Tom Veatch wrote:
... if the concept was
considered very high on the list, it would have received funding for at
least theoretical work. ...
The problem with those who are educated is that ...
Their predilection is to assume the veracity of the precedent, without
question.
...

When vacuum tubes were coming on line, there probably wasn't an awful
lot of funding for semiconductor research. "Invention" may be what's
needed rather than "development".


Certainly, but invention does not take place (so to speak) in a vacuum.
No innovation can violate demonstrated physical properties. Maxwell's
Equations that describe the governance of electromagnetic fields
have been with us for quite some time and seem unlikely to be
wrong. So, if we are to "innovate" in matters as discussed here,
there are really only two choices: A) There must be a fundamental
breakthrough in physics that changes all the known rules (possible
but unlikely) or B) We find a better way to engineer around the known
constraints of physics.

What Tom wants makes sense, but only in limited contexts, at least as
physics is understood today. Moreover, all engineering is a tradeoff
between features, time (to go to market) and *cost*. A modern wire
manufacturing facility is not a cheap thing to build. To justify what Tom
suggest, there has to be concrete economic advantage. If copper cost,
say, $3M per oz, that would be a compelling economic driver. But it
doesn't and the economics seems - at least at a casual glance - to favor
the status quo.

BTW, note that the transition from vacuum tubes to semiconductors was
not a fundamental shift in our understanding of amplification or
oscillation. It was a fundamental breakthrough in process technology.
That is, we discovered how to do what vacuum tubes were doing in a more
compact, and ultimately, less expensive way as a matter of
*engineering*. There was, of course, a corresponding breakthrough in our
understanding of the physics of semiconductors. Even so, semiconductors
never completely replaced vacuum tubes. Radio transmitters of any large
size still use tubes (valves to those of you in the rest of the
Anglosphere) because there are no transistors of which I am aware,
at least, than can deliver 50KW of RF into an antenna.

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Tim Daneliuk
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