FT276


New inventions routinely fail to live up to their promise. Polyester and nylon are cheap and hardwearing, but after the initial enthusiasm people reverted to natural fabrics. Valium and Prozac enjoyed their heydays as panaceas, but lost ground when their disadvantages became apparent. But rarer and more tantalising are Men in White Suits, who come up with an amazing technological breakthrough and then vanish forever.

Sometimes we are left asking “Whatever happened to…” because unexpected limitations or flaws in the original research sink the invention; but many genuine discoveries fail between the laboratory and the marketplace, and the root cause is usually money. Even fairly modest inventions take millions to turn into practical products, and this means that investors are needed to put up the capital. Programmes like Dragon’s Den overdramatise the process, but do capture its essence: persuading investors that your invention works and is a likely source of profit.

Investors are not scientists, and rely on established experts for an opinion on whether an untried new breakthrough is worth a punt. However, the scientific community is hostile to researchers from outside the establishment, so they are unlikely to give support – so unless you’re lucky, or have a few million in the bank already, or have a working prototype that is unarguably brilliant, your new invention is likely to remain forever unbuilt.

The patron saint of such invent­ors is Nikola Tesla. One of the celebrated pioneers of the early days of electricity, Tesla was responsible for the alternating current (AC) system now used around the world. His great dream was wireless electricity transmiss­ion, and from 1901 he started work on a system to power an industrial park at Wardenclyffe on Long Island [FT217:32–39]. Unfortunately, the costs kept growing until JP Morgan, the wealthy banker who was funding the project, lost faith in the eccentric Tesla. The power-transmitting system was never completed and was dismantled in 1917. The media still loved him, and Tesla still promised new wonders including death-rays and weather control, but after the Wardenclyffe debacle there was no funding and no chance these dreams would be realised.

Wireless power transmiss­ion has barely progressed since then. You can get wireless devices to recharge your mobile without having to plug it in, but these waste energy. Whether Tesla’s scheme to beam electricity effic­iently over long distances would work remains imponderable.

Cold fusion is the classic example of a discovery rejected by the scientific establishment, ruining any chances of comm­ercial exploitation (assuming it works). In 1989, scientists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons (pictured above) announced that they had produced excess heat in a desktop experiment involving the electrolysis of heavy water with a palladium electrode. This excess heat could only be explained by nuclear energy, they claimed. In effect, they had created a cheap, port­able, nuclear reactor that could in theory supply the world’s energy needs forever (FT172:14).

Scientists were appalled at the way Pons and Fleischmann announced their results to the press rather than via a peer-reviewed journal; and the science behind the discovery was far from clear. Others failed to replicate their success, and cold fusion was consigned to the fringes, from where it makes occas­ional sallies. The US Office of Naval Research is one stronghold, with researchers working on it in their ‘spare time’ rather than as part of funded projects, and Italian researchers have claimed successes recently. But after the previous failures, investors are shying well away.

Various other fusion projects are in the same boat. Dr Paul Koloc has been working on a form of artificial ball lightning since the 1980s [FT246:14]. In his invent­ion, nuclear fusion takes place in a free-floating, self-sustaining magnetic field shaped like a doughnut. Getting even a million or two is not so easy for someone outside the establishment and without the backing of a major university. Without funding, we will never know whether it really works, and Dr Koloc will be just another inventor who could have been a contender. The situation is very similar with bubble fusion, in which nuclear reactions appear to occur in tiny bubbles blasted by high-intensity sound (FT224:13).

Meanwhile, the giant ITER hot fusion reactor has attracted billions of euros of government funding. While some progress has been made, more than five decades of research have failed to produce a working fusion reactor. But the money keeps pouring in, because respectable scientific institutions say that the techno­logy ought to work someday, even after such a dismal return on the investment so far.

By contrast, if other scientists are actively scornful of your work then you have little chance, however impressive the prospects are. Dr Roger Shawyer’s Emdrive could be the future of space travel, a reactionless drive based on a reson­ant chamber filled with microwaves [FT201:14]. Dr Shawyer has a track record with Europ­ean satellite systems, and has a working demonstration model of his Emdrive. This appears to produce thrust without reaction. But most scientists would rather dismiss it out of hand, on the basis that it can’t possibly work, than look at it. So after an initial flurry of media attention, the Emdrive may never get the development programme it needs to make it into spacecraft.

The current system does act as a buffer to keep out a tide of half-baked ‘breakthroughs’ by legions of crazed inventors; but there is no telling how many world-changing discoveries never make it to the market simply because they can’t get past the dragons.