I concur. Einstein was a pretty sharp guy, who had a good head for patent law. There was a good article in Scientific American about this little anecdote, but SA's search function is misbehaving.
Anyways, back in 1929 Einstein was working on a project with Leo Szilard (who was young and poor at the time). The refrigerator was a new invention at the time, and quite dangerous. Leaks of the sulphur dioxide coolant sometimes killed whole families. Einstein and Szilard were working on a project with a possible application here. In effect Einstein said 'Hey, let's work on something with a commercial application... I'm well known, so we'll be taken seriously and maybe both make some money.' They developed a solid-state pump, or rather several, each operating on a different principle. The idea was that if you make the system solid-state, it could be sealed at the factory in such a way as to avoid anything that might leak later. Right about now, GE was bringing out the first generation of fridge cooled by inert freon. GE didn't want any competition for their new safer icebox, so they bought out the patents for a good chunk of change.
This demonstrates a number of qualities that while good on their, together make up an extraordinary whole: Originality, practicality, compassion, and genius.
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I concur. Einstein was a pretty sharp guy, who had a good head for patent law. There was a good article in Scientific American about this little anecdote, but SA's search function is misbehaving.
Anyways, back in 1929 Einstein was working on a project with Leo Szilard (who was young and poor at the time). The refrigerator was a new invention at the time, and quite dangerous. Leaks of the sulphur dioxide coolant sometimes killed whole families. Einstein and Szilard were working on a project with a possible application here. In effect Einstein said 'Hey, let's work on something with a commercial application... I'm well known, so we'll be taken seriously and maybe both make some money.' They developed a solid-state pump, or rather several, each operating on a different principle. The idea was that if you make the system solid-state, it could be sealed at the factory in such a way as to avoid anything that might leak later. Right about now, GE was bringing out the first generation of fridge cooled by inert freon. GE didn't want any competition for their new safer icebox, so they bought out the patents for a good chunk of change.
This demonstrates a number of qualities that while good on their, together make up an extraordinary whole: Originality, practicality, compassion, and genius.
Someone have that Scientific American citation?