Best Engineering in the Past 100 years

[jim hardy]

An important "small device" that bridged a gap between electronic vacuum tube flip-flops and integrated circuit memory was magnetic core memory.

That stuff was great ! Completely nonvolatile.
We had 270k of it that pretended to be a disk drive. What fast access time it had !

 

[PAllen]

Best engineering, Rube Goldberg machines, best engineer, Rube Goldberg (even though not primarily an engineer).

 

[YoungPhysicist]

Putting a man on the Moon is darned cool.

But the invention of the personal computer has transformed the world. It's the parent of all phones, Speak & Spells, GPS systems and the internet.

I'll nominate the Global Positioning System (GPS), because there are lots of great innovations involved, and it is such a game-changer for navigation and other endeavors. In a strange twist, it also has helped to reduce collateral casualties in military bombing attacks. I know I couldn't make it to many of my shifts in strange places without navigation aided by GPS on my phone...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

How about the boston dynamics robots?
https://www.bostondynamics.com/robots

How about a smart phone? I think a device that knows where you are, can tap into the world's store of knowledge, can communicate with most of the rest of the people in the world, and fits in your pocket would be viewed as miraculous by people from even 100 years ago.

How about transistors that make all those things exist?

For a micro controller amateur enthusiast like me, that might be the most important small black thing ever existed.

Edit: Nothing. Already listed.

 

[phinds]

How about transistors ...

Already listed

 

[YoungPhysicist]

Already listed

Ok.Sorry, I missed that. Previous post edited.

 

[2milehi]

Nuclear weapons - man had the ability to wipe life off this planet. Not something to be proud of.

 

[mfb]

I would like to add two (okay, one and a group):

The ISS
It transformed an environment where humans can't survive even for a minute without help into a home for 6 people. It has been inhabited continuously for over 18 years now.
It also brought together engineers (and scientists) from many different countries.

Every big international engineering project
Examples:
SESAME - a synchrotron light source built together by Cyprus and Turkey, Israel and Iran and the Palestinian Authority, and a couple of other countries. People from countries that sometimes don't even recognize the other countries work together here.
ISS, see above.
Apollo-Soyuz project - USA and Russia collaborating in spaceflight in the middle of the Cold War
CERN's accelerator complex. Started shortly after the second World War by countries from both former sides working together.

They serve as examples how irrelevant the political differences between countries can be, and that you can work together even if the governments are close to starting a war. They also show how much more an international collaboration can achieve vs. what a single country can do.

 

[phinds]

Nuclear weapons - man had the ability to wipe life off this planet. Not something to be proud of.

I disagree. I think the achievement is something to be VERY proud of. The likelihood that we might do something stupid with it is a separate issue.

 

[BWV]

Claude Shannon developing logic circuits in certainly what was the greatest Master’s thesis ever

The Transistor

 

[phinds]

The Transistor

Third mention so far. I think we're in agreement.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Lots of great engineering mentioned in this thread. Picking winners is more like a beauty contest (much as is naming best science), so I'll make no pretense of objectivity.

The element of time pressure and the magnitude of the enemy make the Manhattan Project stand out to me. Of course, as a physicist, I'm also biased. And as long as I admit my bias, I'll also mention the invention of the laser.

My wife would probably mention artificial joints and automotive safety systems: seat belts, air bags, and so on. Survival rates in high speed crashes are truly impressive compared with what they were 50 years ago.

 

[YoungPhysicist]

Parachutes.

That save more people than most things,and it makes early space missions’ Earth return possible,like the Apollo missions.

 

[mfb]

There is no peer-reviewed double-blind study demonstrating that parachutes increase the survival rate of anything.

Edit: @PAllen found a negative result.

 

[Borg]

There is no peer-reviewed double-blind study demonstrating that parachutes increase the survival rate of anything.

I guess that it was difficult to get volunteers.

 

[YoungPhysicist]

I guess that it was difficult to get volunteers.

 

[dRic2]

Every big international engineering project

Hope to se ITER on that list as well... as soon as possible! :D :D

 

[BWV]

The Haber process - without which one would have had enough to eat to come up with other projects

With average crop yields remaining at the 1900 level the crop harvest in the year 2000 would have required nearly four times more land and the cultivated area would have claimed nearly half of all ice-free continents, rather than under 15% of the total land area that is required today.[19]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

 

[YoungPhysicist]

The Haber process - without which one would have had enough to eat to come up with other projects

Mentioned twice.

 

[berkeman]

automotive safety systems: seat belts, air bags, and so on. Survival rates in high speed crashes are truly impressive compared with what they were 50 years ago.

Yes, truly impressive. I can attest to that from personal experience at many vehicle crash sites (I was not involved in the crashes, just the care afterwards).

 

[Buzz Bloom]

There is no peer-reviewed double-blind study demonstrating that parachutes increase the survival rate of anything.

Hi mfb:

But that is a scientific perspective. From an engineering perspective it is not necessary to do double-blinds.

However, I did enjoy the humorous thought.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Borg]

automotive safety systems: seat belts, air bags, and so on. Survival rates in high speed crashes are truly impressive compared with what they were 50 years ago.

Yes, truly impressive. I can attest to that from personal experience at many vehicle crash sites (I was not involved in the crashes, just the care afterwards).

Similarly, the change that was made to automobiles bumpers. Previously, pedestrians tended to be forced under the car when struck. Moving the height of the bumpers to below the knee now tends to force pedestrians over the car in slow speed impacts making them far more survivable.

 

[BillTre]

Very fun thread @anorlunda!

1)
Simplest new thing with a big effect:

The screw driver for cordless drills.

Small simple design, big benefits for those putting things together.
Add magnetic adapter and cordless drill and you get better, faster, easier construction for everyone, usable almost anywhere.

I chose not nail guns because I like screws better: better hold, easier to disassemble.

2)
Second choice, a category: the tools and techniques of molecular biology --> molecular engineering.
This will lead to many revolutionary developments in medicine, biology, human evolution as well as the evolution of many other species!

 

[TeethWhitener]

Not technology per se, but it's difficult to understate how radically the field of industrial engineering (i.e., logistics, lean manufacturing, etc., even something as trivial seeming as the standardization of shipping container sizes) has revolutionized the way we live. Just one of many many examples: I can get an orange in the dead of winter for a few cents, and it doesn't even occur to me that it's extraordinary.

 

[anorlunda]

It isn't clear what "best" means

That's deliberate. With "best" in the title, there are no right answers or wrong answers.

As an aside, the mixing of inks components was also key to the ball point pen success.

Wow can I attest to that. I'm left handed. Ball point pens in the 50s and 60s had terrible ink that smeared the paper as my hand dragged over it. Never could write legibly, and never could get the left edge of my left palm to be other than blue for 20 years.

 

[gmax137]

I'm not the oldest one here but the desks in my first & second grade classrooms still had inkwells in the far right corner. not that we used them for inking our pens (quills?). i do remember the blue fountain pen ink cartridges and the leaky pens they went into. most of us kids used the Bics.

 

[DennisN]

I vote for the transistor.

If you hadn't mentioned the transistor, I would . It was first demonstrated in 1947 and here's a page about it: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/transist.htm (San José State University).
The development of the transistor has had an incredible impact on our society;

• Personal computers, smartphones and calculators all use transistors. As do internet routers, gateways, radios, standard music- and audio equipment, digital cameras, video cameras, and a lot of various electronic scientific equipment etc.
• Moon landing etc: The computers in the Apollo command and landing modules were based on transistors.

Edit:
And Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain got a well-deserved Nobel Prize for it:
"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1956 was awarded jointly to William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect.""
Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1956/summary/

 

[D_Scullion]

Can't argue with any of those top spot suggestions so will maybe throw in a few runner up suggestions:

Formula 1 cars - Peak performance for their application, listed because of the amount of engineering that has gone into their evolution over 3 quarters of a century. No other (commercial) engineering feat has consistently sat right at the cutting edge of current technology for so long - engineered to perfection.

The widget - the little nitrogen filled ball inside my can of Guinness that delivers a quite acceptable glass of draught Guinness in the comfort of my sitting room.

Recent advances in prosthetic's - genuinely life changing

Remote central locking on a car - it's the simple things! . . . just waiting on someone developing remote central locking for my house! . . . Ill throw the remote control for the TV in there too.

Agricultural machinery - I'm a small time farmer who relies on a lot of old machinery and enjoys restoring vintage machinery but also a design engineer who has worked for a company designing new agricultural machinery - the contrast and the advancements are really something to stand back and admire.

The fridge!

 

[jim hardy]

Has high-level computer programming language been mentioned?
I don't know what was the first one, probably a precursor to Fortran.

Were we still bumping along with machine specific 0's and 1's we'd have no internet, no AI,
and half the word would live like Bob Cratchit tabulating columns of figures for the financiers likely with mechanical adding machines.

It's changing the language .

 

[tech99]

I would like to propose the building of the Worldwide telecommunications backbone. Without this we would not have the Web and we would not even be talking to one another. Just think of the collosal network infrastructure under every city, the millions fibre cables linking switches and servers in every centre. Man's absolute ingenuity in integrating new voice, data and mobile services, and the task of forging international agreement on every detail on how it should be done. And at the same time keeping abreast of the rapid development of ideas and diverging opinions. Thank you, ITU.

 

[DaveC426913]

I would like to propose the building of the Worldwide telecommunications backbone.

Hm. I'd say the personal computer is more fundamental than the internet.
You can have a useful computer without the internet**, but you can't have the internet without (>1) computers.

** Yes, you young whippersnappers. There were quite a few decades of good computing done before the internet came along.

 

[PAllen]

It seems LIGO has not been mentioned (might have missed it, but I checked). Given the number of extreme precision engineering challenges, it must be among the top few.

 

[osilmag]

The operational amplifier is one of the most common ICs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_amplifier

 

[256bits]

Remote central locking on a car - it's the simple things! . . . just waiting on someone developing remote central locking for my house! . . . Ill throw the remote control for the TV in there too.

Remotes - nice one. don't forget the garage door opener!

 

[256bits]

You can have a useful computer without the internet**, but you can't have the internet without (>1) computers.

Made me think of the lost art of writing a letter, post cards, going to the library for research and just to browse around, and all that jazz before the internet.

 

[scottdave]

Use of microwave energy for:
communication
RADAR and it's uses: weather, navigation, tracking, distance and speed measuring.
And of course cooking