3e to 4e: TL7 and TL8

[dcarson]

And lots of things that were almost able to be done. Arthur C Clark and geosynchronous comsats, Hedy Lamarr and frequency hopping radio for example.

[Willy]

To develop and implement a technology in the world you need two different things.
First is obviously having the idea and how to make it happen at a large scale not a lab.
Second there has to be a need in society that can be solved with this idea - now. A lot of einsteins had big and practicable ideas with possible great worth for humanity, but the idea was developed when there was not need for it- yet. This way a lot of ideas were forgotten. Like this for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor, a "sail" with a really high efficiency, just as the diesel came up, now people think it can make modern ships run with 50% fuel savings.
Also we should keep in mind that much historical knowledge is forgotten due to the death of the few people who kew about the production secret, or burned down librarys.
We speak today about the dark ages, actually there was a docu on TV last week about there drugs and medicines. A really simple healing salve which kills 99,9% of the well feared staphylococcus a. yes including multiresitant variants.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by dcarson

And lots of things that were almost able to be done. Arthur C Clark and geosynchronous comsats, Hedy Lamarr and frequency hopping radio for example.

Clarke proposed them in 1945 (ealy TL7), and the first geosynchronous satellite was launched in 1964, mid-TL7 and development of the capability was fairly continuous over that time. I don't think this is a good example of something that was proposed well before it could be done. Now, if you date the idea from Herman Potočnik's proposal in 1928, it works better - the idea was pretty much ignored until Clarke popularised it after WWII.

[the-red-scare]

If I may briefly return to the actual question I asked, I’m most inclined to simply extrapolate a TL8 value between TL7 and TL9 by default (option 2), but I really feel like splitting the TL7 value (option 3) is more in line with the fact that TL7 itself becomes split. To the extent that these numbers reflect any kind of researched reality I assume they were derived as rough averages across the entire 50-year span — otherwise they would have been labeled early or late.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Note that there's a difference between being able to conceive an idea and being able to turn it into practical technology. It isn't enough to recognize that the bread-mold Penicillium kills bacteria. To identify and isolate the relevant components, and then develop mechanisms to grow the organism and isolate the relevant component on an industrial scale, all has technological requirements. Similarly, steam engines are TL5 despite the existence of steam-powered gadgets in Hellenistic Greece, because it was not until the 1700s that the inherent difficulties in producing effective large-scale engines were overcome- and the difficulties involved probably couldn't be overcome without developments in many areas that more or less amount to reaching TL5.

The 1978-1979 Connections series shows there are other factors in totally unrelated fields that can have an effect.

The best example from that series is with Watt's steam engine - without a variation of a cannon borer his improvement to the Newcomen atmospheric engine wouldn't have worked because the pistons needed to have a tighter fit to work properly.