That was a great story! We have the blue ones because one guy was willing to put it all on the line to get it done.
Amazing so much hangs on just one of us sometimes.
We also have it because the research scientist acquired real electromechanical skill. Most of the time those skills are not there and my mind is on fire thinking about what could be done, and done faster with that kind of know how more broadly distributed.
Not having that PhD sucked mostly due to peers not valuing other skills.
I know a chemistry professor who values these things. I met him while setting some polymer equipment up. (Limiting details here to keep from outing people who may well read here. (Hello, from you know who in Oregon!))
Basically, this prof has a parts and equipment depot. Anytime there is an opportunity to score inexpensive, relevant gear, they do it.
Students often build the gear they need. This may not be science grade, but it is almost always enough to validate a research path, or some other plan, including procurement or access to science grade equipment later on.
In my discussions, those students live the program and know the value they are getting.
Essentially, it is the same high value our Blue LED making friend has seen; namely, more direct agency and control with far fewer, maybe even zero dependencies navigate.
They can explore even higher risk areas of research and then upon seeing potential outcomes worth publishing, can put their stuff to work how they need, when they need.
A quick look back through history shows us a whole lot of the hard won scientific understanding we value and depend on, engineer with, came to us via people who could make things as well as think and observe. Add computation to that list as well.
Academia could use a whole lot more of this as could public research and even private research programs.
And as can be seen, not only incandescent but also LED lighting was only made possible when it was by truly Edisonian efforts.
>Anytime there is an opportunity to score inexpensive, relevant gear, they do it.
Up into the 1980's things were done a bit differently than they are now in industrial research when it comes to equipment.
For energy, well-funded places like Exxon and Shell would store and accumulate used equipment in surplus warehouses when they recommissioned laboratories or replaced individual gear with the latest & greatest. There it would age for 5 to 10 years on average before being tagged for discard.
The material was traditionally being held as a resource as in previous decades, when it was expected that principal investigators would look first in the vast storehouse for useful items before requisitioning & purchasing new equipment for their labs. But nobody was doing that any more, energy had skyrocketed in price and oil companies had plenty of money so they had only been buying new equipment for years.
These were big warehouses, but eventually they would fill up and stay full, and they needed to make room for more on a regular basis so things were auctioned off.
I ended up with a very small (carefully selected) fraction of what was passing through those warehouses, and it was still a nice multiple of the tonnage that any one PhD had at their disposal during an average career. A lot of them don't want to touch the equipment anyway, they make the interns do it. So it's not often the most scientifically advanced one in the lab leveraging their hands-on experience, and conversely seldom the most capable hands-on operator having their abilities leveraged most scientifically.
I collaborated with some of their people who would visit my lab at the time, plus non-research customers and there was nothing to be ashamed of using their second-hand equipment which still had inventory stickers from the original owners. I was constantly validating equal or superior performance to their own in-house work.
They would never think of using their own surplus equipment or even going down to the warehouse to see how much overwhelming tonnage there actually was.
>>The material was traditionally being held as a resource as in previous decades, when it was expected that principal investigators would look first in the vast storehouse for useful items before requisitioning & purchasing new equipment for their labs.
Amazing so much hangs on just one of us sometimes.
We also have it because the research scientist acquired real electromechanical skill. Most of the time those skills are not there and my mind is on fire thinking about what could be done, and done faster with that kind of know how more broadly distributed.
Not having that PhD sucked mostly due to peers not valuing other skills.
I know a chemistry professor who values these things. I met him while setting some polymer equipment up. (Limiting details here to keep from outing people who may well read here. (Hello, from you know who in Oregon!))
Basically, this prof has a parts and equipment depot. Anytime there is an opportunity to score inexpensive, relevant gear, they do it.
Students often build the gear they need. This may not be science grade, but it is almost always enough to validate a research path, or some other plan, including procurement or access to science grade equipment later on.
In my discussions, those students live the program and know the value they are getting.
Essentially, it is the same high value our Blue LED making friend has seen; namely, more direct agency and control with far fewer, maybe even zero dependencies navigate.
They can explore even higher risk areas of research and then upon seeing potential outcomes worth publishing, can put their stuff to work how they need, when they need.
A quick look back through history shows us a whole lot of the hard won scientific understanding we value and depend on, engineer with, came to us via people who could make things as well as think and observe. Add computation to that list as well.
Academia could use a whole lot more of this as could public research and even private research programs.
Again, great story. Love it.