Free Republic

Gilder Guideposts: Cacophonous are the voices decrying the implosion of “the U.S. Innovation Ecosystem,” as the Harvard Business Review puts it. Do not hope, the voices warn, to see in our future anything like the miraculous progress of the last two centuries, or even the last 50 years. It’s done. Tighten your belts. Supporting the doomsters are dozens of academic studies arguing that “big research,” whether at our great corporations or our universities, yields increasingly diminishing returns. Making headlines recently was a Nature study concluding, “We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past...

It’s taken 400 years of scientific discoveries to make it possible for anyone to find his location anywhere on the globe using GPS.With the letters GPS, we instantly recognize an innovation that has revolutionized our lives. The concept was born half a century ago in a sweltering room at the Pentagon over Labor Day weekend in 1973.That’s the genesis of the concept for a constellation of platforms orbiting the Earth, transmitting radio signals to determine location. Many years of calculation, experiment, and miniaturization led to the Navigation Signal Timing and Ranging (NAVSTAR) satellites that became known as the Global Positioning...

Absolutely amazing breakthroughs concerning graphene. A new way to make it that is economical, judicial with the energy needed, and makes clean energy in the process. Sounds too good to be true but looks real. Watch and be amazed.

Stephen Thaler petitioned the high court to review an appeals court’s decision that patents can only be issued to human inventors and that his AI system cannot be the legal creator of inventions it generated. Thaler said in his brief that AI is being used to innovate in fields ranging from medicine to energy, and that rejecting AI-generated patents “curtails our patent system’s ability — and thwarts Congress’s intent — to optimally stimulate innovation and technological progress.” SCOTUS declined to take up his case. The justices turned away Thaler’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that patents can be issued...

Idaho is pretty underappreciated when it comes to useful inventions that are widely used around the world. We invented the television, for goodness sake. Still, the only thing that comes to people’s minds when they think of Idaho are potatoes. There are even some Idahoans who are unaware of all the amazing things our state has done. Did you know the chairlift was invented here? There’s no telling where snow sports like skiing and snowboarding would be today without this invention. Not many people are aware of this little tidbit, but the story is truly a weird one. Ski and...

With more than 10,000 backers, the Misen Oven Steel promises more accurate temperatures and therefore better food.Home cooks take note: there’s a new kind of pizza stone in town. Founded by former FreshDirect vice president Omar Rada in Greenpoint, Brooklyn circa 2015, Misen takes pride in its thoroughly tested, yet affordable, kitchenware including knives, pans, prep tools, and more. However, its latest project goes a step further, making the ambitious claim that “your oven is lying to you” and it has the fix. The Misen Oven Steel is a sensational new tool specifically designed to improve the precision of your...

After appearing for decades in science fiction, then moving into an actual theory, a new patent for an updated warp drive was published last year to no fanfare. Like many other false starts in cutting-edge research, the patent may represent the next step in the expanding theory, or it could mean the practical, real-world design of a functioning warp drive is on the horizon. BACKGROUND: HOW TO BEND SPACE-TIME WITH A WARP DRIVE After first publishing his groundbreaking 1994 warp drive concept in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, Mexican Mathematician and Physicist Miguel Alcubierre received significant positive and negative...

A Bay Area boy has invented a device to battle the spread of coronavirus. It's a tool, made with a 3-D printer, to avoid touching surfaces with your hands. "I was excited and surprised how many sales we got, I was very happy," said Mizan Rupan-Tompkins of South San Francisco. The 12 year old demonstrated his creation at a nearby mall, entering stores using the small hook-like device to open doors without direct contact. "I think most of the excitement is because of his age," said Mizan's mother Ronica Rupan Tompkins, showing how a small puncher on the device can...

It’s San Francisco, so naturally there’s some controversy. Burgers are the number one segment of restaurant food, ripe for disruption by robotics, and the VCs are pouncing. Robots might take away fast-food jobs, or create better ones, so the labor activists are activating. But today I just want to understand how they made it. How two young engineers could invent a complicated culinary robot that makes cheeseburgers from scratch. Really good ones. I’m on my second visit to Creator, the world’s only robotic hamburger restaurant. Since opening doors in September 2018, it has built a rep for quality and innovation,...

Israeli startup reinvents the wheel, by using it to contain car’s key components Relocating the motor, steering, suspension and brakes into vehicle’s wheels, REE creates a flat, light, versatile chassis to increase energy efficiency in electric cars By Shoshanna Solomon 9 July 2019, 5:11 pm 4 Edit Facebook Twitter linkedin email 782 shares An illustration of REE's flat chassis (Courtesy) Israeli startup REE has unveiled a “revolutionary” new design and look for electric vehicles, in which all of the classic components of the car — the motor, the steering system, the brakes and the suspension — are moved from under...

Imagine the following scenario: You spend your life slaving away at building some ingenious new device in your garage. After years of painstaking work, testing, and sleepless nights, you finally produce your device, patent it, and take it to market. However, before you can take it to market, someone serves you with a lawsuit.

In the bottom corner of my overstuffed dresser drawer of running clothes is a 9-year-old sports bra. Its once-fiery orange has faded to a dingy, tepid coral. Two of its hooks are bent in directions that make it impossible to wear. The Velcro straps—adjustable for comfort on this Cadillac of bras—don’t stick together anymore, which means that if I were to put it on, my breasts would loll out like a pair of microwaved Peeps. This nearly decade-old bra is the opposite of lingerie. Frankly, it’s a little gross that I still have it, but I can’t bring myself to...

Red Semidouble URGED BY THE APPROACH of Laurence’s triumph, Stephen rises to assist at his combat; it is a meeting full of beauty and strength, revealing the work of Eternal Wisdom in the arrangement of the sacred cycle. But the present feast has other teachings also to offer us. The first resurrection, of which we spoke above, continues for the Saints. After Nazarius and Celsus, and all the martyrs whom the victory of Christ has shown to be partakers of his gory according to the divine promise, the standard-bearer of the white-robed army himself rises glorious from his tomb...

CALGARY, June 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A pair of music researchers have invented a musical instrument designed to be played by a preborn child in the womb. Aura Pon, a mother who holds a music technology PhD from the University of Calgary, has teamed up with Johnty Wang to invent the “world’s first prenatal musical instrument,” CTV News reports. The device, dubbed the Womba, is strapped to a pregnant woman’s belly and creates music in response to the kicks and other movements of the baby growing inside her. Users can choose a variety of different sounds, and speakers enable both...

Red Double of the Second Class IT WAS MOST JUST that our Divine King should show himself to us with the scepter of his power, to the end that nothing might be wanting to the majesty of his empire. This scepter is the Cross; and Paschal Time was to be the Season for its being offered to him in glad homage. A few weeks back, and the Cross was shown to us as the instrument of our Emmanuel’s humiliation, and as the bed of suffering whereon he died; but has he not, since then, conquered Death? and what is...

Halsey Taylor is one of the leading manufacturers of drinking fountains today. Company founder Halsey W. Taylor invented the non-squirting drinking fountain. In 1896, Taylor's father died from typhoid fever. This illness is principally spread through contaminated drinking water. Several years later, while working as a plant superintendent for the Packard Motor Car Company, Taylor realized numerous workers were becoming sick with dysentery. He believed contaminated drinking water was the chief reason for the spreading illness. Taylor determined to develop a drinking fountain that was sanitary and would not contribute to the spreading of various illnesses. By 1912, he had...

A Wisconsin high school student was inspired by horrific school shootings to invent something that could save lives. Somerset High School senior Justin Rivard invented a tool he calls the "JustinKase" in shop class. Made of steel plates and connecting rods, his device slips beneath a classroom door and latches to the door’s jam. With his device in place, Rivard has yet to find a person who can push a classroom door open, including linemen from his high school football team. “You can lock a door with a lock, it can get shot out,” he says. “You can lock a...

Hollywood screen siren Hedy Lamarr acted throughout the 1940s and 50s in romantic scenes with the likes of Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart – but in her down time, the brunette beauty created and patented a scientific invention that paved the way for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology, according to a new documentary. “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” – produced by actress Susan Sarandon — premiers Wednesday in London as part of the Jewish Film Festival. The documentary touches on the 35 Hollywood films the sizzling brunette made — including one she filmed at 17 where she portrayed the first female...

For decades, individual inventors were granted 25 percent or more of all U.S. patents. This creativity was the foundation of dozens of new industries, thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs. Yet beginning in the early 1980s, their portion of granted patents begin to drop like a rock in free fall. By 2015, individual inventors received only 5.8 percent. A decline so great and so fast has profound consequences and is not an accident or fluke. A useful place to begin the examination of this decline is a 1998 interview of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who was asked,...

Bishop Curry looks for ways to fix the world. For an 11-year-old boy, he's unusually curious about big-picture problems, his dad says — from natural disasters to civil rights. And he's always loved to tinker. That's why it wasn't a surprise when Bishop, after seeing an upsetting local news report about a 6-month-old who died when left in a hot car, resolved to make sure something like that never happened again.