Talk:Timeline of historic inventions

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Potassium nitrate military use in the Seleucid Empire

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The cited source for this claim doesn't appear to actually support this statement. The book mentions that the Arabs had a word for potassium nitrate, and that there was evidence of military use in ancient India, but doesn't mention the Seleucid Empire anywhere in the book (as far as I can tell)

I don't know if the claim is true or not but for what it's worth I can't find any other evidence online to support it. I believe it should be marked 'Verify source' 32.221.25.105 (talk) 05:56, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I removed it. I was also unable to find documentation. Rublamb (talk) 22:28, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria for inclusion?

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I think it would help considerably if we could develop criteria for inclusion on this page and state those criteria in the lede. The current selections follow no rhyme or reason that I can discern, and while I am tempted to make sweeping changes, I'm sure each editor having their own standard in mind is how we ended up in this mess. So I've come to the talk page. 166.181.87.25 (talk) 04:59, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A draft, off the top of my head, to maybe serve as a starting point for discussion:

This page lists nonincremental inventions that are widely recognized by reliable sources as having had a direct impact on the course of history that was profound, global, and enduring.

Under this proposal, for instance, we would remove "ejection seats" from the page (unless there is something even more historically significant about them than I am aware of), but, in the same general area, would add an entry like "UAVs" on the grounds that drone warfare is considered a major global development by a sizeable number of historians, and we could back that up with WP:RSs. 166.181.87.25 (talk) 05:24, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I support this change. I'm updating the lead section, as nobody else has yet weighed in. Hadron137 (talk) 23:48, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like this wording would remove trivia/nationality pushing from this page, claims such as "(Did you know) Country X had Y way before date Z, before it was generally knows to exist?" since such developments did not have "direct impact on the course of history that was profound, global, and enduring". All for that. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am going to add that this list is not a search for the first development of an item, but for historically significant inventions. For example, a blacksmith might have invented the first/oldest known prototype of a revolver in the 1500s, but that one prototype was not seen by very many people and, thus, did not have historical impact. However, the Colt revolver, introduced in the 1830s, might be worthy of this list because of its historical impact. Similarly, several people might have independently experimented with a medical treatment; it doesn't matter who was first, but who made the procedure or medication well known. Rublamb (talk) 22:44, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have similar concerns with many of the inclusions in the last couple of decades, which read like ad copy for some successful corporations which successfully put specific products into the mass market, rather than genuine indicators of historic inventions.
I understand that the "credit" going to the companies as a whole may be a result of the specific teams who developed those technologies being under anonymizing contracts (also common in the latter part of the 20th century), but to give a few examples, YouTube was not the first video streaming website, Amazon did not invent the concept of remotely hosted "cloud computing", nor did they coin the term, the iPhone was an iteration upon earlier mobile phone technology, the Kindle was not the first e-reader, and neither Netflix nor Hulu invented nor w" first to offer Video On Demand services.
I would argue that these were milestone product releases, not "inventions" by the same criteria as much of the list. Where do we draw this line? Particularly pertinent to the very gradual evolution of telephones and mobile phones and smart phones, I think. Cerebulon2 (talk) 16:31, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The example I keep think about is Herny Ford. He didn't invent the car, but his manufacturing innovations made the automobile affordable and widely used. Thus, the Model-T is a more important invention historically than whoever the experts say made the first steam-powered automobile prototype. So, I can get why Amazon and iPhone might make the list. The key has to be sources. That way, it is not about my opinion but the opinion of the writer of a reliable secondary source.
However, I can already tell that people are going to be dismissive of online sources if they don't like the invention. For example, I would consider a list published in USA Today to be a general consensus of items that have influenced recent years; however, it was dismissed in the AfD analysis. Another source, with a score of more than 4 in Trustpilot should be considered a reliable source to discuss inventions that have impacted the economy (since it is an investment publication), but it was also dismissed in the AfD analysis as not being reliable and not have the knowledge to talk about this topic. And there are always going to be editors who says we can't determine the impact of recent inventions, regardless of the sources.
The crux of the problem is that are less likely to see print sources for these general topics that used to appeal to younger readers and general interest magazines editors (librarian here, speaking knowledgeable of the publishing industry), meaning online sources will by necessity dominate the section on the 21st century and will continue to make the article vulnerable to a future AfD. One option is to cut off the list at the end 20th century. To me, that only works if we split the article into a series by time periods. This is not a bad idea, given its current length and the RAM it takes to be able to edit. Another option is to state that the invention has to go back at least 25 years or 50 years or some other time period we agree to. That will not be as limiting as it sounds because many of the inventions that are having an impact in the 21st century date back decades earlier, but it should address concerns about needing time to gain perspective. Rublamb (talk) 17:15, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't view USA Today as a particularly problematic source, though the newspaper had no clear political stance until the early 2010s, and even had a reputation of being apolitical. I am more concerned that it is owned by Gannett which has a recent policy of reducing or eliminating its editorial content, in favor of simply reprinting news items from Reuters. Dimadick (talk) 15:13, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nintendo Switch

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Should this Nintendo Switch be added to this article? 205.155.225.249 (talk) 18:41, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When compared to events such as the introduction of CRISPR? No. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 18:45, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why is this not an invention? 205.155.225.249 (talk) 18:46, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Read lead def--> "significant technological inventions". Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 18:52, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]