Hard to think of a decent title for my question
What technologies in existence now could have existed a lot earlier except for the fact vested interests meant they were either repressed or no funding given for research. This isn’t meant to be a woo woo conspiracy
http://fortune.com/2015/06/30/tesla-of-electric-buses/?xid=soc_socialflow_facebook_FORTUNE
Can’t think of any examples.
Hero of Alexandria (c.10 – 70AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer who invented a number of devices including an early example of a steam engine. It’s often argued that had there not been such plentiful cheap labour in the form of slaves, a steam-powered industrial revolution might have occurred in ancient Roman days.
Bubblecar said:
Hero of Alexandria (c.10 – 70AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer who invented a number of devices including an early example of a steam engine. It’s often argued that had there not been such plentiful cheap labour in the form of slaves, a steam-powered industrial revolution might have occurred in ancient Roman days.
there were plenty of slaves in Victorian England, 100 years prior to the beginning of the industrial revolution the peasants had been moved off the land where they worked as serfs and straight into the slums. the act of enclosure was one law that drove peasants off the land because it made their presence illegal in the countryside.
I think it was a psychological thing the romans probably didn’t think about process lines very much
Cymek said:
Hard to think of a decent title for my questionWhat technologies in existence now could have existed a lot earlier except for the fact vested interests meant they were either repressed or no funding given for research. This isn’t meant to be a woo woo conspiracy
I can think of a number of inventions that could have been invented earlier, such as the bicycle and the ram-air canopy style of parachute. And inventions that should have become popular earlier, such as the quadcopter and ultralight.
Many valuable “orphan drugs” have been killed off by excessive costs and low returns. One could argue that it was “vested interests” that led to the excessive costs.
The loss of chrysotile production due to political pressure was a major loss to society, ditto radium. Compare that other similar products that have survived unscathed through similar political pressure, including thalidomide and copper-chrome-arsenic.
I still bemoan the loss of the Wankel engine, it was a very bad financial decision to limit its use to one company.
Perhaps I could complain about “vested interests” in suppressing the invention of a car window wiper that wipes all of its window, and suppressing the availability of the 4-point, 5 point and 6-point harnesses in street cars. But I won’t because in both cases I suspect that it was just badly worded legislation that was responsible.
> no funding given for research.
Someone made a great comment about this recently, I’ll see if I can remember when or where. Ah yes, in the “molten salt nuclear reactor” video. The comment was to the effect that developing a new technology (such as molten salt cooled thorium reactors) to the point where it can compete commercially with current technology (such as pressurized water reactors) requires a lot of funding with no guarantee of a return at the end, and very few people are willing to take that sort of chance.
There must be millions of other examples like that. Pick any long-established technology, think of alternatives that were never popular. Or. Think of any invention (other than the saw bench) from the original ABC “The inventors” program and see what happened to it.
Why don’t we see very fast train technology in Australia, or in the USA? Why aren’t cargo ships and large passenger liners nuclear powered? In both cases the accepted technology is inferior to the rejected technology. Microsoft Windows as an operating system is awful, but vested interests from software manufacturers have insisted that it survive.
Fortran was a great programming language, until the idiots in charge of its standard specification prior to 1990 decided to cripple it by removing its mathematics and graphics capabilities. The idiots were computer scientists – writers of languages – and didn’t want Fortran to compete with their other languages.
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On another one, I do happen to know why lightweight building panels have failed to become a major part of Australian housing. CSIRO got a new lightweight building panel test every six months or so for more than twenty years. Not one of them passed through all the rigorous code-of-practice tests.
I’d like to add one here that is somewhat weird, the LED became commercially available in 1962, but wasn’t used for room lighting until very recently. This wasn’t a case of delays by vested interests or limited research funding, but because of a variant of Moore’s Law; LED illumination doubled every three years since their discovery.
Cymek said:
Hard to think of a decent title for my questionWhat technologies in existence now could have existed a lot earlier except for the fact vested interests meant they were either repressed or no funding given for research. This isn’t meant to be a woo woo conspiracy
I take it you’re not interested in mollwollfumble’s “inventions”. They could have existed a lot earlier were it not for laziness.
Conveyer belts for human transport in the city. Conveyor belts were invented in 1892-1901. They were promoted (and taken seriously by city councils) in the 1940s as an alternative to underground trains. Their capacity can greatly exceed that of underground trains so would be much more suitable wherever trains are overcrowded.
mollwollfumble said:
Conveyer belts for human transport in the city. Conveyor belts were invented in 1892-1901. They were promoted (and taken seriously by city councils) in the 1940s as an alternative to underground trains. Their capacity can greatly exceed that of underground trains so would be much more suitable wherever trains are overcrowded.
the only thing would be old people and stupid people using it
Cymek asks great questions. I wish I had better answers on this one. To reiterate, what current technology could have been invented earlier?
If “clear glass” had been invented earlier, then the ancient Greeks or Romans could have had the lens, the prism (spectroscope), and the telescope. Clear glass was invented in Venice in the 16th century, so certainly could have been invented by the ancient Romans. The element mercury was known in ancient times so with clear glass the ancients could also have had the mirror (they only had mirrors of polished bronze) and the thermometer.
mollwollfumble said:
Cymek asks great questions. I wish I had better answers on this one. To reiterate, what current technology could have been invented earlier?If “clear glass” had been invented earlier, then the ancient Greeks or Romans could have had the lens, the prism (spectroscope), and the telescope. Clear glass was invented in Venice in the 16th century, so certainly could have been invented by the ancient Romans. The element mercury was known in ancient times so with clear glass the ancients could also have had the mirror (they only had mirrors of polished bronze) and the thermometer.
I’ve mentioned quadcopter above. Invented in 1907 and took almost a hundred years to become popular. Still not used to best advantage – heavy lifting in strong winds.
Sugar in Europe. The first record of sugar in English is in the late 13th century. It was initially more expensive than gold. But sugar had been available in Europe all along. It could have been produced from sugar beet at much lower expense from prehistoric times, this was noticed for the first time only in 1747. Think about it, if beet sugar had been recognised earlier then that would have completely altered the history of the slave trade.
3-D printing. All the necessary components were there in the 1950s, when General Motors had developed a technique to record the motions of a human machinist and play them back automatically. Other components – thermoplastics were around in 1935, sintering and the cake-icing nozzle were much earlier. 3-D printing only began in 1981 using an entirely different technique, curing photopolymers with ultraviolet lasers.
mollwollfumble said:
Sugar in Europe. The first record of sugar in English is in the late 13th century. It was initially more expensive than gold. But sugar had been available in Europe all along. It could have been produced from sugar beet at much lower expense from prehistoric times, this was noticed for the first time only in 1747. Think about it, if beet sugar had been recognised earlier then that would have completely altered the history of the slave trade.
Interesting.
I can’t think of anything significant that was suppressed by vested interests, but if the question is what could have been invented earlier, if someone had thought of it:
Reinforced concrete.
The steam engine.
All sorts of agricultural tools.
We can be pretty sure no-one will ever invent a time machine, or they would have gone back in time and invented it ages ago.
Bubblecar said:
We can be pretty sure no-one will ever invent a time machine, or they would have gone back in time and invented it ages ago.
Maybe it caused so many problems they went back in time and stopped it being invented.
The Rev Dodgson said:
Bubblecar said:
We can be pretty sure no-one will ever invent a time machine, or they would have gone back in time and invented it ages ago.
Maybe it caused so many problems they went back in time and stopped it being invented.
But they’d also have to go forward in time, to every possible future, to make sure it’s never invented then.
Bubblecar said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
Bubblecar said:
We can be pretty sure no-one will ever invent a time machine, or they would have gone back in time and invented it ages ago.
Maybe it caused so many problems they went back in time and stopped it being invented.
But they’d also have to go forward in time, to every possible future, to make sure it’s never invented then.
Good point.
The Rev Dodgson said:
I can’t think of anything significant that was suppressed by vested interests, but if the question is what could have been invented earlier, if someone had thought of it:Reinforced concrete.
…
All sorts of agricultural tools.
Good points. One the chemically fantastic things about reinforced concrete is that the alkali in the cement inhibits corrosion of the steel, making it more durable than both. The ancient Romans discovered concrete that sets underwater, which was much later rediscovered and improved on. Ancient peoples also had adobe bricks reinforced with straw. So why not concrete reinforced by steel? It would have been darn useful for the roofs of their large buildings. Perhaps it was the vested interests of the swordsmiths, blacksmiths and armourers.
Agricultural tools. Which ones did you have in mind?
Plough, sickle, scythe, harness, yoke, seed drill, millstone, spade, water pump were very early. Animals stamping on grain could be used to thresh it. There was even a Roman horse-powered version of the front-end loader used for harvesting. “Chinese had invented the hydraulic-powered trip hammer by the 1st century BC. Its main function to pound, decorticate, and polish grain. The Chinese also innovated the square-pallet chain pump by the 1st century AD, powered by a waterwheel or an oxen pulling on a system of mechanical wheels.”
Cymek said:
What technologies in existence now could have existed a lot earlier except for the fact vested interests meant they were either repressed or no funding given for research.
Secrecy by people who first manufactured a product (vested interests) has hampered the subsequent development. Famous examples include:
Porcelain. First manufactured in northern China 7th century AD, delayed until 10th century AD in southern China. Failed attempts at producing porcelain in Europe started in the the 16th century AD, succeeding only in 1708 and still remained secret until 1712 when “many of the elaborate Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets were revealed throughout Europe by the French Jesuit father Francois Xavier d’Entrecolles”.
Purple dye. Tyrian purple, produced from the Murex shell, appeared in the bronze age around the Mediterranean and was known in Italy about 1800 BC. Successful trade restrictions stopped the dye being exported to China until at least the 16th century AD.
Silk. Invented in the 4th millennium BC. Eggs were smuggled into the Byzantine empire in the 6th century AD.
Stradivarius violin. Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) was the greatest maker of stringed instruments in his age. The secrecy of his family and of his contemporaries, notable Guarneri, meant that is wasn’t until the early 21st century that better violins were made.
Leonardo da Vinci’s use of code to hide his inventions.
Cymek said:
What technologies in existence now could have existed a lot earlier except for the fact vested interests meant they were either repressed or no funding given for research.
I wonder, what about plastics? Not nylon, obviously, but perhaps viscose/rayon, cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate.
Let’s examine. Sulfuric acid was known in Sumerian times and the main ingredient, sulphur, was plentiful as a product of volcanoes. By 1746, sulfuric acid was available at a strength of 65%. Nitric acid was known in the 13th century and perhaps earlier. The modern method for producing nitric acid was produced in 1648. Sodium hydroxide, formerly called lye, was used at least 4800 years ago by the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, and was chemically identified in 1807. Carbon disulphide can be made from heating coke with sulphur, both of which were available in ancient times. Carbon disulfide was so widely used in 1850 that physicians were aware of CS2 poisonings. Acetic acid (vinegar) was well known in prehistoric times.
Viscose/rayon is produced by dissolving wood pulp in a mixture of lye and carbon disulphide. All the ingredients were available long before the Roman empire existed. So ancient civilisations could have all worn synthetic fabrics. Vested interests, perhaps the wool trade.
Gun cotton (explosive) was invented in 1832/1846 and the related cellulose nitrate (plastic) was invented in 1862. Given that gun cotton is just nitric acid plus wood pulp, it could have been found up to 600 years earlier, or at least 200 years earlier.
Cellulose acetate is produced by reacting wood pulp cellulose with acetic acid and acetic anhydride in the presence of sulfuric acid. Actually, cellulose acetate may have been first produced as soon as the technology was available. Cellulose acetate was first produced in 1865, only a few years after acetic anhydride in 1852.
Polyester. That’s interesting, this is a real example of a discovery delayed by vested interests. Polyester was found in or shortly after 1930, which is not long before nylon in 1935. Because of vested interests supporting nylon, the production of polyester was delayed until Dacron in 1951.
Of course, there’s always:
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/medicine/prescription-drugs-rejected.htm
Bubblecar said:
Hero of Alexandria (c.10 – 70AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer who invented a number of devices including an early example of a steam engine. It’s often argued that had there not been such plentiful cheap labour in the form of slaves, a steam-powered industrial revolution might have occurred in ancient Roman days.
But the OP is about repression of the technology by “vested interests”.
dv said:
Bubblecar said:
Hero of Alexandria (c.10 – 70AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer who invented a number of devices including an early example of a steam engine. It’s often argued that had there not been such plentiful cheap labour in the form of slaves, a steam-powered industrial revolution might have occurred in ancient Roman days.
But the OP is about repression of the technology by “vested interests”.
It may have been that there were vested interests in the slave industry
> vested interests meant they were either repressed or no funding given for research
The number one example of this is war. Research shuts down almost completely on every project during war not directly related to one on the following three:
Reverse engineering of the enemy’s weapons.
Repairing failures in your own weapons,
Research into a (very small) number of new weapons for yourself.
The only exception I can think of to that rule is the invention of stents by allied soldiers in Indochina. These were made from fabric cut from shirts. Research funding was nil. This was prior to the Palmaz-Schatz stents that were held open with wire.
The cavity magnetron was not invented during the war. It was invented prior to WWII in Britain, and mass-produced during WWII.
> excessive startup costs when competing with established technology … Molten salt thorium reactor
Exotic fruits and vegetables are a good example of this. In order to compete with standard fruits and vegetables, exotic fruits and vegetables first need research funding to both increase shelf life and reduce the inedible (eg. seed) component. Few people are willing to make such a big investment for uncertain returns. For example, loquets, tree strawberries (arbutus) and lantana grow well in Australia and have delicious sweet fruit, but you won’t see any of the three in fruit shops. Other exotic fruits and vegetables now sold in fruit shops have had delayed introduction for the same reason.
> vested interests meant they were either repressed or no funding given for research
A very famous one is DC power transmission (promoted by Tesla).
Vested interests being in AC power transmission (promoted by Edison).