A Century of Innovation
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
Lee Kwan Yew, the leader who built modern Singapore, was once asked what he
considered the most important invention of the 20th century. His answer was classic: air
conditioning. Because without air conditioning, Singapore – sitting there next to the
equator – wouldn’t be much of a place to do business.
Perspective can mean a lot when looking back on the century’s inventions
and innovations. The modern typewriter doesn’t carry much weight with Asians. The
photocopier, a moderate technology event in the USA, was a huge deal to old Soviet
totalitarians, who saw that it could threaten their monopoly on information. The first
electric bass guitar rocked the music industry yet barely registered in, say, banking
circles.
For some inventions, perspective hardly matters. Those would be the
universally-great inventions such as the airplane, the TV, the transistor and the
Internet. From almost any angle, they have changed and are still changing the world.
Different Perspectives
But you could twist your mind and think a little differently. Maybe the
century’s greatest invention is modern America – the place of invention. Or, try
to step far into the future and look back. Maybe then the 1969 moon landing stands out,
much as Columbus’ 1492 landing in the New World seems today to be the mega-event of
the 15th century.
USA TODAY wanted to capture some of those perspectives, in effect creating an
end-of-century dinner party conversation about invention. So here’s what we did: We
picked 17 interesting, smart, successful and hopefully fairly different people. They range
from technology industry leaders such as Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Humongous
Entertainment CEO Shelley Day to former Sen. Paul Simon to musician Quincy Jones.
Each graciously agreed to tackle our assignment: Write an essay about the 20th
century invention or innovation that you consider to be most important to society, your
industry or you personally.
From there, the writers went off in a bunch of different directions, usually
very much depending on their perspectives.
This section probably won’t settle any arguments about what is THE greatest
invention of the past 100 years. For that matter, not every great invention is included
here. There is nothing about air conditioning, nor anything about the birth control pill.
And no one mentions Jacques Plante’s 1959 introduction of the face mask for hockey
goalies. From the perspective of a goalie, can you imagine a more important 20th-century
invention?
What we have, though, is an eclectic quilt of commentary and points of view
– pretty much what you’d want from a good dinner party.
