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It had everything to do with sharing. Please read the debates that were going on in the early 1990s between particle physicists and others who stood to lose funding. Yes, it would have been nice if the $2 billion had not been spent, but go read up on the concept of sunk cost to understand why that $2 billion already spent was not relevant when deciding whether to spend still more.

But critics say big projects drain funds from small-scale research vital to the creation of new products and jobs and often to the advance of science itself.

"Big science has gone berserk," said Dr. Rustum Roy, professor of materials science at Pennsylvania State University, who is an adviser to the House Committee on Science. "Good minds and a lot of money are going into areas that are not relevant to American competitiveness, American technological health, or even the balanced development of American science."

Dr. George F. Chapline, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said the trend bodes ill for the nation. "It is very questionable whether these projects will contribute much to stopping America's industrial decline, and may even exacerbate it," he said.

Moreover, the big instruments can take so long to plan and build, sometimes a decade or more, that they are sometimes seen as obsolete when switched on because science now moves so fast. Perhaps most troubling, this same lag is seen as causing bright graduate students to abandon some fields now dominated by giant instruments as they search for timely projects on which to base their Ph.D. research.

Disclaimer: My father got his start in accelerator physics where he helped design this so our family has some experience with unexpected funding cutbacks.

That's because it wasn't until 1945 that a researcher noticed a candy bar in his pocket had melted. Up until then they were just cooking themselves without knowing it...

Wind can also be grid tied just like solar, infact.. let me find a link for ya. http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/iap/ inventors_szp2.html Here's a style you can use for turbines. I saw some computer models of this once, and was really impressed with it's efficiency.

http://www.picoturbine.com/rotorsim.htm

I was looking for that forever!

ne way have a great day!

A more accurate list of Teslas accomplishments.

LCD is older than that:

Friedrich Reinitzer first observed liquid crystals in 1888.

Reinitzer Scientists have known about liquid crystals since the end of the 19th century. Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer (1857-1927) first noted the phenomenon in 1888. When he heated a solid organic compound, cholesteryl benzoate, it appeared to have two distinct melting points. It became a cloudy liquid at 145C and turned clear at 179C.

Otto Lehmann, a professor of physics in Germany, learned of Reinitzer's experiment and continued the research. Using a microscope fitted with a heating stage, he determined that some molecules do not melt directly, but instead first pass through a phase in which they have the ability to flow like a liquid while retaining the molecular structure and optical properties of a solid crystal. These properties led Lehmann in 1889 to coin the term "liquid crystal."

George Heilmeier headed the research group at RCA that invented the first liquid crystal display.

Heilmeier The first published suggestion for using liquid crystal materials for display came in 1963 from Richard Williams and George Heilmeier at the David Sarnoff Research Center, RCA's laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. Heilmeier (1936-) went on to head a group at the lab--including Nunzio Luce, Louis Zanoni, Joel Goldmacher, Joseph Castellano and Lucian Barton--to investigate the use of liquid crystal displays for a "TV-on-a-wall" concept, a dream of David Sarnoff himself.

The digital time display was developed in order to market the LCD in a commercial product.

The challenge was to find a liquid crystal that would provide a display at room temperature, and by 1968 the RCA group had a display based on the dynamic scattering mode (DSM) of liquid crystals. But at the same time it was clear that large-screen LCD TVs were many years off, and the group set its sights on displays that could be incorporated more immediately in commercial products. A number of the RCA pioneers left to form Optel Corporation, in Princeton, New Jersey, where they perfected techniques for the manufacture of LCD displays and digital watches. Beginning in 1970, Optel designed and produced LCD watches for several watch companies. Optel later marketed LCD watches under its own name.

In the dynamic scattering liquid crystal display, an electrical charge is applied which rearranges the molecules so that they scatter light. These early DSM displays proved unsatisfactory, suffering from relatively high power consumption, limited life, and poor contrast. An improved liquid crystal display was invented in 1969 by James Fergason at Kent State University based on the twisted nematic field effect.

http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/quar tz/inventors/liquid.html
http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/quar tz/inventors/heilmeier.html

LCD is older than that:

Friedrich Reinitzer first observed liquid crystals in 1888.

Reinitzer Scientists have known about liquid crystals since the end of the 19th century. Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer (1857-1927) first noted the phenomenon in 1888. When he heated a solid organic compound, cholesteryl benzoate, it appeared to have two distinct melting points. It became a cloudy liquid at 145C and turned clear at 179C.

Otto Lehmann, a professor of physics in Germany, learned of Reinitzer's experiment and continued the research. Using a microscope fitted with a heating stage, he determined that some molecules do not melt directly, but instead first pass through a phase in which they have the ability to flow like a liquid while retaining the molecular structure and optical properties of a solid crystal. These properties led Lehmann in 1889 to coin the term "liquid crystal."

George Heilmeier headed the research group at RCA that invented the first liquid crystal display.

Heilmeier The first published suggestion for using liquid crystal materials for display came in 1963 from Richard Williams and George Heilmeier at the David Sarnoff Research Center, RCA's laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. Heilmeier (1936-) went on to head a group at the lab--including Nunzio Luce, Louis Zanoni, Joel Goldmacher, Joseph Castellano and Lucian Barton--to investigate the use of liquid crystal displays for a "TV-on-a-wall" concept, a dream of David Sarnoff himself.

The digital time display was developed in order to market the LCD in a commercial product.

The challenge was to find a liquid crystal that would provide a display at room temperature, and by 1968 the RCA group had a display based on the dynamic scattering mode (DSM) of liquid crystals. But at the same time it was clear that large-screen LCD TVs were many years off, and the group set its sights on displays that could be incorporated more immediately in commercial products. A number of the RCA pioneers left to form Optel Corporation, in Princeton, New Jersey, where they perfected techniques for the manufacture of LCD displays and digital watches. Beginning in 1970, Optel designed and produced LCD watches for several watch companies. Optel later marketed LCD watches under its own name.

In the dynamic scattering liquid crystal display, an electrical charge is applied which rearranges the molecules so that they scatter light. These early DSM displays proved unsatisfactory, suffering from relatively high power consumption, limited life, and poor contrast. An improved liquid crystal display was invented in 1969 by James Fergason at Kent State University based on the twisted nematic field effect.

http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/quar tz/inventors/liquid.html
http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/quar tz/inventors/heilmeier.html

The Smithsonian has a great interview with Ida Rhodes, who assisted Blanch.
Here.

You should check out the Smithsonian Institution. It has links to the (US) National Zoo, the Air and Space Museum, and much more. Probably one of the best uses of our tax dollars (at least in the US).

The real reason they won't release fuel cells isn't because of problems. The article itself says they last 10x longer than a regular Li. Duh. They won't release them because then noone will want the older batteries. Then they can't gouge the fuck out of us at the register (those things are damned expensive for all the longer they last in my DC3200).

Edison invented a light bulb that will last 10x longer than even today's four and five year bulbs. You can go to the Smithsonian and see it for yourself. But why won't GE and Sylvania, or even Philips, spit one out on the consumer market? Because then they couldn't rope us into buying the nasty bulbs that don't last very long at all. We buy more, they make more money. Simple as that.

And I'm sure the government has computers that far outdo anything that any PC or Server that's commercially available could do. When will we see that kind of power? When they decide that they don't have to charge $10G for a toilet seat to cover this stuff (aka none too soon).

I hate the song, but Puffy said it best: It's all about the Benjamins, baby...