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pwasser wrote: The computer particularly the PC ... There is no other invention that has become so ubiquitous.
*cough* mobile phone *cough*
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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That would be any of those IoT items OG keeps posting over the weekends 
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Most significant technological innovation in my lifetime? That's an easy one -- the personal computer.
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Yes I forgot to mention the medical advances. Heart transplants, NMR and particularly DNA technologies. That is a big one for sure.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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Easy - reliable birth control! 
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I agree - the pill. It allowed the other half of us to be in control of pregnancy. So we doubled the number of people able to do interesting work and caused other societal changes as well.
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Most people around here are far too young to remember Sputnik. (I remember Apollo 11!) But lots of the inventions people would mention as made in their own life time, are not - they are much older.
Like the microwave: As a boy, I read about these in my parents' old science books dated 1951 and 1952. These books also explained how color TV was made, with a photo of a color TV screen. And of optical "fibers" - they were glass pipes, not fibers, but the principle explained in the article is that of optical fibers. The first IC came in 1949. The first digital computers were developed during WW2. FM radio was patented in 1935, the field-effect transistor in 1925.
Of my own "firsts" worth mentioning that I did play around programming APL on what I believe was the first commercial portable (/luggable) personal computer, the IBM 5100, back in 1975 - but it wasn't an "invention", just a smaller form factor.
Some times I have fun with my younger colleagues, when a crash leads to a core dump, I ask if they have ever seen a real core dump - and then I show them my old 1152 bit core memory. Or I dig up my old card decks, or punched paper tape. Even flapping floppies, 8 in size, is something new and unknown to younger people today.
Now that you mention calculators: The first generation came as four-function (+-/*) or five-function (with square root as well) variants - the latter quite a lot more expensive. A friend of mine wanted to save money by buying the cheaper one, hoping that it actually could do sqrt, if you found the solder connections for the button. He digged out a scalpel to cut an opening in the plastic case where the 5-fn model had its sqrt button ... and the button popped up! Even the button itself was there, inside the case! No soldering required, no button needed. Making an opening in the case was all that was required.
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Talking about IBM 5100, have you seen "Compaq Portable 1" restoration videos made by 8-bit guy? One of the hardest restoration projects he has done yet.
Going back on topic, 3D printer is a really cool relatively recent invention. Even they are not as significant like the other things mentioned here, I think it's pretty amazing to see your computer generated 3d model come to life. What do you think? Do you think 3D printers could become big deal in a few years and even reach general consumer market?
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An IBM 5100 (or IBN 5100) is the only computer that can derail the coming distopia! 
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No one mentioned "The Clapper"! 
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I might be about the same age as Peter Wasser - I am 67 and, like him, from Australia. My first computer was my university's IBM 7040 in 1969 which I programmed in assembly language. I have been programming ever since, although now semi-retired. These days I make apps for Android phones using Java. And while I agree on GPS and fibre optics as being significant I think I have to agree with others here that computers, especially as personal devices, and the internet are the innovations with the greatest impact. However a close contender is the mobile phone and another is the commercial use of jet aircraft.
David Shillito
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Invented a while before I was born but anyway. The late Hans Rosling said that the most important invention was the washing machine. Because that freed up a lot of time for the women not having to stand in some frozen creek in the middle of the winter washing clothes. Instead they could read to their kids, help them with homework and make higher education possible for a greater part of the population.
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I'll go another route. In the area of music, the electric guitar. At 55, I can't say it was invented in my lifetime but it certainly flourished and was refined by further inventions during the time. Utilization is possibly more important than initial invention. Richard Daniels in The Heavy Guitar Bible, Volume II makes an excellent point about the extensive sustain providing guitarists playing options far beyond what was available before. A revolution akin to what the violin provided for classical music. BTW, if you are a guitarist, this is a great read from the formative years of rock.
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A colleague asked his grandfather, who responded quickly: "Barbed wire, screen wire, and indoor plumbing."
In my lifetime, I'd say it would be the internet communication protocol which has changed how we do work and play, and makes it possible for this question to be asked of so many so quickly.
Albert Einstein spoke highly of compound interest, though. 
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TCP/IP gets my vote too...just within my lifetime, I believe.
Although, I do miss those random "Pub/Playground facts" that people would spout, that you just couldn't verify immediately....the original, original "Fake News" 
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Genetically Modified Organics. Biggest issue facing mankind is overpopulation and increasing the food supply is the best bandaid (plaster) we have.
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My first "computer" was a huge block of electro-mechanical relays and the next was a large chassis full of thyratrons. The first program I wrote was on a 256 byte Univac digital trainer circa 1964. My vote for the most important technological innovation in my lifetime is the transistor without which there could be no integrated circuit or any of the more recent innovations.
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Black light posters. But not the ones with the black fuzzy stuff on them. We could have gone without the fuzzy stuff.
Money makes the world go round ... but documentation moves the money.
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I have to concur with many of the other respondents here: the personal computer. When I think how it's morphed into the many forms it takes now from PCs to phones to watches to IoT and how the computing engine has shrunk and is in so many objects, I marvel at how much we take this immersion for granted. It's had so many impacts on our lives, too many of them not so good but many that are.
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From a technical innovation, as being on the more consumer receiving end, I will mention some things which were made avaialble at a consumer level in my lifetime.
Yes GPS and gyroscopes were made available at a enterprise level in the 70's and 80's, but the iPhone brought these into a mass availability.
First Compact Disk player.
Then MiniDisc
Then MP3 - Oh wow, I can put 4x as much music on 1 disk now!
PS2 (PlayStation 2 and not the port) - Old enough to realise the sigificant step change in technology. Had MegaDrive, Gameboy, n64 but memory being more as entertainment.
First PC - win 95 (Magic School bus was a great game)
Zip Drive
My first external hard disk drive storage. 500MB external storage. (5inch HDD in in case, power brick just as big as the drive and case)
First USB drive - 20MB in such a small thing, oh wow.
First USB drive with 1 GB
ISDN internet - you mean i can be on the internet all the time now!
my first mobile phone
my first mp3 player (30 gb of storage - i was a Creative fan, nomad jukebox, instead of ipod)
iPhone (my first smart phone would be a sony years later, but this was a big step in the consumer space. I think blackberry was more popular in the business space. Dont recall seeing sidekick out in europe?)
Chrome with auto updating software.
my first SSD drive
Nothing outstanding in a while.
Improved driving safety features I think still in the upper middle class section (tesla AutoPilot, lane assist, car follow)
Carbon Nano tubes - lots of hype,
4k - its great, but until 80% of the computers in the office MUST require it, I dont think a stand out need.
(semi)Contact-less credit card payments - has a very high usage in such a short period of time.
QR codes kind boom and busted in Europe. I understand they are massive and still growing in Asia due to "old" less "smart" phones (nokia pre 2006 type phones, which have more then cable camera to scan QR)
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I like these comments.
I've always had a music collection. Originally this was in the form of vinyl records (and 4 track tape). The anticipation of the CD by music buffs was quite frenzied. I can remember going into my record shop and explaining all this to the owner whose comment was "It won't catch on". At that time the videotape format wars were going on.
MP3s are interesting technology but in my view a backward step.
ZIP drives were a good idea - the implementation was abysmal.
On the subject of hard drives the first IBM PC had none so booting up and loading some useful software took multiple 170k disks. The first hard drive available was 5mb - they were unreliable but a game changer (they all failed prematurely but by the time they did we were up to 20mb from memory).
Like you I'm a huge fan of SSD.
Your post has made me think about robotics and AI. Yes it's all computers (so is the Internet for that matter) but these are quite sophisticated applications.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
modified 10-Oct-18 6:31am.
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maze3 wrote: Yes GPS and gyroscopes were made available at a enterprise level in the 70's and 80's, but the iPhone brought these into a mass availability.
Gyros were also available throughout the 1990's, 3000$ could get you a piece of sh*t with 5 degrees of precision an 2 degrees of drift per minute.
Then Nintendo came along in 2004 to one american accelerometer company and said: "I know you sell 100 of these a year at 3000$. We want you to make a new model that sells for 2$ and we'll buy 50 million of them".
Once that ridiculous tech/money barrier was broken, then all the other manufacturers picked up 2$ gyros (why wouldn't they?).
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I wrote that email a bit quick. Looking it up and now realising, wow, Wii came out in 2006 (2007 global) as well.
So yeah, them bring the price of gyroscopes down, and size of the component, to a hobbyist level I think helps push what applications people use it for.
A lot of things like VR, AR, turn by turn navigation, benefit from more people programming with the devices and finding out algorithms
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Many of the things listed here, like PC's, the transistor, IC's, and TV, are excellent candidates.
Electricity was the first thing I experienced. It was brought into my area the year I was born. Our house was wired when I was one year old. It brought lights, indoor plumbing and television within five years.
My first radio was a 3 transistor portable that ran on two AA batteries. Could only get one or two AM stations.
Watched nuclear power go from a miracle saver of the future to a public relations disaster.
Watched the moon landing on a color TV. Black and white from the moon, but colored announcers.
Watched C/Unix evolve from a experimental laboratory language and system to the common structure of most current languages and systems.
Cheap gas and muscle cars followed by expensive gas and crappy cars that couldn't do over 80.
Watched the Intel 4040 evolve into the 8080, to the 8086.....
Watched the stock market rise, crash, rise, crash, rise crash.....well, you get the picture.
Watched Google become a silent giant.
BUT...the most impressive and significant development, IMO, is the PVR!!!! I can watch a TV show without being blasted with commercials.
My vote: The Personal Video Recorder.
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