' The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread' ?

[Horsetan]

Maybe, was this really invented post 1928 though?

Became a lot more widespread from the late 1920s onwards, certainly.

[jjb1970]

The most transformational thing is probably the semiconductor transistor and it's derivative, the integrated circuit.

I'd agree with this, although I'd also rank the turing machine up there too.

[RBAGE]

The Saturn V.

The most powerful machine ever built.

[pirouets]

I looked up OO but that came along in 1921 (assuming the wizard of wikepedia is correct so model wise I will have to settle for a Hymek model, other wise it has to be inside toilets. I'm not old enough to remember outside ones but I just know I was not cut out for that sort of living.

[PatB]

I looked up OO but that came along in 1921 (assuming the wizard of wikepedia is correct so model wise I will have to settle for a Hymek model, other wise it has to be inside toilets. I'm not old enough to remember outside ones but I just know I was not cut out for that sort of living.

 

My brother rented a house, in a not particularly poor area of Leicester, which had an outside toilet in 1987 when he moved in and still had one when he moved out c1989. Sure, it was a proper WC and had electric light but it was still a daunting prospect on a winter's night. Stories of the need for a stick to break the ice are entirely true.

[Horsetan]

....Stories of the need for a stick to break the ice are entirely true.

 

Surely that would have been unnecessary if he'd had a curry beforehand? 

[PatB]

Surely that would have been unnecessary if he'd had a curry beforehand? 

 

You really don't want the kind of splashback that a smooth, hard surface could provide .

[jonny777]

Is this what they mean when people say "this thread has plumbed new depths"?

[Horsetan]

Is this what they mean when people say "this thread has plumbed new depths"?

 

The videos will no doubt be able on YouBend.

[Chubber]

It has to be the cable auto-rewind device on a vacuum cleaner.

 

After years of untying knots and tangles in the lead when it needed to reach as far as the car in the driveway, or disentangling my fishing rods or pogo stick it has to rate very highly in this thread.

 

Doug

[Reorte]

Domestic freezers are a little too early for that (1913 if you believe Wikipedia, first widespread one in 1927). There are always medical advances and if you need one that's the best thing, but that's probably a bit too vague. Hmm, struggling now. Was going to suggest the humble AA battery, only to find that that goes back to 1907! (although "standardised" in 1947, whatever that means - adopted as a standard as opposed to having several different ones all called AA?)

 

That probably leaves me with remote space travel, getting all sorts of fascinating images and data from the solar system, the modern equivalent of setting foot on an unexplored shore for the first time. There will be all sorts of post-1928 inventions required to make that necessary.

[edcayton]

Gotta say my smartphone impresses the heck out of me. I can talk to it and unlike all my other toys, it will not only talk back but talk sense!

 

Ed

[Tim Dubya]

my phone is smart but that's about it...

[jonny777]

My best "thing" since I was born, is very selfish and is actually a human being. He was the chap who put my smashed-up left leg back together again after I broke both bones in it, as a result of falling out of a tree, when I was aged 8.

 

Maybe the clean breaks to the bones helped, but without his skill on a Saturday afternoon (for which he had to interrupt a golf match) over 55 years ago, my life would have been so much different; or I would have bled to death.

 

I believe that the consultant's name was Mr Powell (I only remember this because a few years later a politician of the same name gave a highly controversial speech involving the red stuff), so my eternal thanks go to him, his assistants, and the steady improvements in medical technology over the decades.

[wombatofludham]

Toss up between the NHS and the Internet.  I'm old enough to remember my first home computer (a ZX Spectrum no less) which seemed revolutionary at the time, but the Internet has had a major impact on my life in the past fifteen years. 

 

However, the NHS has had just as profound an impact but in a "taken for granted" way.

[edcayton]

My best "thing" since I was born, is very selfish and is actually a human being. He was the chap who put my smashed-up left leg back together again after I broke both bones in it, as a result of falling out of a tree, when I was aged 8.

 

Maybe the clean breaks to the bones helped, but without his skill on a Saturday afternoon (for which he had to interrupt a golf match) over 55 years ago, my life would have been so much different; or I would have bled to death.

 

I believe that the consultant's name was Mr Powell (I only remember this because a few years later a politician of the same name gave a highly controversial speech involving the red stuff), so my eternal thanks go to him, his assistants, and the steady improvements in medical technology over the decades.

 

Do you suppose he got paid for Saturday working?

 

Ed

[Nearholmer]

Universal, affordable, decent-quality, healthcare provision. Which equates to the NHS in my mind.

 

I used to listen in awe to the horrors recounted by my grandparents and their siblings, of how people they knew had "got by" in pain, in extremes cases expiring young, simply because they couldn't afford to visit the doctor or the dentist, or had to take "the cheap cure" (painkilling medicine). Even my parents used to remind us, on every visit to doctor, dentist, or optician, that this was something only resorted to in the direst emergency when they were children.

 

Countless times, older members of my family used to say: "Thank The Lord we'll never have to go back to the 'Thirties." And, they were living in the SE of England, and were never out of work.

 

Computing and advanced telecoms? We're still in the middle of the upheaval being caused by those technologies, so too soon to say whether or not, in the long-run, they will trump the NHS.

 

Kevin

[AndyID]

I notice no one has suggested television

[Nearholmer]

And, I guess, if asked to name the greatest improvement in the ninety years, few would nominate sliced bread!

 

I do wonder if we might get the contraceptive pill mentioned, if most railway modellers were women, rather than men

 

K

[jonny777]

Do you suppose he got paid for Saturday working?

 

Ed

 

 

I'm sure that he did, and quite generously I expect.

 

He may have been on call that weekend of course, but I don't know how that worked in the days before pagers and other electronic devices.

 

Whatever his financial rewards it was worth every penny to me; and although my leg was in plaster for over 3 months, there have been no problems or complications since the original operation. My only lasting effect is one leg about half an inch shorter than the other (I was growing fast at that stage) and feet which are half a shoe size different from each other.

 

I'm not keen on the modern stodge known as sliced bread, but I presume that it would be impossible to cut with a bread knife, if bought as a whole loaf with that amount of water added to it. I gather the flour used has chemicals added to absorb as much water as possible. Why sell bread when you can sell water?

[Fat Controller]

Universal, affordable, decent-quality, healthcare provision. Which equates to the NHS in my mind.

 

I used to listen in awe to the horrors recounted by my grandparents and their siblings, of how people they knew had "got by" in pain, in extremes cases expiring young, simply because they couldn't afford to visit the doctor or the dentist, or had to take "the cheap cure" (painkilling medicine). Even my parents used to remind us, on every visit to doctor, dentist, or optician, that this was something only resorted to in the direst emergency when they were children.

 

Countless times, older members of my family used to say: "Thank The Lord we'll never have to go back to the 'Thirties." And, they were living in the SE of England, and were never out of work.

 

Computing and advanced telecoms? We're still in the middle of the upheaval being caused by those technologies, so too soon to say whether or not, in the long-run, they will trump the NHS.

 

Kevin

It used to be quite common for people to have their adult teeth pulled out as a 21st birthday 'present', on the basis that it would reduce future pain and suffering. Bit of a b****r if you had this done in 1947, only for NHS dental care to arrive a year later.

I'm alive due to the development of antibiotics, and the NHS; my mother had puerperal fever when I was born, and we were both very poorly. My father's first wife, and their only child, had died of this some 15 or so years earlier.

[Tim Dubya]

I'm not keen on the modern stodge known as sliced bread, 

 

A chef once described English sliced white bread to me as "the art of making water stand upright".

 

Nice all the same though - but don't tell my GP, she'll kick my monkey arse!  

[Ozexpatriate]

The most transformational thing is probably the semiconductor transistor and it's derivative, the integrated circuit.

I'd agree with this, although I'd also rank the turing machine up there too.

Certainly computing existed without semiconductors through the likes of Babbage and Holerith and Turing's concept made computing adaptable to electronics - like vacuum tube machines such as Eniac, but the combination of binary arithmetic, an instruction set and semiconductors is the foundation of everything we think of as modern electronics.

 

Id say the personal computer. It has allowed thousands upon thousands of people to connect and communicate in situations where it would be impossible otherwise. The world, once so large, has been shrunk with near instant communication. Without which, this thread and the internet it exists on, would not exist.

That communication is enabled more by internet protocol than the existence of the personal computer. As a specific entity what we know as the desktop "personal computer" is almost dead.

 

Most of the communications concepts (subsequently enabled by semiconductor electronics) were invented before 1928 and pioneered by the likes of Marconi and Tesla.

 

It is interesting just how many things that are an essential part of modern life were invented before 1928 including but not limited to electrical power generation and distribution, electric motors, internal combustion engines, the automobile, chlorinated drinking water, pasteurized milk, the special and general theory of relativity, Rutherford's atomic model etc.

 

I notice no one has suggested television

The impact of television on influencing and even arguably determining cultural norms should not be underestimated. Whether that is a good thing is obviously questionable. I will say the best television moment (perhaps the most significant televised event) was Armstrong stepping on the moon. The camera that had to be developed (small, light and with those compromises of relatively poor quality) to do that before large scale digital electronics is an interesting story of it's own.  Imagine had they been able to take a HD GoPro.

 

And, I guess, if asked to name the greatest improvement in the ninety years, few would nominate sliced bread!

It's odd just how much cachet this relatively unimportant item has. It is more of a stand-in for industrialized food than anything else.

 

I do wonder if we might get the contraceptive pill mentioned, if most railway modellers were women, rather than men.

The pill and penicillin are great medical choices, but there is one more significant one:

 

Computing and advanced telecoms? We're still in the middle of the upheaval being caused by those technologies, so too soon to say whether or not, in the long-run, they will trump the NHS.

It might be that the greatest discovery of the post-1928, 20^th century will be determined to be the discovery of Deoxyribonucleic acid and the field of genetics.  It will take some time to demonstrate this.  It might even be the worst thing, but I'm more hopeful than that.

[Ozexpatriate]

I wonder how long (or short) a time it will be before the autonomous vehicle makes a list like this one?

[Nearholmer]

It's something horrible, called "The Chorleywood Wood Process", I'm told by someone who lives in Chorleywood.

 

K