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History of Technology - Science topic
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Questions related to History of Technology
"Self-fulfilling prophecy" is Moore's own definition, while "a convenient fiction" is somebody else's...
I have decided that, giving some excerpts from two relevant articles will be more helpful than trying to explain my personal views in detail.
A.Z.
Excerpts from the article "Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?" by Kevin Kelly:
(...) Writing in 2005, (...) Moore says, “Moore’s Law is really about economics.” [Moore's colleague] Carver Mead made it clearer yet: Moore’s Law, he says, “is really about people’s belief system, it’s not a law of physics, it’s about human belief, and when people believe in something, they’ll put energy behind it to make it come to pass.”
(...) Finally, in a another reference, Mead adds : “Permission to believe that [the Law] will keep going,” is what keeps the Law going. Moore agrees in a 1996 article: “More than anything, once something like this gets established, it becomes more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Semiconductor Industry Association puts out a technology road map, which continues this [generational improvement] every three years. Everyone in the industry recognizes that if you don’t stay on essentially that curve they will fall behind. So it sort of drives itself.”
(...) Andrew Odlyzko from AT&T Bell Laboratories concurs: “Management is *not* telling a researcher, ‘You are the best we could find, here are the tools, please go off and find something that will let us leapfrog the competition.’ Instead, the attitude is, ‘Either you and your 999 colleagues double the performance of our microprocessors in the next 18 months, to keep up with the competition, or you are fired.'”
Excerpts from the article "A Moore’s Law Mystery" by Rose Eveleth:
(...) Moore’s Law probably didn’t start as a marketing ploy. Even Carlson will admit that. But it then became, what he called, “a convenient fiction.”
Thomas Haigh, a historian of technology at the University of Wisconsin, had a similar idea. “[Moore’s Law] has always been more of a self-promotion for the wondrous accomplishments of the semiconductor industry than a law of nature,” (...) “It’s also been a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, since it’s taken ever larger investments of research and development money to keep it coming true."
Hi, as part of my bachelor thesis on the design of programming languages for teaching mathematics in the 21st century, I have planned to discuss the evolution of (the) major programing languages which focus on the idea that computer programming could play an integral role in STEM education.
In order to analyze different programming languages as a framework for teaching (primarily) mathematical concepts, I am currently searching for (citable) research projects providing insights into the historical development of educational programming languages. – Are you familiar with any research on the evolution of educational programming languages?
Many thanks in advance for your contributions,
Tobias
Dear TEM&RG community, does anyone recognise the old TEM on the image, probably from end of the '60s? The microscope was installed in Slovenia, also wall-text suggest that. Based on our archive, there were several possible candidates, and most of them I could rule them out:
- 60kV Zeiss EM8 (nope)
- 100 kV Siemens Elmiskop 1A (nope)
- Tesla BS242 (nope)
- Jeol JEM-T8 (I have no ref. images for thisone)
- 100 kV Philips EM301 (nope)
Others are too new and of clearly Jeol design. The design of view-port resembles the one installed in Siemens & Halske Übermikroskop from 1938 but was changed in later commercial microscopes. Any suggestions and hints bring good karma!
Apparently, the mystery is now solved - this was Yugoslavian made diffractoscope / diffractograph, operating at 30-80 kV.
Here are also some other images from the various sources.
Could anyone help me finding related research papers regarding p2p lending industry especially the portal algorithms of different p2p portals such as prosper, lending club, zopa etc...
Can you recommend some good books and sources about the history of technology in education? I am interesting in pre-computer age, I mean learning and teaching machines, magic lanterns, chalkboards and the history of its implementation in schools.
Have you found any? Can you refer me to it?
PS I ve found Larry Cuban s "Teachers and Machines" but I am also looking for earlier times.
Metaphors are powerful ways for conveying scientific hypotheses. And we are looking for fresh theoretical and methodological insights to the classic questions of archaeology as we are setting forward to discuss the mechanisms by which inventions and innovations shaped the societies that embraced them during our session Nr. 371 "Trial and error in times of transition"of EAA in Bern [https://www.researchgate.net/project/EAA-2019-Session-371-Trial-and-error-in-times-of-transition] If you feel willing to contribute to the discussion, please consider submitting an abstract. 10 days left!
I'm looking for some publications (books, articles, chapters, etc...) about seamless tube history (steel, cast iron or copper seamless tube), in particular in their tecnhological development during 19th and 20th century. Can somebody give me some suggestions about it?
I have already found:
- James Percy Boore, The seamless story: A history of the seamless steel tube industry in the United States
- Douglas Alan Fisher, The epic of steel
Is it true that in America during the independence war 10000 guns were ordered and this is the point I'm looking for?
Many models of this aircraft were developed, does somebody know a source for geometrical, aerodynamic, and mass characteristics?
It is known that after the italian armistice in 1943 all the material and all the documentation about the CS 15 were confiscated by German military authorities and moved to Germany.
Most of us assume, what we experience or thought as facts of nature. Let me explain this based on my experience. I grow up in a remote village in India. One of the most fascinating thing I saw around the age of 10 was a Magnet, which was taken out of a dynamo of a bicycle and my fiend showed me in the school. I wanted one and nagged my parents, and finally they barrowed one form a bicycle repair shop for few days for me to play with it. One of the fascinating thing was, how small gains of iron stick to it.
After few years, in the science class I learned about the Universal gravity. If was unbelievable and fascinating again to learn that I am a miniscule gain of iron stuck to the huge magnet – The Earth. Up until that time, I was of the impression that the Earth is round disk and one could fall-off, if he runs to the edge of the Earth.
My tacit assumptions were shaped by my experiences and my friends talking about the edge of the disk shaped earth and falling off the Edge etc. If I were not a boy and not thought from the science book, I might have refused to accept that the Earth is a huge Magnet. Even it contradicted my perception of reality, I was forced to accept it, because I had no choice (but few adults supported my view, I might had refuse to accept it).
Similar kind of flawed tacit assumption was at the root of geocentric paradigm, which lead to one of the greatest scientific crisis known to mankind. The following web-page illustrates how complex it is to expose the insidious tacit assumption: http://www.real-software-components.com/forum_blogs/BriefSummaryOfTruths.html#Chronology
How is it possible to expose such insidious tacit assumption, if it exists in any modern scientific discipline in the 21st century? The scientist and researchers feel that they know everything and it is impossible to have such insidious flaw in their knowledge. They refuse to accept anything that doesn’t fit their perception of reality. Every other researcher and expert are in support of their perception of reality, so they have no reason to accept the error in tacit assumption: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295525659_Tacit_assumptions_or_Implicit_assumptions_if_they_are_flawed_leads_to_paradoxical_paradigm_and_scientific_crisis
Best Regards,
Raju Chiluvuri
Need info for a student in my seminar on tour books for cyclists (1880-1930).
I am looking for well-written articles, chapters and books (in English, German or French) about history of science and technology as a subject/field of historiography. I am especially interested in the beginnings of the field in the late 19th and the early 20th century. Thanks for your advice!
I am writing a history of the human search for scarce and valuable metals from the Bronze Age to about 1960. The metals are: gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, mercury. The book is based on a set of case studies--each is an important mining site, was mined for anywhere from 100 to 4000 years, and currently has a good interpretive museum and underground tour. The sites are: Great Orme Mine (Wales), Laurion (Greece), Rio Tinto (Spain), Reed Gold Mine (North Carolina), Erzgebirge/Freiburg (Germany), Almaden (Spain), Potosi (Bolivia), Copper Region (Upper Peninsula Michigan, US) and Gold District (Johannesburg, South Africa). A narrative history of world mining will tie the cases together. I would be interested in information about any of the study sites, especially personal familiarity, interest in chapter or manuscript review, or in hearing from anyone who would find this work useful for their own research.
I believe it was invented by Dr. Fritz J. Hansgirg, an Austrian chemist and metallurgist, in 1935-1936. He then filed patents for the process in Japan, Germany, Austria, Canada, Great Britain and in the U.S. The process then fell into Russian hands in September 1945 when Soviet forces occupied Japanese-occupied Hungnam, North Korea at the end of WWII. (See attached)
I Would need estimates of the total costs and job creation of renewable energy, from construction trough operation to decomissioning. Preferably divided into these catogories, to estimate how much of the jobs and money is generated in the countries where the technology comes from, and how much in the locations where they are running.
The 2013 complexity conference hosted by the Nanyang Institute of Technology contained the following excerpts :
"The 21st century," physicist Stephen Hawking has said, "will be the century of complexity." Likewise, the physicist Heinz Pagels has said that "the nations and people who master the new sciences of complexity will become the economic, cultural, and political superpowers of the 21st century."
General systems theory was thought to be the "skeleton of science" (Kenneth E.Boulding)
Is "multidisciplinary" and "interdisciplinary" subsumed under "transdisciplinarity"?
Does "transdisciplinarity" imply "universality"? Is it very different from the notion of "consillience" (coined by Edward O Wilson)
I am studying musical instrument making, and circulation of knowledge in relation to wood trade. Thank you for your help.
I would be pleased to know any details related to scientifc or technical publisihng houses´s experiences during the 20th century
Canoe-goers use this very handy axe today, but they did not make it. They say it is very old. When we first looked at it we thought wow! it must be Minoan. We know the Minoans travelled far and wide and probably had trade relations with South America, India and Indonesia since very ancient times and were experts in mining (name from them?) and metallurgy. Maybe someone knows more about this subject
Typically, modern and new instrumentation implies that it is smaller, faster, more accurate, less power hungry and more suitable for today's applications. Most of the time these 'modern' instruments are full of 'likeable features', which reminds one of model railway engineering. What about the older technologies, some of which were very reliable, dependable, repairable and 'loveable'. As example consider vacuum tube technology, beautiful, reliable, very functional. Is there a place for it today? As example, I add a photo of a collection of Collins Radio HF receivers, transmitters and transceivers (1960's). This was quality of the day, very reliable and are much coveted today by those who know. What is your experience? Is modern and high tech always the way to go in technology? What and why is this incessant drive towards smaller and smaller instruments and equipment with more bells and whistles?
In the Russian Empire and the beginning of the construction of new rail stations followed the rite of consecration construction equipment, locomotives and wagons. Has there been a priest blessing the railway stations in Europe and America (1830-1900-s) after the completion of their construction? Was this an important (necessary) tradition? Or was sanctification by this time a private archaic tradition?
I am looking for potential speakers at a workshop for 2014
