R&D Quotes
This quotation became the mantra of the MIT Media Lab's Professor Hugh Herr and others whose total efforts are spend inventing things for the future.
Borden invented some of the basic methods of preserving food and assuring uncontaminated food—especially with dairy products.
He was referring to the institutions in the particular fields. An established institution in education like a university might develop an innovation in astronomy or language translation, but not likely develop significant innovations in education. An established computer programming company might innovate the method of warehousing and shipping merchandise, but they are not likely to develop an innovative way of computer programming. That is typically done by a programming non-established firm or individual. There are a number of exceptions and this is not put forth as a general principle, but as a statistical observation. Established institutions are working harder and smarter to find ways of innovating regularly, and may succeed more frequently than the present.
Many of the male mathematicians were already working for the military or defense industries or still in military service. The University Of Pennsylvania Moore School of Engineering was working on trying to design and build a programmable computer that was to be the ENIAC computer. This was one of the very early computer development projects and mathematicians were desired to write the programs to control the computers and make them do something. But at the time, ironically, male mathematicians and engineers, wanted to design and build the computers—all of the early computers were built in a laboratory by scientists and engineers not by workers in a factory. Those were the prestigious and “interesting” jobs. Doing the programming most men assumed would be uninteresting, scut work, and so this project, out of desperation, came up with the radical idea of using women. And so the first computer programmers were mostly women. The irony was that once it became clear how creative and exciting computer programming could be, and its critical importance, the men flooded into the field and a decade later almost everyone thought that computer programming was a man’s profession, and there was a very common bias that women would not make good programmers. However, the people (men) who thought that did not know that the first computer programmer was a woman—Ada Lovelace {641640} and the earliest programming pioneers in America were mostly women.
This is a very important quotation for government officials because the time to complete modern digital tech projects are impossible to determine beforehand. It is only when one is well into the project and in many cases almost finished, that the technologists can accurately predict the finish date. The 2013 rollout of the computer system for Obama Care signup was one of the great examples.
Babbage anticipated the digital era when a small number of computer programmers develop a powerful program that can be used by millions of people who have no skill at programming.
Scientific breakthroughs depend on genius, circumstances, the work of others and serendipity. None of these are very predictable which is why it is do difficult to manage a scientific enterprise and be accountable for any results. See {624867}.
He had a plan to not only transmit the signals but also transmit the electrical power to run the portable devices. Tesla was one of the great American immigrant scientists. He found in America the kind of intellectual and operational freedom that did not exist in the rigid, monarch-controlled, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He developed patents and techniques that formed the technological bases of radio, telephone long distance, TV, cell phones, Wi Fi, just to name a few. Most important he was Thomas Edison’s great nemesis. Edison invented DC electric generators that could power factories or entire streets in a neighborhood. Tesler invented and developed AC electrical technology which could power entire cities and he could move electricity over long distances which Edison could not. Tesler was one of the first scientists to conceive of and try to implement “Big Science” where there were huge capital investments to develop machines and systems to do what had never been done before—philosophically like the CERN Hadron Collider. Tesler even convinced a large corporation to finance the construction of a massive building and tower so he could experiment with the wireless transmission of electricity. However, as the industrial democracies have learned, Big Science can only be funded by governments and it often takes sever working in consort to afford the huge investment that is required. In Tesler’s era, the federal and state governments did not fund scientific research so his work was not only technically ahead of his time but also conceptually. He anticipated most of the problems and need for a national power grid that was challenging America even at the beginning of the 21st century.
Tesla was one of the great American immigrant scientists. He found in America the kind of intellectual and operational freedom that did not exist in the rigid, monarch-controlled, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He developed patents and techniques that formed the technological bases of radio, telephone long distance, TV, cell phones, Wi Fi, just to name a few. Most important he was Thomas Edison’s great nemesis. Edison invented DC electric generators that could power factories or entire streets in a neighborhood. Tesler invented and developed AC electrical technology which could power entire cities and he could move electricity over long distances which Edison could not. Tesler was one of the first scientists to conceive of and try to implement “Big Science” where there were huge capital investments to develop machines and systems to do what had never been done before—philosophically like the CERN Hadron Collider. Tesler even convinced a large corporation to finance the construction of a massive building and tower so he could experiment with the wireless transmission of electricity. However, as the industrial democracies have learned, Big Science can only be funded by governments and it often takes sever working in consort to afford the huge investment that is required. In Tesler’s era, the federal and state governments did not fund scientific research so his work was not only technically ahead of his time but also conceptually. He anticipated most of the problems and need for a national power grid that was challenging America even at the beginning of the 21st century.
The “gap” is different in different fields. Public health has a particularly large gap while laser app;ications have a much smaller one.
