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It's interesting how inventions from the early part of the 1900s are becoming more useful today. I remember reading an article which stated that engineers were re-discovering mathematical models from the early 1900s for use today.

The big concern I have is that we'll end up with more expensive hybrid cars and China will have the cost-effective stuff.

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Yes, re-using old inventions is important.

As another example: In the last 20 years there has been an explosion in the power of mathematical optimization, because numerics got fast and stable enough that algorithmic techniques that had been put into the bottom drawer decades ago have been resurrected. Those techniques were initially numerically unstable (or needed too much computation to keep them stable).

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