What Is Your Favorite Technological Or Engineering Marvel?

[KittyWampus]

Mine would be a toss up between the suspension bridge and the windmill.

[skygazer]

1. Great minds think alike

Suspension bridges for sure - they awe me. I love bridges anyway - I'm from Vermont which has (I'm pretty sure) more covered bridges than any other state - they're beautiful and elegantly engineered. But suspension bridges! They're like something that's not even real - they seem to leap over vast distances and hang there like delicate spiderwebs. Just amazing...

[Allenberg]

8. I think PA has more covered bridges.

I may be wrong.

[Allenberg]

10. No, I'm right

http://pittsburgh.about.com/cs/pennsylvania/a/covered_bridges.htm

I love 'em. :)

[flvegan]

2. Pez dispensers.

You pop the head back, out comes candy. Brilliant!!

[KittyWampus]

3. there's marketing genius in there as well!

[stlsaxman]

4. Computer based digital audio recording.

If not for the recording of sound, music might have been something found only in circuses... jesus- i hate to think about it!

"Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence." Robert Fripp

[skygazer]

9. Yes and no

I think one downside to the mass recording of music is that people don't tend to make their own music so much - they don't gather in family or community groups to sing or jam as they did before mass recording (and television and other types of entertainment). They made their own entertainment. Wealthier families had a piano, poorer families made instruments.

Even for me, growing up we would gather around as a family in the evening, my dad would play his guitar and we'd sing songs. It was very nice. It's rare to see that anymore.

[stlsaxman]

17. Good point, i appreciate that's missing nowadays and it's a real loss,

but as far as the technologies goes it is, to me, a wonderment. You can't touch it but you can feel it... music. and to capture a beautiful piece of music, whatever genre, to be able to witness the musicians craft without them being present. to the musician and composer opens a vast array of choices and possibilties...

i was the kid who hung out in his basement with his Friends, instruments and a couple reel-to-reel decks.

[KittyWampus]

20. another point about modern recordings... lots of "do-overs"

a friend of mine who played cello for NYC Opera said in early recordings the musicians went straight through. You can hear "mistakes". Nowadays, those mistakes are removed one way or other.

[puerco-bellies]

5. Hubble Space Telescope

The closest we'll get to peaking into god's window.

[Deja Q]

6. The refrigerator

I can live without a tv set.

[justabob]

7. lenses are pretty cool

Glasses, camera, telescopes, microscopes..... maybe not as practical as windmills and bridges but pretty cool all the same.

[Allenberg]

11. I'd have to say

microprocessors.

[Democrats_win]

18. Transistors and diodes

A person could spend a lot of time studying these building-blocks of the microprocessor which is itself quite complicated.

[lpbk2713]

22. The storage battery

It was the dawn of DC theory which eventually led to solid state circuits.

[maveric]

12. The "Internets".

[LunaSea]

13. The Mighty Saturn V

Boosted tons of equipment and humans to the moon. The most complicated machine ever built in its time.

It never failed.

[BigMcLargehuge]

14. The 802.16 wireless municipal WAN protocol

followed closely by the original digital telecommunications switch

[Book Lover]

15. The Codex

Keeps a roof over my head and knowledge spread throughout the four corners of the earth...

[Guy Fawkes]

16. Pizza

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. For non-marvels, the printing press. For marvels, the microprocessor.

I just don't think that windmills and suspension bridges count quite as marvels.

A "marvel" to me should be something that is very close to magic, and I think we have to get into electronics for that. And for me, the microprocessor, of all the integrated circuits, is the true marvel.

Either the hard disk or the cyclotron is number 2. I'm having a hard time deciding right now.

[moof]

21. Panama Canal & Brooklyn Bridge