Challenge: Remembering Little Achievements in Design and Engineering

 

There are all sorts of awards out their for big, fancy, world changing developments in design and engineering. Things like the space shuttle, the international space station, the hubble space telescope, the mars rovers, developments in nanomaterials, some of the huge damns and skyscrapers, new methods of generating power, etc. all come to mind as the sorts of inventions or developments that will end up vying for such prizes.

Today, I was struck by the fact that many design enhancements or developments in our world are smaller, more banal or pedestrian, and yet for all that, incredibly useful. I think many of these are under-rated. So I thought I would throw out a small challenge to my reader(s):

Try to think of one or two small design enhancements or small inventions that you've seen over the past 15 or so years and post a line or two about them here. The idea is to identify the sort of thing that is a small invention, device, or feature enhancement and therefore that wouldn't probably make any sort of lists of bigger, more spectacular achievements, but yet one that has the sort of utility that makes you say 'hey, that was a good idea!' and the kind of ubiquity that should mean the other reader(s) would know what it was (or would understand why it was good even if they didn't).

So, bonus points (I'm keeping score) for the best replies!

I'll start with my own first candidate:

The screw-top orange juice carton

Now, this little baby was, if you think about it, a neat development. Maintains the same form factor generally (means package needs to change very little overall and larger scale shipping containers require no changes) as older cartons and keeps orange juice fresher for longer, makes for more convenient pouring, means you don't have to wrestle with reticent cardboard spouts (that can tear while opening and then where does that leave you?), and generally seems so obvious that you say 'wow, why didn't they think of that beforehand?'.

Of course, if it was so obvious, why did none of us think of it?

I hope the packaging designer who came up with this got a raise or a share of the patent revenues. He probably didn't, but it has now become fairly ubiquitous and it is a highly functional design.

So, what else have you got?