#invention — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #invention, aggregated by home.social.
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Sciencepost: On pensait connaître l' #histoire de l' #invention de la #roue : une nouvelle étude pointe vers de simples mineurs que personne ne soupçonnait
C’est ce qu’on appelle réinventer la roue... 😅
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Sciencepost: On pensait connaître l' #histoire de l' #invention de la #roue : une nouvelle étude pointe vers de simples mineurs que personne ne soupçonnait
C’est ce qu’on appelle réinventer la roue... 😅
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🇨🇦 Canadian Word of the Day: Garburator
In Canada, that noisy machine under the kitchen sink that grinds up food scraps is called a 'garburator.' In the US and elsewhere, it's typically known as a 'garbage disposal.' The term 'Garburator' was originally a brand name for a unit made by General Electric, but like 'Kleenex' or 'Zamboni,' it became the common term for the device itself across the country. #Canada #CanadianSlang #WordOfTheDay #Invention
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🇨🇦 Canadian Word of the Day: Garburator
In Canada, that noisy machine under the kitchen sink that grinds up food scraps is called a 'garburator.' In the US and elsewhere, it's typically known as a 'garbage disposal.' The term 'Garburator' was originally a brand name for a unit made by General Electric, but like 'Kleenex' or 'Zamboni,' it became the common term for the device itself across the country. #Canada #CanadianSlang #WordOfTheDay #Invention
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Who invented the first compound microscope?? Turns out the answer is a lil *messy*
To find out more, check out this week's #podcast episode: https://starrytimepodcast.podbean.com/e/microscopium-myths-and-retconstellations/
#history #Invention #StarLore #microscopium #Microscope #science #humor
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Who invented the first compound microscope?? Turns out the answer is a lil *messy*
To find out more, check out this week's #podcast episode: https://starrytimepodcast.podbean.com/e/microscopium-myths-and-retconstellations/
#history #Invention #StarLore #microscopium #Microscope #science #humor
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SELF-INFLICTED STUPIDITY
"I've just invented something that can destroy humanity at the drop of a hat. However, to keep it from doing so is going to require more funding."
#irony #humor #errtling #bookcafe #law #gov #governance #android_dreams #writing #invention #society #ai -
SELF-INFLICTED STUPIDITY
"I've just invented something that can destroy humanity at the drop of a hat. However, to keep it from doing so is going to require more funding."
#irony #humor #errtling #bookcafe #law #gov #governance #android_dreams #writing #invention #society #ai -
💁🏻♀️ TIL: Engineers at #PennState have developed a conductive #ink that works like face paint to create customizable electrodes for monitoring #heart, #muscle, and #brain activity.
The #water-based ink dries on #skin within minutes, conforms closely for more accurate readings, and can be washed off and reapplied. In tests, the sensors tracked #ECG for 12 hours and fed muscle signals to a robotic #prosthetic.
👉 https://www.popsci.com/technology/colorful-paint-on-health-sensors/
#sensors #health #wearables #stem #ecg #emg #science #invention #engineering #biotech #tech #technology
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: Engineers at #PennState have developed a conductive #ink that works like face paint to create customizable electrodes for monitoring #heart, #muscle, and #brain activity.
The #water-based ink dries on #skin within minutes, conforms closely for more accurate readings, and can be washed off and reapplied. In tests, the sensors tracked #ECG for 12 hours and fed muscle signals to a robotic #prosthetic.
👉 https://www.popsci.com/technology/colorful-paint-on-health-sensors/
#sensors #health #wearables #stem #ecg #emg #science #invention #engineering #biotech #tech #technology
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Çad #binaire #excluant et #complementaire avec une #bicategorisation sexuelle est une #invention récente. (je vais link des liens) Excluant pcq d'ap le trope sexiste tjrs, ce qui existe chez l'un.e ne peut se retrouver chez l'autre. Çad qu'une caractéristique physique considérée comme féminine NE PEUT ni NE DOIT se retrouver chez l'homme et vice versa. Par ex voix aiguë, peu/pas de pilosité, des pecs pointus etc etc. Complémentaire pcq l'homme est fait pour la femme et la femme pour l'homme.
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Çad #binaire #excluant et #complementaire avec une #bicategorisation sexuelle est une #invention récente. (je vais link des liens) Excluant pcq d'ap le trope sexiste tjrs, ce qui existe chez l'un.e ne peut se retrouver chez l'autre. Çad qu'une caractéristique physique considérée comme féminine NE PEUT ni NE DOIT se retrouver chez l'homme et vice versa. Par ex voix aiguë, peu/pas de pilosité, des pecs pointus etc etc. Complémentaire pcq l'homme est fait pour la femme et la femme pour l'homme.
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🧊🤖 A British led #expedition launching this month will deploy a fleet of #drones, subs, and sensors to study #Greenland’s melting #glaciers in detail.
The #GIANT project aims to improve #climate models by observing the tiny scale #physics of #ice #ocean interactions. The mission, funded by the #UK’s Advanced Research and #Invention Agency, runs from the #research ship Sir #DavidAttenborough.
👉 https://www.sciencenews.org/article/robot-mission-map-greenland-ice-climate
#robots #climatechange #science #submarine #arctic #engineering #earthscience #currents #amoc
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🧊🤖 A British led #expedition launching this month will deploy a fleet of #drones, subs, and sensors to study #Greenland’s melting #glaciers in detail.
The #GIANT project aims to improve #climate models by observing the tiny scale #physics of #ice #ocean interactions. The mission, funded by the #UK’s Advanced Research and #Invention Agency, runs from the #research ship Sir #DavidAttenborough.
👉 https://www.sciencenews.org/article/robot-mission-map-greenland-ice-climate
#robots #climatechange #science #submarine #arctic #engineering #earthscience #currents #amoc
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Dolosse – a South African invention used over the world
https://thisbugslife.com/2021/11/21/dolosse-a-south-african-invention-used-over-the-world/
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48786124
#HackerNews #Dolosse #SouthAfrica #invention #engineering #innovation #globalimpact
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Dolosse – a South African invention used over the world
https://thisbugslife.com/2021/11/21/dolosse-a-south-african-invention-used-over-the-world/
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48786124
#HackerNews #Dolosse #SouthAfrica #invention #engineering #innovation #globalimpact
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travailleurs de première ligne : les grandes inventions du quotidien
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travailleurs de première ligne : les grandes inventions du quotidien
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https://www.fogolf.com/1310103/this-92-year-old-retired-chemist-wants-to-fix-your-slice-with-a-golf-glove-golf-news-and-tour-information/ This 92-year-old retired chemist wants to fix your slice … with a golf glove | Golf News and Tour Information #CureYourSlice #DrLawrenceRocks #Golf #GolfCourses #GolfGlove #invention #news #products #Science #Story #This92YearOldRetiredChemistWantsToFixYourSliceWithAGolfGlove
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https://www.fogolf.com/1310103/this-92-year-old-retired-chemist-wants-to-fix-your-slice-with-a-golf-glove-golf-news-and-tour-information/ This 92-year-old retired chemist wants to fix your slice … with a golf glove | Golf News and Tour Information #CureYourSlice #DrLawrenceRocks #Golf #GolfCourses #GolfGlove #invention #news #products #Science #Story #This92YearOldRetiredChemistWantsToFixYourSliceWithAGolfGlove
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“Most things are never meant”*…
From Dan Russell‘s nifty (and in this instance, all-too-appropriately-named) newsletter, Unanticipated Consequences, an “appreciation” of a gentleman into whom (Roughly) Daily has run before (e. g, here)…
If you set out to design a supervillain to destroy the biosphere, create a jovial, optimistic mechanical engineer from Ohio who wanted to make the world a slightly more convenient place. Thomas Midgley Jr. was not a mad scientist plotting global ruin from a diabolical evil-genius lair, he was an enthusiastic tinkerer, and as a friend once commented, had “ten ideas a minute, nine of them screwy, but the tenth a lulu.” He wrote light verse, loved music, and held over a hundred patents. As a teenager, he used elm-tree juice instead of spit to throw unhittable curveballs. He was, by all accounts, a charming guy who merely sought practical solutions to the day’s pressing technological annoyances. What could go wrong?
Yet, by the time his career was over, Midgley had introduced two of the most globally destructive chemical compounds in human history. He became, as one historian aptly put it, a one-man environmental disaster. His legacy is the ultimate cautionary tale for the modern innovator: a masterclass in the massive, terrifying, and utterly unanticipated consequences of design choices…
[Russell tells the stories of Midgley’s pair of consequential inventions: the additive “lead” (tetraethyl lead, a neurotoxin) in gasoline and the refrigerant CFC (the use of which ripped a hole in the ozone layer). He recounts Midgley’s death (literally) in the grip of another of his inventions, then concludes…]
… What do we do with the ghost of Thomas Midgley? It is easy, with a century of hindsight, to look back at the millions of cardiovascular deaths, the plummeting IQs, and the shredded stratosphere, and label him a monster. But that ignores the fundamental mechanics of innovation. The Midgley story is a stark reminder of the massive delta between human intent and ecological reality.
When we invent, we are almost always trying to solve a local, immediate pain point. Engines rattle and refrigerators explode. Midgley looked at these problems and offered brilliant and simple solutions. But biology and atmosphere are deeply intertwined and heavily networked systems. The consequences of introducing synthetic compounds into these systems don’t spool out in days or weeks; they unfold across generations.
Midgley did not want to poison the world. He wrote poetry about human dominance over the Earth, genuinely believing that science could only make the future better. If forced to concede the environmental damage of his inventions, he likely would have plunged headlong into the lab to invent safe substitutes. But he lacked the conceptual tools, the time horizon, and the humility to imagine that the very things that made his inventions magical—the cheap and effective solution of lead and the unyielding stability of Freon—were exactly what made them apocalyptically awful for humanity.
The history of Thomas Midgley is a brilliantly clear, slightly horrifying reminder: sometimes, the most dangerous things in the world are brought to us by a friendly guy with a periodic table in his pocket, just trying to stop that really annoying noise in his car…
The bane of unintended consequences: “New Ways to Poison an Entire Planet: The Legacy of Thomas Midgley, Jr.”
* Philip Larkin, “Going, Going“
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As we consider consequences, we might acknowledge that there are some consequences ourecall that on this date in 1908, at around 7:15 am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun was seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there was a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 400 miles away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 60,000 mph penetrated Earth’s atmosphere, heated to about 10,000 ºC and detonated 6 to10 km above the ground. The blast released the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 830 square miles of forest and leaving almost no trace of life. (As the area was essentially unpopulated, estimates are that only three people died.) The Tunguska rock came from the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth’s orbit twice a year.
Midgley’s story is a reminder that we need to take all of the care we can to protect ourselves from unintended harms that we might inflict on oursleves. A meteor strike is, of course, not the product of a human choice– and in 1908, outside our control. But today, there is something we can do: check in with the B612 Foundation.
Trees knocked down and burned by the blast. (Image from over two decades after the event.) source #CFC #culture #DanRussell #history #invention #meteor #Science #Technology #tetraethylLead #ThomasMidgley #ThomasMidgleyJr #Tunguska #TunguskaEvent #unanticipatedConsequences #unintendedConsequences -
“Most things are never meant”*…
From Dan Russell‘s nifty (and in this instance, all-too-appropriately-named) newsletter, Unanticipated Consequences, an “appreciation” of a gentleman into whom (Roughly) Daily has run before (e. g, here)…
If you set out to design a supervillain to destroy the biosphere, create a jovial, optimistic mechanical engineer from Ohio who wanted to make the world a slightly more convenient place. Thomas Midgley Jr. was not a mad scientist plotting global ruin from a diabolical evil-genius lair, he was an enthusiastic tinkerer, and as a friend once commented, had “ten ideas a minute, nine of them screwy, but the tenth a lulu.” He wrote light verse, loved music, and held over a hundred patents. As a teenager, he used elm-tree juice instead of spit to throw unhittable curveballs. He was, by all accounts, a charming guy who merely sought practical solutions to the day’s pressing technological annoyances. What could go wrong?
Yet, by the time his career was over, Midgley had introduced two of the most globally destructive chemical compounds in human history. He became, as one historian aptly put it, a one-man environmental disaster. His legacy is the ultimate cautionary tale for the modern innovator: a masterclass in the massive, terrifying, and utterly unanticipated consequences of design choices…
[Russell tells the stories of Midgley’s pair of consequential inventions: the additive “lead” (tetraethyl lead, a neurotoxin) in gasoline and the refrigerant CFC (the use of which ripped a hole in the ozone layer). He recounts Midgley’s death (literally) in the grip of another of his inventions, then concludes…]
… What do we do with the ghost of Thomas Midgley? It is easy, with a century of hindsight, to look back at the millions of cardiovascular deaths, the plummeting IQs, and the shredded stratosphere, and label him a monster. But that ignores the fundamental mechanics of innovation. The Midgley story is a stark reminder of the massive delta between human intent and ecological reality.
When we invent, we are almost always trying to solve a local, immediate pain point. Engines rattle and refrigerators explode. Midgley looked at these problems and offered brilliant and simple solutions. But biology and atmosphere are deeply intertwined and heavily networked systems. The consequences of introducing synthetic compounds into these systems don’t spool out in days or weeks; they unfold across generations.
Midgley did not want to poison the world. He wrote poetry about human dominance over the Earth, genuinely believing that science could only make the future better. If forced to concede the environmental damage of his inventions, he likely would have plunged headlong into the lab to invent safe substitutes. But he lacked the conceptual tools, the time horizon, and the humility to imagine that the very things that made his inventions magical—the cheap and effective solution of lead and the unyielding stability of Freon—were exactly what made them apocalyptically awful for humanity.
The history of Thomas Midgley is a brilliantly clear, slightly horrifying reminder: sometimes, the most dangerous things in the world are brought to us by a friendly guy with a periodic table in his pocket, just trying to stop that really annoying noise in his car…
The bane of unintended consequences: “New Ways to Poison an Entire Planet: The Legacy of Thomas Midgley, Jr.”
* Philip Larkin, “Going, Going“
###
As we consider consequences, we might acknowledge that there are some consequences ourecall that on this date in 1908, at around 7:15 am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun was seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there was a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 400 miles away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 60,000 mph penetrated Earth’s atmosphere, heated to about 10,000 ºC and detonated 6 to10 km above the ground. The blast released the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 830 square miles of forest and leaving almost no trace of life. (As the area was essentially unpopulated, estimates are that only three people died.) The Tunguska rock came from the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth’s orbit twice a year.
Midgley’s story is a reminder that we need to take all of the care we can to protect ourselves from unintended harms that we might inflict on oursleves. A meteor strike is, of course, not the product of a human choice– and in 1908, outside our control. But today, there is something we can do: check in with the B612 Foundation.
Trees knocked down and burned by the blast. (Image from over two decades after the event.) source #CFC #culture #DanRussell #history #invention #meteor #Science #Technology #tetraethylLead #ThomasMidgley #ThomasMidgleyJr #Tunguska #TunguskaEvent #unanticipatedConsequences #unintendedConsequences -
The Better Screw: A Canadian Grip
In 1908, Canadian P. L. Robertson invented the square-socketed screw to prevent 'cam-out'—the slipping that plagues other screw types. This superior grip made it highly efficient. While the Phillips head became more common globally, the Robertson screw remains widely preferred in Canadian construction and manufacturing for its reliability. #Canada #Innovation #Invention #Tools
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The Better Screw: A Canadian Grip
In 1908, Canadian P. L. Robertson invented the square-socketed screw to prevent 'cam-out'—the slipping that plagues other screw types. This superior grip made it highly efficient. While the Phillips head became more common globally, the Robertson screw remains widely preferred in Canadian construction and manufacturing for its reliability. #Canada #Innovation #Invention #Tools
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#randonnée #invention #ConcoursLépine
#PoussOQRécompensés au concours Lépine, deux inventeurs comtois ont mis au point le Pouss'O'Q, un bâton de randonnée révolutionnaire qui propulse le marcheur pour aller plus vite. Inspirée des prothèses d'athlètes, cette invention brevetée promet d'amortir les descentes et pourrait être commercialisée dès cet été.
[ 😅 La fin du reportage ! ]
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🏭📦 An Australian creative agency is building a solar-powered steel monolith in #Queenstown, #Tasmania.
Inspired by #aviation flight recorders, this indestructible capsule will continuously archive global #climate #data, atmospheric #temperature, and environmental #policy decisions. The #monument serves as an ongoing historical record, encouraging #students to consider how our current decisions affect #future generations.
#climatechange #australia #engineering #science #environment #technology #tech #art #invention #conservation #earthscience #history
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🏭📦 An Australian creative agency is building a solar-powered steel monolith in #Queenstown, #Tasmania.
Inspired by #aviation flight recorders, this indestructible capsule will continuously archive global #climate #data, atmospheric #temperature, and environmental #policy decisions. The #monument serves as an ongoing historical record, encouraging #students to consider how our current decisions affect #future generations.
#climatechange #australia #engineering #science #environment #technology #tech #art #invention #conservation #earthscience #history
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🏭📦 An Australian creative agency is building a solar-powered steel monolith in #Queenstown, #Tasmania.
Inspired by #aviation flight recorders, this indestructible capsule will continuously archive global #climate #data, atmospheric #temperature, and environmental #policy decisions. The #monument serves as an ongoing historical record, encouraging #students to consider how our current decisions affect #future generations.
#climatechange #australia #engineering #science #environment #technology #tech #art #invention #conservation #earthscience #history
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🏭📦 An Australian creative agency is building a solar-powered steel monolith in #Queenstown, #Tasmania.
Inspired by #aviation flight recorders, this indestructible capsule will continuously archive global #climate #data, atmospheric #temperature, and environmental #policy decisions. The #monument serves as an ongoing historical record, encouraging #students to consider how our current decisions affect #future generations.
#climatechange #australia #engineering #science #environment #technology #tech #art #invention #conservation #earthscience #history
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🧲💡 Sang-Woo Kim’s team at #Yonsei University in #SouthKorea built a small floating capsule that purifies #water using only magnetism.
Shaking it for three seconds powers a sensor and generates electrostatic fields that pop open bacterial membranes, with no #batteries or #chemicals required.
#purification #invention #engineering #physics #biology #nature #science #technology #tech #publichealth #health #medicine
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🧲💡 Sang-Woo Kim’s team at #Yonsei University in #SouthKorea built a small floating capsule that purifies #water using only magnetism.
Shaking it for three seconds powers a sensor and generates electrostatic fields that pop open bacterial membranes, with no #batteries or #chemicals required.
#purification #invention #engineering #physics #biology #nature #science #technology #tech #publichealth #health #medicine
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🧲💡 Sang-Woo Kim’s team at #Yonsei University in #SouthKorea built a small floating capsule that purifies #water using only magnetism.
Shaking it for three seconds powers a sensor and generates electrostatic fields that pop open bacterial membranes, with no #batteries or #chemicals required.
#purification #invention #engineering #physics #biology #nature #science #technology #tech #publichealth #health #medicine
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🧲💡 Sang-Woo Kim’s team at #Yonsei University in #SouthKorea built a small floating capsule that purifies #water using only magnetism.
Shaking it for three seconds powers a sensor and generates electrostatic fields that pop open bacterial membranes, with no #batteries or #chemicals required.
#purification #invention #engineering #physics #biology #nature #science #technology #tech #publichealth #health #medicine
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🎧☎️ The first headphones weren’t for #music – they were a 4.5 kg (10 lb) harness invented in 1881 by Ezra Gilliland so telephone switchboard operators could take calls hands-free.
Over 80 years, inventors slimmed them down: the first earbuds with rubber tips (1891), Baldwin’s headband #design (1910), Beyerdynamic’s dynamic headphones (1937), and Koss’s 1958 system that brought headphone listening to the public.
👉 https://www.bgr.com/2188620/first-headphones-weighed-over-10-pounds-not-for-music/
#invention #history #technology #tech #audio #sony #bose #sound #engineering #inventors #vintage #science
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: 🎧☎️ The first headphones weren’t for #music – they were a 4.5 kg (10 lb) harness invented in 1881 by Ezra Gilliland so telephone switchboard operators could take calls hands-free.
Over 80 years, inventors slimmed them down: the first earbuds with rubber tips (1891), Baldwin’s headband #design (1910), Beyerdynamic’s dynamic headphones (1937), and Koss’s 1958 system that brought headphone listening to the public.
👉 https://www.bgr.com/2188620/first-headphones-weighed-over-10-pounds-not-for-music/
#invention #history #technology #tech #audio #sony #bose #sound #engineering #inventors #vintage #science
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RE: https://arram.senta-la.cloud/@autobrain/116739122274188067
"On 12 June 1817, a crowd gathered along the best road in Mannheim, Germany to watch Baron Karl von Drais demonstrate his newest invention: the 'draisienne', a two-wheeled horseless vehicle propelled by its rider."
https://www.cyclinguk.org/cycle/draisienne-1817-2017-200-years-cycling-innovation-design
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RE: https://arram.senta-la.cloud/@autobrain/116739122274188067
"On 12 June 1817, a crowd gathered along the best road in Mannheim, Germany to watch Baron Karl von Drais demonstrate his newest invention: the 'draisienne', a two-wheeled horseless vehicle propelled by its rider."
https://www.cyclinguk.org/cycle/draisienne-1817-2017-200-years-cycling-innovation-design
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Inventor’s Microfiber Laundry Filter Is Already Keeping Tons of Fossil-Fuel Fibers Out of the Environment
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Inventor’s Microfiber Laundry Filter Is Already Keeping Tons of Fossil-Fuel Fibers Out of the Environment
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#History #Computers #ChineseAmerican #Invention #Video
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON 6/9/26
250 WE ARE AMERICANS 1 minute video
“AN WANG PERSONIFICATION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM” -
#History #Computers #ChineseAmerican #Invention #Video
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON 6/9/26
250 WE ARE AMERICANS 1 minute video
“AN WANG PERSONIFICATION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM” -
Arm in Arm with Chance
A misdated photograph, two of the largest minds of the last century, and the partnership physics never got. The photograph travels well. A man and a woman walk the edge of a lake, both buttoned into heavy coats against a cold the season should not have brought. He wears the famous hair, gray now at the temples, the drooping mustache, the look of someone who long ago stopped negotiating with his tailor. She is smaller and upright, her face composed into the expression of a person who has weighed sorrow by the gram. Their arms are linked. The internet, which prefers its history pre-chewed, captions the image with confident precision: Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, Saranac Lake, New York, 1929. Nearly every word of that caption is wrong. […] -
Arm in Arm with Chance
A misdated photograph, two of the largest minds of the last century, and the partnership physics never got. The photograph travels well. A man and a woman walk the edge of a lake, both buttoned into heavy coats against a cold the season should not have brought. He wears the famous hair, gray now at the temples, the drooping mustache, the look of someone who long ago stopped negotiating with his tailor. She is smaller and upright, her face composed into the expression of a person who has weighed sorrow by the gram. Their arms are linked. The internet, which prefers its history pre-chewed, captions the image with confident precision: Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, Saranac Lake, New York, 1929. Nearly every word of that caption is wrong. […] -
You'll never guess who made the first wireless telephone
https://signoregalilei.com/2026/05/31/youll-never-guess-who-made-the-first-wireless-telephone/
#HackerNews #wirelesstelephone #invention #history #technology #innovation
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You'll never guess who made the first wireless telephone
https://signoregalilei.com/2026/05/31/youll-never-guess-who-made-the-first-wireless-telephone/
#HackerNews #wirelesstelephone #invention #history #technology #innovation
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: Long before flying his kite, #BenjaminFranklin was experimenting with materials to stop counterfeiters from faking #colonial paper #money. 💵
Centuries later, scientists at #NotreDame used advanced microscopes to analyze hundreds of surviving bills and found Franklin was using graphite-based ink instead of common soot ink, and embedding tiny mica particles into the #paper that shimmered when tilted. He even printed leaf vein patterns as unique anti-counterfeiting marks. 🔎
#counterfeit #history #printing #pennsylvania #philadelphia #science #engineering #invention #currency
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💁🏻♀️ TIL: Long before flying his kite, #BenjaminFranklin was experimenting with materials to stop counterfeiters from faking #colonial paper #money. 💵
Centuries later, scientists at #NotreDame used advanced microscopes to analyze hundreds of surviving bills and found Franklin was using graphite-based ink instead of common soot ink, and embedding tiny mica particles into the #paper that shimmered when tilted. He even printed leaf vein patterns as unique anti-counterfeiting marks. 🔎
#counterfeit #history #printing #pennsylvania #philadelphia #science #engineering #invention #currency
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The Glass People: The Materials of Madness, from the Glass King to the Simulation
More than six hundred years ago, the King of France stopped letting anyone touch him. Charles VI had iron rods sewn into his clothing and moved through his palace with the stiff care of a man carrying something breakable, because he believed he was carrying something breakable. He believed it was himself. The chronicles of his reign record that the king became convinced his body had turned to glass, and that a careless embrace or an ordinary stumble would shatter him to pieces on the stone floor. […] -
The Glass People: The Materials of Madness, from the Glass King to the Simulation
More than six hundred years ago, the King of France stopped letting anyone touch him. Charles VI had iron rods sewn into his clothing and moved through his palace with the stiff care of a man carrying something breakable, because he believed he was carrying something breakable. He believed it was himself. The chronicles of his reign record that the king became convinced his body had turned to glass, and that a careless embrace or an ordinary stumble would shatter him to pieces on the stone floor. […] -
Oh look, another #groundbreaking #invention that promises to rescue us from the existential dread of using #Git #worktrees. 🎉 Apparently, "Rift" is here to save the day with a sprinkle of #AI #magic, because, you know, regular Git wasn't complicated enough. 🙄 Meanwhile, I'll be over here still trying to figure out what a "worktree" is. 🚀
https://github.com/anomalyco/rift #tech #news #software #development #HackerNews #ngated -
Oh look, another #groundbreaking #invention that promises to rescue us from the existential dread of using #Git #worktrees. 🎉 Apparently, "Rift" is here to save the day with a sprinkle of #AI #magic, because, you know, regular Git wasn't complicated enough. 🙄 Meanwhile, I'll be over here still trying to figure out what a "worktree" is. 🚀
https://github.com/anomalyco/rift #tech #news #software #development #HackerNews #ngated -
“Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. . It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest.”*…
A machine called the New Castle, built by Richard Trevithick in 1803, was the first locomotive to do actual work. (source)Our old friend (and here and here) Brian Potter thinks deeply about scientific and technological advance. Here, he ponders the pace of progress…
In her book on the history of the laser, historian Joan Bromberg notes that the technological and scientific predecessors of the maser (which itself preceded the laser – two critical technologies whose developmental histories I sketched in this piece two months ago) were in place for decades before physicist Charles Townes had the insight to combine them…
… This sort of decades-long wait between when a technology first becomes possible, and when it actually appears, seems common, or at least seems like it might be common. I’ve previously written about why it took so long for wind power to be widely deployed after it became technologically possible, and people often idly speculate whether inventors in the Roman Empire could have built a steam engine, or why we waited so long to put wheels on luggage.
Knowing how long this gap between when an invention becomes possible, and when it actually appears, is useful, because it tells us something about the nature of technology and technological progress. What factors govern whether some new technology appears? How much does mere technical possibility matter, and how much do things like cross-pollination of knowledge, economic feasibility, and political factors contribute? Knowing more about how long it takes for an invention to appear once it becomes technically possible can help us answer these sorts of questions.
I wanted a better sense of how long it takes for some technology to appear once its necessary predecessors are in place. So I used AI to try and find out…
[Potter explains his method, then unpacks his results…]
We can clearly see a few trends on this graph. One is that for most inventions, the gap between when it could have been invented and when it was actually invented is not particularly large. Of the 166 inventions Claude estimated a date for, 107 of them (64%) had an “earliest plausible” date 50 years or less from the actual date, and 150 of them (90%) had an “earliest straightforward” date 50 years or less from the actual date. For more than half the inventions, the average earliest straightforward date of invention was 10 years or less from the actual date.
Conversely, there were a relatively small number of inventions where the gap between “could have been invented” and “was invented” was very large. 30 inventions (18%) had an average gap of more than 100 years between “earliest plausible” and actually invented, and eight inventions had a gap of more than 1000 years. You can see this clearly on a histogram, which shows a large bump of small time gaps, and a long tail of fewer, larger gaps.
The inventions with the longest period between “could have been invented” and “was invented” are below.
There’re a few interesting trends observable here. Many of the longest-delayed inventions — the hypodermic needle, general anaesthetic, stethoscope — are medical inventions. (You could argue the surgical mask could be in this category as well). For the hypodermic needle, this probably needed to wait until the existence of some substance that needed to be injected (such as morphine, first synthesized in 1804), but for other medical inventions this possibly also reflects folks’ reluctance to do inventive-tinkering in a medical context. For general anaesthetic, for instance, the trial and error of getting the dose right was incredibly dangerous, and the inventor Hanaoka Seishu “crippled his mother and blinded his wife perfecting the dose.”
Several of the longest-awaited inventions are ones where the version in the list is an early, impractical version of the one that actually solved a problem. So the “dandy horse” — a two-wheeled, wooden vehicle that was a predecessor of the bicycle — could have been built in antiquity, but the dandy horse wasn’t particularly practical as a means of transportation, and actually useful bicycles had to wait for the improved manufacturing technology of the later 19th century. Likewise, the version of the ballpoint pen that Claude thinks could have been invented much earlier is John Loud’s 1888 version, but Loud’s pen worked poorly and wasn’t successful. Actually useful ballpoint pens are surprisingly difficult to manufacture (China famously couldn’t manufacture them until very recently), and credit for the “useful ballpoint pen” is usually given to Lazlo Biro in 1938. (Claude correctly notes that “useful” versions of both these inventions would need to wait until much later.) Judson’s early zipper and de Martinsville’s early sound-recording device are also examples of early, not-particularly-useful inventions.
Other inventions on this list seem like they might be a case of the surrounding social or technological conditions needing to be right for the invention to appear. So Otis’ elevator safety brake needed to wait until elevators were in higher demand, which probably didn’t occur until steam engines or some other similar power source came along (though maybe you could have water-driven elevators much earlier). Barbed wire perhaps needed to wait until enclosing very large areas of land for grazing became something people needed to do.
And some inventions seem like they might have been genuinely useful had someone thought of them earlier, and simply nobody did. Blanchard’s pattern-tracing lathe, Neilson’s hot blast, and the safety pin all seem like they fall into this category, though perhaps there were good reasons these didn’t appear earlier.
Going back to the scatterplot, the other obvious trend on this chart is that the gap between when an invention becomes possible and when it appears has narrowed over time. If we graph the average and median gaps for inventions by 20-year time periods, we can see that they have fallen over time.
For the 60 post-1900 inventions, every one has a “straightforward” invention date of 50 years or less than the actual date, and 75% of them have a straightforward date of 10 years or less before the actual date. Of the 30 inventions with a gap of more than 100 years between when they could have been invented and when they actually appeared, 29 of them were invented before 1900. So the process for creating new inventions seems to be getting more and more efficient — opportunities are getting noticed and exploited sooner and sooner, up through 1970 at least (which is when the list of major inventions extends to).
We can also look at how wait times vary by type of technology. The chart below shows average wait times by different categories, for both inventions overall and for just post-1900 inventions. We can see that medical inventions have the longest wait, while electronic inventions have the shortest wait…
… We can also look at what types of factors tend to be bottlenecks. For some inventions, the bottleneck is primarily scientific: the limiting factor for the transistor is the band theory of quantum mechanics, and the limiting factor for the radio was Hertz’s demonstration of electromagnetic waves. But for other inventions, it’s primarily technological: the turbojet had to wait not for some new physical theory, but until compressor technology and high-temperature steels appeared; likewise the airplane had to wait not for some novel theory of aerodynamics but until a light enough engine appeared. The chart below shows how often “science” or “technology” was the limiting factor for a given invention, for both inventions overall and post-1900 inventions.
In both cases, technology is the bottleneck far more often than science (though of course if you removed enough technological bottlenecks eventually you’d hit a scientific one, and vice versa).
There is of course only so much you can learn from this sort of exercise: at the end of the day, this is based on an AI’s best guess, not a thorough analysis of the various controlling factors by experts. But while I wouldn’t swear to its accuracy, I think the answers are probably mostly pretty good, and enough for us to draw some general (if tentative) conclusions about the nature of technological progress.
My main takeaway is that we mostly don’t wait all that long for new inventions. Since 1800 most inventions have appeared within a few decades of when it was possible to build them, and since 1900 these gaps been even narrower. It also seems likely that medical inventions are more likely to have long wait times than other types of inventions, and that the limiting factor for how early some new technology could appear is most likely to be technological, rather than scientific.
On the (maybe suprisingly) quick– and quickening– pace of progress: “How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions?” from @constructionphysics.skystack.xyz
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As we analyze advance, we might send inventive birthday greetings to William Webster (W. W.) Hansen; he was born on this date in 1909. A physicist and one of the founders of the technology of microwave electronics, he had a central hand in the development of klystron technology (essential to high frequency amplification, thus central to microwave technology, radar, and UHF television transmission), and linear accelerators (he led the development of SLAC), and along with the Varian brothers and Edward Ginzton, co-founded Varian Associates (in 1948)–one of the first high-tech companies in Silicon Valley.
#BrianPotter #culture #history #innovation #invention #inventions #klystron #linearAccelerator #microwave #Physics #radar #Science #SLAC #Technology #VarianAssociates #WWHansen