What’s an invention that quietly changed the world, but doesn’t get enough credit?

I don't know man, but I'm thankful for toilet paper everyday. They used to use magazine pages in the old days and those outhouses were so cold in the winter and hot and stinky in the summer, so yeah. 😂

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WiFi

Albert Einstein when asked what mans greatest invention was he said compound interest.

It definitely doesn't get enough credit. It's probably netted more money than all other inventions combined.

Not so much invention as discovery: that of being able to create and control Heat Energy: Fire.

Probably the most fundamental of all human achievements, without which almost everything else could not have been possible... and we do not know where, when and how this happened.

In rough chronological order but spanning millennia:

Controlling Fire led to...

Cooking
Pottery
Copper, Tin and Zinc (hence Bronze and Brass, respectively)
Glass,
Iron (our most valuable, versatile and ubiquitous metallic element, especially in its leading to -
- Steel.
Mechanised Manufacturing and -
- Mechanical Transport
Electricity.

All else are developments from, or relying on, one or more of these!

The telegraph. You can Google it, young uns. It first demonstrated how you could communicate rapidly over long distances, shrinking the globe forever after. Led to the telephone, radio, TV, and eventually the Internet and cellphones. Prior to the telegraph it could take days for messages to be conveyed. Battles were fought after wars had ended, just because the word had not gotten to the battlefields. And where would early stock markets have been without the tickertape sharing the latest price fluctuations? News outlets without the "wire services" which earned their nickname because the stories were conveyed by a wire.

I will shamelessly plug my own invention here: the BioLink(TM) Case. It is a cellphone case that provides a detailed heart rhythm analysis. Check it out at www.biolinkcase.net, if you would.

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Elevators

Asphalt 🚗 🚙

Electricity

GPS

Especially for foreign travel

Paper clip

Can opener

The zipper

You know how you only here about a few millionaires and billionaires i was wondering why we don't hear more about the person who invented the toilet. They are literally in nearly (not all) households around the world.

Paper.

Sliced Bread

The flush toilet.

Pasturization? Penecillin?

Sanitation

WD-40. The preceding 39 water displacement formulas were not quite right.

Cable TV.

The leather belt

The written word

Doorknobs

Indoor Plumbing

Adult sippy cups.

Ecovers and ebikes

Float glass.

Refrigerators and air conditioning.

The wheel. Underrated king

The Barcode

cure for small pox

Brass Knuckles

Fentanyl

Since this is SW I'm amazed that nobody has said "buttplugs" yet!

the flux capacitor

smilies/emojis

Viagra