How Europe Missed The Transistor
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
What should amaze more I think is how much was achieved in fields not directly related to rebuilding in that period, in spite of that gigantic handicap.
The winter of '44 was one of the worst famines in living memory and by '48 the continent was still very much in recovery mode.
Also a lot of the achievements that put the US firmly on the map as the world leader in technology after the war were in fact pioneered in Germany during the war.
Not in the least the rocket technology that led to the successful moonshot.
Edit: reading further down in the article it's funny how they try to patent something they know for sure is already working and invented elsewhere.
The article also seems to contradict itself slightly, because the European device was unstable until they learned about the American one and the explanation behind the physics of it, but in the conclusion it writes: "And it seems clear from the still-sketchy historical record that they indeed had a working, reliable amplifier by that time." but the rest of the article has no real arguments underpinning that statement.
Very interesting read though.
Werner von Braun is an interesting case all by himself because anybody else in Germany with as much standing in the Nazi party and use of concentration camp resources for their research would have surely been executed after a swift trial in Neuremberg.
Instead von Braun was made a naturalized citizen of the US in '55.
Lots of other info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
If you want to commit atrocities and avoid the war crimes tribunal, do them within the context of science.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
As an aside, it's also worth observing that many people fleeing Europe before the war -- such as Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein -- made massive contributions to American science efforts both during and after the war.
Disgusting.
This is actually quite normal, as any patent attorney will tell you. The telephone is another well known exammple of this occurring. (Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray) It seems that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come, it's just a matter of who will get the rewards.
Almost every patentable invention is but a minor advance in the state of the art.
Once again I have to wonder why such articles ignore Lilienfield's work (from 20 years before)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Edgar_Lilienfeld
and how he profited (if at all) from his patents.