People are making armor out of silly putty. Think of it as impact armor–it’s soft, mooshy and flexible until something hits you, then it instantly goes rigid and spreads the force over a much larger area. The video I watched showed somebody being hit with baseball bats and it didn’t hurt him. Of particular use for sports equipment (for truly effective knee & elbow braces).
Prior to this, all the improvements in personal armor were attempts to come up with something that was harder (and therefore less easy to wear) in order to absorb more force.
I am still not liking the definition of invention given and then revised by OP. I don’t think anything counts until you have an actual working version. Lasers for example count count IMHO. Otherwise, you could say that Leonardo DaVinci invented helicopters simply from sketches and that isn’t true.
And movies, including those out of Hollywood, could be purchased, sometimes in 16mm if the wall in the mansion’s private screening room was too small for the regulation-size flick.
They could be purchased. What didn’t exist was mass production of a machine that nuked the protectionist copyright racket that once again is crippling civilization.
It’s possible he stole the idea from Sidney Schwartz and burned his papers.
1945 to 1955
101 Mendelevium (Ghiorso, Harvey, Choppin, Thompson, and Seaborg 1955)
100 Fermium (Ghiorso et al. 1952)
99 Einsteinium (Ghiorso et al. 1952)
98 Californium (Thompson, Street, Ghioirso, and Seaborg: 1950)
1955 to 1965
102 Nobelium (Ghiorso, Sikkeland, Walton, and Seaborg 1958)
103 Lawrencium (Ghiorso et al. 1961)
104 Rutherfordium (L Berkeley Lab, USA - Dubna Lab, Russia 1964)
1965 to 1975
105 Dubnium (L Berkeley Lab, USA - Dubna Lab, Russia 1967)
106 Seaborgium (L Berkeley Lab, USA - Dubna Lab, Russia 1974)
1975 to 1985
107 Bohrium (Dubna Russia 1975)
109 Meitnerium (Armbruster, Munzenber et al. 1982)
108 Hassium (Armbruster, Munzenber et al. 1984)
1985 to 1995
110 Darmstadtium (Hofmann, Ninov, et al. GSI-Germany 1994)
111 Roentgenium (Hofmann, Ninov et al. GSI-Germany 1994)
1995 to 2005
112 Copernicium (S. Hofmann et al. 1996)
114 Flerovium (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna 1999)
116 Livermorium (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna 2000)
I remember our first TV, in the early 50s. It had a 12" round screen, and was of course B&W. And receiving a clean signal was as much an art as a science. Compare that to some of today’s TVs.
And I remember my first Walkman, in the late 70s. I could play a 60-minute cassette. My 2012 iPod can play over 2,500 random-access hours, and sounds better. And 1950? . . . I still have some of my father’s old 78s.
And I recently had open-heart surgery that literally saved my life. Even the pre-surgery testing (especially cardiac catheterization), was only a dream in 1950, if that.
I have found electronics before that used germanium transistors, so it isn’t like they were impractical to use or mass produce, although they did have some problems (high leakage current, poor frequency response, low voltage ratings) that lead to transistor-tube hybrid circuits for a while, such as TVs with transistors for signal circuitry and tubes for power output stages (I wonder though how much they could have improved; silicon transistors, particularly MOSFETs, are continuously making significant improvements many decades later).
Maybe if you are talking about the power plant, but the first nuclear reactor (self-sustaining nuclear reaction) was in 1942.
Only thing is, how many of those are actually useful, since they are all radioactive with very short half-lives, much too short to be of any practical use.
Just as we’re only beginning to see the true uses of things like the Internet, transistors and lasers, it’ll take maybe 50 more years before we can see the revolutionary purposes of inventions after 1950 eg stem cells, carbon nanotubes.
Don’t discount the value of making something mass producible and cheap. The first microwaves cost >$10,000. Bringing the cost down may be more important than inventing something.
The giant magnetoresistance effect: discovered in 1988, Nobel prize awarded in 2007, already in use in harddisks now. Mossbauer effect, discovered in 1958, Nobel prize in 1961, also in use now. These 2 may not have huge impact, but before 1950 nobody suspected they existed.
And yet, holography has failed to transform the media world, AFAIK. It remains a “science book curio”, as it were. I remember one of the World Book Encyclopedia annual science supplements from the 1960s had a hologram of some chessmen, printed on a transparency that came inside the book. IIRC you had to hold a penlight behind the card to get the effect. Around the same time there was one that appeared with an ad in one of my dad’s professional journals.
I haven’t seen any holograms since, at least not outside of the odd museum or two. I know, we have 3D television now, but is that process holographic?
Almost every invention is built on early discoveries. The internet is no different. Right now, I have a device on my desk that gives me access to almost all of mankind’s archived knowledge. That is revolutionary.
To expound on point 1: if you asked this question 50 years ago - what’s new since 1900, I doubt anybody would have said lasers, even though they were conceptualised in 1917. Simply because in 1962 many of the uses of lasers had not been found yet. Even today I bet most people wouldn’t be able to name uses of lasers that didn’t involve cutting things.
Oh and conductive polymers (barely made after 1950) may have applications other than electrical conductivity alone.
He was probably more prone to the fantastical due to his genius artistic side. His science was more observational and visual. But the man changed the world.
And it was science fiction, until it became actual science. He was just thinking way ahead of his time. Flight was a particular fascination of his, and he was sincerely trying to crack the problem.
[QUOTE=WIKIPEDIA]
For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, including his c. 1505 Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as plans for several flying machines, including a light hang glider and a machine resembling a helicopter.[17] The British television station Channel Four commissioned a documentary Leonardo’s Dream Machines, for broadcast in 2003. Leonardo’s machines were built and tested according to his original designs.[98] Some of those designs proved a success, whilst others fared less well when practically tested.
[/QUOTE]
This has been raised before, and I agree that a hard definition of when something was “invented” is elusive, and picking the year 1950 is totally arbitrary. Some of this is going to be a matter of judgement. For example, if someone were able to construct a working helicopter solely from Leonardo DaVinci’s drawings, I would credit him as inventing the helicopter. But I don’t think his drawings were that detailed, so I would just consider them ideas, not inventions.
The spirit of the discussion is trying to determine if we are less inventive now than in the past.
I guess time machines must count. We have a number of designs on how to make them. They do involve quite astounding amounts of energy, and there are some serious engineering issues to be worked out, but the basics are out there.
So anyone looking back on the last 50 years will count time machines, interstellar hyperdrives, cure for cancer and possibly immortality, as being invented then.
