Genius gizmos: Top of Utahns speak out on their favorite inventions
Illustration by BRYAN NIElSEN/Standard-Examiner
Michele Culumber
Dave Winter
Craig Bielik
Nick Corbin
Alan Hall
Bryton Sampson
Robert Christensen
Carol lynn Curchoe George
Navin Varma
What happened to the sliced bread?
Sliced bread must have been one of the best inventions ever, or we wouldn’t have spent the past 85 years praising other inventions by saying they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Yet somehow, sliced bread didn’t make the cut for “101 Inventions That Changed the World.” The top invention was controlled fire — but even electric guitars (No. 72), LEGOs (No. 77) and Velcro (No. 94) beat out sliced bread.
“101 Inventions That Changed the World” is the latest big exhibit at The Leonardo in Salt Lake City. The Leonardo is the first U.S. museum to host the traveling exhibit, which was developed by Grande Exhibitions of Australia.
The list of inventions on which the exhibit is based was created by a panel of eight CEOs from science centers around the world, with parameters specifically set so that the list didn’t reflect just more modern innovations.
“The most important thing was to break it down into time periods, to look through the dawn of humankind to the current age,” said Rob Kirk, operations director for Grande Exhibitions, by phone from Melbourne.
Kirk says people may question each item’s standing within the list’s hierarchy. For example, email is at No. 44. The alphabet is No. 54. Air conditioning is No. 99.
“That’s very much open to debate, and that’s the beauty of the exhibition,” Kirk said. “We wanted to create debate and discussion.”
To keep the debate going, the Standard-Examiner invited folks in the Top of Utah to unofficially join the think tank, and discuss their favorite inventions.
• Vaccines and antibiotics
From Michele Culumber’s perspective — that of the chairwoman of Weber State University’s department of microbiology — the greatest inventions are vaccines and antibiotics.
“Penicillin was the first really good antibiotic,” she said, of the lifesaving treatment for infections. “And the smallpox vaccine probably saved more lives in a shorter period of time than just about anything.”
On a day-to-day basis, her favorite invention is the microscope.
• The microwave
“I think the microwave was a pretty cool invention,” said Dave Winter, head of research and development and engineering for Lifetime Products, in Clearfield.
The microwave wasn’t just an improvement to an older invention, according to Winter: “It’s doing something in a completely different way, and I think it was really thinking outside of the box.”
• The Thermos
One of David Tanner’s favorite inventions is the Thermos.
“It keeps cold things cold, and hot things hot,” said the Layton man, who has seen plenty of packed lunches as a school principal. “I don’t know that it’s changed the world, but it’s changed how people can take picnics, or have their cup of hot chocolate in the morning.”
• Snooze and lose buttons
Craig Bielik says the best inventions ever are the snooze button, and the “undo last action” command on a computer.
“I wish I had ‘CTRL+Z’ in my life,” said the North Ogden stand-up comic. “And anybody who wants to debate on whether the snooze alarm is the best invention can go ahead — I’m going to hit the snooze button.”
• The bow
The bow gets a vote from Nick Corbin, a Layton teen.
“It was invented so long
ago … and allowed people to hunt animals,” he said. “It led the way to ranged weapons and firearms today in hunting, and it just made life easier for everyone.”
• The wheel
Chris McKearin says the greatest invention in the world, besides penicillin, is the wheel.
“It revolutionized transport, revolutionized agriculture, and changed the way we look at the surface upon which we move,” said the Ogden man, adding, “It provides a lot of fun and enjoyment for everybody — bicycles, automobiles and, yeah, horse-drawn carriages, I guess, as well.”
• Computers
It’s hard to choose the greatest invention, because so many are built on inventions that came before, said John Wallace, of Salt Lake City.
“Probably the invention of indoor plumbing is a big one,” he said. “Refrigeration is huge.”
But the invention that most changed life, especially for young adults like Wallace, is the computer– especially handheld computers.
“I’m not saying necessarily that it’s better (than indoor plumbing), just that it’s more transformative across society,” he said. “Social interactions happen online so much more frequently, relationships start online, so the younger generation is just really taking the technology and going with it.”
• Printing press
“The greatest invention that’s changed the world is, No. 1, printing,” said entrepreneur Alan Hall, of Roy. “From there, everyone could start to read, and so all of our education came out of that first printing press. Whoever developed that device made it so we all had access to reading materials.”
That ability to read, and learn from past inventors, made many other inventions possible, he said.
Hall’s other favorite invention came from a family member. “I have an uncle, by the name of Tracy Hall, who invented the manmade artificial diamond,” he said.
H. Tracy Hall worked at General Electric when he made the first machine that could put enough heat and pressure on coal to duplicate the forces of nature to create diamonds. He perfected the process further as a professor at Brigham Young University.
“Glasses, watches, computers — anything that you make today uses those diamonds for cutting and grinding,” Hall said.
Alan Hall says the new science building at Weber State University will be named after H. Tracy Hall, who was a student at the school.
• Gears
Daniel Amsel’s gears were turning when he chose “gearing” as a favorite invention.
“I think gearing was important because before we had gears, there was no way of really transferring energy from one system to another, without a lot of inefficiency,” said Amsel, of Ogden, noting that gears are used in everything from motors to the printing press. “Anything that needs a lot more power than we have, gearing did for us.”
• Superman
The Leonardo museum has a timeline, and visitors are invited to add their own notes of important inventions. Bryton Sampson added “Superman” to the timeline.
“Everyone has their own little historical inventions that are important to them, personally — maybe they didn’t change the world, but they impacted someone,” said Sampson, communications manager for The Leonardo.
Action Comics introduced “Superman” in 1938.
“It set the tone, not just for comic books, but pop culture entertainment,” he said. “Everything still kind of traces back to that, even movie and TV shows.”
• Incubators, tubes and lights
Three of the most important inventions for premature babies were three of the most simple.
“Decades later, these three inventions — although they’ve been improved greatly — are still in use, and they are still essential to every NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) in the world,” said Robert Christensen, a neonatologist with Intermountain Health Care in Ogden.
The first on Christensen’s list is the premature infant incubator, invented in 1880 by French obstetrician Stéphane Tarnier.
“Prior to the invention, it was known that premature babies would get cold no matter what you did, and they would die from hypothermia,” Christensen said. But Dr. Tarnier was familiar with poultry farming, and knew about chick incubators.
“He got together with a poultry farmer and an engineer, and made the first incubator for premature babies,” Christensen said.
Next on Christensen’s list is the hematocrit tube, invented in 1934 by Dr. Maxwell M. Wintrobe, who later became the first professor of medicine at the University of Utah.
“His invention was a simple glass tube about three inches tall, that was hollowed out, and he would draw patients’ blood into this tube, cap the end, and put it in a centrifuge to spin it. After the spin, you would see what proportion of the blood was occupied by the red blood cells,” Christensen explained. “All of the modern, sophisticated cell counters go back to the Wintrobe hematocrit tube.”
Third on his list is the phototherapy unit for jaundiced babies, invented in 1958 by English doctor R.J. Cremer.
“In England, they noticed that in their preemie wards, the babies closer to the windows had less yellow jaundice,” Christensen said. “That’s a simple observation, but it was just amazing that somebody was so smart as to figure out these babies by the window are not yellow, and those over in the shade are all yellow.”
Phototherapy, with light in the visible spectrum, is now used all over the world.
“That has done just an incredible amount of good, because high jaundice levels in a baby would cause brain damage,” he said.
• Polymerase chain reaction
“My background is in molecular and cellular biology,” said Carol Lynn Curchoe George, Utah’s state science adviser. “The invention that changed the world, as I see it, is the polymerase chain reaction.”
This technology makes it possible for researchers to take a DNA molecule and copy it millions of times, so it can be analyzed.
“That allows us to do everything from paternity testing and personalized medicine, to detection and diagnosis of infectious diseases and basic gene sequencing,” she said.
Examples of its use include identifying victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and choosing medicines to target cancer and reduce side effects in individual cases.
• Quantum logic
Members of the Absinthe Society of Ogden meet on a regular basis to discuss various ideas in depth. A recent topic was “What is the most important invention in the last 100 years?” Answers included the development of visual media, the Internet, the philosophy of ecology and social responsibility, and magnetic resonance imaging.
Navin Varma, an Ogden-based neurologist, suggested quantum logic as the most important invention.
“I think it will change the way we think, and that will be a tremendous leap forward to human reasoning,” he said.
Current thinking is a fairly linear process, coming to conclusions through deductive or inductive reasoning based on observed data.
“Quantum logic allows — or rather challenges — us to say, ‘What if there are multiple processes going on at the same time, and none is definite?’ ” he said. “Quantum reasoning recognizes the uncertainty, and recognizes that you have to come down to a decision point.”
The physical application of quantum logic could be computer chips designed on a subatomic level, he said, capable of making decisions that account for multiple states.
“The metaphysical application could be forcing human beings to recognize that we don’t need to accept linear models,” Varma said, offering the example that it allows people to recognize that a neighbor can be different from you, and not be a bad person — that human beings are valuable in their diversity.
Quantum logic may be Varma’s pick for the most important invention of the past century, but it’s not his pick for the most important ever — that honor goes to satyagraha, Gandhi’s philosophy of fighting oppression by goodness.
“Until then, we just killed each other,” Varma said.
1. Controlled fire
2. Paper
3. Pasteurization
4. X-ray photography
5. Arabic numerals
6. Optical fiber
7. Telephone
8. Birth control pill
9. Cellular phones
10. Internet
11. Electric motor
12. Integrated circuit
13. Incandescent light bulb
14. Stone tools
15. Powered airplane
16. Television
17. Artificial satellite
18. Microprocessor
19. Penicillin
20. Gunpowder
21. Public electricity supply
22. Locomotive
23. Radar
24. Irrigation
25. Motorcar
26. Photography
27. Wheel and axle
28. Phonograph
29. Enigma machine
30. Atomic bomb
31. Polio vaccine
32. World Wide Web
33. Microscope
34. Refrigerator
35. Punched card
36. Cloning
37. Printing press
38. Electrical generator
39. Laser
40. Aspirin
41. Personal computer
42. Film camera/projector
43. Polyvinyl chloride
44. Email
45. Lens
46. Dynamo
47. Tractor
48. High-pressure steam engine
49. Vaccination
50. Diesel engine
51. Jet engine
52. Gene therapy
53. Supercomputer
54. Alphabet
55. Color television
56. Cyclotron
57. Synthetic rubber
58. SI units (International System of Units)
59. Reinforced concrete
60. Electron microscope
61. Hard disk drive
62. Digital camera
63. Magnetic resonance imaging
64. Metalworking
65. Spinning wheel
66. Nuclear reactor
67. Transistor radio
68. Map
69. Random access memory
70. Glider
71. Magnetic recording
72. Electric guitar
73. Space station
74. Metric system
75. Sonar
76. Geostationary communications satellite
77. LEGO
78. Computer-aided manufacturing
79. Telescope
80. Artificial neural network
81. Abacus
82. Cuneiform script
83. Bank note
84. Harber process
85. Nylon
86. Polystyrene
87. Radio telescope
88. Movable type
89. Canned goods
90. Typewriter
91. AC electric power
92. Stainless steel
93. Digital electric computer
94. Velcro
95. Macadam
96. Scanning tunneling microscope
97. Submarine
98. Transformer
99. Air conditioning
100. Global Positioning System
101. Sail
— The Leonardo exhibit