What Are The Top Two Inventions Of All Time?

As a millennial, you probably expect me to write that the top two inventions of all time are the computer and instant messaging. They did cross my mind. But while these are two things I would be unhappy not to have in my life, there were inventions before the computer and instant messaging that made them possible. I briefly considered the wheel, but really, without the wheel we could still get around by our own two feet.

My first vote goes to the telephone. It was accidentally invented by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson when they started building on the idea that sound could travel through telegraph wires. For this first time in the history of the world, anyone could talk to anyone anywhere at any given moment without physically seeing the person. It also made it possible for people to respond to emergencies––which saved lives. The telephone is the forerunner to the digital revolution of my generation as well: without the phone, there wouldn't be phone lines, or modems or fibre optics or wireless technologies... you get where I'm going on this.

My second vote was going to be for the airplane, but I decided to go with the washing machine after watching Hans Rosling on TED. Washing has always been hard work for women, and don't kid yourself––it's mostly the women who do the washing in both the developed and developing worlds. Before washing machines, women had to wash by hand. It was hard, time-consuming labour, which, unless you had servants, you had to do for hours every week. But the washing machine changed women's lives forever. Women got to load the laundry in a machine and the machine did all the work. This gave women a valuable commodity: time. For the first time in history, women could imagine a life without the hours and hours of drudgery of doing the weekly laundry. So even though people might criticize the washing machine as something that is not environmentally friendly or all that energy efficient, you won't hear that from me. Because thanks to the washing machine, one day I am going to have the time to go to university, to have a career and if I'm lucky, to have a family––and be consumed by things and people who matter to me, and not their laundry.