Invention Wars!

What is the best invention in the history of the world? There are many contenders, all with great claims to have benefitted humanity.

The first contest to decide just which invention is best is the glitzy iPad vs the humble spoon.

The Spoon

The spoon is one of the oldest inventions in the world. Lord Nelson, Albert Einstein, Jesus Christ and Ghandi are all believed to have been regular spoon users.

Spoons come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, from teaspoons up to ladles.  An etiquette has built up around which spoon to use in different situations. To use a soup spoon to stir your tea is both silly and a major social faux pas.

Plastics, metal and wood are used for the manufacture of spoons. This means a well-kept spoon will last you a long time. If you were fortunate enough to have been with a silver spoon in your mouth, said spoon will survive long after you have shuffled off this mortal coil.

Spoons are primarily used for eating soups, cereal and ice cream. They are also used for food preparation and also make great food catapults.

However, their wi-fi capabilities are rubbish. Trying to play Angry Birds on a spoon is impossible. You can’t even use facebook on a spoon.

The iPad

The iPad was unleashed on the world in 2010, bridging the gap between laptop and mobile.

The iPad allowed people to engage with social media, surf the internet, play games and download apps that make farting noises. Its smaller size makes the iPad easier to carry around than the cumbersome laptop.

The iPad’s success lead to a wave of imitators with their own operating systems but the iPad remains at the top of the tablet tree, even if the branch is starting to sag.

The rate of technological change means Apple has to constantly evolve its product. This means improving the interface and functionality. This has the unfortunate side-effect that current iPads will be increasingly obsolete in future years meaning consumers will need to replace their iPads, which generally cost £400 upwards. Spoons are considerably cheaper and will last a lot longer.

The Winner: For its durability and for the way it has evolved humanity beyond the level of savages, the winner of this contest is: THE SPOON!

Can we ever surpass sliced bread?

Got yourself the latest iphone? Or a Sky plus HD box? A 60" LCD TV to fit inside your 6x8 living room? Maybe even a super shiny sports car? No doubt you think all these things are pretty good and they are pretty good but there is something they're not as good as. Something a lot older but still more greatly revered than all of them. I'm talking of course, about sliced bread.

In an age where we can carry movies and hundreds of songs in our pockets, where all information is just a fingertip away on internet and companies are considering the possibilities of commercial space flights, the technological benchmark against all these things are set, is the ability to produce pre-sliced pieces of bread. The phrase still goes 'the best thing since sliced bread'. Sliced bread has existed for a number of years but clearly in the opinion of mankind nothing has come along that can match or even surpass its brilliance. Nobody says 'Wow, thats the best thing since Google.'

Perhaps we underestimate just what a big deal sliced bread was in its time. After doing some research (by research, I do mean googled) and it would seem sliced bread first went on sale in the USA in 1928. By 1928 a lot of things had been invented such as tanks, telephones, economic systems that made no sense and aeroplanes. Presumably, one of these must have been 'the best thing since...' but sliced bread surpassed them all. Consider that a moment, this is definitive proof that bread is better than an aeroplane. People were more in awe of being given pieces of bread already cut up for them than they were at the ability of a machine for aviation.

The question is, if mobile phones, the internet and space shuttles can't shift sliced bread as best invention ever, what can? Can anything? Has our species reached its technological peak? Maybe its not that bread is so great, maybe its the flaws in everything thats come since that has kept it in its place. As far as I know, a paedophile has never used a loaf of bread to contact a small child with.

Or maybe sliced bread just really is brilliant.