fast divider?

Einstein general relativity paper was published in 1915. and immediately explained the precession pf the orbit of Mercury, which had been inexplicable for a century or two.

Dirac's prediction of the existence of the positron preceded it's discovery by a couple of years. The magnetic monopole has proved more elusive.

There a perfectly good analogue four quadrant multiplier, now horribly expensive

Generously, one way of looking at a "test particle" in the standard narrative, not that there are any or they're "virtual", is that: that's a magnetic monopole, and they're pretty much "everywhere".

Then, the "skyrmions" and "spintronics" get involved, ....

People hear so much about magnets, and never electrets, ....

Go to Digikey and search for "electret".

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Electrets are interesting. You can freeze a bunch of bound charge, so just inside the surface there’s a large E field.

Outside, there are conductors and free charge (e.g. air ions), so the field gets shielded out with distance. Eventually a layer of crud will collect, which will give ions a place to live.

Initially though, a clean surface is likely to have too low a density of states to neutralize the field completely, so it can persist out to a considerable distance.

I did an interesting front end for a semiconductor surface contamination sensor based on that—using a scanning capacitive probe, a small fraction of a monolayer of organic schmutz was easily visible from 200 microns away.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

It reminds of the similarities, and differences, of the "capacitor" and the "condenser".

These are basically ideal components, making advantage of that there are both the "electrodynamic" and "electrostatic", in effect, and about that things like a radio wave have both "very, very high" and "very, very low" frequency components, vis-a-vis the usual account of band, and about things like Faraday's law that makes that waves are always spirals and spirals are always waves, in nature.

So, much like the mythical "divider", and about for example ideas of constructing Fourier-style circuits including various what are often considered "uniqueness" results in mathematics that are actually "distinctness" results, many of these sorts components are readily available off-the-shelf, where they usually mostly gather dust.

It's kind of like the difference between "square wire" and "round wire" for motor windings: square wire gives better numbers.

So, any kind of application basically has an ideal electrical component, or rather, any kind of circuit is its own kind of ideal.

And very few of them look sensible after the sun has come up.

If you knew a bit more, it would be a much thinner folder.

An expensive self-indulgence.

People don't give you purchase orders for patents. They buy products. A good and patentable idea can be central to a product, but inept development can wreck the best of ideas. The Lintech electron beam tester was based on a patented idea of their boss, whose name was on the patent (which he'd got to own). He cheap-skated on the development to such an extent that one of his ex-engineers was able to build a pretty much identical machine which destroyed his business - nobody ordered a Lintech machine after the Schlumberger competitor hit the market, and after Lintech had delivered the last of the machine it had sold they went bankrupt. Mike Engelhart - of LTSpice fame - worked on that project.

It seems to be the only evidence you can understand. You seem to have got your name on exactly one patent, taken out by a group you were working with, so your grasp of what constitutes a patentable idea and what you can do with it does seem to be second hand.

Most are obviously goofy. Many have already been invented and are on the market. There are still lots that might become products.

So the next step is to research what's out there. Lately we hire a bright college student to research the science, technology, competitors, market. They deliver a report for $1000.

One unstated benefit is that we get to evaluate the kids, even if the technology idea was silly. And it's fun.

It would be thicker.

Super cheap, compared to the alternates, like hiring a usually-fatheaded marketing manager.

Exactly. Patents are "An expensive self-indulgence."

Why the obsession with patents?

Only a small fraction of patents become commercial successes. Most are abandoned in the expensive process before they are issued, and then most issued patents are abandoned because of the maintenance fees.

Expensive vanity, mostly. OK if you are a big drug company maybe.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Not a particularly plausible claim.

Bright college students don't know all that much. They can learn, but their point of view is shaped by an education system that tells them what to think, and that does tend to concentrate on area that are easy to teach.

It will tell you quite a bit about the kids.

Dream on.

The usual term is market research organisation. Marketing manager look after the people who talk to the customers - Tom Peters thought that that ought to include the engineers but marketing managers don't feel that they can control what the engineers tell the customers.

They can be. But they were invented to let people publish and sell their trade secrets, and it is a system that does make sense if you use it sensibly.

It's the same idea as scientists exploit when they publish their results in peer-reviewed journal. You create a free market for good ideas.

All true. The Lintech patent was taken out by Cambridge Instruments and abandoned when the parent company went bust. The graduate student half of the two named inventors took over the patent by paying the maintenance fees. It was a wise move, and would have paid off even better if he'd paid more attention the people who ended up using the machines rather than to the bosses who bought them.

It's like venture capitalism - 19 out of 20 patents weren't worth taking out, but the twentieth paid for all the rest. EMI, RCA and IBM all patented everything they could. The big drug companies have the same business model.

We have recently got two excellent reports on technology, specs, competitors, pricing. Two more in process look good. I was surprised how well this is working.

Dream? Yes!

Engineers are the best choice to talk to customers.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Perhaps, but they do need to devote most of their time to engineering.

We filed a provisional for the thermal Faraday shield, but that's our only one in the 17 years we've been in business. We're hoping to interest folk like 3M--they could sell Scotch Isothermal Tape. :)

In periods when there's venture money around (i.e. not the present time), patent protection is important for startups, because it's hard to get money without it.

Plus, of course, we do a lot of patent litigation work.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The only patent that I'm named on is for a kinda silly delay-line imaging anode, to locate charge hits behind a microchannel plate. It was just a suggestion on my part. But VCs had taken control of the company, as they are wont to do, and they like to have a giant patent portfolio for when they go public and cash out.

This was during the nanotech fad, which peaked and crashed before the thing could go public.

I have one of the anodes around here somewhere. It does look cool.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Well, in your average startup you have two basic assets: your people and your IP. The IP is easier to control.

Post a picture!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Oh, all right.

This was for the ill-fated tomographic atom probe project in Madison.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Gnarly!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Why was it ill-fated?

Mainly because I put in a huge amount of work, with some folks in Madison and in Oxford, and didn't get rich.

There was a nanotech boom/bust, sort of like the first internet bump and AI now.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics