I can also completely forgive anyone in the 1980s for being led down the spooky national-defence paranoia route, regarding their invention. It was a different time where people were more deferential to the authorities, and had more of a reason to want their protection. You just need one visit from the men in grey coats asking nicely for a cup of tea, your formula, and your signature on the official secrets act. The effects compounded if you were prone to the Walter Mitty effect.

Anything crucial enough to maintaining an edge in the Cold War — or rather, ensuring survival should it become a hot war, something for which magical ablative insulation would be very handy — isn’t the sort of thing that gets a patent. One simply doesn’t win by suing the USSR for intellectual property infringement in the dying ashes of civilisation, old boy.

A lecturer of mine published a paper on bivalve adhesion that was allegedly funded by government interests desperate to maintain a strategic lead in limpet mines. Another worked with ultra high speed equipment with an electronic shutter that was switched by a krytron, the same component used in nuclear device detonation. There was a potent, possibly overblown concern about labs being infiltrated or broken into.

I think we forget about the miserable amount of paranoia brought about by the world being permanently only four minutes away from ending, and the weird things it made people do.