How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions?

In her book on the history of the laser, historian Joan Bromberg notes that the technological and scientific predecessors of the maser (which itself preceded the laser - two critical technologies whose developmental histories I sketched in this piece two months ago) were in place for decades before physicist Charles Townes had the insight to combine them:Stimulated emission had been known to physicists for over 30 years, and “regenerative” oscillators, that is, oscillators with feedback, were we...