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Nikola Tesla’s dream of wireless transmission of electric power was a technological dead end. The remains of a great tower he built on Long Island, New York, to demonstrate his theory is a testament to the folly of his plan.
Tesla (1856-1943) ended his days with something of a reputation as a mad scientist, because his big ideas that failed came near the end of his career as an inventor. But those dead ends belie the fact that Tesla contributed some of the most important innovations of the industrial age: alternating current transmission of electricity, the alternating current motor, and invention of the radio. On the basis of those inventions alone, Tesla was a creative giant.
Tesla’s life illustrates a fact of scientific life: most of the great innovations of human history have been accompanied by failure after failure of theoretical laboratory work. Trial and error is fundamental to human progress, and to industrial and technological development.
Continued experiments – another way of saying trial and error – are vital to discoveries of which we have not yet dreamt. The accidental discovery of Plexiglas in a German laboratory in 1935 produced today’s ubiquitous substitute for glass, for example.
Yet, too often the failures, or experimental dead ends, are hailed as justification for doing nothing. The emphasis is on avoiding the cost of the scientific journey rather than on the potential rewards at the end of the journey.
The May 9, 2009 headline in The State newspaper set just such a tone. “Obama cuts deal blow to S.C. hydrogen economy,” screamed the lead headline on the newspaper’s front page.
Indeed, the federal government is cutting back grants for research on hydrogen as a potential fuel for automobiles. There remain many long-term obstacles to widespread use of the fuel in cars, such as the current inability to shrink the size and weight of the vessel needed to contain the volatile fuel.
But the facts belie the notion that these research funding cutbacks are a “blow” to research into alternative fuels at institutions such as the University of South Carolina, the Savannah River National Laboratory, and Clemson University. In fact, much of the research at these institutions focuses on stationary power applications, or portable power generation for applications other than transportation. And many have nothing to do with hydrogen. A start-up company, Trulite, is setting up its first manufacturing line on Midlands Technical College’s Technology Accelerator campus in Northeast Richland County. Its portable units, powered by fuel cells, can replace batteries on jobs as diverse as construction sites or battlefields.
Far from cutting back, the Obama administration is increasing funding across a broad front of research. The University of South Carolina recently learned, for example, that its College of Engineering and Computing will lead a $12.5 million, five-year research program to conduct research on the frontiers of energy science. USC’s new Materials for Energy Systems research center will seek to “build a scientific basis for bridging the gap between making nano-structured materials and understanding how they function in a variety of energy applications,” according to the Department of Energy announcement. Put simply by research leader Kenneth Reifsnider: “The research is about how to use energy, how to store it and how to carry it.”
Far from suffering a “blow”, energy research at South Carolina institutions has a bright future. The best outcome in their laboratories would be the opportunity for experiments to fail, again and again, until they hit upon that one big idea that is a game-changer in the world energy economy.
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