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What's the greatest invention?

In the third in our series of Big Questions, we invited six writers to make the case for the invention which they think trumps the rest. Samantha Weinberg, an editor on the Times' monthly science magazine Eureka, kicks us off, and sets the criteria. "I am taking the greatest to mean the invention that has had the greatest impact on the most people in a relatively immediate sense," she writes, "power equals energy over time."  

But how do you measure one invention against another? How would you rate “the wheel against the space shuttle”? Your choice will depend on who you are and where and when you live. Ask women, Weinberg writes, "and we might vote for the contraceptive pill (Carl Djerassi, 1960), which, by handing us the responsibility for our own fertility, freed us to run our own lives. Blind people might point to Braille (1824)." Even around Samantha's own kitchen table the suggestions were diverse, from her daughter's favourite, the bridle, to her father's pick, the iPad.

Over the next few weeks we will be publishing online the arguments made by five other contributors in the magazine. But voting starts now. Perhaps readers will agree with Ed Carr, foreign editor of The Economist, who goes all the way back to the blade; or Tom Standage, The Economist's digital editor, who picks another ancient invention—writing. Or maybe readers will follow Roger Highfield (the scientific method), Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu (the transistor radio) or Nick Valéry (the flush toilet) and go for something more modern. Or maybe Weinberg's own choice will persuade—the most modern invention of them all, the internet, which has changed the way we live, love and overthrow dictators. Have your say by voting in the poll below. Or if you think the bicycle should ride away with the prize, or concrete has changed the world, you can make your own suggestions.