Jeremy Webb - An Editor's thoughts ..

As Editor of New Scientist, Jeremy Webb is sadly not eligible to win a trip to space. To get everyone else's juices flowing, he's submitted some ideas ..

I'm not going to say what my favourite is: that would be giving the game away. But here are some ideas that I think are strong contenders.

The first has got to be the telephone. No other invention has fostered communication in the way the telephone has. The phone allowed people for the first time to talk over vast distances. To be able to let the US and Soviet leaders speak or merely a husband and wife separated by hundreds of miles, that was a great achievement. And although the technology may be different, Alexander Graham Bell's device was the forerunner of the cellphone that we all carry with us today. An entire generation would be lost without them. In developing countries, cellphones are revolutionising not only communications between friends and relatives but also information systems, healthcare delivery and lots more besides.

Next is the humble electric light bulb. It might seem a dim idea, but artificial light has a profound impact on the world.

A few years ago I visited rural Kenya. In much of the area around Mount Kenya, life pretty much stopped after dark. But in one village, people had installed solar panels linked to car batteries. The prime use for this miniature power station was to provide light. A local schoolmaster told me how their lives had changed. Previously, children had gone to bed as soon as it got dark -- paraffin lamps just couldn't provide enough light to read by. But since the installation of electric light bulbs, children read into the evenings. The number of exam passes at the local school went through the roof: more and more children were going on to secondary education and university.

All that education and progress for the cost of a few light bulbs. We tend to take them for granted, but it's not until you go somewhere that doesn't have them that you realise just how important they are. Our modern way of life would stop dead without them.

There are plenty of other ideas out there: the aeroplane, for example, or the transistor, penicillin or Velcro. And I'm dying to see a great justification for how bubble wrap changed the world!

NB. I know this is a lot more that 250 words, but New Scientist Editors aren't allowed to win, so I can break the rules a little ...

You can also hear Jeremy's thoughts in the first of our podcasts.
To subscribe to the series copy the address below into your podcast software: http://www.newscientist.com/spacetrippodcastfeed.ns

The winner has now been chosen and you can read their entry here.

Jeremy Hicks - Catseyes

Like all great inventions, the catseye started off with a simple piece of lateral thinking. Inventor Percy Shaw already had a hand in making motorised road rollers, but lived in a foggy part of England. One evening, crawling home in zero visibility, he saw a cat's eye flashing before him. Inspired, he set to work, creating reflecting studs that could be set into the tarmac (U.K patents #436,290 and #457,536); before long they were required by law.

Jeremy Hicks, Director of Audi UK

Brian Blessed - GPS

Shouting at your car or even at the atlas isn't terribly satisfying, not least because the poor things can't answer back! Thank heavens for satellite navigation, which spouts inanities and half truths and responds well to a tongue lashing. After which it sometimes comes across as quite apologetic. In all seriousness, credit has to be handed to the wizards, who created GPS.

Brian Blessed, Actor, Author and Writer

Tamsin Outhwaite - Solar Cell

The sun was the first power source on earth - and some say it's still the best. Although solar cells as we now know them date from the late 50s when they generated power for the first satellites, the original patent was made in 1946 (US Patent 2402662). Each year brings new efficiencies, as the technology turns once-bulky panels into wafer-thin slivers that can even be sewn into clothes. The sky is, quite literally, the limit.

Tamsin Outhwaite, Actress

William Woollard - MRI Scanner

There seems to be some controversy over who actually developed the Magnetic Resonating Image Scanner (MRI); what's absolutely certain is that this is one of the most important medical inventions ever devised. MRI works, as the name suggests, by manipulating a magnetic field, enabling doctors to probe deep within the human body. It's a technology that's improving all the time, and has already saved countless lives.

William Woollard, Broadcaster and Author

Win a trip to space - the result

Human inventiveness is alive and well, judging by the entries to the win-a-trip-to-space competition. More than 2400 would-be astronauts entered, giving answers characterised by passion, ingenuity and not a little straw-clutching.

It is astonishing how much emotion the humble paper clip can provoke. Certainly it is a simple, practical design, and some people think civilisation would crumble without it. Post-it notes and Blu Tack are similarly lauded for keeping our lives in order. Other popular choices include the biro, for doing what it's supposed to do cheaply and reliably, the PC and the internet for changing our lives so dramatically, and the flush toilet, for improving sanitation, human comfort and for providing a place of solitude in a chaotic world.

For cheek, Maeve Regan deserves a mention for nominating duct tape and the lubricant WD-40. "If it doesn't move and it should, go with the WD-40," she advises. "If it moves and it shouldn't, tape it up." Wise words, no doubt, but there is one too many inventions in her answer. Let's also dispense with venetian blinds (without them it would be curtains for us all): their advocates would do well to find a new jokes website.

The left field is well represented. The Odyssey Gyro is a device used by bicycle stunt riders: it lets them spin their handlebars without tangling their brake cables. It's ingenious, but definitely niche.

More widespread but still on the obscure side are aglets, the caps on the ends of shoelaces that stop them fraying. Even shoes themselves are proposed for services to human mobility. Then there is the keystroke sequence control-alt-delete, that panacea for frustrated PC users.

For passion, it is hard to match Dillon Hayes's selection of the electric guitar: "whatever your taste in music it's hard to deny the powerful imagery and sounds generated by man and his axe". Of the many rhyming entries, this from Lydia Houghton stood out:

How many calories in a tin of Spam?
What's the time in Vietnam?
Should I worry about getting rabies?
Who invented jelly babies?
And so it goes until you discover why these questions are being asked:
Who, what, where, when, how or why?
Finding out is as easy as pie
For answers in life and comprehension
The search engine is the best patented invention

A great entry, if only that last line had scanned...

And so to inventions that have unequivocally changed the course of history. Believe it or not, the wheel was patented in Australia in 2001. While it is hard to believe there was no "prior art" in Australia before the third millennium, there are examples from other countries dating back many centuries. The Gutenberg printing press was praised for spreading information to the masses. But Gutenberg created his machine about a decade before the first patent was awarded in 1449 by King Henry VI of England.

Many entries focused on steam engines, ranging from Edward Somerset's 1663 model to James Watt's more efficient condensing engine, but none made a convincing case for novelty. Cameras gained support for recording historic events, personal moments and everything in between. Oral rehydration salts were a close-run thing: this simple mixture of salt and sugar saves millions of children a year from dying of diarrhoea. So too was the integrated circuit, which underpins so much of our modern world.

The winner chose an earlier transforming technology. Ian Anderson of Staffordshire, UK, opted for radio and gave it an out-of-this-world justification. You can read his entry here.

So, commiserations to all those who had high hopes for their entry and congratulations to Ian Anderson, who now joins the queue to become a pioneer among space tourists.