2013.11 自车轮以来最伟大的50项突破

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技术
自车轮以来最伟大的50项突破
为什么要花这么长时间来发明手推车？我们是否达到了创新的顶峰？我们的清单揭示了关于想象力、乐观主义和进步的本质。

作者：詹姆斯-法洛斯

2013年11月号


有些问题你会问，因为你想要正确的答案。其他问题之所以有价值，是因为没有答案是正确的；回报来自于一系列的尝试。七年前，《大西洋》杂志调查了一批杰出的历史学家，以创建一个对现代美国的特征做出最大贡献的100人的排名表。小组成员们很容易就在前几个名字上达成一致--林肯、华盛顿、杰斐逊，依次为林肯、华盛顿、杰斐逊，但随后开始出现了耐人寻味的分歧，这不仅反映了他们自己的价值观，也反映了影响我国的各种途径。刘易斯和克拉克，还是亨利-福特？托马斯-爱迪生，还是马丁-路德-金？这个结果当然是不科学的。但是，询问、比较和选择的练习帮助我们更多地了解这些历史人物所做的事情，以及美国社会在哪些领域被证明对有才华、有决心的男人和女人所带来的变化最开放和最不开放。


现在我们转向技术。大西洋报》最近召集了一个由12位科学家、企业家、工程师、技术历史学家和其他人士组成的小组，评估那些对现代生活的性质影响最大的创新。这项工作的主要规则是，这些创新应该是在车轮开始广泛使用之后，也许是6000年前。这就排除了火，我们的祖先早在几十万年前就开始使用火了。我们要求每位小组成员做出25项选择，并对其进行排名，尽管不可能对原子弹和犁进行公平的比较。 碰巧的是，这两项都进入了我们的最终名单：核裂变的发现和应用导致了原子弹和核电站的出现，在前50名中排名第21位，排在木板犁之前，后者极大地扩展了农民可以耕种的土地范围，排名第30。我们还邀请小组成员对他们的选择作出解释，我在采访中对他们中的一些人和其他专家进行了跟踪。

一位专家小组成员不是按照重要性，而是按照发明日期，从最古老的（水泥）到最新的（GPS卫星）对他的选择进行排序。一些人强调的不是具体突破的重要性，而是广泛的成就类别。例如，西北大学的经济历史学家Joel Mokyr在他的前十名中提名了 "模块化"。他指的是工业流程的改进，使功能相同的部件能够大批量产出。这使得大规模生产和亨利-福特式的装配线（在《大西洋月刊》的榜单上排名第49位）成为可能，也使得一切事物从手工制作到批量生产的深刻转变。模块化没有进入我们的最终名单；采用标准化的运输集装箱，在不同的领域延伸了同样的逻辑，只是没有入选。


简而言之，这些科学家和创意人士决定回答他们希望我们问的问题，而不是我们提出的确切问题。我们对试图管理大学和研发实验室的人有了新的同情心。但最终，我们从足够多的人那里得到了足够多的可比和重叠的建议，有足够多的解释，以及他们背后足够多的经验和洞察力，可以放心地提出《大西洋月刊》对自车轮以来人类最重要的50项技术突破的调查。我们把所有的答复转换成可以输入电子表格的数值；我们尽可能合理地对支持的强度和广度进行加权；我们看着综合排名随着每个新答复的到来而上升和下降；我们得出了你在这里看到的最终排名。

当你开始浏览这些结果时，有一个方面就很明显了：一旦你超越了最初的几个选择和排名，这些选择和排名就有了争议。例如，麻醉（46）在1846年首次出现时，开始将手术与酷刑区分开来，但它几乎没有进入前50名，而这只是因为一位专家小组成员极力推动它。如果由我来做这个排名，它将进入前10名，当然要高于个人电脑（在我们的最终名单上为16名）。在这种情况下，对我的考验是。如果它不存在，我会更想念哪一个？(我们的小组成员约翰-多尔（John Doerr）是一位著名的技术投资者，他说他用一套类似的 "配对比较 "的方法来研究他自己的前25名名单，问他会更怀念哪种技术）。我依赖个人电脑，但在它们问世之前我过得很好；我仍然记得在英国的一次牙科手术，当时国家卫生局没有支付新麻醉剂的费用。

从最后的名单中不太明显的是，我从与许多小组成员的交谈中着迷地了解到的情况。这就是对重要的历史突破类型的看法的多样性，对这里记录的漫长的创新足迹现在是否已接近尾声达成了惊人的共识。

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最明显的共识例子是最终汇编中的第一个项目--印刷机。在提交排名的12人中，有10人将其排在或接近首位。为了与我们的 "有影响力的美国人 "调查相提并论，印刷机是与亚伯拉罕-林肯相对应的，被认为是最佳选择。正如之前的调查揭示了历史人物施加影响的主要模式--作为危机时期的政治领袖，作为工业先驱，通过流行文化或设计--从个人提名中产生了一系列的类别。我们的小组成员之一，斯坦福大学的商业历史学家莱斯利-伯林（Leslie Berlin）并没有将她的提名作为一个整体的名单，而是将其归入功能类别。从我们小组成员的提名中，出现了一套类似但略微宽泛的类别。以下是我对柏林的有用计划的改编。

拓展人类智力及其创造性、表现力、甚至道德可能性的创新。这一组包括印刷机（1）和纸张，（6）以及现在的互联网，（9）个人电脑，（16）和现代数据时代的基础技术，半导体电子（4），以及摄影（29）。科学作家和《大西洋月刊》的常客查尔斯-C-曼（Charles C. Mann）把写作放在第三位，排在火和农业改进，包括动物的驯化之后。史蒂夫-乔布斯、阿尔伯特-爱因斯坦和本杰明-富兰克林的传记作者沃尔特-艾萨克森（Walter Isaacson）将这一类别的创新列为前三名：字母化、纸张和印刷机。

对现代世界的物质和运营基础设施不可或缺的创新。科技作家乔治-戴森说，最后排名第37位的水泥是一项关键的早期创新，"处于我们所知道的文明的基础上--没有它，大部分文明都会崩溃"。约翰-多尔的前五个选择中有三个属于这个类别：电气系统是第一，室内管道是第二，制造饮用水的过滤系统是第五。(一位小组成员提到了水渠。)多尔说，在当今大部分贫穷的世界中，"就社区繁荣而言，清洁水的回报率 "至少是20比1。在我们的排名中，电力是第2位，卫生系统是第12位。在过去的半个世纪里，空调（44）在美国跨越太阳地带的扩张中发挥了重要作用。空调现在在中国、印度、海湾国家和其他地方也有类似的影响。我们的小组成员、麻省理工学院媒体实验室负责人乔伊-伊藤说，空调 "被新加坡的李光耀确定为允许居民从事白领工作的著名技术，它赋予了生活在温带气候的人口以权力。"

使得工业革命及其一波又一波的物质产出扩大的创新。这些创新包括蒸汽机（10），工业炼钢（19），以及石油的提炼和钻探（分别为35和39）。一个世纪前，一份类似的清单必须包括煤炭的使用，虽然它仍然是发电厂最广泛使用的燃料，但在这里没有出现。


汽车旅行加快了人们长期以来通过其他方式进行的旅行，而飞机则使人们能够以一种前所未有的方式来观察和了解地球。
用Leslie Berlin的话来说，就是延长生命的创新。这一大类包括连续的农业革命，这些革命现在让地球养活了数十亿人：固氮（11），特别是大约一个世纪前的哈伯-波斯工艺，它使现代氨基肥料成为可能，并通过使植物获得更多的氮，解除了以前对作物产量的不可打破的限制。(同样的工艺导致了现代炸药和第一次世界大战期间使用的毒气）。此外，还有绿色革命（22）；木板犁（30）；阿基米德的螺旋桨（31），它从溪流和运河中引水灌溉田地；以及科学的植物育种（38）。这一组还包括在我们目前的基因组学革命之前的医学知识和治疗方面的进展。第3位是青霉素（近一个世纪）；第8位是疫苗接种（几百年前）；第20位是避孕药（半个世纪前）。我们的一位小组成员建议将 "传染病的病菌理论 "作为人类的十大突破之一。50年后的榜单，也许只有5年，无疑会强调基因组学的革命性潜力，但迄今为止，它还没有进入我们的评选。延长生命的类别还包括与改进后的医疗同步发展的公共卫生措施：卫生系统（12）和制冷（13）。


在青霉素之后，这个类别中排名最高的项目是光学镜片，排名第5。我很高兴有几位小组成员提到了它们，因为它们的加入说明了某些技术的涟漪效应未被重视。在矫正镜片出现之前，视力不完美的人在人类早期的狩猎-战士阶段可能容易受到敌人或掠夺者的攻击，后来又因为无法像其他人那样清楚地看到字母或数字而在智力上受到阻碍。我们的小组成员中没有人这样说，但我一直认为，通过扩大潜在的识字人群，采用矫正眼镜相当于人类历史上最大的一次智商提升。这也是几个令人困惑的 "晚期 "创新之一，发生在罗马人和其他人发现镜片的光学特性之后的漫长几个世纪。乔尔-莫克尔（Joel Mokyr）认为，一个类似的难题涉及到手推车的延迟出现。他告诉我："这是你能想到的最简单的省力设备，""但它似乎在车轮出现后几千年才被人想到，而在中国首次使用后，欧洲人又花了大约一千年才想到它。"

创新，使实时通信超出了单一人类声音的范围。互联网（9）显然给通信带来了新的规模和速度，但真正超越以往限制的飞跃发生在19世纪中期，电报（26）的发展，随后是电话（24）和无线电（28）。正如Joel Mokyr所说，在电报机之前，"除了少数例外，信息的传播速度不可能超过骑马的人。烟雾信号、飞鸽传书和信号电报的带宽都很低，而且不可靠。电报至少在原则上使信息以光速移动成为可能，从而极大地改善了远距离通信，并因此对更大的领土进行指挥和控制。"

考虑到现代经常被称为 "电视时代"，以及人们现在在各种屏幕前花费了多少时间，值得注意的是，电视只排在第45位。许多年后，也许人们会将20世纪下半叶视为广播电视似乎是一项主导技术的短暂时刻。由于其明显的回溯性限制，如单向信息流而非互动性，以及对重型硬件的依赖以达到最佳显示效果，也许电视注定要过渡到其他一些更适合个人口味的系统。或者是我们的小组成员不好意思为它投票。

人和货物的物理运动的创新。在过去的150年里，内燃机（7）使汽车时代（18）所带来的社会、经济、政治和环境影响成为可能。随着推进系统的变化（以及后来喷气涡轮发动机的出现），这种创新也使飞机成为可能（15）。为什么飞机会领先于汽车？大概是因为汽车旅行加快了人们长期以来通过其他方式进行的陆地旅行，而飞机则使一种全新的人类运动形式成为可能--也许同样重要的是，一种前所未有的观察和了解地球的方式。在17世纪末第一次试探性的气球飞行之前，人类从来没有从高于树梢或山峰的高度观察过他们的环境布局。在20世纪的动力飞行时代，他们可以亲自看到他们在地图上近似的自然轮廓和人造特征。

从1700年开始，蒸汽机(10)使铁路得以发展--就像自行车一样，在一个世纪前的可比调查中，铁路大概会排在前列。即使是现在，在美国，铁路的货运量也远远超过卡车、驳船或任何其他形式的运输；在欧洲，铁路是客运系统的骨干；在中国的基础设施投资中，铁路所占比重超过机场或公路。但是，并不是所有的东西都能入选的 属于这一类的还有第40位的帆船（六分仪在第23位，指南针在第17位），以及第41位的火箭（用乔治-戴森的话说，"到目前为止，我们离开地球的唯一途径"）。

组织方面的突破，为人们以日益高效和现代的方式工作和生活提供了软件。琳达-桑福德（Linda Sanford）是IBM负责企业转型的高级副总裁，她选择了公历（34）作为她的第一个项目，排在她的第二个选择--纸。字母化（25）的重要性很容易被忽视，直到你考虑到在非字母语言（特别是中文）中出现的索引、阵列和检索知识的挑战。

最后，与我们在1950年或1920年可能发现的情况相比，也没有那么突出，我们有杀人方面的创新，包括火药（14）和核裂变（21）。只有一项提名的机枪，在100年前会在这个类别中占主导地位。也没有人提到无人驾驶飞机、化学或生物武器、恐怖主义或游击战。但仔细想想，我们的小组成员可能说对了。除了原子弹之外，武器的突破性进展不如人类冲突的文化和气质重要。

任何50项突破的集合都必须排除50,000项突破。两个小组成员推荐的GPS系统，现在有这么多形式的运动都依赖于它，那么GPS系统呢？思科公司首席技术和战略官Padmasree Warrior提出的数字 "0 "的概念呢？(她没有对她的25个项目进行排名，但其中18个出现在最后的50个项目中；多伦多大学的经济学教授米歇尔-阿莱克索普洛斯有21个，沃尔特-艾萨克森提交的26个项目中有25个）。除了煤炭，怎么会没有人提到铺设的道路？或者DNA双螺旋结构的发现？登上月球？或者微积分的数学，太空飞行和其他许多事情都依赖于此？我们的排名引发的问题和讨论越多，这项工作就越成功。

我们注意到，创新可能没有我们假设的那么个人化。我们的 "有影响力的美国人 "调查都是关于做出改变的具体人物，尽管在某些情况下--伊丽莎白-卡迪-斯坦顿、马丁-路德-金--他们做出的改变是为了说服大型团体为一个共同目标而努力。在这项调查中，值得注意的是，很少有改变世界的突破可以直接与一个英雄般的诺贝尔奖获得者联系起来。巴氏消毒法（33）是前50名中唯一以人名命名的，除非你算上公历或阿基米德的螺丝。从约翰内斯-古腾堡（Johannes Gutenberg）到亚历山大-格雷厄姆-贝尔（Alexander Graham Bell），其他人也取得了其他著名的进步，但总的来说，这些都是一群人在彼此努力的基础上取得的成就，有时甚至跨越了许多年。

最后，我们了解到为什么技术会滋生乐观主义，这可能是这项工作最重要的部分。

未来
大众文化经常对发现和发明的明星表示敬意。一个世纪前，这意味着莱特兄弟、爱迪生和汽车先驱；在艾森豪威尔时代，乔纳斯-索尔克和沃纳-冯-布劳恩；而在上一代，首先是比尔-盖茨，然后是史蒂夫-乔布斯。但是，对于技术的全面发展，文化和政治的态度充其量是混合的。每一位作家、思想家或政府领导人都热情地欢迎技术可能带来的任何变化，但也有一个对应的人警告其危险性。从布莱克到狄更斯，从《大都会》到《银翼杀手》，从厄普顿-辛克莱到雷切尔-卡森，以及一长串类似的搭配，技术驱动时代的文化一直在追赶，以纠正现代性的破坏性和非人性的影响。

通过扩大潜在的识字人群，矫正眼镜的采用可能相当于历史上最大的一次智商提升。
对于我们这个时代来说，技术帮助造成的主要问题，以及更快的创新可能会或可能不会纠正的问题，是环境、人口和社会经济问题。环境挑战，因为世界上的海洋、天空、土壤和非人类生命形式正在承受不可持续的负担；人口问题，因为医学和公共卫生的进步正在迅速推高整个发达国家的中位年龄；社会经济，因为全球化的高科技经济正在扩大各地的贫富差距。

也许我不应该感到惊讶的是，像我们的小组成员一样，对创新的来源和影响进行过深入思考的人，在意识到创新的好处的同时，也意识到了它的危害。我发现值得注意的是，与我交谈的技术专家们主动列出了创新所带来的危险。"创新是否提高了地球的财富？我相信是的。"帮助推出谷歌、亚马逊和其他当今科技巨头的John Doerr说。"但是，任由技术自行发展会扩大而不是缩小贫富差距。" 尽管创新的前景令他兴奋，但他说："我不认为有任何理由认为，从长远来看，会自动有足够的'好'工作，有足够的人。" Joel Mokyr指出，创新总是有好处也有坏处。"你看看抗生素、杀虫剂、交通--每当我们解决一个问题，就会出现一个新的问题，"他说。"每一项发明都依赖于后续的发明来清理它所造成的混乱。"

请停下来想一想。在科学和技术之外，除了每个家庭创造的遗产之外，人类今天正在为一种累积的成就感而奋斗。今天的政治家比我们祖父母时代的人有进步吗？今天的公共辩论水平？音乐、建筑、文学、美术--这些以及世界文化的其他表现形式在不断变化，但不一定会有改善。托尔斯泰和陀思妥耶夫斯基，与现在在莫斯科最畅销的作家相比，谁的作品更受欢迎？最初的、优雅的宾夕法尼亚车站，与它的仓库式的替代物？

技术专家的一个核心问题是，物质和生产领域的创新是否可以持续，或者相反，我们是否已经进入了另一个漫长的、停滞不前的时代，这在人类历史的大部分时间里都是如此，包括在快速发展的时代之后的时代。在今天新的和改进的冲击中，任何形式的放缓似乎都是不可能的，但可能是可取的。关于经济放缓可能发生，以及如果发生将是有害的说法有三种主要形式。

第一种是历史性的。一些社会将自己封闭起来，完全停止了发明创造：特别是中国在明朝时期取得了卓越地位之后，以及阿拉伯伊斯兰世界的大部分地区在欧洲文艺复兴之前就开始了。由于未能向前迈进，相对于他们的对手和他们所面临的环境和经济威胁，他们不可避免地往后退。如果创新的社会和知识氛围变坏，以前发生过的事情就会再次发生。

第二个问题来自于技术为基本问题提供的解决方案的速度明显放缓。在1850年至1950年期间，由于抗生素、免疫和公共卫生措施的综合作用，美国的预期寿命几乎翻了一番。从那时起，预期寿命就一直在攀升。在1920年至1970年间，汽车、公路、飞机甚至铁路的改进使旅行更快、更便宜、更安全、更舒适。从那时起，发达国家的旅行充其量只是缓慢地改进。在绿色革命的一代人中，每英亩的作物产量翻了一番，但没有再翻番。

第三种也是最广泛的说法是，作物产量或旅行时间的放缓是经济学家所说的边际收益递减的一般模式的一部分。很自然地，容易的改进是最先进行的；后来的改进都比较缓慢和困难。

西北大学的经济学家罗伯特-J-戈登（Robert J. Gordon）最近对这一观点进行了最系统的阐述，他认为美国作为一个国家的历史恰好与技术史上一个罕见的时刻相吻合，现在已经接近尾声。"1750年之前几乎没有经济增长，"他在最近的一篇论文中写道。他说，这就留下了一种可能性，即 "过去250年取得的快速进步很可能是人类历史上的一个独特插曲，而不是保证未来以同样的速度无止境地前进。" 乔治-梅森大学的经济学家泰勒-考恩（Tyler Cowen）在《大停滞》（The Great Stagnation）一书中说，美国几个世纪以来的快速增长相当于收获了开阔的土地、廉价的能源和工业时代的突破等 "低垂的果实"，这种收获是无法持续的。

与我交谈的每个人都熟悉这种警告性的分析；没有人断然否定它们。但当被问及时，他们每个人都说，他们预计有用的创新步伐会加快，而不是减慢。同样，他们的解释有三种主要形式。

首先，令人欣慰的是，无论小组成员对哪个领域最了解，他或她都认为最有希望。约翰-多尔强调了从根本上说更便宜和更有效的电池的变革潜力，而这又是清洁能源经济的一个关键因素。(风力涡轮机、太阳能电池板和其他可再生资源的发电时间与电网的需求不一致。现代电池成本太高，储存的能量太少，在缓冲供应不足方面没有用。见本期 "值得关注的技术"）。与我交谈的其他人在其他领域也看到了类似的前景。埃隆-马斯克(Elon Musk)不是我们小组的正式成员，他可能是这个时代最雄心勃勃的创新者。他同时领导着一家制造火箭飞船的公司SpaceX；另一家制造流行的电动汽车的公司Tesla；还有一家领先的太阳能供应商SolarCity。当我问他，他希望能活到什么时候，但又担心自己可能看不到，他说，"火星上的可持续人类定居点"。

这些位于美国的技术专家中的大多数人认为，美国的创新前景仍然比其他地方更光明。而这种判断来自于充分意识到基础研究资金持续减少和其他挑战的人。"Leslie Berlin告诉我："我们可以担心最后1%的创新环境，但那是因为我们认为其他一切都理所当然。

第二，许多人指出，越来越便宜、越来越快的计算能力本身就可以促进所有其他领域的创新--就像蒸汽机在19世纪和电力在20世纪所做的那样。举个例子。马萨诸塞州剑桥市布罗德医学研究所所长Eric S. Lander（也不在我们的小组）指出，在过去12年中，人类DNA测序的成本已经下降到以前的百万分之一。他说，这种成本的降低意味着未来十年应该是一个 "在理解疾病的遗传基础方面取得惊人进展的时期，对癌症的影响尤其强大"。

最后，与我交谈的人说，结束创新的概念本身违背了他们对人类探索的一切理解。"乔尔-莫克尔告诉我："如果你只看一下20世纪，生活水平的提高所面临的困难是巨大的。"两次灾难性的世界大战、冷战、大萧条、极权主义的兴起--这是一场又一场的灾难，这一系列的灾难本来足以让我们重新陷入野蛮的状态。然而，过去的半个世纪是有史以来技术增长最快的时期。我看不出有什么理由会放缓。"

乔治-戴森用另一种方式说，从某种意义上说，这是最乐观的。"我是一个技术进化论者，"他说。他说："我认为宇宙是一个由可能的事物组成的相位空间，而我们正在这些事物中进行随机漫步。最终，我们将填补一切可能的空间。"

戴森最希望在他生活的相位空间中看到什么创新？他显然以前就想过这个问题，并立即回答。"帆船作为商业上可行的运输系统的回归"。他说，即使在布帆和麻绳的时代，帆船也能将60%的风的原始能量转换成有用的工作。有了现代材料和设计，他们可以捕获比他们在途中使用的更多能量。"当一个船队到达港口时，他们不仅可以运送货物，甚至可以将能源输入电网。" 这就是创新者的思维方式。

列表
大西洋报》要求十几位科学家、历史学家和技术专家对车轮以来的顶级创新进行排名。以下是结果。

你也可以选择你自己的五大创新，并看看读者的选择与《大西洋》专家的选择如何叠加。

1. 印刷机，1430年代
印刷机被我们12位小组成员中的10位提名，其中5位将其排在前三位。戴森将其发明描述为 "知识开始自由复制并迅速拥有自己的生命 "的转折点。


2. 电，19世纪末

然后是光--以及第4、9、16、24、28、44、45号，以及现代生活中的大部分其他东西。

3. 青霉素，1928年
1928年意外发现，尽管抗生素直到二战后才被广泛传播，但当时它们成为治疗任何一种以前致命的疾病的银弹。


4. 半导体电子，20世纪中期
虚拟世界的物理基础

5. 光学镜片，13世纪
通过玻璃折射光线是那些简单的想法之一，花了神秘的很长时间才流行起来。"莫克尔说："罗马人有玻璃工业，塞涅卡甚至有一段关于玻璃碗里的水的光学效果的记载。但在几个世纪后，眼镜的发明才极大地提高了人类的集体智商，并最终导致了显微镜和望远镜的诞生。

6. 纸张，第二世纪
"如果你有纸，盖印图像的想法是很自然的，但在那之前，经济上是负担不起的。" - Charles C. Mann


7. 内燃机，19世纪末
将空气和燃料转化为动力，最终取代了蒸汽机（10号）。

8. 疫苗接种，1796年
英国医生爱德华-詹纳在1796年使用牛痘病毒来预防天花，但直到1885年路易斯-巴斯德开发出狂犬病疫苗，医学和政府才开始接受让人生病可以防止进一步生病的想法。


9. 互联网，20世纪60年代


数字时代的基础设施

10. 蒸汽机，1712年
为工厂、火车和船舶提供动力，推动了工业革命的发展

11. 氮的固定，1918年
德国化学家弗里茨-哈伯，也是化学武器之父，因其开发的氨合成工艺而获得诺贝尔奖，该工艺被用于制造绿色革命的核心的新一类肥料（第22号）。

12. 卫生系统，19世纪中期
我们比1880年多活40年的一个主要原因（见 "再死一天"）。


13. 制冷，19世纪50年代
"发现如何制造冷饮将改变我们的饮食和生活方式，其深刻程度几乎不亚于发现如何烹饪"。- 乔治-戴森

14. 火药，10世纪
将杀戮外包给了一台机器

15. 飞机，1903年
改变了旅行、战争和我们对世界的看法（见第40号）。


16. 个人电脑，1970年代
像杠杆（第48号）和算盘（第43号）一样，它增强了人类的能力。

17. 指南针，12世纪
为我们指明方向，即使是在海上



18. 汽车，19世纪末

改变了日常生活、我们的文化和我们的景观


19. 工业炼钢，19世纪50年代
通过一种被称为贝塞麦工艺的方法，大规模生产钢铁，成为现代工业的基础。

20. 药片，1960年
发起了一场社会革命

21. 核裂变，1939年
给予人类新的破坏力和创造力

22. 绿色革命，20世纪中期
结合合成肥料（第11号）和科学植物育种（第38号）等技术，极大地提高了世界的粮食产量。设计这种方法的农业经济学家Norman Borlaug被认为拯救了超过10亿人的饥荒。

23. 六分仪，1757年
它用星星制作地图。

24. 电话，1876年
让我们的声音得以传播

25. 字母化，公元前一千年
使得知识可以被获取和搜索--而且可能促成了使用拼音字母的社会的崛起，而不是使用表意字母的社会。


26. 电报，1837年
乔尔-莫克尔说，在这之前，"信息的流动不会比骑马的人快"。

27. 机械化时钟，15世纪
它量化了时间。

28. 无线电，1906年
首次展示了电子大众传媒传播思想和同质化文化的力量

29. 摄影，19世纪初

改变了新闻、艺术、文化，以及我们看待自己的方式

30. 模板犁，18世纪
第一种犁，不仅可以挖土，而且可以翻土，使更硬的土地得到耕种。没有它，我们所知的农业就不会在北欧或美国中西部存在。

31. 阿基米德的螺杆，公元前三世纪。
这位希腊科学家被认为设计了最早的水泵之一，一个旋转的开瓶器，将水推到管子里。它改变了灌溉方式，至今仍在许多污水处理厂中使用。

32. 轧棉机，1793年
使美国南部的棉花工业和奴隶制制度化。


33. 巴斯德消毒法，1863年
路易斯-巴斯德的病菌理论最早的实际应用之一，这种利用热量对葡萄酒、啤酒和牛奶进行消毒的方法被广泛认为是历史上最有效的公共卫生干预措施之一。

34. 格里高利历，1582年
对儒略历进行了调试，将其提前10天，使世界与季节同步。

35. 石油提炼，19世纪中叶
没有它，石油钻探（第39号）将毫无意义。

36. 蒸汽涡轮机，1884年

涡轮机是蒸汽机（第10号）的一个不太受人欢迎的表亲，它是今天能源基础设施的支柱：它们产生了世界上80%的电力。

37. 水泥，公元前一千年。
文明的基础。从字面上看。

38. 科学的植物育种，20世纪20年代
人类操纵植物物种的历史几乎与我们种植植物的历史一样长，但直到20世纪初，科学家们发现了奥地利植物学家格雷戈尔-孟德尔1866年发表的一篇被遗忘的论文，我们才弄清楚植物育种--后来是人类遗传学的工作原理。

39. 石油钻探，1859年
推动了现代经济的发展，确立了地缘政治，并改变了气候。

40. 帆船，公元前四千年
改变了旅行、战争和我们的世界观（见第15号）。

41. 火箭技术，1926年
"到目前为止，我们离开地球的唯一途径。" - 乔治-戴森

42. 纸币，11世纪
现代经济核心的抽象概念


43. 算盘，公元前三千年
最早用于提高人类智力的设备之一

44. 空调，1902年
没有它，你会在休斯顿或班加罗尔创业吗？

45. 电视，20世纪初
将世界带入人们的家庭

46. 麻醉剂，1846年

奥利弗-温德尔-霍姆斯（Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.）在回应乙醚的首次公开演示时写道："痛苦的极致已经浸泡在遗忘的水中，痛苦的眉头打结的最深沟壑已经被永远抚平。"

47. 指甲，公元前二千年
"通过使人们有住所而延长了生命。" - 莱斯利-柏林

48. 杠杆，公元前三千年。

埃及人在建造金字塔时还没有发现车轮；他们被认为主要依靠杠杆。

49. 装配线，1913年

将以手工业为基础的经济转变为大众市场经济

50. 联合收割机，1930年代

农场机械化，使人们得以从事新型工作

我们的专家小组
我们咨询了科学家、历史学家和技术专家，以制定这份名单。

米歇尔-阿列克索普洛斯
多伦多大学经济学教授

莱斯利-柏林
斯坦福大学商业和技术历史学家；《微芯片背后的人》的作者。Robert Noyce和硅谷的发明

约翰-杜尔
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers公司普通合伙人

乔治-戴森
技术史学家；著有《图灵的大教堂》和《机器中的达尔文》。

沃尔特-艾萨克森
阿斯彭研究所总裁兼首席执行官；作者：史蒂夫-乔布斯、爱因斯坦：他的生活和宇宙，以及本杰明-富兰克林。美国人的生活

乔伊-伊藤
麻省理工学院媒体实验室主任

亚历克西斯-马德里戈尔
大西洋报》高级编辑；《为梦想提供动力》作者。绿色技术的历史和承诺

查尔斯-C-曼
记者；著有《1491：哥伦布之前的美洲新启示》和《1493。揭开哥伦布创造的新世界的面纱

乔尔-莫克尔
西北大学经济学和历史学教授

琳达-桑福德
企业转型高级副总裁，IBM

阿斯特罗-泰勒
谷歌[x]月球计划的负责人；小脑资本和BodyMedia的联合创始人

Padmasree Warrior
思科系统公司首席技术和战略官  

詹姆斯-法洛斯是《大西洋》杂志的特约作家。



TECHNOLOGY
The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel
Why did it take so long to invent the wheelbarrow? Have we hit peak innovation? What our list reveals about imagination, optimism, and the nature of progress.

By James Fallows

NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
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Jump straight to the list

some questions you ask because you want the right answer. Others are valuable because no answer is right; the payoff comes from the range of attempts. Seven years ago, The Atlantic surveyed a group of eminent historians to create a ranked list of the 100 people who had done the most to shape the character of modern America. The panelists agreed easily on the top few names—Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, in that order—but then began diverging in intriguing ways that reflected not simply their own values but also the varied avenues toward influence in our country. Lewis and Clark, or Henry Ford? Thomas Edison, or Martin Luther King? The result was of course not scientific. But the exercise of asking, comparing, and choosing helped us understand more about what these historical figures had done and about the areas in which American society had proved most and least open to the changes wrought by talented, determined men and women.


Now we turn to technology. The Atlantic recently assembled a panel of 12 scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, historians of technology, and others to assess the innovations that have done the most to shape the nature of modern life. The main rule for this exercise was that the innovations should have come after widespread use of the wheel began, perhaps 6,000 years ago. That ruled out fire, which our forebears began to employ several hundred thousand years earlier. We asked each panelist to make 25 selections and to rank them, despite the impossibility of fairly comparing, say, the atomic bomb and the plow. (As it happens, both of these made it to our final list: the discovery and application of nuclear fission, which led to both the atomic bomb and nuclear-power plants, was No. 21 of the top 50, ahead of the moldboard plow, which greatly expanded the range of land that farmers could till, at No. 30.) We also invited panelists to add explanations of their choices, and I followed up with several of them and with other experts in interviews.

One panelist ranked his choices not by importance but by date of invention, oldest (cement) to newest (GPS satellites). Some emphasized the importance not of specific breakthroughs but of broad categories of achievement. For instance, Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern, nominated in his top 10 “modularity.” By that he meant the refinements in industrial processes that allowed high-volume output of functionally identical parts. This enabled mass production and the Henry Ford–style assembly line (49 on The Atlantic’s list), and the profound shift from handmade to volume-produced versions of everything. Modularity didn’t make it onto our final list; the adoption of standardized shipping containers, which extended the same logic in a different realm, just missed the cut.


In short, these scientists and creative types decided to answer the question they wanted us to ask, rather than the exact one we posed. We have new sympathy for people attempting to manage universities and R&D labs. But in the end we had enough comparable and overlapping suggestions, from enough people, with enough spelled-out explanations, and enough force of experience and insight behind them, to be comfortable presenting The Atlantic’s survey of humanity’s 50 most important technical breakthroughs since the wheel. We converted all the responses into values we could enter on a spreadsheet; we weighted, as reasonably as we could, the intensity and breadth of support; we watched the combined rankings go up and down as each new response arrived; and we came up with the final ranking you see here.

One aspect of the results will be evident as soon as you start looking through them: the debatability of the choices and rankings once you move beyond the first few. For instance, anesthesia (46), which, on its debut in 1846, began to distinguish surgery from torture, barely made the top 50, and that was only because one panelist pushed it hard. If I were doing the ranking, it would be in the top 10, certainly above the personal computer (16 on our final list). In this case the test for me is: Which would I miss more if it didn’t exist? (Our panelist John Doerr, a well-known technology investor, said he worked his way through his own top‑25 list using a similar set of “pairwise comparisons,” asking which technology he would miss more.) I rely on personal computers, but I got along fine before their introduction; I still remember a dental procedure in England when the National Health Service didn’t pay for novocaine.

Less evident from the final list is what I was fascinated to learn from my talks with many of the panelists. That is the diversity of views about the types of historical breakthroughs that matter, with a striking consensus on whether the long trail of innovation recorded here is now nearing its end.

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Innovation: A Taxonomy
The clearest example of consensus was the first item on the final compilation, the printing press. Ten of the 12 people who submitted rankings had it at or near the top. To draw another parallel to our Influential Americans survey, the printing press was the counterpart to Abraham Lincoln as the clear consensus for the top choice. And just as that previous exercise revealed the major patterns through which historical figures had exerted influence—as political leaders in times of crisis, as industrial pioneers, through pop culture or design—a set of categories emerged from the individual nominations. One of our panelists, Leslie Berlin, a historian of business at Stanford, organized her nominations not as an overall list but grouped into functional categories. From our panelists’ nominations, a similar but slightly broader set of categories emerges. Here is my adaptation of Berlin’s useful scheme:

Innovations that expand the human intellect and its creative, expressive, and even moral possibilities. This group includes the printing press (1) and also paper, (6) and now of course the Internet, (9) the personal computer, (16) and the underlying technology for the modern data age, semiconductor electronics (4), plus photography (29). Charles C. Mann, the science writer and frequent Atlantic contributor, put writing third, behind fire and agricultural improvements, including the domestication of animals. Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin, ranked as his top three innovations items from this category: alphabetization, paper, and the printing press.

Innovations that are integral to the physical and operating infrastructure of the modern world. George Dyson, the technology writer, said that cement, which in the end ranked 37th, was a crucial early innovation, “at the foundation of civilization as we know it—most of which would collapse without it.” Three of the top five choices from John Doerr were in this category: electrical systems were first, indoor plumbing was second, and filtration systems to create potable water were fifth. (One panelist mentioned aqueducts.) Doerr said that in much of today’s poor world, “the payoff of clean water, in terms of community prosperity,” is at least 20‑to-1. In our ranking, electricity was No. 2 and sanitation systems were No. 12. Through the past half century, air-conditioning (44) played a major role in America’s expansion across the Sun Belt. Air-conditioning is now having a similar effect in China, India, the Gulf states, and elsewhere. Our panelist Joi Ito, the head of the Media Lab at MIT, said that air-conditioning “was famously identified by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore as the technology that allowed residents to have white-collar work, and that empowered populations living in temperate climates.”

Innovations that enabled the Industrial Revolution and its successive waves of expanded material output. These include the steam engine (10), industrial steelmaking (19), and the refining and drilling of oil (35 and 39, respectively). A century ago, a comparable list would have had to include the use of coal, which does not appear here, although it is still the most widely used fuel for electric-power plants.


Automobile travel sped up the journeys people had long made by other means, whereas the airplane made possible an unprecedented way of seeing and understanding the Earth.
innovations extending life, to use Leslie Berlin’s term. This broad group includes the successive agricultural revolutions that now let the Earth support its billions of people: nitrogen fixation (11), notably the Haber-Bosch process, about a century old, which made modern ammonia-based fertilizers possible and, by making more nitrogen available to plants, lifted a previously unbreakable limit on crop yields. (That same process led to modern explosives and the poison gas used during World War I.) Also, the green revolution (22); the moldboard plow (30); Archimedes’ screw (31), which drew water from streams and canals to irrigate fields; and scientific plant breeding (38). This group also includes the advances in medical knowledge and treatment that predate our current genomics revolution: No. 3, penicillin (nearly a century old); No. 8, vaccination (a few hundred years old); and No. 20, the pill (half a century old). One of our panelists suggested “the germ theory of infectious disease” as one of humanity’s top 10 breakthroughs. A list made 50 years from now, or maybe only five, would undoubtedly emphasize the revolutionary potential of genomics, but as yet it did not make our cut. The life-extending category also includes the public-health measures that have advanced in parallel with improved medical treatment: sanitation systems (12) and refrigeration (13).


After penicillin, the highest-ranked item from this category was optical lenses, at No. 5. I am glad they were mentioned by several panelists, because their inclusion illustrates the underappreciated ripple effects of certain technologies. Before the advent of corrective lenses, people with imperfect vision could be vulnerable to enemies or predators in humanity’s early hunter-warrior stages, and later intellectually handicapped by their simple inability to see letters or numbers as clearly as others. None of our panelists put it this way, but I have always believed that the adoption of corrective lenses amounted to the largest onetime IQ boost in human history, by expanding the pool of potentially literate people. It was also one of several puzzlingly “late” innovations, occurring many long centuries after the Romans and others discovered the optical properties of lenses. A similar puzzle, according to Joel Mokyr, involves the delayed appearance of the wheelbarrow. “It is about as simple a labor-saving device as you can think of,” he told me, “but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone for thousands of years after the wheel, and it took about a thousand years longer to occur to anyone in Europe after its first use in China.”

Innovations that allowed real-time communication beyond the range of a single human voice. The Internet (9) obviously brings new scale and speed to communication, but the real leap beyond previous limitations occurred in the mid‑1800s, with the development of the telegraph (26), followed by the telephone (24) and then radio (28). As Joel Mokyr put it, before the telegraph, “with few exceptions, information could move no faster than a man on horseback. Smoke signals, homing pigeons, and the semaphore telegraph all had very little bandwidth and were unreliable. The telegraph made it at least in principle possible for information to move at the speed of light, and thus vastly improved long-distance communications and hence command and control over much larger territories.”

Considering how often the modern era has been called the “television age” and how much time people now spend before a variety of screens, it is notable that television comes in only at No. 45. Many years from now, perhaps people will regard the second half of the 20th century as the brief moment when broadcast TV could seem a dominant technology. With its obvious-in-retrospect limitations, like one-way information flow rather than interactivity, and dependence on heavy hardware for best display, maybe TV was bound to be a transition to some other system more tailored to individual tastes. Or maybe our panelists were embarrassed to vote for it.

Innovations in the physical movement of people and goods. Through the past 150 years, the internal combustion engine (7) made possible the social, economic, political, and environmental effects brought on by the age of the automobile (18). With variations in propulsion systems (and later the emergence of jet-turbine engines), this same innovation made possible the airplane (15). Why is the airplane ahead of the car? Presumably because automobile travel sped up the land journeys people had long made by other means, whereas the airplane made possible an entirely new form of human movement—and, perhaps as important, an unprecedented way of seeing and understanding the Earth. Until the first, tentative balloon flights in the late 1700s, human beings had never viewed the layout of their environment from an elevation higher than that of a treetop or a mountain. In the age of 20th-century powered flight, they could see for themselves the natural contours and man-made features they had approximated on maps.

Starting in the 1700s, the steam engine (10) enabled growth of the railroad—which, like the bicycle, presumably would have come near the top of a comparable survey a century ago. Even now railroads carry far more freight in the United States than do trucks, barges, or any other form of transport; they are the backbone of passenger-travel systems in Europe; and they account for more of China’s infrastructure investment than airports or roads. But not everything could make the final cut! Also in this category are No. 40, the sailboat (with the sextant at No. 23 and the compass at No. 17), and No. 41, rocketry (“our only way off the planet—so far,” in George Dyson’s words).

Organizational breakthroughs that provide the software for people working and living together in increasingly efficient and modern ways. Linda Sanford, a senior vice president for enterprise transformation at IBM, picked the Gregorian calendar (34) as her very first item, ahead of her second choice, paper. The importance of alphabetization (25) is easy to overlook until you consider the challenges of indexing, arraying, and retrieving knowledge that arise in non-alphabetic languages, notably Chinese.

Finally, and less prominently than we might have found in 1950 or 1920—and less prominently than I initially expected—we have innovations in killing, including gunpowder (14) and nuclear fission (21). The machine gun, which received only one nomination, would have dominated in this category 100 years ago. Nor did anyone bring up drones, or chemical or biological weapons, or terrorism or guerrilla warfare. But on reflection, our panelists probably got it right. Except for the atomic bomb, breakthroughs in weaponry matter less than the culture and temperament of human conflict.

any collection of 50 breakthroughs must exclude 50,000 more. What about GPS systems, on which so many forms of movement now depend, and which two panelists recommended? What about the concept of the number zero, as suggested by Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology and strategy officer at Cisco? (She did not rank her 25 items, but 18 of them showed up among the final 50; Michelle Alexopoulos, an economics professor at the University of Toronto, had 21, and Walter Isaacson had 25 of the 26 he submitted.) In addition to coal, how can no one have mentioned paved roads? Or the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA? Landing on the moon? Or the mathematics of calculus, on which space flight and so much else depended? The more questions and discussions our ranking provokes, the more successful the endeavor will have been.

We notice that innovation may be less personalized than we assume. Our Influential Americans survey was all about specific people who made a difference, though in some cases—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martin Luther King—the difference they made was to persuade large groups to work toward a common end. In this survey, it is remarkable how few world-changing breakthroughs can be tied directly to a single, heroic, Nobel Prize–worthy innovator. Pasteurization (33) is the only one of the top 50 to be named for a person, unless you count the Gregorian calendar or Archimedes’ screw. Other people made other celebrated advances, from Johannes Gutenberg to Alexander Graham Bell, but overall these are the achievements of groups of people who built on one another’s efforts, sometimes over spans of many years.

We learn, finally, why technology breeds optimism, which may be the most significant part of this exercise.

The Future
Popular culture often lionizes the stars of discovery and invention. A century ago, this meant the Wright brothers, Edison, and the auto pioneers; in the Eisenhower years, Jonas Salk and Wernher von Braun; and in the past generation, first Bill Gates and then Steve Jobs. But about technology’s onrush in general, cultural and political attitudes have been mixed at best. For each writer or thinker or government leader who has enthusiastically welcomed whatever changes technology might bring, there has been a counterpart warning of its dangers. From Blake to Dickens, from Metropolis to Blade Runner, from Upton Sinclair to Rachel Carson, and through a long list of similar pairings, the culture of a technology-driven era has continually played catch-up to correct modernity’s destructive and dehumanizing effects.

By expanding the pool of potentially literate people, the adoption of corrective lenses may have amounted to the largest onetime IQ boost in history.
For our era, the major problems that technology has helped cause, and that faster innovation may or may not correct, are environmental, demographic, and socioeconomic. Environmental challenges, because of the unsustainable burden being placed on the world’s oceans, skies, soils, and nonhuman life-forms; demographic, because advances in medicine and public health are rapidly pushing up the median age throughout the developed world; and socioeconomic, because a globalized, high-tech economy is widening the gap between rich and poor everywhere.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised that people who have thought deeply about innovation’s sources and effects, like our panelists, were aware of the harm it has done along with the good. I found it notable that the technologists I spoke with volunteered lists of innovation-enhanced perils. “Does innovation raise the wealth of the planet? I believe it does,” John Doerr, who has helped launch Google, Amazon, and other giants of today’s technology, said. “But technology left to its own devices widens rather than narrows the gap between the rich and the poor.” Despite the prospects for innovation that excite him, he said, “I don’t think there is any reason to assume there will automatically be enough ‘good’ jobs, for enough people, in the long run.” Joel Mokyr pointed out that innovation has always done both good and harm. “You look at antibiotics, insecticides, transportation—every time we solve one problem, a new one comes up,” he said. “Each invention relies on subsequent inventions to clean up the mess it has made.”

Please stop to think about this: Outside of the sciences and technology, and apart from the legacies created in each family, humanity is struggling today for a sense of cumulative achievement. Are today’s statesmen an improvement over those of our grandparents’ era? Today’s level of public debate? Music, architecture, literature, the fine arts—these and other manifestations of world culture continually change, without necessarily improving. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, versus whoever is the best-selling author in Moscow right now? The original, elegant Penn Station, versus its warehouse-like replacement?

A central question for technologists is whether innovation in the material and productive realms can be sustained—or whether we might, on the contrary, already be entering another of the long, stagnant eras that have marked much of human history, including the ones after times of rapid advance. Amid today’s onslaught of the new-and-improved, a slowdown of any sort might seem improbable—but possibly desirable. The argument that a slowdown might happen, and that it would be harmful if it did, takes three main forms.

The first is historical. Some societies have closed themselves off and stopped inventing altogether: notably China after its preeminence in the Ming era, and much of the Arab Islamic world starting just before the European Renaissance. By failing to move forward, they inevitably moved backward relative to their rivals and to the environmental and economic threats they faced. If the social and intellectual climate for innovation sours, what has happened before can happen again.

The second draws from the visible slowdown in the pace of solutions that technology offers to fundamental problems. Between 1850 and 1950, life expectancy nearly doubled in the United States, thanks to the combined effects of antibiotics, immunization, and public-health measures. Since then, it has only crept up. Between 1920 and 1970, improvements in cars, roads, airplanes, and even railroads made travel faster, cheaper, safer, and more comfortable. Since then, travel in the developed world has improved slowly at best. Crop yields per acre doubled within a generation of the green revolution but have not doubled again.

The third and broadest form of the argument is that a slowdown in, say, crop yields or travel time is part of a general pattern of what economists call diminishing marginal returns. The easy improvements are, quite naturally, the first to be made; whatever comes later is slower and harder.

The most systematic recent presentation of this view has come from the economist Robert J. Gordon, of Northwestern, who has argued that America’s history as a nation happens to coincide with a rare moment in technological history now nearing its end. “There was virtually no economic growth before 1750,” he writes in a recent paper. This, he said, left open the possibility that “the rapid progress made over the past 250 years could well be a unique episode in human history rather than a guarantee of endless future advance at the same rate.” Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, says in The Great Stagnation that America’s long centuries of rapid growth amounted to harvesting the “low-hanging fruit” of open land, cheap energy, and industrial-era breakthroughs—harvesting that could not be sustained.

Everyone I spoke with was familiar with such cautionary analyses; none dismissed them out of hand. But when pressed, every one of them said they expected the pace of useful innovation to speed up, not slow down. Again, their explanations took three main forms.

First, and reassuringly, whatever field a panelist knew most about, he or she considered most promising. John Doerr emphasized the transformative potential of radically cheaper and more efficient batteries, which in turn are a crucial element of a cleaner-energy economy. (Wind turbines, solar panels, and other renewable sources don’t produce power on a schedule that matches the grid’s demands. Modern batteries cost too much, and store too little energy, to be useful in buffering undersupply. See "Technologies to Bet On" in this issue.) Others I spoke with saw similar prospects in other fields. Elon Musk, not officially one of our panelists, is perhaps this era’s most ambitious innovator. He simultaneously heads a company building rocket ships, SpaceX; another making a popular electric car, Tesla; and another that is a leading provider of solar power, SolarCity. When I asked him what innovation he hoped to live long enough to see but feared he might not, he said, “Sustainable human settlements on Mars.”

Most of these U.S.-based technologists thought prospects for innovation remained brighter in the United States than anywhere else. And this judgment came from people fully aware of the continued erosion of basic-research funding and other challenges. “We can be concerned about the last 1 percent of an environment for innovation, but that is because we take everything else for granted,” Leslie Berlin told me.

Second, many pointed out that ever cheaper, ever faster computing power could in itself promote innovation in all other fields—much as steam-powered engines did in the 19th century and electricity in the 20th. For one example: Eric S. Lander, the director of the Broad Institute for medical research in Cambridge, Massachusetts (also not on our panel), pointed out that in the past 12 years, the cost of sequencing human DNA has fallen to one one-millionth of its previous level. This reduction in cost, he says, means that the next decade should be a time of “amazing advances in understanding the genetic basis of disease, with especially powerful implications for cancer.”

Finally, the people I spoke with said that the very concept of an end to innovation defied everything they understood about human inquiry. “If you look just at the 20th century, the odds against there being any improvement in living standards are enormous,” Joel Mokyr told me. “Two catastrophic world wars, the Cold War, the Depression, the rise of totalitarianism—it’s been one disaster after another, a sequence that could have been enough to sink us back into barbarism. And yet this past half century has been the fastest-ever time of technological growth. I see no reason why that should be slowing down.”

George Dyson put it a different way, in a sense the most optimistic of all. “I am a technological evolutionist,” he said. “I view the universe as a phase-space of things that are possible, and we’re doing a random walk among them. Eventually we are going to fill the space of everything that is possible.”

What innovation did Dyson most hope to see during his time in the phase-space of the living? He had obviously thought about this before, and answered immediately: “The return of sailing ships as a commercially viable transport system.” Even in the days of cloth sails and hemp rope, he said, clipper ships could convert 60 percent of the raw energy of the wind into useful work. With modern materials and design, they could capture more energy than they used en route. “When a fleet of ships got to port, they could not only deliver cargo but even put energy into the grid.” This is how innovators think.

The List
The Atlantic asked a dozen scientists, historians, and technologists to rank the top innovations since the wheel. Here are the results.

You can also choose your own top five innovations, and see how the readers' choices stack up against the Atlantic experts'.

1. The printing press, 1430s
The printing press was nominated by 10 of our 12 panelists, five of whom ranked it in their top three. Dyson described its invention as the turning point at which “knowledge began freely replicating and quickly assumed a life of its own.”


2. Electricity, late 19th century

And then there was light—and Nos. 4, 9, 16, 24, 28, 44, 45, and most of the rest of modern life.

3. Penicillin, 1928
Accidentally discovered in 1928, though antibiotics were not widely distributed until after World War II, when they became the silver bullet for any number of formerly deadly diseases


4. Semiconductor electronics, mid-20th century
The physical foundation of the virtual world

5. Optical lenses, 13th century
Refracting light through glass is one of those simple ideas that took a mysteriously long time to catch on. “The Romans had a glass industry, and there’s even a passage in Seneca about the optical effects of a glass bowl of water,” says Mokyr. But it was centuries before the invention of eyeglasses dramatically raised the collective human IQ, and eventually led to the creation of the microscope and the telescope.

6. Paper, second century
“The idea of stamping images is natural if you have paper, but until then, it’s economically unaffordable.” — Charles C. Mann


7. The internal combustion engine, late 19th century
Turned air and fuel into power, eventually replacing the steam engine (No. 10)

8. Vaccination, 1796
The British doctor Edward Jenner used the cowpox virus to protect against smallpox in 1796, but it wasn’t until Louis Pasteur developed a rabies vaccine in 1885 that medicine—and government—began to accept the idea that making someone sick could prevent further sickness.


9. The Internet, 1960s


The infrastructure of the digital age

10. The steam engine, 1712
Powered the factories, trains, and ships that drove the Industrial Revolution

11. Nitrogen fixation, 1918
The German chemist Fritz Haber, also the father of chemical weapons, won a Nobel Prize for his development of the ammonia-synthesis process, which was used to create a new class of fertilizers central to the green revolution (No. 22).

12. Sanitation systems, mid-19th century
A major reason we live 40 years longer than we did in 1880 (see “Die Another Day”)


13. Refrigeration, 1850s
“Discovering how to make cold would change the way we eat—and live—almost as profoundly as discovering how to cook.” — George Dyson

14. Gunpowder, 10th century
Outsourced killing to a machine

15. The airplane, 1903
Transformed travel, warfare, and our view of the world (see No. 40)


16. The personal computer, 1970s
Like the lever (No. 48) and the abacus (No. 43), it augmented human capabilities.

17. The compass, 12th century
Oriented us, even at sea



18. The automobile, late 19th century

Transformed daily life, our culture, and our landscape


19. Industrial steelmaking, 1850s
Mass-produced steel, made possible by a method known as the Bessemer process, became the basis of modern industry.

20. The pill, 1960
Launched a social revolution

21. Nuclear fission, 1939
Gave humans new power for destruction, and creation

22. The green revolution, mid-20th century
Combining technologies like synthetic fertilizers (No. 11) and scientific plant breeding (No. 38) hugely increased the world’s food output. Norman Borlaug, the agricultural economist who devised this approach, has been credited with saving more than 1 billion people from starvation.

23. The sextant, 1757
It made maps out of stars.

24. The telephone, 1876
Allowed our voices to travel

25. Alphabetization, first millennium b.c.
Made knowledge accessible and searchable—and may have contributed to the rise of societies that used phonetic letters over those that used ideographic ones


26. The telegraph, 1837
Before it, Joel Mokyr says, “information could move no faster than a man on horseback.”

27. The mechanized clock, 15th century
It quantified time.

28. Radio, 1906
The first demonstration of electronic mass media’s power to spread ideas and homogenize culture

29. Photography, early 19th century

Changed journalism, art, culture, and how we see ourselves

30. The moldboard plow, 18th century
The first plow that not only dug soil up but turned it over, allowing for the cultivation of harder ground. Without it, agriculture as we know it would not exist in northern Europe or the American Midwest.

31. Archimedes’ screw, third century b.c.
The Greek scientist is believed to have designed one of the first water pumps, a rotating corkscrew that pushed water up a tube. It transformed irrigation and remains in use today at many sewage-treatment plants.

32. The cotton gin, 1793
Institutionalized the cotton industry—and slavery—in the American South


33. Pasteurization, 1863
One of the first practical applications of Louis Pasteur’s germ theory, this method for using heat to sterilize wine, beer, and milk is widely considered to be one of history’s most effective public-health interventions.

34. The Gregorian calendar, 1582
Debugged the Julian calendar, jumping ahead 10 days to synchronize the world with the seasons

35. Oil refining, mid-19th century
Without it, oil drilling (No. 39) would be pointless.

36. The steam turbine, 1884

A less heralded cousin of steam engines (No. 10), turbines are the backbone of today’s energy infrastructure: they generate 80 percent of the world’s power.

37. Cement, first millennium b.c.
The foundation of civilization. Literally.

38. Scientific plant breeding, 1920s
Humans have been manipulating plant species for nearly as long as we’ve grown them, but it wasn’t until early-20th-century scientists discovered a forgotten 1866 paper by the Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel that we figured out how plant breeding—and, later on, human genetics—worked.

39. Oil drilling, 1859
Fueled the modern economy, established its geopolitics, and changed the climate

40. The sailboat, fourth millennium b.c.
Transformed travel, warfare, and our view of the world (see No. 15)

41. Rocketry, 1926
“Our only way off the planet—so far.” — George Dyson

42. Paper money, 11th century
The abstraction at the core of the modern economy


43. The abacus, third millennium b.c.
One of the first devices to augment human intelligence

44. Air-conditioning, 1902
Would you start a business in Houston or Bangalore without it?

45. Television, early 20th century
Brought the world into people’s homes

46. Anesthesia, 1846

In response to the first public demonstration of ether, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote: “The fierce extremity of suffering has been steeped in the waters of forgetfulness, and the deepest furrow in the knotted brow of agony has been smoothed for ever.”

47. The nail, second millennium b.c.
“Extended lives by enabling people to have shelter.” — Leslie Berlin

48. The lever, third millennium b.c.

The Egyptians had not yet discovered the wheel when they built their pyramids; they are thought to have relied heavily on levers.

49. The assembly line, 1913

Turned a craft-based economy into a mass-market one

50. The combine harvester, 1930s

Mechanized the farm, freeing people to do new types of work

Our Panel of Experts
The scientists, historians, and technologists we consulted to make this list.

Michelle Alexopoulos
Professor of economics, University of Toronto

Leslie Berlin
Historian of business and technology, Stanford; author, The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley

John Doerr
General partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

George Dyson
Historian of technology; author, Turing’s Cathedral and Darwin Among the Machines

Walter Isaacson
President and CEO, the Aspen Institute; author, Steve Jobs , Einstein: His Life and Universe, and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Joi Ito
Director, MIT Media Lab

Alexis Madrigal
Senior editor, The Atlantic; author, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology

Charles C. Mann
Journalist; author, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovring the New World Columbus Created

Joel Mokyr
Professor of economics and history, Northwestern University

Linda Sanford
Senior vice president for enterprise transformation, IBM

Astro Teller
Captain of moonshots, Google[x]; co-founder, Cerebellum Capital and BodyMedia

Padmasree Warrior
Chief technology and strategy officer, Cisco Systems  

James Fallows is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.