That's a good point, but we're talking about a fundamental new component here... I'm sure it's gonna make an impact, one way or the other, and not forgotten
The dawn of the memristor...
- Thread starter cmartinez
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Again... those arguments can't be applied to the memristor, which is on par with resistors, capacitors and diodes, which will are here to stay for a very, very long time
Hello,
If you read this article, we have to wait for a couple of years:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/01/hp_memristor_2018/
Bertus
If you read this article, we have to wait for a couple of years:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/01/hp_memristor_2018/
Bertus
there have been a lot of so called fundamental new componants through the years, some make impacts and some flop. it gets real hard to find parts for equipment designed around flops. rtl worked till something better came along, dtl worked till something better, and so on. now things using rtl just have to not work till someone finds those chips in a dump somewhere. tunnel diode amplifiers and oscilators were new tech for a while, who uses them now?
would you mind clarifying? I'm not familiar with rtl's and dtl's
Here is one of my "favorites":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory
I once saw some in an electronics surplus store. They wanted real money for them so they did not get added to my collection of electronic history esoterica. They would have gone right next to my CCD dynamic memory chips.
What about ferroelectric memory? I know that digikey sells those chips, for instance, but I have yet to see a device in the market that's actually using them
This is a real technology available from several different manufacturers -- not just RAM but microcontrollers as well. I have some of the RAM in the RPN calculators I have made. (See may avatar
).Some examples:
http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcont...ultra-low_power/msp430frxx_fram/overview.page
Nice... I didn't know that you literally made your own avatar, that's the coolest of things, congrats.This is a real technology available from several different manufacturers -- not just RAM but microcontrollers as well. I have some of the RAM in the RPN calculators I have made. (See may avatar
Some examples:
http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcont...ultra-low_power/msp430frxx_fram/overview.page
Fair enough. In fact, the penicillin example perhaps offers an example of what you are looking for, but not in the discovery of penicillin itself, but in the development of deep-tank fermentation. In fact, my guess is that if we include processes and techniques in the discussion, there are probably lots of examples in which the invention or development of something resulted in mass-scale impacts in a few years (and let's tentatively say that "a few years" is no more than five years).Alright, I'm back... (yes, I am that stubborn
So let's make the question (challenge?) clear:
You want me to find an example of an invention or discovery that made a public impact in a relatively short time after its conception. Is that correct?
But before I proceed, I want to clarify that everything is connected. It is impossible to come up with an entirely new idea without building on previous concepts and ideas. For example, I don't think that the transistor would've ever been invented without the prior development of the vacuum tube, since people would've never known what to look for and what properties they'd want from it. And in that example it took years of research and development and trial and error, and then after that more than a decade to reach the market because the infrastructure for its production needed to be built first. So no, the transistor is not the example I'm proposing.... I'm just saying that if I come up with something, you gotta give me a break and don't start your argumentation by saying something like "look, Martinez, before that happened, it took many years for fire to be mastered by the primitive caveman" ...
So please don't answer "balloon" when I say "airplane" ...
Are we on?
We can also agree to start the clock when something is realized. For instance, the airplane being realized in 1903 even though significant and serious effort was being made for quite some time prior to that. I'm a bit hesitant to agree to that because so many of these "huge impact" claims come before something is even realized but rather when it is some press release by some company, university, or organization. Think cold fusion -- I remember stories back then that didn't even bother to say, "If this proves out...," but rather flatly stated that the process was so simple that we WOULD have fusion power sources in all cars and homes within a decade. So whether I agree to that caveat depends on the nature of the claims that were made for that invention or discovery.
The speed at which something is mass produced after it was developed depends a lot on historic timescales. Take the pointed arch architecture for instance. Once it was discovered that it was stronger than the traditional arch, churches, cathedrals and other buildings proliferated at an amazing speed throughout Europe. But in this case, amazing speed refers to something of less than a century, or so, since communications in the high middle ages deepened entirely on personal travel, mostly done by foot, by the common man. But this is not the example that I wanted to propose.
My example is simply this: the movable type printing press, by Joahnnes Gutenberg.
I'm very much aware that China and India were already using a primitive form of printing in which large pieces of wood, for instance, were carved so as to later print whole pages of graphics or text. But it was Mr Gutenberg's stroke of genius that conceptualized splitting printed pages into individual letters, some might call it a minor tweak, but I think it was an earth-shattering change from the previous paradigm. So much so that his device is credited by most historians as to being the prime marker that separated the middle ages from the Renaissance.
You still may argue about the work of China and India influencing Gutenberg's work, but he did develop more innovations that were absolutely essential for his invention. Look at the third paragraph in this wikipedia article. This same article states that the first books in english were not printed until 20 years after this event. But even then, that means that lots of books in german were being printed already, and 20 years in that historic timescale is practically an immediate acceptance and expansion of the technology.
My example is simply this: the movable type printing press, by Joahnnes Gutenberg.
I'm very much aware that China and India were already using a primitive form of printing in which large pieces of wood, for instance, were carved so as to later print whole pages of graphics or text. But it was Mr Gutenberg's stroke of genius that conceptualized splitting printed pages into individual letters, some might call it a minor tweak, but I think it was an earth-shattering change from the previous paradigm. So much so that his device is credited by most historians as to being the prime marker that separated the middle ages from the Renaissance.
You still may argue about the work of China and India influencing Gutenberg's work, but he did develop more innovations that were absolutely essential for his invention. Look at the third paragraph in this wikipedia article. This same article states that the first books in english were not printed until 20 years after this event. But even then, that means that lots of books in german were being printed already, and 20 years in that historic timescale is practically an immediate acceptance and expansion of the technology.
The movable-type printing press is certainly a good example to consider. Even if we stipulate that 20 years is comparable to "a few years" in modern discussions, the question that still has to be answered is how long after the introduction of this technology can it reasonably be said to have had a widespread and fundamentally transformative effect on society? It's one thing for there to be "a lot of books" and another for those books (and pamphlets and whatever) to start having a major transformative influence. However, I would tend to agree that the printing press probably qualifies as an invention whose widespread adoption and influence happened over a sufficiently short time frame to be considered a viable example.
Man! you made me work hard to get that out of you! ha ha ha...
It's too bad that so far I've been able to find only one example in our discussion... it must mean that you're right in general... and I'm... well... almost right in general... ha ha ha...Check this other example in this thread, it might not qualify considering our established restrictions, since it's already been almost 9 years since its conception. But it's still pretty impressive!
Not to pick a nit, but I never said that there were NO inventions that had the kind of "revolutionary impact in the next few years" that is so often claimed will be the case, merely that there were very few (see Post #4). I was very careful to allow for there being a few because (1) categorical statements are almost always guaranteed to be false (notice that even here I don't make a categorical statement about categorical statements), and (2) I have a hard time believing that there haven't been such inventions from time to time.Man! you made me work hard to get that out of you! ha ha ha...
Very interesting. Here is the actual paper: https://journals.aps.org/pre/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevE.91.012304
The American Physical Society is a serious organization, but I have to admit when I looked at their homepage and saw research into zombie escape plans, I had to do a double-take.
You can't blame them for having a sense of humor, in fact I think the world would be a much better place if more people lightened up every once in a while.
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I too try to avoid being categorical when I talk (though I slip every once in a while, and sometimes it gets me in trouble), that's because when one is categorical with some people, even when what one is saying is 100% axiomatic and completely true, it hurts their egos and starts a different discussion that misses the point.
As we get older we learn to choose our words more carefully (though some people never learn) and hence talk more slowly... that's how one can tell the difference between a mature person and a young one. Young people tend to talk faster and more passionately, and very lightly say things that they might come to regret... Now that I think of it, I sure would never want to get into an argument with a young version of myself
rtl, resistor transistor logic dtl, diode transistor logic
Sometimes it's ego, but other times is just that many people can't comprehend the difference between a claim that something rarely happens and a claim that something never happens, or, equivalently, a claim that something usually happens and that something always happens. I can't even count the number of times I've said something like, "The overwhelming majority of people that are ejected from a vehicle in a crash do not survive," and someone "disproves" that statement by citing some instance in which someone did survive being ejected from a vehicle.
