Have new technological innovations required human generations to pass
before powerful inventions became commonplace? Put another way, do
people have to become really used to an innovation before it can be
made powerful?
My thesis here is that since the beginning we have seen four stages
(at least, in physics dependant technology):
Technlogies involving
1. whole atoms and molecules,
which you could see
2. electricty,
which you could feel
3. nuclei and nuclei-related radiations,
which you could neither see nor feel, but which you could detect
4. quantum mechanics,
which you could not understand, but which you could calculate
In the 18th century in the first stage, technological innovation
involved actions with whole atoms and molecules, for example,
* canals in which the bed and banks of stone and dirt channeled the
fluid water;
* textile machines in which spools and spindles held fibers and
thread; and,
* steam engines in which metal cylinders held steam.
These early technological innovations consisted of visible matter
re-arranged. (Well, steam could not be seen; but it condensed into
water that could.) Nowadays, we speak of atoms and molecules.
Powerful steam engines, huge textile factories, and big canals came
generations after the first steam engines, textile machines, and
canals.
Incidentally, an internal combustion engine uses visible matter so in
that sense it is a first stage device. But the gasoline vapor in it
is exploded by a second stage technology, an electric spark (excepting
in Diesel engines). Moreover, in normal operation, parts in an engine
move too fast to see. The internal combustion engine did not come
into widespread use until after the second stage had been around for
several generations.
The second stage involved a fluid moving through certain kinds of
solid -- an electric `fluid' moving through `conductors'. This must
have been very strange for humans accustomed to rivers, canals, and
pipes in which the contents was visibly different from the container
and in which nothing could move through a solid.
While a weak electric `fluid' could be tasted and a strong one gave a
shock, there was no obviously visible reason why salty water conducted
and sweet water did not. Reflecting metal could be seen as different
from non-reflecting rubber, a visible difference, but both were
solids. How could anything move through a solid?
An early and famous use of this second stage technology involved
relatively weak electric `currents' in signalling: the electric
telegraph. The electric motor was invented within the same generation
as the electric telegraph became practical but the electric motor
itself did not become powerful or widely used for a very long time.
(Incidentally, nowadays, we speak of electrons, a crowd moving along,
but we also speak of electric `currents' and the `flow' of
electricity.)
The third stage involved something that could not be felt or tasted
and which could move through anything. Fortunately, X-rays could be
detected from the beginning with photographic plates and with certain
salts such as zinc sulfide. The latter was good for medical X-rays
machines and for painted, radium containing, wrist watch numbers.
Nowadays, we say that all this involves nuclei and radiations
involving nuclei.
Although nuclear radiations were used weakly in glowing paint, nuclei
themselves were not used for power for two generations: they were
first used in the nuclear bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and then in nuclear reactors as hot water boilers for
electric power plants.
Interestingly, the bombs involved a first stage technology, bringing
visible stuff together, but in a high tech way: quickly moving the
two uranium hemispheres together in the previously untested Hiroshima
gun-type bomb, and even more quickly, compressing the plutonium in the
Nagasaki implosion bomb.
The `slow' power part of this third stage involved a nuclear reactor
as a `hot water boiler'. This, incidentally, is just what coal does:
it produces heat that converts water to steam in a boiler.
Incidentally, nowadays, no one uses the nuclei of thorium, although
India, which has large deposits of thorium, is beginning a test using
uranium and plutonium to provide the neutrons. (Although not fissile
itself, a nucleus of thorium-232 will absorb a neutron to produce
uranium-233, which is fissile.) On its own, thorium cannot sustain a
nuclear reaction. However, thorium can be used in combination with a
neutron source such as a uranium and plutonium nuclear reactor.
Even better, Carlo Rubbia, a physicist, suggested building a thorium
reactor with an electrically operated neutron source such as that
provided by a linear accelerator or a not-very-good, but currently
buildable, hydrogen-fusion device.
Just like normal uranium and plutonium, thorium produces radioactive
products that are dangerous. However, thorium is a lower numbered
element than regular uranium or plutonium. In general, its fission
products come after the transmutation thorium-232 to uranium-233 and
the latters' fissioning. These products do not have half-lives as
long as those from higher weighted uranium or plutonium.
Nonetheless, these fission products do last dangerously for thousands
of years. But they do last for tens of thousand of years. Moreover,
a thorium device can also be used to reduce the danger of other
high-level nuclear waste by converting long-lived radio-actinides into
shorter lived radioactive elements.
The fourth stage involves something that not only cannot be seen, like
water, or felt, like an electric current, or detected, like X-rays or
gamma rays, and which cannot readily be understood but which can be
calculated: quantum mechanics.
With quantum mechanics, we speak of waves that are also particles, of
the magnetic spin of an electron whose dimensions cannot be measured,
of the probability of a particle jumping over or tunneling through a
barrier that on average prevents such a leak.
At the moment, quantum mechanics demonstrates itself in the tunnel
diodes used in communications and computers. But technologies
involving quantum mechanics are not used for large scale power
generation, whether quickly in an explosion, or slowly in a power
plant.
As for low-density energy sources:
Currently, wind is the most successfully harnessed of the low-density
energy sources. Wind powered electric generators now produce
electricity at a cost not so different from oil-fired electric
generators.
These successful wind generators mainly use first and second stage
technologies. However, they use computers for control.
Are control computers an example of a fourth stage innovation being
necessary for the proper functioning of an earlier stage device? If
so, is this because otherwise to work economically, the device
requires a high-density source of energy -- a steady and strong wind?
Solar voltaic cells, which use third or fourth stage technologies, are
still costly.
A query:
Thermal electric generators use a third stage technology, a vacuum in
which electrons boil off a hot source and travel to a cool collector.
Yet they are hardly commonplace.
Is it more expensive to pump the necessary vaccuum for a one gigawatt
device, the electical output of a contemporary power station, than to
build a steam turbine and electric generator? If pumping the vacuum,
and keeping it, are expensive, then we see the costs of a first stage
technology. However, does the high vacuum needed by a thermal
electric generator require a second or third stage technology of some
sort? Is this the case?
Or is a thermal electric generator in effect a `low-density energy
source' that requires too much `boil off' surface area for economic
use?
--
Robert J. Chassell
[EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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