stickmaker: (Default)
Stickmaker ([personal profile] stickmaker) wrote2005-10-27 08:12 am

Check Your Assumptions! (At the Door. :-)

I wish people writing about some new development in science or technology would be more careful about the hype they repeat or invent. Just because a particular author hasn't heard of some innovation doesn't mean it's new!

Two corrections of recent science articles:

The Multiple Mirror Telescope is not the first to use a honeycomb back to reduce weight and speed temperature change. The 200" mirror of the Hale was cast with what is usually called a "waffle" pattern, back in the mid-Thirties.

Arthur C. Clarke is a brilliant and creative man, but he did *not* invent the beanstalk (aka the space elevator). Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky developed it in *1895*.



Stickmaker

Try again..

(Anonymous) 2005-10-27 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
That's not unusual-I watched a science program on KET years ago, that claimed the fax machine was invented in the 1960's...there was a crude fax machine about 90 years before that-there was a wireless fax called the Jenkins Radio Camera in the 1920's that could send photos or text. Many things are older than you might think...Scott