What if Basic research developed rapidly from 1910?
- Thread starter Alex Sherman Cadriella
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Alex Sherman Cadriella
Banned
Good, so what kind of weapons and equipment will be used by both sides in World War II?
Exactly. Research of all sorts goes to places where there's a reason. If nasty underhanded underwater weapons are making holes in one's ships, ways to prevent it get priority. If mother nature blows a hole two miles across in he mountains of New Hampshire, that's a different line of research. There's also pure science and applied science. Pure science that might have useful applications--like chosing to make a hole like the meeor crater--is more likely to get sped up than somethin interesting, but of no applicable use, like the strucure of the atom in 1900.
I'm working hard on the explosion of consequences just two years after the meteor of 1876, and it's already noticeable.
My suggestion to the OP for a more comprehensive set of answers: Present a POD that might drive science in some areas harder. Then bear in mind that it might inhibit science elsewhere. For example, if there's a need to stop asteroids from blowing more holes in the planet, biological sciences might be less important, so research funds that might go to vaccines go to rockets, telescopes, antigravity, and the like. (Antigravity would be a valid area of exploration for basic physices around 1900, as the other known natural forces had both attraction and repulsion.)
Nebogipfel
Monthly Donor
You get massive butterfly effects all over the place, I somehow doubt there would be WWII as we know it. E.g. if several sides have nukes (barely possible), we probably have MAD. But first the money has to come from somwhere - the additional funding has to come from somwhere, which will have consequences. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and AH is actio/reactio to the extreme.
The one were saw IOTL.
In 1910 the world air speed record was a blistering 55mph. By 1939 55mph was below the stall speed of most aircraft and top speeds were touching 400mph. In 1910 the cutting edge of battleship design was the Bellerphon class (19,000 tons, 525 feet long, 21 knots). In 1939 both the Iowa (58K tons, 887 feet, 33 knots) and Yamato (71K tons, 867 feet, 27 knots) classes were under construction. There was no such thing as antibiotics in 1910. By 1939 sulfa drugs were readily available and penicillin was in limited use.
I agree with where I think CalBear is going. And that is, it is very hard (read all but impossible) to radically increase the speed of research and development.
To a degree all research and development is interconnected. You cant develop Y without X preceding it as Italy builds on top of each other. Basically you can’t build a railroad until it is time to build a railroad.
You need advancements in metalergo and a better understanding of a Buch of other stuff in order to build a better internal combustion engine. And you need to be able to make cloth to cover the wings and an understanding of engineering to build the wing and aerodynamics to design the wing and you need to be able to pull (make) strong wire to cross brace the fuselage sand wings and so on and so forth. By the time you get to the 20th century you are getting far enough along the technology tree that it gets harder and harder for a long researcher to invent something be it a object a technology or a theory. You still get them but they are harder and fewer and usually built on the back of another.
A ”modern” steam engine is built of hundred of patents and even more technological developments and practices.
So you are not changing one thing or one POD you are talking about changing thousands and thousands of things. To advance “technical” by 10 years so that we get an IPhone 13 in 2011 you are going to need to advance a hundred thousand things by a year or more each. (Just grabbing numbers here). And some of them will be hard to do as you advance them so much that other people, organizations or companies will have to invent them.
For instance advancing the IPhone may require Apple to do things sooner but Apples big thing was not the IPhone it was the Graphic User Interface used by the Mac. But this was at least in part based on the developments at Parc (PaloAltoResearch Center ). So you want to create advances that often rely on multiple things coming together. But they are all going yo travel different paths then they did originally. This is like trying to get a spicific sports game to play the same but a week or a. Month or a decade sooner. Even if you get the same players you don’t get the same game.
I love history and what I most love is how everything is interlinked and how we get from a lone gunman and a lost driver to WW1 to WW2 and ultimately the Nuclear bomb….
But technology and science are so interlinked that you are changing literally EVERYTHING. Frankly this is probably the most impossible thing we have ever suggested. It goes beyond ASB.
To a degree all research and development is interconnected. You cant develop Y without X preceding it as Italy builds on top of each other. Basically you can’t build a railroad until it is time to build a railroad.
You need advancements in metalergo and a better understanding of a Buch of other stuff in order to build a better internal combustion engine. And you need to be able to make cloth to cover the wings and an understanding of engineering to build the wing and aerodynamics to design the wing and you need to be able to pull (make) strong wire to cross brace the fuselage sand wings and so on and so forth. By the time you get to the 20th century you are getting far enough along the technology tree that it gets harder and harder for a long researcher to invent something be it a object a technology or a theory. You still get them but they are harder and fewer and usually built on the back of another.
A ”modern” steam engine is built of hundred of patents and even more technological developments and practices.
So you are not changing one thing or one POD you are talking about changing thousands and thousands of things. To advance “technical” by 10 years so that we get an IPhone 13 in 2011 you are going to need to advance a hundred thousand things by a year or more each. (Just grabbing numbers here). And some of them will be hard to do as you advance them so much that other people, organizations or companies will have to invent them.
For instance advancing the IPhone may require Apple to do things sooner but Apples big thing was not the IPhone it was the Graphic User Interface used by the Mac. But this was at least in part based on the developments at Parc (PaloAltoResearch Center ). So you want to create advances that often rely on multiple things coming together. But they are all going yo travel different paths then they did originally. This is like trying to get a spicific sports game to play the same but a week or a. Month or a decade sooner. Even if you get the same players you don’t get the same game.
I love history and what I most love is how everything is interlinked and how we get from a lone gunman and a lost driver to WW1 to WW2 and ultimately the Nuclear bomb….
But technology and science are so interlinked that you are changing literally EVERYTHING. Frankly this is probably the most impossible thing we have ever suggested. It goes beyond ASB.
Fleming worked on antibiotic research in the twenties and came up with penicillin in 1928. Acceptance was sluggish in the thirties and widespread use didn't come until WW2. Perhaps there could have been more research a little earlier. The biggest medical/first aid development that came late was CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It wasn't perfected until 1958. There is no reason it couldn't be done before 1900. It's just that nobody thought of it.
If you use this formula in Excel =(2010-1910)/(100%+X%)+1910 and replace X with the percentage of increase you want, it will tell you what year you get 2010 basic science.
I expect someone who knew anything about math or Excel could make a better formula.
But, there are all kinds of caveats on this accelerated research.
All kinds of things limit the speed that basic scientific research happens. If you are looking for sub-atomic particles, you need a particle accelerator, so the basic research is limited by the available technology. This will be more true in some fields than others.
All kinds of things limit the practical application of the deployment of technology. You can’t build a Sopwith Camel out of carbon-fibre until you make the machinery that makes carbon fibre. You need to have the material technology, and you need to make the machines that make the thing you want.
Scientific/Industrial progress is really a pyramid of giants standing on the shoulders of giants.
I expect someone who knew anything about math or Excel could make a better formula.
But, there are all kinds of caveats on this accelerated research.
All kinds of things limit the speed that basic scientific research happens. If you are looking for sub-atomic particles, you need a particle accelerator, so the basic research is limited by the available technology. This will be more true in some fields than others.
All kinds of things limit the practical application of the deployment of technology. You can’t build a Sopwith Camel out of carbon-fibre until you make the machinery that makes carbon fibre. You need to have the material technology, and you need to make the machines that make the thing you want.
Scientific/Industrial progress is really a pyramid of giants standing on the shoulders of giants.
I was recently reading up - and also asking - a bunch of questions relating to the development of machine tools and production machinery from beginning of 19th century to present day.
Surprisingly, a lot of machine operators told me that a good deal of aircraft parts are still made on machines dating back to WW2, though they didn't give specifics, presumably because it may have been defence related.
I also read somewhere that the USSR actually made the jet engines and turbine blades on machines repatriated from occupied East Germany immediately after WW2, up till its latest models of aircraft till the late 1980s.
I was reading Simon Winchester's book, "Precision", which went into detail the history of machine production and precision engineering, and surprisingly, by the late 18th century, extremely fine tolerances were already being achieved, but it was breakthroughs in metallurgy (unusual mix of alloys) that really saw rapid development take off so quickly after WW2.
Still, I think there is a limit, especially in the area of semiconductors. I am not an expert (in fact, I am a complete amateur), but I think the development of the transistor may be the area that may be the most difficult to accelerate.
The thing is research and development is not a stand along thing.
Not only does it all inter connect (you need to develop the theory and the tools all together). But you need the reason behind why it was developed.
A good example of this is battery operated power tools. They got a large push by the space race. As did a lot of other technology. So unless you move the Cold War forward and have it still result in a space race vs world war, then you actually slow some development.
You are proposing a giant butterfly that accelerates EVERYTHING IN HISTORY for the last 120+ years. And this is simply impossible.
According to various things the development of penicillin was at least partially the result of a fortuitous accident. But you want to accelerate this accident. According to some stories he development of the Microwave oven (aka the “radar range” is the result of a person working on a radar project having a chocolate bar that gets in the bath of the radar and gets “heated” So we need this to move forward as well.
So we need to move everything forward and this is just not possible. And it has to be everything as it is all so interconnected..
This may be the most impossible topic we have had in a long time. It make the great sea mamma look easy to pull off.
Not only does it all inter connect (you need to develop the theory and the tools all together). But you need the reason behind why it was developed.
A good example of this is battery operated power tools. They got a large push by the space race. As did a lot of other technology. So unless you move the Cold War forward and have it still result in a space race vs world war, then you actually slow some development.
You are proposing a giant butterfly that accelerates EVERYTHING IN HISTORY for the last 120+ years. And this is simply impossible.
According to various things the development of penicillin was at least partially the result of a fortuitous accident. But you want to accelerate this accident. According to some stories he development of the Microwave oven (aka the “radar range” is the result of a person working on a radar project having a chocolate bar that gets in the bath of the radar and gets “heated” So we need this to move forward as well.
So we need to move everything forward and this is just not possible. And it has to be everything as it is all so interconnected..
This may be the most impossible topic we have had in a long time. It make the great sea mamma look easy to pull off.