Finding a permanent cancer cure must go down as history’s greatest achievement in my view. Not sure there are cancer death statistics over the past 100 years but it has to be in the billions.
What is your point?
When was cancer first diagnosed?
I’ll be the first one to praise the inventors Swannie, in fact I squirrel away in my workshop and invent and build stuff but unfortunately it has all been invented before…
No matter, It’s the journey I enjoy more than the destination!..
However, you have to agree that progress and new materials are not infinite, and at some point it will slow down and stop when we have exhausted the planet of every useful material. A while back I was reading about a shortage of copper; can you imagine a world without copper…There is also a shortage of ‘sand’ sand would you believe! Apparently it has to be a special kind of sand to make concrete and cement, not just any sand will do! And just look at some of the things we require as humans since say the fifties…What used to be gadgets and gizmos are now necessities.
Mobile Phones, TV (Sky, Satellite, freeview, Netflix etc), the Internet (computers, laptops, games, DVD players) dishwashers, microwaves, gas/electric boilers for heating, cars, new kitchens/bathrooms (showers, En Suites) Medication, New clothes every other week, paint, wallpaper and other decorating materials (B&Q and others have built businesses out of our passion for DIY) and ten thousand different types of food from every corner of the planet!..
We are on a slippery slope Swannie, we can either stick, or carry on to oblivion (or cave dwelling)…
I don’t think cancer is a man made invention Besoeker…In fact, it’s part of you that goes rogue, that’s why it’s so hard to cure…How do you stop it without killing yourself?
Nice One OGF, I thought I was the only Soothsayer in the Village.
What about (C2H4)n Foxy?
There certainly are good and bad aspects to inventions. Inventions in the medical field have meant people living longer, although some might consider this is not such a good thing.
We are able discuss inventions here because of inventors. The technology behind what we see on our computer screens is amazing but it uses resources one way or another. Resources that we know cause harm to the World. All the time the screen is on, we’re part of it.
Covid-19 has given an insight of what it’s like to take a backward step as regards less driving, flying and consumerism in the shops, restaurants etc. We know these aspects of life use inventions that cause pollution and/or use resources but we want them back again don’t we?
It would take years to adapt to a new normal with all the job losses and depleted economies this would involve. It’s not going to happen basically. As I’ve said previously (somewhere) “We’re all doomed!”
Most of the inventions during the Industrial Revolution including steam engines, locomotives, mill machinery, refining the steel process, accurate clocks, RADAR, television, thermionic valve (predecessor of the transistor), hovercraft, jet engines, computers - all British inventions.
A pity that the younger generation don’t realise that all the things they take for granted were created from British inventions and would rather slag off our history rather than rejoice in it.
Surprised nobody has mentioned the wheel yet.
Good spot!
I’m surprised nobody hasn’t mentioned our best invention of all…OK well maybe not an “invention” but waddaya do!
If we British hadn’t invented the railways and steam engines, she wouldn’t have been able to do the Locomotion. 
[quote=“Judd, post: 1920961”]
Most of the inventions during the Industrial Revolution including steam engines, locomotives, mill machinery, refining the steel process, accurate clocks, RADAR, television, thermionic valve (predecessor of the transistor), hovercraft, jet engines, computers - all British inventions.
A pity that the younger generation don’t realise that all the things they take for granted were created from British inventions and would rather slag off our history rather than rejoice in it.[/QUOTE]
Absolutely Judd. ‘Inventors Lives Matter!’
Nice curved ball Spitty…Could be a link…
[I]Ethylene (IUPAC name: ethene) is a hydrocarbon which has the formula C
2H
4 or H2C=CH2. It is a colorless flammable gas with a faint “sweet and musky” odour when pure.[5] It is the simplest alkene (a hydrocarbon with carbon-carbon double bonds).
Ethylene is widely used in the chemical industry, and its worldwide production (over 150 million tonnes in 2016[6]) exceeds that of any other organic compound.[7][8] Much of this production goes toward polyethylene, a widely used plastic containing polymer chains of ethylene units in various chain lengths. Ethylene is also an important natural plant hormone and is used in agriculture to force the ripening of fruits.[9] The hydrate of ethylene is ethanol.[/I]
Unintentional genetic modification could be responsible for a lot of stuff, not invented in literal terms.
Trouble with that one is, animals have tumours, maybe that is the Food Bowls???
Hi
Fluorocarbon leaders.
The fish cannot see them, ace.
computers - all British inventions. Fraid not Judd.
Frederick, Maryland, U.S. John Vincent Atanasoff, OCM, an American physicist and inventor, is best known for being credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer in the 1930s at Iowa State College.[I]
Englishman Tim Berners-Lee and Belgian Robert Cailliau invented the World Wide Web in 1989.