Jed Rothwell wrote: > Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > >> Or it would be like the SR-71 Blackbird being developed in a time when >> all mainstream flight engineers still believed faster than sound flight >> was impossible. >> >> Or it would be like someone building a working digital computer and >> computing pi to 1000 places on it, *before* Edison announced the >> invention of a practical lightbulb. > > That's my gut feeling. There have been some mechanical devices that seem > temporally out of sequence, such as the Antikythera device and Babbage's > computer designs. But I can't think of any full-scale devices based on > new physical principles.
Actually, both the Antikythera device and Babbage's engines support what I was saying: They were the bleeding-edge best which could be done in their times, and they were both based firmly on known and well understood physics of those times. No scientist of the time would have mistaken them for magic; any engineer of the time would have recognized them for what they were. Babbage's engines were based on mechanical mechanisms which had been understood, at least in principle, for a couple thousand years. The Antikythera device was similar (in principle). Neither would have allowed computing pi to 1000 places; they simply didn't have the horsepower for the job. To do that job, new physics was needed, and the new physics didn't exist before the 1900's, and the engineering fundamentals needed to use the new physics didn't exist before Edison's lightbulb paved the way to develop vacuum tubes. In concept, one could compare both of those computing engines to a star ship built with a combination of rockets and ground based lasers. We can design such a device today, because it's based on physics we understand. But we could not build such a device and cruise to the galactic center to check out the black hole there, because such a star ship simply wouldn't be capable of such a performance. New physics is needed -- and there is no hint of the necessary new physics anywhere in the mainstream literature. A Bussard ramjet is probably the closest thing going to an "end run" around the problems of a star ship. Unfortunately as far as I know there's no reason to believe such a thing is even possible; it's pure speculation without any kind of firm factual foundation -- like Tony Stark's "transistor powered" iron suit. > > The closest I can think of offhand is ancient Iraqi batteries, from > around 2000 years ago, which were probably used for medical purposes. Of > course ancient people did not understand electricity. The batteries were > clay jars with an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder. The > electrolyte was probably vinegar, and it produced ~1.1 V. You wonder how > they ever discovered it, but that can be said for countless other > ancient discoveries such as steel. > > - Jed >
