4 ms·

tbh the fallacy is thinking that invention is unique to the inventor because the transistor is so fundamental, we probably could've worked towards it in hundre

tbh the fallacy is thinking that invention is unique to the inventor because the transistor is so fundamental, we probably could've worked towards it in hundreds of different ways than Bell Labs but that's a big thing in tech circles - thinking a person or entity doing some technical feat is somehow a sign that they are otherworldly

rowanG077 6y ago
Probably yes. But let's say the transistor would have been invented 20 years later by a university. The world would look completely different today. Simply saying we could have invented it some other way disregards the continous impact a result in research makes.
ColanR 6y ago
That's really easy to say in retrospect, just like it's easy to say any major discovery was inevitable after we've already discovered it.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  But it is really like that. It depends on the groundwork that's there, technical capabilities and tooling. Once that's in place it only takes a lucky guy to pluck the discovery out of the air. Consider dual-space methods in crystallography. Herb Hauptman is credited with the discovery. My undergraduate advisor obliquely mentioned that he had done something similar in 1986 - obtain atom positions from direct methods, then do a few cycles of tangent refinement from the highest peaks. It reduces map noise considerably. Computers were simply too slow at that time to use this as a general method of solving 1000-atom structures, so the approach remained an afterthought. But the possibilities were noted once the computing power was there.
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    It is like that. But simply discoveries being delayed could delay technical advancement for decades and even centuries in the long run.
  - ColanR 6y ago
    The problem is, that lucky guy can take an indefinitely long time to show up. I heard recently about the Scythe Project. Apparently, the scythe was never invented in some places, including India. That's a long time for the lucky guy to never show up.
- obastani 6y ago
  According to Wikipedia [1], the transistor was independently rediscovered by two German physicists just a year later (1948). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#History

rowanG077 6y ago

Probably yes. But let's say the transistor would have been invented 20 years later by a university. The world would look completely different today. Simply saying we could have invented it some other way disregards the continous impact a result in research makes.

ColanR 6y ago

That's really easy to say in retrospect, just like it's easy to say any major discovery was inevitable after we've already discovered it.

HarryHirsch 6y ago
But it is really like that. It depends on the groundwork that's there, technical capabilities and tooling. Once that's in place it only takes a lucky guy to pluck the discovery out of the air. Consider dual-space methods in crystallography. Herb Hauptman is credited with the discovery. My undergraduate advisor obliquely mentioned that he had done something similar in 1986 - obtain atom positions from direct methods, then do a few cycles of tangent refinement from the highest peaks. It reduces map noise considerably. Computers were simply too slow at that time to use this as a general method of solving 1000-atom structures, so the approach remained an afterthought. But the possibilities were noted once the computing power was there.
- rowanG077 6y ago
  It is like that. But simply discoveries being delayed could delay technical advancement for decades and even centuries in the long run.
- ColanR 6y ago
  The problem is, that lucky guy can take an indefinitely long time to show up. I heard recently about the Scythe Project. Apparently, the scythe was never invented in some places, including India. That's a long time for the lucky guy to never show up.
obastani 6y ago
According to Wikipedia [1], the transistor was independently rediscovered by two German physicists just a year later (1948). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#History