What’s the most important modern simple invention?
Not levers and wheels and gears, but Velcro and paper clips. I’d put “modern” as after 1700, and “simple” as “you can pretty much build it yourself”, but you can argue theses (as I’m sure you will! :-)
Pads and tampons. Some argue these are environmentally unfriendly and produce too much waste, but you have to think, not everyone is privileged enough to own a washing machine in their own home, particularly those in 2nd and 3rd world countries. I genuinely believed pads and tampons allowed women to be more productive in the work force and eventually lead to more equality, just hearing my mom and grandma's story of having to hand wash your own bloody (literally) period bands gives me nightmares, that was in the 70s, not that long ago.
The process for making ammonia from air (nitrogen) and hydrogen. Allowed a huge increase in agricultural output that saved a few billion people from starvation.
Haber-Bosch process.
I’d like to recommend James Burke’s series “Connections”[1] and “The Day the Universe Changed”[2] from the late 70s early 80s.
He was a bbc journalist covering NASA and doing science communication and one of his particular fascinations (and mine, having grown up with his work) is the cumulative effect of ideas and technology shape not only how we interact with the modern world, but how we perceive it.
[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/
[2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/?ref_=m_nm_knf_wr_t3
Since you've allowed modern to include the Industrial Revolution, I would submit the invention that started it: the flying shuttle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle
(How did this cause the Industrial Revolution? It made weaving so much faster, that the spinning industry had to come up with machines to supply the weaving industry.)
Hand washing. Modern disease control and prevention is borderline magic. Hand-washing is clearly the most important lifesaving and disease preventing invention in modern times.
Materially ... Well, "yourself" precludes anything computerized, unless you mean "program". It also precludes a huge range of materials science advances.
Technically, you can make steel and concrete yourself with enough real-world minecrafting, and good steel or concrete is probably hands down the most important factor in all our chemical, structural, and industrial processes.
Luckily there's a book with the most important inventions to re-engineer a complex, sustainable society called The Knowledge, and just about everything in there is build-able by a determined individual or small group (until you get to modern things). Not suprisingly, it mostly focuses on agriculture, medicine, steel, and concrete.
The humble ball point pen.
People forget how cumbersome and/or expensive it was to write before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use fountain pens. The cheap ones leaked and were an absolute mess to carry around. The ones that didn't leak were expensive.
I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years and just stash them everywhere I want
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis on discovering the effects of washing your hands before operating on patients. Simple, yet highly effective.
I don't know if it's the most important, but it's a great example of how a very simple innovation had huge benefits. The Fitch Barrier are those big orange barrels you see on the side of the road. They're filled with sand inside, and basically help to dampen the momentum of a car that veers off the road.
They were invented in the 1950s by John Fitch, a Formula 1 driver who just came up with them as a quick and dirty way to make the race track safer. One afternoon's random idea has managed to save over 17,000 lives and billions of dollars in damage.
Washing Machine. Recent iterations are more complex( repair engineer could plug into ours and diagnose all sorts of things, including checking results of previous washes), however the principle behind it isn't that complex. It has made life easier for so many households.
The surface plate. Modern precision all stems from the concept of a flat reference. However, the technique to make a surface as flat as possible (which is based on simple geometry) was first discussed in the early 19th c.
In terms of profound impact on modernity, the metal screw-cutting lathe.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned radio communication. The AM (Amplitude Modulation) transmission is even quite simple to understand and build.
You can even create an electric arc between the ground and the transmitting tower as a cheap (and dangerous) receiver: https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw
The modern idea of a library catalog came around in the early 1800s, and probably accelerated the pace of knowledge transfer and acquisition quite a bit. In its original form, index cards, it was ubiquitous for almost 200 years before being replaced by computerized systems.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog
Bicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could 'build one yourself'.
The greatest invention/discovery of modern times is electricity. It is the second fire and much much more..
3D printing.
I know, I know - overhyped. But you know what's a funny thing? It's incredibly basic tech. Stepper motors and thermoplastic. We could have had something like it at pretty much any time over the past century, and in its modern form from about 1960 or so. It has unquestionably revolutionized prototyping and short-run manufacturing, and we just didn't think of it. The idea was just too zany and expensive - the people with enough money to invent a 3d printer could afford to just pay someone to make their prototype by hand. It's a rare modern example of the "ancient greek railway problem"; Hellenistic culture posessed all the technology to begin making crude steam trains, and almost certainly had the technical drive to approach making practical ones, if only they had thought of it or considered it a worthwhile thing to do.
(Although there is the interesting question of data management. The .gcode for a small print can still run into the megabytes. CAD software was thin on the ground in 1970 too. So maybe therein lies the difficulty - what good is a 3D printer if you must painstakingly transcribe your blueprints into movement instructions by hand?)
Maybe not "most important", but a few dollars worth of post-it notes can turn any wall into a "business application" that can potentially cost thousands to turn into code.
Rubber o-rings, or as a generalization, rubber gaskets.
They allow the use of fluids in an extremely wide range of applications.
Also, unfortunately they led to the Challenger explosion in 1986.
I highly recommend the podcast "50 things that made the modern economy".
They're in season two now, with a second set of 50 things.
Every podcast is about a simple invention that had a huge impact.
Incidentally the Haber-Bosch Process (mentioned in this thread) is number two, after the diesel engine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Things_That_Made_the_Modern...
Window screens and indoor plumbing are the 2 greatest improvements for our daily lives.
I would say the Telegraph.
In the book [CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Softwar](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...), Charles Petzold talks about how it's foundational to the eventual invention of the computer.
Back then, it also meant coast to coast communications were almost instantaneous. And soon after, transatlantic cable-enabled telegraph boosted commerce between America and Europe.
I think the concept (rather than an invention) of negative feedback is very important. By that I mean envisioning that a machine can change it's own behaviour. This seems to have not been understood with early steam engines. People had to manually control valves to operate the first steam engines used as pumps in the U.K. James Watt and Mathew Bolton realized that coupling the output to the steam control valve would make it cycle automagically,
This concept permeates modern design so we don't always see it for the important development that it is IMHO.
Seat-belts maybe. Not as important as the car itself obviously, but definitely simple and super impactful.
Mosquito net. Modern cities may not find use for them but there is a pretty big chunk of world's population for whom this simple item is indispensable. Its cheap. Protects against diseases like malaria, dengue etc. And definitely helps with getting a good sleep.
Many villagers in India build it themselves for the community and i hope it stays that way. I know its is popular in the subcontinent (India,pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka.) Would love to know if other countries also use them
Maybe some non-device inventions: the staff system; the germ theory of disease; currency without a gold standard; public health; public education
> A twistlock and corner casting together form a standardized rotating connector for securing shipping containers. The primary uses are for locking a container into place on a container ship, semi-trailer truck or railway container train, and for lifting of the containers by container cranes and sidelifters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock
The telegraph and the telephone. The enabled economies of scale and speed of decision making that were not possible before.
The cargo container: it has changed the entire planet culturally, economically and geopolitically. It would be hard to count the percentage of every day objects most people use world wide that owe their availability or existence to that standardized metal box.
It's not as simple as you'd like, but the little known Bosch-Haber process, which produces ammonia for farming, staved off mass famines and may be why many readers of HN are alive today.
The condition "you can pretty much build it yourself" forces me to exclude many things with important impact like for example nuclear reactors, LSD, birth control pills, and the silicon transistor. But I think steam engines (or Rankine cycle engines in general) and penicillin are simple enough to qualify.
Ah, the problem is that modern inventions are really embedded in a practice and theory. The invention may be simple but the practice and theory are not.
So I would put up soap as a contender. Simple, saves hundreds of thousands of life, prevents diseases and so forth.
But soap, as an invention, is embedded in the modern practice of washing, which requires our modern knowledge of germs and diseases, as well as our modern effective plumbing system to bring the clean water and dispose of the dirty water.
Of course if it didn't require those it wouldn't be modern.
Refrigeration, particularly because it has revolutionized our food infrastructure.
Zipper (1851) and ballpoint pen (1888) would be my picks.
The basic internal combustion engine.
Without it, we'd still be spending half our lives travelling places.
How about electromechanical relay switch. As far as digital electronics goes, relay can, with some mental gymnastics, be considered grandfather of transistor (which, in turn, is one of the most important inventions of all time, but too complicated).
Unix Pipes - BWK pointed out in his memoir how a small piping implementation done in a single day changed Unix(and computing) forever.
I think the soldering iron has to be in the hunt on all three (important, modern, simple) counts.
Sterilization of medical equipment. Easy to do even at home if you know how, probably saved hundreds of millions of lives since it was invented.
Standardized shipping containers massively decreased the cost of global commerce which is perhaps the most important force in the modern world.
I'm late to the party, but I think the winner is the bra.
Wikipedia says:
> The Dresden-based German, Christine Hardt, patented the first modern brassiere in 1899. Sigmund Lindauer from Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Germany, developed a brassiere for mass production and patented it in 1912. In the United States, Mary Phelps Jacob received a patent in 1914 for the first brassiere design that is recognized as the basis for modern bras.
> A bra is one of the most complicated garments to make. A typical design has between 20 and 48 parts, including the band, gore, side panel, cup, apex, neckline, underwire, strap, ring, slider, strap join, and closure.
I'm not sure about the whole "build it yourself" part, but the "Bessemer process" for making steel was a simple innovation improving on something that existed but made it so much more affordable that many experts think it was a significant contributor to a "second" industrial revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution
Equally important is contraception and elective abortion. Being able to control the timing of raising a family allows a much higher degree of freedom and also ensures a safer and more healthy environment to raise a child.
I think the most important prerequisite to being a parent is the desire to be a parent.
https://www.awazeuttarpradesh.com/blog/1337x/
The idea of Open Source software
The basic ground breaking conceptual innovation is - "self serve".
The innovations with respect to tools - either support or serve that basic need.
All hygiene tools - Nail cutters, Contact Lenses, tooth pick, soap, tooth brush, shaving blade may fall in this category.
If we step little outside - I feel bicycle is one of the biggest innovation which triggered modern day - self serve - without depending on/troubling animals.
Smokeless gunpowder? It completely changed the dynamics of the battlefield, and you said "important" not necessarily "good"
Common soap bars, they weren't really a thing until the mid 1850's and you had to make your own soap unless you were wealthy prior to that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#19th_century
Similarly, liquid soap which came to be around the same time.
Canning and food preservation. It used to be all about salt salt salt.
At the risk of being controversial, perhaps the most modern simple invention is the internet and its ability to let randoms ask a basic question and have a thousand people contribute hundreds of cumulative man-hours to answering it.
(Maybe I'm being cynical, but I feel like the OP is asking this question for reasons beyond pure curiosity.)
Washing machine and dish washer
I read “modern” as “post-world-war-II” and suggest:
Drywall.
Would be interesting to hear about most famous inventions in other countries. From Sweden, or Swedish inventors: Dynamite. The sun valve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_valve). The milk separator.
Tetrahedron-shaped plastic-coated paper carton packaging. The self aligning ball bearing. All these were part of early history of what became larger companies existing to this day.
The adjustable spanner, the zipper and the propeller are also sometimes mentioned in this category within Sweden, but are the also referring to inventors with partly Swedish origin or for improvements of previous designs.
The metric system is pretty good
I'll suggest the thermostat (and throw in the rest of control theory).
Engines - replacement of muscle power. A steam engine isn't that hard to make (I built one in high school).
The Romans got pretty far without it, but it's hard to see them going further.
The phonograph. The idea of "record something and play it again later" has significantly impacted all of our lives, and was barely even imagined prior to invention
Rice cookers. Totally ingenious.
Plastic. We're now drowning in a new problem, but plastic and its impact on sanitation (particularly medical sanitation, like disposable needles, which then supports vaccinations) has dramatically improved life quality and length.
Losing a child to disease before the age of five is no longer a universal human experience, portrayed in the Robert Frost poem below.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial
Apropos time to link my favorite blog: https://rootsofprogress.org/. It's an exploration of the things that helped humanity leap forward.
Spoilers: empirically-informed hygiene, and textile manufacturing techniques.
Wood pulp paper, dimensional lumber (and related framing methods), and I see someone already mentioned the AM radio.
The manipulation of the aether thoroughly meets your definition of modernity, and the principles of constructing a simple radio aren't terribly complicated.
In terms of economic importance, the assembly line was extremely simple yet had a massive impact.
Not post 1700, Luca Pacioli's double entry accounting is simple but extremly effective one.
Compressor, so we can have refrigeration and feed million of people safely between other things.
It's kind of an oxymoron because if it were simple it would have been invented before modern times.
But I'll say backpacks for everyday commuter use and trashcans with wheels (what they refer to in British TV shows as "wheely bins").
The menstrual cup.
It is definitely more ecological and practical, without any chemicals or fragrance that are found in tampons / pads these days.
I definitely see it as a more affordable (the initial cost is higher, but think long-run) solution.
For me: Electric Kettle, Umbrella and Bicycle.
I have used them for the last 45 years in the same shape and form.
If you gave me any of the "older" models from 40 years ago, the utility value will be similar to what I buy from the store today.
"simple" is a strong requirement. I don't know how to make anything of most things proposed!!!
If we were thrown to the Earth 10000 years ago, we would be able to bootstrap our current tech in less than a century?
Contact Lenses. My favorite and most day-to-day useful technology.
Electricity: The ability to send energy down a wire, and then to have energy available "on tap" at any moment.
Many of the inventions I see listed here rely on some form of electricity.
Modern day plumbing/water/waste management. Clean water comes in, waste goes out. Don't have to give two thoughts about it.
Printing press. Without it, spread of knowledge would've been dwarfed and it put the industrial revolution in its full swing.
Earplugs! Improved sleep quality can have huge health benefits and the world is noisier than ever.
...might have been invented before 1700 though.
Internet. I know you can't build it easy. But if the building blocks were in place, its straight forward.
The idea of human rights is simple, fairly modern, and very important -- one of the most important today.
The modern clothespin wasn’t invented until 1887. It was then that the coiled fulcrum came into play.
The wheels under the suitcase. Somebody came up with that idea after we got a man on the moon.
Sewers - literally prevents plagues
The limited liability corporation
Bending light (1840s)
-> Fiber optics (1954)
--> fast network connectivity
---> Internet
---> Telephony
--> fiber optic endoscopy (1956)
---> better disease detection
---> laparoscopic surgery
Modern mathematical notation, binary, or pretty much any software development language
Ice making (someone else said refrigeration, but this is more specific).
The drill and digger (for fossil fuel).
"Important" is perhaps a loaded word in this case.
General Purpose Computers,It single handed accelerated lots of industries.
The bicycle. I'm stunned it didn't come along earlier.
The toilet and sewer system has got to be down there somewhere.
Basic hygiene. Washing hands and yourself with hot water and soap. Not exchanging needles. Covering your mouth before sneezing. Tampons / pads, toilet tissue (although I prefer a faucet and doing a first pass with water. More hygienic and less tissue used. Also much better for the bottom)
Vaccines, anti-biopics and good hygiene and sanitary practices have doubled our average life span.
With a long life we’ve been able to achieve a lot more. Women have been more productive, we’ve created more wealth, have fewer children so each child has more resources and opportunities.
The state of US healthcare really makes me sad, but I’m hopeful we’ll keep on learning more about the human body and engineer more ways of fixing it and making us all live a longer, healthier, wealthier, happier life.
Wheels on suitcases (taken from antifragile by N.Taleb)
The invention of speech or is that to 'old'
plumbing and sewers increased life expectancy more than any other improvement.
After that maybe the steam engine, electric generator, light bulb
A/C
Productivity, mortality and convince.
Screws!
Or more accurately, the ability to mass produce them.
1) Indoor plumbing
2) Washing machine
The electric motor/generator.
Biogas reactors
Silage
Pads/Tampons
Wearable Pedometers and Heart Rate sensors
Microwave. Self-explanatory.
. Duct Tape
. Bungie Straps
. Zip Ties
Not necessarily in that order.
Shoelaces. Without them we'd be tied in knots.
The Toyota Way. Totally transformed manufacturing.
Someone has to say it... Squatty Potty
It's not the inventions that are most important but the thinking processes and curiosity that continue to investigate, tinker, design, and test new ideas and processes. Humans are problem solvers by nature and by survival instinct. Every invention is a product of the mind.