30 Machines that Changed the World

[Doug Rose]

 
I am surprise we didn't make it? I think the Telephone was a big deal?


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/30-machines-that-changed-the-world/ss-AAJaWht?li=BBnb7Kz#image=31

[countryman]

People take telephony for granted in a way they don't even notice what a revolution it meant for mankind.

[Dan/Panther]

People that do the research on these lists ALWAYS overlook the obvious.

If it were not for the telephone, exactly how would companies have communicated over the entire globe, to facilitate the development of these ground breaking inventions.

Personally the Telephone, has been the single most important tool, needed to develop just about everything ever invented in the modern world.

D/P

[Owain]

It's not just the telephone in itself.

Without the telephone we wouldn't have had (at least at the time when we did) microphones - so no speech radio or television, just telegraphy; loudspeakers - no public address at large gatherings; no automatic telephone exchanges - which also lead to automatic teleprinter networks, but it was telephone exchanges that lead the way due to their far higher capacities, and it was automatic telephone exchange (Strowger) technology and expertise that lead from the bombes and Heath Robinson machines to Colossus, the world's first electronic computer.

Without public address at the huge Nazi rallies, Hitler might not have come to power in the way he did, and without Colossus he wouldn't have been defeated.

Without the telephone, skyscraper offices wouldn't have been feasible, as there would have been too many messengers running around for stairs/lifts to cope and speaking tubes would have been impracticable.

Without the telephone we wouldn't have had a pair of wires to almost every house that 100 years later we could use for high-speed data.

We wouldn't have had the 999 system and the lives that has saved.

We wouldn't have had intercontinental speech between world leaders and the lives that has saved.

[compubit]

I know these are "Click Bait" lists, but #14 might not have been created, as there probably wouldn't have been a Bell Labs...

J