in what's happened since May 2017, the ACLU posts all their discovery filings on their website.

[https://www.aclu.org/cases/wikimedia-v-nsa-challenge- upstrea...](https://www.aclu.org/cases/wikimedia-v-nsa-challenge-upstream- surveillance-under-fisa-amendments-act)

Also, if you want to support the ACLU: [https://action.aclu.org/give/donate- to-aclu](https://action.aclu.org/give/donate-to-aclu)

</comment><comment><USER3> I mean to be fair, the slide they show seems to not mention Wikipedia as a target, but rather as an example of average user activity on the web.

<comment><USER4> But to try to dismiss the whole lawsuit over that? That's outright outrageous.

Dismissing a lawsuit because somebody can't show damages was instituted to prevent frivolous lawsuits, the idea that it would stop the judicial branch from performing a check-and-balance on the executive is absurd.</comment></comment>


Subtitles for theatre – Create, edit and screen subtitles in theatre shows - <AUTHOR> http://www.subtitlesfortheatre.com/ <comment><USER2> I would try and get both "supertitles" and "captions" in your promo copy. As someone who used to organize supertitles for Opera and captioned performances for hearing impaired patrons, those are the words I expect to see and search for.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very good point, thank you. I'm adding "supertitles", "captions" and "surtitle".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

Is there a story about its development?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a story about solving actual pain of theatre professionals - at this point, most of them are making subtitles using PowerPoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I misunderstanding theatre shows needing their own screen subtitles? I imagine it's subtitling a recorded performance, so no different than most video. Please correct me if I'm making a wrong assumption there...

How would this compare with Aegisub [0]? It's hard to tell without any screenshots of the software. If the two are even comparable at all, it might be nice to see why I should pick this over Aegisub.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegisub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegisub)

<comment><AUTHOR> Video is irrelevant there. It's not about recorded show, what matters is live subtitles for theatre show.

Imagine you're director of theatre show that's made in german - you're going to france. With german actors. You need to caption the play in french. You need to translate the lines and adjust screening of french subtitles.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. It took a little bit more Google-Fu after you pointed me in the proper direction to learn about `captioned performances`. I guess I don't see nearly enough performances to not have had that be the first thing to pop in my head. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. There's also another point of subtitling theatre - support for deaf people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introduction to ARMv8 64-bit Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://quequero.org/2014/04/introduction-to-arm-architecture/ <comment><USER2> Once you get past the slightly non-standard english, it seems informative enough. I was not aware that the number of conditional instructions has been reduced to the conditional branch, conditional register-register move (with a few variations like increment), and conditional comparison. I am sure ARM engineers studied this closely, but I'm sad to see it go as I always considered the conditional flags on almost all instructions as a core trait of ARM...

</comment><comment><USER3> I cant wait until we see ARM as a big player in the personal computer/laptop game.

They are starting to compete, on a serious level, with features found in other manufacturers chip-sets.</comment>


Self-made hexacopter - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikrokopter.com/ucwiki/

<comment><USER2> Not self made, as the title suggests. This is a commercial product.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Dieses ist ein Selbstbau-Projekt rund um einen Mikrokopter." translates to "This is a self-made project for a microcopter."

In the left navigation panel you can find "Nachbau-Anleitung", which gives you detailed instructions on how to build such a thing yourself.

<comment><USER2> Ah, admittedly my language skills are not very broad. I took the title to mean that this was entirely homemade which it clearly is not.</comment></comment></comment>


Swedish ISP forced to block Sci-Hub by Elsevier also blocks Elsevier - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2018/11/03/balkanizing-the-balkanizers.html <comment><USER2> Good that an ISP has the balls to do that.

On a technical note: is this kind of censorship at DNS level, where that ISP's default DNS servers return a different ip for the blocked sites, or is it one level deeper and using third party DNS won't help?

</comment><comment><USER3> Good for them, I wish more ISPs were on their actual customers' side in matters like this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original title "Swedish ISP punishes Elsevier for forcing it to block Sci-Hub by also blocking Elsevier" was slightly modified to fit the title length requirement.</comment>


Forecasting for Covid-19 has failed - <AUTHOR> https://forecasters.org/blog/2020/06/14/forecasting-for-covid-19-has-failed/ <comment><USER2> This is just one side of the debate between Ioannidis & Taleb, which has already been submitted (at the top level):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521850)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very detailed.</comment>


Chronic Low-Level Radiation Good for Us? Taiwan Housing Accident Suggests So. - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceboard.net/community/perspectives.122.html <comment><USER2> Radiation hormesis (i.e. low level radiation being beneficial) is considered very controversial, but the data about how low levels of radiation affects humans is very bad. Most data that people work with is from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb survivors. On the low end of the scale the models usually just have a question mark. One of the models proposed is radiation hormesis. There is some other (controversial) data that people who are exposed to chronic radon exposure have lower levels of lung cancer.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis>

The plot on this page shows some of the current guesses about low-level radiation response:

[http://web.princeton.edu/sites/ehs/osradtraining/biologicale...](http://web.princeton.edu/sites/ehs/osradtraining/biologicaleffects/Risk.htm)

Hormesis would dip below the axis, indicating a less than zero risk.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cancer death rate goes down to zero when everyone dies from other illnesses.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Tossing in another axis for lifespan would be good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This journal seems to have a definite political agenda.

[http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/strange- bedfello...](http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/strange-bedfellows)

</comment><comment><USER6> Note that heat shock hormesis and calorie restriction hormesis (which may involve the same underlying mechanisms) are demonstrably good for you. The science backing those forms of enhanced bodily health are good: a little damage and adversity provokes the body into much greater clean-up and defense efforts, with the net result of increased health and longevity.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis>

As other posters point out, the data for radiation hormesis is lacking in comparison. However, it's not an unreasonable hypothesis given the reaction of mammal biology to other types of low-level damage.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a reminder of issues to check in any news report about a scientific study,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

from Google's director of research, Peter Norvig.

</comment><comment><USER8> That graph looks TOO good to be true.

<comment><USER9> That graph looks like the half-life curve of Co-60...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Study comparing apples to oranges ... Why anyone takes this seriously? Just because of thrill value?

From Wikipedia:

However, this study has been considered to have next to no scientific value, because it compares the irradiated population with the much older general population of Taiwan. A subsequent study by Hwang et al. (2006) found a significant exposure-dependent increase in cancer in the irradiated population, particularly leukemia in men and thyroid cancer in women, though this trend is only detected amongst those who were first exposed before the age of 30

</comment><comment><USER11> These theories have been around for decades:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis>

Needless to say, they don't have a lot of mainstream acceptance.

<comment><USER12> That's the result of fear-mongering by anti-nuclear groups. Hell, there is NO support for the beliefs that power lines cause leukemia or cell phones cause brain cancer, but lots of idiots still believe it, as the results of environmentalist and "pro-consumer" fear-mongering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmm, interesting, well, has anyone repeated the results in lab animals in a controlled environment?

<comment><USER14> In reference 6 from the Wikipedia article on Radiation Hormesis, the abstract says "Data concerning about 85,000 exposed animals and their 45,000 corresponding controls, with a total of over 60,000 and 12,000 cancers in exposed and control animals, respectively, have been collected." So, for suitable definitions of controlled environment, they have been repeated.

I'm frankly tempted to believe this data. There does seem to be a plausible mechanism of action, and there isn't, to my knowledge, much evidence to prefer the Linear No Threshold model. On the other hand, I probably won't go and tape a radioactive source over my pancreas, so I don't believe either model enough to actively do anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm assuming the effects on humans are different for different types of radiation and different types of exposure; as I recall, lung cancer deaths are significantly higher in regions where radon (an alpha-emitter) emissions from granite are above average.

</comment><comment><USER16> there is a kind of logic to this. Humans have evolved in an environment where there is continual low level background radiation. So like any other feature of the environment, we are adapted to cope with it, maybe even to expect and benefit from it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really don't see how low-level radiation can be good for us. If it is then cell phones should also prevent brain cancer.

<http://www.globalchange.com/radiation.htm>

I agree with eggoa who said that this article must have a political agenda.

<comment><USER18> "Radiation" means a lot of different things. Decay of nuclear materials != cell phone emissions.</comment></comment>


Prefect Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://docs.prefect.io/cloud/ <comment><USER2> After reading the landing page copy I am still not sure of the use case. Is it like AWS Simple Workflows which allows to create dynamic workflows for any kind of user, or is it more dev or devops specific?</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone got Startup School acceptance emails yet? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Nope, still intermittently spamming refresh on my gmail

</comment><comment><USER3> Waiting on my email yet as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just got mine, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> See you all there!

</comment><comment><USER6> Just got mine.

</comment><comment><USER7> Got mine :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Got it.</comment>


Mesopotamian Accounting Tokens - <AUTHOR> http://www.maa.org/book/export/html/117930 <comment><USER2> I don't know how widely accepted this interpretation of events is, but seeing how incredibly slow progress can be, progress that looks simple and 'obvious' from the far side, is always amazing.</comment>


AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) - Preview Beta - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/iam/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't yet have access to AWS websites which makes it not totally useful yet. The most important thing for me is to give multiple people access to the AWS management console. Still a useful feature though.

<comment><USER3> "In the near future, we plan on adding support for your Users to login to the AWS Management Console. We also plan to extend the AWS Management Console to support IAM, providing a web-based interface to manage your Users, groups, and permissions."

Still, it's good to see that they're finally releasing it. With another company I'd wonder if "near future" means a couple of months or couple of years. Based on Amazons good track record I'm guessing 1-3 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> sweet. About time. I asked [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/130264/impact- of-aws-acco...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/130264/impact-of-aws- account-identifiers) almost 2 years to the day..</comment>