KEY POINTS:
It was the end of the wonky cut loaf and the start of a saying when 80 years ago this week sliced bread hit the shelves of a baker in Missouri, US.
When Iowa inventor Otto Rohwedder convinced the Chillicothe Baking Company to begin selling sliced bread in July 1928, the move made front page news in the local town.
The saying, the best thing since sliced bread, soon followed and the well-worn marketing cliche has been used ever since to describe everything from credit cards to TV screens.
But what is really the best thing since sliced bread?
We want to hear your suggestions and, to help you along, below is a list of some of the major world inventions since 1928.
But you might also want to consider something closer to home, such as the bungee jump, hokey pokey ice cream, and the jet boat.
New Zealand inventions:
1953 - Bill Hamilton, develops the first jet boat engine.
1966 - Bruce McLaren's first car appears on a racing track.
1988 - AJ Hacket's first commercial bungee jump.
1992 - John Britten's Britten V1000 takes out the Daytona Supertwins race.
International inventions:
Atari 2600 games console, 1977 The gaming industry today is worth $80 billion a year and new titles are released with more fanfare and to more fervour among legions of gaming nuts than the biggest Hollywood blockbusters.
Not so in the 1970s, when consoles played one or two crude games, such as Pong. Atari changed that with the 2600, the first console to take an unlimited number of games cartridges. The 1978 Space Invaders sent sales skywards, heralding the age of the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360.
Biro, 1938 Had Hungarian journalist Laszlo Jose Biro kept the patent for the world's first ballpoint pen, his estate (he died in 1985) would be worth billions. But he sold the patent to Baron Bich of France in 1950. Biro's breakthrough had been to devise a ball-bearing nib capable of delivering to paper the smudge-resistant ink already used in printing. Today, about 14 million Bic "Biros" are sold every day, perhaps making the pen the world's most successful gadget.
Cardiac Pacemaker, 1958 It wasn't long ago that if you had a terminally dodgy ticker, you would be sent to hospital and hooked up to a large, static piece of equipment.
Cue Swedish doctors Rune Elmqvist and Ake Senning, who in 1958 designed the first implantable pacemaker. Their device failed within hours, but US engineer Wilson Greatbatch built a reliable model in his garden shed. He tested a prototype on a dog in 1958, and, in 1960, Henry Hannafield, 77, became the first human recipient.
CD, 1965 For US inventor James Russell, the crackly sound of surface noise on vinyl ruined music, so he patented a disc that could be read with a laser rather than a needle. Philips and Sony picked up the trail in the early 1970s, when they perfected the Compact Audio Disc or CAD, later shortened to CD. The first discs appeared in shops in the early 1980s and could play 74 minutes. That was because Sony chief Akio Morita insisted that one disc should be able to contain Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Clockwork radio, 1991 With the wind-up radio, not only did deprived areas of the developing world get access to public information about Aids and contraception, but we were given a true legend of invention. Trevor Bayliss, a British former professional swimmer, stuntman and pool salesman, devised the contraption after being horrified by reports from Africa that safe-sex education wasn't getting through.
Credit card, 1950 Before the advent of "plastic", people had to queue at banks to get their hands on cash. Today millions of us can get our hands on anything with just a swipe of a card, whether we can afford it or not. New Zealand's outstanding credit card debt is $4.5 billion. We have American Ralph Schneider, founder of the Diners' Club card, to thank for this dangerous convenience.
Digital TV recorder, 1999 In homes full of slimmed-down TVs and gleaming DVD players, video cassettes, with their clunky heads and jam-prone magnetic tape, look decidedly dated. So out they go, replaced by a digital recorder, which (almost) silently lays down programmes on a computer hard disk.
iPod, 2001 Can it really be only six years since the now ubiquitous slab of sleek white plastic and polished steel burst on to the gadget scene and helped revolutionise the music industry? Conceived by Apple's British design luminary, Jonathan Ive, the iPod - the largest of which can store more than 30,000 songs - has sold 110 million in 14 incarnations (that's 2000 iPods an hour).
Microchip, 1958 These tiny slivers of silicon and metal have transformed our lives. They are in everything from toys to tanks and motorbikes to microwaves. But in 1952, when engineer Geoffrey Dummer proposed using a block of silicon layered to provide the components of electronic systems, nobody took him seriously and he never built a working prototype. Six years later, US engineer Jack Kilby built the world's first monolithic integrated circuit, or microchip.
Microwave oven, 1946 The first victim of the microwave was a peanut bar, which was in the pocket of American engineer Dr Percy Spencer, who was working in range of the radio waves emitted by amagnetron, a key component of radar. It melted, so an intrigued Spencer applied the magnetron to an egg, which exploded. By the end of the year, the prototype had been built and commercial ovens (costing US$38,000 in today's money) soon followed.
Mobile phone, 1947 There are more than two billion mobile phones in the world, and the European Union is home to more cellphones than people.
Of all the gadgets in the average person's arsenal, it is surely the one we would be worst off without. Those who disagree can blame Bell Laboratories for their invention; the firm introduced the first service in Missouri in 1947. Widespread coverage in New Zealand did not begin until the late 1980s.
PC, 1977 The computers IBM was producing for businesses as early as the late 1950s cost about $100,000 (almost $500,000 today), so the idea of one in every home remained a dream. But that changed in the 1970s when a group of chip-wielding geeks in California began tinkering in garages. One of the brightest was Steve Jobs, whose Apple II, unveiled in 1977, was the first personal computer to resemble the machines that went on to transform our lives.
Polaroid Camera, 1947 Edwin Land probably did not expect that his photographic innovation would one day allow a generation of couples to take naughty pictures without fear of exposure at the developer's.
He was inspired by his daughter, Jennifer, who asked why she had to wait so long to see her holiday snaps. He produced the Land Camera in 1947, and the first instant camera became popular with police officers and artists (and those naughty couples"a luxury hotel in Mexico provides a Polaroid camera in every room).
Post-It-Note, 1973 The scourge of office cleaners and the obsession of list freaks, Post-It notes have peeled out of the factory of US manufacturing giant 3M in their billions. A 3M designer, Art Fry, frustrated by errant hymn book page-markers at choir practice, realised the need for a low tack sticky note. He applied a weak glue to yellow paper and the Post-It, now sold in more than 100 countries and in 62 colours, was born.
Txt messaging, 1992 Linguist purists H8 txt spk. The Short Message Service (SMS) has developed the thumbs of a generation of communicators who have devised their own shorthand, text speak, to stay in touch (and uncover extra-marital affairs).
British engineer Neil Papworth sent the first (unabbreviated) text 15 years ago. It read: "MERRY CHRISTMAS". Texting's popularity exploded in the late 1990s and now billions of texts are sent every day.
The internet, 1969 The simplest way to illustrate the impact of the internet is to chart the growth in the number of people connected to it â" four in 1969, 50,000 in 1988, a million in 1991 and 500 million in 2001. Today, the figure is 1.2 billion, or 19 per cent of the world's population.
Conceived by the US Department of Defence in the 1960s, the internet and the World Wide Web, invented in 1989 by Briton Tim Berners-Lee, has shrunk the world like no other invention.
The Pill, 1951 The contraceptive pill not only empowered women, but was a turning point in medicine, as it was the first drug used by healthy people to prevent something, rather than by the sick to treat an ailment. It was developed by a team headed by Austrian-born chemist Carl Djerassi in the United States in 1951.
Transistor, 1947 We have all heard the word and probably know that it's something to do with electronics, but how many of us realise the importance of the transistor, possibly the most unsung gadget in the history of invention? Barely the size of a fingernail and resembling a tiny insect, it is the fundamental building block of the circuitry in computers, mobile phones, and practically every other electronic device we take for granted. It was invented at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the United States in 1947.
TV remote control, 1950 It is no surprise that the first remote control, made in 1950 by the US company Zenith Electronics, was quickly nicknamed "Lazybones". The device, originally linked to the TV set by an unsightly wire, enabled channel hopping couch potatoes to sit back and zap. In 1955, Zenith developed the first wireless remote, the "Flashmatic", which spawned the family of remotes that now crowds the average coffee table. Universal remotes, made by One For All, came in 1987.
VHS recorder, 1976 For more than 30 years after TV broadcasting appeared in the 1930s, viewers had to cancel dates and delay dinners if they wanted to catch the latest episode of Coronation Street (well, the Coronation of King George VI, anyway). Video recording dates back to 1927, when John Logie Baird used wax discs, but it wasn't until JVC won the video format war with Sony that its VHS format became the standard, bringing the ability to record into every home.
(List Compiled by The Independent, UK)
- NZ HERALD STAFF
