> And things like clocks and batteries were slowly refined over many, many years, so they don't fit either.
Everything started with a thought, or a discovery. What happens after is irrelevant. The event, that kicks off Dramatic Change(tm), is at the start.
> That's just a list of good inventions.
No. It isn't just a list of good inventions. Ignoring that it's not all inventions, you seem to lack the understanding of the impact. For example:
> Antibiotics
A discovery. It literally changed how humanity moves forward. One of the whitest swan moments in human history.
> public key cryptography
It took until 1975 for someone to figure this out and it changed how we exchange information, legitimize ourselves and deal with our privacy.
> contraceptive pill
The invention of the pill was an event that had massive impact on how Humanity moved forward.
> printing press
The invention of mass production of books lead to the first information explosion, dramatically changing humanity's future.
What you're doing here is mixing your ignorance of the impactfullness of some of the things on the list, with your own personal idea of what's "great", or however you want to call it.
Even if I agree that not everything on that list is equally meaningfull in terms of impact, some of them are really fucking high up the ladder, just like room temperature superconductors.