A significant percentage of american high schoolers probably couldn't find France on a world map. This doesn't imply a conspiracy to keep France hidden.
And, frankly, I'm unaware of any modern textbook (high school or otherwise) that credits Edison with the invention of alternating current. I have yet to see anyone other than Tesla so-credited. Furthermore, his debate (or feud) with Edison was well-publicised at the time, and remains well known today.
If your average high-schooler is unaware of this it isn't because of a conspiracy of silence, it because he or she frankly just doesn't care.
What the average secondary school student does or does not know is a pretty lousy metric by which to judge the existence of a coverup.
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with your comments, but beyond what grade schoolers learn about Thomas Edison, the history of the invention of alternating current, the polyphase motor, and associated technologies is hardly a secret. Entire books have been written on the subject, and Tesla is not an unknown name. Like Henry Ford and JP Morgan, Edison became an American icon, and he gets more coverage in history books than most other inventors, but that has nothing to do with your previous statements regarding forgotten technologies.
Benjamin Franklin did not "discover" electricity when he was flying a kite. He already knew about electricity, and had several other prior inventions covering the subject. He was attemping (foolishly) to demonstrate the lightning conductor.
People love to deride Edison because he "took credit" for inventions his associates developed. So what. They were on his payroll. Edison figured out how to turn them into products. Tesla didn't know how to make money with his ideas. That's why Edison is super famous and Tesla is not. History likes entrepreneurs. Don't be so quick to dismiss them.
In what grade school or high school is this taught? Anyone who has ever lived in a cold climate and had the acquaintance of a cat knew about electricity--they might not know the name but they had certainly experienced it.
And?
(a) who cares who invented it and (b) last I heard it was Tesla.
Maybe _you_ were, but everybody else I know who gives a damn was taught that it was invented by Karl Benz.
Asked and answered. Why are you repeating yourself? Is your record skipping? Who invented the phonograph by the way?
Why would one want to ask a high schooler anything about events that occurred before said high schooler was borne? If you want information on the latest fads or the like a high schooler would be a good source, but unless he has an interest in history and studies it independently one would not expect him to know about such things.
No, he isn't. He's dead so it's a bit late to be sending him to school.
So? A student in a school in the US (there is no "USA school system", the schools are managed by the individual states or in some cases by local governments) generally will tell you that New Mexico is part of Mexico and if asked to point to Washington, DC on a globe will likely point to some location in Australia, so why would you expect them to be able to identify obscure engineers?
So?
Since you seem to think that one has to deliberately set out to create a light bulb that will burn out, how does one make one that will not?
Is there an echo in here?
Because nobody gives a damn?
Who?
Forgotten by who? The local bookstore has more books on the shelf about Tesla than about Edison.
Pity those others didn't have patent lawyers of the same caliber as those employed by hole in the wall software companies today.
Read about it where? I thought that it had all been covered up. Do strive for at least an appearance of consistency.
Where would one read about this?
Like "don't listen to lunatics raving on USENET"?
The name of the person who invented alternating current has about the same relevance to every day life today as does the name of whoever first discovered that a sharp edge on a rock will cut.
Cugnot, actually, if you consider an "automobile" also includes steam-powered engines.
But seriously, as in my other reply to Rich, "inventors" like Ford are given credit because they commercialized the idea. Before his death Benz built maybe 10,000 cars total; Ford built some 15 million Model T's alone.
But the half life can be reduced. There is an article in the current (Mar 18th) issue of The Economist about an experimental reactor in Japan that burns nuclear waste by shooting high energy protons at it. The protons knock loose neutrons, which may cause fission (releasing more neutrons) or be absorbed by other nuclei. In most cases, the resulting nuclei have much shorter half-life than the original material, which means the energy is released as heat over decades instead of millennium. Even after subtracting the power needed to run the proton accelerator, they come out ahead.
It is just a research project. But I think that it is quite possible that future generations will look at the gunk we are storing in Yucca Mountain as a resource rather than waste.
The premise in the post to which I was responding was that the half life was hundreds of thousands of years. My point was that there is a relationship between half-life and energy production--the longer the half-life the lower the rate of energy production.
That is quite likely.
On the contrary, there are nuclear robots in existence now. See, for example, Voyager. Depends on the application.
Without supporting fact, this assertion can not be taken seriously. You are assuming that someone has had an invention and it was never public, but the fault in your reasoning is that you could not know about it either.
Secrets and conspiracies very much resemble "Schrodinger's Cat" in that once someone knows about them, they are no longer secret.
Yes, and it was abandoned because although Edison called alternating current witchcraft, it was better than DC. MUCH better than DC.
Yup, and people came along and made more efficient ones.
And how would they stop it?
Again, how would they stop it?
Mostly true, but that's why new industries pop up. Do you think the typewriter and "liquid paper" companies would allow products in the market that made them obsolete? How about adding machine companies?
If there is any validity to your argument, think of *all* the industries that were virtually wiped out by computers. How on earth was the computer allowed to come to the market? Simple, because you really can't stop a good idea. Delay, maybe, obstruct, sure. Stop? No way.
That's nonsense. If you don't make it, someone else will.
Until someone makes an umbrella with a lifetime warrentee.
That too, is nonsense. Light bulbs *can't* last forever, but LEDs are getting bright enough to replace them. They currently do so in a lot of flashlights, and they last for, almost, ever.
Automobiles, well, I don't know how they last as long as they do. Amazing machines.
Shoes? Not and be comfortable.
Clothing? See shoes.
Paint? Everything exposed to the elements wares away.
Roads? See paint.
Actually, in *all* the industries you mention, great strides have been made to improve the products to last longer.
It isn't a secret. You can't make something that is used and lasts forever. It doesn't work that way, certainly not in any sort of economy where cost of the device has to be finite. That isn't a conspiracy to make it more breakable, but if you used carbon fiber struts, a titanium shaft, and woven kevlar sheet for an umbrella, it may, in fact, last for ten or twenty years without ever failing, but who would pay a grand for an umbrella?
When, of course there was food. Not all primitives were "hunter gatherers" many, in fact most successful peoples were agrarian.
Oh please, are you serious?
4 hours a day work, the rest recreation for hunter gatherers? Hardly. Shelter, heat (finding wood), making clothing, preserving food if possible, finding/getting water, sickness -- LOTS of sickness, lucky for them life spans of 35 years.
Who is "they" and why do you listen?
Again, who told you?
Secrets can't be kept, they all get out sooner or later.
In the history of man kind, there have never been secrets that remain so. They always get out.
The information may not be universally known, but that doesn't mean it is secret. I may know many things which you do not, that doesn't mean they are secret. All you would need is curiosity.
You're marketing it all wrong. Howard Stern would have you on in a second. There's your big chance. Grab the brass ring...or finger in your case and pull.
LOL...I can't believe how far off the path this thread has gone. I apologize for making an actual post about robotics. I posted it to the wrong group. ;-)
I sort of have to accept an amount of the responsibility, I guess, for posting about "cold fusion," I think that was the break in the flow. :-) What's really funny, however, is how fast it got off track.
Walking robot-> full throttle -> power concerns -> cold fusion (me) ->
I got to see this machine during their demonstration at SwRI last year, as one of the groups funded by DARPA's Biodynotics program. Looks like they have made impressive progress since then.
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