I wonder what the greatest invention was before sliced bread?

[Swede]

:shrug:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. The zipper?

[av8rdave]

13. I hate zippers...one of those things I just don't get along with

They snag, catch, rip, jam...I'm sure it's all clumsiness and operator error, but I hate 'EM just the same.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. But there's something kind of disturbing about a Velcro fly.

RRRRRRIP!

[av8rdave]

17. That's why I like button fly

Velcro fly. :rofl:

[struggle4progress]

2. pumpernickel bagels

[MichiganVote]

3. Separate outhouses for men and women

[Richardo]

4. Bottled beer.

:beer:

[Shagbark Hickory]

5. The wheel. n/t

[petronius]

6. The bread knife?

:shrug:

[blueknight]

7. unsliced bread

:shrug:

[bigwillq]

48. ...

What I was just about to post! :) :thumbsup:

[RedCloud]

8. Rocks flaked on both sides=spear=civilization!

[Chan790]

20. We're basically thinking the same way.

Though I opted for flours (as the end result of grain-milling). Without it, we likely never gain the capacity to feed ourselves sufficiently for human civilization to flourish. Sure, we could have stuck to meat and veggies but we'd have destroyed our ability to feed ourselves millennia ago by fallowing the earth and killing every edible living thing.

Early advances without which there is no civilization possible...there are about 30 of them and arguing between them is futility. They're all vital to us advancing beyond nomadic hairless apes.

[Boojatta]

28. How about the invention of alphabetical written language?

Without written language, this argument would be not merely futile, but impossible.

[Chan790]

33. Cuneiform and hieroglyph are both lovely highly-viable non-alphabetical written languages.

Numerical pictography in the first instance, representative pictography in the second case.

I'm just busting your chops, Boo...written language is pretty fucking key. I mean I know ASL and have the Gallaudet typeface but the rest of you would be screwn.

[eppur_se_muova]

35. Not to mention Chinese.

But writing was the key invention. It enables us to learn from previous generations, in their own words.

[trof]

9. Easy: Pocket on a shirt.

Next question?
;-)

[Boojatta]

10. Pottery

[trof]

11. I loved watching the deli bread slicer.

Place where I used to shop in Birmingham.
Buy a whole loaf of rye or whatever and say "Would you slice that, please?"
They'd put it in this kind of cradle and a battery of vibrating knives came down on it.
Chickitey, chickety, chickety, chickety...
And it was SLICED!
Cool.
:-)

[Chellee]

12. Fire.

[Boojatta]

30. You are taking us back a long, long time ago.

You are making us think of a time when one person would say, "That guy is a pyromaniac" and somebody else would respond by saying "No, he's simply inventive."

[dimbear]

15. Shredded bread. Now outmoded. n/t

[Lucian]

16. Hmmmm...

baked bread?

Can't have sliced bread until you have baked bread.

:shrug:

[Boojatta]

29. Bread tends to bake outside in the hot sunlight.

The indoors is an invention, but the outdoors is hardly even a discovery.

[Chan790]

18. Flours.

What person looked at a field full of...well...um...grass. Grains are grasses for the most part. What person looked at that field and said "I bet you could make all sorts of awesome edible stuff...literally a core food-form consumed in every corner of the globe by nearly everybody in the last 10000 years...if we take this grass and grind it up into a fine powder."

That person is a genius...his genius has not been exceeded since. Without him...we're hairless gorillas. "Grain-milling" is one of the earliest key-stage developments of human civilization along with "shelter", "fire" and "clothing"...it's even bigger and more important than "Shamwow!" or "internet".

[graywarrior]

19. Sex

[RushIsRot]

21. Church key!

[madinmaryland]

22. Beer. nt

[krispos42]

23. Indoor plumbing.

Or the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Hmmm... when was sliced bread invented?

[7wo7rees]

24. BEFORE sliced bread?

Printing press.

Before that? Aqueducts.

Before that? Levers.

Before that? Swords.

Before that? Wineskins.

Before that? UNsliced bread.

Before that? Astronomical charts.

Before that? Candles.

Before that? Mushroom soup.

[sakabatou]

34. Alice is playing a Sony Dreamcast?

[7wo7rees]

42. You could have asked "Why is there a power supply on a giant mushroom?"

The point is the shroom, not Alice.

[Enrique]

25. anaesthesia n/t

[Iggo]

26. Winner!

:toast:

[jmowreader]

27. Bread someone else made

[dimbear]

31. Since that happened in 1928, I'm going to go radio.

Seriously. Gateway to modernity.

[Doc_Technical]

32. Liquid Prell

The 2000 year old man approves.

[Rhiannon12866]

36. Maybe just bread?

:D

[tk2kewl]

37. Sliced iPads?

[HughBeaumont]

38. Plastic.

[zanana1]

39. Fire?

[OffWithTheirHeads]

40. Actually, it was canning.

Just ask Napoleon.

[yankeepants]

41. footwear that distinguished right from left

[Hotler]

43. Bacon. n/t

[cherokeeprogressive]

44. Not sure but I think it may have been round...

[6000eliot]

45. A better mousetrap?

[Tom Ripley]

46. Sliced unicorn

[SwampG8r]

47. i was around then so i actually remember

before it was sliced bread it was loafed bread
yup
used to in the old old timey times bake bread with no pan
good bread but not uniform at all
then Jedidiah Loaf in (disputed)1787 invented the "stump pan" and advertised it everywhere for sale in spain
unfortunately for Jedidiah the spanish had lost a violent war with the french in the years preceding his invention and many spaniards were themselves stumpy and felt the name an insult
the name was changed to the Loaf pan and history was made

as to the dispute noted above
in 1786 Thomas Bread filed a patent for what he named "The Bread Pan" which for all intents and purposes was identical to the Stump/Loaf pan
what gave his claim credence was the fact that his family had in fact invented bread almost 3000 years previously in egypt and had always maintained a family profession as bakers
international patent law leaves both with a disputed claim to the title
hope this helps!!

[Bake]

49. Fire. Otherwise you couldn't bake the bread to slice it.

:hi:

Bake