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From: norman@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Norman Ramsey)
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: BRAZIL
Message-ID: <380@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Fri, 7-Mar-86 11:45:27 EST
Article-I.D.: batcompu.380
Posted: Fri Mar  7 11:45:27 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 02:16:18 EST
References: <1705@mtgzz.UUCP>
Reply-To: norman@batcomputer.UUCP (Norman Ramsey)
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 21
Xref: lsuc net.movies:3531 net.sf-lovers:6224

In article <1705@mtgzz.UUCP> leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) writes:
>ducts.  All the technology in the world is refinements of inventions that
>were around at the end of World War II.  (One exception, I think, is the
>Fresnel lens, but for society to have changed so much and for only one
>invention to come along is a rather telling indictment of this political
>system.)  This is a paper-bound society in which the path to getting the

Actually, the Fresnel lens was invented by Augustin(?) Fresnel in the 
nineteenth century, when he started working for the government on the
problems of optics in lighthouses. He was one of the few nineteenth-century
students of optics whose work can still be read as physics today (the other
one perhaps being Thomas Young). He is probably most famous for his theory
of diffraction, which stunned the scientific world by predicting (correctly)
the appearance of a bright spot in the center of a shadow cast by a circular
disk.

Of course, this has nothing to do with sf-lovers, except to point out that
there were NO technological innovations since WWII. Besides, I thought you
might like to know.
-- 
Norman Ramsey     norman@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu       Pianist at Large