10 Greatest Inventions?

The invention of charging interest on loaned money...it was a crime and sin throughout the classical and middle ages. Only in the 600 years or so has it really been set free. I would rank it in the top 10.

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Nonsense. The Sumerians used credit millenia ago. Nothing original or different about that in all of history.

I thought paper was the top. Must have been another Top-Ten list.

Ahh,Another who "knows better". Edison was great,but it was said that he stole alot of "his" ideas from Tesla.(or Tesla just couldn't get the grant money to patent and produce his ideas,nobody wanted to fund a "crazyman".) and/or other people. Tesla practically invented AC and everything we know of it.(Transformers,Motors,multiphase,etc,etc,etc...) And all in his *head* at that.. He had planned out the entire AC distrubition system without paper..*everything* was detailed in his head.. Funny how nobody believed it would work back then,but it's been serving us fine for 50+ years.IMHO Tesla was a misunderstood Genius,before his time.

Edison did some nasty things to "prove" his DC system was better,like electrocuting animals (dogs,cats,elephants,tigers,pigs,etc) in the streets,to "show" people how dangerous AC was,and that his DC system was much safer..Humm, Sounds like a nice guy..(not)

Nikola Tesla is my f'n Hero.. I love him...

Excessive interest was "usury", and the "sin" part is about a loan to a relative (or maybe countryman, whatever "brother" meant back then):

Deuteronomy 23:19-20:

You shall not lend upon interest to your brother, interest on money, interest on victuals, interest on anything that is lent for interest. To a foreigner you may lend upon interest, but to your brother you shall not lend upon interest; that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are entering to take possession it.

Cheers! Rich

Yeah, that list must've been from 3000 BC, when the Egyptians converted over from heiroglyphics to papyrus. ;-)

Because paper wasn't the first thing that was used for writing, you should really change that to the system of writing itself, whether it be on stones, or mud paddies as the Sumerians used, to vellum or sheepskin, or to paper and then the so-called paperless office of today with nothing but CRTs and PDAs.

And also, you have to remember that most people had never seen paper until the last century or so. It was largely confined to the church and government before then because most people lived in an agrarian society.

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If the first attempt at making a drawing board had been a failure, what would they go back to?

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What do you mean? Tesla _worked_ for Edison.

"Edison made him work from 10:30 am to 5:00 the next morning, seven days a week."

He had his trials and tribulations.

vice-grips and expoxy Fire and cooked food.

Micro mini skirts & hotpants!

The thermos bottle. Put something hot in it, it stays hot. Put something cold in it, it stays cold. How does it know???

How 'bout the original, no pants at all? ;-)

And hence the joke about the blonde who put both in and asked the salesman about the device's faliure...

Tim

-- "California is the breakfast state: fruits, nuts and flakes." Website:

It doesn't have to know, but you do! ;)

dwayne dibley certainly got lots of use from his.

The same way the wall knows how hard to push back when you push on it.

;-)

Without agriculture there wouldn't be a civilization.

Without civilization you wouldn't need agriculture! ;)

And it is not really free even now... there are probably maximum interest rates on loans where you live, and for some purposes loans are limited or still forbidden... for purposes of otherwise lega gambling for example, or sometimes on a purchase without a down payment...

Thomas

Was Morton's invention of surgical anethesia on the original list?

By the way, the original operating theatre known now as the "Ether Dome" still exists at the Massachusetts General Hospitial, and a large monument memorializing the discovery stands in the Boston Public Gardens. When you consider that prior to anesthesia almost half of the surgical patients died of shock, anethesia is at least as important a discovery as antibiotics, if not more so.

The Ether Dome was built in the days before anethesia, designed to contain the screams of the surgical patients of the day, and is the place where general anethesia was first used. It is a very eerie place to visit to this day, as I did once when I was confined at MGH recovering from leg reconstruction surgery after an accident.

Harry C.