History of Science and Technology Q&A (May 18, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram hosts a live and unscripted Ask Me Anything about the history of science and technology for all ages. Find the playlist of Q&A's here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Originally livestreamed at:   / stephen_wolfram  

If you missed the original livestream of this episode, feel free to submit a question you would like Stephen to answer in a future Q&A livestream here: https://wolfr.am/12cczmv5J

00:00 Start stream
3:17 SW begins talking
3:41 Why did electromagnetism become a focus of study so late into human civilization? Wouldn't the ancients have observed and studied magnets and static electricity and characterized as easily as us?
21:15 Why did Turing come up Turing Machines as a basis for computation and not tag or substitution systems or mobile automata or register machines?
27:30 According to Wikipedia, Telex became an operations teleprinter service in Germany in 1933.
27:35 Maybe not telex, but ticker tape. Ticker tape was around in the 1800s.
29:01 According to Wikipedia, ticker tape stock price telegraphs were invented in 1867 by Edward A. Calahan, an AT&T employee.
43:35 The joke was that Godel was the only one who read it!
44:33 Einstein came to regret the name 'theory of relativity'. Would 'theory of invariance' have been a better choice?
57:03 Somewhat ironic that Russell had one of the clearest prose styles of all time and was responsible for one of the most unreadable books!
1:08:49 At least he didn't name it, "Space Time Stuff and Things."

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