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"Fractenna"
The patent is the only thing that matters
in such new technology.

Yawn... Oh sorry...

Look - anyone could 'patent' going into space in a cheap, reusable rocket
like 'this' and like 'that'. What makes the evening news is when someone
actually DOES it. Same thing for 'light antennas' - who did it first
(couldn't care less who happened to apply for a patent if they didn't
actually DO it).

When they changed the definition of 'reduction to practice' from 'send a
working model' to 'just write it down', the whole patent system became a
lawyers' game and a work of fiction in many cases.

BTW, here's today's trivia question.
Carbon 14 dating is a mainstay for setting ages
of things a few thousands of years old.
Who--invented--it?

Perhaps someone patented it in 1920.

The decay of Carbon-14 and it's relationship to cosmic rays, the atmosphere,
life and death is a natural phenomenon. It wasn't really 'invented' (except
by God and/or Nature), it was discovered (or developed) by W.F. Libby.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 Deluxe CD edition (oh so cool for
$10):
"The carbon-14 method was developed by the American physicist Willard F.
Libby about 1946."
"...he and his students developed the carbon-14 dating technique."
"[He] wrote Radiocarbon Dating (1952)."
"For this development he was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in
1960."

From the WWW:
"In 1960, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for leading the
team (namely, post-doc James Arnold and graduate student Ernie Anderson,
with a $5,000 grant) that developed Carbon-14 dating."

"Martin Kamen discovered [Carbon-14] in 1940 in collaboration with the late
Sam Ruben, a University of California, Berkeley chemist, while the two were
working at the 60-inch cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory."

Do you know something the rest of the world doesn't?



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