Deeply unserious list. Johannes Guteburg and Eli Whitney were more influential than everyone else on here combined. And they’re only notable because we don’t know the exact people who invented movable type in China/Korea or interchangeable parts in ancient Carthage.
Inventors had more impact on history than any politician or philosopher. Antibiotics, the internet, refrigeration, the scientific method, gunpowder, fermentation, and nuclear bombs…the list goes on of things that changed the world more than George Washington.
The zipper has more impact on the modern world than George Washington
There comes a point where who made the thing doesn’t even matter. It’s just that it was made. There’s a reason so many inventions have multiple originators. They always come from what came before. No one person is uniquely amazing, there’s just occasionally people with the correct drive, skill, and opportunity to connect the dots and come up with the thing.
Look up the number of inventors who died destitute trying to sell their invention that later went on to change the world. How many of them do we just not know about because Edison et al didn’t find a way to exploit their work or know they existed?
…which is why this list is deeply unserious. The Great Man of History isn’t real because history is driven by systems, people within those systems, and through advancement in how humans perform labor.
So when Eli Whitney rediscovered interchangeable parts (they were discovered much, much earlier by Carthage, then lost), it allowed for rapid industrialization. And Whitney was only one of a handful of people making the same discovery, but the first to present it to people with the power to implement it. Putting Woodrow Wilson in the same category, however, is complete nonsense.
Vulcanization is another good one. Exploitation of a natural resource in South America. It was kinda useless, then vulcanization was “discovered” when they literally could have just spoken to the tribes they enslaved to harvest rubber for 3 seconds and seen that they had been vulcanizing for a thousand years…
I can accept both Washington and Lincoln being on the list due to their personalities being very influential in shaping the US. While the country would probably be the great satan with or without them, they have left clear marks on it, and it is the world empire right now.
Sort of like how Churchill is probably fine to keep in. Pivotal for the immediate post WWII events.
But like all of the British monarchs?? Louis 14 AND 16? Get outta here. Add in Gustav Vasa if you’re gonna do this dumb shit anyway.
i mean there are theories he encountered also muslim prints, his invention is movable type and alloy for it basically (and combining the stuff together, which is important)
Agreed but my point was that the press needed a medium to imprint characters onto(not that other required things didn’t come from elsewhere than China), its true vellum or something else could probably have been used, but paper it was
But yeah all science and technology is iterative, which is why the westoid mantra of ‘China stole X technology’ is so stupid, especially when so many technologies rely on base components(paper, gunpowder etc) that were invented/discovered in China(and of course those things themselves also iteratively built upon prior things some discovered elsewhere)
Do you mean Gutenberg, or are you a really big fan of that one swedish city?
I gotta be honest and say most of the inventors and scientists on the list are a joke too. I’m not a determinist, nothing is ensured to happen, but all of the people in the list weren’t unique in their reasearch or area of focus for their time. Like yeah Edison invented the lightbulb, but it’s not like he were the only guy at the time working on that. Carl Linnaeus made the classification system because a bunch of people wanted one and were working on one.
Deeply unserious list. Johannes Guteburg and Eli Whitney were more influential than everyone else on here combined. And they’re only notable because we don’t know the exact people who invented movable type in China/Korea or interchangeable parts in ancient Carthage.
Inventors had more impact on history than any politician or philosopher. Antibiotics, the internet, refrigeration, the scientific method, gunpowder, fermentation, and nuclear bombs…the list goes on of things that changed the world more than George Washington.
The zipper has more impact on the modern world than George Washington
There comes a point where who made the thing doesn’t even matter. It’s just that it was made. There’s a reason so many inventions have multiple originators. They always come from what came before. No one person is uniquely amazing, there’s just occasionally people with the correct drive, skill, and opportunity to connect the dots and come up with the thing.
Look up the number of inventors who died destitute trying to sell their invention that later went on to change the world. How many of them do we just not know about because Edison et al didn’t find a way to exploit their work or know they existed?
…which is why this list is deeply unserious. The Great Man of History isn’t real because history is driven by systems, people within those systems, and through advancement in how humans perform labor.
So when Eli Whitney rediscovered interchangeable parts (they were discovered much, much earlier by Carthage, then lost), it allowed for rapid industrialization. And Whitney was only one of a handful of people making the same discovery, but the first to present it to people with the power to implement it. Putting Woodrow Wilson in the same category, however, is complete nonsense.
Vulcanization is another good one. Exploitation of a natural resource in South America. It was kinda useless, then vulcanization was “discovered” when they literally could have just spoken to the tribes they enslaved to harvest rubber for 3 seconds and seen that they had been vulcanizing for a thousand years…
/great man theory
I can accept both Washington and Lincoln being on the list due to their personalities being very influential in shaping the US. While the country would probably be the great satan with or without them, they have left clear marks on it, and it is the world empire right now.
Sort of like how Churchill is probably fine to keep in. Pivotal for the immediate post WWII events.
But like all of the British monarchs?? Louis 14 AND 16? Get outta here. Add in Gustav Vasa if you’re gonna do this dumb shit anyway.
And Gutenberg couldn’t have done his thing without the Chinese dude who invented paper
i mean there are theories he encountered also muslim prints, his invention is movable type and alloy for it basically (and combining the stuff together, which is important)
Agreed but my point was that the press needed a medium to imprint characters onto(not that other required things didn’t come from elsewhere than China), its true vellum or something else could probably have been used, but paper it was
But yeah all science and technology is iterative, which is why the westoid mantra of ‘China stole X technology’ is so stupid, especially when so many technologies rely on base components(paper, gunpowder etc) that were invented/discovered in China(and of course those things themselves also iteratively built upon prior things some discovered elsewhere)
Do you mean Gutenberg, or are you a really big fan of that one swedish city?
I gotta be honest and say most of the inventors and scientists on the list are a joke too. I’m not a determinist, nothing is ensured to happen, but all of the people in the list weren’t unique in their reasearch or area of focus for their time. Like yeah Edison invented the lightbulb, but it’s not like he were the only guy at the time working on that. Carl Linnaeus made the classification system because a bunch of people wanted one and were working on one.
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