On Mon, 6 Aug 2007, Terry Blanton wrote: > I'm just curious what Vorts might think. I don't blame you if you are > unwilling to comment to me personally or the subject generally.
If it involves scientific revolutions stumbled upon during military weapons research, then probably they can halt it dead. The same is true of easily-weaponized inventions when the inventor tries to patent them. A few years back there was a petition being circulated by engineers on a classified government project demanding that some black-project scientific discoveries be declassified, since the benefit to the economy and to mankind would far outweigh the risk of letting other nations get hold of the secrets. This was during the Clinton years. I never heard more about it, so presumably that info, whatever it was, remained classified. I often wonder, if Gordon Gould had been the only Laser inventor, whether the laser would still be a government secret. Gould behaved as an inventor, and lost his invention to the cloak of military secrecy. Townes and Schawlow invented the laser independantly, but they behaved as scientists, and published. Imagine similar situations where only one person stumbled across a major discovery... but it ended up as a military secret rather than as a physics paper. There are probably lots of these situations. But are any of them a major discovery like the laser? (((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 425-222-5066 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
