http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4513929.stm
The humble bicycle has won a national survey of people's favourite
inventions.
Listeners to BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme were invited to vote
in an online survey looking at the most significant innovations since 1800.
It was an easy victory for the bicycle which won more than half of the vote.
The transistor came second with 8% of the vote and the electro-magnetic
induction ring - the means to harness electricity - came third.
Interplanetary travel
Despite their ubiquity, computers gained just 6% of the vote and the
internet trailed behind with only 4% of all votes cast.
People chose the bicycle for its simplicity of design, universal use,
and because it is a ecologically sound means of transport.
TOP TEN INVENTIONS
Bicycle - 59%
Transistor - 8%
Electro-magnetic induction ring - 8%
Computer - 6%
Germ theory of infection - 5%
Radio - 5%
Internet - 4%
Internal Combustion Engine - 3%
Nuclear Power - 1%
Communications Satellite - 1%
The survey also asked participants which innovation they would most like
to disinvent.
GM foods came top of the polls with 26% of the vote, followed by nuclear
power with 19%.
By contrast the technology most would like to see invented was an AIDS
vaccine.
Alas, plans to ship long-suffering commuters to distant planets may need
to be put on hold with only 15% voting for an interplanetary commuting
transport system.
Half voted water treatment and supply systems as the technology to bring
most benefit to society.
Protestors make point against GM foods
GM foods have sparked widespread protests
Another 23% thought that vaccinations deserved the honour.
Each of the technologies were nominated by a different expert, including
writer Sir Arthur C Clarke, cloning expert Professor Ian Wilmut and
Professor Heinz Wolff.
Prof Wolff's praise of the bicycle held the most sway with voters which
will come as a disappointment to Lord Alec Broers, this year's Reith
lecturer.
His series of lectures - Triumph of Technology - prompted the vote.
In the first of these he expressed surprise at the results of a similar
survey.
It too ranked the bicycle above scientific breakthroughs such as
electricity generation, the jet engine, the discovery of DNA and the
invention of vaccinations