BUT WHAT USE IS IT?
by Isaac Asimov ---------------

IN THE 1840s, the English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, in one of his enormously popular lectures, illustrated a peculiar phenomenon. He thrust a magnet into the hollow center of a spiral coil of wire connected to a galvanometer that would record the presence of an electric current. There was no current in the wire to begin with, but as the magnet was inserted, the needle of the galvanometer moved to one side of the scale, showing that an electric current was flowing. As the magnet was withdrawn, the needle flipped in the other direction, showing that the current was now flowing the other way. When the magnet was held motionless within the coil, no current flowed at all.

After the lecture, a member of the audience approached Faraday and asked, "But of what practical use can this be?" Faraday answered, "Sir, of what use is a newborn baby?"

It was precisely this phenomenon that Faraday made use of to develop the electric generator, which, for the first time, made it possible to produce electricity cheaply and in quantity. That, in turn, made it possible to build the electrified technology without which modern life would be inconceivable. Faraday's newborn baby grew into a giant.

Even the shrewdest of men cannot always judge what is useful and what is not. Thomas Alva Edison was surely one of the greatest inventors who ever lived. In 1868 he patented his first invention, a mechanical device that would record and total votes at the push of a button. A Congressman whom Edison consulted, however, told him that there wasn't a chance of its being accepted. A slow vote, it seemed, was sometimes a political necessity, since opinions might change as a count was being taken, whereas a quick vote might, in a moment of emotion, commit Congress to something undesirable.

Edison, chagrined, decided never again to invent anything unless he was sure it would be needed.*(Numerous legislatures, including the U S House of Representatives, now use vote-tallying machines.) He stuck to that. Before he died, he had obtained nearly 1300 patents--including one for the first practical electric light, perhaps the most useful of all his inventions. Over the years, Edison labored to improve the electric light, mainly by making the glowing filament last longer before breaking. One of his hit-or-miss efforts was to seal a metal wire into an evacuated light bulb, near the filament but not touching it. Edison then turned on the electric current to see if the metal wire might somehow preserve the life of the glowing filament.

It didn't, but he could not help noticing that an electric current seemed to flow from the filament to the wire across that vacuum gap. Nothing in Edison's knowledge explained the phenomenon. He wrote it up in his notebooks and, in 1884, being Edison, patented it. The phenomenon, called the "Edison effect," was his only discovery in pure science. Since he could see no use for it, he pursued the matter no further.
Later, however, scientists who pursued "useless" knowledge for its own sake discovered that electric current was accompanied by a flow of sub-atomic particles (eventually called "electrons"). The Edison effect was the result of the ability of these electrons, under certain conditions, to travel through a vacuum. In 1906, American inventor Lee De Forest made use of this new understanding when he devised an evacuated glass bulb with a filament, a wire and a metal plate that enabled it to amplify an electric current. The result is called a radio tube. It made possible all of our modern electronic equipment-- including radio and television.

The Edison effect, then, which the practical Edison shrugged off as useless, turned out to have more astonishing results than any of his practical devises. In fact, it is difficult to find a branch of science that isn't useful. Between 1900 and 1930, for instance, theoretical physics underwent a revolution. The theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics led to a new understanding of the basic laws of the universe and of the behavior of the inner components of the atom. None of it seemed to have the slightest use for mankind, and the brilliant young scientists involved apparently had found an ivory tower for themselves that nothing could disturb. But out of that abstract work came, unexpectedly, the nuclear bomb, and a world that now lives in terror of a war that could destroy mankind in a day.It didn't bring only terror, however. Out of that research also came radioisotopes, which have made it possible to probe the workings of living tissue with a delicacy otherwise quite impossible, and whose findings have revolutionized medicine in a thousand ways. Nuclear power stations also offer mankind the brightest hope of ample energy during all his future existence on earth.

The point is that we cannot foresee consequences in detail. Faraday did not foresee a television set when he puzzled over his magnet-induced electric current. Einstein, as he worked out the equation "e=mc2", did not sense the mushroom cloud.

We now stand in the closing decades of the 20th century, with science advancing as never before. We've discovered quasars and pulsars in the distant heavens. Of what use are they to the average man? Astronauts have brought back rocks from the moon at great expense. So what? Scientists discover new compounds, develop new theories, work out new mathematical complexities. What for?

No one knows right now. But you will know if you live long enough; and if not, your children or grandchildren will know. And they will smile at those who say, "But what is the use for sending rockets into space?" just as we now smile at the person who asked Faraday the use of his demonstration.

In fact, unless we continue with science and gather knowledge--whether or not it seems useful on the spot--we will be buried under our problems and find no way out. Today's science is tomorrow's solution--and, most of all, it is mankind's greatest adventure.(#)