Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!ncar!groucho!steve
From: steve@groucho.ucar.edu (Steve Emmerson)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Techno-welfare
Message-ID: <5774@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 89 21:26:44 GMT
References: <1989Dec20.150503.27019@cs.rochester.edu>
Sender: news@ncar.ucar.edu
Lines: 18

dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:

>Transistors were invented in 1948.  ICs were invented in the late
>1950's.  Early IC development was nurtured by military and NASA
>spending, but it isn't clear to me that without NASA ICs wouldn't have
>come along anyway at about the same rate -- especially if the
>engineering talent that went into NASA had gone into other fields.

[Paul asked me to post this reply to the net.  I changed the word
"most" to "many" ;-).  Enjoy.]

You might be interested in this anecdote.  Two friends of mine worked
as consultants on the Apollo project in the '60's (something to do with
batteries, I think).  I remember them recounting how they were mildly
surprised to discover that many of the switching systems on Apollo were
electro-mechanical -- not solid-state.

--Steve Emmerson	steve@unidata.ucar.edu