Corporate Space

[tzor]

I mentioned Carter becase he was the one who created the department and that was the mission he gave them.

[K]

The wright brothers very deliberately built their airplane as a commercial venture, and developed new engines as well as doing a crapton of practical research on lift characteristics.

I didn't know about the South African working on government grant, but the math is simple enough to do out longhand. You wouldn't want to, but it's seriously very simple. That's not even a contribution.

You're probably correct that there is no recent invention free of government support, but that's a point about the pervasiveness of government, not the relative capability of industry.

I'm about to drop out of this discussion. I'm sorry for that, it's not fair.

I was going to post a link to the history of early flight, but at this point it all seems moot. If you won't learn about the actual history of invention, then you won't ever be convinced to drop your preposterous opinion which has no basis in fact.

I think it is important to note that the mythology of the "inventor-entrepreneur" of the late 1800s didn't last into the 1900s for the simple reason that none of the inventors made a fortune on his inventions. That, above all else, proves that as a model for innovation it is a failure. If it wasn't, we'd still be using it.

The private sector is concerned with making profits, and the entire history of invention has been a loss in terms of money made.

This means that research won't get done. The private sector knows it can make money on the next new boner pill, but it will never invest in space-flight. I mean, the recent rise in space tourism options was not done by plucky inventor-entrepreneurs, but by rich guys looking to win the Ansari-X prize and who didn't care if they ever made a dime off it.

[tzor]

I think it is important to note that the mythology of the "inventor-entrepreneur" of the late 1800s didn't last into the 1900s for the simple reason that none of the inventors made a fortune on his inventions. That, above all else, proves that as a model for innovation it is a failure. If it wasn't, we'd still be using it.

I would disagree with that, there are many inventor-entrepreneurs in the 20th century. We don't normally think of them as such. Everyone loves to talk about the Wright Brothers, but there were a plethora of people who tried and got it wrong.

In the 20th century there are lots of places where a small group of people made it big. Let's consider computers, as an exmaple: Dell started out in a college dorm room. Gateway was started on a farm. Decades eariler Hewlett-Packard started out in a garage.

[sabs]

What has Dell, HP or Gateway 'invented?' exactly.

[Zinegata]

What has Dell

A massive end-to-end process for assembling and delivering PCs and laptops to customers involving dozens of different suppliers and customers and doing it at a price generally lower than its competitors, with a consistent enough quality and tech support to ensure repeat purchase.

I mean, seriously, people give a lot of credit to individual inventors, but very little credit is given to people who can actually figure out how to manufacture stuff efficiently - something which the best corporations excel at. Inventing a light bulb is tough. Making a factory that makes light bulbs without going bankrupt is incredibly tougher

Henry Ford for instance may not have invented the car, but without him the reality of nearly every American family having a car wouldn't have happened.

[cthulhu]

What has Dell

A massive end-to-end process for assembling and delivering PCs and laptops to customers involving dozens of different suppliers and customers and doing it at a price generally lower than its competitors, with a consistent enough quality and tech support to ensure repeat purchase.

I'm pretty sure the assembly line was invented by someone not called Michael Dell. So was.. customer experience management and eBusiness!

[Zinegata]

What has Dell

A massive end-to-end process for assembling and delivering PCs and laptops to customers involving dozens of different suppliers and customers and doing it at a price generally lower than its competitors, with a consistent enough quality and tech support to ensure repeat purchase.

I'm pretty sure the assembly line was invented by someone not called Michael Dell. So was.. customer experience management and eBusiness!

And if you actually read between the lines, I'm not talking about invention specifically. I'm talking about implementation. Sabs opened the door by going 'invented'.

Lots of folks use an assembly line and went out of business, because they didn't realize that the invention of the assembly line does not automatically come with a how-to-manual on how to implement it properly. It's more than just having a conveyer belt carrying a half-finished item from one worker to another.

And again, people tend to overvalue the inventors over the actual implementors, when the latter is much harder.

[cthulhu]

Not quite sure what kind of arguments I can give to a friend of mine who strongly feels that NASA shouldn't be a gov't agency, and stuff like it should be privatized (profit breeds innovation in her opinion).

Unfortunately, I don't have any good arguments. NASA needs, "a man and a plan" to really work well. Back when George M Lowe was in charge of Apollo, we had that man and we had that plan. Now we don't. While NASA hasn't gotten down to the level of "just another damn department" (like ... say ... the department of energy ... have we removed our dependence upon foreign oil yet ... but that's what Carter wanted the department to do) it has gotten close to "just what the hell are they doing?"

No - it needs a serious commitment of money. Space is so fucking cool that if you want to do cool shit and are going to pony up the money, you will be buried under top quality applicants and people.

However, no-one wants to rot on the bench, and all that you can see for NASA is 'the bench' for miles and miles.

A massive end-to-end process for assembling and delivering PCs and laptops to customers involving dozens of different suppliers and customers and doing it at a price generally lower than its competitors, with a consistent enough quality and tech support to ensure repeat purchase.

I'm pretty sure the assembly line was invented by someone not called Michael Dell. So was.. customer experience management and eBusiness!

And if you actually read between the lines, I'm not talking about invention specifically. I'm talking about implementation. Sabs opened the door by going 'invented'.

Lots of folks use an assembly line and went out of business, because they didn't realize that the invention of the assembly line does not automatically come with a how-to-manual on how to implement it properly. It's more than just having a conveyer belt carrying a half-finished item from one worker to another.

And again, people tend to overvalue the inventors over the actual implementors, when the latter is much harder.

So your arguement is that corporations are terrible at innovating new technologies, but can refine existing technologies.

No fucking shit. You just have to look at the progression of mass storage to know this.

[Zinegata]

Nope, I'm saying that there is a difference between inventing something, and implementing a large-scale process or organization that can actually make use of the said invention.

Henry Ford for instance was not the inventor of the assembly line. But he was capable of feats of organization that allowed the assembly line to make stuff people thought weren't possible with that technology.

For instance, people thought airplanes were too complex to put through an assembly line. The Nazis in particular scoffed at American air planes.

So during World War II, Ford responded by building a factory - Willow Run - which could produce a four-engine heavy bomber that consists of like 100,000 parts every 63 minutes.

That's how the Allies could send a thousand bombers over Germany every single day, lost a couple dozen, and come back the next day to with just as many planes to bomb some more.

But people are never going to call Willow Run an invention. They're never gonna cite how brillant the factory's design is - which has two seperate assembly lines focusing on a wing each, which then merges into the main assembly line that works on the fuselage. He's never gonna get credit for being able to keep track of something like 10,000 suppliers from all over the country, all of whom managed to more or less deliver their materials on time to ensure the factory averaged an outstanding production figure of one bomber for every 63 minutes during the war.

Because again, people focus way too much on the "inventors", and don't look at actual implementors.

[Blasted]

I'd take HP off the list:
HP Labs has a long history of research and innovation.

So your arguement is that corporations are terrible at innovating new technologies, but can refine existing technologies.

Many people have argued that all innovation is built on the back of previous innovation, that there is nothing actually 'new'.

[Sashi]

Bell Labs has been kind of important, too.

[sabs]

Both HP and Bell Labs also no longer do any real research.

Saying that Dell took ford's model for making cars and modified it to make computers in no way shape or form shows that Private Industry is good at Scientific Breakthroughs that will shape the future. We're talking about how to fun pure scientific research, and wether the private sector or the public sector is the best place.

And yes, I said 'invented'. I'm sorry but Dell did not invent anything. They innovated, and they implemented, but they did not invent anything.

Just like Microsoft and Apple did not 'invent' operating systems. Even Linus Torvald didn't do that.

Intel does massive amount of pure R&D
IBM used to do massive amounts of R&D.

I would say actually that the large corporations of the 70's did tons of R&D, but they've all been cutting back since the 80's.
Pharma/Agri companies do tons of R&D and inventing. Though they tend to focus on things that will make them goblets of money over things that would actually cure a disease.

[tzor]

BY your argument, the Wright Brothers didn't invent the airplane, they implemented it.

[sabs]

No, The Wright Brothers built basically the first successful flying machine. That's inventing.
(Leonardo's sketches were great and all, but I think the Wright Brothers worked out the actual aerodynamic issues.)

[tzor]

No, The Wright Brothers built basically the first successful flying machine. That's inventing.

But what exactly did they invent? The basic airfoil, while optimized by wind tunnel tests was basically standard glider designs of the day. The gas engine was made by someone else. For the most part, they assembled the right components and put them all together. (Yes they did have to invent a good controling mechanism to be able to steer the machine in the air, but that's not what we think of when we say "invent" the airplane. They "assembled" the various components that succeesed where others had failed.)

[Doom]

Excactly, the hair splitting, especially the one sidedness of it, makes it impossible to have a discussion on this.

[Koumei]

No, The Wright Brothers built basically the first successful flying machine. That's inventing.
(Leonardo's sketches were great and all, but I think the Wright Brothers worked out the actual aerodynamic issues.)

I'm sorry, you just lost 10 points there, as did everyone else who claimed the Wright Brothers made the first successful flying machine/aircraft/aeroplane.

For aircraft in general, it was the Chinese a gajillion years ago, like everything else, but they didn't see fit to continue working on it and turn it into something useful (a sort of bamboo helicopter).

For aeroplanes, you'd be looking for John Stringfellow (1799 – 13 December 1883) of England.

Just being smug, rather than helping the conversation (which seemed to be going nowhere anyway).

[Zinegata]

The Wright Brothers are credited for the first machine-powered flying machine. Previous flying machines "sort of " existed, but they were powered either by human muscle or relied on being held aloft by wind or air.

Moreover, they are credited for creating the first flying machine that could be reliably reproduced. The flying machines prior to the Wrights were unreliable at best, and were often little more than death traps if a human being was strapped inside.

Still, it wasn't the Wrights that made the use of airplanes so widespread. Again, you can thank the Great War and a number of different companies for transforming the puny Wright flyer into a practical mode of transportation that could be used by millions of passengers.

The DC-3 for instance came into service a couple of decades after the Wright Flyer, but its payload capacity and range are so superior to the Wright Flyer that you may as well be comparing the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek with the Apollo 11 rocket ship.

Again: Invention is hard. But widespread implementation takes a lot more effort and people, and they aren't given enough credit.

[tzor]

The Wright Brothers needed a number of things in order to get their plane "right." (And not wrong as was the case with many others.)

First and foremost, they needed an engine light and powerful. Charlie Taylor built that one for them. Without that engine ... no go.

Second they needed a way to push their plane. Here is something they did have to invent, and they did a bang up job here.

Then they had to attach these things to the damn good glider design they had already perfected through extensive tests. (The 1902 glider.)



In the end, the whole success was more the result of process; wind tunnel tests threw out all the bad ideas at the early stages, optimizing the craft as a glider first made it the best platform for the powered engine and push system. Doing this out of sight of the annoying press who often forced untested advanced and would broadcast all failures around the world ... PRICELESS.

No really, the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison had a lot more in common than you might think. All of this involved a process of development. In order to "invent" the filiment that created the light bulb, Edison had to discover a plethora of filiments that failed. The same is true for the Wright Brothers. True invention is a process, thus I am at a loss at why you do not think people who come up with processes are not "inventors" as though inventions are fully born like Venus from a sea shell.

[PoliteNewb]

Could be wrong here, but I believe a great many inventions in the field of firearms were made by private individuals, for profit. Percussion caps and the practical revolver, to name a couple.

But I'd agree with Doom...before we can have any kind of discussion, what are the criteria you'd accept for "an invention made by a private individual for profit"? Does this mean it had to have been invented by a single guy, with no help, and be something that nobody had ever worked on before?

Frankly, as long as you can't point to an inventor receiving funding/support from (the/a) government, I'd say it's a private invention for profit.

[Maj]

[stupid sidenote]

First and foremost, they needed an engine light and powerful.

My response to this comment was, "Powerful what?" I read "engine light" rather than "engine [that was] light."

[/stupid sidenote]

[Blasted]

Both HP and Bell Labs also no longer do any real research.

Except that they do.
A journal or google scholar search will quickly disabuse you of that notion. They both have have quite a reasonable research output.
They are no longer the power houses that they once were, but that's a function of their parent companies not being in the same position.

I would say actually that the large corporations of the 70's did tons of R&D, but they've all been cutting back since the 80's.
Pharma/Agri companies do tons of R&D and inventing. Though they tend to focus on things that will make them goblets of money over things that would actually cure a disease.

This is not correct either.
The rise and fall of r&d
Businesses still spend vast sums of money on research, but it's no longer all in house. Or if it is, it just relates to their core business. The constant spate of boeing v airbus lawsuits are an excellent demonstration of the change in research from private to public + private partnerships. Of course, the government sponsorship of some of this research is what causes the lawsuits. Current aeronautical research is too expensive for a non monopoly by itself.

[K]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines

Here is a link on early flight. People in this argument need to stop using the info they got from a 4th grade history report.

The Wright Brothers did not invent flight, but were simply one of many contributors to the endeavor. I love American Exceptionalism as much as the next patriot, but you guys need to learn the history of at least one invention before entering into this debate.

[Zinegata]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines

Here is a link on early flight. People in this argument need to stop using the info they got from a 4th grade history report.

The Wright Brothers did not invent flight, but were simply one of many contributors to the endeavor. I love American Exceptionalism as much as the next patriot, but you guys need to learn the history of at least one invention before entering into this debate.

And like I said, that's a long list of death traps

Again though, the Wright Flyer is exceptional not because it flew. It's exceptional because it could be reliably reproduced. Whitehead for instance could claim he managed to invent and fly an airplane one full year ahead of the Wrights - but he was never really able to reproduce the results.

The Wrights by contrast were selling their flyer a few years after their first flight. And it as reliable enough that Teddy Roosvelt became the first president to fly by being a passenger in one.

It's not about who thought of an idea first. It's about who was the first person to convert a idea into a practical form so that it could be used by society.

But again, very little credit is often extended to the guy making the airplane factory, as opposed to the person holding the patent for the airplane.

[Koumei]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines

Here is a link on early flight. People in this argument need to stop using the info they got from a 4th grade history report.

The Wright Brothers did not invent flight, but were simply one of many contributors to the endeavor. I love American Exceptionalism as much as the next patriot, but you guys need to learn the history of at least one invention before entering into this debate.

I would have thought that everyone has seen QI and learned from that.

And Zine is still talking shit about them being the first to invent a safe and reliable and reproducible one. I know, Zine talking shit, call the press.