Happy birthday Daedalus

Exactly 85 years ago, on April 20, 1938, the great British visionary and popularizer of science, David Edward Hugh Jones, was born, known in our countries for his book “The Inventions of Daedalus” (“The World”, 1985). Unfortunately, the book was no longer reprinted, and therefore is something like the “secret knowledge” of the older generation. Why is David Jones so famous?

He put forward the idea of the existence of fullerenes 19 years (1966) before their actual production (1985).
Proposed the idea of 3D printing using lasers (1974).
Anticipated the Segway (1978).
Predicted the advent of television programs written by artificial intelligence (1976).
The first to propose digital money (1974).
Proposed Hyperloop (1968).

short biography

David Jones was born in London to copywriter Philip and secretary Dorothea. As a child, he built rockets, took photographs and drew cartoons. He attended Eltham College, then studied chemistry at Imperial College London and received his PhD in organic chemistry in 1962.

He began publishing his Daedalus columns for the New Scientist in 1964. Then they were collected in “Inventions of Daedalus” (1985), “Further Inventions of Daedalus” (1999, not published in Russian), illustrated by his own cartoons and “Moment “Aha!”” (2012, also, unfortunately, passed by us).
Television was another outlet for his ingenuity: from the mid-70s, David Jones worked for Yorkshire Television on Don’t Ask Me and The Scientific Eye, and then began hosting the German television science quiz show Kopf um Kopf, where he worked for eight years. In 1987, he became the subject of a BBC QED program that realized one of his inventions: shared transport.
After a year of teaching at the University of Strathclyde, he moved to ICI at Runcorn as a spectroscopist, where he researched bicycle stability in addition to his main job.
Jones described himself as “the court jester at the court of Her Majesty Science”.

His columns continued until 2000 when David suffered a stroke. After his recovery, he continued to write, but Daedalus retired. David’s latest book, Why Are We Aware?, was inspired by his stroke experience.
David liked to have fun, but in his personal life he was a loner with a skeptical attitude towards humanity, as can be seen from his last column: “The big problem is the readiness with which people lie. Indeed, this is almost a defining sign of humanity.”

What is so great about the book?

I know the book almost by heart, but when preparing the article, abundant references to Komsomolskaya Pravda and Russian / Soviet scientists caught my eye. It is unlikely that Jones had access to Komsomolskaya Pravda, so these references to the newspaper are entirely on the conscience of the Mir publishing house. And here are links to Russian / Soviet scientists – why not, especially since the USSR was quite popular “in the West” in the late 70s – early 80s.

In his research, Daedalus acts not alone, but as the head of the NIGHTMARE company. And no, this is not the company you currently work for. NIGHTMARE stands for “Large-Scale Topical Development Company”. The company encourages “the complete scientific irresponsibility of our employees, allowing them to jump from one task to another to conduct ridiculous experiments, etc. NIGHTMAR owes its success entirely to the fact that it exists for the pleasure and entertainment of its employees” (even Google is far from this ).

The most interesting thing is that Daedalus for most of his inventions provides qualitative and quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of his theories, historical references and references to subsequent scientific work.

So, inventions

Since I am not a fan of long reads, out of 129 inventions of Daedalus, I singled out only the most, in my opinion, remarkable (the year of publication in New Scientist is after the title of the chapter). As I mentioned above, all illustrations are drawn personally by Jones:

Fullerenes (Chapter “Hollow Molecules”, 1966).
In 1985, Harrold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley were the first to discover fullerene, for which they received the Nobel Prize in 1996. In his Nobel lecture, Harrold Kroto did not forget to mention Jones.
Digital money (chapter “Money loves an account”, 1974-1975).
Here are the features of its digital money:
- Limited issue.
- Accounting for all banknotes in circulation (“each bank current account will indicate not only the total amount, but also specific numbers of banknotes”).
- Several digital currencies can communicate in parallel in a country.
  Yes, the version from Daedalus, of course, is very raw, but, nevertheless, he was the first!
  Consequences of the introduction of digital money:

At present, all banknotes of the same denomination are completely identical to each other, like elementary particles that obey Bose-Einstein statistics. If we begin to distinguish them by numbers, then they should behave in accordance with the Fermi-Dirac distribution and show a much lesser tendency to “crowding”. This will create prerequisites for a more equitable distribution of wealth in society.
It is unlikely that the entire currency confusion will be worse than what we have now; watching her will be very instructive. Apparently, a real war will begin between currencies: some of them will turn out to be unpopular, others, having won the trust of the public, then burst with a bang, and still others will not be able to gain recognition outside the country. Ultimately, there will likely be only one currency left. Perhaps this will teach economists something, and there is a chance that economics will finally become a serious science.

A look at crypto exchanges from 1975. It looks like it, doesn't it? — A look at crypto exchanges from 1975. It looks like it, doesn’t it?

It is possible to seal the entire subway tunnel and pump passengers through it, freely floating in the form of a “suspension” in a liquid respiratory mixture. At the same time, there are no restrictions on either the speed of movement or the amount of acceleration: passengers will be relieved of discomfort. In terms of its throughput, the new transport will have no equal: at a speed of only 45 km/h, a tunnel with a diameter of 6 m will be able to pass up to a million passengers per hour!

In 1968, people were not like us, iron! I would not like to fly through a pipe at a speed of 45 km/h. In the form of “suspension”.

Smiley (chapter “Feykoder”, 1973).
I know very well that the text emoticon 🙂 was invented earlier, but Daedalus was the first to suggest using it in graphical form to display information about the state of the system on displays. 😊

Predicted the appearance of television programs written by artificial intelligence (chapter “Entertainment television programs and mathematics”, 1976).

Daedalus began statistical analysis of a large number of television programs, determining the probabilities of transitions from one scene to another. The resulting probabilities, together with an extensive selection of various episodes, are entered into the computer’s memory. Based on this material, the “stochastic generator of entertainment TV programs” (SGRT) invented by Daedalus composes an infinite sequence of typical television shows according to the following principle: a scene is selected from the class of “outsets”, then, taking into account the statistical weight, a transition occurs to a randomly selected next scene, etc. until, again at random, an ending is chosen (e.g. “happy ending”).

Segway (chapter “Monosphere”, 1978)
In the Daedalus version, the Segway could climb stairs!
New methods of metalworking (chapter “On the benefits of cracks”, 1976).

Traditional methods of processing metal and other materials require too much energy. The efficiency of a lathe is less than 0.1% – most of the energy is converted into heat. According to Daedalus, glass cutting is the most economical from an energy point of view: the glazier makes a scratch on the glass and cleanly breaks it along this line, spending a minimum of energy. With some skill, this method allows you to cut glass not only in a straight line, but also cut out curly parts and holes.
A prototype of the KOSHMAR processing machine with the help of piezostrictive exciters creates internal stress in the workpiece and initiates the propagation of a crack from a notch made in advance at the right place in the workpiece. Further crack propagation is guided by signals from photoelectric and strain gauge sensors. Everything happens in a matter of milliseconds: the operator does not have time to blink an eye, as the workpiece cracks along a given contour and the finished part is obtained.

Daedalus is looking for a method of surface treatment that would provide a very low surface speed of sound, so that any crack, sharply refracted, would come back to the surface. The metal processed in this way will revolutionize technology. Imagine a similar part on a test bench (or even in a real design). When the stresses at some point are above the tensile strength, the resulting crack will not destroy the part, but will come to the surface, gently breaking off a piece with a manufacturing or design defect, in which dangerous stress is concentrated.
We can say that the metal of Daedalus will have the property of self-improvement. In his dreams, Daedalus already sees a new era of design, when designers will practically be left without work, and machines and mechanisms will be assembled from poorly made parts, which in the process of work will take on optimal forms. Motorists, on the other hand, will look with quiet joy at the fragments and debris pouring from the engine.

Transport with collective responsibility (chapter “Transport with collective responsibility”, 1973)
In the “collective responsibility transport” (CRT) he invented, each seat has a steering wheel, levers and pedals in front of each seat, and each passenger can watch the road using a television screen. All passengers are encouraged to take part in the management. The on-board computer collects signals from all consoles. It discards extreme values from too brave or not too skillful drivers, and drives the bus according to the average signal from the rest of the consoles. Therefore, individual deviations (signals coming from the consoles of a reckless driver or a passenger who wants to drive right to his doorstep) are not taken into account, and the collective experience of passengers and their knowledge of the route guide the movement.

The speed, style of management and route will depend on those who are willing to fork out – in exact accordance with the basic principle of capitalism: the one who pays the most is right.

Debriefing. Most of the fine should definitely be paid by the one who paid the most for the trip. Stowaways, as always, have nothing to do with it: ''I was just driving''. — Debriefing. Most of the fine should definitely be paid by the one who paid the most for the trip. Stowaways, as always, have nothing to do with it: ”I was just driving”.

Passive dust collector (chapter “For the home, for the family”, 1970).
Actually, it’s just a hole in the floor in which dust accumulates (I myself saw one in a server room in the late 90s). True, Daedalus went even further and offered to fill them with oil so that the dust would definitely not get out.
Translator from one dialect to another (chapter “The battle music thunders …”, 1968).

“Lingaphone” will be an ideal means for two-way communication: the voice of a Scot speaking into one mouthpiece will come out of the other, for example, with a Texan accent; accordingly, the device will work in the opposite direction. Perhaps the “lingaphone” will even make it possible to decipher that incomprehensible guttural language in which stops are usually announced on suburban trains.

3D printer (chapter “Laser sculptor”, 1974).
Pools of compressed xenon (chapter “Easy breathing”, 1967).
The idea is to compress the mixture of xenon and oxygen to the density of a human body: