Question: what is the best thing an engineer ever made

Conor McGinn answered on 4 Mar 2016:

There’s lots – lets explore some of the big ones… Sorry in advance for how long this will likely be!
going way back I would say the wheel or fire (this was engineering!). How our ancestors learnt to make tools, especially for farming, also changed the world in a major way. The practical application of trigonometry, in architecture for example fundamentally changed how we designed buildings. How material science and mechanism designed enabled people to make better boats and navigation methods was huge – we could never have discovered America otherwise. Steam power and the design of engines drove the industrial revolution. This allowed us to mass produce things for the first time. And to travel long distances efficiently. To realise the effect – just imagine how pretty much every road in the world probably didn’t exist 200 years ago?! Then came electricity – this led to the development of the modern city. Later jet engine technology and planes – which enabled us to rapidly travel long distances and even explore space. The telephone, radio and the television allowed people to connect and communicate and spread information in new and incredibly powerful ways. Modern medicine – vaccines, the discovery of antibiotics etc, saved millions of lives. Computers, automation, the internet etc we can now send messages for free invisibly through the air instantly to distant parts of the world – need I say more!!! Renewable energy – this is and will be huge – if we can’t harvest energy without destroying the planet we are screwed. Artificial intelligence and robots, will almost certainly be the next big thing. They may well be the most disruptive technology we’ve ever seen. They have the potential to be used for amazing good and for extreme evil. We live in an exciting time, maybe the most exciting time in history.