inventors and revolutionaries etc . . . .

[mollykins]

. . . . who are long gone but their legacy is still with us, what would they think of now a days?

Such as Guttenburg and how millions of papers and books are printed every day, even from a computer.

Or Darwin with all the missing link fossils and dinosaur remains we've found and how so many people now believe him and his ideas are being taught in schools.

The list goes on, but what would they think of how their ideas or inventions have come along?

[jake-the-peg]

I don't think Darwin would be all that amazed at the fossil record but DNA would have amazed him. The mechanism for inherited characteristics was unknown then.

Lavoisier would have been very pleased to see and understand the periodic table

But the one historical character I would love to show around the twenty first century was Roger Bacon - probably the only man who's foresight exceded Leonard da Vinci's

[beso]

I often contemplate those who came up with the really basic stuff.

Somebody was the first person to invent trousers. What an awesome breakthrough. (Probably originally the draftless skirt). Laceup shoes. Buttons. Shirts. Sewing, weaving, knitting.

Someone was the forst to do this stuff. The insight and creativity was profound in comparision to the inventiveness of those who later combined technologies. These were fundamental technologies without precedent.

So many receipies. Cake, bread, gravy, beer, wine. Imagine having consumed these things for the first time in a world where they were previously unheard of.

[mollykins]

Exactly, and beso do you wonder how those people would feel if they came into the 21st century and saw how their ideas had come along . . .?

[jno]

trousers haven't really got much further since the days of the Celts (the Romans took to wearing them when posted to Britain, much chillier climate that then were accustomed to). Zips and keyrings are new, I suppose.

[mollykins]

Well msot other things have come along a lot like jake mentioned, with dna, or what about the old steam loco to the new bullet train, or the person who thought up of photos and now there's 3d, hd tv and films the list is endless.

[mccfluff]

its food that get me, who the hell looked at a mushroom and thought yum or cows udders and thought i'll just have a tug on these...

[McMouse]

The bloke who invented the wheel probably didn't think much beyond his barrow.

[mike11111]

The one which has always baffled me is bread. Who first thought of harvesting corn, extracting the kernels, grinding them up and making dough to bake?

[jno]

... not to mention putting slices of pepperoni on it.

[jake-the-peg]

Your forgetting that a lot of the food we eat was specifically bread by humans.

Cabbages, carrots, wheat, apples the wild versions of these were pretty unapetising - we owe a huge debt to those people who cultivated and improved these.

Go eat a crab apple and see what it's like!

[R1Geezer]

Einstein would have been delighted though not suprised by the application and verifications of relitivity. Especially the bending of light measured during an eclipse and of course the time dilation equation that is needed for GPS to work.

[vascop]

jake
Couldn't help laughing when I read your misspelling of bred as bread(food). No offence, but it was so appropriate.

[mollykins]

Most food discoveries are experimental or accidents but i don't know how you'd accidentally make stuff like bread and pastry . . .

I'm sure he would geezer, my ex physics teacher who looks like him is amazed at how physics works and why

[jake-the-peg]

:c) vascop

Start with a porrige of flour and spill it in the fire I guess.

[Buenchico]

I hope that Johannes Gutenberg would have the good grace to admit that he did not invent printing with moveable type! Even the Gutenberg Museum (in Mainz, which I visited last year) recognises that Bi Sheng did so, hundreds of years earlier.

Even recent inventors, such as John Bardeen (who died in 1991) and Walter Brattain (who died in 1987) might be stunned to see where their invention has led us to. They were the co-inventors of the transistor, without which the 'electronic revolution' could never have taken place. They were around to see the beginnings of personal computers and devices such as bank ATMs, yet they might still be amazed at the rise of the internet, mobile phones, PDAs, media players, debit cards, bar code technology, electronic management of car engines, digital TV, MRI scanners and the thousands of other applications which wouldn't exist without their work. (They were awarded the Nobel prize but, amazingly, hardly anyone seems to know about one of the most important inventions ever!).

Chris