Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisbrandow | Hacker News Reader

This is another entry in my mental file of the many modern day technologies that have merely been iterations of things discovered or created in the mid-50’s to early 60’s. A vague, indefensible notion to be sure, but that era is pretty incredible.

View on HN

There's this concept of "mature" technologies that have reached more or less the optimum characteristics and are only going to see slight tweaks until requirements or materials change.

eg the assault rifle has seen only one major change since the '40s (the switch to small caliber high velocity in the '60s), transonic passenger and cargo airplane airframe shapes have settled on a single general configuration, &c

The '60s in particular just happened to be a point when lots of aerospace stuff happened to reach maturity, along with our understanding of the common-case aerodynamics.

It's worthwhile pointing out that there have been significant changes to aviation since, most notably the move to twin-engine aircraft. But ultimately that was made possible through small incremental improvements in engine design (and material sciences and manufacturing). There haven't been similar leaps forward since.

The Boeing 747-8 is 29% more fuel efficient than the 747-100 in absolute terms before you even start considering the extra space it has as a larger aircraft. Some of that is aerodynamic refinement (and they're limited by starting with the older airframe!) and some of that is newer engines. And the 747-8 is relatively poor compared with many newer airframe designs.

Deinitely lots of refinements!! But didn’t twin engine aircraft emerge with the DC-2/3 era? Unless I’m completely misunderstanding the term.

http://www.cadhistory.net/13%20IBM,%20Lockheed%20and%20Dassa...

another likely inflexion point was the introduction of CADAM around the period

We can see this with smartphones as well

My very-low-confidence prediction is that we'll see a burst of experimentation once foldable screens become viable.

And cheap? Because many versions of them are on their second public generation, and not too many people are excited about them.

I was including "economically viable" under "viable". I didn't even realize there were any available on the market yet, and looking right now it looks like they're still at the $2k price point and still have mechanical issues.

Yeah. That’s a helpful concept. I noticed that there are just so many technologies whose essential characteristics were discovered/demonstrated in the late 50’s/early 60’s. And by no means just in aviation.

It’s almost easier to name foundational technologies that weren’t discovered by then than the reverse.

Maybe that's because retiring them would make it clear that the US has a viable replacement, and any hypothetical replacement is a secret.

We live in an era where our great minds get to ask, how do I get funding for this technology..? Because the great minds of that generation spent their time asking, is it possible..?

Spy technology with military applications still has extremely lavish funding.

It would be great if it was documented on how to get access to that funding or even the problems to be addressed in that space for a potential startup.

Have at it:

https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities

Here too:

https://www.iqt.org/apply-now/

And one more that addresses broad research funding priorities rather than specific opportunities. Get used reading these sorts of dry documents if you get involved in this space:

https://www.arl.army.mil/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/arl-baa-...

>We live in an era where our great minds get to ask, how do I get funding for this technology..?

It was a spy plane...no asking needed, if you could fly over the USSR and bring that intel back in some hours your sold.

But yeah i miss Skunkwork too especially the A12/SR-71:

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...

You are right... WW2 and then the Cold War were major catalyst to a lot of modern innovations...

There have been 4 leaps during the industrial revolution. At the beginning the the new tech is just a toy, then it becomes useful and starts taking over previous/old tech, then it reaches a maturity point where improvements are very small/incremental:

1) Steam - 1800-1880s

2) Electricity and the Combustion Engine 1890 - 1940

3) Jet, rockets and Nuclear era 1941 - 1970

4) Digital Information 1970 - 2012-s

Now, AI/Green Tech/ or just stagnation? Who knows...

I think we may look back at this period in history as a time of innovation in social information and interaction. Surely the telegraph and telephone had some impact but the scale with which people are able to communicate has changed radically in the last 20 years. It's impossible for us to know now but I think we will look back at Facebook or Twitter and wonder "how did that work?" in much the same way we look at a party line today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com