How Invention Begins ch. 8
Why do people invent?
Technologies tend to grow faster than linear growth (exponentially)
Leinhard shows the growth of speed in a chart where speed increases as a straight line, but look at the y axis measurement of speed--it isn't 100, 200, 300 but 100, 1000, 10,000. His chart shows exponential growth, not linear growth
more detail on Leinhard's argument
Have you heard of a similar pattern in the increasing speed of computers (and more fundamentally the number of components in an integrated circuit) called Moore's law--computer speeds have been doubling every one or two years for over 50 years.
Not everything follows exponential growth:
Lienhard thinks war slows down invention, which you wouldn't expect. We will come back to that question.
Before 1840 the exponential growth of progressing technologies was fairly constant.
After that they start growing faster and faster.
- profit
- necessity
- pleasure
- freedom
- If you look at the number of patents issued per year, technology is obviously progressing faster and faster
- but patents have to be approved, not everything that is
invented is patented, not everything that is patented is significant
- it isn't clear that all these inventions are changing our lives as much as peoples lives were changed by the 1920s by the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, etc.
- some technologies have a more radical effect on our lives
than others, an awful lot of patents are for minor improvements rather
than something really new
Technologies tend to grow faster than linear growth (exponentially)
Leinhard shows the growth of speed in a chart where speed increases as a straight line, but look at the y axis measurement of speed--it isn't 100, 200, 300 but 100, 1000, 10,000. His chart shows exponential growth, not linear growth
more detail on Leinhard's argument
Have you heard of a similar pattern in the increasing speed of computers (and more fundamentally the number of components in an integrated circuit) called Moore's law--computer speeds have been doubling every one or two years for over 50 years.
Not everything follows exponential growth:
- Why don't we build taller and taller buildings in the same
pattern
of
exponential increase?
- Leinhard says because we don't have so
clear a motivation to build taller buildings.
- Look at the dates on a chart of the worlds tallest buildings--the Empire State Building built in 1931 is still the world's ninth tallest building
- taller and taller buildings are not profitable
- thre are a lot of other factors that go into what is
progress--progress can't be measured by a single measure
- Leinhard wants to measure how fast the exponential growth is.
- Does the measure of the technology (speed or whatever)
double every 2 years or every 30 years?
- Leinhard measures this differently--his measure is how much does a technology increase in 30 years (roughly one person's career). Land speed doubled (actually a little faster than doubled--2.06 rather than 2.00) every 30 years from 1790 to 1965
- The other measure he uses, the time constant, is something
like the time it takes the technology to double (actually it is the
time it takes the technology to increase by 2.7 times, not just to
double)
Lienhard thinks war slows down invention, which you wouldn't expect. We will come back to that question.
Before 1840 the exponential growth of progressing technologies was fairly constant.
After that they start growing faster and faster.
- population and resources are increasing
- communication is faster
- There was a new expectation that technology would progress faster and faster
- Science became more useful to technology
- Industrial Research laboratories provided a place dedicated to developing new technologies
- Laboratories at universities trained students by a kind of apprenticeship to make new discoveries
- engineering began to be taught in schools rather than by apprenticeship
- (we will come back to some of these when we discuss the next
book)
- how do you teach people to be scientists?
- chemists discovered how to make synthetic dyes
- new colors were systematically researched and developed in the lab
