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The world is a pretty complicated place. Just think about all the moving parts it takes to get sliced bread delivered, regularly, to your local grocery store and then apply that to every facet of life. However, there is nothing like a problem to really get human creativity going.
Someone asked “What complicated problem was solved by an amazingly simple solution?” and people from across the internet shared their favorite examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments down below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
There was a mayor called Jaime Lerner in the southern city of Curitiba in Brazil who was famous for using simple creative solutions for solving third world urban problems
In Curitiba’s slums, where garbage trucks could not enter, he created a trash-for-vegetables program. Residents collected their waste and exchanged it for fresh vegetables grown in city gardens, improving cleanliness, nutrition, and public health at the same time.
To clean polluted rivers and lakes, Lerner paid fishermen to collect trash from the water instead of fish in the off season. This protected wildlife, cleaned the waterways, and still provided sustainable income for the fishermen.
Another example is flood control. Instead of building costly concrete canals, Lerner turned flood-prone areas into public parks. These green spaces absorbed excess water during heavy rain and became recreational areas when dry. This solved environmental problems while improving quality of life. Rather than paying for expensive lawn mowing maintenance he introduced flocks of sheep.
Rather than building an expensive underground metro he developed an overground Bus Rapid transit system on dedicated roads with stations that moved the same amount of people at one sixth of the cost. One problem was lining the bus exactly up with pedestrian bus stations which his foreign consultants had many expensive technology solutions. He solved it with a pencil marking.
CloPotato 4 days ago
That is the type of things I'm here for. Just people with grumption. My town and others nearby also adopted sheep as landmowers and they're the cutest, people love to have a walk and see them, several of us know their names. And how nice it is to walk away from the city centre and see a lil bit of countryside-like peace 🐑
JB 4 days ago
Is grumption where you have enterprise and initiative because you are fed up with people's s**t?
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John 4 days ago
The problem is the people with the solutions are rarely the people that are willing to put up with politics 😂
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RELATED:
#2
The Japanese ["Pointing and Calling"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling) safety standard, *Shisa Kanko* (指差喚呼), in the railway industry. By physically pointing at and saying what you're about to do, human error was reduced by almost 85%. It engages more areas of your brain (seeing, speaking, hearing, motion) which act like fail-safes.
I've implemented similar habits in real life. I always touch my key/wallet/phone before leaving the house; keep my eyes on what I'm working on; I do an ok👌gesture after locking the door, so I don't forget; etc.
CloPotato 4 days ago
For some reason despite being 28 I regularly mix up left and right, I've recently taken to pointing toward the direction I mean and it has indeed approved.
B Hobbs 4 days ago
I am more than twice your age, similar problem. Whenever left/right is mentioned, even if I am not involved, I rub my thumb and index finger together on my dominant hand to remind me. Less noticeable to others. I have done this for decades, works well for me.
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nicholas nolan 4 days ago
They do that in the NYC subway system. Adopted from the Japanese system after an accident during WW1.
Apatheist 4 days ago
I was advised to keep a running commentary going when driving while tired - observing and saying out loud about road hazards, other drivers turning, pedestrians etc keeps the mind focussed. Seeing and hearing doubles the input to the brain and increases the chances of processing it properly, and remembering if necessary. It also helps to keep one's speed down. It's something police drivers are taught to do during a chase.
Sue User 3 days ago
I calculate MPG and what time O will hit milestones on my journey,over and over again.
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TotallyNOTAFox 4 days ago (edited)
Having the hands free to do that is a good indicator that something went wrong already
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Brian Droste 4 days ago
I do this at Mexican restaurants. If I order something and they don't understand me, I will point at the meal I want.
Nikolaj Christensen 4 days ago
And do you then speak LOUD and SLOWLY, but still in english, in the universal way of turists/white people trying to communicate with people speaking another language than them???
Load More Replies... Mary Peace 1 day ago
I have always talked to myself, especially at moments like going to bed or leaving the house. "Right, I need this bag, I've got the book to return to Sarah, water bottle, phone, gloves. I've fed the cat and the keys are in the door."
#3
Kinda surprised nobody has mentioned this yet but crop rotation was a simple solution to a very complicated problem.
Huddo's sister 4 days ago
And many ancient cultures already knew this, but colonisers didn't understand/wouldn't listen
Frank 4 days ago
weird comment: which "colonisers" didn't know that? This was also practised in Europe for a very, very long time.
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Verena 4 days ago
Giant monoculture is something only very few countries do, and it requires more effort. Small fields with hedges and flower strips in between and rotating crops reduces workload and expenses for fertilizer and pesticides. 30% to 50% of all produced food is thrown out by processing/packing factories, supermarkets and other sellers and consumers. That includes a lot of meat, which means an animal was born, raised, slaughtered for the bin.
Vincent Bevort 4 days ago
There is still a lot of people believing the the ancients were stupid. Only "we" can be smarter that them. We still have to dicover how the romans used as a recipy for there concrete that still stands after thousends of years when our version alreade crumbles after a decade.
Bill Swallow 4 days ago
You're a bit behind on that one. We now have the recipe for the very durable Roman concrete. There have been several recent articles about that being rediscovered.
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Sally Moen 3 days ago
It's mentioned in the Bible, even is mentioned in modern times (the non-planting-crops-year once every 50 years) the Jubilee Year. Also called a Jubilee. It's meant to give an acreage or field a full year of rest.
#4
Shipping containers.
Before the 1950s, shipping goods across the ocean was expensive and chaotic. Every piece of cargo had to be loaded and unloaded manually from trucks, to trains, to ships, which was incredibly time-consuming, and also resulted in a lot of theft, damage, or your goods ending up mixed in with someone else else's goods.
Malcolm McLean invented a simple steel box that stacks and transfers easily between ships, trucks, and trains. It cut loading time *from days to hours*, and cut costs *by 90%*, and quickly became the standard for global trade.
Midoribird Aoi 4 days ago
The cost of retrofitting it is still high, though.
Load More Replies... Frank 4 days ago
The system was known by then, as the US army used containers by then, albeit small ones. They reason why McLean was successful, was that the - in spite of the US law - owned ships, trucks and other transport systems and so could start his new container system on all kinds of transport, to show that it worked well; And then of course he did not monopolise the system, but had it put into public standards.
Manos 4 days ago
Trucking from North Carolina to New York City was such a pain he thought putting the trailers on a barge would be cheaper. Then he took the the wheels off so they could be stacked.
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primeline31 4 days ago
I use the same concept under my kitchen sink. My sink is a corner sink and the area beneath is rather huge for a cabinet. In the back are the shut offs for the cold & hot water as well as the whole house water shutoff. I used to have to pull all the cleaning product bottles out two at a time to get to the shut offs. I solved that pain in the b**t problem by buying plastic tubs and stacking the cleaning products in them and pushing those units into position. Now all I need to do is grab a bin and slide out 6-8 bottles/cans in one swoop.
Lazy Panda 2 4 days ago
Interesting fact. Containers typically come in two sizes: 20 standard units and 40 standard units. What is a standard unit? A foot!
nm 3 days ago
There are more sizes and shapes: Half containers, High cube, open top, freezers, etc.
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geezeronthehill 4 days ago
And ever since then, the spread of invasive species has increased worldwide because they stow away in containers.
Mook The Mediocre 4 days ago
And invasive species NEVER stowed away in any form of packaging before that? Hmmm. Please explain how the rats brought the bubonic plague to the UK...
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Ralph Vanloton 3 days ago
McLean came up with this by observing the process and asking, "Why?"
Bunny Wood 3 days ago
Basically at the start it was the back of a truck from his fleet. Then it became a standard size. The wharf workers hated the idea because it stopped them from casually stealing.
nm 3 days ago
The wharf workers hated the idea because they lost their job. Pilfering was less important.
Load More Replies... #5
Airports were frequently dealing with p****d off passengers who were able to get off the plane fairly quickly, but I hated the long wait for their bags. They tried to hire more staff to speed it up, they tried to move the belts faster, but people were still angry and annoyed at the time spent standing around waiting for their bags to be unloaded.
The simple fix? Just move the baggage claim further from the arrival gate, so that passengers spent more time walking. By the time they got to their bags, they were often waiting, and the number of complaints plummeted.
DennyS (denzoren) 4 days ago
So that's why I had to walk literally around the airport to get the bag...geez.
WonderWoman 4 days ago
And you get your steps in after sitting for so long on the plane!
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Mel in Georgia 4 days ago
You can get practically all your daily steps in at one go once you deplane off of an international flight at ATL. It was explained to me that the baggage situation was the reason why and seriously I'd rather walk than wait!
Mook The Mediocre 4 days ago
"but I hated the long wait for their bags" - you were concerned for their anxiety? Well done, you.
Mook The Mediocre 4 days ago
This is Panda. Saying "Píssed off" will get you burnt at the stake by militant Baptist grandmothers.
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Robert T 4 days ago
My simpler solution was to simply travel "handbaggage only" on domestic flights. I remember once struggling with a laptop, a suit bag AND a projector (an old one that weighed a ton). I knew it would be an almost empty flight, so no-one batted an eyelid as I struggled up the aisle! Through the airport and out the other end in next to no time. :D
QuincyForrest 4 days ago
Yep. Unplug the phone. Very effectively screens out all unwanted callers. But not a good solution to the problem.
#6
This is an old one they tell in management classes: a toothpaste factory has a major issue. The defect rate of boxes being packed for shipment that, through human error, do not have toothpaste inside is too high, greater than 1%. It’s leading to significant issues for the brand as customer complaints start piling up.
The management team calls in experts from all over. They begin engineering solutions. A scale to measure the weight of the boxes? Hiring a team of checkers to manually vet each employee’s packed orders? The potential solutions roll in, as do the potential increased costs for each solution. Then one day? The defects stop.
Management is befuddled by this. The fancy experts had not yet implemented any solutions. How could the defects have stopped? Curious they walk the assembly line to see. Edna, the chief toothpaste packer of 40 years, has made a small change: she set up a box fan on the conveyor belt right before the boxes get placed into the delivery truck.
Full toothpaste box, good to go? The breeze from the box fan isn’t strong enough to impact it.
Empty dud that escaped human notice? The light cardboard is no match for the fan and blows to the floor, safe from being shipped out.
The moral of the story in management classes is that listening to your own people is more powerful than hiring experts, but in the possible world where it’s a true story Edna and her box fan solved a complex problem very simply.
Khavrinen 4 days ago
Getting management to actually *listen* to their own people would be a major accomplishment, indeed.
Fungus John 4 days ago
better get some experts in to figure out how to do that
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Deborah Brett 4 days ago
The other version of the story is a soap company, where they implement a complex and expensive system that weighs each box, and sets of an alarm and stops the conveyer belt when it detects an empty box. A couple of weeks after implementing, the manager notices he's not heard the alarm all day, and thinks the detector must be broken. He goes to check it, already getting pissed because the expensive fix seems to have broken down. He finds that there's a pedestal fan set up before the weigh station, and it blows empty boxes into a large trash can on the other side of the belt. He asks who set it up, and it's the guy detailed to respond to the alarm. He was too lazy to walk across and reset the machine, so he set up the fan. Then he was too lazy to up the empty boxes at the end of his shift, so he set up the rubbish bin where they were landing.
Michael Largey 4 days ago
The moral is that Edna should have been put in charge of the factory years ago.
S Bow 4 days ago
Yes, and I'll bet that all she got was a handshake and a "good job", yet the ineffective consultants still got paid a bundle.
Load More Replies... John Dilligaf 4 days ago
Untold part of the story: Edna gets reprimanded for bringing unauthorized equipment onto the shop floor without the written OK of her manager. /s/
Sue User 2 days ago
Edna's manager gets a bonus for both saving the company money on a solution and saving money on salaries. 😆
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sudarsanforever 4 days ago
This story is false, it is a common urban legend. Also, an electronically tared weighing scale would require far less electricity that a continuous box fan.
Robert T 4 days ago
Even if Edna is made up, this is something that is actually used on production lines.
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Pferdchen 3 days ago
IBM had a microchip fabrication plant in Vermont that opened in 1966. My brother-in-law got a job there without any college education. In the fabrication process, many chips were produced at once on a single wafer / disc. They were having some sort of difficulty identifying which sections or chips were good and which should be rejects. He suggested the obvious: inspecting them with a microscope. I don't recall, but projecting enlarged images on a screen might have been involved. So obvious that I found it hard to believe, but I saw the award he received.
Sven Horlemann 3 days ago
I am product manager and this is natural for me - I was always surprised by the ignorance of too many of my colleagues. They live in a powerpoint world.
#7
Many deadly infections were cured after the discovery of a forgotten moldy petri dish.
Penicillin and antibiotics rule!
TotallyNOTAFox 4 days ago
And it wasn't even Alexander Flemming that discovered it, it was known for some decades that these fungi produce antibiotics but the discovery didn't have the reach before WW1 showed the necessity for such treatments being mass producable
Forrest Hobbs 4 days ago
TotallyNOTAFox: mass production of penicillin was figured out in WWII. Pfizer's Jasper H. Kane suggested a practical method: deep-tank fermentation. Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau was the engineer who got the first such plant designed, built, and working. I'd love it if those who enjoy boasting about the USA would mention this contribution to the good of the world - mass produced penicillin was a US triumph and frankly a lot more useful than the right to bear arms.
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David Paterson 4 days ago
The craziest coincidence of all is some research assistant finding a strain of penicillin mould inside a cantaloupe at the local markets. Every penicillin sold is a direct descendant of her cantaloupe strain.
Krd 3 days ago
I always thought, if I got thrown back in time, I'd just "invent" penicillin, and vaccines. Super "easy" to do. I would be king in no time (or at least a nobleman). Could also create a lead acid battery, and give electricity to the old world. Just hope they don't call you a demon/wizard and execute you!
Forrest Hobbs 2 days ago
Mmm... The thing about lead-acid batteries is that for a useful one, you need sulphuric acid a means of "forming" it (and of recharging it). Wikipedia says: "The cells initially had low capacity, so a slow process of forming was required to corrode the lead foils, creating lead dioxide on the plates and roughening them to increase surface area. Initially, this process used electricity from primary batteries; when generators became available after 1870, the cost of producing batteries greatly declined." I know enough to give instructions on how to build a basic electrical generator, if someone else makes the magnets and wire and suchlike, and someone else is a skilled craftsman. 😁 (Me? I can just about hit things with a hammer and maybe undo a bolt...)
Load More Replies... #8
Simply being more sanitary/clean helped slow down or almost completely put an end to allot of the health problems caused in the middle ages through the 19th century. I'm so glad I live in an era where being clean is something most people have adopted. Even just brushing teeth & using TP helped create a significantly healthier & better standard of living for most people.
CloPotato 4 days ago
I think back fondly of this colleague who gleefully told me after COVID lockdown "it's so great, not having to bother washing hands anymore". She was coming out of the bathroom. She was not a dry humor/sarcastic person, she was 100% serious.
Deborah Brett 4 days ago
Doctors washing their hands was an incredibly controversial idea, when first introduced, but when it caught on, the effect was massive.
Sue User 2 days ago
And now we are backsliding Apparently doctors overestimate the number of times they wash. And at the same time, mortality during birth is increasing in USA.
Load More Replies... Anonymouse 4 days ago
so many people take the availability of fresh, clean water for granted. it was inconceivable even 100 years ago.
Tim Douglass 4 days ago
When people say "100 years ago" they typically mean "250 years ago". One hundred years ago is pretty much modern era.
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#9
Using ZERO as a number.
FlamingZombies 4 days ago
The hilarious thing is watching right wingers losing their s**t after finding out that the number system we use is the Arabic number system. They actually believe that is some sort of Muslim plot to indoctrinate kids.
Mary Peace 1 day ago
I want to meet the person that thought of this. I would say, "Thanks for nothing!"
#10
Small pox was very d***ly (estimates put the mortality rate for outbreaks somewhere between 20-30% but with some outbreaks as high as 35%). A few different solutions were tried. In China powdered scabs could be used to induce a mild case and then immunity but with a 2-3% mortality rate. Despite the risk this was considered worthwhile enough the knowledge spread to Europe and Africa.
Edward Jenner developed a better solution using the pus from cowpox infections to inoculate people against smallpox.
Cee Cee 4 days ago
His 'hut' where he carried out his experiments still exists at Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire. The castle itself is interesting too and has a dark (reputed) history of regicide.
Batwench 4 days ago
My hubby (then bf) used to live in the village. It is a great place to visit.
Load More Replies... Eastendbird 4 days ago
I'm sure I remember reading in a Ladybird book, when I was growing up sooo long ago, that milkmaids often caught cowpox from the cows and this naturally prevented them from getting smallpox. Jenner noticed the connection and it sparked his research. May be an urban myth, happy to be corrected!
CloPotato 4 days ago (edited)
Turkey had known this for a long while, it was called inoculation, brought back to England by Lady Mary Montagu who'd travelled there. But a lot of people were wary, in no little part because it was women and foreigners deemed as "uncivilized" who practiced this first. George Bernard Shaw called inoculation a "crass witch bite". Still, the practice showed success so it spread in some circles -around lady Mary. For a timeline, she had her daughter inoculated in 1721, and kept being a huge activist for it. Edward Jenner's solution came in 1796. In short, he wasn't a genius who came up with a super brilliant idea, however he still should really be credited for developing a scientific and systematized approach to it, making his peers less inclined to be antivax (and believe me, it was already the same s**t in the 18th century -or don't believe me in fact, go check it out, it's funny) and then his research played a part in developing further vaccines.
CP 4 days ago
Imagine if small pox wasn't basically eradicated with the current US administration. Measles could get out of control any second with the incompetence of Trump and RFK Jr.
S Bow 4 days ago
Measles is spreading rapidly in the US, not surprisingly amongst the unvaccinated. We haven't seen this many cases for decades and people are dying from it, mostly unvaccinated children.
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Brian Droste 4 days ago
George Wahington knew about small pox vaccine rva form of it but refused to do it at first because his troops would be incapacitated for two to three weeks. But he lost quite of few tropps to smallpox. Eventually he gave in and have his troops given smallpox vaccine.
Drop Bear from Hell 4 days ago
It terrifies me that something like smallpox could be utilised to annihilate a third of the world's population if released. We have no immunity and very little in the way of inoculations exist. THIS is my new fear instead of nuclear war.
TACO Don's Authentic TexMex 4 days ago
Small pox inoculation was mandatory in the Revolutionary Army
#11
Water chlorination. Prior to it, water borne parasites and diseases ( think typhoid and cholera) were rampant and a major public safety concern. Water chlorination in public water supplies has saved countless lives.
Razill 4 days ago
Yes. Some states have removed it. Guess now is a good time to study dentistry
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Bruce Mardle 4 days ago
Neither chlorine in water or fluoride in water are ideal solutions; they both cause problems... but if you're lucky they solve bigger problems.
Jaya 4 days ago
In the Netherlands we don't use chlorine in our tap water system, and we're totally fine. I don't know, you probably need good quality water/pipes, so maybe it's more difficult to do? But I'm very happy about it because the water actually tastes nice, instead of feeling like you're drinking from a swimming pool.
Anonymouse 4 days ago
Check out the show "How we got to now - clean water", apparently the guy decided to go ahead (without approval) and simply dumped hundreds of gallons of chlorine into NY city reservoirs. Chlorine is a deadly poison, so this could be a bad thing if he was wrong...
nicholas nolan 4 days ago
Ignorant? Perhaps. Stupid? Nope. It's just poverty all the way down. Always is.
Load More Replies... #12
Breaking a large hole in the the ice on a reservoir during a deep freeze in winter reduces the blue green algae growth in the warmer months.
(Northeast USA) Reservoir management turn on reservoir “bubblers” in the middle of a deep cold snap in winter to break the ice layer above the bubbler. This then allows the exposed water below the ice to drop in temperature a few degrees. This few degrees is enough to k**l off the non-native fish species en-masse (ie Alewives) who cannot survive the colder temperatures. Non native fish species populations are directly correlated with the size and health of blue green algae populations within those reservoirs. Blue green algae/ cyanotoxins in fresh water used for drinking= bad.
#13
Norway solves homelessness by giving people housing.
Ace 4 days ago (edited)
Wrong. They've implemented many measures to try to ensure that people don't become homeless in the first place as well as providing temporary emergency housing for those who do. It's a complicated integrated approach involving multiple agencies.
Deborah Brett 4 days ago
It started with a simple idea: If we give every homeless person basic accommodation and a basic income for a year, no questions asked, will the majority of them be able to fix their own lives? The answer was yes. Then you target debt counselling, a*******n management and mental health services, etc on the remainder. They also found that the homelessness solution is cheaper than the homelessness problem.
Load More Replies... Seadog 1 day ago
Most of Norway also placed power utilities underground, proving to America is is possible, feasible and an all around good idea. No outages due to weather or car wrecks taking out poles, low maintenance. and better aesthetics. The US refuses to do it because the greedy power companies will have to spend some of their ill gotten gains on something to make things better.
Marie 4 days ago
1. It's for asylum seekers, not illegal immigrants. If their asylum is rejected, they can't access those council houses. 2. Today, those people are housed in hotels, it's not necessarly the most cost-effective solution compared to council houses. 3. Asylum seekers being homeless and "natives" being homeless are two widely different subjects. Asylum seekers don't have access to benefits and can't work before getting their refugee status, so they can't find a place to stay by themselves. Leaving them in the streets would only lead to more problems and be a breach of human rights. "Native" homeless population has access to other type of benefits. While benefits aren't always enough, the issue rarely is to just house them. In europe, most of the homeless need social and/or mental help.
Load More Replies... #14
Saving lives during a cardiac arrest by putting all the necessary supplies on a mobile cart. Rather than wasting precious minutes on finding the required medications/equipment, everything is just wheeled into the room.
Michael Largey 4 days ago
Given my family's success rate with surviving cardiac arrest, the only thing they'll need in that cart is a shovel.
#15
Woman and their newborns dying from infection after child birth.
Solution? Doctors washing hands before and after meeting a patient.
Forgot the name of the doctor that thought of it but I remember he was striped of all his titles and sent to an asylum for trying to push doctors to implement this into there practice.
Ian Webling 4 days ago
His name was Ignaz Semmelweis, an Austrian doctor who noted that in a hospital where hand washing was encouraged, the death rates among pregnant mothers from puerperal fever were lower than in one where it was not. Thanks to his work promoting this concept, the chances of a mother dying in Vienna when giving birth went from one in four in 1841 to four in one hundred in 1846 to one in four hundred in 1860. Typical of the time, his ideas were pilloried by the medical community and doctors offended by the proposition they should wash their hands mocked him. In 1865, Semmelweis may have suffered a nervous breakdown. As a reward for his contribution to saving lives, his colleagues committed him to an asylum where he was so badly beaten by the guards that he died fourteen days later.
Bruce Mardle 4 days ago (edited)
(Semmelweis' story reminds me of Elizabeth Kenny's, which I was talking about earlier today. Kenny was a nurse who invented a better way of treating people who had polio. Doctors went to great lengths to prevent her way being used, before eventually admitting she was right.)
Load More Replies... Breadcrumb. 4 days ago
It's back on the rise thanks to this "free birthing" movement. 48 deaths in Canada as of recently. You are taught to never get a ultrasound, don't use any pain management at birth because naturally births are painless and it's modern medicines fault that it hurts. Also germ theory isn't real and nor is gravity, according to it's leaders. I hate how stupid people got after covid..
amy lee 2 days ago
The stupid after COVID is really scary. It's been like a zombie horror film where everyone's brains rotted
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Laura Gillette 4 days ago
They also thought the reason it was more common amongst upperclass than poorer patients was that the upperclass women must be more "fragile" and "delicate" than the "tough, sturdy" working class women. In actuality, it was because the upperclass women were seen by male doctors who didn't wash their hands, and the poor women were seen by female midwives, who had been washing their hands before and after each birth for generations. Neither group knew why what they were doing worked (or didn't) but the midwives were wise enough to trust generational wisdom, as long as it worked, and the men were too full of themselves to think they could learn anything from the women.
S Bow 4 days ago
Thank you, that's interesting, I'd never heard that but I absolutely believe it.
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Catmom 4 days ago (edited)
Still in the dentist's chair after a cleaning, my husband met our new dentist. He reflexively reached out his hand, which she shook. He wasn't expecting what happened next, and before he could say anything, she put her hand that had just touched his into his mouth. We are switching dentists. Universal precautions, people!
SchadenFreudian Psychology 4 days ago
Don’t most dentists wear gloves to do their work? Mine have, for decades now. I think that started in the 1980s, during the AIDS crisis.
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Andi 4 days ago
Georgian / early Victorian times: there are records where death rates of non - vulnerable mothers and children were lower in some areas where the poor couldn't afford doctors because they had to use local women / midwives who washed their hands as a matter of course. Doctors would regularly go from patient to patient to the outside world without any thought to cleanliness. they were still pretty high by modern standards, and it's a bit more complicated than that - social issues, locations of birth, post natal care, keeping men /visitors aways for a few days whilst the mother and child recovered etc. But the practices were based on old long established habits.
#16
Marvin Pipkin, an engineer with GE, was experimenting with acid washes to "frost" clear light bulbs. Clear light bulbs are very fragile and are difficult to use for tasks like reading and close work so efforts to diffuse the brightness were very important. Pipkin filled a bulb with an acid solution and then stepped away to take a call, rather than pour the acid out immediately. When he returned, he tipped the bulb off the table by mistake and instead of breaking it bounced off the floor and stayed intact. Turns out that leaving a weak acid solution inside the bulb for a longer time was the only requirement for making light bulbs commercially viable.
#17
I dunno if that happened everywhere but in France, Iodine deficiency was a major public health problem in the mountains and in places far away from the sea because before refrigirated transport, they couldn't have access to seafood. They simply added a little bit of iodine to table salt and it erased the problem overnight.
Ace 4 days ago (edited)
It was a big thing in Switzerland, more than France, with some populations of remote alpine valleys being dubbed "crétins des alpes" due to mental disabilities in children whose mothers developed goiters due to iodine deficiency, which once identified (by a French doctor in the 18th c.) helped to identify the causes of the disease.
CloPotato 4 days ago
Ohhhh so THAT's where it comes from!! I'd kinda assumed it was just derogatory but with no real ground. Thanks for the info!
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Tea Drinker 4 days ago
It's been creeping back since so many people eschew "common" table salt for sea salt and other exotic, un-iodized salts.
Forrest Hobbs 4 days ago
Tea Drinker: I've never found out why, but here in the UK, table salt is just sodium chloride with an anti-caking agent - no iodine added. For whatever reason, iodine deficiency isn't much of a problem here.
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Helen Rohrlach 3 days ago
Table salt in Australia is iodinised but people are using less. They used to use an iodine cleaner in dairys so trace amounts were in milk however they stopped using it some years ago and now cases of iodine deficiency are on the rise.
#18
Aircraft checklists. Before a 1935 crash of a B-17 prototype, pilots just trained on how to do the necessary steps of starting, taking off, cruising, etc etc. A very experienced test pilot forgot to take off the gust locks before takeoff (a control restrictor so that things don't move around in the wind while sitting on the ground). After the crash engineers developed the first checklist for each stage of flight so that each little/big item would be sure to be attended to and so you didn't have to depend on your memory.
Mary Peace 1 day ago
So, just as important for the safety of lots of people, and similar to the 'check-list', #2 on this list, Japanese 'pointing and calling' on the railways.
Ross Seibert 3 days ago
Still need to use the checklist. Air Indiana 216 went down in 1977 because the pilot didn't do that.
#19
I have a friend who is a pretty big deal consultant. He works with companies in a ton of different fields and you bring him in when you have a process that is causing you major problems and no one else has been able to figure out a solution. It could be a scheduling process issue, a QC issue, a safety issue, etc. Basically, he is the last guy you call before you give up.
He has tons of stories like this, but this is my favorite:
One day he is contacted by a large company somewhere in Asia (I can't remember the exact country ATM). They are having a major issue with injuries on the factory floor and have spent hundreds of thousands, if not a million dollars trying to figure out how to solve the issue. He goes to the factory and spends about 20 minutes on the floor before going to meet with the president of the company.
During the meeting he tells the president that he has a solution for his problem, but it is so simple that he is going to rewrite the cotract with a reduced fee, but he is going to require payment up front because (as he tells it) no one would ever pay him for such a simple solution.
Turns out the offending machine required something like six people to operate and they all had to use various controls while the machine was operating. However, when using the controls, the operators would frequently end up getting hurt by the machine. His solution....move the controls for each person by 2 feet. Last I heard no one has been injured since. He did get his payment.
Michael Largey 4 days ago
I once had a business hire me (a mathematician) to find out if they could improve the efficiency of their delivery and fueling system through mathematical network theory. I worked for three weeks and came back with a one word answer - "No." (I found that the problem was that they were measuring the efficiency incorrectly.) They were very pleased, paid me, and hired me for other consulting jobs.
Seadog 1 day ago
My son went to work for a cabinet component company. Soon after he started they had everyone stop what they were doing so they could reboot the computer that controlled the process. A few days later he happened to be at the location where the offending computer was located and as they were beginning to to a restart he asked them "why?" They said this is the only way they could get the computer to function once the program froze. He showed them they didn't need to stop the entire plant or reboot the computer, just do "this" (idk what he did) and everything would carry on. From that day on, every time the program froze, they'd pull him off whatever job he was on and have him do "this". Every time he showed them what to do. Roughly 3 years later as he's leaving for a new job, they called for him to do "this". After 3 years, they still hadn't learned one simple process he showed them at least once a week.
#20
Clean water. A whole bunch of complicated public health issues were solved/reduced by controlling city water supplies and making them clean. Clean water laws had a more immediate impact on longevity than vaccines and antibiotics. For vaccines and antibiotics, it takes a generation for the increased life span to start showing up in your statistics. The evidence that sanitary water saved lives was clear within a couple of years. Source: Gerald Grob, The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America.
WubiDubi 4 days ago
The orange t**t is cutting the research into sewage that was detecting viral and bacterial outbreaks in big city populations. Health is power and depowering it is in vogue.
Nikolaj Christensen 4 days ago (edited)
To people like HIM the poor who gets hurt from infections poverty etc are better of dead when they can no longer be used as coporate slaves annyway, if dead then no complaints or turning into criminals! Easy right? ✅
Load More Replies... Daniela Keks 4 days ago
How is this a "simple solution"? Cleaning water is not simple/quick/easy
Forrest Hobbs 4 days ago
Daniela Keks: providing fairly clean water from a fairly clean and then filtered source isn't hard, once you've worked out how to make affordable and robust water pipes. Chlorination helps, of course - but once upon a time, back in the 19th century, some of the most impoverished people living in some parts of London had only the Thames as their water source and yes, the river was as filled with all the forms of waste London produced. A decent piped water supply from somewhere that wasn't an actual open sewer was a massive step up.
Load More Replies... Seadog 1 day ago
They should test our local supplied water. I guarantee it won't pass if you get a lab that's not bribed to pass everything to run the test. I tried to get a lab to test it but was informed up front, if they see it's from a supplied system, they will destroy the sample and all records that it was ever there. Bureaucracy at it's finest.
#21
The "Mind the Gap" warnings on the London underground (both audio and visual) are generally considered effective due to a combination of frequency, psychological impact, and clarity, which contributes to overall passenger safety despite significant increases in passenger numbers.
WubiDubi 4 days ago
Some of the gaps require a stretching session beforehand. Bank station for one.
Lucas 4 days ago
Used to work with a colleague who was blind - he'd take a massive step as he wasn't sure quite how big the gap was!
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Eastendbird 4 days ago
I was on a tube train last year with a group of "well-oiled" football fans from Sheffield. They found the "mind the gap" announcement hilarious and proceeded to repeat it, constantly, accosting each passenger as they got on and off the tube train. Now was it mildly amusing the first few times? Yes. Did it become increasingly annoying after they continued to do it Every. Single. Time..also yes. Eventually I changed carriages.
#22
Small children don't wake up from smoke detector alarms consistently, so researchers created one that just had a woman's voice saying "Wake up, the house is on fire." It was much more effective at getting them up and out of bed.
WubiDubi 4 days ago
Yes but student accommodation that has fire alarms that go off daily from toast shows that we can get used to (and sleep through) anything.
Sally Moen 3 days ago (edited)
That's an indication of poor placement of the smoke alarms. Your home ought to have one outside your bedroom, not over your stove or countertop. There ought to be a fan instead
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Lee Gilliland 4 days ago
It was important it was a woman's voice, we instinctively listen to it because we listened to one in the womb.
Rick Murray 4 days ago
I'd like mine if it was able to bleep for burnt toast and smoke from an extinguished candle wafted directly into it (not a peep!) but it screams in the middle of the night when a spider slinks through it. Uh-huh, right...
Load More Replies... #23
Barbed wire was revolutionary for farming.
It was cheap and allowed for the erection of large scale fencing for the first time, ultimately leading to the industrialisation of agriculture.
Upstaged75 4 days ago
Barbed wire is a no-go for horses. Very dangerous. Although horses will somehow find a way to injure themselves on anything - even in a rubber padded stall. 😂
Billo66 4 days ago
Yep and people hated it at first. Look up Fence Cutting Wars in the 1800's.
Bill Swallow 4 days ago (edited)
"And by 'people', we mean mostly 'cattle ranchers', especially when the fences were put up by sheepherders." Cattle, on the other hand, were often left to freely roam the range.
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Helen Rohrlach 3 days ago
I never thought about it but it probably also lead to better breeding as there's more control over which animals ended up as breeding animals.
#24
Putting a little image of an insect in the men’s urinal helps the aim better and reduces a serious amount of people splattering outside it.
Forrest Hobbs 4 days ago
Michael Largey: it was originally a bee, because Latin for "bee" is apis. A-pís, geddit? The ones which use an image of a house fly revolt me - that's one insect which screams "unhygenic, this whole place needs cleaning up right now!" It's possible that the house fly version results in my aim being worse, because I can't bear to look. 😬😉
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RomanceRadish 4 days ago
To help train a little boy: put one square of TP in the toilet and ask him "do you think you can sink the square?"
SouthernGal 4 days ago
Aim like a man or sit like a lady. No gender insults here - just a cute old saying.
Gavin Johnson 3 days ago
At my old works we had four toilets, two had Man U stickers to aim at, two had Man City stickers to aim at. Kept the football fans happy. As a Stockport County fan I didn’t have to be picky about my choice of toilet 😀
Kenneth Smith 4 days ago
And I don't care how good you think your aim is, you'll miss from time to time.
#25
Oh I have a good one. So, with lung transplants, an issue has always been "how long can the lungs be out of the donor and still be viable". Traditionally, you store them on ice around 4 degrees Celsius and 5 to 6 hours is kinda typical for the ischemic time, longer you start to have issues. This creates many logistical issues. Now there's more and more devices out now that can extend that, keep it warm, pump blood through it, oxygenated, etc, but those are all complex and Hella expensive.
Turns out, if you just store the lungs in a fridge at 10 degrees Celsius, the ischemic time can be increased to 12 hours or even more without worse outcomes vs traditional cold storage.
Marie 4 days ago
I think you have the solutions backward, the basic fridge one is the good (and simple) solution.
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#26
Outhouses. In many areas without plumbing or outhouses people just kinda go walk out into the woods and p**p. This makes them vulnerable to hookworms. Outhouses separate p**p from the walking places and limits infection.
Hookworms can result in calorie deficiencies and as result people can be lethargic and not as intelligent. So outhouses can literally improve test scores and society at large just by digging a big hole in the ground and pooping through a hole in a bench.
Bill Swallow 4 days ago
In the right circumstances, even primitive measures most people would sneer at can be quite beneficial.
Laserleader 4 days ago
Ummm. This is not new or technology. Humans have had dedicated areas for toilet activities for eons. They also threw trash into piles called middens to prevent disease from waste products.
#27
Instead of digging the Panama Canal (took long time exposing workers to tropical diseases longer), build a dam and partially flood the same path. Use locks to navigate height.
Ace 4 days ago (edited)
Fairly standard approach to canal building, albeit on an unprecedented massive scale.
Ross Seibert 3 days ago
The simple solution for the mosquitoes was getting rid of all standing water.
geezeronthehill 4 days ago
France tried first, but wanted a sea level canal because that was the suez canal model. They were out of their minds; there is a mountain range in the way. They failed.
#28
One I was personally involved in:
We had dozens of cnc machines all exactly alike and making automotive parts. The engineering team had miscalculated and the coolant supply was inadequate, causing hundreds of faults daily. Every fault required an operator to manually reset and restart the machine. Those operators were so busy resetting faults that they could not perform other tasks.
A friend of mine asked me to help him solve the issue. We went out there together and figured it out in about 10 minutes. We had an engineer add 2 seconds to the pressure switch timer. The coolant switch now waited that little bit extra time before it would fault out, allowing the pressure to build. As soon as all the machines were modified in this way, the faults went from hundreds every day to just a handful.
Everybody was super happy and my friend and I split a max suggestion award, which was $12,500 each. We literally saved the company millions by eliminating downtime and not having to replace expensive coolant systems.
Geoffrey Scott 4 days ago (edited)
We installed a huge painting facility in our plant. It would automatically shut down (paint fumes are burned rather than exhaust VOC's into the air) about the same time every day. It was finally determined someone had included the parking lot lights on the circuit. Every time it got dark, the overload from the lights coming on would shut it down.
#29
Scientists had been trying to get a single layer of graphite, called graphene. Graphite is just a specific structure of carbon atoms, so for a single layer, we're talking about a single carbon atom thick. It's the thinnest two dimensional material known to man or mollusc. They tried all the fanciest equipment. Teams of people at competing companies, universities, and agencies were trying to crack it.
One of those fancy tools was a laser. To prep graphite block, they would use scotch tape to remove dust. IIRC, one night, after some drinking, one of the scientist had a "brain blast" moment, called his coworker, raced down to the lab, and immediately found the graphene! Turns out that the tape would pull graphene sheets off the block, so they had been throwing graphene in the trash the whole time. They won a Nobel prize in physics for their experiments with graphene.
Anyway, graphene is cool because it's conductive, strong, flexible, and transparent. Problem is that the scotch-tape method isn't a great method for mass production. There's been a few other methods tried with varying success and promise. Most people will probably never see a device advertised as containing graphene, but it, and it's mimics, will be everywhere. [Here's more information](https://www.science.org/content/article/twenty-years-after-its-discovery-graphene-finally-living-hype).
Stardust she/her 4 days ago
The same scientists who got graphene were the ones who won the Ig Nobel award for managing to levitate a frog with the help of magnets.
Apatheist 4 days ago
Graphene was touted as the next big thing for lots of stuff, from computers to aircraft windows.
TotallyNOTAFox 4 days ago
If somebody finds a way to mass produce it it will be the next step for digital technology since silicon based components are close to reach their effective limit. But who knows when it will become available
Load More Replies... Bill Swallow 4 days ago
Because, while comments are filtered that way, actual list entries are not.
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#30
The person who realised some of the water wells were contaminated with human waste and that was a reason for all the deaths - no one believed him - there was one family who got really sick but no one in the area got sick but that was coz they walked all the way to a different well because they liked the taste….
Ace 4 days ago
Jon Snow. Cholera. London. The better taste thing is invention. One of the things he had noticed was that families of brewers were much less likely to contract the disease, he surmised that it might be because they drank (weak) beer all the time instead of water. Then he removed the handle from one pump once he'd identified a particular cluster of cases.
Bill Swallow 4 days ago
"In Wine, there is Truth. In Beer, there is Strength. In Water, there is Disease."
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#31
The Hubble space telescope was launched with fault mirrors that collected light incorrectly. The team at NASA discussed a lot of potential options would fix the issue but weren't feasible to do. They ended up removing the least used piece of equipment to install the equivalent of eye glasses. This gave us some of the most amazing pictures of space that anyone has seen.
Bill Swallow 4 days ago (edited)
The main mirror, built by Perkin-Elmer, had been ground to the wrong curve. I remember watching a science documentary about the Hubble, made and shown before the Hubble launched, in which the presenter spoke with someone from Perkin-Elmer. This guy didn't even really talk about the Hubble itself. All he could go on about was the new technology that P-E had never had before, that they had to bring in house to make that mirror, and spent his air time salivating about all the neat things they could do now that they had that technology. After the Hubble was launched, and the flaw in the mirror was publicized, the memory of that documentary left me with a sour feeling that P-E was only interested in the Hubble as a way to get this new manufacturing tech, to the point where they didn't bother with proper testing.
Forrest Hobbs 4 days ago (edited)
Perkin-Elmer did do proper testing. But the test results which indicated a problem were ignored. Basically, P-E had designed a fancy new instrument to test the mirror shape and when the boring old instruments reported a problem, they decided the old kit was wrong and the single new instrument was right - apparently, this was ultimately because P-E management had decided that their optical designers should be excluded from the manufacturing and test processes. Another problem was that NASA quality control wasn't good enough - trusting that P-E's single instrument testing was adequate, and not testing the fully assembled optics as a complete system before launch.
Load More Replies... Bruce Mardle 4 days ago
Google says it cost $1,500,000,000 to fix that problem, so I'm doubtful it qualifies as a "simple" solution.
Bill Swallow 4 days ago
"Simple" is not synonymous with "Cheap". Just like "Primitive" is not synonymous with "Stupid".
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#32
Personal story here.
First job - I was in charge of preparing a weekly excel report that ran into multiple hundreds of lines. Mostly automated with visual basic. In one of the review meetings, a bunch of these lines were deemed unnecessary, and all heads turned to me, asking how long before I could update the sheet and the code to remove the unwanted lines. Everyone had mentally prepared for a 2 week cycle on this.
My suggestion was to just hide the unwanted rows and roll out the “updated” version immediately.
No one clapped, but there definitely were a couple of startled laughs!
Apatheist 4 days ago
That's all very well until someone tries to copy to or from the sheet, then gets confused by the different number of resulting rows.
Ace 4 days ago
I spent not-insignificant periods of my working life trying to make sense of spreadsheet solutions and turn them into proper documented, tested and working solutions. To paraphrase, "When your only tool is excel, every problem looks like a spreadsheet".
Load More Replies... Chich the witch 4 days ago
Did you not learn from Scotty's example? Never tell people how long a project will actually take. Overestimate, deliver slightly ahead of schedule and be crowned a wizard.
wobbly jelly 4 days ago
was in a clients office watched someone go to printer remove a 500+ page report - take the last 2 summary pages and put the rest in scrap paper. I asked what? Oh we only need the summary - OK we'll change the report - the long report was only run over night - the new summary could be run hourly. We did quote 2 days to change it, when we checked the code was 10m job, so they got it the next day and thought they'd won!
#33
At least according to Malcom Gladwell, Korean air safety was improved dramatically by simply ensuring every pilot spoke English well enough to effectively communicate with international air traffic control.
TotallyNOTAFox 4 days ago (edited)
Using a uniformed language and signals in traffic is very common, take SOS for example: Introduced by the german trade navy in 1905, adopted by the military in 1906 it became the international distress signal for all ships in 1908. It was chosen because it was easy to remember and easy to recognize in comparison to "CQD" (The movie "Titanic" got it wrong in one scene). And no, it does not mean "Save our Ship" or "Save our Souls", those were added later and make it a backronym
Norfolk and good 4 days ago (edited)
The Titanic did use CQD as well as SOS. The operators alternated between both to maximise their chances of rescue, as SOS wasn't used universally at the time. There is a deleted scene from the movie where one of the operators says he's going to use the SOS signal as it might be his last chance to do so, which is based on the real life testimony of the operator.
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#34
The game series Wing Commander used more memory than the base memory limit of the (pre-Windows) Microsoft DOS operating system, which means it requires expanded memory management which is more complex.
During development of the first game in the series, there was a defect that after a user exited the game the expanded memory manager would output a specific error message to the command interface, which looks bad but is a non-issue because the game is exited.
To buy themselves some time to fix the issue while still being able to demo the game to stakeholders, one of the developers edited the expanded memory manager itself to change that one specific error message to “Thank you for playing Wing Commander”.
#35
I worked at a company branch where there was lots of f**kery afoot. Lazy managers who didn't do their jobs, favored employees, nepotism, and theft. The owner solved it by firing everyone and dissolving that branch of the company.
Chich the witch 4 days ago
I've worked in govt and private sector. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy. Easy to take pot shots at govt but I've seen good and bad on each side.
BrunoVI 3 days ago
The difference is that in government, dysfunctional levels of bureaucracy result in getting more money, but in business they result in making less money. So outside of businesses with a protected market, there is a natural tendency for businesses that minimize bureaucracy to be the more successful and therefore proliferate the best.
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 4 days ago
So nice when the person in charge takes personal responsibility for the mess he's allowed to occur.
Robert Cosgrove 4 days ago
Including the thousands of lower level (and poorly paid) clerical workers ?
Load More Replies... #36
Type 2 diabetes. It runs in my family. I was on my way. I cut back on sugar, and stopped snacking after dinner. Completely reversed.
Michael Largey 4 days ago
I was heading to Type 2 as well. (My brother had it bad.) My wonderful wife found all these keto substitutes, and my a1c level has reversed directions.
DramaDoc 4 days ago
My T2D was caused by an imbalance with my thyroid. As soon as my thyroid was corrected, the T2D went into remission. I have to be monitored for both conditions now, but I haven't been insulin-dependent in 7 years, and both thyroid and T2D have been classified as 'in remission' for nearly 3 years. I have not needed to change my diet significantly since I was diagnosed 8 years ago and my A1cs have been in the 5.1 - 5.7 range for 7 years. It can absolutely be genetic.
Kate Mothers 3 days ago
Sorry, Type 2 diabetic here. You can back track some if your overall health improves, but you can't completely reverse it, as there's no cure, unless you were misdiagnosed in the first place.
Sally Moen 3 days ago
It's not the sugar that matters, it's the carbohydrate grams you get in each candy bar. Or pickle, or cheese cracker, or whatever. Keto diets feature low carb eating. Lots of folks reduce their sugar intake, others cut bread out of their diets.
Grm Moore 4 days ago
Type 2 is not hereditary. It's caused by too much sugar and carbs in diet.
Laserleader 4 days ago (edited)
No it is not! People can eat themselves int a situation that mimicks type2 by eating things that jump their sugar levels too high (a single donut or a glass of milk contin the same sugars). This is NOT THE SAME as geneticly inherited issues with pancreas and insulin resistant cells. I can eat nothing for three days straight and have a sugar level of 200 naturally (covid helped me discover this). Tell me my diet caused this when I eat less than 70 carbs a day (120 is required for a normal person) and I live on salad and meats (no potato, corn, grains, beans, rice, water only).
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#37
The longitude problem. Centuries of complex maths and astronomy failed the solution turned out to be a good clock. Knowing the time difference instantly told sailors their longitude. Simple idea, huge impact.
Bob Jones 4 days ago (edited)
Not quite true. This was known for a long time but the real problem and what was thought impossible was actually making a suitable clock that would work reliably over a long period of time whist being shaken about on a ship, and subject to large temperature variations. There is a very good book called "longitude" about this
Bill Swallow 4 days ago
James Burke addressed this in an episode of his excellent science history documentary series (and book), 'Connections'. (It might have been Connections II, or Connections III, or his 'The Day the Universe Changed' - it's been too long since I rewatched these...)
Brian Droste 4 days ago
A longtime ago I seen a program about this problem I believe. The authorities I believed couldn't come up with a solution. They tried different clocks. But due to weather and moisture, moving of the ships, the clocks would not stay accurate. The authorities decided to make a contest that anyone who could come up with a solution, they would receive a cash prize. A watchmaker came up with a very simple solution. Just use a pocket watch. Didn't have to worry about the weather or moisture or the movement of the ship. Because it was such a simple solution and he wasn't with the shipping industry and just a watchmaker, the authorities refused to pay him the prize money. Plus, his solution was such a simple solution.
Forrest Hobbs 4 days ago (edited)
Brian Droste: the "watchmaker" was the eminent clockmaker John Harrison, who'd dedicated his life to building the most accurate time keepers in the world. He tried three different marine chronometer designs, each better than the one before, but none of them were quite good enough for navigating at sea. He finally distilled his decades of experience into an incredibly sophisticated watch 13cm/5.2 inches in diameter - now called the H4. One innovation was the fast-beating balance wheel controlled by a temperature-compensated spring. It had a mechanism which allowed power to be supplied continuously to the time keeper even while the watch was being wound. Everything about H4 was absolutely state of the art, in large part because Harrison had invented so much of the mechanism himself. The escapement used tiny pallets made out of diamond "2 mm long with the curved side radius of 0.6 mm" - imagine being given the job of making those items in the late 1750s. Simple? No, it was very very complicated.
Load More Replies... Seadog 1 day ago
Throw in time zones which often follow no rhyme or reason and things get complicated real quick.
roepi 1 day ago
Timezones Re completely irrelevant in this. The clock is set to GMT and you tyen check at what time you have noon. You tyen know your longitude.
Load More Replies... #38
Captain cook cured scurvy with sauerkraut. Maybe an oversimplification but still applicable since he didn’t know why at the time.
Spencer's slave no longer 4 days ago
No, Cook didn't cure scurvy, naval surgeon James Lind had already cured scurvy using citrus, lemon juice, in 1747.
Unicorn 4 days ago
And anyway on Cook's second voyage it was the ship's surgeon James Patten who made the crew eat vegetables.
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Pernille 4 days ago
The Norsemen brought fermented cabbage when going viking and never had issues with scurvy, it seems that they never told anyone else and it had to be reinvented later.
Ace 4 days ago
They typically didn't spend more than a week or two on any voyage though, far too short a time for scurvy to develop. Fermented vegetables have long been known and used in many parts of the world where winter farming was not possible, and were pretty much a winter staple
Load More Replies... Sally Moen 3 days ago
You'll know you have it when your teeth are all loose and your gums bleed.
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Rhoda Isaacs 2 days ago (edited)
in the 1400s Chinese admiral Zheng He travelled with a platoon of thousands of ships. for every 4 ships there was a farm ship, providing fresh vegetables & meat for the sailors. all the other sailing nations in the world knew how to prevent scurvy - it's just the europeans who "discovered" it late...
#39
Using base two arithmetic in computers. The early models tried to use base ten and it was ugly. Then they discovered that it was quite simple to represent a 1 or a 0 based on voltage level. Problem solved.
Twos complement arithmetic was also a magnificent solution to representing negative numbers in a register. (When you add two numbers together using simple binary arithmetic you get the correct answer, regardless of the signs.) It was the "wheel" of computing.
Ace 4 days ago
Binary was already the basis for early mechanical punch card systems long before computers came around, it was not a new approach, no they didn't really try base ten for the actual calculations, as described.
Rick Murray 4 days ago
Ace: The ENIAC would like to have a word. It worked using 10's compliment.
Load More Replies... TotallyNOTAFox 4 days ago
I think I have to mention Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz here, who developed the binary system 200 years before the first computer prototype (Zuse Z1) used it for calculations
Forrest Hobbs 4 days ago
TotallyNOTAFox: mmm.... Thomas Harriot also developed binary - and died before Leibniz was born. Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz was supposedly the first European to publish on the binary system - 1700, apparently. Zuse 1 was merely one early programmable computer - 1938, purely mechanical, and never reliable. There was a lot of computing machinery being designed and built in the 1930s. Zuse 1 was the "first freely programmable computer that used Boolean logic and binary floating-point numbers". But it never worked reliably and even if it had, being mechanical with a clock speed of 1Hz, it was never going to be much of a success.
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 4 days ago
The main reason I like the binary system is that when I get mad I only have to count to 2.
Rick Murray 4 days ago
If you'd like your mind to melt slightly, look up "ternary computer" which each "trit" (the ternary equivalent of "bit") can have three states, often -1, 0, and +1.
#40
The man who invented the automatic sensor for bathrooms, had a problem after installing them. He couldn’t figure out why the men’s rooms worked, but the women’s wouldn’t work all the time. He couldn’t figure out a solution until he went home and explained it to his wife who immediately knew what was going wrong. She explained to him that a lot of women don’t actually sit on a public toilet seat, that actually a lot of them hover over the toilet seat. So the solution was to put the sensor higher than it had originally been.
Ace 4 days ago (edited)
A great example of a completely invented story, and also of some Americans' reluctance to use actual English words like Toilet. This is based on the dreadful idea of automatic toilet flushing systems, whose main function is to try and force users to spend less time using them or risk getting a wet bûm.
BrunoVI 3 days ago
It's funny that you try to slam on Americans for avoiding "crapper" by saying "bathroom," and use the French word for "bathroom." In America, "bathroom" is used to describe a room that actually pretty much always has a bath, even though of course, most people intend to use the crapper when they say they're going to use the bathroom. Crapper rooms that don't have baths are usually gender specific, so can correctly be called "men's room" or "women's room." It is actually against real-estate regulations to refer to a room without a bath as a bathroom, which is why there is the strange practice of referring to a "half bathroom," which is a bathroom missing the half that contains the bath!
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FreeDragon 4 days ago (edited)
"Real story, bro", because all men sit down to pee. For sure...
Sally Moen 3 days ago
If there are "lots of women" hovering over, and not actually sitting down on a toilet seat, I wouldn't know. I've never heard anyone ever describe doing this, except over a pit latrine. Women get their underwear wet if they hover over a toilet seat unless they are super careful, as p33 just doesn't come out straight down like a faucet. It might drip or drizzle, go out the front or back. Sitting down contains it so you don't walk out of the bathroom stall looking like a 5 year old kid who wet their pants.
Gadaffi Duck 3 days ago
I hover, I have never got my underwear wet because I pull them down. You assume a sitting position an inch or so above the seat, nickers round your knees.
Load More Replies... #41
The British military couldn’t get their soldiers to take their doses of antimalarial. At the time, it was quinine mixed with water (and called tonic water). Quinine tastes incredibly bitter. So the soldiers kept getting sick or dying from malaria because they would not drink their daily tonic water. The simple solution was to give the soldiers a ration of gin, which alters the flavor of the quinine.
And thus, the gin and tonic cocktail was born.
Ace 4 days ago
No. Soldiers never got a gin ration. No, gin does not make the quinine taste better. No, this was never a thing for ordinary soldiers. Mixing the quinine with lots of sugar helps disguise the bitter taste, so tonic water was used as a delivery mechanism, just like "a spoonful of sugar" and it became popular amongst the officers.
Huddo's sister 4 days ago
I have to drink a lot of tonic water because of my restless leg syndrome and don't find it bitter. Sometimes I add cordial to it, but I am trying to limit my sugar intake, so often drink it on it's own.
Dusty's mom 4 days ago
Never heard of this. I take magnesium for mine. Thanks for the information!
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Lukas (he/him, it/its) 4 days ago
My little sister likes to drink tonic water just on its own. I find it incredibly gross
Lee Gilliland 4 days ago
Um, sailors got rum, not gin, and rum does nothing to the taste of quinine.
Michael None 4 days ago
And this helped the British military commit countless genocides in tropical climates. Great job.
#42
GPS receiver. Radio navigation, like Loran, was very complicated with hyperbolic curves intersections. To solve it digitally in the reciever back in 1980s would make a very expensive big powerhungry device. Even today it is a big problem.
Now the genius solution: just solve the problem using straight lines. Your calculation will be wrong, maybe by 100s of kilometer off course and useless. And then just do it again, using straight lines from your previous position. An surprisingly, after a few iterations your position converge and is accurate. And even better, this is how the receiver works in normal mode; calculate a new position every second or so. .
martin734 4 days ago (edited)
It doesn't work like that. Each GPS satellite continuously transmits a unique timestamped code that allows the GPS receiver to identify the satellite and it's position, and by comparing the time difference between when the code was transmitted and when it was received, to tell how far away that satellite is. When a GPS receiver receives the transmissions from 4 or more satellites it is able to pinpoint it's position very accurately.
What do you think ?
Ace 4 days ago
Why do so many people want to take perfectly good and interesting historical facts and embroider them into almost complete fiction like so many of these? Presumably by the time they get posted on articles like this the people doing so have already taken the mostly-invented story as actual historical fact.
Apatheist 4 days ago
That's what people have been doing for centuries...read any holy book, for example.
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Dl B 4 days ago
My father worked in a large foundry where it got incredibly hot in the summer time. They had large fans in the roof to pull air through but someone had to climb up on a catwalk and pull chains to open the covers. My father told the boss to make the covers out of a lighter weight material so they would open when the fans started. The boss dismissed it until weeks later when he took my father over to the fan controls flipped the switch and the covers opened. Father never got any recognition. Boss told all the credit.
Ralph Vanloton 3 days ago
When I worked for the Michigan highway department my boss did the same thing with my suggestions; I learned to only make them with several supervisors around thus getting proper credit, and $$ bonuses.
Load More Replies... Mel in Georgia 4 days ago
TIL about a simple solution to the devastating effects by invasive crown-of-thorns starfish on coral reefs. When divers inject them with plain old vinegar, they die in a day or so with no toxic effects on the environment or other species.
Ace 4 days ago
Why do so many people want to take perfectly good and interesting historical facts and embroider them into almost complete fiction like so many of these? Presumably by the time they get posted on articles like this the people doing so have already taken the mostly-invented story as actual historical fact.
Apatheist 4 days ago
That's what people have been doing for centuries...read any holy book, for example.
Load More Replies... Dl B 4 days ago
My father worked in a large foundry where it got incredibly hot in the summer time. They had large fans in the roof to pull air through but someone had to climb up on a catwalk and pull chains to open the covers. My father told the boss to make the covers out of a lighter weight material so they would open when the fans started. The boss dismissed it until weeks later when he took my father over to the fan controls flipped the switch and the covers opened. Father never got any recognition. Boss told all the credit.
Ralph Vanloton 3 days ago
When I worked for the Michigan highway department my boss did the same thing with my suggestions; I learned to only make them with several supervisors around thus getting proper credit, and $$ bonuses.
Load More Replies... Mel in Georgia 4 days ago
TIL about a simple solution to the devastating effects by invasive crown-of-thorns starfish on coral reefs. When divers inject them with plain old vinegar, they die in a day or so with no toxic effects on the environment or other species.
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