Curiously, according to Bloomberg’s recent ‘The 85 Most Disruptive Ideas in Our History’, the microchip comes second to the first-place jet engine. And their justification seems stranger still – the way in which the jet shrunk the world is perhaps fair enough, though the claim that for the first time the entire surface of the planet was reachable is open to question. Tell that to the likes of Alcock and Brown (first non-stop transatlantic flight, 1919), Macready and Kelly (first non-stop transcontinental flight, 1923), Smith and Nelson (first round the world flight, 1924) (and see Famous Firsts in Aviation for more in this vein). And yet in almost the same breath it is noted that the jet engine technology has become remarkably static.

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