Please try to limit your response to ONE invention . . . The one 20th century invention that you feel had the most beneficial impact on our world and on our species. Limit your responses to inventions that first saw the light of day during that one century. For example, some might feel that the wheel was humanity's paramount invention, but the wheel has been with us for some 3,500 years! Same goes for the radio, which certainly changed our lives for the better, but its introduction dates back to the late 19th century.
Antibiotics
The era of antibacterial treatment began with the discoveries of arsenic-derived synthetic antibiotics by Alfred Bertheim and Ehrlich in 1907
Although a strong argument could be made for plastics
The world's first fully synthetic plastic was bakelite, invented in New York in 1907 by Leo Baekeland who coined the term 'plastics'.