"Can we claim an new invention in the last ten years?"

Re: "Can we claim an new invention in the last ten year


Read/Write DVD's?

Read/Write Flash Memory?

Car GPS/Nav Systems?

These systems may have existed in labs or in military formats before 1995, but they certainly have come into public market usage in the last ten years.

stealth boat hulls.

RFID's in merchandise and farming

onboard gIS/gPS for custom farming

deeep till plows

very accurate directional drilling

paving made of shreded tires

The "rough draft of the human genome" 2001

weve completed it in 2003 and added a whole bunch more genomes

South Park

For important inventions it often takes a century or so from conception to large scale implementation. CNT = carbon nano tubes may soon become important. Tell us about the highway made of wood chips. Neil

since about 96, the dOT has developed contracts with tire shredding outfits . Theey mix the ply shreds into the MAC mix . This has beeen tested on I 95 and has been used extensively since 2001 . It helps rid the landscapee of huge piles of used tires. I dont know about using wood chips though

How 'bout particle accelerators, those are pretty new, right?

E. O. Lawrence won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering them.

I believe creation becomes invention once it has practical use. Edison's first light bulb was cool, but not very practical. We need the mad scientists for all those wild ideas, and the engineers to make them work for everybody.

I read a cool article on DARPA about a year ago where they talked about a lot of the new stuff in development.

Two that I recall dealt with paint.

One was a self healing paint. If your wall cracked the paint would release more paint to fill the crack.

The other was a camoflague paint that would mimic the surrounding area by working with reflections.

I'm sure there are hundreds of other cool (and many terrifying) things that DARPA doesn't talk about.

It seems pretty practical to me.

In 1879 Edison invented the first incandescent electric light bulb. He demonstrated it to the public by lighting Christie Street in Menlo Park, NJ that same year.

In 1882, he constructed the first commercial power station, located on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan, providing light and electricity power to customers in a one square mile area. The electric age had begun.

EXCEPT THAT EDISON WAS PUSHING DC.

Even though he was fully aware that in DC the resistance of the best wire available at the time attenuated the amount of power it could deliver over distance. He was indeed a stubborn man.

Aircraft lighting, like automobiles, is still DC because of the use of batteries. I've worked with both DC and AC for low voltage lighting. My track lighting at home is AC low voltage (12V). Aircraft is generally 6V.

BTW, this basic post appears in two different places. If anything, Mr. Paul blah, blah, blah is persistant.

Edison, besides having a fortune tied to DC, was really concerned that AC was "ultimately a hazard".
Remember, he had a bunch of silly inventions also.
He, like Leonardo and Jefferson , are each given credit for being "bright lights of their time' when we often forget that they came up with some really dumass ideas even for their eras.
Haavee you ever visited MOnticello? its really a laugh at thie grand waste of space because Jefferson couldnt figure out how to span areas well.

I think Edison knew there was no hazard as he was also a businessman and did have a lot of money tied up in it so decided to poo-poo the competition. I don't care who someone is, they can indulged in some business politicking that can be really petty.

I suppose anyone could look at Monticello as an architectural nightmare.
The house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Ramon Navarro in the Hollywood Hills is really eerie. No wonder Navarro got murdered in it. It looks like a contemporary surreal haunted house. Of course, we can say this now about someone like Jefferson but he was experimenting and developing his ideas about architecture with Monticello as his prototype. I was closely involved with research housing in Laguna Beach in the 70's. We did some fantastic things with new lighting products that are now kind of passe.

yeh but at Monticello we already knew the best ways to span areas since the Reannaissance. Jefferson , a diletante spanned his domed roomss with angle pieces which resulted in a uge amount of wasted space in which he tucked half a dining room and his "crypt " bed
e was known for being pettty and a one man sow so , whatever we conclude about Monticello , it was all his design.

I get a bigger kick from reading Leonardos Leicester Codex, wherein his "genius" in natural sciences was displayed.

I don't have time to read it... can you give some examples of his "genius"?

yeh, while Nicholas Steno had concluded tthat sedimentary rocks get depositd and then are "deformed" by earth forces (he did this about 75 years after Leonardo) , Lonardo was stating that many things like fossils and sediments are emplaced by the "arteries and veins" inside the earth , The earth was actually likened to a living thing.Leoonardo was the first Gaia ist
Ill try to find some more
The Dover series on the Leicester Codex uses a split page were the latin and English translations are side b y side.

ee belieeved in underground river , a concept that still believed in some areas today.