🚀 go-pugleaf

"Robert J. Kolker" <bobkolker@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:xrGdnT1f_cCBE1zanZ2dnUVZ_s2tnZ2d@comcast.com...
> Tom Potter wrote:
>>
>> As I indicated,
>> technology is driven by technology,
>>
>> and new technologies come about via serendipity.
>
> And understanding of the underlying processes. Which is why we did not
> have working transistors until 1948.
>
> We did not have the makings of radio until Maxwell modified Ampere's law
> with the displacment current term.  Without the theory, there would have
> been no technology.
>
> We did not have atomic bombs until we had an atomic theory. All
> engineering technology is guided by the available theory, although some
> fortunate accidents may occur.
>
> The mother of modern technology is quantum field theory which is, in part,
> based on relativity theory.

 Bob Kolker makes a good point when he points out that
"We did not have atomic bombs until we had an atomic theory."
the bible, Newton's Laws, Maxwell's Equations,
the Magna Carta. and the American Constitution.

Of course, we also did not have atomic bombs until
someone noticed that some material was messing up
their photo plates, and that particles were being emitted
from heavy elements, and that the concentration of
light elements increased and the concentration
of  heavy elements decreased, and until folks
measured the masses of the various elements and isotopes,
and folks made radioactive watch faces, and understood
that the light energy had to come from somewhere, etc.

-- 
Tom Potter

http://www.geocities.com/tdp1001/index.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~tdp
http://notsocrazyideas.blogspot.com
http://groups.msn.com/PotterPhotos