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Just read abt Starlite and other Amazing man made substances at this URL thru reddit. http://listverse.com/2013/06/20/10-awesome-man-made-substanc...
I recommend people have a look. The video of the amorphous metal is quite interesting.
(Yogrish. I saw the link elsewhere first as well but maybe we're not meant to use the R word here)
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I'm sure he didn't plan to die.
Not having something robust sorted out for your invention to survive your death by the time you're 78 years of age? That's bad planning. Or, perhaps, being a scrooge.
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Ages ago I spent a fair amount of time considering what would happen if someone invented a new power source. I was planning to try to write a short story based on the idea. In my imagination I invented a device the size of a fridge freezer capable of powering a small town for 100 years. The workings and science were irrelevant, but the politics of it was what interested me. I cant find the notes I made now, but essen…
That's more or less the premise of Atlas Shrugged. John Galt (one of the protagonists) invents a device just like that.
In the story, Shipstone quits his job, retreats to his basement and invents a technology that packs 'more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."'
Like Ward and Musk [1], Shipstone eschews patenting his new technology in order to deny others the opportunity to steal it (or tie him up in court cases) and instead begins manufacturing the devices (eponymously named "Shipstones") which end up becoming ubiquitous, powering everything from flashlights and automobiles, to households and ocean-going ships. The company he founds becomes the largest and most powerful industrial conglomerate in the galaxy and the method of manufacturing Shipstones remains a closely-held secret.
[1: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-patents-2012-11 ]
What sort of scientific Scrooge chooses to take his invention to the grave like that? What has he gained in the end?
Ages ago I spent a fair amount of time considering what would happen if someone invented a new power source. I was planning to try to write a short story based on the idea. In my imagination I invented a device the size of a fridge freezer capable of powering a small town for 100 years. The workings and science were irrelevant, but the politics of it was what interested me. I cant find the notes I made now, but essen…
Look at nuclear technology. Weapons or other wise, super powers and their allies are always paranoid that developing countries may develop nuclear power and all the edge they have in negotiating anything will just go away.
Inventions like things that control vast advances in science and technology are always going to be much about politics and less about altruistic nature of humans to share the inventions with each other.
Fighting bigger wars to prevent small insignificant wars is the common theme these days.
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That's more or less the premise of Atlas Shrugged. John Galt (one of the protagonists) invents a device just like that.
In the sci-fi novel 'Friday', Robert Heinlein writes about a physicist named Daniel Shipstone who realised that 'the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhere—in sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer…
As a theme only things that can be easily reproduced by looking at the very physical nature are patented. If something is easy to reproduce by just looking at the idea or invention itself, that is the kind of thing that is commonly patented. Why else do you think the patent ecosystem if full of crappiest and most obvious patents possible.
It hardly makes any sense to patent some thing that is genuinely difficult to figure out otherwise.
Sounds like a situation that the patent system was supposedly designed to prevent. But, from the article linked by yapcguy: > He refused to patent the recipe as that would mean making it public and risking its theft Wouldn't patenting the formula prevent it from being "stolen"? Or is our patent system truly good for nothing at all?
It doesn't prevent theft, it just easens getting compensation for theft. Numerous patent authors have put deliberate errors in the patent to prevent copying.
Seems to me anyone discovered doing that should at the very least have their patent annulled and have to return all licensing fees they've made. The whole point of a patent - in theory, anyway - is it's a bargain, a contract between an inventor and the rest of society. In return for getting a monopoly on an idea for 20 years, you have to thoroughly publicly document it, so that after your 20 years is up, the idea becomes open to all.
Putting deliberate errors in a patent "to prevent copying" is trying to get the benefit of this bargain without paying the price. It's a fraud on society.
Sounds like a situation that the patent system was supposedly designed to prevent. But, from the article linked by yapcguy: > He refused to patent the recipe as that would mean making it public and risking its theft Wouldn't patenting the formula prevent it from being "stolen"? Or is our patent system truly good for nothing at all?
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SpaceX does not patent any of their stuff for the same reason; it can be stolen by people outside of the country and the patent is essentially directions on how to do so.
I forget the quote exactly, but there was an interview with Elon and the lady was asking him about not patenting things at SpaceX. He said something along the lines of "Patents aren't going to do you much good when your competitors are other country's governments".
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/al...
I remember this being on Tomorrows World (which is a show that needs to come back), and practically every year that memory pops into my head and I wonder whatever happened to it. I think the segment ended with him showing it to NASA. If I remember correctly, he created it in his garden shed using off the shelf products that you could buy on the high street, and he just started mixing them together and testing the res…
Ward certainly believes in his product, claiming publicly that it could have prevented the space shuttle disasters. 'Starlite has a Q-value [an energy absorption rating] of 2,470. The space shuttle tiles have a Q-value of 1.' Not only that, but because Starlite is so lightweight – 1mm thick, compared to 75mm for the space tiles – it's actually '2,470 x 75 times better'. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/S…
Just what about a substance determines how thick it is? How thick is concrete, then? Glass?
Is there a reason Starlite can't be manufactured 75 mm thick, and would it then not be even more amazingly effective? Or alternatively, what's the thickness value for concrete? Glass? What's the Q-value of 75mm of paper tissue?