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You’re right about vacuum tubes not being affected by an EMP, but I’m not so sure about saying that the Soviets stuck with tubes for that reason. I know that they copied an old IBM wire-frame computer and kept the known glitches in the design even though they could have easily corrected them. Ever heard of the Trabant? It was supposed to be the Communist Bloc’s answer to the VW Beetle. As I’m sure numerous of our European Dopers can testify, it was an unmitigated piece o’ crap that is rapidly proving to be a disposal problem in a post-Soviet world (something about toxic material being used in the body panels, IIRC). If the Communists couldn’t duplicate the Model-T (which by all standards was a vastly superior car to the Trabant) some thirty to forty years later, why should we expect them to come up with something as complicated as a decent integrated circuit? Everything I’ve read has indicated that the Soviets never mastered the task of building intergrated circuits to the level necessary for military purposes.
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Bear in mind (if you’ll pardon the pun) that in the Soviet Union, the military received the best development efforts and the consumer economy got the leftovers. So it’s true the Trabant was a terrible car but that poor design isn’t reflected in the equipment of the Soviet armed forces. (Usually in the cases were Soviet equipment was inferior, it was due to poor maintenance not design).
As you pointed out, the Soviets were shameless in imitating foreign designs if they were better than their own. But the very fact that they chose to imitate some NATO airframes and then convert the electronics entirely over to tubes indicates it was a conscious decision not just a necessary flaw.
The WBs built several unpowered gliders in the years prior to their success with the 1903 powered craft. One of the groups building replicas is called the Dayton Project. They show up at Kitty Hawk and try to fly replica gliders off of the dunes there, on roughly the same dates (plus 100 years) that the WBs were doing their flights. They try to use 1903 technology to fabricate the gliders, and it’s pretty cool to examine them up close. Wood, canvas, string, etc. I helped launch a couple of them off the dunes last October, and might be able to schmooze a few flights the next time they show up (I’m just the right weight). Yes, they do fly. Yes, they are extremely difficult to maneuver. The goal is to launch with the proper angle of attack, glide a few dozen yards in a straight line, hopefully with no turns, and have as un-rough of a landing as possible.
BTW, there were plenty of other inventors trying to achieve powered flight. The WBs got credit for the first success primarily because they did a good job of documenting & recording their development process. This obviously helps out the replica builders tremendously, although they still haven’t figured out everything.
One of the interesting things I’ve observed about the Dayton Project group is that none of them appear to be experienced glider pilots. They either pilot the replicas themselves or get air force/army pilots to do so. But Wilbur & Orville didn’t know how to fly either, so when the replica pilot crashes and learns something by it, he’s kind of recreating what the WBs probably had to go through as well.
In the 1930s, John J. Earley developed a type of masonry called Polychrome. It was a sort of mosaic style that was both ornate and inexpensive. There are a number of examples of his work in Washington DC and nearby Maryland suburbs (mainly Silver Spring). When Earley died, an office fire destroyed his records of how to duplicate the process.
It’s a shame; one of the Polychrome houses in DC has a huge crack down the side of its outer wall and no one alive knows how to fix it. I guess if someone had the money and motivation they could figure it out, but since fewer than ten houses (and a handful of other public edifices) are built with the stuff and these are small houses, this is unlikely.
Little Nemo: I think Tuckerfan was alluding to the Soviet’s lack of technical how-how in general, of which the Trabant is only one example. It wasn’t that the Trabant was bad, it’s that it was frighteningly bad. The Soviets - even with thousands of well-educated engineers - had great difficulty even replicating the designs of most Western electronic items. I am familiar with their work in replicating automation electronics - the Americans, Germans and Japanese gained 2-3 generations of development while their Soviet counterparts in the same time were barely able to recreate the first generation product.
You didn’t think the Gulf War was just about oil, did you? The Gulf War was the final straw with the Soviet Union technologically. The Soviets saw the massive display of (what was then) awesome technology and decided that they simply could no longer compete.
A bump, because I’ve found a copy of the LEM manual in pdf format! It’s on this NASA page. While it’s not complete, there’s certainly enough there that one could probably build something comparable if they so chose.
One thing that comes to mind, and hasn’t been mentioned is the blue in the stained glass of the Chartes cathedral in France. Many of the medieval styles for glass making were lost during the Renaissance, but no one (IIRC) has been able to duplicate the pure blue of the Chartes glass.
Thanks for all the interesting input everyone, I’m amazed we’ve “lost” so many technologies. The explanations as to why we lose or forget technologies were very insightful too.