What 20th century development most changed the world? (no spam)

[Nightmare]

I'm going to go with the internet. Never before has anything connected people in such a way...

[Scayde]

Most changed the world? I vote for penicillin. It has doubled the average life expectancy. However, without the combustion engine and the airplane it would have been very hard to distribute it to all those people.

[Tamerlane]

Politically and socially, the atom bomb. It has this unusual habit of continously changing the world.

[Osiris]

My vote goes to the development of antibiotics, although in the long run, recent developments in genetics (human genome etc.) could possibly have more impact.

[Xandax]

Originally posted by Rob-hin
<snip>
But to name just one thing, I'd have to go for the combustion engine.

That would be my bet also.

Or maybe tabloid newspapers and paparazzies

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Electricity. A surprisingly large percentage of mankind is now dependant upon electricity for light, storage of food, and indeed most of the modern-day way of life, at least in Western society.

EDIT-Well, that was embarassing. My vote must therefore be changed to the widespread use of electricity, then.

[frogus]

@Ode...IIRC electricity was first discovered in the late eighteenth century...

[HighLordDave]

@Ode to a Grasshopper:
I would place electricity as something that became prevalent in the 19th Century, even though many people didn't have access to electricity until well into the 20th Century (a lot of people around the world still don't have electricty). We've known about electricity and electrical properties for over quite a long time (in fact, remains of what appear to have been an ancient chemical battery have been found in Egypt in ruins dating back three millenia). In 1831, Michael Faraday found that he could generate a small electric current by passing a magnet over a coil of copper wire (induction current). By 1882, Thomas Edison had a DC generator capable of lighting his laboratory and street lights in New York, and other cities quickly followed suit.

@Mr Flibble:
That was a minor abberation. I'm getting back to my old form . . .

[Mr Sleep]

Originally posted by Osiris
My vote goes to the development of antibiotics, although in the long run, recent developments in genetics (human genome etc.) could possibly have more impact.

I agree with Osiris, antibiotics have become a major effector on how many people recover from diseases and viruses. Of course it has it's down sides like the creation of super bugs that can over come antibiotics.

Interesting thing is that i avoid anti biotics but i think they have had a major effect.

[fable]

Originally posted by HighLordDave
@Ode to a Grasshopper:
I would place electricity as something that became prevalent in the 19th Century, even though many people didn't have access to electricity until well into the 20th Century (a lot of people around the world still don't have electricty).

I'd agree with HLD, here. The telegraph, for instance, was already in frequent use by the middle of the 19th century. (There was a line between Baltimore and Washington, DC, operated by the US Post Office Department, started as early as 1845.) The electric light was actually created as an open arc by CF Brush and used to light streets in Cleveland, Ohio, as early as 1877. Edison was the first to run that arc in a vacuum, and offered the results just a few years later. The telephone was also going strong by the last decade in the 19th century, thanks to Bell's zealously monopolistic impulse. (He eagerly took any competitors to court and borrowed huge sums of money to wreck competitors or buy them out. He was a very unpleasant man, a sort of 19th century Bill Gates.)

Where the 20th century really broke with the 19th was in its development of electricity as a powering mechanism for the human presence, over vast distances. Though motion pictures and the phonograph were developed in the 1880s, they didn't become commercially feasible until the first decade of the 20th century. Radio didn't really take off until 1920-1922, despite earlier experiments. Television, while demonstrated at major international expositions in the late 1920s, didn't achieve a successful form until the late 1940s.

(With one exception: the British had a television network nightly in the early 1930s, but it used a system of transmission that was only capable of transmitting moving shadows with sound. I spoke once with a woman who used to sing on that British television service, and she said they had her stand perfectly still while doing so, so the silhouette wouldn't "smudge.")

[Gruntboy]

Since nukes & planes are taken, the Machine Gun gets my vote.

[HighLordDave]

@Gruntboy:
I would consider the machine gun an invention of the 19th Century. The US Army was using the multi-barrel Gatling Gun against the Indians after the Civil War and it also saw use in the Spanish American War (1898). John Browning invented a gas-operated automatic machine gun which the US Navy purchased in 1895.

[Vivien]

I think it is too hard to say what was the most important.

Bigger Guns?

Flying Planes?

Computers?

What about things like the birth control pill, antiperspirant, the advent of people in the u.s. actually bathing on a regular basis much more during the 1920's-1930's due to the influence of people with clean shiny hair in the movies? What about condoms and tampons?

These are all important in my little world. *shrugs*


(See HLD, this is why I don't join these debate)

[HighLordDave]

Originally posted by Vivien
(See HLD, this is why I don't join these debate)

What was so hard about that? The pill and personal hygiene are all very important developments . . . but ultimately still wrong because the airplane is the correct answer . . .

[Gruntboy]

Don't argue with me HLD!

I was, of course, referring to the Maxim Gun (Gatling gun - pfaff! What about the mitralleuse then eh?) 1908 model.

This induced the bloody stalemate of the Great War - thus forever changing the course of World history in the 20th C.

[RandomThug]

Personally

I believe that the greatest development wouldn't be an invention like a plane considering some countries dont even have airports but everyone is affected by ilness's and pollution and such. Im not sure what it is but I am pretty sure its something along the lines of an illness or penicilin. Im also crazy and bored and the donkeys keep warding me away from the chili so bah humbug and merry holiday.