Alphabet v. Wheel- Which is the Greater Invention?

Some simple thought prompts certain things as food for thought, and historical consideration of the basic inventions we enjoy everyday often have people reminiscing on what it might have been like without this or before that. What was life like before our electronic age? Can you imagine what a computer would have been like before the transistor or the microchip? How about before the vacuum tube? What was it like before plastic?

What was it like before iron or bronze?

There are a handful of basic inventions and discoveries that made a fundamental difference for the humanity following ever since and these are contemplated now and then. For example, the discovery of fire is often considered the finest of humanity’s early discoveries since so much rapidly occurred thereafter, and the wheel is often considered humanity’s first primary stroke of genius.

I cannot doubt this grand invention was one of humanity’s first master wonder thoughts of historical proportion. Evidence of the invention of the wheel goes back nearly ten thousand years and we’re still using the hell out of it (can you imagine the difference of our world if one particular family name held a patent on that thing all this time? Hey, a story unfolds…), but is it still the finest of human inventions? Has anything surpassed it in importance? Just because it happened first, does that make it the forever number one?

The history of the Alphabet does not go back quite so far, but this thinker will make the claim that the wheel was dethroned by this one amazing invention. Because, sure, Grog and the other cavemen of the time could have passed on the methods to create another wheel without really having to write it down, but the potential implications of this invention and the potential future that could be created required some serious thought. The point is that the possibility to write down information and then pass it on to others in order to regain that information from what was written down has made a difference in human history unlike anything else.

So, why does the wheel take all the credit as being humanity’s finest invention? Beyond that, was the wheel an actual invention or does it also fall under the category of discovery? Those who first used the wheel for practical purposes may not have just worked out the wheel thinking they need something that rolls, but may have come across something round and found it rolls. Grog or Bill or whoever looked at that and had some dazzling thoughts about what could be done with it, but did he truly invent the thing?

Look, we’ll never know that for sure, but we can be certain that the development of the alphabet wasn’t something so easily stumbled upon. Sure, certain aspects of symbolic drawing likely led to simplifying those symbols in order to ease the time spent (they didn’t have writing tools then, one must suppose) creating them, and eventually a standardization took place. Today’s Phoenician Alphabet is considered the standard by which other alphabets were based on and has been since it was first created so long ago, and it exists with only one other primary alphabetical system, which is the Chinese writing. Sure, there are Hebrew and other forms, but the alphabet we use along with the system still employed by the Chinese are now the mainstays while others just hang on within certain cliques. And the alphabet wins out over that Chinese method as the standard to consider around the globe.

The Alphabet we know of today truly changed the way humanity functions on just about every level. Now, the wheel was a basic invention that changed human history forever, and another standardized invention helped along the way, which was the development of language. The use of language was likely one of the first capabilities placing humanity on the road to sentience and civilization, but the written language allowed humanity to travel so much faster and to so many more people. Writing down how to make a certain wheel and then disseminating that information far and wide would have been better than Grog rolling his one wheel along and having people behold firsthand.

Language was certainly one of humanity’s greatest thresholds of grand importance, but the invention of the written language allowed human thought and discovery to spread just about everywhere. This is why we still consider the library as a location of incredible human wisdom, history and the accumulation of what we know, all in one convenient spot. That is made possible because of the alphabet.

And wow, but is it so simple. Clearly, I am employing this awesome invention at this moment simply to pass on these thoughts to you, and the alphabet ensures these thoughts are passed on far and wide. By using the alphabet in the way it was prescribed (this symbol sounds like this, while this one sounds like that, and you put them together to obtain this sound, or more importantly, this word…) we’ve been able to reach a point where we can fly, discover so many secrets of the universe, see places once thought not to exist, and, well, on and on and on.

As a writer, I am so grateful to have this marvelous invention as a part of my life. In fact, such things as writers would not be here; we would still be mere hunters and gatherers, and maybe doing some farming. At the time of this writing, I have been making my living as a truck driver (all 18 wheels of it), so it isn’t as though I am someone dissing the wheel. Those eighteen wheels have made a positive difference in my life, as well as everyone else’s. Today’s Transportation Industry makes all the difference in the way society and the economy operates, so if trucks were to stop rolling, so wouldn’t everything else.

While it wasn’t something I thought of consciously on a daily basis, but I have to consider how these two primary and ever-important inventions have made a particular difference in my life. Further, while I do find the alphabet the better of the two inventions for several reasons, the wheel does me more in terms of economic potential than the alphabet.

After all, innumerable people benefit from what I do via the wheel, but how many people will ever make it through to reading this particular sentence?