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Depends on what you mean by "existing technology". Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semicond

by jhgb 5y ago

Depends on what you mean by "existing technology". Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor industry. What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube industry. Etc. etc. Before these things existed, nothing even remotely similar was being utilized by human civilization in our technological ventures at the very least in these two cases (or at least nothing did that readily comes to my mind, but considering the physics involved, it seems unlikely).

kragen 5y ago
> Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor industry. That was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose in Bangladesh, who built working millimeter-wave radios using Schottky diodes in 01894. Of course, he didn't understand the quantum effects, but then, semiconductor diodes were in wide industrial use (mostly in the rich West) for decades before Shockley's Equation in 01949. The quantum theory was largely a Western discovery during those 55 years, but also included significant contributions from non-Western people like Shinichiro Tomonaga, Yoshiro Nishina, Leo Esaki, Tsung-Dao Lee, Hideki Yukawa, and Hantaro Nagaoka, and of course since 01949 quantum theory has been a field of investigation dominated by non-Western people. As you may be aware, there have been significant improvements in solid-state electronics since 01949, including full-color LEDs that permit LED lighting (due to Shuji Nakamura) and the switch to MOSFETs (due to Mohammed Atalla and Dawon Kahng, who were not from the West but were in the West) which eliminated the power consumption barrier that restricted 01960s electronics to dozens of transistors on a chip. China in particular has had a pretty bad couple of centuries, in between being invaded by the US, England, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the Austro-Hungarian empire, Russia (twice), and Japan (three times), having two of the most ruinous civil wars in human history, and having the worst famine in human history. So it's been innovating a bit below par, though it seems to be doing okay now. > What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube industry. It does seem that the whole cathode-ray thing was a Western discovery, but it was built on the Hindu ayurvedic techniques of mercury distillation that formed the basis for Arabic and then Western alchemy (necessary for the Sprengel pump, which was for decades the only source of a hard enough vacuum); also, building the apparatus drew on the Mesopotamian techniques of glassmaking, which are usually considered to hail from Asia Minor, though some believe they originated in Egypt. (It's possible that the Hindus imported the techniques of mercury distillation from China, but that is far enough back that it's difficult to know. At any rate, the Europeans got them from the Arabs, who got them from the Hindus.)
- inkyoto 5y ago
  > […] 01894 > […] 01949 Is there a specific esoteric or cabbalistic reason to prefix the number of bygone summers with a zero? Both make for invalid octadecimals and have broken my builtin parser.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > That was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose in Bangladesh, who built working millimeter-wave radios using Schottky diodes in 01894. The effect in question was discovered by a German two decades earlier: https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/semiconductor-point-contact-rectifier-effect-is-discovered/ https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/semiconductor-... > and of course since 01949 quantum theory has been a field of investigation dominated by non-Western people. As you may be aware, there have been significant improvements in solid-state electronics since 01949 Not quite sure how that matters for the question I was answering, which was emphatically NOT "is there a field of inventions historically wholly monopolized by the west". The question was for "AN example of a western invention not based on existing technology" - one would be sufficient. > but it was built on the Hindu ayurvedic techniques of mercury distillation ?????? We're not talking about pseudoscience here.
  - kragen 5y ago
    > The effect in question was discovered by a German two decades earlier Oh hey, you're right. So Bose only invented the use of the effect for radio, not the Schottky diode itself. I stand corrected. > ?????? We're not talking about pseudoscience here. Mercury distillation is not pseudoscience; like glassblowing, it was an existing technology that was a basis for the vacuum-tube age. Of course, if you trace any technology back, you will find that its origins are mixed with pseudoscience; Semmelweis promoted handwashing because he was convinced disease was caused by cadaveric particles, Priestley invented water carbonation because he was convinced scurvy was a carbonated water deficiency, etc. Naturally enough, mercury distillation seems to have been invented by people who were convinced that drinking mercury was good for you. They were wrong about that, but their distillation technology still works.
    - 5y ago

by jhgb 5y ago

kragen 5y ago

> Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor industry. That was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose in Bangladesh, who built working millimeter-wave radios using Schottky diodes in 01894. Of course, he didn't understand the quantum effects, but then, semiconductor diodes were in wide industrial use (mostly in the rich West) for decades before Shockley's Equation in 01949. The quantum theory was largely a Western discovery during those 55 years, but also included significant contributions from non-Western people like Shinichiro Tomonaga, Yoshiro Nishina, Leo Esaki, Tsung-Dao Lee, Hideki Yukawa, and Hantaro Nagaoka, and of course since 01949 quantum theory has been a field of investigation dominated by non-Western people. As you may be aware, there have been significant improvements in solid-state electronics since 01949, including full-color LEDs that permit LED lighting (due to Shuji Nakamura) and the switch to MOSFETs (due to Mohammed Atalla and Dawon Kahng, who were not from the West but were in the West) which eliminated the power consumption barrier that restricted 01960s electronics to dozens of transistors on a chip. China in particular has had a pretty bad couple of centuries, in between being invaded by the US, England, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the Austro-Hungarian empire, Russia (twice), and Japan (three times), having two of the most ruinous civil wars in human history, and having the worst famine in human history. So it's been innovating a bit below par, though it seems to be doing okay now. > What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube industry. It does seem that the whole cathode-ray thing was a Western discovery, but it was built on the Hindu ayurvedic techniques of mercury distillation that formed the basis for Arabic and then Western alchemy (necessary for the Sprengel pump, which was for decades the only source of a hard enough vacuum); also, building the apparatus drew on the Mesopotamian techniques of glassmaking, which are usually considered to hail from Asia Minor, though some believe they originated in Egypt. (It's possible that the Hindus imported the techniques of mercury distillation from China, but that is far enough back that it's difficult to know. At any rate, the Europeans got them from the Arabs, who got them from the Hindus.)

inkyoto 5y ago
> […] 01894 > […] 01949 Is there a specific esoteric or cabbalistic reason to prefix the number of bygone summers with a zero? Both make for invalid octadecimals and have broken my builtin parser.
jhgb 5y ago
> That was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose in Bangladesh, who built working millimeter-wave radios using Schottky diodes in 01894. The effect in question was discovered by a German two decades earlier: https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/semiconductor-point-contact-rectifier-effect-is-discovered/ https://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/semiconductor-... > and of course since 01949 quantum theory has been a field of investigation dominated by non-Western people. As you may be aware, there have been significant improvements in solid-state electronics since 01949 Not quite sure how that matters for the question I was answering, which was emphatically NOT "is there a field of inventions historically wholly monopolized by the west". The question was for "AN example of a western invention not based on existing technology" - one would be sufficient. > but it was built on the Hindu ayurvedic techniques of mercury distillation ?????? We're not talking about pseudoscience here.
- kragen 5y ago
  > The effect in question was discovered by a German two decades earlier Oh hey, you're right. So Bose only invented the use of the effect for radio, not the Schottky diode itself. I stand corrected. > ?????? We're not talking about pseudoscience here. Mercury distillation is not pseudoscience; like glassblowing, it was an existing technology that was a basis for the vacuum-tube age. Of course, if you trace any technology back, you will find that its origins are mixed with pseudoscience; Semmelweis promoted handwashing because he was convinced disease was caused by cadaveric particles, Priestley invented water carbonation because he was convinced scurvy was a carbonated water deficiency, etc. Naturally enough, mercury distillation seems to have been invented by people who were convinced that drinking mercury was good for you. They were wrong about that, but their distillation technology still works.
  - 5y ago