What is the greatest engineering achievement in history?

Four thousand years separate the oldest of these from the newest. Decide whether sheer scale or sheer difficulty should win.

1. 1
   The Apollo Moon Landing

   Put twelve people on another world and brought them all back, on a budget of $25.4 billion in 1973 dollars.
   1000pts
2. 2
   The Pyramids of Giza

   Built around 2560 BC from millions of limestone blocks, and the tallest structures on Earth for nearly four thousand years.
   912pts
3. 3
   The Golden Gate Bridge

   A 1937 suspension span across a strait engineers had called unbridgeable.
   912pts
4. 4
   The Netherlands Delta Works

   A system of dams, sluices and storm barriers holding back the North Sea from land below sea level.
   789pts
5. 5
   The Transistor

   Invented at Bell Labs in 1947, and the component every other modern technology is assembled from.
   684pts
6. 6
   The Large Hadron Collider

   A 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets cooled colder than deep space to find the Higgs boson.
   684pts
7. 7
   The Roman Aqueducts

   Moved water hundreds of kilometres on gravity alone, with gradients accurate to a few centimetres per kilometre.
   684pts
8. 8
   The Interstate Highway System

   Almost 50,000 miles of road that rebuilt where Americans live and how goods move.
   684pts
9. 9
   The James Webb Space Telescope

   Unfolded a 6.5-metre gold-coated mirror through 344 single-point failures, a million miles from any repair.
   560pts
10. 10
    The Hoover Dam

    Poured 2.5 million cubic metres of concrete in the Depression and tamed the Colorado River.
    560pts
11. 11
    The Internet

    A packet-switched network with no central authority that now carries almost all human communication.
    560pts
12. 12
    The Panama Canal

    Cut a shipping route between two oceans through mountains and malarial swamp, opening in 1914.
    410pts
13. 13
    The Transcontinental Railroad

    Joined the American coasts by rail in 1869, cutting a months-long journey to about a week.
    228pts