XPost: sci.physics.relativity   
   From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 14/02/2026 4:52 am, john larkin wrote:   
   > On Sat, 14 Feb 2026 03:51:17 +1100, Bill Sloman    
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >> On 14/02/2026 2:23 am, john larkin wrote:   
   >>> On Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:50:59 +0100, Thomas Heger    
   >>> wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> Am Mittwoch000011, 11.02.2026 um 19:47 schrieb Liz Tuddenham:   
   >>>>> john larkin  wrote:   
      
      
      
   > Given that cathode ray tubes existed in 1890, it's astounding that the   
   > triode amplifier was invented by de Forest in 1905. He never   
   > understood how it worked.   
   >   
   > Academics seem to enjoy ridiculing people that they see as wrong; you   
   > can see that here. That's a bad environment for inventing stuff.   
      
   Academics see the necessity for identifying and correcting errors.   
   If you'd had any experience of the time that can get wasted on   
   elaborating fundamentally silly ideas you be less tolerant.   
      
   There was a project at EMI Central Research for doing image   
   reconstruction with ultrasound beams travelling through the human body   
   in different directions. The guy - C.A.G.LeMay - that thought it up had   
   lots of credibility. He'd invented the image reconstruction algorithm   
   that made the EMI brain and body-scanners practical.   
      
   He ignored the fact that ultrasound beams - unlike X-rays - don't travel   
   through the body in nice predictable straight lines. He did claim that   
   you could get around this, but never explained how in any sort of   
   convincing detail.   
      
   I was supposed to be the senior engineer supervising a team to build the   
   hardware that would make his idea work. I was rude enough about the   
   project that I didn't get stuck with the job, and the unfortunates that   
   did get stuck with trying to make it work had to deal with his nasty   
   habit of fiddling with the hardware after everybody else had gone home   
   without document the the changes he'd made.   
      
   Their first job, every morning, was checking the machine for   
   undocumented changes.   
      
   It didn't work, and wasted a lot of time and money.   
      
   I blame myself - and my boss - for not ridiculing the idea sufficiently   
   energetically to get it thrown out. There are a lot more bad ideas than   
   good ideas, and you do need to weed out as many of the bad ones as you can.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)