"if it wasn't for the invention of X we wouldn't have Y"

[Ed.Kloonk]

Just watched Curious Droids' latest vid on the history of Bell Labs. No shade on Paul, but I have often wondered just how true the statement "if it wasn't for the invention of X we wouldn't have Y" really is.

In this case the invention of the Mosfet, we wouldn't have computers we have today.

I have my suspicions. 

Would you knowledgable folks like to either confirm or debunk any widely accepted invention that spawned other inventions. Did it really?

Would the second batter up, so to speak, eventually accommodate the gap in technology?

[Zero999]

I think it's often more accurate to say, if X didn't invent Y, then Z would have.

[ataradov]

There is a flow to things that needs to happen in a certain  way, but I do agree that there is no way progress would stop if one thing in a chain did not happen exactly the way it did. But the timing may be extended without certain discoveries or contributions. And for that some people deserve credit.

There is a very good series by James Burke called Connections. It explores chains of inventions from ancient times to modern stuff. The first season is pretty good. The chains in the following two seasons are a bit  of a stretch, IMO.

[magic]

Well, computers today are packed with MOSFETs so if those had never been invented, even till now, we would surely be using bipolar machines instead.

Perhaps water cooling would be more popular

[pcprogrammer]

Another thing to consider in this topic: "What inventions or discoveries where made while looking for something completely different?"

Can't produce a good sample out of the top of my head, but I am sure there will be, especially in the medical field.

[jpanhalt]

I think it's far more often the other way around.  Instead of, "if it wasn't for the invention of X we wouldn't have Y,"  it should be "if it wasn't for Y, X wouldn't have been invented."

Much as ataradov said, there's almost always a sequence.  We had computers long before mosfets, but the drive to improve them led to mosfets.

As for accidental discoveries, the invention of Teflon comes to mind.  It's inventor was working on better refrigerants.
https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/roy-j-plunkett#:~:text=Teflon%2C%20discovered%20by%20Roy%20J,of%20the%20other%20polymer%20products.

3M's Post-it adhesive pads are another example.  I don't have a link to it, but having lived in the shadow of 3M, it was common lore.  Basically, it was a failure for making a better adhesive that was repurposed.

[tom66]

A BJT-based CPU would probably require a refrigeration system to keep it sufficiently cool at just 50 MIPS. 

Are there examples of non-CMOS CPUs that were commercially produced?

[Cyberdragon]

I think it's often more accurate to say, if X didn't invent Y, then Z would have.

This exactly. It's actually easier to ask "What if X was invented sooner if not for Y?". A great example of this is asshats burning the Library of Alexandria, setting back scientific progress for centuries. I mean we still made it through that great loss of human knowledge, but it just took us awhile. Another example is Babbage, if he had actually succeeded in making a clockwork computer, would electromechanical then electonic computers to replace it have been invented sooner?

[pardo-bsso]

There is a very good series by James Burke called Connections. It explores chains of inventions from ancient times to modern stuff. The first season is pretty good. The chains in the following two seasons are a bit  of a stretch, IMO.

I also second that. It's an incredible series.

[pardo-bsso]

In this case the invention of the Mosfet, we wouldn't have computers we have today.

Probably bipolar or small triodes.

[jonpaul]

Bonjour à tous

Every advance in technology builds on previous knowledge, invention and discovery

Each Pioneering advance built on and was an improvement on all the preceding.
Every patent application cites all the prior art.
Often the  invention is discovered almost simultaneously by different inventors like the telephone

A timeline  for semiconductor and computers   1800s..2000 could be


Babbage engine, Jacquard loom, Crystal detector, vacuum tube, transistors, FETs, ICs, CPUs, quantum computer


For telecommunications

Sémaphores, Chappe système, Telegraph, multiplexing télégraphe, téléphone, undersea cables, satellites, internet, mobile phones...

Bon courage

Jon

[jmelson]

Just watched Curious Droids' latest vid on the history of Bell Labs. No shade on Paul, but I have often wondered just how true the statement "if it wasn't for the invention of X we wouldn't have Y" really is.

In this case the invention of the Mosfet, we wouldn't have computers we have today.

Computers were made with bipolar junction transistors for at least a decade before MOSFETs were ready.  IBM made the 370 line of machines with small ICs using mostly NPN transistors in the ECL logic family, back starting in 1970 or so.  Yes, clearly, MOSFETs are now the first choice inlogic circuits, and CMOS has developed into a very successful way to build fast, low-power logic on a huge scale.
It does seem that somebody developed a MOSFET back in the 1930's, trying to make a "solid state" tube, but he was not able to get very reproducible (or long-lasting) results.
Jon

[daqq]

The thing is, progression from one idea/invention/discovery/application is insanely non-linear and difficult to predict. You can trace the origins of a sex lubricant formulation* to the US space program, which was greatly helped by the invention of teflon, which was the side product of commercial research into refrigerators. Odds are that these discoveries would have come eventually, but not necessarily as fast or in the same form. Or something completely different would have come, since the people who wanted a material with the parameters of teflon would have not been satisfied due to the lack of teflon and they'd do a lot of research and got something completely different.

* - [NSFW?] https://astroglide.com/blog/our-roots-in-rocket-science-out-of-this-world-pleasure-endless-possibilities

[jpanhalt]

You can trace the origins of a sex lubricant formulation* to the US space program
* - [NSFW?] https://astroglide.com/blog/our-roots-in-rocket-science-out-of-this-world-pleasure-endless-possibilities

Although K-Y Jelly was first marketed in 1917 long after the Chinese invented rockets, it was not a product of the US space program.
https://www.k-y.ca/pages/frequently-asked-questions#faq-1  Wikipedia gives an even earlier date (1904).  Maybe the Wright brothers used it to lubricate their control cables?  I'm satisfied with 1917.

[SiliconWizard]

Just watched Curious Droids' latest vid on the history of Bell Labs. No shade on Paul, but I have often wondered just how true the statement "if it wasn't for the invention of X we wouldn't have Y" really is.

While inventions obviously trigger other inventions in cascade, the problem with the above statement is its absolute nature: as if there was only one possible path for anything that we do. That is clearly bullshit and sounds more like magic thinking than anything else.

[jmelson]

A BJT-based CPU would probably require a refrigeration system to keep it sufficiently cool at just 50 MIPS. 

Are there examples of non-CMOS CPUs that were commercially produced?

CPUs on an IC?  Yes, HP made a series of machines with Silicon on sapphire substrates, for lower parasitic capacitance.
Under a microscope, you can see thriugh the chip like glass.  I don't know what the circuit topolgy was.
IBM made the 370 series with the bipolar junction transistor technology they called MST4, which was essentially similar to Motorola's ECL.
The original Z-80 was implemented in XMOS, I think.
Jon

[mikeselectricstuff]

Often statements like that are predicated on an assumption or suggestion that something might never have been invented, but in practice it's more often just a matter of time (when rather than if) and available materials/processes, as well as commercial incentive.
Something like a MOSFET would almost certainly have been invented eventually.

It's often said that Clive Sinclair invented the pocket calculator, but all he did in reality was figure out how to make it cheap enough before the competition did, it would have happened anyway. I think this is true for a very large number of "inventions"

Another interesting thing to consider is the opposite - what progress has been hindered by the invention of a non-optimal solution. For example if valves (vacuum tubes) hadn't been invented, would we have got semiconductors sooner ?

[daqq]

You can trace the origins of a sex lubricant formulation* to the US space program
* - [NSFW?] https://astroglide.com/blog/our-roots-in-rocket-science-out-of-this-world-pleasure-endless-possibilities

Although K-Y Jelly was first marketed in 1917 long after the Chinese invented rockets, it was not a product of the US space program.
https://www.k-y.ca/pages/frequently-asked-questions#faq-1  Wikipedia gives an even earlier date (1904).  Maybe the Wright brothers used it to lubricate their control cables?  I'm satisfied with 1917.

Didn't say it was the first and only one The question is, would we have Astroglide without Teflon?

[langwadt]

You can trace the origins of a sex lubricant formulation* to the US space program
* - [NSFW?] https://astroglide.com/blog/our-roots-in-rocket-science-out-of-this-world-pleasure-endless-possibilities

Although K-Y Jelly was first marketed in 1917 long after the Chinese invented rockets, it was not a product of the US space program.
https://www.k-y.ca/pages/frequently-asked-questions#faq-1  Wikipedia gives an even earlier date (1904).  Maybe the Wright brothers used it to lubricate their control cables?  I'm satisfied with 1917.

Didn't say it was the first and only one The question is, would we have Astroglide without Teflon?

and Telfon (PTFE) was an accidental discovery while working on a new refrigerant

[Circlotron]

And what if someone had invented really really good batteries in the late 1800s? So good that no one would have bothered with internal combustion engines? So much of the 20th century would have been different. Oil rich nations would have remained a backwater. Probably fewer wars. Less environmental damage of the type we see today. But I expect people collectively would have found another way to do the horrible things they do.

[free_electron]

The FET is older than the BJT. The concept of field effect was postulated 20 years BEFORE Shockley/Bardeen/Brattain discovered the BJT. They were actually trying to make a FET but ran into all kinds of problems and discovered the junction transistor instead.
The first BJT did not really have a collector and emitter (it was actually not a BJT, not in the sense Bipolar junction transistor). It was symmetrical . That famous first bipolar transistor was not a NPN or PNP but what came later to be known as a Schottky junction ( metal/semiconductor junction , not a semiconductor-semiconductor junction ). The Base was a slab of doped germanium (hence the name "base") the rest were two gold-germanium junctions. one collected electrons, the other emitted electrons. The base could modulate the conductivity.

Mosfets came later. But, what is used today is no longer a MOSFET. MOS means Metal - oxide - Semiconductor. The gate was metal. That is no longer the case. Not for digital ics. The gate is doped polysilicon. Why ? Because you can make smaller structures in polysilicon than in metal. It is much more resilient to mechanical damage. And stacking metal was problematic : you need an insulation layer inbetween. So the first ic's actually used a layer of polysilicon to create the gates AND do part of the routing. There was 1 metal layer. When I started in semiconductors in 1990 we had one metal layer.

[langwadt]

And what if someone had invented really really good batteries in the late 1800s? So good that no one would have bothered with internal combustion engines? So much of the 20th century would have been different. Oil rich nations would have remained a backwater. Probably fewer wars. Less environmental damage of the type we see today. But I expect people collectively would have found another way to do the horrible things they do.

what do you think would have been used to charge those batteries?

[KE5FX]

Another interesting thing to consider is the opposite - what progress has been hindered by the invention of a non-optimal solution. For example if valves (vacuum tubes) hadn't been invented, would we have got semiconductors sooner ?

It's been argued that any well-equipped neon sign shop could have built lasers in the 1930s if they'd known how.  You have to wonder how that might have altered the course of the next few decades' worth of scientific as well as technological history.

[SiliconWizard]

And what if someone had invented really really good batteries in the late 1800s? So good that no one would have bothered with internal combustion engines? So much of the 20th century would have been different. Oil rich nations would have remained a backwater. Probably fewer wars. Less environmental damage of the type we see today. But I expect people collectively would have found another way to do the horrible things they do.

what do you think would have been used to charge those batteries?

Which is pretty much the same problem we have today... (at least on a large scale.)

[pcprogrammer]

And what if someone had invented really really good batteries in the late 1800s? So good that no one would have bothered with internal combustion engines? So much of the 20th century would have been different. Oil rich nations would have remained a backwater. Probably fewer wars. Less environmental damage of the type we see today. But I expect people collectively would have found another way to do the horrible things they do.

How different would things be if oil was not discovered? Modern society would probably not exist as it is today. So many products depend(ed) on crude oil. Think of the petrochemical industry.

Having it reduce on wars, probably not, because something in human nature drives us to them constantly. "Hey this is mine, you can't have it. What the hell you took it, this means war." Just take a good look at history way back before the combustion engine came into play. It is filled with war. Nations are build on it.

It is not just humans to be fair. Take a good look at nature and there is "war" all over the place. Plants competing over sun light, animals competing over food, etc. We just took it to the next level.

You can't blame the environmental damage just on fossil fuels. With or without, there would be a lot of problems just because of human existence. So much nature had to make way for our living needs, but also, and probably much worse for the environment, all the space we fill with the rubbish we produce. Sure it has exploded in the last 150 years or so, but it basically started with the first man walking.