-proof of stake;
-complex sharding
-EVM specification
https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/03/29/road.html
Nuclear power
AI healthcare services
61 different Automated Decisionmaking Systems
https://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/automating-public-services-learning-from-cancelled-systems/
Geoengineering delivery system
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328717301696
High definition optical disk format
Development of spacecraft and booster vehicles -- Ares I and Ares V-- to enable completion of the ISS, return to the moon before 2020, and travel to Mars
Molecular manufacturing vs nanomaterials
https://www.wired.com/2004/10/drexler/
NASA research into nuclear-powered systems for long range space missions
[military acquisitions study]
https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/339/
Legacy Soviet weapons
Legacy Soviet weapons
Rifle firing caseless ammunition
"ubiquitous computing" paradigm
Heavy ground effect planes, invisible to radar/sonar, with anti-ship missiles
Space-based missile defence, using swarms of kinetic impactor satelites
Nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers
'Combat satellite': space-based laser weapon for ballistic missile defense. Part of Strategic Defense Initiative.
https://books.google.dk/books?id=Inf1CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=zenith+star+satellite&source=bl&ots=d7W6eI8N4-&sig=Tu0QmaCB6Yvo2up8cucweSoB4E4&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=zenith%20star%20satellite&f=false and
Develop full human-level machine intelligence
Supposed "epoch-making supercomputer"
Anti-ballistic missile "nuclear shotgun": utilize nuclear explosions to accelerate kinetic impactors to 70-100km/sec
For use by cosmonauts; damage optical devices and cause eye injuries
Space-based missile defense using thermonuclear-bomb powered X-ray lasers. Part of Strategic Defense Initiative.
Various proposals
ICBM Basing Study
ICBM basing option: anchoring encapsulated ICBM missiles to the coastal seabed for survivability; on command, they rise to the surface and launch
Utilizing psychic phenomena for reconnaissance and intelligence
Bleek 2017
Civilian supersonic passenger airliner
Bleek 2017
Soviet space shuttle
Bleek 2017; for application to AGI, see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kipMvuaK3NALvFHc9/what-an-actually-pessimistic-containment-strategy-looks-like
Role-playing games
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-where-be-dragons
Laser tank
Strategic long-range bomber
[military acquisitions study] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/339/
Bleek 2017
Distributed decision support infrastructure, based on cybernetics principles, to aid in management of the economy
Bleek 2017
Giant airborne aircraft carrier, nuclear-powered
Civilian supersonic passenger airliner
Bleek 2017
Weather control. Military cloud seeding in Vietnam War to extend monsoon season and disrupt Vietcong operations. Increasing local rainfall by an estimated thirty percent during 1967 and 1968.
Bleek 2017
Soviet Peaceful Nuclear Explosion program
Jet-powered hovertrain
Military one-man rocket-powered hopper
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576509005153
(Recognition as promising research direction)
"Hardware Lottery"
Military space station, with potential 'negation' (A-SAT interception) capabilities
Nuclear warhead delivery system using a low earth orbit
Weather control: reduce the strength of hurricanes
Planned Soviet moonbase for 6-12 crew
Soviet internet
Super-heavy ICBM capable of delivering 100MT yield warheads
http://www.astronautix.com/p/proton.html
Giant bipedal robot, controlled by operator, intended for use in Vietnam War
https://www.businessinsider.com/ge-military-robots-2016-3
US program to explore Peaceful Nuclear Explosions for infrastructure (e.g. to blast canals)
Giant ekranoplan (ground effect plane)
Artificial ionosphere, by launching 480 million copper needles into orbit
Ellsberg 2017
'Nuclear lasers': shaped nuclear charges to generate directional explosions (high-velocity plasma jets) as space weapons/ballistic missile defense
Sagan 1996; Curtice 2021; Bleek 2017
Ground-based missile defense
Assault rifle
space-plane --
Large supersonic passenger airliner
Giant civilian hovercraft
Military moon base
Low-yield thermonuclear weapons designed to maximize lethal neutron radiation in the immediate vicinity of the blast
Project to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon
Wingless VTOL aircraft
Primitive fusion power: use of thermonuclear bombs in underground cavities for power generation
Inflatable airplane
Intended first orbiting satellite
Barnhart 2021; https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/how-america-chose-not-beat-sputnik-space-0
Bleek 2017
10-gigaton yield nuclear bombs (670,000 times Hiroshima)
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/
Low proliferation risk nuclear reactors
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.13182/NT70-A28619
https://energyfromthorium.com/2011/12/23/techtalk-why-tmsr/
https://energyfromthorium.com/timeline/
Onboard nuclear generators for indefinite-range aircraft
Nuclear pulse spacecraft propulsion
Mutation breeding of crops by plant irradiation
http://www.atomicgardening.com/1966/03/01/whatever-happened-to-the-atomic-garden/
computer programming language statement, performs a one-way transfer of control to another line of code
Asymmetric oblique-wing aircraft
Mustard
Nuclear-powered ramjet engine for indefinite-range cruise missiles capable of months-long stand-off flight
Bleek 2017
Giant amphibious transport/assault submarines
Bleek 2017
Bleek 2017
Bleek 2017
(see nation-specific entries)
Van der Meer 2011, 2014
Submarine aircraft carrier
‘Unsinkable’ wood-pulp/ice aircraft carrier
Radiological weapons
Meyer et al. 2020
Flying tank
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221020-the-tank-that-could-fly-into-battle?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Flying tank
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221020-the-tank-that-could-fly-into-battle?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Rhodes; Speer -- Ellsberg
Super-heavy battleships
Ornithopter
Flying aircraft carrier
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zveno_project
rocket-powered bomber
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10548535
Ellsberg 2017 / https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-nazi-germanys-only-long-range-heavy-bomber-was-flammable-disaster-78061
Biddle 2004 on strategic bombing
Pape 'Bombing to Win'
Chlorofluorocarbons, widely used as refrigerants, propellants (in aerosol applications), and solvents.
First aircraft carriers
Horowitz 2018, but see Kuo 2021
Private or merchant transport submarines, to evade blockades and/or utilize sub-arctic shipping routes
air conditioning
https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/cold-comfort-0
...
'Why internal combustion?' https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/why-internal-combustion-1
https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/history-colour-photography
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/nyregion/08artsnj.html
AC Current
Juma Innovation and its enemies
Insecticide
Bayonet with incorporated saw teeth on the spine of the blade
Brundage et al. 2020; https://www.un.org/disarmament/publications/occasionalpapers/unoda-occasional-papers-no-30-november-2017/
Modern land mines
https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle
Horowitz 2010; Drezner 2019
https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-cotton-gin
https://lostfutures.substack.com/p/why-werent-hot-air-balloons-invented
Mechanized grinding of flour
https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-threshing-machine
Dafoe 2015
Mechanized wood-sawing (eg using wind-power)
Cooney, 1991; and https://www.antonhowes.com/blog/is-innovation-in-human-nature
Flushable toilets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions#Paleolithic
https://meteuphoric.com/2017/12/28/why-did-everything-take-so-long/
[set of norms outlawing use of which]
Anton Howes: -- I
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-why-wasnt-the-steam
II:
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-why-wasnt-the-steam-cc8
III:
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-why-wasnt-the-steam-76c?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=18480&post_id=75599725&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
An improvement to the loom, which radically increased the productivity of weaving
Howes 2017 https://www.antonhowes.com/blog/is-innovation-in-human-nature
Katja Grace; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-it-took-so-long-to-inv/
Erb-Satullo 2021
Nuclear cars, etc.
Augmented-reality glasses
Power lines and generators
Higonnet, Patrice L. R.; Landes, David S.; Rosovsky, Henry (1991). Favorites of Fortune: Technology, Growth, and Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pg 89
Grotto
[Graeber & ]...
Nuclear power
Nuclear-powered cruise liners
Next generation assault rifle, modular
Airborne aircraft carrier
Handheld tactical nuclear weapon launcher
Neural Networks
Sarah Hooker -
https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.06489
[vid]
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/h127hu/given_the_relative_simplicity_of_boltaction/
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/gejd1p/what_was_preventing_the_expansion_of_the_honey/
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-getting-into-hot?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=18480&post_id=79993018&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-the-beacons-are
https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-wind
flying jeep
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2022/12/the-race-to-create-working-practical-personal-jetpacks/
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2022/12/the-race-to-create-working-practical-personal-jetpacks/
Gravity propulsion research
Stateless computers
Script
The Pentagon's Brain