One true century?

I was listening to CBC 1 -- or something equally intelligent -- and someone said that an invention we all take for granted in the development of modernity was invented "in the middle of the 14th century." Like a flash I was back in the fourteenth century debate. Was, despite the wars and the plague, uprisings and so forth, "the one true century?" I was introduced to this debate by well-educated re-enactors who just loved the clothing and the armor of the period. I was just about ready to throw in the towel. I was one of the people who always told these people, "What about the wars, the plague, etc?" But it seemed that I was regularly running into "in the middle of the fourteenth century." And then I remembered that the wars, the plague, etc. were still real. (The best short discussion is Nicholas Wright's Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years War in the French Countryside. You can love pretty armor (I do) without forgetting the other stuff.