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Name an invention that is most useful to you. What are some of the best inventions that were made?
Anything you feel you cannot live without or wonder how it was possible to live beforehand? What are some inventions that changed the world for better or worse? Would you be able to go back to a time when their were different methods to what is used today?
Is there anything you feel we need to invent for modern times and for the future that is currently missing?Penicillian and modern waste dispersal systems (Meaning cleaner water)
How did people manage without food wraps? E.g., plastic wrap, wax paper, aluminum foil.
Did they use leaves or animal skins?
The Electric Light and Refridgerator is also pretty useful
The wheel and the Coffee Room are two examples that come to mind.
Air Conditioning
Indoor plumbing
Flush toilets (or toilets themselves)
Toilet paperSnaps, Elastic (socks!), Plastic anything, razor blades, electric hair clippers & shavers, sneakers, dish soap, water filters, ballpoint pens, eyeglasses, telephones,
You really ought to define some narrower parameters, such as inventions of the last decade / century / millennium. The list is really endless. If you went back 1,000 years in time, you would not recognize anything and would almost not be able to function. OTOH, if people from then came to our time, they would think we are wasteful and pampered.
Indoor plumbing has to be way up there.
Eyeglasses (were there fewer vision issues long ago? Did it not matter when people did not need to drive or operate heavy equipment, and very few were literate?)DovidBT, I think food wraps became necessary when leftover food storage became practical- with invention of fridge/freezer. Before that they managed because their need wan’t so great.
Having Kerosene Lamps in peoples houses for light was a major cause of fire in the older days. While fires are still fairly common, they are not as common as in previous generations and we dont have fires that wipe out half a city
I’m being serious now.
It can be assumed that all the traditional ashkenazi Jewish foods are rooted centuries ago in Europe.
How then, did they make potato kugel without a food processor?Besides advances in the health world, the most important thing ever is mazgan, 24/7, 365.
The Life expentancy in NYC around the year 1900 was 41, Today is about 80
While infant mortality is not unheard of , its quite rare and children dying is also very rare, It was very common in those days. Most people did not make it to adulthood
DovidBT, I think food wraps became necessary when leftover food storage became practical- with invention of fridge/freezer. Before that they managed because their need wan’t so great.
Or I suppose a bowl with a lid would accomplish the same thing as a food wrap. The wrap is merely more convenient.
grater?
Or simply a knife and cutting board.LC: גאון אתה מאוד. The famous ריבאייזען. Thanks 🙂
Agriculture.
RBS, potatoes didn’t come to eastern Europe until the mid-18th century.
Nixon:
“potatoes didn’t come to eastern Europe until the mid-18th century”.
Wow, so you’re saying that PK isn’t that traditional after all?With everything that was already mentioned and the thousands more not mentioned yet , and a world today of technology, our thanks to Hashem for all this should be unlimited. Sure it is human nature to take things for granted, stop using something from this amazing wonderful world that Hashem created for JUST ONE HOUR AT A TIME YOU NEED IT and then go use it and your thanks to Hashem will be unlimited and you will also be rewarded with seeing the beauty and amazement of the product that you didn’t realize until now.
RBS
Never mind food processors. How did they make potato kugel in Europe without potatoes? Potoatoes were unknown in Poland/Lithuania until the middle of the 17th Century C.E. What did they make kugel from before then?The ones I wonder about the most are the really really old ones. For example how did people live without a hammer, rope, or bucket? How did they make clothes without needle, thread or woven cloth?
Ah – the age-old question that was addressed in Pirkei Avos. How did they make the first set of Tongs, without Tongs! The Mishnah teaches us that Hashem created them (Yesh Meiayin) and presumably gifted them to mankind.
Then again, even given Tongs, would you know what to do with them? How did they know to add salt to their food? or bake bread, grind wheat, or even to eat the fruit and not the wood and leaves of the tree?
Animals are born with a certain instinct for whatever they need to survive, including what type of food they eat and where and how to find it. My guess is that mankind was also created with a certain amount of necessary knowledge. It must be, because they were created as full-grown adults and never had parents to teach and care for them.
Bowls and lids were around at the earliest times of man. They are even mentioned in the Torah. I assume the other basics like rope and buckets came along with the tongs.
GPS
I know there were maps and gas station people that
still answered you when you asked and knew their
neighborhoods.
But with the GPS it is just amazing.. detailed turns.,.
Traffic rerouted. Accidents along the way… Cops
hiding out…, Estimated arrival times that are
pretty much accurate on the button.Vaccines. I remember the days of polio epidemics every summer, when every parent (including mine) lived in terror of their child dying or being permanently crippled. My parents had already lost one child to pneumonia, so you better believe I was at the head of the line for the shots. 🙂
And then there’s smallpox, which up until a century ago was still killing millions in the most gruesome way possible. Even after developed countries vaccinated everyone there it still hung on in poorer parts of the world until the 1970s.
Measles, mumps and whooping cough (pertussis). Back in the 1930s My poor older sister had all three at once and wound up in an isolation room in the hospital. Now – almost unheard of.
Pneumonia vaccine – for old people like me. Pneumonia was – and to some extent still us – a major killer of older people.
Flu – in most years either you won’t get sick at all or it will be much milder.
I agree with all those who mention all the advances in health and sanitation, that save lives every day.
This is a great thread and the responses are funny and thought-provoking at the same time.
internet and chocolate
Paper to write seforim and printing press to print it.
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