The Greatest Mechanical invention

I bet they use 18V cordless hammers these days Clive.

Dek

I Think it has to be the wheel, used much for transport, grinding corn in the early years, train wheels, Lathe gearwheels, airoplane wheels, wheelbarrow wheels ,In fact anything used for transportation. But having said that about transportation, We havnt made any real advances in the 50 or so years, Still seems to take forever to get to town.

Andy

Hi. Ian

Probably explains why I failed my GCSE history

Hi,

If we are talking about the modern world the flush toilet and sewerage system (think of it as a huge complex machine) must be up there with the best. Cleaned up the cities got rid of common killer diseases such as cholera from the general population, saved countless lives worlwide, and made the place smell a lot better. Although the pumping stations used the steam engine they could just as easily have used water or wind powered pumps.

Regards

Terry

PS. I forgot to say it also provides a quiet and peaceful reading room where one is unlikely to be disturbed, 

T

Edited By Terryd on 11/10/2012 09:42:04

Yup, and if you're Wi-Fi enabled you can post from there as well

Martin.

Yes, the Antikythera Mechanism - a fantastic documentory from the BBC that's well worth looking for, if it's still available on iPlayer or Youtube.

Martin.

Nobody has mentioned the dynamo / generator yet, think of the world without electricity......

There are so many diverse directions that inventions and processes have gone its hard to see and choose any particular mechanical invention.

As one process is started it goes into the next, for example iron ore smelting/bronze/tin etc and then the refining of iron metals into steel and all its variations without which non of this 'Future' would have happened so fast.

The wheel is only part of it and its progression into the pneumatic tyre so beloved of us all now. To drive that tyre you need steel and gears, then an automotive drive, carbon fuel or electric.

this brings us to the petro chemical industry where oil and fuel are found but also coal is a fuel so we are back to the blast furnace.

I see it as a giant, 'Thread' picture with threads leading all over and interjoining into every process.

One aspect is the making of glass and the first windows, 'Bulls eye' glass where a glass balloon was blown and then pierced and spun into a sheet of glass with a dimple in the middle. But that was a progression of something else, not an invention but a process.

So what was the first invention ? the cleaved Flint to cut with or the pierced fish bone as a needle.

The band is so broad I doubt if any one thing is first ! As a simple native, all he needs is a spear and a bow and some arrows and something to cut with, modern man cannot survive without constant music and fags and alchohol and TV. The rest follows as a progression.

Clive

Has to be the wheel. No wheel, no transport of anything heavy from A to B, or gears or engines or clocks or machine tools or flour mills or just about any machine that does useful work advancing our technology or watermills draining and reclaiming land or printing presses or....

Well it would certainly be different!

It would still exist though but we would have found different ways of doing things. Maybe supercars would still do 200MPH catalytic ignition with Acetelene headlamps! There are probably lots of technologies that were never developed to their potential because something else came along.

Nowadays new ways of doing things are described as being a 'disruptive' technology.

Ian P

I was going to say that i vote for the water wheel while i was thinking of Sheffield’s steel industry which i am told once produced a quarter of the worlds stainless steel this industry grew in Sheffield because the city has several streams running through it which were used to drive grind stones sharpening cutlery this of course grew into a very large industry over time. but then i thought the knife, how could we ever have got this far without it , can anyone think of a civilisation that didn't use the knife?

In a bare bones survival courses you may well be instructed on how to survive with only a knife but not many will give alternatives you just have to have one

Used for making shelter cutting and gathering food and of course defence from wild beasties I know I still use them every day

The other really good one is the water container if that can be called mechanical. If we had had to spend all our time hanging around watering holes ( where the beasties wait for you) we might never have got out of Africa in the first place

Why such a question it is not ME and is only down to the person that thinks it relevant.

Bob

I wonder if Graham read my comment on the display of cultivation technologies at the science museum?

My initial thought was the basic flint scraper, the first tool that, allowed proto-humans to maximise the energy they could get out of their food by pre-processing it. This meant more time - the space in which cuture could develop.

But then I read the complaints about hand tools (although a scraper is a clear example of a lever, which is a mechanism in my book) - in which case the spear-thrower, which predates the bow and arrow and is clearly mechanical. This too had a huge impact on our ability to efficiently gather food.

Similarly the quern (simple millstone) might be a contender.

Neil

Bob,

I really think it is time we saw your definition of ME

[... I presume that you mean Model Engineering.]

Please feel free to define each word sepearately, or the phrase as a whole.

The rest of us seem to be enjoying the discussion.

MichaelG.

Maybe the most important "invention" mechanical or otherwise is the tea break! Where else is better for discussions of this sort - and discussion is the best way to explore a range of ideas and to access the various skills and knowledge of all to apply to the solution of problems.

Just think - how many problems real or imaginary, trivial or important have you solved over tea and can you imagine a world where such an " institution" had never existed? We would all have to go along each re-inventing the wheel over and over again.

(For those of you of a more serious demeanour perhaps I am saying that the most important "invention(s)" are the various means by which we can communicate ideas and knowledge to harness the power of the many to solve problems.)

Regards

Norman

Ps

Tea break over - get back out in yer sheds!

Edited By NJH on 11/10/2012 23:59:30

Nicely put, Norman

MichaelG.

As we are going back to the beginning of human occupation of the earth then we must include in the mechanical inventions Animal traps ! Man did not live unless he hunted and foraged but could not do all at the same time so animal traps were important and then the flint edge to process skins and flesh. It is important to remember that to live one has to forage for food and this can take a lot of the day just to accumulate enough to survive. Fishing is time and the idea of a fish trap is important and then traps on animal trails which work when you are not around.

The basic things are important.

Clive

Edited By Clive Hartland on 12/10/2012 08:08:23

as an ecologist, it's interesting that several of us have identified things that made food gathering more effcient.

Another interesting observation is that, in very broad terms, the few hunter-gatherer societies work no harder than modern folks, perhaps even less. Farming meant you could produce more grain and store it up, but then it just meant you had more time to make pyramids for the local pharoah...

Yes the Antikythera mechanism is another fascinating example. If there was to be a co-operative project on this forum, I would love it to be working upa design for a working model of the mechanism. If it could function with hand-filed gears such a thing should be within the compass of any competent model engineer.

Neil

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 12/10/2012 21:25:55

Hi,

The Antikythera mechanism is interesting as a historical object but was essentially a dead end in it's day. Apart from the unexpected use of gears it is really is just an early orrery There appears to have been no development from it as our mechanisms came from other sources.

As for a model, it's been done:

Hi Terry and Neil, that must have been the mechanism they dubbed the 2000 year old computer on a Horizon programme I watched a couple of weeks or so ago. I think they said it was descoverd in in the first part of the 1900's. The Greeks won't let the remains out of their museum, so a spceial X-ray machine was built and shipped over to take internal images of it.

Regards Nick.

P.S. A chap who was building one (don't know if it was the same person in your link Terry) demonstrated how to mark out odd numbered gear teeth with a pair of divdiders and then file them all by hand, just like the Greeks had to do over 2000 years ago.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 12/10/2012 23:33:12