HN Explorer

Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

253 points by abrax3141 ↗ HN
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! :-)

582 comments

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metaloha
Rice cookers. Totally ingenious.
dossy
Rice cooker = hipster Instant Pot.
JoeAltmaier
Isn't that reversed? Instant Pot === hipster Rice Cooker
coenhyde
Well i'd say dossy is right. Because he's assigning "Rice cooker" to equal "hipster Instant Pot". Thus we know that they are the same value. You are only doing a test. We don't know for sure if your conditional returns true.
jrace
Rice cookers came out in the 1950s, instant pot was 2009
dossy
Sorry, yeah, I got them mixed up in my head when I was typing it out - I think you understood what I meant, thanks for correcting.

My comment got downvoted, but come on, the Instant Pot _is_ just the hipster version of the old rice cooker ... and the rice cooker is a really important but simple modern invention.

overcast
Most used kitchen item by far in my house, almost used daily.
abrax3141
Not sure this counts as "simple".
mhh__
My dad still uses the family (his dad's) rice cooker from the mid 1950s, so they aren't that complicated, they're basically a heater and thermal cutoff

PSA for anyone who doesn't: Wash your fucking rice

ken
> Wash your fucking rice

Even better: use no-wash rice. It's easier for you, and better for the environment:

> [...] believe it or not, the cloudy water consumers pour off when washing their rice has been identified as a significant source of water pollution in Japan. In the B.G. method [used to make no-wash rice], the bran comes out dry, so instead of going out with the wash water and ending up in rivers and streams, it can be diverted into fertilizer and animal feed.

and:

> It’s considered enough of a problem that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government urges residents to water plants with their togijiru [cloudy rice water] rather than sending it down the sewer. And Shiga Prefecture, in an effort to protect Lake Biwa, has asked its citizens to switch to no-wash rice.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/16/reference/no-wa...

mhh__
I've literally never seen no wash rice in my life (in the UK)
EL_Loco
-> Wash your fucking rice

What? Sure, if you want to remove some of the starch, but what if you don't? I don't really know why you should if you don't want to, unless it was dirty, but rice today comes pretty clean of debris and bugs. Plus, it's going to be cooked, so no problem there.

mhh__
It's not for safety: it's because starchy rice sticks together and makes clumpy bad-tasting rice, it's also much more easily seasoned in my experience if you wash it first.
schwap
A basic rice cooker is a very simple device.
btschaegg
Then I'd like to submit the Bialetti (Mokka-)style coffee maker :)
solarkraft
So what am I missing using a pot on the stove?
jfk13
Not much; you just have to be a bit more careful to manage the heat and time appropriately.
dossy
The incandescent light bulb.

"In 1761, Ebenezer Kinnersley demonstrated heating a wire to incandescence."

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

Jaruzel
I still don't think LED (or Halogen) house bulbs are anywhere near as good as the classic incandescent bulb.

Most LED bulbs give me a headache. Bad LED bulbs cause 'strobing' in my vision which is even worse.

jes5199
I’ve gotten used to LEDs but I recently picked up an incandescent night light bulb- 25 watts for a dim glow. It gets really warm! 25 watts is an absurd amount of power. And people light rooms with multiple 60s! That’s bonkers
tylermac1
Love 25W bulbs for bedrooms. Perfect amount of light to provide a relaxed atmosphere.
madhadron
This isn't the LED itself. It's the circuitry running current through the light emitting material. Unlike incandescents and fluorescents where the medium itself smooths out poor signal from the circuitry, LEDs show you the quality of the signal going in.

Then there's the question of whether the color emission mix is designed so that your eye perceives it as an approximation of a blackbody spectrum. That's an issue of matching doping to our biology and one of those things that I think is just about settled in decent quality bulbs.

Once the doping mix and the quality of circuitry is fixed, the incandescent lightbulb is at best an historical curiosity.

clashandcarry
I find Philips brand bulbs appear to have circuitry to "smooth out" the voltage and provide consistent light levels. I use my phone camera's slow motion mode to record my bulbs and see the flicker. Every brand I've tested via the above method, save for Philips, have suffered from flicker.

Give Philips a try? May just be worth the premium. Hopefully a standard like the one mentioned in a comment below is put into place.

JoeAltmaier
Maybe some non-device inventions: the staff system; the germ theory of disease; currency without a gold standard; public health; public education
arbitrage
as in musical staves? good one!
madhadron
Musical staves aren't after 1700, though. The five line staff we used today was widespread by the 16th century, and staff notation goes back to the 11th century.
dnautics
currency without a gold standard is arguably the original system of money (see debt: the first 5000 years)
pmdulaney
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").

aidenn0
Simplicity is only somewhat related to invention.

The compound bow was not invented until 1966, but any technically-inclined person from the early-modern era would immediately understand how it works from a picture.

willvarfar
Tangential, but if you want to nerd out on bow tech, the slingshot channel is awesome! Rapid fire repeating bows with half draw-weight, all made in the classic mad inventor in a garage charm!

A good intro https://youtu.be/f3fcNyZoEIw

nathell
Zipper (1851) and ballpoint pen (1888) would be my picks.
ryanmercer
The development, and successful commercialization, of the ballpoint pen is a really interesting hole to dive down.

John Loud is like check this cool thing I made, it doesn't really work though. Laszlo Biro comes along and makes it viable, everyone tries to rip him off, then Marcel Bich comes along and is like "Biro, let me have that, everyone sit down Bic has this!".

Stuff You Should Know did a podcast episode about it once. IIRC it was a decent listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXB7479t0XM

hatmatrix
Meanwhile, Levi's 501 still pretending like 1851 didn't happen
Jaruzel
The basic internal combustion engine.

Without it, we'd still be spending half our lives travelling places.

abrax3141
Important, def! But I don't think that this could count as "simple".
abyssin
Not saying it didn't have an impact, but I'm nitpicking about the impact it had on how we spend our time: "Marchetti's constant is the average time spent by a person for commuting each day, which is approximately one hour. [...] Ever since Neolithic times, people have kept the average time spent per day for travel the same, even though the distance may increase due to the advancements in the means of transportation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant

zip1234
I would say the internal combustion engine has not meaningfully cut people's day to day travel. Where prevalent, many just live further away and travel a long time still. I understand that long distance travel has been revolutionized by engines (steam and internal combustion), but I'm not certain about day to day travel. Many people near me are in a car for multiple hours per day. I would love to see a study on average 'commute' times in the 17-1800s.
roosgit
Liquid paper.

Invented in 1956 by a typist, in her kitchen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Paper

ph4
I'm having trouble seeing how this even makes the top 100 list of "most important".
estebarb
12 years ago we still relayed on notebooks and pens for everything. Then smartphones appear and life changed forever. And also devices like clocks, calculators, cameras, gps, planners, maps, agendas, erasers and liquid paper become redundant.
AnimalMuppet
12 years ago was 2008. Most of us didn't type manually by then. Most of us had word processors, and keyboards with a backspace button.
new2628
I still rely on notebooks and pens for everything, yet I never used liquid paper. What am I missing?
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akeck
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.
pcurve
I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but the post it note meetings only provide illusion of getting things done and they can often be destructive if not conducted well or relied on too heavily. Your mileage will vary of course.
013a
Though, many people say the exact same thing about Jira, so...
davidw
Bicycles are pretty amazing, although there's no way you could 'build one yourself'.
miguelmota
Bicycles may seem simple but took many decades to get it right.

Your comment also reminded me of this gallery of drawings from people attempting to create a bicycle from memory which is pretty funny https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw...

notatoad
The most astounding thing about bicycles is that we did actually get it right. looking at the first ~100 years of iteration, you'd kind of assume that it was one of those things that would just keep evolving forever. But then they found the classic diamond frame design, and bikes have been fundamentally the same since then.
davidw
Feels kind of asymptotic to me: they got most of the basics right 100 years ago, but things like derailleurs are a pretty big improvement in terms of allowing an ordinary person to ride over varied terrain. Quick release skewers (grazie a Tullio Campagnolo), lighter materials, clipless pedals (for racers)... have all been incremental improvements. More recently, tubeless tires on mountain bikes are a big improvement in my enjoyment of riding off road.
madhadron
You could also argue that the political necessity in competitive cycling to maintain its status quo (thus not allowing recumbents and the like) has forced us into a local maximum that we cannot easily exit.
dharmab
You can absolutely make arguments that bicycle design is unoptimized.

Why use front forks when they have so many problems? https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/why-are-there-no-alter...

Why haven't recumbent bicycles taken over the road bike market despite many advantages (hint: It has to do with what kinds of traffic we prioritize in cities) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle#Compared_to_...

notatoad
people have been trying to make linkage forks a thing since forever ago, and it never pans out. For all the claims that telescoping suspension isn't very good, there's still nothing better.
Grustaf
I don’t get it, front forks seem very optimal to me. Could hardly be any simpler.
dharmab
They're simple, but from the article:

> The main problem with conventional forks is that they can’t separate bump forces from braking forces.

> As a result, a conventional fork dives under hard braking. As weight’s transferred to the front wheel, the fork springs compress. This uses up fork travel that would otherwise be available for bumps, which is bad enough. But wait, it gets worse...

> Brake dive also shortens the wheelbase and changes the rake angle. In a perfect world, engineers would certainly rather not change those parameters in mid-corner!

This makes braking mid-corner a risky proposition, which leads to accidents when riders encounter surprises mid-corner.

In the motorcycling world this is being worked around by computers, so we're not likely to see an alternate front suspension, unfortunately. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHRWg91hv-M

Grustaf
This seems like it’s talking about front forks with suspension though? Only mountain bikes have that, and in the terrain they are made for it works well. On the road mountainbikes are terrible in numerous ways.
m463
What's kind of fascinating is that sport motorcycles have all reached a similar design too, except they were all influenced by a racing rule that said the fairings couldn't extend forward of the front axle. Before that, motorcyles were tending towards football-shaped.
plopz
What a frustrating article, they say its missing a key component but doesn't say what.
arpfaust
A bar between the axes of the pedals and the rear wheel ;)
Jarwain
Even the artist just says "an important part of its frame".

If I had to guess, it's a bar connecting the back wheel's harness-thing with the gear to maintain a consistent distance. If someone sat on that, I think the wheels would flex out, the chain come loose, etc.

davidw
The chainstays are missing in the first image.
ogre_codes
It's the Chainstays. You need two bars connecting the bottom bracket to the rear hub or the rear wheel is extremely unstable.

Most modern bikes are fundamentally 2 triangles joined at the base.

blackearl
I'd love to see some of these built out and tested. I'm assuming most would snap in half when riding over the first curb. Thanks for sharing!
blacksmith_tb
Well, you can certainly assemble a bike from a pile of components, a pair of wheels, and a frame (try and do that with a sedan...) And it's not beyond most people to learn how to weld or braze a frame together from tubing (or even glue up carbon fiber or bamboo into a frame, at room temp). But smelting the steel and aluminum at home to make the parts is admittedly not practical.
kqr
Not only not practical -- essentially requires a highly refined metal industry to begin with, as I understand it.

It's no surprise the first mass producers of bicycles were weapons manufacturers -- they were the ones with the high quality steel supplies and equipment that allowed for tight tolerances.

bluGill
There are people on youtube who refine their own ores. They are lucky enough to live in a place where ore is close to the surface - not high quality ore, but with enough that for a youtube video you can get a small quantity of pure metal out. (high quality ore is either deep in the ground or already mined). For iron the process is actually simple, knowledge of iron refining likely predated the bronze age, but quality iron ores were too hard to come by to make it useful. (bronze is in much less quantity overall, but where there was was easy to find)

Edit: I won't discount the advances in iron refining though. the methods known thousands of years ago were not suitable to large scale production. It is hard to say if they would have made those advances if ore was available or not.

some1else
> 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

dvirsky
Actually the shipping container itself is pretty much high up there I guess. Pretty revolutionary for a box.
hencq
You might already be familiar with it, but I can heartily recommend the book The Box by Marc Levinson [1]. It describes how a simple idea of putting items in a container first, instead of directly on a ship, completely changed the world. It is for example the reason why Oakland and New Jersey eclipsed San Francisco and New York as ports. When Malcolm McLean, the inventor of the humble container, died in 2001, container ships all over the world, at an agreed moment, sounded their horns in tribute.

[1] - https://g.co/kgs/vCK3nB

ufmace
I was going to post the standardized shipping container myself. It was apparently a massive boost to transportation efficiency when the industry moved to a standard container that a single simple crane could rapidly load and unload from any ship and load onto a truck or railcar. It seems that, before this, most goods were transported in barrels or other one-off small containers loaded and unloaded from ships by manpower. Could take weeks to load and unload a ship.
leoh
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.
ghaff
After which, Haber went on to play a key role in helping Germany develop chemical weapons for World War I.
new2628
Would the world be better or worse off without the population boom that resulted from the invention?
robbrown451
Better to whom? How do you define "better" if not relative to some entity able to appreciate the difference between good and bad?
dredmorbius
Looking at the long-term consequences might be illuminating, though that presupposes agreement on what that long-term consequence is.

If it is a high, stable, prosperous, and happy population, sustainable over the long term, arguably good.

If you start deviating from these criteria, things don't look so good.

H-B has given us "large. Is that population stable? Is it prosperous (and if so or if not, where and why)? Is it happy? And is it sustainable over the long term? If not, what does the end-stage look like, and how does it compare to the status quo ante*, prior to H-B?

As with tackling complex projects, addressing difficult questions sometimes becomes more tractable when decomposed into sub-problems and components.

As with mathematical proofs, sometimes presuming one result, then walking that to its inevitable conclusions, leads to a proof by contradiction.

harryh
Standardized shipping containers massively decreased the cost of global commerce which is perhaps the most important force in the modern world.
arcturus17
Nice one, but we could get into a debate on whether a convention counts as an invention.
harryh
Ya, I dunno if it counts either. Just seemed like an interesting answer so I threw it out there.
riskneutral
I’ve got an even simpler one: the standardized shipping pallet.
harryh
An excellent example of complementary goods! :)
ken
Does standardization count as an invention? Then I'd put the metric system higher than shipping containers.

I'm not sure "you can pretty much build it yourself", either. The actual process is pretty involved [1]. Even if each step is simple, it's a lot of work, and building a large 3D object to precise specifications is not easy.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7l6AQN1KV0

On that note, though, I submit arc welding as a simple modern invention of great importance. Living in a city, it's rare that I'm not within 2 steps of some object that was joined with arc welding. The basic structure of an arc welder is really simple: an electric current, a wire feeder, and some way (like a noble gas) to protect it.

gramakri
Washing machine and dish washer
ganzuul
That's actually a big one because of how much time women would spend on these chores.
candiddevmike
Aluminum beverage cans are an engineering marvel:

https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw

TimSchumann
Fun fact -- 15,000+ aluminum cans are manufactured every second. Every. Second.

Really hope Bill keeps putting out videos, but I understand how life gets and it's not his full time job.

s9w
is that right? That would be something like 5 per day per person on earth.
hackandtrip
Isn't it 5 persons per can?
s9w
right, oops
TimSchumann
I think the number you were shooting for is 15k cans/second = roughly one can every 5 days for each person on the planet.
TimSchumann
If it's off, it's likely less than an order of magnitude off. It's based on the numbers in the video, which he states as half a trillion cans a year from 2015. If anything, I'd guess the number is a touch low.
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PopeDotNinja
Well I just drank my daily 8 cans of Diet Pepsi.
deg4uss3r
My dad worked in a plant growing up, right before college my summer job was cleaning the washing ovens to "make sure I value my education and don't drop out." Amazing to see the aluminum pucks and machinery and get up close and take it apart to clean it, I don't think my dad was worried after the foreman asked him if I was going to be mechanical engineer.
slipwalker
toilet paper, maybe ?...
jfk13
Why? Cleaning with water works fine - better, in many people's opinion.
rafaelvasco
First water of course, and then paper to dry it. If any residue is found, repeat the process.
octokatt
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

[dead] Method5440
Does the theory of evolution by natural selection count as an invention or a discovery? ;)
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