Einstein, Albert inventions

As remarked by Albert Einstein (3) Theory cannot be fabricated out of the results of observation, but it can only be invented Observation as such cannot be prior to theory as such, since some theory is presuposed by any observation. 

But the distance between the laboratory and the marketplace is often long. Space engineers didn t invent rockets one day and send men to the moon the next. Some twenty years elapsed between the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA and the first transplantation of a gene from one organism to another. The atomic bomb came forty years after Albert Einstein gave us the theory behind it and his formula that linked energy and matter E = me2. As Donna Fitzpatrick of the Department of Energy recalls ... 

Benjamin Franklin and Mme. Marie Curie were experimental physicists. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were theoretical physicists, perhaps the greatest. In the earlier days, the tools, both experimental and mathematical, were so simple that a single man or woman could become skilled in the use of both kinds. Isaac Newton not only made the thrilling experiment of breaking sunlight into colors with a prism, but actually invented for his own use one of the most useful forms of mathematics, the calculus. Franklin contributed to electrical theory. Nowadays some of the tools are so complex that few physicists are versatile enough to become masters of them all. 

In 1928, in Berlin, where he was a Privatdozent at the University of Berlin and a confidant and partner in practical invention of Albert Einstein, Szilard had read Wells tract The Open Conspiracy. The Open Conspiracy was to be a public collusion of science-minded industrialists and financiers to establish a world republic. Thus to save the world. Szilard appropriated Wells term and used it off" and on for the rest of his life. More to the point, he traveled to London in 1929 to meet Wells and bid for the Central European rights to his books. Given Szilard s ambition he would certainly have discussed much more than publishing rights. But the meeting prompted no immediate further connection. He had not yet encountered the most appealing orphan among Wells Dickensian crowd of tales. 

One of Szilard s sidelines, then and later, was invention. Between 1924 and 1934 he applied to the German patent office individually or jointly with his partner Albert Einstein for twenty-nine patents. Most of the joint apphcations dealt with home refrigeration. A sad newspaper story... 

French engineer Felix Trombe (1906-1985) invented what came to be called the Trombe wall structure in the late 1950 s. The photoelectric effect that makes solar cells function was first explained by Albert Einstein in 1905, but it was not until the transistor revolutionized electronics in the mid-twentieth century that silicon became a sufficiently viable commodity to produce solar cells on a large scale. The physical principles that drive these different applications now form the foundation of the energy-efficiency movement. 

Lasers. The term laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. The possibility of lasers was postulated by Albert Einstein, and a microwave laser was developed in the 1950 s. Some credit American physicist Gordon Gould with the invention of the first laser using light however the ruby laser invented by American physicist Theodore Maiman in 1960 is considered to be the first laser to use light. 

Immediately following the invention of optical lasers in the early 1960s, all instruments used lasers as the light source. Acquisition of spectra from samples with arbitrarily high Rayleigh radiation required some spectrometer developments as well as implementation of low-noise detectors. Curiously, the physics on which both laser and photomultiplier operation are based is derived from work of Albert Einstein. Photomultipliers operate by using the photoelectric effect for which Einstein received the Nobel Prize for work done in 1905. Laser action was a demonstration of stimulated emission that was predicted by Einstein in 1917. A discussion of laser action will not be included in this chapter, but the reader can refer to a text on optoelectronics such as Ref. 17. 

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