A perfect example of american Creativity

[Jccarlton]

This is what goes on in national labs here in the US. Innovative use of something for what it was never intended for.:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/scien ... ef=science
if my experience with model trains is any indication they could have run that engine for years if need be.

[chrismb]

(Can't read it. It's got some sort of sign-up service.)

Misunderstand me if you like (I suggest you don't) but aren't Americans really good 'fast-followers'. I mean, they are great at innovating a good idea, but they don't come up with many ideas. Like, err, computers, the www, cars, aeroplanes (see 'George Cayley'), space rockets (von Braun/Nazi V2), jet engines (Whittle), &c., &c.. I mean, Americans don't even use diesel power to drive their passenger cars yet!!....

I think inventiveness is a key attribute of backward societies, and America is too far forward and 'soft' for its inhabitants. You only go looking for a solution to something when you're not happy about it. So the cheery and well served Americans don't sit there shivering in their garden sheds working on their new confabulation to improve their miserable and uncomfortable existence in a country that fails to make commercially available general hardware to fit oneself up with a comfy life, but instead they just go down the beach or coffee shop to chill out 'cos life's already easy. That's why all the great inventions are British, we get pushed around and generally maligned as a working population, so the only way to fix it is to build something yourself to make life better - at which point the highly innovative Americans immediately see the benefits of how it can make their lives even easier still, and that Brit inventor ends up in the States pronto.

It's also applicable to Russian and Central European types, plus a few post-war Germans, but the Brits also combine it with this arrogant "you can't tell me I don't know how to build a fusion reactor... just watch me!" type of attitude. We're arrogant and stuck up enough to think we know better, combined with the "necessity-is-da'-muther-" route to inventions.

[Jccarlton]

(Can't read it. It's got some sort of sign-up service.)

Misunderstand me if you like (I suggest you don't) but aren't Americans really good 'fast-followers'. I mean, they are great at innovating a good idea, but they don't come up with many ideas. Like, err, computers, the www, cars, aeroplanes (see 'George Cayley'), space rockets (von Braun/Nazi V2), jet engines (Whittle), &c., &c.. I mean, Americans don't even use diesel power to drive their passenger cars yet!!....

I think inventiveness is a key attribute of backward societies, and America is too far forward and 'soft' for its inhabitants. You only go looking for a solution to something when you're not happy about it. So the cheery and well served Americans don't sit there shivering in their garden sheds working on their new confabulation to improve their miserable and uncomfortable existence in a country that fails to make commercially available general hardware to fit oneself up with a comfy life, but instead they just go down the beach or coffee shop to chill out 'cos life's already easy. That's why all the great inventions are British, we get pushed around and generally maligned as a working population, so the only way to fix it is to build something yourself to make life better - at which point the highly innovative Americans immediately see the benefits of how it can make their lives even easier still, and that Brit inventor ends up in the States pronto.

It's also applicable to Russian and Central European types, plus a few post-war Germans, but the Brits also combine it with this arrogant "you can't tell me I don't know how to build a fusion reactor... just watch me!" type of attitude. We're arrogant and stuck up enough to think we know better, combined with the "necessity-is-da'-muther-" route to inventions.

Here's the make magazine link that I got the NYT story from:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/0 ... usion.html
And most of the great inventions are not British. Americans don't spend time in garden sheds because we have garages or basements, which when necessary, we heat to keep warm. I wish I had photographs of some of the basements and garages that I ran into at estate sales when I was selling on ebay a while back. The first general use computer was ENIAC, invented by Mauchley and Eckert in Philadelphia. The first liquid fuel rocket was invented by Goddard and he was doing some of the things Von Braun did at least ten years earlier. The internet was invented as a military communications tool by ARPA, have you never heard of ARPANet. And Cayley never actually built anything that actually flew under power, so that doesn't count. As for diesel power cars, if you live in New England they can be a problem, which my brother has discovered with his VW. I think that inventiveness is universal, but the US has the demonstrated long term best environment for allowing creativity to flourish, ever.

[Tom Ligon]

Clever.

I've always been more than a little unhappy with the uncertainties in calibration when working with typical neutron detectors in close proximity to a fusor. Say you have a cylindrical detector tube in a larger cylindrical moderator. You ask the calibration lab how they calibrated it and they give some vague statement about a neutron beam from some source of neutrons with energies nothing like what you are measuring. The beam is direct from the source but also scatters thru a surrounding moderator, so the energy and direction are poorly defined. Plus, the moderator has this awkward geometry. Do they bother to tell you the angle at which the beam hit the moderator in the calibration? That would be novel.

For maximum sensitivity you are running the detector very close to what you hope is a nearly point source of neutrons in the fusor, so parts of the moderator are much closer to the source than others. There is some necessary handwavium in the resulting calibration.

A moving source would be a help, I think, especially for an in-situ calibration.

[chrismb]

The first general use computer was ENIAC, invented by Mauchley and Eckert in Philadelphia.

So you're talking about the electronic version of a mechanical idea already invented by Charles Babbage.

There you go. Brilliant US innovation [mechanical to electronic] of a prior invention.

The first liquid fuel rocket was invented by Goddard and he was doing some of the things Von Braun did at least ten years earlier.

The first solid rockets were invented by the Chinese a couple of thousands of years before.

There you go. Brilliant US innovation [solid fuelled 'toy' rocket to liquid fuelled utility rocket] of a prior invention.

The internet was invented as a military communications tool by ARPA, have you never heard of ARPANet.

The first information networks were invented by the Greeks and their teams of marathon runners (which, I hasten to suggest, was set up for exactly the same purpose - for the integrated national defence of a load of self-autonomous city states).

There you go. Brilliant US innovation [running with a bit of paper to sending stuff by electronics] of a prior invention.

And Cayley never actually built anything that actually flew under power, so that doesn't count.

But he built something that flew.

There you go. Brilliant US innovation [non-powered flight to powered flight] of a prior invention.

the US has the demonstrated long term best environment for allowing creativity to flourish, ever.

The case for my wind-up of the colonists rests.

[Josh Cryer]

I think as long as the US invests in good science it will always be ahead. We had little scientific investment in the Bush years (and a lot of cutbacks or under funded mandates), but it seems to be changing.

[Jccarlton]

Clever.

I've always been more than a little unhappy with the uncertainties in calibration when working with typical neutron detectors in close proximity to a fusor. Say you have a cylindrical detector tube in a larger cylindrical moderator. You ask the calibration lab how they calibrated it and they give some vague statement about a neutron beam from some source of neutrons with energies nothing like what you are measuring. The beam is direct from the source but also scatters thru a surrounding moderator, so the energy and direction are poorly defined. Plus, the moderator has this awkward geometry. Do they bother to tell you the angle at which the beam hit the moderator in the calibration? That would be novel.

For maximum sensitivity you are running the detector very close to what you hope is a nearly point source of neutrons in the fusor, so parts of the moderator are much closer to the source than others. There is some necessary handwavium in the resulting calibration.

A moving source would be a help, I think, especially for an in-situ calibration.

How small would you need it. You can get model train drives that are really really small. precision control is also available. It looks to me as if the limiting size factor would be the radiation source.

[chrismb]

Y'see, I would've stuck the neutron source at the end of a metronome sitting on a rotating platform, all riding the train, to increase the pseudo-uniformity of its emissions.

Brit creativity....

[MSimon]

So you're talking about the electronic version of a mechanical idea already invented by Charles Babbage.

Babbage never reduced it to practice.

And in any case the American genius is in engineering - reducing ideas to practice. Fission was discovered by Euros. Americans reduced it to practice in 3 1/2 years. The Manhattan Project was about engineering - the practical side of science.

I always liked the science humor in the Beatles movie Help. The Brits were continually screwed by connector problems.

[chrismb]

So you're talking about the electronic version of a mechanical idea already invented by Charles Babbage.

the American genius is in engineering - reducing ideas to practice. Fission was discovered by Euros. Americans reduced it to practice in 3 1/2 years. The Manhattan Project was about engineering - the practical side of science.

I agree.

That's what I call innovation. Babbage had the invention, but it needed 20th century Japanese toolmaking to be able to finally make it with sufficient precision and efficiency that it was affordable and that it worked.

[MSimon]

So you're talking about the electronic version of a mechanical idea already invented by Charles Babbage.

the American genius is in engineering - reducing ideas to practice. Fission was discovered by Euros. Americans reduced it to practice in 3 1/2 years. The Manhattan Project was about engineering - the practical side of science.

I agree.

That's what I call innovation. Babbage had the invention, but it needed 20th century Japanese toolmaking to be able to finally make it with sufficient precision and efficiency that it was affordable and that it worked.

IIRC there was also a Brit effort to recreate the Babbage Machine. It worked.

The second part of American engineering genius is to reduce science to practice at an affordable price.

A comparison of Polywell to ITER is instructive in that regard.

[alexjrgreen]

Babbage had the invention, but it needed 20th century Japanese toolmaking to be able to finally make it with sufficient precision and efficiency that it was affordable and that it worked.

19th century precision was all that was required. Babbage was skilled enough to make the parts himself, but the size of the job meant he had to delegate. Whenever he contracted the work out, the precision was too poor and costs spiralled.

[Jccarlton]

So you're talking about the electronic version of a mechanical idea already invented by Charles Babbage.

Babbage never reduced it to practice.

And in any case the American genius is in engineering - reducing ideas to practice. Fission was discovered by Euros. Americans reduced it to practice in 3 1/2 years. The Manhattan Project was about engineering - the practical side of science.

I always liked the science humor in the Beatles movie Help. The Brits were continually screwed by connector problems.

Connectors are easy:
AMP
http://www.tycoelectronics.com/default.aspx
You don't really need to know anything else unless you are putting your stuff on airplanes.

[Tom Ligon]

I'm seeing a bit of "we thought of it first", but the examples are often of things other people thought of but then decided were impractical and didn't build.

Americans didn't know any better, so they did it anyway.

Steel bridges ... Brits prohibited the use of steel for bridges because they did not know if the material was strong enough. They did use iron. But an American inventor who didn't know any better built a huge one, put in service in 1874, and still in service:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eads_Bridge

The keystone of American invention is not knowing what can't be done. It is audacious and even arrogant.

[MSimon]

The keystone of American invention is not knowing what can't be done. It is audacious and even arrogant.

No wonder I fit in so well with engineers.