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In all seriousness - is math an invention? Or a discovery (kinda like fire)? At the end of the day, I guess if you go back far enough, math is what allows for pretty much everything we have today... and pretty much needed to engeineer/produce a lot of the products mentioned on this thread. no?
In all seriousness - is math an invention? Or a discovery (kinda like fire)? At the end of the day, I guess if you go back far enough, math is what allows for pretty much everything we have today... and pretty much needed to engeineer/produce a lot of the products mentioned on this thread. no?
Bhahaha.....that had me rollin'. They are definitely just as effective as good "make up", aren't they?
Math > Numbers/numbering system like alphabet, whoever came up with it must have been a genius.
I think once some caveman invented the wheel, his neighbor or friend figured he could make a ton of money selling the wheel but in order to know what a lot, and money is, he needed to invent those 2 first!
I use to put language at the that top. But now I put at the very most important:
the stick
From the stick came the spear, hoe, pencil, screwdriver, hammer...etc. Language could not have been recorded without the pen to write books, which kept and transferred knowledge to others.
From the stick came fine tools to allow detail work, be it medical tools or cutting metal to make a telescope.
A shovel is a large stick with a metal 'hand' that can scoop dirt to mine for minerals such as coal for energy, or copper for electric wire.
A drill turns a metal stick with a sharpened tip (a drill bit) that can penetrate objects when rotated at high speed. This allows making holes to attach objects together (using bolts- another type of stick), making construction possible of all manner of devices, be it a toaster or a skyscraper.
An oil rig is basically a giant drill using a drill pipe (there's that stick again) that can extract oil from the ground, up through the hollow drill pipe.
A large hollow stick with something to burn inside can be fired and it will take flight. A rocket. A jet aircraft.
Samuel Hopkins 1790 - Improved process for producing potash. Used in manufacturing of fertilizer, soap, glass and gun powder. The first patent issued from the US Patent Office, signed by both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
We wouldn't be feeding the world at the rate we had from then to today without this innovation.
movable type / printing press (Guttenburg I believe)
prior to this knowledge was handed down by word of mouth.
Books were hand written and very few and far between...unavailable to all but a very select few people of importance.
A knowledge explosion quickly followed. EVERYTHING we take for granted followed that.
This is the correct answer. The printing press brought about the scientific revolution.
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