3 ms·
As a second order to this effect, I've noticed a general "clumping", so to speak, of timeless machines and designs in general, that seem to originate in the lat
by flyingcircus3 9y ago
As a second order to this effect, I've noticed a general "clumping", so to speak, of timeless machines and designs in general, that seem to originate in the late 1940s, and the 1950s, likely due to the unprecedented rise in the United States overall fortunes, after WWII. It's almost like John Kennedy "tricked" us to thinking that he initiated the US involvement in the space race, instead of the natural IP transfer that occurred from Germany to both the US and Soviet Union as the spoils of victory.
Mid Century Design is even an acknowledgement of this concept, in my opinion.
Transistor - 1947 (William Shockley)
Helical structure of DNA - 1953
Maser, precursor to the Laser - 1953
Polio Vaccine - 1955
Fairchild (William Shockley) loses control of the Fairchildren, and many of the definitive titans of the tech industry pull off the first silicon valley disruption - 1957
The wealth, and easing of human suffering that were precipitated by these 5 events, over 10 years are seemingly peerless in human history.
A formidable contender would be Special relativity, airplanes, radio, and Ford's assembly line all came out of the first decade of the 20th century.
- varjag 9y agoAside from space programme which descended from V-2 on both sides, can't think where the U.S. advancements were based on German ones. The effects of Operation Paperclip were limited and didn't leave a lasting impact otherwise. In fact the victory achieved over Third Reich was based in massive industrial superiority.
- flyingcircus3 9y agoStart with the Manhattan project, and work backwards from there. Operation Paperclip may have been a failure, but that was after the war. Any modern electrical engineer's professional lexicon is dripping with the names of the titans of our field. I assume the same is true for physicists, because we electrical engineers stand on the shoulders of physicists every day. But don't take my word for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_... This article describes the letter that Leo Szilard wrote to Albert Einstein, in 1937, which Einstein essentially put his existing scientific prowess behind as an appeal to expertise, and forwarded it on to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In it, he enumerates some of the latest discoveries Enrico Fermi has been finding in Uranium. The letter simply supposes that if these scientists in the US are discovering the possibility to induce a chain reaction in Uranium, it is a safe bet to assume that the Germans were "peer reviewing", if you will. Another factor Einstein lays out is all of the known key Uranium deposits around the world: Czechoslovakia and The Congo, among others. Einstein/Szilard have the foresight to deduce that the Germans stopping all public sales of Uranium in Czechoslovakia, along with the very short human network from those Czechoslovakian Uranium mines to the German leadership, is extremely compelling circumstantial evidence that Germany has already started their Manhattan Project, and have all the benefits of incumbency behind them. How did the US close the loop faster than the Germans? We hired Hungarian refugees fleeing Europe, who ran absolute circles around the rest of the known universe in Mathematics. Any modern student of mathematics can easily recite their names: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-conside... And then in its usual cosmic sense of humor, the universe brought Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem back around the eternal golden braid, and brought us the Cold War.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- paulie_a 9y agoPBS has a great documentary on the Fairchildren called "silicon valley"
- flyingcircus3 9y agoI believe thats on HBO ;)