The Invention-Discovery Cycle

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The Invention-Discovery Cycle

A new tool leads to new knowledge, which leads to a new tool. Over time, the cycle speeds up, first with a burst of creativity in Asia; then with the Enlightenment and the Industrial Age in Europe; leading up to the twentieth century and the invention of the airplane, transistor, and silicon chip. All of these inventions depended on the work of scientists. In turn, the scientists depended on increasingly sophisticated laboratory and field equipment. Throughout the 1900s, as the cycle spun faster and faster, the demand grew for ever more sophisticated equipment. 

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Crystals in Space

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Crystals in Space

Imagine a Dr. Mary, a young assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Maryland. Mary wants to combine a set of different molecules to form a crystal, one that she believes might offer unparalleled insulating qualities. Her problem is, her Earth-bound laboratory can’t produce the kind of perfect crystal that she needs to prove her hypothesis. Gravity has a tendency to distort the way crystals form.

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The Space Pen Myth

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The Space Pen Myth

Government missions actually work best in areas of high uncertainty, such as space. Failures not only get spread throughout society, where they can be absorbed without shock to a particular sector or system; those “failures” often turn into business successes. The seeming wastefulness of NASA got encapsulated in an urban legend about the so-called space pen. 

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