Re: geography nerds?

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:22:27 GMT, "Karl Johanson"
<karljohanson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>"mike weber" <fair****tfan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote


>> John W Campbell once published a little squib in Analog which claimed
>> that US Navy radio operators using crystal sets Way Back When had
>> discovered that adding a second "cat whisker" contact wire and feeding
>> a low DC voltage to it improved reception - they had no idea why, and
>> apparently it was an accidental discovery.
>>
>> What iw was basically an application of the transistor principle
>> thirty or so years before the invention of the transistor.
>
>Woo. As major as thinking up geostationary satellites, but not patenting 
>the idea.
>
Since they didn't know how or why it worked, it wouldn't have been
patentable.

As to the satellites thing - i don't think Clarke's satellites were
geostationary, but, even if they were...

Clarke once wrote a piece (fiction, but withe a strong grain of truth,
as i recall) in which it was explained that, at the timehe conceived
the idea, it was not patentable because it was beyond the State of the
Art, and couldn't be done.

Years later, when it *could* be done, it had become so generic an idea
that it wasn't patenable becuase it wasn't "original"...