| Which is the best discovery of 20th century ? |
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Asked 3 years ago
by theaskcompass  Germany |
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About
DOCTOR
M.B.B.S
M.S
M.B.A
I.A.S
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16 Points
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Electricity.
Great discovery. Wrong century.
About 1920, 1/4 of houses here were connected.
I was thinking connection instead of discovery.
Woops !
Only one of these was a discovery.
Agree, the other three are inventions!
Precisely!
What about DNA?
In the world of greatest inventions/discoveries you have:
#1 Fire (1,400,000BC~500,000BC)
#2 Wheel (about 3500BC)
#3 Transistor (17 November 1947)
That would make the Transistor the best discovery of the 20th century. Just my opinion.
The transistor would be an invention, not a discovery.
Nope it is a discovery. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain observed (discovered) that when electrical contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, the output power was larger than the input. Pure science. Now the wheel, that would be an invention.
Okay... the principle under which transistors operate was a discovery. But transistors were an invention. William Shockley created the first "working" transistors, but the patent belongs to Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. Note the Wikipedia article is titled "Invention of the transistor," not "Discovery of the transistor." ;o)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor>
If you want to play it that way just about everything was an invention; arguably even penicillin. Granted finding a mold that happened to killed bacteria around it was a discovery, but making Penicillin into a medicine that worked in the human body was an invention.
But back to the question, based on the choice of answers I think it is clear the question was asking about discovery and/or invention.
But clearly of the choices listed, penicillin is the only one that is in any way a discovery rather than an invention. The question really sells the human mind short.
But I tend to (at least try to) give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the wording of the question. Especially when the form limits your word count, and in this case English probably isn't the first language of the person who asked the question.
Considering that three of the four options rely on transistors, I tend to agree.
Only one of these was a "discovery." The other three were inventions. There's a substantive difference.