My choices for the Top 5 advances in 20th Century Science, ranked in order of importance.
By DDgrange
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The Wright Stuff!
One of the best inventions? Airplanes. Without it, most inventions would have taken much longer, or might not have happened at all. Great minds are now able to travel around the world in record time and across oceans to get together to invent new things, brainstorm new ideas or meet to discuss and solve world crises. It has shown people that there is way more happening in the world than what is happening in our own backyards. Air Travel has truly opened up the way to the future. -
Spark my words!
The Top invention of the 20th Century has to be the humble Transistor, without it, nothing else would have been able to spark to life.
It is the basic building block in any and all modern day electronics. You can say it definitely "connected the dots" for scientific growth. Shoutout to the Julius Edgar Lilienfield who first came up with the idea back in 1925, but alas, he was just a little bit ahead of his time and the first point-contact-transistor came to life in 1947. -
Chips are indeed brainfood...
The integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit places a set of electronic circuits on a flat piece, aka a chip, of semiconductor material and it has enabled the existance of smaller, cheaper and faster circuits! This little thing is what ultimately brought you personal computers, cell phones and an array of home appliances we enjoy today. It made compact possible, and these days smaller is considered better, more convenient. So micro led to nano, and nano is still evolving. -
Fibre makes everything go faster.
Fibre really does ensure that all things run smoother. The invention of fibre optics has enabled the transmission of data over longer distances and at higher bandwidths. Signals can now travel without losing quality and with little to no interference. We have Narinder Singh Kapany to thank for his breakthroughs in the field, he has ensured that our Entertainment and our link to The World Wide Webb arrives at lightning speeds! -
There are no Strings on me!
Wi-fi, wireless network protocols. The IEEE 802 protocol family of standards giving you local area networking and allowing devices to exchange data through radio waves. This has brought the internet to your home and into the palm of your hands and has led to smarter homes and smarter devices and a whole new world of possibility. It has enabled the world to connect anywhere and anytime without any "strings" attached. -
The Sky is the limit.
From inventions that first allowed people to travel across the world, to inventions that allowed sparks to travel, but not fly, bundled them together to move faster and power more, and then adding data to the the travel log, allowing them to run at lightning speeds and ultimately without wires! Technology has taken off in 1903 and it has been going fast and furious ever since, the sky truly is the limit!