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20th Century's Greatest Engineering Achievements 161

Posted by Hemos from the what-have-we-learned-charlie-brown dept.
dgw1 writes "The National Academy of Engineering has produced an ordered list of the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. I thought the articles about all of the entries were very interesting, even if I didn't agree with the order that some of the achievements were placed in. "
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20th Century's Greatest Engineering Achievements More

20th Century's Greatest Engineering Achievements

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  • Re:The car? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If all cars were to be got rid of tomorrow, and all people's required journeys for commuting, leisure, business, goods transport etc were to be carried out instead by public transport instead, do you think there would be:

    1. Less overall pollution?
    2. More overall pollution?

    Think carefully now. Remember, not every journey is between one major population center and another - and a car with two people in it is a lot less polluting (per passenger mile) than a bus with two people on it.

  • Re:Not sure why ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Comfort is nice, but let us not forget that without AC and Refrig we could not ship food across country. Us city dwellers would have to go without many of the foods we have come to love and would be limited to what could be grown and raised locally. While I don't have the time or interest in doing a study on this, I would say AC and Refrig should be #3 or #4 on having the largest impact on our way of life, as it enables the urban sprawl which surrounds most cities (and which defines some areas of the country). Those areas would necessarily have to be farm and pasture land if not for those inventions.

    And no, I'm not a fridge repairman, I'm an EE who works on ICs all day...but give credit where credit is due, it ain't glamorous and high profile, but it IS a great achievement. I think another *VERY* important invention not covered is plastics. Simple put, many of us would be dead if not for them.

  • Technology has made our lives worse (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This kind of praising of the so-called "benefits" of technology is obviously going to find its place on "tech-savvy" forums like /., where people pride themselves in knowing that they are technologically elite than the rest of society. But if you look at the issue across a broader scale, it is clear that technology has done nothing to really benefit us, and in fact has made the lives of millions worse.

    The effects of technology are both subtle and insidious. The communications advances of the 20th century have enabled our society to turn into an uber-capitalist monster, where the "American Dream" has become a quest for material conquest at the expense of others. Since our society is based on this violent premise, it is no suprise that we are seeing more and more acts of violence in every day life, also helpfully brought to our attention by the "wonders" of modern technology.

    Humans are inherently social, tribal animals. We are meant to communicate with at most a small group of people and mistrust others. The advent of modern society, made possible by all of these technologies, has meant that we are constantly forced into conact with people we don't know and hence mistrust. This constant level of mistrust fosters a dehumanising influence upon us all, and this again feeds back into this process, creating a vicious downwards spiral with one end in sight - the complete annihilation of society through internecene conflict.

  • The thing is that just about anything you can make is technology. Sometimes crude technology but technology nonetheless. You can't simply point at a flint axe and claim that it isn't technology.

    I'd say it is very shortsighted and arrogant to claim that the computer has been a more important technological advance than the flint axe. The flint axe clearly has had a much bigger impact on mankind than the computer.

  • They're a bit silly, really: and they miss out on the synergies between innovations, which is what turned invention into achievement.

    For instance, "the Automobile" on the one hand refers to a 19th century innovation: the internal combustion engine. But the 20th century achievement isn't the car itself, but the technologies around it. It took Ford's mass production techniques to make automobiles affordable; it took refrigeration (that is, air conditioning) and electrification to make it possible to run assembly lines.

    Having a "top 20" is completely wrong. We should think of the interconnections -- the hyperlinks -- between these categories, rather than a lazy hierarchy.
  • Not sure about lake sizes, but Hoover isn't even the largest dam in the US, much less the world, any more. Largest in US is the Grand Coulee on the Columbia river, and the largest in the world is the Aswan dam in Egypt, but will soon be the Three Gorges dam in China. (I didn't go look these up, I might be wrong, except about Three Gorges, it'll be far and away the largest when it's done.) Damn it's hard not typing damn instead of dam!
  • 1) The Porsche 911
    2) Designer drugs
    3) Semi automatic firearms for all
    4) Sexual liberation
    5) Digital cameras
    6) Mass production of chocolate bars
    7) The time travel machine
    8) Neural interface
    9) The great pyramid of ghiza
    10) Telethapy
  • I believe the quote is that man is a political animal, not a social one. And, yes I do realise that he meant people lived in a polis.
  • Horses?

    Oh yeah, mounds of dead horses...

    What, like a 50-horse pileup? Just don't take your horse above 25 on those foggy mornings.
  • Medicines are certainly a great advance, but I'm not sure I'd call them feats of engineering.
  • Borrowing great engineering achievments of the 19th century to pad our list, are we?
  • You've got to be kidding. One supposes it belongs there, due to the tremendous effect it has had on american society, but overall the effect was a harmful one.

    The automobile/oil industry is a textbook example of government meddling in industry - in this case massive subsidation, supported by state violence in some cases (Gulf War). The industry is entirely unnatural and wouldn't exist for five minutes without government aid.

    I can see cars making sense in some situations, but for urban dwellers, cars make no sense at all. Indeed, cars have essentially destroyed cities. This might not be so bad if the suburbs were not worse than cities.

    Pollution is one often cited problem (although electricity is also bad in this respect), but the worst problem is traffic and gas consumption, which is totally out of control. The whole industry is a house of cards, and it isn't going to be pretty when it falls down. Too bad the architects and proponents of this nonsense won't have to suffer for it.

  • It reads like a 6th grade class project. At the very least it doesn't appear that a lot of effort was put into it...
  • Eons ago, one of my high school history teachers opined that mankind's greatest invention was that of soap, since it makes such a fundamental difference in fighting infection and disease.In line with that kind of thinking, I believe water supply and distribution, including indoor plumbing, flush toilets, sewer systems and waste treatment deserves top honors. Second place should go to refrigeration, since it can be done without our current electrical infrastructure(although not easily). After that, agricultural mechanization that lets farmers feed themselves and a lot of other people, freeing up those other people to do something other than spend all their time growing their own food.
  • In preview the above had a paragraph break where the first and second sentences are jammed together without a space.
  • It appears that you're living in the rain forests of Chapel Hill.
    In the early 70s I managed to survive summers there in high ceilinged dorm rooms using a box fan in the window (and by being considerably younger than now).
    If you think it's bad there, try the flat tobacco growing area around Kinston, Greenville, Goldsboro or for *real* humidity, come on down to the banks of the New River (ask anyone who's ever pulled a Skylar and gone to summer camp at Camp Lejune).
  • > god bless the USA... they invented everything.

    It seams the US invented Packet Switching as
    well.
  • Wasn't Al Gore responsible for all of these?
    ---
  • Telephone : patented 1876
    Radio : patented 1898
    Water Supply and Distribution : Roman Empire
    Automobile : patented 1886 by Benz, later to join with Mercedes, obviously.

    I'm embarrassed to have read that page. I'd be mortified to have written it. I might be being a bit pedantic in using dates at which certain things were patented. Going from dates that things became reasonably common sights, or in the case of civic services such as telephones, radio might be considered a 20th century achievement. The others were common enough before 1900 to be considered developments of the 19th century
  • And there's me griping about other people not doing their research...

  • Tesla (Score:1)

    by mTor ( 18585 )
    Wow... they actually mentioned Dr. Nikola Tesla in the 1st section, "Electrification". Not bad. I'm glad he's finally getting some recognition.


    --
    GroundAndPound.com [groundandpound.com] News and info for martial artists of all styles.
  • Weapons of mass destruction are nasty, and may have completely changed the way nations practice war and politics.

    But *fortunately*, they haven't had that much of a visible effect on the day-to-day lives of people in the industrialized world. People that live in developed countries (which includes almost all of the people who read /., and certainly the members of the american association of engineering societies) don't live daily with the effects of nuclear radiation, sarin gas, or anthrax --- and even the vast majority of people living in "third-world" countries do not.

    Compare this with the achievements which made it onto the list; every one of them (with the possible exception of imaging, which as an "achievement" strikes me as being imprecise) resulted in major changes not just in our technology, but in our day-to-day lives, and the way our society functions.

    Most Americans under the age of 30 could not imagine living without electricity; the automobile made it possible to travel in two hours a distance which a century ago would have taken days; etc. For all that weapons of mass destruction are probably technology's biggest black mark in the twentieth century, they don't compare in impact to *any* of the items on the list.
  • I'm not sure that 1935-1945 is a reasonable basis for comparison to either the postwar (1945-1990) or modern (1990-) periods; it was historically unusual, the second half of the bloodiest period in modern western history (1914-1945).

    A better comparison might be the political 19th century (1815-1900) which saw *two* major wars in Europe (one of them, the Crimean War, was viewed as being unusually bloody by contemporaries) but otherwise relative peace and harmony between nations.

    One of the best arguments i've heard for *why* there was such an extended period of peace (the longest in modern European history, in fact) is that the industrial revolution had effectively given Britain a hegemonic position in Europe, which allowed it to more or less maintain the peace, until the hegemony broke down.

    The reason this argument is interesting is that it's directly relevant today; the US is in a hegemonic position, the world is unusually devoid of major threats to stability ... but assuming that that hegemony will last forever, and that stability is here to stay, is probably misguided.
  • This list, basically, covers every major engineering feat of the 20th century.

    Sure: it's obvious from looking at it that it's not a list of the most technically innovative inventions, but rather a list of those technical innovations which in some way changed society.
  • I can't see why highways are considered one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. It takes lots of materials, but the engineering is just about leveling ground and paving it.

    And some of the places where they did that, the effort it must have taken was incredible. Considering that it took almost *ten years* to build the first railroad across the continent, and it took approximately ten years for the majority of the interstate highway system to be built ...

    And, compared with the roads in existence in the 30s and 40s, the interstate highways were an incredible improvement: well paved, and graded so as to allow as a normal thing speeds which would have been impossible on previous roads.

    (Not to mention the comparison between US/Canadian/European highways and highways in places like, say, Bolivia).
  • This kind of praising of the so-called "benefits" of technology

    I find your message disturbing *not* because it says that technology has negative effects, but because it seems to go as far in that direction as you accuse mindless technology boosters of going.

    Some technologies have *horrible* effects on society (I would argue television to be one of them, because of the way it has contributed to isolating us from each other). Others come close to being unmitigated good (refrigeration comes to mind; I *like* the fact that I can eat healthy and safe food year-round, and that my eggs won't spoil in less than 24 hours during the summer, and I can't see how anyone is hurt by it particularly).

    But most of them are ambiguous in their effects. Is the car a good thing? Maybe --- it allows people to travel, to experience more of the world; it means people who live in a boring flat hot dry farmland valley can drive to the beach, or the mountains, and see that there is more to the world. But maybe not; it encourages people to not notice the land they are passing through because they are driving too fast, and it has the side effect of encouraging them to not know their neighbors.

    In the end, was it good or bad? Some of both, I think.
  • Apparently, these people don't get the Internet either. They list all kinds of uses which all involve getting information. There is no mention of the fact that the Internet allows anyone (well, almost anyone) to publish worldwide, and I think the importance of this is far greater.
  • The alignment of the planets, combined with the rousing celebration of Cinco de Mayo on the west coast, is sure to set off the Hayward fault, and destroy Silicon Valley. SELL YOUR TECH STOCKS BY THURSDAY!!!
  • Fridges are way more important for life-expectancy than all medicine combined. It should be rated before airplane's and automobiles because everyone in the western world uses it and they live longer because of it..
  • Don't stop there. Just think, in another 100 years we'll be able to manufacture anti-matter. What a bunch of ignorant monsters we'll all be. sheesh
  • Yea, everyone knows or should know that porn is what has driven all computer innovation. Just think bandwidth, bigger harddrives, larger screens, color printers, video capture, web cams, every thing. It is all for the sake of the porn.
    :)
  • I think I'm right on all three. The basis for the millenium and century ending this year is that there was no year 0 when the calendar was defined. Using the same logic, the first decade started in year 1 and ended in year 10. So by the same logic, the 90's start in 1991 and end this year. Strange, but I'm pretty sure that's right.
  • I know this is a subject of some debate ( and who doesn't like a spirited debate?), but the 20th century ( and subsequently, the 90s and the second millenium ) isn't over [navy.mil] yet. What about anything cool that happens this year, eh? Some poor inventor's gonna feel cheated on this one.
  • You know, most of those locations that people are talking about are at approximately the same latitude as North Africa. Does that seem a little hotter than "just open a window and dress lightly?" Even in Spain & Italy, which is approximately the same latitude as New Jersey, towns shut down from 11-2 because it's too hot to work without air conditioning. Don't think Americans are too attached to their creature comforts (in this case anyways)- industry in Copenhagen is just as dependent on heating in the winter as Phoenix, AZ is on cooling in the summer.
  • I don't quite see what you mean about the list favoring comfort over communication. Certainly, there is a glut of convenience elements to the list, but they have "radio & television", "telephone", "internet", and "fiber optics". To a degree, it could be argued that "automobile", "highways", and "Airplane" could be lumped into the communications category. What communications did they miss?
  • Hmmm... Maybe you North-Americans are getting a bit *too* attached to your creature comforts?

    Airco is not nearly as widely spread here in Europe, and still people live, work and play just as you do. Sometimes it gets hot, yes, but then you just open a window or dress lightly. Or use a fan instead of a full-flegded air conditioner. Saves energy and does not cause respiratory diseases...

    Cheers//Frank

    [North-European without airco...]
  • I think that plastics are probably covered under petrochemicals, though it isn't specifically mentioned...
  • Oops.... I meant to add, 'as well under the performance materials, since they did mention polymers'.

    Stupid submit reflex...
  • Would be semi-useful navigation on their site. What? No previous or next links on the different achievment pages? Hello, McFly?
  • Yeah - it's a pretty fluff article, all in all - no real explanations or text. Somebody was bored, and put together a 5th grade report.
  • Plastic might be lumped under petrochemicals... depends on your point of view... though I'm sure they are 'performance' - just think of how much lighter cars are due to plastic and fiberglass.
  • I agree with all the advancements/inventions that are on the list. From an engineering standpoint they are also in the right order. IMO - they could have added a few extra...

    They could have added:
    Architecture (Major Building advances - factory and like - i.e. Chicago Sears Tower)
    Genetic Engineering (Cloning)
    Boats (Submarine anyone?)
    Communication Technologies (Wireless Cell Phones, GPS, Satellite)
    Environmental Advances (Conservation work - ability to make ink out of plant seed juice, Earth improvement work - Hoover Damn)
    Construction/Processing advances (from the sledgehammer to the robot)

    That's just a few I can think of at the moment. Overall the list is very nice and for the most part covers a wide range of topics - however some of them - highways for example, I question if they were real engineering achivements in this century because the Romans, Mayans, Chinese, and like all had highways a long time ago - way back when...
  • Maybe I's just ignert, but does a spacecraft really need air conditioning? Think about it -- the temperature outside the orbiting craft is somewhere around absolute zero. Would any heat from the ship not be radiated away à la laws of entropy?

    It's more a matter of heat transfer being needed, and for the propellants.

    Remember the old pictures from Mercury, the astronaut in his heavy silver suit, carrying a suitcase? The suitcase was portable air conditioner, keeping him somewhat cool as he walked to his capsule.

    Then he's in his capsule, about the size of a telephone booth, crammed full of 1960's era electronic equipment. That waste heat has to go somewhere, and air conditioning is one way to transfer it.

    The top two reasons may have been surmountable without airconditioning/refrigeration, but did you ever think about what propels a rocket? Most manned rockets are liquid fueled, and the best performance comes with cryogenic liquids, ie. liquid oxygen and hyrdrogen. Now, how are you going to make liquid oxygen and hydrogen without refrigeration technology? Adiabatic cooling and compression would talk a long, long time.

    George
  • Bullshit.

    I'm alive because of technology, I was sickly as a kid, and in an earlier century I would have been the one dragging mean mortality down to 30 years.

    Oh yeah, I'm over 30, in an earlier century I'd be considered middle aged, have fewer teeth, and be in generally poor health.

    Go back to reading your Rousseau and living in an unheated cabin, wearing bear skins if you're so against technology.

    George
  • Horses?

    Oh yeah, mounds of dead horses, streets lined with road apples, count me in.

    Bikes?

    Not in the northeast US where I live, at least for 6 months of the year. I can't imagine biking 15 miles each way in below freezing temps on a snow and ice covered pathway.

    Mass transit?

    Better, but we'd have to really increase the population density.

    Unfortunately, the US is hooked on cars, and it would take some massive real estate and lifestyle changes to make it possible to live without cars. Not that it wouldn't be interesting, it would just take quite a few years (or gasoline going to $10 a gallon).

    George
  • Whereas now, you're taking up valuable medical resources which could be better used in keeping healthy people alive for longer. The burden on the taxpayer of the elderly is enormous, and this sector contributes nothing at all to society. Thanks to the liberals decent hard-working people like myself have to support people we've never met, never will meet, who contribute nothing and will die anyway in a few years? How is this fair?


    Sorry troll, today I'm healthier than a horse. I'm at a normal weight, watch my diet, exercise, don't smoke tobacco, have lower than normal blood pressure, incredibly low cholestorel, wear my seat-belt and drive a Volvo.

    I don't consider 34 elderly, and probably pay twice what you do in taxes.

    You might want to look up the definition of decent, also.

    George
  • Yes, you could argue, that they weren't very widely used then. But neither are spacecrafts today (ever been at a space trip?).

    Yeah man, I have, it was 7/10/87, Dylan and the Dead in Philly, got some fresh, clean blotter, I sucked on one, then a second fifteen minutes later, woo-hoo, off to the cosmos,

    ah, what were we talking about?
  • Hmmm... Maybe you North-Americans are getting a bit *too* attached to your creature comforts?

    Airco is not nearly as widely spread here in Europe, and still people live, work and play just as you do. Sometimes it gets hot, yes, but then you just open a window or dress lightly. Or use a fan instead of a full-flegded air conditioner. Saves energy and does not cause respiratory diseases...

    Cheers//Frank

    Um, did you read any of the previous posts?

    Or maybe you grow all your own food, and milk your own cows?

    Or perhaps you don't buy any groceries that require refrigeration, including from the farm/meat packing plant to your store.

    It's not just about being comfortable, it's about refrigeration being used in industrial processes, cooling computers, and cooling produce.

    George
  • I was thinking more of how their heart goes out right after the 60 month, 6000 mile warranty is up.

    And if you can't get a jump start within minutes, you're looking at a big pile of dog food.

    George
  • If you think supercomputers don't affect your daily life, then you must not think that reliable six-day (SIX Days) weather reports don't affect your life.
  • I give a big raspberry and a big snotty sneeze to all those who think Air conditioning and refrigeration are mere luxuries.

    I'm sorry but it is a luxury. In America and Europe most people enjoy air conditioning. In many countries its unheard of, yet somehow people there manage to survive. In fact people have survived for thousands of years in cities that get VERY hot. The birth of human civilization after all did occur in Egypt and other rather warm areas.

    Also let's not forget the difficulty of supporting huge cities and far flung locals without food refrigeration. Food poisoning is no joke.
    Well if refrigeration just stopped working, I admit we'd be in trouble. If it had never happened, we'd still be curing our meat with salt, and finding other ways around it.

    As far as your networking equipment goes, well it's built to work in a air-conditioned room. If we didn't have air conditioning, speed would be sacrificed for functionality in the heat.

    As far as your health is concerned. Asthma and allergies (yes I do have both) are mostly a 20th century phenomenon. The conditions are definitely enhanced by our dependance on air-conditioned air.

    So I have to agree with the Hemos and others that air conditioning has had a less significant impact on human civilization then you might think. Certainly less so then petroleum. But thats a whole different argument. In short I'm very thankful for my A/C (well actually my dorm last year didn't have it), but in terms of significance I'd have to rate it a bit lower then several others on this list.

    Spyky
  • Well this started a long way before the 20th century, with the industrial revolution lead by Britain in the late 18th early 19th century (nearly complete by 1850). So more mechanization is just a continuation of the industrial revolution, which was primarily the 19th century. Fertilization has been practiced (manure) since the middle ages, probably before. Agrichemicals, while significant, are just refinements of age old techniques combined with modern science, evolutionary, not revolutionary.

    Spyky
  • Don't forget . . . without vapor-compression cycle cooling, we wouldn't be able to have those neat supercooled overclockable PCs (or at least we wouldn't be able to overclock them as much).

    Also, I'm originally from Michigan, now in Georgia, and I agree that without AC life would be insufferable here.
  • It keeps hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold. How does it know?

  • Think about a spacecraft without air conditioning. "Houston, it's 120 degrees in here" "Roger, can you open a window?"

    Maybe I's just ignert, but does a spacecraft really need air conditioning? Think about it -- the temperature outside the orbiting craft is somewhere around absolute zero. Would any heat from the ship not be radiated away à la laws of entropy? Or does that require a medium?


    Regards,

  • Air conditioning in auto plants is quite a recent development. I remember working very briefly at the Ford Rouge plant straightening out some mis-stamped rocker panel mouldings for the Mustang shortly after I got out of High School back in the late seventies.
    It was in August and temperatures on the assembly line were about 110F. I weighed about five lbs less at the end of every nine hour shift.
  • This sounds like a valid criticism, but I don't think it is...
    • If you somehow wiped most of the cars off the planet, lots of people would need to take public transport instead. Hence, the buses would be full, and would run on many more routes much more often.

    • You almost certainly wouldn't be using buses anyway. Even trains are much more efficient than buses, but if cars weren't around, and the resources that get put into automotive R&D were diverted, you would most likely have other, even better, alternatives.
    By now, you would probably have "route planning" systems. You tell your computer which pair of obscure places you need to get from/to, and it tells you how to get there quicky. The system could even re-route transport according to people's needs (in advance). In some circumstances, it might choose to use a car-sized vehicle if that was appropriate.

    The essential difference is that the system would work better by being community oriented (kind of like free software, vs. a thousand proprieatry re-implementations of bits of UNIX :)...


  • Crazy view. A list of importance in order.

    What would the world be like if any of these inventions/developments were eliminated? Any one, and probably a lot of the others would have never happened, or never reached the current state of development.

    Drop refrigeration, no mainframes because you couldn't have cooled all of the tube systems.

    Etc.

    This is another manifestation of a Newtonian mind, assuming infinite predictability into the future. How someone can maintain such a world-view in the face of everyday experience is a mystery to me.

    Lew
  • I'm not entirely convinced that MAD is responsible for the level of peace we've seen. I agree that the nature of warfare is drastically different because of it. (And also because of long-range weapons.) But I believe the main reason we've been spending less time trying to kill each other is the changes in communication that occurred during the 20th century.

    First there was photography showing everyone what war really looked like, pure and unglamourized. Then there was telephone and radio, which allowed truces to be called as quickly as you could fire a rifle. Then, as more and more information was being made available widely, we have begun to realise at some level that we are all more alike than different.

    The other aspect of peace in the 20th century is that the fruit of the industrial revolution is increased prosperity. So many people have led generally happy lives, and don't really need to declare war on somone else just to make themselves feel better.
  • The first air-conditioned house I can remember was built in Florida about 1865, not exactly in the 20th Century. I was educated in south Texas before air conditioning was economical, and never missed it. Engineering made it economical, and now most people cannot imagine life without it. Life without air conditioning is possible. Fans, light clothes, and shade become very important, as does frequent bathing.
  • Yes but Hoover was the first dam to stop the flow of a major river and the others you mentioned used the lessons learned in building Hoover for their design and building. Although any of these are increadable achivements of engineering, the question would just be which is the greatest effort which is arguable indefinately.
  • And medicines aren't engineering (although one could argue the medical infrastructure is)
  • Well superconductors haven't been applied in a major way to any engineering problem yet (and still could fall under performance materials).

    What aviation besides planes? (Radar -Electronics(?) or Radio/Television, Airframes - Performance materials, Jet engines - probably could fall under airplane itself)

    Railroads were first developed at the end of the 19th century, so technically they don't have to fall in these catagories since it is excluded by the time of development, so are there any engineering developments of the 20th century that don't fit in one of these catagories?

    I would have rather seen a more specific list of SPECIFIC engineering achievments, for instance in no particular order-

    Apollo Project
    MIR/SkyLab
    Shuttle Program
    Voyager Missions
    Any of a number of space projects, not all would make the top of the list

    Hoover Dam
    Aswan High Dam
    etc..

    Akashi Kaikyo Bridge
    Golden Gate Bridge
    etc...

    Intercontinental communication lines
    Manhattan Project
    The first programmable computer
    Wright brothers airplane
    Model T ford (1st mass produced automobile)
    1st nuclear power plant
    etc...
  • I agree strogly that this list just covers all of the technology developed in the 20th century (can you think of anything developed in the 20th century that couldn't be included in this list?)

    But engineering achivements are not necessitated by their enviromental impact either, (auto, Space Shuttle (BTW CFCs(High Perf Mat?) are much more destructive to O3 than the SS) or even usefulness (space program) mearly amazing feats of applying technology to a specific problem.

    For example -

    Apollo Program - Apply and advance current technology to send men to the moon and return.

    Hoover Dam - Create a dam to block a major river and create the largest man made lake in the world (at least at the time, night still be not sure)

    Manhattan project - Produce a few kg of a material that is an extremely rare part of an extremely rare material (isotope separation of U235 or production of plutonium) and fashion it into a weapon that requires a perfectly symmetric explosion to detonate it (plutonium bomb)

    Los Angeles/Las Vegas/Phoenix/etc. Water supply -
    Deliver water to millons of residents and farmers in the middle of a desert.

    Any integrated circuit fab plant - Devolop a manufactuing plant completely free of dust, which produces complex electric circuits on tiny slivers of fused sand using light and chemicals in billions of units for a tiny price per unit.

    Akashi Kaikyo Bridge - Build a bridge between two points nearly 4km apart which can survive a major earthquake (and be expanded by 1m).

    etc....

    I really think the internet should be in there, but not number 1.

  • Plastics (or polymers in general) are a huge part of everyday life. I would probably starve if it weren't for teflon - well maybe not but washing up would certainly cut into the time I have for watching TV.

    Other impressive materials include Stainless steel. Imagine life without beer - that last beer you had was almost certainly brewed in statinless steel. The beer can and beer bottle are also marvels of 20th century engineering that would not have been possible without materials science.

    So there you have it Plastics, ceramics, Meturgy, and Zymurgy - four of the most important technologies in our lives today barely making the list at number 20.
  • Nope...must disagree.

    While there have been alot of proxy wars and non-proxy wars (Rwanda). Less lives have been lost in wars since 1945 than were lost between 1935 and 1945.

    War by proxy was the norm in the 60s, 70s and 80s. But it's not the norm now. Look at the number of American missions abroad since 1992 (Somolia, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo) and look at the lack of foreign involvment in Afganistan now...and the lack of Western Involvment in the Central African mess. It's simply that the proxies are big enough and well equipted enough now to fight without any help. Also the biggest region of Soviet-NATO proxy fighting was the Israel-Arab conflict
    ...which is downright cozy these days
  • I can't see why highways are considered one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. It takes lots of materials, but the engineering is just about leveling ground and paving it.

    Apart from the use of asphalt and concrete, there's nothing involved in a highway that the Romans hadn't done thousands of years ago. The aspect of highways that require great feats of engineering, the bridges and tunnels, are projects to themselves that aren't tied intrinsically to highway engineering.

    On top of all this, the highway isn't even that great a solution to basic problem of transportation.

  • I'm not disagreeing that Electrification belongs at #1, it does, but I'd say that the Automobile (#2), the Airplane (#3), Water Supply and Distribution (#4), Agricultural Mechanization (#7), and Highways (#11) could have been accomplished without Electrification. Steam locomotives did not even require electricity, much less electrification, and could certainly have provided the technology for several of the things I just listed. I'm taking electrification to mean practical widespread distribution of electricity, not just electricity itself. Electricity as a discovery (and some inventions using it) predates the 20th century by quite a bit, and as a discovery is also not an "engineering achievement."

    Refrigeration even seems to not require electricity, much less electrification. You could build a steam powered system of pumps (for the freon) and fans to circulate air over the freon pipes. It certainly wouldn't be as practical as using electricity (generating that much heat for the steam makes it tricky to then cool something else, but if you're clever you could do it)

    You could make a case that Telephone (#9) doesn't require electrification, though the telephone does itself distribute small amounts of electricty over long distances. Also worth noting, however, is that Telephone does not belong on a list of 20th century achievements at all, as it was invented in 1876! The same could be said for the automobile, but I suppose they meant to imply widespread availability of these inventions, not the invention itself.
  • That's all fine and good until the US:

    a) builds its anti-missile defense system.
    b) perfects its orbital weapons (check out the USSPACECOM websites).

    Then we can "project our power" (IYKWIM-AITYD) all over the globe without fear of retaliation!
  • I just calculated the per-square foot rate of my rental unit, and applied that to the two street parking spaces outside. It comes to $1425 per space per year. The government charges $40/year for a parking permit.

    You're right, it would take some major economic changes to get rid of cars. The main one would be the adoption of capitalism.

  • Refrigeration was quite a revolutionary invention. Think of life without it-- for starters, you don't get a freezer or a refrigerator, so all food must either be preserved somehow or eaten quickly. No frozen foods at all, of course. Ice must be bought in expensive blocks at a store, who ships it in from up north (or stores it from winter). Perishable food cannot be transported far without refrigeration, so it has to be produced close to where it is eaten. This could limit the size of cities, and they would need to be ringed with farmland.
  • I looked at thier list pretty quickly, but it seems to me that just about every technological advance made in the 20th century made it. I can't think of anything off hand that didn't. The categories are broad enough to encompas just about anything (including the kitchen sink -Household Applinaces & Water Supply and Distribution). Can the NAE (Nation Academy of Engineering) please stop producing web sites that look like the films they used to show us in grade school (I'd love to hear a Troy McLure voice over for the site), and go back to building something.

    --locust



  • > I support huge printers (DocuTech 135 and
    >6135), and recommend running them above 100
    > degrees F.

    Of course you recommend that!! If they didn't
    overheat you'd be out of business! :-)
  • Well, two out of three. This is the last year of the 20th century and the last year of the second millenium. However, we are no longer in the 90's. That naming convention is based on the numbers in the date, so it is zero-origin. So here we are in the 00's, the decade that includes two milleniums.
  • Refrigeration are more than just comfort.

    Late last summer mine when out and my roomate opened all the windows. I was so overwhelmed by allergens, that I had a bad asthma attack. I can't live without aircondtioning.

    Also when I was working at a large hospital in the middle of the winter when two of the the data room air conditioners went out. We were able to safely open several windows in sub zero weather, and channel that air with fans, but when the temp got to 100 F in the back of the room, there were several failures including a router, IIRC.
    My network can't run without air conditioning.

    Many of the lovely large highways we have go to places that are only habitable with air conditioning.

    Also let's not forget the difficulty of supporting huge cities and far flung locals without food refrigeration. Food poisoning is no joke.

    I give a big raspberry and a big snotty sneeze to all those who think Air conditioning and refrigeration are mere luxuries.
  • Hey,

    Where is porn on that list? Camon guys, that's gotta be one of the top inventions of the 20th century.

    I mean, in the 19th century. It was very hard to find porn. Now, you don't even have to go outside to get porn. Making porn easily accessibly is gotta be the top invention of the 20th century.

    I think that goes under "Internet".
  • I prefer the cynical value of nuclear weapons: they are the first weapon that puts the wagers of war in as much, if not more, danger as the people who actually have to fight their wars. They also make the objectives of war pointless, as they exterminate most of your potential ideological converts/slaves/scapegoats, and render your enemy's resources hazardously radioactive.
  • Why are these list always so myopic? They always seem to list things that are new and glitzy, while ignoring the things that we tend to take for granted but really have a deeper impact on our lives.

  • Actually, look into old towns/old mining towns of the American West in the late 1800's, and the history of "shady ladies" (so called, because of many towns passing laws requiring "ladies of the night" to walk on the shaded sides of the street only). You will find that many of these women would pass out "invitation" cards to clients and prospective clients, that featured nude poses of various sorts (a good collection can be found in Tombstone, Arizona - none of it is hardcore. Most of the collection would look right at home in a Playboy. The pictures are quite artistic, and show a lot of skill on the parts of the photographer and "model").

    I am sure porn has been around longer than that though, probably for as long as mankind could create art.
  • Or even earlier, what with tea from India, and coffeehouses springing up (of course, the Chinese, Ethiopeans and Arabs were indulging much before, but their not white Europeans, from which we measure all history).

    Some people thought it quite the drug scourge, all these radicals clustering in dank, smoky coffeehouses, getting buzzed and plotting revolution.

    Check out McKenna's Food of the Gods for a chapter on how caffeine affected society.

    Also check out Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, several coffee house scenes.

    George
  • Mechanizing agriculture was sure an important development. It freed 80% of the population to go work on something else (manufacturing) although the dislocation cost was high.

    But IMHO, almost as important were the developments in agrichemicals and genetics to improve crop yields.
  • Here [demon.co.uk] is a link to info on General Motors and the closure of America's tram lines.

    The same sort of thing also happened here in Australia, as this [interweb.com.au] and this [railpage.org.au] page imply, although I can't find any detailed documents...

  • The car is certainly a very significant invention. But given that General Motors used shady buisiness techniques to wipe out a significant slice of the world's public transport, this one has got to sit under something of a cloud (pardon the pun :).

    More seriously though, it is debateable whether the world is really better off with cars. There are benefits (independence of travel, convenience for moving "stuff"), but the costs (accidents, pollution, time waiting in traffic jams) are pretty high. Perhaps a world with just a few cars would work better....

  • The thing I found most objectionable about this list is that it is the sort of list Al "I invented the Internet" Gore would love. It is virtually all infrastructure.

    Infrastructure is what the bureaucrats get to create by turning the crank on the wheels of the machine once the inventors have created the machine. Until then, bureaucrats are an impediment to infrastructure creation. The worst crimes against humanity are the creation of technobureaucracies that virtually must, by their very political nature, give authority over innovation to the wrong people.

    For example, the transistor got invented in spite of, not because of, Bell Labs' management. [geocities.com]

  • 2. Automobile

    Close, but Daimler just crept into the 19th.

    4. Water Supply and Distribution

    Like many urban Brits, my water supply (and sewerage) still runs through a system built by the 19th century Victorians.

    7. Agricultural Mechanization

    Eli Whitney ? Jethro Tull ? 10th Century...

    Harry Ferguson was 20th, I'll grant you, but they quoted achievements in general, not enhancements.

    11. Highways

    Apart from motorways, most of the UK's road network is either 19th, or very late 20th

    20. High-performance Materials

    What about what is still our most common high performance material - cheap carbon steel, a mid-19th invention by Bessemer.

    Biggest omission ? Mass production, on the Ford model.

  • It also listed refridgeration with air conditioning. I think they're refering to a whole range of devices, not just air conditioners. Like food storage and transport, liquid cooled supercomputers [cray.com], and cold fusion [energyscience.co.uk]. Don't these things positively effect your daily lives? Okay, so maybe not those things, but the freezing and refrideration of food has had a great impact on the development of society. Frozen food is much more resiliant to disease and easier to transport larger distances. Cheaper and More available food directly relates to an increase in population. Although debatable whether an increase in human population is good, one cannot doubt that refridgeration has significantly contributed to the development of society.
  • Their list seems to favor human comfort and convenience over communication. If Aristotle is correct and "man is a social animal", this ordering is not too keen.

    -L
  • I was expecting pictures, biographies, timelines of some of the greatest engeneering feats of the 20th century. Instead, I got 20 vague categories, which would have been great for elucidating a specific invention, but not just a summary of everything that happened in that field. For example, the section on refrigeration, which is important in allowing cheap food everywhere, all the time, could have had something on the first use of ammonia as a coolant. Or on some of the great water projects that were made during the last century, such as the LA aquaduct.

    Here are a few suggestions for what would be on my list of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. I know, the descriptions are vague, but they're also better than the ones on the site.

    1. The Hoover Dam. Huge, will last a few thousand years with no problems, allowed a good amount of industry and agriculture in the Southern California region.

    2. The Microprocessor. Without it just about everything done in the computer industry in the last 25 years wouldn't have been. Intel's 4004 is what all started it.

    I know, I know, only two. Hey, this is just the start of a list. Given a few more hours, or preferably a day or two, and I could build a list that looks better, and has more technical information than the one on the site.
  • While I agree that petroleum products have benefited our society by providing fuel for cars, and introduced other great inventions, what they fail to mention is that these services and advantages have come with a heavy price on the environment. Petroleum has also contributed an enormous amount of pollution from the exhaust of our cars, as well as waste from our industries.

    Unfortunately, our society is now very dependent on petroleum and its byproducts, and it's bound to get worse unless a suitable alternative is found (who among us likes paying upwards of $2 per gallon of gas?).

  • I really enjoyed reading about this. However, #20-high performance materials. Don't you think they could have been a little more specific? And highways? C'mon, there have been roads since pre-historic times. How is putting 4 lanes on a road any huge advance?


    Enigma

  • It's a bit general (Score:3)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @03:03AM (#1095722)
    Looking at the list, I expected to find some specific examples of engineering. I mean, 'spacecraft'? 'Highways'? And what the fuck is a 'household appliances'?
    Instead, I'd have suggested Mir and, er, a big road. And the multi-region DVD with remote control and a free copy of the Matrix.
    This list, basically, covers every major engineering feat of the 20th century. I challenge y'all to come up with something that isn't in one of these categories.

  • Not sure why ... (Score:3)

    by arthurs_sidekick ( 41708 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @03:03AM (#1095723) Homepage
    The invention linked as the one with which Hemos disagrees is Air Conditioning at #10 ... I am guessing that Hemos thinks that's too high?

    What do you expect from a Michigander? =)

    I'm from Canada, I live in NC now. Without the air conditioner, I simply could not survive the summers or even the spring. AC makes year-round industry, and hence industry, a feasible prospect for the US south.

    Don't underestimate its importance.

  • Air Conditioning/Refrigeration is important (Score:3)

    by georgeha ( 43752 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @03:13AM (#1095724) Homepage
    Though not just for comfort.

    Think about the first time you went into a room with big iron, the raised floor, the chilly air, yeap, those mainframe monsters needed cool air to run.

    They wouldn't be much use if they could only run North of the Mason-Dixon line, and then only for 3 seasons.

    I support huge printers (DocuTech 135 and 6135), and recommend running them above 100 degrees F.

    Think about a spacecraft without air conditioning.

    "Houston, it's 120 degrees in here"

    "Roger, can you open a window?"

    I'm not a chemical engineer, but from just browsing a few recipes, it seems that cooling a solution is a very common procedure. Hard to do without a/c.

    George

  • Re:Nukes (Score:3)

    by spiralx ( 97066 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @04:16AM (#1095725)

    I agree with this statement in general, of course there is always the possiblity of the fanatical getting hold of this kind of weapon. The reason WMD have preserved global peace so well is that national leaders realise the damage that would come in retaliation, and they care about this. But fanatics could set off one of these (easier with the advent of portable nukes) with no intention of surviving it. This is IMHO the biggest danger from the invention of this weapon.

    The reason this is a problem is that the defence against this type of weapon always lags behind the offence. It is always technologically easier to destroy than it is to defend, and so there is always a period between when a weapon is invented and when its defence is invented during which the weapon is at its most dangerous. And at the moment we are in this stage, so anyone with a nuke has a lot of power.

  • Porn (Score:3)

    by BWS ( 104239 ) <swang@cs.dal.ca> on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @03:10AM (#1095726)
    Hey,

    Where is porn on that list? Camon guys, that's gotta be one of the top inventions of the 20th century.

    I mean, in the 19th century. It was very hard to find porn. Now, you don't even have to go outside to get porn. Making porn easily accessibly is gotta be the top invention of the 20th century.

  • Plastics? Medicines? (Score:3)

    by mmmBEERz ( 180987 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @03:00AM (#1095727)
    Does performance materials include plastics? Most of what we have today, we owe some debt to plastics. What about medicines? The 20th century has seen an explosion of medical technologies. I would imagine without them some of the greatest achievements would have been taken to the grave. At least in My Narrow Point of View [mnpov.com]

  • Missing one. (Score:4)

    by devinoni ( 13244 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @02:47AM (#1095728)
    Where's slashdot on the list?

  • Nukes (Score:5)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @03:29AM (#1095729)
    Well...I know I'll get flamed for this but here goes.

    Actually the advent of Nuclear Weapons and MAD (and to a lesser extent the lessons learned by the Great Powers in WW1) have lead to a period of unprecidented peace in Western Europe. While there have been some clashes (Serbia, Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea) for the most part they have been scaled down because of the spectre of full scale nuclear war.

    Chemical weapons havn't been used on the battlefield in large scale or with much success since the WW1, while there was the Holocaust and that did involve chemical weapons, the Germans wouldn't use gas against the Allies because of the retaliation of gas against the Germans.

    So I'm of the mind that MAD is a good thing.

  • Refrigeration should be higher (Score:5)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Wednesday May 03, 2000 @04:51AM (#1095730) Homepage
    I agree that the placement of refrigeration (and air conditioning) is incorrect -- it is possibly the single most important engineering accomplishment of the past several hundred years, right with the printing press.

    Talk all you want about internal combustion, petrochemicals, etc, they are all very important and changed the world, but they did not unquestionably and uniformly improve every aspect of our lives and our existence as a species.

    Without refrigeration, we would not have any other technologies on the scale necessary for modern life. You couldn't have the current phone or electrical grid, computers and most other modern technology would have been nearly impossible to invent. Space travel would be impossible, much air travel would be as well.

    Without refrigeration, our life expectancy would still be about 30-50 years because vaccines and the blood supply would be impossible to make and maintain. Our food supplies would be just as questionable as those at the turn of the last century (when food poisoning was a perfectly common way to die).

    And of course without such reliable ways to safely transport food and other perishables, our economy could never grow to the scale of current urbanization.

    And don't forget that "air conditioning" as it literally means, allows us to control the air in an environment. We can not only make it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, we can also control the humidity so that electronics can function properly and valuable materials are not destroyed or contaminated by water vapor.

    To understand the danger of humidity, simply visit the tombs of Egypt, where humidity did not exist until the irrigation projects of the past hundred years. For thousands of years, delicate artifacts sat perfectly preserved, and in the past hundred they have literally begun to disintegrate as humidity attacks them.

    Refrigeration is unquestionably one of the most significant advances in mankind's control over his environment, along with irrigation and fire.

    And like many great advances, it was scorned early on by others. The New York Times (keeping in mind NY made a lot of money by shipping ice all over the country for cooling) published an editorial making fun of "some fool in Florida thinks he can make ice better than God Almighty!"...
  • Weapons of Mass Destruction.

    Just think folks, 102 years ago the most that people could kill with one weapon was about a hundred people. What an enlightened time we now live in.

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