Ridiculous-Sounding Government-Funded Experiments that Led to 'Material' Benefits for Most People

[kalisti]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm new here, but have been browsing the forums and love the community that seems to exist here.

 

With the current budget debate going on, I'm seeing a lot of fluff news pieces about 'ridiculous' things that have received government funding (Shrimp on Treadmills was the one that got me this morning).

 

I know that a lot of these experiments that sound silly are for very good reasons, and often end up leading to huge advances in science and an increase in the average person's standard of living. The thing is, I don't have any great examples to offer people when I want to have this discussion with them (I have an easier time defending the space program, because I have a list of benefits that people use in their daily lives that came from space research).

 

So I'm wondering if people can help me out by mapping out a few good chains between a ridiculous-sounding (to the average person) experiment funded by the government and some sort of everyday technology or advancement that the same average person would recognize as being hugely beneficial, and which couldn't have been achieved without the initial research/experiment.

 

I hope that makes sense, and hope people can offer some insight!

 

Thanks so much.

[tomgwyther]

Not that it was government funded but: IIRC. A chap named john Scott Russel noticed how a wave from the bow of an abruptly stopped boat would continued forward along a canal for several miles. He experimented with so called 'solitary waves' and found that such waves - of different amplitude and/or frequency - could pass each other without interference. Which, I believe is the way modern fibre-optic technology functions today, his theory was used within the development of said fibre-optic technology.

I found this transcript of his original findings...

 

`I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped - not so the mass of water in the channel which it had put in motion; it accumulated round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed. I followed it on horseback, and overtook it still rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles an hour, preserving its original figure some thirty feet long and a foot to a foot and a half in height. Its height gradually diminished, and after a chase of one or two miles I lost it in the windings of the channel. Such, in the month of August 1834, was my first chance interview with that singular and beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation''.

 

i have no doubt that there are countless other inane discoveries - government funded or otherwise - which lend them selfs, if not partially; but absolutely - to the modern conveniences we enjoy today.

 

'Velcro' for example

Edited July 10, 2011 by tomgwyther