https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/ 2026-04-29T21:03:35+00:00 FeedCreator 1.8 (info@mypapit.net) 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/effect_of_alexnet_on_historic_trends_in_image_recognition?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,113 @@ + ====== Effect of AlexNet on historic trends in image recognition ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;AlexNet did not represent a greater than 10-year discontinuity in fraction of images labeled incorrectly, or log or inverse of this error rate, relative to progress in the past two years of competition data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The annual ImageNet competition asks researchers to build programs to label images.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1382&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Since 2010, the ImageNet project runs an annual software contest, the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC), where software programs compete to correctly classify and detect objects and scenes.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Imagenet&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 20 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ImageNet&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900080629.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It began in 2010, when every team labeled at least 25% of images wrong. The same was true in 2011, and would have been true in 2012, if not for AlexNet, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolutional_neural_network&quot;&gt;convolutional neural network&lt;/a&gt; that mislabeled only 16.4% of images.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1382&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;#mce_21&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;data section&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for sources for this data.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Percent of images mislabeled === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data on the error rate (%) of the 2010 – 2012 ImageNet competitors from Table 6 of Russakovsky et al&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1382&quot; title=&#039;Olga Russakovsky et al., “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11263-015-0816-y&quot;&amp;gt;ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;International Journal of Computer Vision&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 115, no. 3 (December 1, 2015): 211–52, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYdv4gLdtwkzYKeXaBJTXBbqeX_9onmw4aAaYVWVUfs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. See Figure 1 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-full is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2288&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ErrorRate.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Error rate (%) of ImageNet competitors from 2010 – 2012 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The ImageNet competition had only been going for two years when AlexNet entered, so the past trend is very short. Given this, the shape of the curve prior to AlexNet is entirely ambiguous. We treat the trend as linear for simplicity, but given that, it is better to choose a transformation of the data that we expect to be linear, given our understanding of the situation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Two plausible transformations are the log of the error, and the reciprocal of the error rate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1382&quot; title=&quot;Percentage of answers incorrect seems unlikely to change linearly over time, since we expect moving from 50% incorrect to 49% incorrect to be easier than halving a 2% error rate. Log of the error rate and inverse of the error rate seem to us more plausible.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; These two transformations of the data are shown in Figures 2 and 3 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/D9XDAoRH9tDVn8usb1XzCUsOdNY_-cNssrBHe1sKeXMbj5fT1wNcojVsoY7ydgpkU_s1mC9vPHvNV2nSWZufkr48fnmKjBonMxyK06Tk1VNoUpgSZzzJIt19TT22u5gUQMV76hfV&quot; width=&quot;583&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Log base 2 / error rate of ImageNet competitors from 2010 – 2012&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;361&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/a-EUqvmgOprtUu--eoK-ZAkdNTtYkE9Mo9Ir-e219QsAWeOQAcfwwqsWv_Xsi-zDJ8vGVkKbeBRShPL4IbCP6zt2GWzkj3YM4AMbpMfrD-0_tfyq2jasOp5ZXq_q7ooaRVT5lfDx&quot; width=&quot;585&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: 1 / error rate of ImageNet competitors from 2010 – 2012 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The best 2012 AlexNet competitor gives us discontinuous jumps of 3 years of progress at previous rates for the raw error rate, 4 years of progress at previous rates for log base 2 of the error rate, or 6 years of progress at previous rates for 1 / the error rate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1382&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYdv4gLdtwkzYKeXaBJTXBbqeX_9onmw4aAaYVWVUfs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; For the 6-year discontinuity, we tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics in the ‘Notable discontinuities under 10 years’ tab &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Since 2010, the ImageNet project runs an annual software contest, the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC), where software programs compete to correctly classify and detect objects and scenes.” – “Imagenet”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 20 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ImageNet&amp;amp;oldid=900080629.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;a href=&quot;#mce_21&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;data section&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for sources for this data.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Olga Russakovsky et al., “&lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11263-015-0816-y&quot;&gt;ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge&lt;/a&gt;,” &lt;em&gt;International Journal of Computer Vision&lt;/em&gt; 115, no. 3 (December 1, 2015): 211–52, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Percentage of answers incorrect seems unlikely to change linearly over time, since we expect moving from 50% incorrect to 49% incorrect to be easier than halving a 2% error rate. Log of the error rate and inverse of the error rate seem to us more plausible.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYdv4gLdtwkzYKeXaBJTXBbqeX_9onmw4aAaYVWVUfs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,113 @@ + ====== Effect of AlexNet on historic trends in image recognition ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;AlexNet did not represent a greater than 10-year discontinuity in fraction of images labeled incorrectly, or log or inverse of this error rate, relative to progress in the past two years of competition data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The annual ImageNet competition asks researchers to build programs to label images.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1382&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Since 2010, the ImageNet project runs an annual software contest, the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC), where software programs compete to correctly classify and detect objects and scenes.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Imagenet&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 20 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ImageNet&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900080629.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It began in 2010, when every team labeled at least 25% of images wrong. The same was true in 2011, and would have been true in 2012, if not for AlexNet, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolutional_neural_network&quot;&gt;convolutional neural network&lt;/a&gt; that mislabeled only 16.4% of images.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1382&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;#mce_21&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;data section&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for sources for this data.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Percent of images mislabeled === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data on the error rate (%) of the 2010 – 2012 ImageNet competitors from Table 6 of Russakovsky et al&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1382&quot; title=&#039;Olga Russakovsky et al., “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11263-015-0816-y&quot;&amp;gt;ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;International Journal of Computer Vision&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 115, no. 3 (December 1, 2015): 211–52, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYdv4gLdtwkzYKeXaBJTXBbqeX_9onmw4aAaYVWVUfs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. See Figure 1 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-full is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2288&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ErrorRate.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Error rate (%) of ImageNet competitors from 2010 – 2012 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The ImageNet competition had only been going for two years when AlexNet entered, so the past trend is very short. Given this, the shape of the curve prior to AlexNet is entirely ambiguous. We treat the trend as linear for simplicity, but given that, it is better to choose a transformation of the data that we expect to be linear, given our understanding of the situation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Two plausible transformations are the log of the error, and the reciprocal of the error rate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1382&quot; title=&quot;Percentage of answers incorrect seems unlikely to change linearly over time, since we expect moving from 50% incorrect to 49% incorrect to be easier than halving a 2% error rate. Log of the error rate and inverse of the error rate seem to us more plausible.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; These two transformations of the data are shown in Figures 2 and 3 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;360&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/D9XDAoRH9tDVn8usb1XzCUsOdNY_-cNssrBHe1sKeXMbj5fT1wNcojVsoY7ydgpkU_s1mC9vPHvNV2nSWZufkr48fnmKjBonMxyK06Tk1VNoUpgSZzzJIt19TT22u5gUQMV76hfV&quot; width=&quot;583&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Log base 2 / error rate of ImageNet competitors from 2010 – 2012&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;361&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/a-EUqvmgOprtUu--eoK-ZAkdNTtYkE9Mo9Ir-e219QsAWeOQAcfwwqsWv_Xsi-zDJ8vGVkKbeBRShPL4IbCP6zt2GWzkj3YM4AMbpMfrD-0_tfyq2jasOp5ZXq_q7ooaRVT5lfDx&quot; width=&quot;585&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: 1 / error rate of ImageNet competitors from 2010 – 2012 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The best 2012 AlexNet competitor gives us discontinuous jumps of 3 years of progress at previous rates for the raw error rate, 4 years of progress at previous rates for log base 2 of the error rate, or 6 years of progress at previous rates for 1 / the error rate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1382&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYdv4gLdtwkzYKeXaBJTXBbqeX_9onmw4aAaYVWVUfs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; For the 6-year discontinuity, we tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics in the ‘Notable discontinuities under 10 years’ tab &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Since 2010, the ImageNet project runs an annual software contest, the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC), where software programs compete to correctly classify and detect objects and scenes.” – “Imagenet”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 20 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ImageNet&amp;amp;oldid=900080629.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;a href=&quot;#mce_21&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;data section&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for sources for this data.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Olga Russakovsky et al., “&lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11263-015-0816-y&quot;&gt;ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge&lt;/a&gt;,” &lt;em&gt;International Journal of Computer Vision&lt;/em&gt; 115, no. 3 (December 1, 2015): 211–52, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Percentage of answers incorrect seems unlikely to change linearly over time, since we expect moving from 50% incorrect to 49% incorrect to be easier than halving a 2% error rate. Log of the error rate and inverse of the error rate seem to us more plausible.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYdv4gLdtwkzYKeXaBJTXBbqeX_9onmw4aAaYVWVUfs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1382&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/effect_of_eli_whitneys_cotton_gin_on_historic_trends_in_cotton_ginning?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,436 @@ + ====== Effect of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin on historic trends in cotton ginning ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 26 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We estimate that Eli Whitney’s cotton gin represented a 10 to 25 year discontinuity in pounds of cotton ginned per person per day, in 1793. Two innovations in 1747 and 1788 look like discontinuities of over a thousand years each on this metric, but these could easily stem from our ignorance of such early developments. We tentatively doubt that Whitney’s gin represented a large discontinuity in the cost per value of cotton ginned, though it may have represented a moderate one.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Cotton fibers grow around cotton seeds, which they need to be separated from before use. This can be done by hand, but since 500 C.E.,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;A fifth-century Buddhist painting… constitutes the earliest evidence of a single-roller gin.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 4.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and plausibly prehistory, a variety of tools have aided in speeding up the process. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1359&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;Archaeologists&amp;amp;#8217; oversight may explain the absence of evidence that would locate the single-roller gin in prehistory. That the rollers of extant gins are made of iron does not preclude the possibility that the machine predates the Iron Age. The roller could have been made out of stone…&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 4.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These tools are called ‘cotton gins’. Eli Whitney’s 1793 cotton gin was a particularly famous innovation, commonly credited with having vastly increased cotton’s profitability, fueling an otherwise diminishing demand for slave labor, and so substantially contributing to the American Civil War.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1359&quot; title=&#039;Wikipedia says: &amp;amp;#8220;A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney&quot;&amp;gt;Eli Whitney&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in 1793 and patented in 1794&amp;amp;#8230;It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States&quot;&amp;gt;growth of slavery&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America&quot;&amp;gt;American South&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War&quot;&amp;gt;American Civil War&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#cite_note-WarCause-4&quot;&amp;gt;[4]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Cotton Gin.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, June 4, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Variants on Whitney’s gin are known as ‘saw gins’.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind of gin. Instead of rollers that pinched off the fiber, he used course wire teeth that rotated through a tightly spaced metal grate to pull it from the seed…Industry ambivalence spurred others to adopt the gin but change it. Gin makers substituted an axle loaded with fine-toothed circular saws for Whitney’s wire-studded wooden cylinder. In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Angela Lakwete, &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; (JHU Press, 2003), 47.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; (See Figure 1.) Cotton became more valuable than all other US exports combined during the antebellum era.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1359&quot; title=&#039;First table of p567, &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA567&amp;amp;amp;lpg=PA567&amp;amp;amp;dq=%22raw+cotton+has+been+one+of+the+chief+exports%22&amp;amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;amp;ots=hin_l4bNTp&amp;amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U2p0xXjYF0Q8FVwBpE-jbbRX41xAg&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwib3NKK6u_iAhWXr54KHVt_AMkQ6AEwAXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=%22raw%20cotton%20has%20been%20one%20of%20the%20chief%20exports%22&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;Federal Reserve Bulletin&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1923), &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q&amp;amp;amp;f=false&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Thus Whitney’s gin is a good contender for representing a discontinuity in innovation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our investigation draws heavily from Lakwete’s &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin.&lt;/em&gt; Lakwete summarizes the situation surrounding Whitney’s invention as follows&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1359&quot; title=&quot;Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 48&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The introduction of a new gin in 1794 was as unexpected as it was unprecedented. It was unexpected because the British textile industry had expanded from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries without a change in the ginning principle. Cotton producers had increased the acres they planted in cotton and planted new varieties to suit textile makers. The market attracted new producers who, like established planters, used roller gins to process their crops. Roller gins, whether hand-cranked in the Levant and India, or foot-, animal-, and inanimately powered in the Americas, provided adequate amounts of fiber with the qualities that textile makers wanted, namely length and cleanliness. All roller gins removed the fiber by pinching it off in bundles, preserving its length and orientation as grown. Random fragments of fractured seeds were picked out of the fiber before it was bagged and shipped.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In 1788 Joseph Eve gave planters and merchants a machine that bridged the medieval and modern. It preserved the ancient roller principle but completed the appropriation of the ginner’s skill, as Arkwright’s frame had that of the spinner. Appropriation had proceeded in stages beginning with the single-roller gin that mechanized the thumb and finger pinching motion. The roller gin in turn appropriated the agility and strength needed to manipulate the single roller, while the foot gin freed both hands to supply seed cotton. The barrel gin used animal and water power, removing humans as a power source but retaining them as seed cotton suppliers. The self-feeding animal-, wind-, or water-powered Eve gin replaced each of the skilled tasks of the ginner with mechanical components.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, Eli Whitney’s unprecedented gin filled a vacuum. While large merchants invested in barrel gins and large planter in the Eve gin, the majority continued to use the skill- and labor-intensive foot gin to gin fuzzy-seed short-staple cotton as well as the smooth-seed, Sea Island cotton. Barrel gins had not decreased the number of ginners and only marginally improved ginner productivity, and Eve’s complicated gin was notoriously finicky. Whitney ignored these modernizing gins and offered a replacement for the ubiquitous foot gin.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;385&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/866WFGmUOmL7hCaEUwT6u6Yexe9JJyoQBkdk_XJPqsqD98ieKl2IUZm1YKDhW6hD7BbcY9hjCwB9lY40DHQCISBFN5jOq4WWovhblAVk2afOqpvfqe7nXLR1R6r3tIZRLQT0WCKd&quot; width=&quot;585&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: What appears to be a saw gin of some kind on display at the Eli Whitney Museum&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cotton_gin_EWM_2007.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Tom Murphy VII (Public domain)&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Pounds of cotton ginned per person-day === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;We are most interested in metrics that people were working to improve—in this case, perhaps ‘cost of producing a dollar’s worth of cotton’. Inclusive metrics are hard to measure however. Instead we have collected data on ‘pounds of cotton ginned per person per day’, which is simpler, often reported on, and probably a reasonable proxy. However, it departs from tracking the usefulness of a gin by ignoring several major factors:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Upfront costs: these presumably varied a lot, because a gin can for instance resemble a rolling pin and a board, or involve horses or steam power.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1359&quot; title=&quot;See a variety of gin descriptions at:&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Thus the gins with higher upfront costs are less useful than their cotton-per-person-day statistic would make them seem. In the mid-1860’s many farms still used foot gins, seemingly because Eve gins—while more efficiently producing high quality output—were expensive.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s. &amp;amp;#8230; The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill as well as a reinforced building that could withstand the vibrations of the feeder. Yet it increased outturn without changing the quality of the fiber&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Even if everything had the same upfront costs, the existence of upfront costs means that a gin which processes 200lb of cotton with two people per day would be better than one that processes 100lb of cotton with one person, so cotton/person-day still fails to match what we are interested in.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Variation in labor requirements: Some gins required especially skilled labor.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Foot ginners could be productive&amp;amp;#8230; but they were the most valuable men a planter owned or hired. With Eve’s gin, planters used that labor to produce cotton and “only the most ordinary” workers to gin it.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 45.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Substitutes for people: some gins used people to power them and others used animals or water-power, along with a smaller number of people.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill &amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40. &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;McCarthy&amp;amp;#8217;s gin was adopted for cleaning the Sea Island variety of extra-long staple cotton grown in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. It cleaned cotton several times faster than the older gins, and, when powered by one horse, produced 150 to 200 pounds of lint a day.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This again makes for higher output per person, but at the cost of additional animals, that we are not accounting for.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;Risks of injury: Some gins, particularly foot and barrel gins, were dangerous to operate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The oxen and water-driven barrel gins that Drayton described could not be stopped quickly, so ginners risked serious injury.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221;Foot gins were not without their own risks and limitations.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 39.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Types and quality of cotton ginned: &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;Whitney’s gin produced degraded cotton fiber, relative to other gins available at the time.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind gin…It turned out large quantities of fiber but destroyed the very qualities that textile makers had valued.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 47&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;But textile makers continued to complain about the quality of the fiber the toothed gin turned out.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 63&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However, Whitney’s gin could process short staple cotton, an easier to grow strain which was previously hard to process.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In the colonial era, small amounts high quality &amp;lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot;&amp;gt;long-staple cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;were produced in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Sea Islands&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Islands&quot;&amp;gt;Sea Islands&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;off the coast of South Carolina. Inland, only short-staple&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton&quot;&amp;gt;cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;could be grown but it was full of seeds and very hard to process into fiber. The invention of the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Cotton gin&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin&quot;&amp;gt;cotton gin&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in the late 1790s for the first time made short-staple cotton usable.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;History of Agriculture in the United States.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 11, 2019. Accessed April 25, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States#Cotton.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span class=&quot;readline_hover&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The Indian roller cotton gin, known as the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;churka&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;or&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;charkha&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;, was introduced to the United States in the mid-18th century, when it was adopted in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Southern United States&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States&quot;&amp;gt;southern United States&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The device was adopted for cleaning&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot;&amp;gt;long-staple cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, but was not suitable for the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; title=&quot;Short-staple cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-staple_cotton&quot;&amp;gt;short-staple cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that was more common in certain states such as&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Georgia (U.S. state)&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)&quot;&amp;gt;Georgia&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. Several modifications were made to the Indian roller gin by Mr. Krebs in 1772 and Joseph Eve in 1788, but their uses remained limited to the long-staple variety, up until Eli Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s development of a short-staple cotton gin in 1793&amp;amp;#8243;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Cotton Gin.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The cotton industry might adjust to different cotton over time, so that long-run differences in quality of outputs of different gins are smaller than initial differences. If so, we expect value produced by a new gin producing lower quality cotton to grow continuously over an extended period. &lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;We do also investigate overall cost per value of cotton ginned later, but do not have such clear data for it (see section, ‘cost per value of cotton ginned’).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;We collected claims about cotton gin productivity in the time leading up to Whitney’s gin, and some after. Many but not all are from Angela Lakwete’s book, &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1359&quot; title=&quot;Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003).&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our sources are mostly secondhand or thirdhand claims about nonspecific observations in the 1700s. We have the impression that claims in this space are not very reliable.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1359&quot; title=&#039;For instance, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=JCSL80pBmfEC&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA61&amp;amp;amp;lpg=PA61&amp;amp;amp;dq=whitney+gin+vs+barclay&amp;amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;amp;ots=J_nr1fnbGa&amp;amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U09Jfn4lVYMIWovBqGrRfNixg-fUA&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwjc4vGQvqbhAhVoHDQIHQkeCKUQ6AEwB3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=whitney%20gin%20vs%20barclay&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;some claim&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Barclay was a slave, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hannapub.com/concordiasentinel/stanley-nelson-the-cotton-gin-and-a-cheating-wife/article_bacae7f8-3925-11e4-8d72-001a4bcf6878.html&quot;&amp;gt;another&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; elaborates his story as a plantation owner. Data from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sailsinc.org/durfee/earl2.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; suggests a large drop in cotton bale production between 1860 and 1880, yet &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/291/cotton-and-the-civil-war&quot;&amp;gt;this&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; says, &amp;amp;#8220;By 1870, sharecroppers, small farmers, and plantation owners in the American south had produced more cotton than they had in 1860, and by 1880, they exported more cotton than they had in 1860.&amp;amp;#8221; Most of all, Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s own claim about the productivity of his original gin is arguably too outlandish to be believed&amp;lt;span class=&quot;s1&quot;&amp;gt;—while estimates of gin productivity slightly later don&amp;amp;#8217;t reach 400lbs/person-day (see our data below), Whitney apparently claimed his gin could produce 1250lb/person-day:&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.&amp;amp;#8221; (Whitney quote from Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49)&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We classified claims as ‘credible’ or not, but this is fairly ambiguous, and we would be unsurprised if some of the ‘credible’ claims turned out to be inaccurate, or the ‘non-credible’ ones were correct.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our dataset of claims is &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and illustrated in Figures 2 – 5. Note that dates are those when a claim was made, not necessarily dates of the invention of the type of cotton gin in question. This is because invention dates are hard to find, and also because it seems likely that much improvement happened incrementally between distinct ‘inventions’ of new types. Nonetheless, this means that a report dated to a time could be from a gin that was built earlier.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2060&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/AllGinData-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Claimed cotton gin productivity, 1720 to modern day, coded by credibility and being records, and dated by when the claim was made (not necessarily when the gin was made). Claims that are both relatively credible and higher than previous relatively credible claims are few. The last credible best point before the modern day is an improved version of Whitney’s gin, two years after the original (the original features in the two high non-credible claims slightly earlier). + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2061&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-cotton-gin-productivity-claims.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-cotton-gin-productivity-claims.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-cotton-gin-productivity-claims-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Historic claimed cotton gin productivity, all time (zoomed out version of Figure 2) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2075&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GinRecords-1-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 4: Zoom-in on credible best cotton gins (excluding modern era) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;For measuring discontinuities, we treat past progress as exponential at each point, but entering a new exponential regime at the fourth point. We confine our investigation to credible records. Given these things, we find the improved Whitney gin to be a 23-year discontinuity over the previous record in this dataset. However the foot gin and Eve’s mill gin appear to be at least one-thousand year discontinuities each.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1359&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; page for more details, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, tab &amp;amp;#8216;credible record gin calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for our calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However our data has at least one key gap. Whitney’s original 1793 gin design was almost immediately copied and improved by many people, most notably Hodgen Holmes and Daniel Clark.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Mississippi&amp;amp;#8217;s first saw gin was constructed in violation of Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s patent rights during the summer of 1795 and put into operation in September. Daniel Clark, Sr., a wealthy planter of Wilkinson County, designed this famous machine after examining drawings made by a traveler who had seen one of Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s gins while on a trip to Georgia.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Moore, John Hebron. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&amp;gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010, page 21. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p47&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The plausible productivity data we have appears to all be for these later variants, which we understand were non-negligibly better than Whitney’s original gin in some way.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1359&quot; title=&quot;We do have Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s own estimate of his gin&amp;amp;#8217;s productivity, but since it is very much larger than estimates of later related gins (see our data), we assume it is an exaggeration: &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; So we know that Whitney’s gin should be somewhat lower and two years earlier than our first data for Whitney-style gins. This means at most, Whitney’s original gin would be a 25 year discontinuity. If it accounted for even half of the progress since Eve’s mill gin, and we are not missing further innovations between the two, Whitney’s gin would still represent a 13 year discontinuity, and the later improved version would no longer account for a discontinuity of more than ten years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1359&quot; title=&quot;See spreadsheet, &amp;amp;#8216;Estimate of first Whitney gin discontinuity&amp;amp;#8217;.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It seems likely to us that Whitney’s gin was at least this revolutionary so we think the Whitney gin probably represented a moderate (10-25 year) discontinuity in pounds of cotton ginned per day.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We are fairly uncertain about whether the two larger discontinuities earlier are real, or due to gaps in our data. We did attempt to collect data for these earlier times (rather than just prior to the Whitney gin), but seem very likely to be missing a lot.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1359&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Over the history of gin productivity, the average rate of progress became higher. It is unclear whether this happened at a particular point. In our data, it looks as though it happened with the foot gin, in 1747, and that progress went from around .05% per year to around 4% per year (see &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet, tab ‘credible record gin calculations’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;). However our data is too sparse and uncertain to draw firm conclusions from.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Cost per value of cotton ginned === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;As discussed above, pounds of cotton ginned per person-day is not a perfect proxy of the value of a cotton gin, and therefore presumably not exactly what cotton-gin users were aiming for. ‘Cost per value of cotton ginned’ seems closer, if we measure costs inclusively and average across various cotton ginning situations. We did not collect data on this, but can make some inferences about the shape of this trend—and in particular whether Whitney’s gin represented a discontinuity—from what we know about the pounds/person-day figures and other aspects of the situation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from the trend in pounds of cotton ginned per person-day == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We expect that the pounds of cotton ginned per person-day roughly approximates cost per value of cotton ginned, with the following adjustments that we know of:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Eve’s gin is worse on cost/value than on cotton/person-day because the latter metric doesn’t reflect its large upfront costs.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Whitney’s gin may be worse on cost per value than it appears, because of its lower-quality cotton output.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Whitney’s gin may be better than it appears, because it could handle short-staple cotton. However this value seems unlikely to have manifest immediately, since it presumably takes time for cotton users to adjust to a new material.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Foot gins and barrel gins (e.g. Eve’s) were dangerous to operate, so are worse on cost/value than they appear.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Foot gins apparently required especially skilled labor, so are worse on cost/value than they appear.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Barrel gins and Eve gins often ran on non-human power-sources, so are worse on cost/value than they appear.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The barrel gin used animal and water power, removing humans as a power source but retaining them as seed cotton suppliers. The self-feeding animal-, wind-, or water-powered Eve gin replaced each of the skilled tasks of the inner with mechanical components.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p48&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These are several considerations in favor of Whitney’s gin representing more progress on cost/value than on cotton/person-day, and one against. However it is unclear to us whether the downside of lower quality cotton was larger than the other considerations combined, so the overall effect on the expected size of discontinuity from Whitney’s gin seems ambiguous, but probably in favor of larger.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from takeup of gins == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The foot gin persisted for at least sixty years after Whitney’s invention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This suggests that Whitney’s gin wasn’t radically better on cost per value of cotton ginned than its predecessors, at least for some cotton producers.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, apparently there was a rush to manufacture copies of Whitney’s gin, so much so that many mechanics became professional gin-makers, and most plantations had one of the new gins within five years. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Because the demand for saw gins became very great during the next few years a number of local mechanics embarked upon careers as professional ginwrights. &amp;amp;#8230; By [1800] one [of the new gins] could be found on almost every plantation.&amp;amp;#8221; Moore, John Hebron. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&amp;gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010 &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This suggests that there were situations for which Whitney’s gin was substantially better than alternatives, and situations for which it was worse. This seems like weak evidence that on average across cotton ginning needs it was not radically better than precursors, though there might be narrower metrics we could define on which it was radically better.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from cotton production trends == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If the Whitney gin made cotton much cheaper to process, we might expect cotton production at the time to sharply increase. Our impression is that this is a common story about what happened.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1359&quot; title=&#039;For instance, History.com:&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;History com Editors, “Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney,” HISTORY, accessed June 18, 2019, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However the data we could find on this, seemingly from a 1958 history of early US agriculture, suggests that cotton production was already growing rapidly, and continued on a similar trajectory after Whitney’s invention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YN2r40TkukftMjzlZWJCz34cOC2KdkHxZVa8CuMQa3M/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;This spreadsheet of ours&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; contains data from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Cotton_Production.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this image&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, which appears to be taken from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=IQ8hAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;amp;q=%22table+40%22&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, Volume 2&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, given that the author is the same and it is from the same page in the book. The full citation is:&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; See Figure 5.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This dataset begins in 1790, only a few years before Whitney’s invention. This is enough to see that the trend just before 1793 is much like the trend just after, however we can further verify this by looking at earlier cotton export figures (Figure 7).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-27-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-27-1359&quot; title=&#039;We made a rough collection of export and production data from numerous sources. See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/193D_4nRLvcqX0Z_hso5g3u3z0Ah-BGEWFCjjkjMbwAo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. We have not vetted these, and the collection process was not thorough or reliable. However since the figures are fairly consistent, we expect that they are roughly correct.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Cotton exports appear to closely match overall productivity where the trends overlap, and the pre-1790 export trend appears to be roughly continuous with the rest of the curve, at least if we ignore the aberrantly low 1790 figure.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1538&quot; height=&quot;356&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-1024x633.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-1024x633.png 1024w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-300x186.png 300w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-768x475.png 768w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9.png 1200w&quot; width=&quot;576&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 5: historic cotton production (bales), probably from Gray et al 1958&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-28-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-28-1359&quot; title=&quot;Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, see above for elaboration on source, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YN2r40TkukftMjzlZWJCz34cOC2KdkHxZVa8CuMQa3M/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;data here&lt;/a&gt;. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1707&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Historic-US-cotton-productivity.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Historic-US-cotton-productivity.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 6: Rough collected figures for US cotton exports and production over period from 1780 – 1830, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/193D_4nRLvcqX0Z_hso5g3u3z0Ah-BGEWFCjjkjMbwAo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;data and sources here&lt;/a&gt;. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1397&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-close-up-on-1793.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-close-up-on-1793.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-close-up-on-1793-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 7: close up on relevant years from Figure 6 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This does not preclude a large change in gin efficacy—perhaps there were other bottlenecks to cotton productivity, or it took time for the gains from Whitney’s gin to manifest in national productivity data. However it does cause us to doubt the story of Whitney’s gin being evidently responsible for massive growth in the cotton industry, which was a reason for suspecting the gin may have represented discontinuous progress. So this is some evidence against Whitney’s gin representing a large discontinuity in cost per value of cotton ginned.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from the 1879 evaluation of ginning technology == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=lSxAAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA410&amp;amp;lpg=PA410&amp;amp;dq=forbes+watson+cotton+gin&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=UwUDOiYSbu&amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U3qQXoA_RpNsoj9QASWVJ42Zb0ZPg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwiArO2PyqjhAhWFAXwKHdTjDHYQ6AEwDnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=forbes%20watson%20cotton%20gin&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;1879 evaluation of ginning technology&lt;/a&gt; reports on extensive measurement trials of different cotton gins. It was seemingly conducted to understand why Indian cotton production lagged behind American. The author says all methods for ginning cotton in India were primitive until recently; he hears that in some places it was done by hand as late as 1859.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-29-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-29-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;How primitive, till comparatively a few years since, were the means of cleaning the &amp;amp;#8216;kuppas&amp;amp;#8217; or seed cotton is best shown by the fact that in the accounts of even 20 years ago repeated mention is made in some districts of picking the wool off the seed by hand&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; Watson, Forbes. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Report on cotton gins and on the cleaning and quality of Indian cotton&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. London, Allen, 1879.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This is confusing because if Whitney’s gin really was much better in terms of cost-per-value than the alternatives, it would be surprising if sixty years later the alternatives were still in use. However many alternatives seem clearly more cost-effective than ginning by hand, so this seems like little evidence about Whitney’s gin in particular.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The outputs of the gins in the experiment seem different from (and usually higher than) the outputs for similarly named gins in our dataset. Which might be confusing, but we expect is because there are modest improvements to gin technology over time within particular classes of gin.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In sum, this evidence looks as though it might be informative, but we do not see it as such on consideration.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from historians == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have not thoroughly reviewed popular or academic opinions on the discontinuousness of the cotton gin, but our impression is that a common popular view is that Eli Whitney’s cotton gin was a discontinuous improvement over the state-of-the-art. On the other hand Dr Lakwete, author of &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin&lt;/em&gt;—a book we found most helpful in this project, and that also won an award for being the best scholarly book published about the history of technology&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-30-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-30-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;won the 2004 Edelstein Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology for the best scholarly book published about the history of technology in the past three years.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Angela Lakwete &amp;amp;#8211; Department of History &amp;amp;#8211; College of Liberal Arts &amp;amp;#8211; Auburn University.” Accessed October 27, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&quot;&amp;gt;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;—disagrees, actually explicitly saying it was continuous (though she may mean something different by this than we do):&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Collapsing two hundred years of cotton production and roller gin use in North America in to the moment when Eli Whitney invented the toothed gin, Phineas Miller and Judge Johnson marked 1794 as a turning point in southern development. Before, southeners languished without an effective gin for short-staple cotton; afterwards, the cotton economy blossomed. Arguing for discontinuity, the idea allowed the visualization of a moment and a machine that separated the colonial past from the new republic. Continuity, however, marked the history of cotton and the gin in America. Continuity would characterize the first two decades of the nineteenth century, as saw-gin and roller gin makers competed for dominance in the expanding short-staple cotton market.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. , 71.&lt;/cite&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Conclusions on cost per value of cotton ginned == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On the earlier ‘pounds of cotton ginned per person per day’ metric, we estimated that Whitney’s gin was worth around 10-25 years of past progress. Various considerations suggested Whitney’s gin might have been a bigger deal for overall cost-effectiveness of ginning cotton than that calculation suggested, but the quality of cotton was lower. We took this in total as neutral to weakly favoring Whitney’s gin being better than it seemed. We then saw that the Whitney gin was taken up with enthusiasm by a subset of people needing to gin cotton, that it didn’t seem to recognizably affect the growth of US cotton production, and that at least one historian with particular expertise in this topic thinks that progress was relatively continuous. This does not particularly suggest to us that Whitney’s gin represented a large discontinuity in cost per value of cotton ginned, and seems like some evidence against.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“A fifth-century Buddhist painting… constitutes the earliest evidence of a single-roller gin.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 4.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Archaeologists’ oversight may explain the absence of evidence that would locate the single-roller gin in prehistory. That the rollers of extant gins are made of iron does not preclude the possibility that the machine predates the Iron Age. The roller could have been made out of stone…”&lt;br/&gt; + Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 4.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Wikipedia says: “A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney&quot;&gt;Eli Whitney&lt;/a&gt; in 1793 and patented in 1794…It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;growth of slavery&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America&quot;&gt;American South&lt;/a&gt; as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War&quot;&gt;American Civil War&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#cite_note-WarCause-4&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; ”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Cotton Gin.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, June 4, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind of gin. Instead of rollers that pinched off the fiber, he used course wire teeth that rotated through a tightly spaced metal grate to pull it from the seed…Industry ambivalence spurred others to adopt the gin but change it. Gin makers substituted an axle loaded with fine-toothed circular saws for Whitney’s wire-studded wooden cylinder. In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.” + &lt;p&gt;Angela Lakwete, &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt; (JHU Press, 2003), 47.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;First table of p567, + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;pg=PA567&amp;amp;lpg=PA567&amp;amp;dq=%22raw+cotton+has+been+one+of+the+chief+exports%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=hin_l4bNTp&amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U2p0xXjYF0Q8FVwBpE-jbbRX41xAg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwib3NKK6u_iAhWXr54KHVt_AMkQ6AEwAXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22raw%20cotton%20has%20been%20one%20of%20the%20chief%20exports%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Federal Reserve Bulletin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1923), &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 48&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cotton_gin_EWM_2007.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Tom Murphy VII (Public domain)&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See a variety of gin descriptions at:&lt;br/&gt; + “Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s. … The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill as well as a reinforced building that could withstand the vibrations of the feeder. Yet it increased outturn without changing the quality of the fiber…” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Foot ginners could be productive… but they were the most valuable men a planter owned or hired. With Eve’s gin, planters used that labor to produce cotton and “only the most ordinary” workers to gin it.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 45.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill …” Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40. + &lt;p&gt;“McCarthy’s gin was adopted for cleaning the Sea Island variety of extra-long staple cotton grown in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. It cleaned cotton several times faster than the older gins, and, when powered by one horse, produced 150 to 200 pounds of lint a day.”&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The oxen and water-driven barrel gins that Drayton described could not be stopped quickly, so ginners risked serious injury.”…”Foot gins were not without their own risks and limitations.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 39.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind gin…It turned out large quantities of fiber but destroyed the very qualities that textile makers had valued.” + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 47&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“But textile makers continued to complain about the quality of the fiber the toothed gin turned out.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 63&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the colonial era, small amounts high quality &lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot;&gt;long-staple cotton&lt;/a&gt; were produced in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Islands&quot; title=&quot;Sea Islands&quot;&gt;Sea Islands&lt;/a&gt; off the coast of South Carolina. Inland, only short-staple &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton&quot; title=&quot;Cotton&quot;&gt;cotton&lt;/a&gt; could be grown but it was full of seeds and very hard to process into fiber. The invention of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin&quot; title=&quot;Cotton gin&quot;&gt;cotton gin&lt;/a&gt; in the late 1790s for the first time made short-staple cotton usable.” + &lt;p&gt;“History of Agriculture in the United States.” Wikipedia. April 11, 2019. Accessed April 25, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States#Cotton. &lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;readline_hover&quot;&gt;“The Indian roller cotton gin, known as the &lt;i&gt;churka&lt;/i&gt; or &lt;i&gt;charkha&lt;/i&gt;, was introduced to the United States in the mid-18th century, when it was adopted in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States&quot; title=&quot;Southern United States&quot;&gt;southern United States&lt;/a&gt;. The device was adopted for cleaning &lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot;&gt;long-staple cotton&lt;/a&gt;, but was not suitable for the &lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-staple_cotton&quot; title=&quot;Short-staple cotton&quot;&gt;short-staple cotton&lt;/a&gt; that was more common in certain states such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)&quot; title=&quot;Georgia (U.S. state)&quot;&gt;Georgia&lt;/a&gt;. Several modifications were made to the Indian roller gin by Mr. Krebs in 1772 and Joseph Eve in 1788, but their uses remained limited to the long-staple variety, up until Eli Whitney’s development of a short-staple cotton gin in 1793″&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“Cotton Gin.” Wikipedia. April 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003).&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=JCSL80pBmfEC&amp;amp;pg=PA61&amp;amp;lpg=PA61&amp;amp;dq=whitney+gin+vs+barclay&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=J_nr1fnbGa&amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U09Jfn4lVYMIWovBqGrRfNixg-fUA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwjc4vGQvqbhAhVoHDQIHQkeCKUQ6AEwB3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=whitney%20gin%20vs%20barclay&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;some claim&lt;/a&gt; Barclay was a slave, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hannapub.com/concordiasentinel/stanley-nelson-the-cotton-gin-and-a-cheating-wife/article_bacae7f8-3925-11e4-8d72-001a4bcf6878.html&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; elaborates his story as a plantation owner. Data from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sailsinc.org/durfee/earl2.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; suggests a large drop in cotton bale production between 1860 and 1880, yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/291/cotton-and-the-civil-war&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; says, “By 1870, sharecroppers, small farmers, and plantation owners in the American south had produced more cotton than they had in 1860, and by 1880, they exported more cotton than they had in 1860.” Most of all, Whitney’s own claim about the productivity of his original gin is arguably too outlandish to be believed&lt;span class=&quot;s1&quot;&gt;—while estimates of gin productivity slightly later don’t reach 400lbs/person-day (see our data below), Whitney apparently claimed his gin could produce 1250lb/person-day:&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;“Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.” (Whitney quote from Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49)&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; page for more details, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet, tab ‘credible record gin calculations’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for our calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Mississippi’s first saw gin was constructed in violation of Whitney’s patent rights during the summer of 1795 and put into operation in September. Daniel Clark, Sr., a wealthy planter of Wilkinson County, designed this famous machine after examining drawings made by a traveler who had seen one of Whitney’s gins while on a trip to Georgia.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Moore, John Hebron. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010, page 21.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p47&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We do have Whitney’s own estimate of his gin’s productivity, but since it is very much larger than estimates of later related gins (see our data), we assume it is an exaggeration:&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See spreadsheet, ‘Estimate of first Whitney gin discontinuity’.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The barrel gin used animal and water power, removing humans as a power source but retaining them as seed cotton suppliers. The self-feeding animal-, wind-, or water-powered Eve gin replaced each of the skilled tasks of the inner with mechanical components.” Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p48&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Because the demand for saw gins became very great during the next few years a number of local mechanics embarked upon careers as professional ginwrights. … By [1800] one [of the new gins] could be found on almost every plantation.” Moore, John Hebron. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010 &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, History.com:&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. “&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + History com Editors, “Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney,” HISTORY, accessed June 18, 2019, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&quot;&gt;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YN2r40TkukftMjzlZWJCz34cOC2KdkHxZVa8CuMQa3M/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This spreadsheet of ours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; contains data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Cotton_Production.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this image&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which appears to be taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=IQ8hAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=%22table+40%22&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, Volume 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, given that the author is the same and it is from the same page in the book. The full citation is:&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &lt;em&gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&lt;/em&gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-27-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We made a rough collection of export and production data from numerous sources. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/193D_4nRLvcqX0Z_hso5g3u3z0Ah-BGEWFCjjkjMbwAo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. We have not vetted these, and the collection process was not thorough or reliable. However since the figures are fairly consistent, we expect that they are roughly correct.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-27-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-28-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &lt;em&gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&lt;/em&gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-28-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-29-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“How primitive, till comparatively a few years since, were the means of cleaning the ‘kuppas’ or seed cotton is best shown by the fact that in the accounts of even 20 years ago repeated mention is made in some districts of picking the wool off the seed by hand…” Watson, Forbes. &lt;em&gt;Report on cotton gins and on the cleaning and quality of Indian cotton&lt;/em&gt;. London, Allen, 1879.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-29-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-30-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“&lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin &lt;/em&gt;won the 2004 Edelstein Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology for the best scholarly book published about the history of technology in the past three years.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Angela Lakwete – Department of History – College of Liberal Arts – Auburn University.” Accessed October 27, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&quot;&gt;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-30-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,436 @@ + ====== Effect of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin on historic trends in cotton ginning ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 26 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We estimate that Eli Whitney’s cotton gin represented a 10 to 25 year discontinuity in pounds of cotton ginned per person per day, in 1793. Two innovations in 1747 and 1788 look like discontinuities of over a thousand years each on this metric, but these could easily stem from our ignorance of such early developments. We tentatively doubt that Whitney’s gin represented a large discontinuity in the cost per value of cotton ginned, though it may have represented a moderate one.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Cotton fibers grow around cotton seeds, which they need to be separated from before use. This can be done by hand, but since 500 C.E.,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;A fifth-century Buddhist painting… constitutes the earliest evidence of a single-roller gin.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 4.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and plausibly prehistory, a variety of tools have aided in speeding up the process. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1359&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;Archaeologists&amp;amp;#8217; oversight may explain the absence of evidence that would locate the single-roller gin in prehistory. That the rollers of extant gins are made of iron does not preclude the possibility that the machine predates the Iron Age. The roller could have been made out of stone…&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 4.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These tools are called ‘cotton gins’. Eli Whitney’s 1793 cotton gin was a particularly famous innovation, commonly credited with having vastly increased cotton’s profitability, fueling an otherwise diminishing demand for slave labor, and so substantially contributing to the American Civil War.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1359&quot; title=&#039;Wikipedia says: &amp;amp;#8220;A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney&quot;&amp;gt;Eli Whitney&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in 1793 and patented in 1794&amp;amp;#8230;It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States&quot;&amp;gt;growth of slavery&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America&quot;&amp;gt;American South&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War&quot;&amp;gt;American Civil War&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#cite_note-WarCause-4&quot;&amp;gt;[4]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Cotton Gin.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, June 4, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Variants on Whitney’s gin are known as ‘saw gins’.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind of gin. Instead of rollers that pinched off the fiber, he used course wire teeth that rotated through a tightly spaced metal grate to pull it from the seed…Industry ambivalence spurred others to adopt the gin but change it. Gin makers substituted an axle loaded with fine-toothed circular saws for Whitney’s wire-studded wooden cylinder. In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Angela Lakwete, &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; (JHU Press, 2003), 47.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; (See Figure 1.) Cotton became more valuable than all other US exports combined during the antebellum era.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1359&quot; title=&#039;First table of p567, &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA567&amp;amp;amp;lpg=PA567&amp;amp;amp;dq=%22raw+cotton+has+been+one+of+the+chief+exports%22&amp;amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;amp;ots=hin_l4bNTp&amp;amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U2p0xXjYF0Q8FVwBpE-jbbRX41xAg&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwib3NKK6u_iAhWXr54KHVt_AMkQ6AEwAXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=%22raw%20cotton%20has%20been%20one%20of%20the%20chief%20exports%22&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;Federal Reserve Bulletin&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1923), &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q&amp;amp;amp;f=false&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Thus Whitney’s gin is a good contender for representing a discontinuity in innovation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our investigation draws heavily from Lakwete’s &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin.&lt;/em&gt; Lakwete summarizes the situation surrounding Whitney’s invention as follows&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1359&quot; title=&quot;Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 48&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The introduction of a new gin in 1794 was as unexpected as it was unprecedented. It was unexpected because the British textile industry had expanded from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries without a change in the ginning principle. Cotton producers had increased the acres they planted in cotton and planted new varieties to suit textile makers. The market attracted new producers who, like established planters, used roller gins to process their crops. Roller gins, whether hand-cranked in the Levant and India, or foot-, animal-, and inanimately powered in the Americas, provided adequate amounts of fiber with the qualities that textile makers wanted, namely length and cleanliness. All roller gins removed the fiber by pinching it off in bundles, preserving its length and orientation as grown. Random fragments of fractured seeds were picked out of the fiber before it was bagged and shipped.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In 1788 Joseph Eve gave planters and merchants a machine that bridged the medieval and modern. It preserved the ancient roller principle but completed the appropriation of the ginner’s skill, as Arkwright’s frame had that of the spinner. Appropriation had proceeded in stages beginning with the single-roller gin that mechanized the thumb and finger pinching motion. The roller gin in turn appropriated the agility and strength needed to manipulate the single roller, while the foot gin freed both hands to supply seed cotton. The barrel gin used animal and water power, removing humans as a power source but retaining them as seed cotton suppliers. The self-feeding animal-, wind-, or water-powered Eve gin replaced each of the skilled tasks of the ginner with mechanical components.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, Eli Whitney’s unprecedented gin filled a vacuum. While large merchants invested in barrel gins and large planter in the Eve gin, the majority continued to use the skill- and labor-intensive foot gin to gin fuzzy-seed short-staple cotton as well as the smooth-seed, Sea Island cotton. Barrel gins had not decreased the number of ginners and only marginally improved ginner productivity, and Eve’s complicated gin was notoriously finicky. Whitney ignored these modernizing gins and offered a replacement for the ubiquitous foot gin.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;385&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/866WFGmUOmL7hCaEUwT6u6Yexe9JJyoQBkdk_XJPqsqD98ieKl2IUZm1YKDhW6hD7BbcY9hjCwB9lY40DHQCISBFN5jOq4WWovhblAVk2afOqpvfqe7nXLR1R6r3tIZRLQT0WCKd&quot; width=&quot;585&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: What appears to be a saw gin of some kind on display at the Eli Whitney Museum&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cotton_gin_EWM_2007.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Tom Murphy VII (Public domain)&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Pounds of cotton ginned per person-day === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;We are most interested in metrics that people were working to improve—in this case, perhaps ‘cost of producing a dollar’s worth of cotton’. Inclusive metrics are hard to measure however. Instead we have collected data on ‘pounds of cotton ginned per person per day’, which is simpler, often reported on, and probably a reasonable proxy. However, it departs from tracking the usefulness of a gin by ignoring several major factors:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Upfront costs: these presumably varied a lot, because a gin can for instance resemble a rolling pin and a board, or involve horses or steam power.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1359&quot; title=&quot;See a variety of gin descriptions at:&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Thus the gins with higher upfront costs are less useful than their cotton-per-person-day statistic would make them seem. In the mid-1860’s many farms still used foot gins, seemingly because Eve gins—while more efficiently producing high quality output—were expensive.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s. &amp;amp;#8230; The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill as well as a reinforced building that could withstand the vibrations of the feeder. Yet it increased outturn without changing the quality of the fiber&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Even if everything had the same upfront costs, the existence of upfront costs means that a gin which processes 200lb of cotton with two people per day would be better than one that processes 100lb of cotton with one person, so cotton/person-day still fails to match what we are interested in.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Variation in labor requirements: Some gins required especially skilled labor.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Foot ginners could be productive&amp;amp;#8230; but they were the most valuable men a planter owned or hired. With Eve’s gin, planters used that labor to produce cotton and “only the most ordinary” workers to gin it.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 45.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Substitutes for people: some gins used people to power them and others used animals or water-power, along with a smaller number of people.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill &amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40. &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;McCarthy&amp;amp;#8217;s gin was adopted for cleaning the Sea Island variety of extra-long staple cotton grown in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. It cleaned cotton several times faster than the older gins, and, when powered by one horse, produced 150 to 200 pounds of lint a day.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This again makes for higher output per person, but at the cost of additional animals, that we are not accounting for.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;Risks of injury: Some gins, particularly foot and barrel gins, were dangerous to operate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The oxen and water-driven barrel gins that Drayton described could not be stopped quickly, so ginners risked serious injury.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221;Foot gins were not without their own risks and limitations.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 39.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Types and quality of cotton ginned: &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;Whitney’s gin produced degraded cotton fiber, relative to other gins available at the time.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind gin…It turned out large quantities of fiber but destroyed the very qualities that textile makers had valued.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 47&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;But textile makers continued to complain about the quality of the fiber the toothed gin turned out.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 63&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However, Whitney’s gin could process short staple cotton, an easier to grow strain which was previously hard to process.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In the colonial era, small amounts high quality &amp;lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot;&amp;gt;long-staple cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;were produced in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Sea Islands&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Islands&quot;&amp;gt;Sea Islands&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;off the coast of South Carolina. Inland, only short-staple&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton&quot;&amp;gt;cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;could be grown but it was full of seeds and very hard to process into fiber. The invention of the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Cotton gin&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin&quot;&amp;gt;cotton gin&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in the late 1790s for the first time made short-staple cotton usable.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;History of Agriculture in the United States.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 11, 2019. Accessed April 25, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States#Cotton.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span class=&quot;readline_hover&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The Indian roller cotton gin, known as the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;churka&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;or&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;charkha&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;, was introduced to the United States in the mid-18th century, when it was adopted in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Southern United States&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States&quot;&amp;gt;southern United States&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The device was adopted for cleaning&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot;&amp;gt;long-staple cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, but was not suitable for the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; title=&quot;Short-staple cotton&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-staple_cotton&quot;&amp;gt;short-staple cotton&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that was more common in certain states such as&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a title=&quot;Georgia (U.S. state)&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)&quot;&amp;gt;Georgia&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. Several modifications were made to the Indian roller gin by Mr. Krebs in 1772 and Joseph Eve in 1788, but their uses remained limited to the long-staple variety, up until Eli Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s development of a short-staple cotton gin in 1793&amp;amp;#8243;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Cotton Gin.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The cotton industry might adjust to different cotton over time, so that long-run differences in quality of outputs of different gins are smaller than initial differences. If so, we expect value produced by a new gin producing lower quality cotton to grow continuously over an extended period. &lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;We do also investigate overall cost per value of cotton ginned later, but do not have such clear data for it (see section, ‘cost per value of cotton ginned’).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;We collected claims about cotton gin productivity in the time leading up to Whitney’s gin, and some after. Many but not all are from Angela Lakwete’s book, &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1359&quot; title=&quot;Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003).&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our sources are mostly secondhand or thirdhand claims about nonspecific observations in the 1700s. We have the impression that claims in this space are not very reliable.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1359&quot; title=&#039;For instance, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=JCSL80pBmfEC&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA61&amp;amp;amp;lpg=PA61&amp;amp;amp;dq=whitney+gin+vs+barclay&amp;amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;amp;ots=J_nr1fnbGa&amp;amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U09Jfn4lVYMIWovBqGrRfNixg-fUA&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwjc4vGQvqbhAhVoHDQIHQkeCKUQ6AEwB3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=whitney%20gin%20vs%20barclay&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;some claim&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Barclay was a slave, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hannapub.com/concordiasentinel/stanley-nelson-the-cotton-gin-and-a-cheating-wife/article_bacae7f8-3925-11e4-8d72-001a4bcf6878.html&quot;&amp;gt;another&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; elaborates his story as a plantation owner. Data from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sailsinc.org/durfee/earl2.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; suggests a large drop in cotton bale production between 1860 and 1880, yet &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/291/cotton-and-the-civil-war&quot;&amp;gt;this&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; says, &amp;amp;#8220;By 1870, sharecroppers, small farmers, and plantation owners in the American south had produced more cotton than they had in 1860, and by 1880, they exported more cotton than they had in 1860.&amp;amp;#8221; Most of all, Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s own claim about the productivity of his original gin is arguably too outlandish to be believed&amp;lt;span class=&quot;s1&quot;&amp;gt;—while estimates of gin productivity slightly later don&amp;amp;#8217;t reach 400lbs/person-day (see our data below), Whitney apparently claimed his gin could produce 1250lb/person-day:&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.&amp;amp;#8221; (Whitney quote from Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49)&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We classified claims as ‘credible’ or not, but this is fairly ambiguous, and we would be unsurprised if some of the ‘credible’ claims turned out to be inaccurate, or the ‘non-credible’ ones were correct.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our dataset of claims is &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and illustrated in Figures 2 – 5. Note that dates are those when a claim was made, not necessarily dates of the invention of the type of cotton gin in question. This is because invention dates are hard to find, and also because it seems likely that much improvement happened incrementally between distinct ‘inventions’ of new types. Nonetheless, this means that a report dated to a time could be from a gin that was built earlier.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2060&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/AllGinData-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Claimed cotton gin productivity, 1720 to modern day, coded by credibility and being records, and dated by when the claim was made (not necessarily when the gin was made). Claims that are both relatively credible and higher than previous relatively credible claims are few. The last credible best point before the modern day is an improved version of Whitney’s gin, two years after the original (the original features in the two high non-credible claims slightly earlier). + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2061&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-cotton-gin-productivity-claims.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-cotton-gin-productivity-claims.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-cotton-gin-productivity-claims-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Historic claimed cotton gin productivity, all time (zoomed out version of Figure 2) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2075&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GinRecords-1-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 4: Zoom-in on credible best cotton gins (excluding modern era) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;For measuring discontinuities, we treat past progress as exponential at each point, but entering a new exponential regime at the fourth point. We confine our investigation to credible records. Given these things, we find the improved Whitney gin to be a 23-year discontinuity over the previous record in this dataset. However the foot gin and Eve’s mill gin appear to be at least one-thousand year discontinuities each.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1359&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; page for more details, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, tab &amp;amp;#8216;credible record gin calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for our calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However our data has at least one key gap. Whitney’s original 1793 gin design was almost immediately copied and improved by many people, most notably Hodgen Holmes and Daniel Clark.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Mississippi&amp;amp;#8217;s first saw gin was constructed in violation of Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s patent rights during the summer of 1795 and put into operation in September. Daniel Clark, Sr., a wealthy planter of Wilkinson County, designed this famous machine after examining drawings made by a traveler who had seen one of Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s gins while on a trip to Georgia.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Moore, John Hebron. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&amp;gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010, page 21. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p47&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The plausible productivity data we have appears to all be for these later variants, which we understand were non-negligibly better than Whitney’s original gin in some way.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1359&quot; title=&quot;We do have Whitney&amp;amp;#8217;s own estimate of his gin&amp;amp;#8217;s productivity, but since it is very much larger than estimates of later related gins (see our data), we assume it is an exaggeration: &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; So we know that Whitney’s gin should be somewhat lower and two years earlier than our first data for Whitney-style gins. This means at most, Whitney’s original gin would be a 25 year discontinuity. If it accounted for even half of the progress since Eve’s mill gin, and we are not missing further innovations between the two, Whitney’s gin would still represent a 13 year discontinuity, and the later improved version would no longer account for a discontinuity of more than ten years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1359&quot; title=&quot;See spreadsheet, &amp;amp;#8216;Estimate of first Whitney gin discontinuity&amp;amp;#8217;.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It seems likely to us that Whitney’s gin was at least this revolutionary so we think the Whitney gin probably represented a moderate (10-25 year) discontinuity in pounds of cotton ginned per day.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We are fairly uncertain about whether the two larger discontinuities earlier are real, or due to gaps in our data. We did attempt to collect data for these earlier times (rather than just prior to the Whitney gin), but seem very likely to be missing a lot.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1359&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Over the history of gin productivity, the average rate of progress became higher. It is unclear whether this happened at a particular point. In our data, it looks as though it happened with the foot gin, in 1747, and that progress went from around .05% per year to around 4% per year (see &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet, tab ‘credible record gin calculations’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;). However our data is too sparse and uncertain to draw firm conclusions from.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Cost per value of cotton ginned === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;As discussed above, pounds of cotton ginned per person-day is not a perfect proxy of the value of a cotton gin, and therefore presumably not exactly what cotton-gin users were aiming for. ‘Cost per value of cotton ginned’ seems closer, if we measure costs inclusively and average across various cotton ginning situations. We did not collect data on this, but can make some inferences about the shape of this trend—and in particular whether Whitney’s gin represented a discontinuity—from what we know about the pounds/person-day figures and other aspects of the situation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from the trend in pounds of cotton ginned per person-day == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We expect that the pounds of cotton ginned per person-day roughly approximates cost per value of cotton ginned, with the following adjustments that we know of:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Eve’s gin is worse on cost/value than on cotton/person-day because the latter metric doesn’t reflect its large upfront costs.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Whitney’s gin may be worse on cost per value than it appears, because of its lower-quality cotton output.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Whitney’s gin may be better than it appears, because it could handle short-staple cotton. However this value seems unlikely to have manifest immediately, since it presumably takes time for cotton users to adjust to a new material.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Foot gins and barrel gins (e.g. Eve’s) were dangerous to operate, so are worse on cost/value than they appear.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Foot gins apparently required especially skilled labor, so are worse on cost/value than they appear.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Barrel gins and Eve gins often ran on non-human power-sources, so are worse on cost/value than they appear.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The barrel gin used animal and water power, removing humans as a power source but retaining them as seed cotton suppliers. The self-feeding animal-, wind-, or water-powered Eve gin replaced each of the skilled tasks of the inner with mechanical components.&amp;amp;#8221; Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p48&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These are several considerations in favor of Whitney’s gin representing more progress on cost/value than on cotton/person-day, and one against. However it is unclear to us whether the downside of lower quality cotton was larger than the other considerations combined, so the overall effect on the expected size of discontinuity from Whitney’s gin seems ambiguous, but probably in favor of larger.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from takeup of gins == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The foot gin persisted for at least sixty years after Whitney’s invention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This suggests that Whitney’s gin wasn’t radically better on cost per value of cotton ginned than its predecessors, at least for some cotton producers.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, apparently there was a rush to manufacture copies of Whitney’s gin, so much so that many mechanics became professional gin-makers, and most plantations had one of the new gins within five years. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Because the demand for saw gins became very great during the next few years a number of local mechanics embarked upon careers as professional ginwrights. &amp;amp;#8230; By [1800] one [of the new gins] could be found on almost every plantation.&amp;amp;#8221; Moore, John Hebron. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&amp;gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010 &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This suggests that there were situations for which Whitney’s gin was substantially better than alternatives, and situations for which it was worse. This seems like weak evidence that on average across cotton ginning needs it was not radically better than precursors, though there might be narrower metrics we could define on which it was radically better.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from cotton production trends == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If the Whitney gin made cotton much cheaper to process, we might expect cotton production at the time to sharply increase. Our impression is that this is a common story about what happened.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1359&quot; title=&#039;For instance, History.com:&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;History com Editors, “Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney,” HISTORY, accessed June 18, 2019, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However the data we could find on this, seemingly from a 1958 history of early US agriculture, suggests that cotton production was already growing rapidly, and continued on a similar trajectory after Whitney’s invention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YN2r40TkukftMjzlZWJCz34cOC2KdkHxZVa8CuMQa3M/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;This spreadsheet of ours&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; contains data from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Cotton_Production.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this image&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, which appears to be taken from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=IQ8hAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;amp;q=%22table+40%22&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, Volume 2&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, given that the author is the same and it is from the same page in the book. The full citation is:&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; See Figure 5.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This dataset begins in 1790, only a few years before Whitney’s invention. This is enough to see that the trend just before 1793 is much like the trend just after, however we can further verify this by looking at earlier cotton export figures (Figure 7).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-27-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-27-1359&quot; title=&#039;We made a rough collection of export and production data from numerous sources. See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/193D_4nRLvcqX0Z_hso5g3u3z0Ah-BGEWFCjjkjMbwAo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. We have not vetted these, and the collection process was not thorough or reliable. However since the figures are fairly consistent, we expect that they are roughly correct.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Cotton exports appear to closely match overall productivity where the trends overlap, and the pre-1790 export trend appears to be roughly continuous with the rest of the curve, at least if we ignore the aberrantly low 1790 figure.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1538&quot; height=&quot;356&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-1024x633.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-1024x633.png 1024w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-300x186.png 300w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9-768x475.png 768w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/image-9.png 1200w&quot; width=&quot;576&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 5: historic cotton production (bales), probably from Gray et al 1958&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-28-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-28-1359&quot; title=&quot;Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, see above for elaboration on source, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YN2r40TkukftMjzlZWJCz34cOC2KdkHxZVa8CuMQa3M/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;data here&lt;/a&gt;. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1707&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Historic-US-cotton-productivity.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Historic-US-cotton-productivity.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 6: Rough collected figures for US cotton exports and production over period from 1780 – 1830, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/193D_4nRLvcqX0Z_hso5g3u3z0Ah-BGEWFCjjkjMbwAo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;data and sources here&lt;/a&gt;. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1397&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-close-up-on-1793.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-close-up-on-1793.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Historic-US-cotton-productivity-close-up-on-1793-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 7: close up on relevant years from Figure 6 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This does not preclude a large change in gin efficacy—perhaps there were other bottlenecks to cotton productivity, or it took time for the gains from Whitney’s gin to manifest in national productivity data. However it does cause us to doubt the story of Whitney’s gin being evidently responsible for massive growth in the cotton industry, which was a reason for suspecting the gin may have represented discontinuous progress. So this is some evidence against Whitney’s gin representing a large discontinuity in cost per value of cotton ginned.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from the 1879 evaluation of ginning technology == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=lSxAAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA410&amp;amp;lpg=PA410&amp;amp;dq=forbes+watson+cotton+gin&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=UwUDOiYSbu&amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U3qQXoA_RpNsoj9QASWVJ42Zb0ZPg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwiArO2PyqjhAhWFAXwKHdTjDHYQ6AEwDnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=forbes%20watson%20cotton%20gin&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;1879 evaluation of ginning technology&lt;/a&gt; reports on extensive measurement trials of different cotton gins. It was seemingly conducted to understand why Indian cotton production lagged behind American. The author says all methods for ginning cotton in India were primitive until recently; he hears that in some places it was done by hand as late as 1859.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-29-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-29-1359&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;How primitive, till comparatively a few years since, were the means of cleaning the &amp;amp;#8216;kuppas&amp;amp;#8217; or seed cotton is best shown by the fact that in the accounts of even 20 years ago repeated mention is made in some districts of picking the wool off the seed by hand&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; Watson, Forbes. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Report on cotton gins and on the cleaning and quality of Indian cotton&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. London, Allen, 1879.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This is confusing because if Whitney’s gin really was much better in terms of cost-per-value than the alternatives, it would be surprising if sixty years later the alternatives were still in use. However many alternatives seem clearly more cost-effective than ginning by hand, so this seems like little evidence about Whitney’s gin in particular.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The outputs of the gins in the experiment seem different from (and usually higher than) the outputs for similarly named gins in our dataset. Which might be confusing, but we expect is because there are modest improvements to gin technology over time within particular classes of gin.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In sum, this evidence looks as though it might be informative, but we do not see it as such on consideration.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Evidence from historians == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have not thoroughly reviewed popular or academic opinions on the discontinuousness of the cotton gin, but our impression is that a common popular view is that Eli Whitney’s cotton gin was a discontinuous improvement over the state-of-the-art. On the other hand Dr Lakwete, author of &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin&lt;/em&gt;—a book we found most helpful in this project, and that also won an award for being the best scholarly book published about the history of technology&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-30-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-30-1359&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;won the 2004 Edelstein Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology for the best scholarly book published about the history of technology in the past three years.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Angela Lakwete &amp;amp;#8211; Department of History &amp;amp;#8211; College of Liberal Arts &amp;amp;#8211; Auburn University.” Accessed October 27, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&quot;&amp;gt;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;—disagrees, actually explicitly saying it was continuous (though she may mean something different by this than we do):&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Collapsing two hundred years of cotton production and roller gin use in North America in to the moment when Eli Whitney invented the toothed gin, Phineas Miller and Judge Johnson marked 1794 as a turning point in southern development. Before, southeners languished without an effective gin for short-staple cotton; afterwards, the cotton economy blossomed. Arguing for discontinuity, the idea allowed the visualization of a moment and a machine that separated the colonial past from the new republic. Continuity, however, marked the history of cotton and the gin in America. Continuity would characterize the first two decades of the nineteenth century, as saw-gin and roller gin makers competed for dominance in the expanding short-staple cotton market.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. , 71.&lt;/cite&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Conclusions on cost per value of cotton ginned == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On the earlier ‘pounds of cotton ginned per person per day’ metric, we estimated that Whitney’s gin was worth around 10-25 years of past progress. Various considerations suggested Whitney’s gin might have been a bigger deal for overall cost-effectiveness of ginning cotton than that calculation suggested, but the quality of cotton was lower. We took this in total as neutral to weakly favoring Whitney’s gin being better than it seemed. We then saw that the Whitney gin was taken up with enthusiasm by a subset of people needing to gin cotton, that it didn’t seem to recognizably affect the growth of US cotton production, and that at least one historian with particular expertise in this topic thinks that progress was relatively continuous. This does not particularly suggest to us that Whitney’s gin represented a large discontinuity in cost per value of cotton ginned, and seems like some evidence against.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“A fifth-century Buddhist painting… constitutes the earliest evidence of a single-roller gin.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 4.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Archaeologists’ oversight may explain the absence of evidence that would locate the single-roller gin in prehistory. That the rollers of extant gins are made of iron does not preclude the possibility that the machine predates the Iron Age. The roller could have been made out of stone…”&lt;br/&gt; + Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 4.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Wikipedia says: “A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Whitney&quot;&gt;Eli Whitney&lt;/a&gt; in 1793 and patented in 1794…It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;growth of slavery&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America&quot;&gt;American South&lt;/a&gt; as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War&quot;&gt;American Civil War&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#cite_note-WarCause-4&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; ”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Cotton Gin.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, June 4, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind of gin. Instead of rollers that pinched off the fiber, he used course wire teeth that rotated through a tightly spaced metal grate to pull it from the seed…Industry ambivalence spurred others to adopt the gin but change it. Gin makers substituted an axle loaded with fine-toothed circular saws for Whitney’s wire-studded wooden cylinder. In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.” + &lt;p&gt;Angela Lakwete, &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt; (JHU Press, 2003), 47.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;First table of p567, + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;pg=PA567&amp;amp;lpg=PA567&amp;amp;dq=%22raw+cotton+has+been+one+of+the+chief+exports%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=hin_l4bNTp&amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U2p0xXjYF0Q8FVwBpE-jbbRX41xAg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwib3NKK6u_iAhWXr54KHVt_AMkQ6AEwAXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22raw%20cotton%20has%20been%20one%20of%20the%20chief%20exports%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Federal Reserve Bulletin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1923), &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;https://books.google.com/books?id=oNnL2qUnv1AC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 48&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cotton_gin_EWM_2007.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Tom Murphy VII (Public domain)&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See a variety of gin descriptions at:&lt;br/&gt; + “Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s. … The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill as well as a reinforced building that could withstand the vibrations of the feeder. Yet it increased outturn without changing the quality of the fiber…” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Foot ginners could be productive… but they were the most valuable men a planter owned or hired. With Eve’s gin, planters used that labor to produce cotton and “only the most ordinary” workers to gin it.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 45.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The [Eve gin] was labor-saving but capital-intensive. It was more expensive than the foot gin and required water or windmill …” Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40. + &lt;p&gt;“McCarthy’s gin was adopted for cleaning the Sea Island variety of extra-long staple cotton grown in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. It cleaned cotton several times faster than the older gins, and, when powered by one horse, produced 150 to 200 pounds of lint a day.”&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“Cotton Gin,” in Wikipedia, June 4, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cotton_gin&amp;amp;oldid=900249024.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The oxen and water-driven barrel gins that Drayton described could not be stopped quickly, so ginners risked serious injury.”…”Foot gins were not without their own risks and limitations.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 39.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new ginning principle and built a new kind gin…It turned out large quantities of fiber but destroyed the very qualities that textile makers had valued.” + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 47&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“But textile makers continued to complain about the quality of the fiber the toothed gin turned out.” Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 63&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the colonial era, small amounts high quality &lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot;&gt;long-staple cotton&lt;/a&gt; were produced in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Islands&quot; title=&quot;Sea Islands&quot;&gt;Sea Islands&lt;/a&gt; off the coast of South Carolina. Inland, only short-staple &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton&quot; title=&quot;Cotton&quot;&gt;cotton&lt;/a&gt; could be grown but it was full of seeds and very hard to process into fiber. The invention of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin&quot; title=&quot;Cotton gin&quot;&gt;cotton gin&lt;/a&gt; in the late 1790s for the first time made short-staple cotton usable.” + &lt;p&gt;“History of Agriculture in the United States.” Wikipedia. April 11, 2019. Accessed April 25, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States#Cotton. &lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;readline_hover&quot;&gt;“The Indian roller cotton gin, known as the &lt;i&gt;churka&lt;/i&gt; or &lt;i&gt;charkha&lt;/i&gt;, was introduced to the United States in the mid-18th century, when it was adopted in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States&quot; title=&quot;Southern United States&quot;&gt;southern United States&lt;/a&gt;. The device was adopted for cleaning &lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-staple_cotton&quot; title=&quot;Long-staple cotton&quot;&gt;long-staple cotton&lt;/a&gt;, but was not suitable for the &lt;a class=&quot;mw-redirect&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-staple_cotton&quot; title=&quot;Short-staple cotton&quot;&gt;short-staple cotton&lt;/a&gt; that was more common in certain states such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)&quot; title=&quot;Georgia (U.S. state)&quot;&gt;Georgia&lt;/a&gt;. Several modifications were made to the Indian roller gin by Mr. Krebs in 1772 and Joseph Eve in 1788, but their uses remained limited to the long-staple variety, up until Eli Whitney’s development of a short-staple cotton gin in 1793″&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“Cotton Gin.” Wikipedia. April 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003).&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=JCSL80pBmfEC&amp;amp;pg=PA61&amp;amp;lpg=PA61&amp;amp;dq=whitney+gin+vs+barclay&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=J_nr1fnbGa&amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U09Jfn4lVYMIWovBqGrRfNixg-fUA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwjc4vGQvqbhAhVoHDQIHQkeCKUQ6AEwB3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=whitney%20gin%20vs%20barclay&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;some claim&lt;/a&gt; Barclay was a slave, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hannapub.com/concordiasentinel/stanley-nelson-the-cotton-gin-and-a-cheating-wife/article_bacae7f8-3925-11e4-8d72-001a4bcf6878.html&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; elaborates his story as a plantation owner. Data from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sailsinc.org/durfee/earl2.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; suggests a large drop in cotton bale production between 1860 and 1880, yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/291/cotton-and-the-civil-war&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; says, “By 1870, sharecroppers, small farmers, and plantation owners in the American south had produced more cotton than they had in 1860, and by 1880, they exported more cotton than they had in 1860.” Most of all, Whitney’s own claim about the productivity of his original gin is arguably too outlandish to be believed&lt;span class=&quot;s1&quot;&gt;—while estimates of gin productivity slightly later don’t reach 400lbs/person-day (see our data below), Whitney apparently claimed his gin could produce 1250lb/person-day:&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;p data-readline-background=&quot;rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)&quot;&gt;“Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.” (Whitney quote from Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49)&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; page for more details, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oXOy2cyaSv_9svTXiInlDbOWn1vv6BG19dEQiZk40C8/edit#gid=91839643&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet, tab ‘credible record gin calculations’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for our calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Mississippi’s first saw gin was constructed in violation of Whitney’s patent rights during the summer of 1795 and put into operation in September. Daniel Clark, Sr., a wealthy planter of Wilkinson County, designed this famous machine after examining drawings made by a traveler who had seen one of Whitney’s gins while on a trip to Georgia.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Moore, John Hebron. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010, page 21.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + In 1796 Hogden Holmes of Augusta, Georgia, patented the adaptation, naming it the saw gin. The suit that followed capped a contentious and socially and legally mediated process from which Eli Whitney emerged as the inventor of the cotton gin.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Lakwete, Angela. &lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America&lt;/em&gt;. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p47&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We do have Whitney’s own estimate of his gin’s productivity, but since it is very much larger than estimates of later related gins (see our data), we assume it is an exaggeration:&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Two ginners on the new gin could turn out as much fiber in a day as one hundred foot ginners each averaging twenty-five pounds, in all twenty-five hundred pounds, Whitney estimated.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (JHU Press, 2003), p49&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See spreadsheet, ‘Estimate of first Whitney gin discontinuity’.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The barrel gin used animal and water power, removing humans as a power source but retaining them as seed cotton suppliers. The self-feeding animal-, wind-, or water-powered Eve gin replaced each of the skilled tasks of the inner with mechanical components.” Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p48&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Instead of being replaced, the foot gin outlasted the barrel gin and remained in use to the mid-1860s.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003., 40.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Because the demand for saw gins became very great during the next few years a number of local mechanics embarked upon careers as professional ginwrights. … By [1800] one [of the new gins] could be found on almost every plantation.” Moore, John Hebron. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026649346;view=1up;seq=245;size=175&quot;&gt;Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010 &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, History.com:&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. “&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + History com Editors, “Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney,” HISTORY, accessed June 18, 2019, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&quot;&gt;https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YN2r40TkukftMjzlZWJCz34cOC2KdkHxZVa8CuMQa3M/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This spreadsheet of ours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; contains data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Cotton_Production.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this image&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which appears to be taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=IQ8hAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=%22table+40%22&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, Volume 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, given that the author is the same and it is from the same page in the book. The full citation is:&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &lt;em&gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&lt;/em&gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-27-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We made a rough collection of export and production data from numerous sources. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/193D_4nRLvcqX0Z_hso5g3u3z0Ah-BGEWFCjjkjMbwAo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. We have not vetted these, and the collection process was not thorough or reliable. However since the figures are fairly consistent, we expect that they are roughly correct.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-27-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-28-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Gray, Lewis Cecil, and Esther Katherine Thompson. &lt;em&gt;History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860&lt;/em&gt;. Peter Smith, 1958.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-28-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-29-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“How primitive, till comparatively a few years since, were the means of cleaning the ‘kuppas’ or seed cotton is best shown by the fact that in the accounts of even 20 years ago repeated mention is made in some districts of picking the wool off the seed by hand…” Watson, Forbes. &lt;em&gt;Report on cotton gins and on the cleaning and quality of Indian cotton&lt;/em&gt;. London, Allen, 1879.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-29-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-30-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“&lt;em&gt;Inventing the Cotton Gin &lt;/em&gt;won the 2004 Edelstein Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology for the best scholarly book published about the history of technology in the past three years.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Angela Lakwete – Department of History – College of Liberal Arts – Auburn University.” Accessed October 27, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&quot;&gt;https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/emeritus/angela-lakwete/&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-30-1359&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/effect_of_nuclear_weapons_on_historic_trends_in_explosives?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,350 @@ + ====== Effect of nuclear weapons on historic trends in explosives ====== + + // Published 31 December, 2014; last updated 10 December, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Nuclear weapons constituted a ~7 thousand year discontinuity in relative effectiveness factor (TNT equivalent per kg of explosive).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Nuclear weapons do not appear to have clearly represented progress in the cost-effectiveness of explosives, though the evidence there is weak.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The development of nuclear weapons is often referenced informally as an example of discontinuous technological progress. Discontinuities are sometimes considered especially plausible in this case because of the involvement of a threshold phenomenon in nuclear chain reactions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;File:Crossroads baker explosion.jpg&quot; height=&quot;418&quot; src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg/763px-Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg&quot; width=&quot;532&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + 21-kiloton underwater nuclear explosion (Bikini Atoll, 1946)&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-201&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;: U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps [Public domain]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Relative effectiveness factor === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The “relative effectiveness factor” (RE Factor) of an explosive measures the mass of TNT required for an equivalent explosion.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-201&quot; title=&#039; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&quot;&amp;gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data on explosive effectiveness from an online timeline of explosives and a comparison of RE factors on Wikipedia.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Bellis, Mary. &amp;amp;#8220;3 Types of Explosive and How They Were Invented.&amp;amp;#8221; ThoughtCo. March 01, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-explosives-1991611. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; These estimates modestly understate the impact of nuclear weapons, since the measured mass of the nuclear weapons includes the rest of the bomb while the conventional explosives are just for the explosive itself.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figures 1-3 below show the data we collected, which can also be found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Our data below is incomplete– we elide many improvements between 800 and 1942 that would not affect the size of the discontinuity from “Fat man”. We have verified that there are no explosives with higher RE factor than Hexanitrobenzene before “Fat man” (see the ‘Relative effectiveness data’ in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit#gid=1489897733&amp;amp;range=A1&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for this verification).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2445&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pre-nuclear-RE-factor-progress.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pre-nuclear-RE-factor-progress.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pre-nuclear-RE-factor-progress-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Approximate relative effectiveness factor for selected explosives over time, prior to nuclear weapons. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2105&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RelativeEffectiveness-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Approximate relative effectiveness factor for selected explosives, up to early nuclear bomb (note change to log scale) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;To compare nuclear weapons to past rates of progress, we treat progress as exponential.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; With this assumption, the first nuclear weapon, “Fat man”, represented a around seven thousand years of discontinuity in the RE factor of explosives at previous rates.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In addition to the size of this discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We checked if “Fat Man” constituted a discontinuity, but did not look for other discontinuities, because we have not thoroughly searched for data on earlier developments. Even though we’re missing data, since gunpowder is the earliest known explosive and Hexanitrobenzene is the explosive before “Fat man” with the highest RE factor, the missing data should not affect discontinuity calculations for “Fat man” unless it suggests we should be predicting using a different trend. This seems unlikely given that early explosives all have an RE factor close to that of our existing data points, around 1 – 3 (see table &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, so are not vastly inconsistent with our exponential. If we instead assumed a linear trend, or an exponential ignoring the early gunpowder datapoint, we still get answers of over three thousand years (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit#gid=0&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for calculations).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Interestingly, at face value this discontinuous jump does not seem to be directly linked to the chain reaction that characterizes nuclear explosions, but rather to the massive gap between the energies involved in chemical interactions and nuclear interactions. It seems likely that similar results would obtain in other settings; for example, the accessible energy in nuclear fuel enormously exceeds the energy stored in chemical fuels, and so at some far future time we might expect a dramatic jump in the density with which we can store energy (though arguably not in the cost-effectiveness).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://aiimpacts.org/whats-up-with-nuclear-weapons/&quot;&amp;gt;this blog post&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for a discussion of why nuclear weapons were such a large discontinuity.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Cost-effectiveness of explosives === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Another important measure of progress in explosives is cost-effectiveness. Cost-effectiveness is particularly important to understand, because some plausible theories of continuous progress would predict continuous improvements in cost-effectiveness much more strongly than they would predict continuous improvements in explosive density.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + = Cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Assessing the cost of nuclear weapons is not straightforward empirically, and depends on the measurement of cost. The development of nuclear weapons incurred a substantial upfront cost, and so for some time the average cost of nuclear weapons significantly exceeded their marginal cost. We provide estimates for the marginal costs of nuclear weapons, as well as for the “average” cost of all nuclear explosives produced by a certain date.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We focus our attention on WWII and the immediately following period, to understand the extent to which the development of nuclear weapons represented a discontinuous change in cost-effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_OTLC2Pvd2Umfn0rf9giQS22Tn8uIJP2-gYA6x3s750/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for a summary of the data explained below. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/1998/atomic&quot;&gt;Brookings Institute&lt;/a&gt;, nuclear weapons were by 1950 considered to be especially cost-effective (though not obviously in terms of explosive power per dollar), and adopted for this reason. However, Brookings notes that this has never been validated, and appears to distrust it.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union’s military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing “a bigger bang for a buck”—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. &amp;amp;#8220;Atomic Audit.&amp;amp;#8221; Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This disagreement weakly suggests that nuclear weapons are at least not radically more or less cost-effective than other weapons.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project&quot;&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, the cost of the Manhattan project was about $26 billion (in 2014 dollars), 90% of which “was for building factories and producing the fissile materials.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Manhattan Project.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 29, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The Brookings U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/manhattan&quot;&gt;estimates&lt;/a&gt; the price as $20 billion 2014 dollars, resulting in similar conclusions.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The Costs of the Manhattan Project.&amp;amp;#8221; Brookings. April 14, 2017. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_atomic_bombs_were_made_during_ww2&quot;&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt; claims that 9 bombs were produced through the end of “&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads&quot;&gt;Operation Crossroads&lt;/a&gt;” in 1946, citing Chuck Hansen’s&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscoldwar.com/&quot;&gt; Swords of Armageddon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;The next definite data in&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Swords of Armageddon&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;gives bomb production up to the end of the 1946 Operation Crossroads: total bombs built 9, total bombs detonated 5, bombs remaining in stockpile 4. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;How Many Atomic Bombs Were Made during Ww2.&amp;amp;#8221; Answers. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_atomic_bombs_were_made_during_ww2. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Index.htm.&amp;amp;#8221; Index.htm. Accessed July 02, 2019. http://www.uscoldwar.com/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The explosive power of these bombs was likely to be about 20kT, suggesting a total explosive capacity of 180kT. &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:effect_of_nuclear_weapons_on_historic_trends_in_explosives?preview_id=201&amp;amp;preview_nonce=b10f13d56d&amp;amp;preview=true&quot;&gt;Anecdotes&lt;/a&gt; suggest that the cost to actually produce a bomb were about $25M,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Just before take-off, Admiral Purnell asked Sweeney if he knew how much the bomb cost. Sweeney answered, &amp;amp;#8216;About $25 million.&amp;amp;#8217; Purnell then warned him, &amp;amp;#8216;See that we get our money’s worth.&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Wayback Machine&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. Web.Archive.Org. Accessed July 5 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20150406054646/http://www.mputtre.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/copy_of_tinian_fat_man_speech.pdf.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; or about $335M in 2014 dollars. This would make the marginal cost around $16.8k per ton of TNT equivalent ($335M/20kT = $16.75k/T), and the average cost around $111k/T.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In 2013 the US apparently planned to build 3,000 nuclear weapons for $60B.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-201&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;Ultimately, the plan calls for some 3,000 of these new weapons at an estimated cost of $60 billion, or $20 million each.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;How Much Does It Cost to Create a Single Nuclear Weapon?&amp;amp;#8221; Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed July 02, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one&quot;&gt;appears&lt;/a&gt; that at least some of these may be refurbishments rather than building from scratch, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one&quot;&gt;B61-12&lt;/a&gt; design at least appears to be designed to be less powerful than it could be, since it is less powerful than the bombs it is replacing&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The new Air Force bomber would carry two types of nuclear weapons: a rebuilt gravity bomb (the B61-12) and a cruise missile, known as the Long-Range Stand-Off (LSRO) weapon or Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM)&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;The B61-12 would have a maximum yield of up to 50 kilotons, but would replace a bomb (the B61-7) with a yield of up to 360 kilotons. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Projects &amp;amp;amp; Reports.&amp;amp;#8221; SECTION 1: Nuclear Reductions Save Money | Arms Control Association. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and much less powerful than a nuclear weapon such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba&quot;&gt;Tsar Bomba&lt;/a&gt;, with a yield of 50mT.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-201&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Blast&amp;amp;nbsp;yield50 megatons of TNT (210&amp;amp;nbsp;PJ)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#cite_note-TsarSize-2&quot;&amp;gt;[2]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Tsar Bomba.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, October 24, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;amp;oldid=922820257&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;amp;oldid=922820257&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The B61-12 is a 50kT weapon. These estimates give us $400/T ($60B/3,000*50kT). They are very approximate, for reasons given. However have not found better estimates. Note that they are for comparison, and not integral to our conclusions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These estimates could likely be improved by a more careful survey, and extended to later nuclear weapons; the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Stephen_I_Schwartz_Atomic_Audit?id=safduT80AHMC&quot;&gt;Atomic Audit&lt;/a&gt; seems likely to contain useful resources.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-201&quot; title=&quot;Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. &amp;amp;#8220;Atomic Audit.&amp;amp;#8221; Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Year&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; Description of explosive&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; Cost per ton TNT equivalent&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1920&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; Ammonium nitrate&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $5.6k&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1920&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; TNT&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $10.5k&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1946&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; +  9 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons#United_States&quot;&gt;Mark 1 and Mark 3’s&lt;/a&gt;) x 20kt (marginal) + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $16.8k (marginal Mark 3)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1946&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; +  9 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons#United_States&quot;&gt;Mark 1 and Mark 3’s&lt;/a&gt;) x 20kt (average) + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $111k (average Mark 3)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; +  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&quot;&gt;3,000&lt;/a&gt; weapons in the 3+2 plan + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $400&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Table 2: Total, average and marginal costs associated with different weapons arsenals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;358&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/RK4oB-KqBvbCMb7N7H0MXQHvA-NbEhTZOZuSEp8y6tgw8F_3t4SprsZsCsahwaAkuUgixasDCwcef8ZBphDd2WIma8vvQtdmYpWOQmxUGC0PIjGsHDqu4JBqpDuVPY8fUmsn47fw&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 4: Cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + = Cost-effectiveness of non-nuclear weapons = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have found little information about the cost of pre-nuclear bombs in the early 20th Century. However &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_OTLC2Pvd2Umfn0rf9giQS22Tn8uIJP2-gYA6x3s750/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;what we have&lt;/a&gt; (explained below) suggests they cost a comparable amount to nuclear weapons, for a certain amount of explosive energy.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate&quot;&gt;Ammonium nitrate&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitrotoluene&quot;&gt;TNT&lt;/a&gt; appear to be large components of many high explosives used in WWII. For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb&quot;&gt;blockbuster bombs&lt;/a&gt; were apparently filled with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol&quot;&gt;amatol&lt;/a&gt;, which is a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-201&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Amatol was used extensively during&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I&quot;&amp;gt;World War I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&amp;gt;World War II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, typically as an&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive&quot;&amp;gt;explosive&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in military weapons such as aircraft&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb&quot;&amp;gt;bombs&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)&quot;&amp;gt;shells&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charge&quot;&amp;gt;depth charges&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine&quot;&amp;gt;naval mines&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Amatol.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=S-ksAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA289&amp;amp;dq=For+example,+as+was+explained+yesterday+general+deficiency+bill&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=XVqjVOHrI8rjoATD5IDQBA&amp;amp;ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=For%20example%2C%20as%20was%20explained%20yesterday%20general%20deficiency%20bill&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;appropriations bill from 1920 (p289)&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the 1920 price of ammonium nitrate was about $0.10-0.16 per pound, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/&quot;&gt;which is&lt;/a&gt; about $1.18 per pound in 2014.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;For example, as was explained yesterday, TNT will cost on an average 44 cents a pound, whereas ammonium nitrate will run from, say, 10 to 15.5 cents&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; General Deficiency Bill, 1918: Hearings Before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations &amp;amp;#8230; in Charge of Deficiency Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 1917 and Prior Fiscal Years, Sixty-fifth Congress, Second Session. Accessed online at &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It suggests TNT was $0.44 per pound, or around $5.20 per pound in 2014. These estimates are consistent with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/How-expensive-were-bombs-during-World-War-Two/answer/Peter-Hand-4&quot;&gt;that of&lt;/a&gt; a Quora commenter.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Peter Hand.&amp;amp;#8221; Quora. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.quora.com/How-expensive-were-bombs-during-World-War-Two/answer/Peter-Hand-4. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This puts TNT at $10.4k/ton: very close to the $16.8k/ton marginal cost of an equivalent energy from Mark 3 nuclear weapons, and well below the average cost of Mark 3 nuclear weapons produced by the end of Operation Crossroads.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Ammonium nitrate is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_effectiveness_factor&quot;&gt;half as energy dense&lt;/a&gt; as TNT, suggesting a price of about $5.6k/T.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-201&quot; title=&quot;($1.18 per pound of ammonium nitrate * 1/0.42 relative effectiveness adjustment for ammonium nitrate relative to TNT * 2000 pounds in a ton)&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This is substantially lower than the marginal cost of the Mark 3.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Note that these figures are for explosive material only, whereas the costs of nuclear weapons used here are more inclusive. Ammonium nitrate may be far from the most expensive component of amatol-based explosives, and so what we have may be a very substantial underestimate for the price of conventional explosives. There is also some error from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol&quot;&gt;synergy&lt;/a&gt; between the components of amatol.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-201&quot; title=&quot;Amatol is a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate that benefits from the TNT getting to use some of the oxygen from the ammonium nitrate. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Amatol.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Without a longer-run price trend in explosives, we do not have enough pre-discontinuity data to measure a discontinuity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#requirements-for-measuring-discontinuities&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However, from the evidence we have here, it is unclear that nuclear weapons represent any development at all in cost-effectiveness, in terms of explosive power per dollar. Thus it seems unlikely that nuclear weapons were surprisingly cost-effective, at least on that metric.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;: U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps [Public domain]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Bellis, Mary. “3 Types of Explosive and How They Were Invented.” ThoughtCo. March 01, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-explosives-1991611.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://aiimpacts.org/whats-up-with-nuclear-weapons/&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; for a discussion of why nuclear weapons were such a large discontinuity.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union’s military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing “a bigger bang for a buck”—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation.”&lt;br/&gt; + Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. “Atomic Audit.” Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Manhattan Project.” Wikipedia. June 29, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “The Costs of the Manhattan Project.” Brookings. April 14, 2017. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “The next definite data in &lt;em&gt;Swords of Armageddon&lt;/em&gt; gives bomb production up to the end of the 1946 Operation Crossroads: total bombs built 9, total bombs detonated 5, bombs remaining in stockpile 4. “&lt;br/&gt; + “How Many Atomic Bombs Were Made during Ww2.” Answers. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_atomic_bombs_were_made_during_ww2.&lt;br/&gt; + “Index.htm.” Index.htm. Accessed July 02, 2019. http://www.uscoldwar.com/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Just before take-off, Admiral Purnell asked Sweeney if he knew how much the bomb cost. Sweeney answered, ‘About $25 million.’ Purnell then warned him, ‘See that we get our money’s worth.&#039;” – “Wayback Machine”. 2019. Web.Archive.Org. Accessed July 5 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20150406054646/http://www.mputtre.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/copy_of_tinian_fat_man_speech.pdf.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Ultimately, the plan calls for some 3,000 of these new weapons at an estimated cost of $60 billion, or $20 million each.”&lt;br/&gt; + “How Much Does It Cost to Create a Single Nuclear Weapon?” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed July 02, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&quot;&gt;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The new Air Force bomber would carry two types of nuclear weapons: a rebuilt gravity bomb (the B61-12) and a cruise missile, known as the Long-Range Stand-Off (LSRO) weapon or Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM)” “The B61-12 would have a maximum yield of up to 50 kilotons, but would replace a bomb (the B61-7) with a yield of up to 360 kilotons. “&lt;br/&gt; + “Projects &amp;amp; Reports.” SECTION 1: Nuclear Reductions Save Money | Arms Control Association. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Blast yield50 megatons of TNT (210 PJ)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#cite_note-TsarSize-2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;“ + &lt;p&gt;“Tsar Bomba.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, October 24, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;oldid=922820257&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;oldid=922820257&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. “Atomic Audit.” Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;”&lt;br/&gt; + Amatol was used extensively during &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I&quot;&gt;World War I&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&gt;World War II&lt;/a&gt;, typically as an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive&quot;&gt;explosive&lt;/a&gt; in military weapons such as aircraft &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb&quot;&gt;bombs&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)&quot;&gt;shells&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charge&quot;&gt;depth charges&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine&quot;&gt;naval mines&lt;/a&gt;.”&lt;br/&gt; + “Amatol.” Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“For example, as was explained yesterday, TNT will cost on an average 44 cents a pound, whereas ammonium nitrate will run from, say, 10 to 15.5 cents…” General Deficiency Bill, 1918: Hearings Before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations … in Charge of Deficiency Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 1917 and Prior Fiscal Years, Sixty-fifth Congress, Second Session. Accessed online at &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “Peter Hand.” Quora. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.quora.com/How-expensive-were-bombs-during-World-War-Two/answer/Peter-Hand-4. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;($1.18 per pound of ammonium nitrate * 1/0.42 relative effectiveness adjustment for ammonium nitrate relative to TNT * 2000 pounds in a ton)&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Amatol is a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate that benefits from the TNT getting to use some of the oxygen from the ammonium nitrate.&lt;br/&gt; + “Amatol.” Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#requirements-for-measuring-discontinuities&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,350 @@ + ====== Effect of nuclear weapons on historic trends in explosives ====== + + // Published 31 December, 2014; last updated 10 December, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Nuclear weapons constituted a ~7 thousand year discontinuity in relative effectiveness factor (TNT equivalent per kg of explosive).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Nuclear weapons do not appear to have clearly represented progress in the cost-effectiveness of explosives, though the evidence there is weak.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The development of nuclear weapons is often referenced informally as an example of discontinuous technological progress. Discontinuities are sometimes considered especially plausible in this case because of the involvement of a threshold phenomenon in nuclear chain reactions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;File:Crossroads baker explosion.jpg&quot; height=&quot;418&quot; src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg/763px-Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg&quot; width=&quot;532&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + 21-kiloton underwater nuclear explosion (Bikini Atoll, 1946)&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-201&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;: U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps [Public domain]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Relative effectiveness factor === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The “relative effectiveness factor” (RE Factor) of an explosive measures the mass of TNT required for an equivalent explosion.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-201&quot; title=&#039; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&quot;&amp;gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data on explosive effectiveness from an online timeline of explosives and a comparison of RE factors on Wikipedia.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Bellis, Mary. &amp;amp;#8220;3 Types of Explosive and How They Were Invented.&amp;amp;#8221; ThoughtCo. March 01, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-explosives-1991611. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; These estimates modestly understate the impact of nuclear weapons, since the measured mass of the nuclear weapons includes the rest of the bomb while the conventional explosives are just for the explosive itself.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figures 1-3 below show the data we collected, which can also be found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Our data below is incomplete– we elide many improvements between 800 and 1942 that would not affect the size of the discontinuity from “Fat man”. We have verified that there are no explosives with higher RE factor than Hexanitrobenzene before “Fat man” (see the ‘Relative effectiveness data’ in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit#gid=1489897733&amp;amp;range=A1&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for this verification).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2445&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pre-nuclear-RE-factor-progress.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pre-nuclear-RE-factor-progress.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Pre-nuclear-RE-factor-progress-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Approximate relative effectiveness factor for selected explosives over time, prior to nuclear weapons. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2105&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RelativeEffectiveness-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Approximate relative effectiveness factor for selected explosives, up to early nuclear bomb (note change to log scale) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;To compare nuclear weapons to past rates of progress, we treat progress as exponential.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; With this assumption, the first nuclear weapon, “Fat man”, represented a around seven thousand years of discontinuity in the RE factor of explosives at previous rates.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In addition to the size of this discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We checked if “Fat Man” constituted a discontinuity, but did not look for other discontinuities, because we have not thoroughly searched for data on earlier developments. Even though we’re missing data, since gunpowder is the earliest known explosive and Hexanitrobenzene is the explosive before “Fat man” with the highest RE factor, the missing data should not affect discontinuity calculations for “Fat man” unless it suggests we should be predicting using a different trend. This seems unlikely given that early explosives all have an RE factor close to that of our existing data points, around 1 – 3 (see table &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, so are not vastly inconsistent with our exponential. If we instead assumed a linear trend, or an exponential ignoring the early gunpowder datapoint, we still get answers of over three thousand years (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit#gid=0&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for calculations).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Interestingly, at face value this discontinuous jump does not seem to be directly linked to the chain reaction that characterizes nuclear explosions, but rather to the massive gap between the energies involved in chemical interactions and nuclear interactions. It seems likely that similar results would obtain in other settings; for example, the accessible energy in nuclear fuel enormously exceeds the energy stored in chemical fuels, and so at some far future time we might expect a dramatic jump in the density with which we can store energy (though arguably not in the cost-effectiveness).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://aiimpacts.org/whats-up-with-nuclear-weapons/&quot;&amp;gt;this blog post&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for a discussion of why nuclear weapons were such a large discontinuity.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Cost-effectiveness of explosives === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Another important measure of progress in explosives is cost-effectiveness. Cost-effectiveness is particularly important to understand, because some plausible theories of continuous progress would predict continuous improvements in cost-effectiveness much more strongly than they would predict continuous improvements in explosive density.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + = Cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Assessing the cost of nuclear weapons is not straightforward empirically, and depends on the measurement of cost. The development of nuclear weapons incurred a substantial upfront cost, and so for some time the average cost of nuclear weapons significantly exceeded their marginal cost. We provide estimates for the marginal costs of nuclear weapons, as well as for the “average” cost of all nuclear explosives produced by a certain date.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We focus our attention on WWII and the immediately following period, to understand the extent to which the development of nuclear weapons represented a discontinuous change in cost-effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_OTLC2Pvd2Umfn0rf9giQS22Tn8uIJP2-gYA6x3s750/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for a summary of the data explained below. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/1998/atomic&quot;&gt;Brookings Institute&lt;/a&gt;, nuclear weapons were by 1950 considered to be especially cost-effective (though not obviously in terms of explosive power per dollar), and adopted for this reason. However, Brookings notes that this has never been validated, and appears to distrust it.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union’s military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing “a bigger bang for a buck”—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. &amp;amp;#8220;Atomic Audit.&amp;amp;#8221; Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This disagreement weakly suggests that nuclear weapons are at least not radically more or less cost-effective than other weapons.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project&quot;&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, the cost of the Manhattan project was about $26 billion (in 2014 dollars), 90% of which “was for building factories and producing the fissile materials.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Manhattan Project.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 29, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The Brookings U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/manhattan&quot;&gt;estimates&lt;/a&gt; the price as $20 billion 2014 dollars, resulting in similar conclusions.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The Costs of the Manhattan Project.&amp;amp;#8221; Brookings. April 14, 2017. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_atomic_bombs_were_made_during_ww2&quot;&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt; claims that 9 bombs were produced through the end of “&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads&quot;&gt;Operation Crossroads&lt;/a&gt;” in 1946, citing Chuck Hansen’s&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscoldwar.com/&quot;&gt; Swords of Armageddon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;The next definite data in&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Swords of Armageddon&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;gives bomb production up to the end of the 1946 Operation Crossroads: total bombs built 9, total bombs detonated 5, bombs remaining in stockpile 4. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;How Many Atomic Bombs Were Made during Ww2.&amp;amp;#8221; Answers. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_atomic_bombs_were_made_during_ww2. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Index.htm.&amp;amp;#8221; Index.htm. Accessed July 02, 2019. http://www.uscoldwar.com/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The explosive power of these bombs was likely to be about 20kT, suggesting a total explosive capacity of 180kT. &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:effect_of_nuclear_weapons_on_historic_trends_in_explosives?preview_id=201&amp;amp;preview_nonce=b10f13d56d&amp;amp;preview=true&quot;&gt;Anecdotes&lt;/a&gt; suggest that the cost to actually produce a bomb were about $25M,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Just before take-off, Admiral Purnell asked Sweeney if he knew how much the bomb cost. Sweeney answered, &amp;amp;#8216;About $25 million.&amp;amp;#8217; Purnell then warned him, &amp;amp;#8216;See that we get our money’s worth.&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Wayback Machine&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. Web.Archive.Org. Accessed July 5 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20150406054646/http://www.mputtre.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/copy_of_tinian_fat_man_speech.pdf.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; or about $335M in 2014 dollars. This would make the marginal cost around $16.8k per ton of TNT equivalent ($335M/20kT = $16.75k/T), and the average cost around $111k/T.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In 2013 the US apparently planned to build 3,000 nuclear weapons for $60B.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-201&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;Ultimately, the plan calls for some 3,000 of these new weapons at an estimated cost of $60 billion, or $20 million each.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;How Much Does It Cost to Create a Single Nuclear Weapon?&amp;amp;#8221; Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed July 02, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one&quot;&gt;appears&lt;/a&gt; that at least some of these may be refurbishments rather than building from scratch, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one&quot;&gt;B61-12&lt;/a&gt; design at least appears to be designed to be less powerful than it could be, since it is less powerful than the bombs it is replacing&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The new Air Force bomber would carry two types of nuclear weapons: a rebuilt gravity bomb (the B61-12) and a cruise missile, known as the Long-Range Stand-Off (LSRO) weapon or Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM)&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;The B61-12 would have a maximum yield of up to 50 kilotons, but would replace a bomb (the B61-7) with a yield of up to 360 kilotons. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Projects &amp;amp;amp; Reports.&amp;amp;#8221; SECTION 1: Nuclear Reductions Save Money | Arms Control Association. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and much less powerful than a nuclear weapon such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba&quot;&gt;Tsar Bomba&lt;/a&gt;, with a yield of 50mT.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-201&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Blast&amp;amp;nbsp;yield50 megatons of TNT (210&amp;amp;nbsp;PJ)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#cite_note-TsarSize-2&quot;&amp;gt;[2]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Tsar Bomba.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, October 24, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;amp;oldid=922820257&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;amp;oldid=922820257&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The B61-12 is a 50kT weapon. These estimates give us $400/T ($60B/3,000*50kT). They are very approximate, for reasons given. However have not found better estimates. Note that they are for comparison, and not integral to our conclusions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These estimates could likely be improved by a more careful survey, and extended to later nuclear weapons; the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Stephen_I_Schwartz_Atomic_Audit?id=safduT80AHMC&quot;&gt;Atomic Audit&lt;/a&gt; seems likely to contain useful resources.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-201&quot; title=&quot;Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. &amp;amp;#8220;Atomic Audit.&amp;amp;#8221; Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Year&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; Description of explosive&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; Cost per ton TNT equivalent&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1920&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; Ammonium nitrate&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $5.6k&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1920&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; TNT&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $10.5k&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1946&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; +  9 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons#United_States&quot;&gt;Mark 1 and Mark 3’s&lt;/a&gt;) x 20kt (marginal) + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $16.8k (marginal Mark 3)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; 1946&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; +  9 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons#United_States&quot;&gt;Mark 1 and Mark 3’s&lt;/a&gt;) x 20kt (average) + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $111k (average Mark 3)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt; &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; +  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&quot;&gt;3,000&lt;/a&gt; weapons in the 3+2 plan + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; $400&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Table 2: Total, average and marginal costs associated with different weapons arsenals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;358&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/RK4oB-KqBvbCMb7N7H0MXQHvA-NbEhTZOZuSEp8y6tgw8F_3t4SprsZsCsahwaAkuUgixasDCwcef8ZBphDd2WIma8vvQtdmYpWOQmxUGC0PIjGsHDqu4JBqpDuVPY8fUmsn47fw&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 4: Cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + = Cost-effectiveness of non-nuclear weapons = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have found little information about the cost of pre-nuclear bombs in the early 20th Century. However &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_OTLC2Pvd2Umfn0rf9giQS22Tn8uIJP2-gYA6x3s750/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;what we have&lt;/a&gt; (explained below) suggests they cost a comparable amount to nuclear weapons, for a certain amount of explosive energy.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate&quot;&gt;Ammonium nitrate&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitrotoluene&quot;&gt;TNT&lt;/a&gt; appear to be large components of many high explosives used in WWII. For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb&quot;&gt;blockbuster bombs&lt;/a&gt; were apparently filled with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol&quot;&gt;amatol&lt;/a&gt;, which is a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-201&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Amatol was used extensively during&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I&quot;&amp;gt;World War I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&amp;gt;World War II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, typically as an&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive&quot;&amp;gt;explosive&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in military weapons such as aircraft&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb&quot;&amp;gt;bombs&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)&quot;&amp;gt;shells&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charge&quot;&amp;gt;depth charges&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine&quot;&amp;gt;naval mines&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Amatol.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=S-ksAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA289&amp;amp;dq=For+example,+as+was+explained+yesterday+general+deficiency+bill&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=XVqjVOHrI8rjoATD5IDQBA&amp;amp;ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=For%20example%2C%20as%20was%20explained%20yesterday%20general%20deficiency%20bill&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;appropriations bill from 1920 (p289)&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the 1920 price of ammonium nitrate was about $0.10-0.16 per pound, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/&quot;&gt;which is&lt;/a&gt; about $1.18 per pound in 2014.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-201&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;For example, as was explained yesterday, TNT will cost on an average 44 cents a pound, whereas ammonium nitrate will run from, say, 10 to 15.5 cents&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; General Deficiency Bill, 1918: Hearings Before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations &amp;amp;#8230; in Charge of Deficiency Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 1917 and Prior Fiscal Years, Sixty-fifth Congress, Second Session. Accessed online at &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It suggests TNT was $0.44 per pound, or around $5.20 per pound in 2014. These estimates are consistent with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/How-expensive-were-bombs-during-World-War-Two/answer/Peter-Hand-4&quot;&gt;that of&lt;/a&gt; a Quora commenter.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Peter Hand.&amp;amp;#8221; Quora. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.quora.com/How-expensive-were-bombs-during-World-War-Two/answer/Peter-Hand-4. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This puts TNT at $10.4k/ton: very close to the $16.8k/ton marginal cost of an equivalent energy from Mark 3 nuclear weapons, and well below the average cost of Mark 3 nuclear weapons produced by the end of Operation Crossroads.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Ammonium nitrate is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_effectiveness_factor&quot;&gt;half as energy dense&lt;/a&gt; as TNT, suggesting a price of about $5.6k/T.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-201&quot; title=&quot;($1.18 per pound of ammonium nitrate * 1/0.42 relative effectiveness adjustment for ammonium nitrate relative to TNT * 2000 pounds in a ton)&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-201&quot; title=&quot; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;TNT Equivalent.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This is substantially lower than the marginal cost of the Mark 3.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Note that these figures are for explosive material only, whereas the costs of nuclear weapons used here are more inclusive. Ammonium nitrate may be far from the most expensive component of amatol-based explosives, and so what we have may be a very substantial underestimate for the price of conventional explosives. There is also some error from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol&quot;&gt;synergy&lt;/a&gt; between the components of amatol.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-201&quot; title=&quot;Amatol is a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate that benefits from the TNT getting to use some of the oxygen from the ammonium nitrate. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Amatol.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Without a longer-run price trend in explosives, we do not have enough pre-discontinuity data to measure a discontinuity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-201&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#requirements-for-measuring-discontinuities&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; However, from the evidence we have here, it is unclear that nuclear weapons represent any development at all in cost-effectiveness, in terms of explosive power per dollar. Thus it seems unlikely that nuclear weapons were surprisingly cost-effective, at least on that metric.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crossroads_baker_explosion.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;: U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps [Public domain]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20190626194926/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Bellis, Mary. “3 Types of Explosive and How They Were Invented.” ThoughtCo. March 01, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-explosives-1991611.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T4TrJBNwTUHuHu17998ltoXMxSRGPcSBtkiMz6tmeH8/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://aiimpacts.org/whats-up-with-nuclear-weapons/&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; for a discussion of why nuclear weapons were such a large discontinuity.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union’s military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing “a bigger bang for a buck”—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation.”&lt;br/&gt; + Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. “Atomic Audit.” Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Manhattan Project.” Wikipedia. June 29, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “The Costs of the Manhattan Project.” Brookings. April 14, 2017. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “The next definite data in &lt;em&gt;Swords of Armageddon&lt;/em&gt; gives bomb production up to the end of the 1946 Operation Crossroads: total bombs built 9, total bombs detonated 5, bombs remaining in stockpile 4. “&lt;br/&gt; + “How Many Atomic Bombs Were Made during Ww2.” Answers. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_atomic_bombs_were_made_during_ww2.&lt;br/&gt; + “Index.htm.” Index.htm. Accessed July 02, 2019. http://www.uscoldwar.com/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Just before take-off, Admiral Purnell asked Sweeney if he knew how much the bomb cost. Sweeney answered, ‘About $25 million.’ Purnell then warned him, ‘See that we get our money’s worth.&#039;” – “Wayback Machine”. 2019. Web.Archive.Org. Accessed July 5 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20150406054646/http://www.mputtre.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/copy_of_tinian_fat_man_speech.pdf.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Ultimately, the plan calls for some 3,000 of these new weapons at an estimated cost of $60 billion, or $20 million each.”&lt;br/&gt; + “How Much Does It Cost to Create a Single Nuclear Weapon?” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed July 02, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&quot;&gt;https://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/nuclear-weapon-cost.html#.VKNkUIrF8kM&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The new Air Force bomber would carry two types of nuclear weapons: a rebuilt gravity bomb (the B61-12) and a cruise missile, known as the Long-Range Stand-Off (LSRO) weapon or Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM)” “The B61-12 would have a maximum yield of up to 50 kilotons, but would replace a bomb (the B61-7) with a yield of up to 360 kilotons. “&lt;br/&gt; + “Projects &amp;amp; Reports.” SECTION 1: Nuclear Reductions Save Money | Arms Control Association. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.armscontrol.org/reports/The-Unaffordable-Arsenal-Reducing-the-Costs-of-the-Bloated-US-Nuclear-Stockpile/2014/10/Section_one. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Blast yield50 megatons of TNT (210 PJ)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#cite_note-TsarSize-2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;“ + &lt;p&gt;“Tsar Bomba.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, October 24, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;oldid=922820257&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tsar_Bomba&amp;amp;oldid=922820257&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Schwartz, Stephen I., and Stephen I. Schwartz. “Atomic Audit.” Brookings. October 23, 2018. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/book/atomic-audit/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;”&lt;br/&gt; + Amatol was used extensively during &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I&quot;&gt;World War I&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&gt;World War II&lt;/a&gt;, typically as an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive&quot;&gt;explosive&lt;/a&gt; in military weapons such as aircraft &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb&quot;&gt;bombs&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)&quot;&gt;shells&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charge&quot;&gt;depth charges&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine&quot;&gt;naval mines&lt;/a&gt;.”&lt;br/&gt; + “Amatol.” Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“For example, as was explained yesterday, TNT will cost on an average 44 cents a pound, whereas ammonium nitrate will run from, say, 10 to 15.5 cents…” General Deficiency Bill, 1918: Hearings Before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations … in Charge of Deficiency Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 1917 and Prior Fiscal Years, Sixty-fifth Congress, Second Session. Accessed online at &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “Peter Hand.” Quora. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://www.quora.com/How-expensive-were-bombs-during-World-War-Two/answer/Peter-Hand-4. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;($1.18 per pound of ammonium nitrate * 1/0.42 relative effectiveness adjustment for ammonium nitrate relative to TNT * 2000 pounds in a ton)&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + “TNT Equivalent.” Wikipedia. June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Relative_effectiveness_factor. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Amatol is a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate that benefits from the TNT getting to use some of the oxygen from the ammonium nitrate.&lt;br/&gt; + “Amatol.” Wikipedia. May 25, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#requirements-for-measuring-discontinuities&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-201&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/effects_of_breech_loading_rifles_on_historic_trends_in_firearm_progress?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,130 @@ + ====== Effects of breech loading rifles on historic trends in firearm progress ====== + + // Published 22 December, 2019; last updated 08 March, 2021 // + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We do not know if breech loading rifles represented a discontinuity in military strength. They probably did not represent a discontinuity in fire rate.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have not investigated this topic in depth. What follows are our initial impressions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Breechloader.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, May 14, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;amp;oldid=897060135&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;amp;oldid=897060135&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;breechloader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader#cite_note-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader#cite_note-2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm&quot;&gt;firearm&lt;/a&gt; in which the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartridge_(firearms)&quot;&gt;cartridge&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)&quot;&gt;shell&lt;/a&gt; is inserted or loaded into a chamber integral to the rear portion of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_barrel&quot;&gt;barrel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Modern &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_production&quot;&gt;mass production&lt;/a&gt; firearms are breech-loading (though &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(weapon)&quot;&gt;mortars&lt;/a&gt; are generally muzzle-loaded), except those which are intended specifically by design to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzleloader&quot;&gt;muzzle-loaders&lt;/a&gt;, in order to be legal for certain types of hunting. Early firearms, on the other hand, were almost entirely muzzle-loading. The main advantage of breech-loading is a reduction in reloading time – it is much quicker to load the projectile and the charge into the breech of a gun or cannon than to try to force them down a long tube, especially when the bullet fit is tight and the tube has spiral ridges from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling&quot;&gt;rifling&lt;/a&gt;. In field artillery, the advantages were similar: the crew no longer had to force powder and shot down a long barrel with rammers, and the shot could now tightly fit the bore (increasing accuracy greatly), without being impossible to ram home with a fouled barrel. &lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Breech loading rifles were suggested to us as a potential discontinuity in some measure of army strength, due to high fire rate and ability to be used while lying down. We did not have time to investigate this extensively, and have not looked for evidence for or against discontinuities in military strength overall. That said, the reading we have done does not suggest any such discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We briefly looked for evidence of discontinuity in firing rate, since firing rate seemed to be a key factor of any advantage in military strength.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Firing rate === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Upon brief review it seems unlikely to us that breech loading rifles represented a discontinuity in firing rate alone. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver&quot;&gt;Revolvers&lt;/a&gt; developed in parallel with breech-loading rifles, and appear to have had similar or higher rates of fire. This includes revolver rifles, which (being rifles) appear to be long-ranged enough to be comparable to muskets and breech-loading rifles.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1370&quot; title=&#039;For an example of a revolver rifle in use at roughly the same time as the Dreyse needle gun, the first breech-loading rifle to get widespread uptake, see the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt%27s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle &quot;&amp;gt;Colt New Model Revolving Rifle&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. Quote: &amp;amp;#8220;Revolving rifles were an attempt to increase the rate of fire of rifles by combining them with the revolving firing mechanism that had been developed earlier for revolving pistols. Colt began experimenting with revolving rifles in the early 19th century, making them in a variety of calibers and barrel lengths.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Colt&amp;amp;#8217;s New Model Revolving Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 16, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt&amp;amp;#8217;s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The best candidate we found for a breech loading rifle constituting a discontinuity in firing rate is the Ferguson Rifle, first used in 1777 in the American Revolutionary War.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Ferguson rifle&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;was one of the first&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&amp;gt;breech-loading rifles&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;to be put into service by the British military. It fired a standard British carbine ball of .615&amp;amp;#8243; calibre and was used by the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army&quot;&amp;gt;British Army&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_War_of_Independence&quot;&amp;gt;American War of Independence&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;at the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saratoga&quot;&amp;gt;Battle of Saratoga&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in 1777, and possibly at the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Charleston&quot;&amp;gt;Siege of Charleston&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in 1780.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle#cite_note-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Ferguson Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It was expensive and fragile, so it did not see widespread use;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1370&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The two main reasons that Ferguson rifles were not used by the rest of the army: The gun was difficult and expensive to produce using the small, decentralized gunsmith and subcontractor system in use to supply the Ordnance in early Industrial Revolution Britain. The guns broke down easily in combat, especially in the wood of the stock around the lock mortise. The lock mechanism and breech were larger than the stock could withstand with rough use. All surviving military Fergusons feature a horseshoe-shaped iron repair under the lock to hold the stock together where it repeatedly broke around the weak, over-drilled out mortise.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Ferguson Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; breech-loading rifles did not become standard in any army until the Prussian “Needle gun” in 1841 and the Norwegian “Kammerlader” in 1842.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Kammerlader&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, or &amp;amp;#8220;chamber loader&amp;amp;#8221;, was the first Norwegian&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&amp;gt;breech-loading&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle&quot;&amp;gt;rifle&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and among the very first breech loaders adopted for use by an armed force anywhere in the world.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Kammerlader.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. January 07, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammerlader. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Dreyse Needle Gun.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Both the Ferguson and the Dreyse needle gun could fire about six rounds a minute (sources vary),&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1370&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;In the British trials, the Dreyse was shown to be capable of six rounds per minute&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Dreyse Needle Gun.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. &amp;amp;#8220;Since the weapon was loaded from the breech, rather than from the muzzle, it had an amazingly high rate of fire for its day, and in capable hands, it fired six to ten rounds per minute.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Ferguson Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; but by the time of the Ferguson well-trained British soldiers could fire muskets at about four rounds a minute.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The main advantage of the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_coat_(British_army)&quot;&amp;gt;British Army&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; was that the infantry soldier trained at this procedure almost every day. A properly trained group of regular infantry soldiers was able to load and fire four rounds per minute. A crack infantry company could load and fire five rounds in a minute. &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Muskets.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 08, 2017. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskets. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Moreover, apparently there are some expensive and fragile revolvers that predate the Ferguson, again suggesting that breech-loading rifles did not lead to a discontinuity in rate of fire.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1370&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;During the late 16th century in China, Zhao Shi-zhen invented the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_Lei_Chong&quot;&amp;gt;Xun Lei Chong&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, a five-barreled musket revolver spear. Around the same time, the earliest examples of what today is called a revolver were made in Germany. These weapons featured a single barrel with a revolving cylinder holding the powder and ball. They would soon be made by many European gun-makers, in numerous designs and configurations.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-4&quot;&amp;gt;[4]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; However, these weapons were difficult to use, complicated and prohibitively expensive to make, and as such they were not widely distributed. In 1836, an American, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Colt&quot;&amp;gt;Samuel Colt&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, patented the mechanism which led to the widespread use of the revolver,&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-5&quot;&amp;gt;[5]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the mechanically indexing cylinder.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Revolver.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 07, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#History.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; All in all, while we don’t have enough data to plot a trend, everything we’ve seen is consistent with continuous growth in firing rate.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/uq8v6G7KQD-dRRrfE32UeUYqbP9IdH3YOsjFdphqTQbRgKQEc6ZjdqYkFGVCI9Wf6ckcKn4rHzKDepV2mrxE02a28_zgO4U81swtKQxqniW29Y9BJ8uSKSv5Pa6cAvIJjjQjAXDL&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Diagram of how to load the Ferguson rifle&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferguson_rifle.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;: See page for author [Public domain]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Other metrics === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;It is still possible that a combination of factors including fire rate contributed to a discontinuity in a military strength metric, or that a narrower metric including fire rate saw some discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Jesko Zimmerman for suggesting breech-loading rifles as a potential area of discontinuity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Breechloader.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, May 14, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;oldid=897060135&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;oldid=897060135&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For an example of a revolver rifle in use at roughly the same time as the Dreyse needle gun, the first breech-loading rifle to get widespread uptake, see the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt%27s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle&quot;&gt;Colt New Model Revolving Rifle&lt;/a&gt;. Quote: “Revolving rifles were an attempt to increase the rate of fire of rifles by combining them with the revolving firing mechanism that had been developed earlier for revolving pistols. Colt began experimenting with revolving rifles in the early 19th century, making them in a variety of calibers and barrel lengths.” “Colt’s New Model Revolving Rifle.” Wikipedia. April 16, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt’s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The &lt;strong&gt;Ferguson rifle&lt;/strong&gt; was one of the first &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&gt;breech-loading rifles&lt;/a&gt; to be put into service by the British military. It fired a standard British carbine ball of .615″ calibre and was used by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army&quot;&gt;British Army&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_War_of_Independence&quot;&gt;American War of Independence&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saratoga&quot;&gt;Battle of Saratoga&lt;/a&gt; in 1777, and possibly at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Charleston&quot;&gt;Siege of Charleston&lt;/a&gt; in 1780.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle#cite_note-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;” – “Ferguson Rifle.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The two main reasons that Ferguson rifles were not used by the rest of the army: The gun was difficult and expensive to produce using the small, decentralized gunsmith and subcontractor system in use to supply the Ordnance in early Industrial Revolution Britain. The guns broke down easily in combat, especially in the wood of the stock around the lock mortise. The lock mechanism and breech were larger than the stock could withstand with rough use. All surviving military Fergusons feature a horseshoe-shaped iron repair under the lock to hold the stock together where it repeatedly broke around the weak, over-drilled out mortise.” – “Ferguson Rifle.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kammerlader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, or “chamber loader”, was the first Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&gt;breech-loading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle&quot;&gt;rifle&lt;/a&gt;, and among the very first breech loaders adopted for use by an armed force anywhere in the world.” “Kammerlader.” Wikipedia. January 07, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammerlader.&lt;br/&gt; + “Dreyse Needle Gun.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the British trials, the Dreyse was shown to be capable of six rounds per minute” “Dreyse Needle Gun.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. “Since the weapon was loaded from the breech, rather than from the muzzle, it had an amazingly high rate of fire for its day, and in capable hands, it fired six to ten rounds per minute.” – “Ferguson Rifle.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The main advantage of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_coat_(British_army)&quot;&gt;British Army&lt;/a&gt; was that the infantry soldier trained at this procedure almost every day. A properly trained group of regular infantry soldiers was able to load and fire four rounds per minute. A crack infantry company could load and fire five rounds in a minute. ” – “Muskets.” Wikipedia. June 08, 2017. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskets. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “During the late 16th century in China, Zhao Shi-zhen invented the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_Lei_Chong&quot;&gt;Xun Lei Chong&lt;/a&gt;, a five-barreled musket revolver spear. Around the same time, the earliest examples of what today is called a revolver were made in Germany. These weapons featured a single barrel with a revolving cylinder holding the powder and ball. They would soon be made by many European gun-makers, in numerous designs and configurations.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-4&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; However, these weapons were difficult to use, complicated and prohibitively expensive to make, and as such they were not widely distributed. In 1836, an American, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Colt&quot;&gt;Samuel Colt&lt;/a&gt;, patented the mechanism which led to the widespread use of the revolver,&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-5&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; the mechanically indexing cylinder.” – “Revolver.” Wikipedia. April 07, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#History.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferguson_rifle.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;: See page for author [Public domain]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,130 @@ + ====== Effects of breech loading rifles on historic trends in firearm progress ====== + + // Published 22 December, 2019; last updated 08 March, 2021 // + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We do not know if breech loading rifles represented a discontinuity in military strength. They probably did not represent a discontinuity in fire rate.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have not investigated this topic in depth. What follows are our initial impressions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Breechloader.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, May 14, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;amp;oldid=897060135&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;amp;oldid=897060135&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;breechloader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader#cite_note-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breechloader#cite_note-2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm&quot;&gt;firearm&lt;/a&gt; in which the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartridge_(firearms)&quot;&gt;cartridge&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)&quot;&gt;shell&lt;/a&gt; is inserted or loaded into a chamber integral to the rear portion of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_barrel&quot;&gt;barrel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Modern &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_production&quot;&gt;mass production&lt;/a&gt; firearms are breech-loading (though &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(weapon)&quot;&gt;mortars&lt;/a&gt; are generally muzzle-loaded), except those which are intended specifically by design to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzleloader&quot;&gt;muzzle-loaders&lt;/a&gt;, in order to be legal for certain types of hunting. Early firearms, on the other hand, were almost entirely muzzle-loading. The main advantage of breech-loading is a reduction in reloading time – it is much quicker to load the projectile and the charge into the breech of a gun or cannon than to try to force them down a long tube, especially when the bullet fit is tight and the tube has spiral ridges from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling&quot;&gt;rifling&lt;/a&gt;. In field artillery, the advantages were similar: the crew no longer had to force powder and shot down a long barrel with rammers, and the shot could now tightly fit the bore (increasing accuracy greatly), without being impossible to ram home with a fouled barrel. &lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Breech loading rifles were suggested to us as a potential discontinuity in some measure of army strength, due to high fire rate and ability to be used while lying down. We did not have time to investigate this extensively, and have not looked for evidence for or against discontinuities in military strength overall. That said, the reading we have done does not suggest any such discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We briefly looked for evidence of discontinuity in firing rate, since firing rate seemed to be a key factor of any advantage in military strength.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Firing rate === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Upon brief review it seems unlikely to us that breech loading rifles represented a discontinuity in firing rate alone. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver&quot;&gt;Revolvers&lt;/a&gt; developed in parallel with breech-loading rifles, and appear to have had similar or higher rates of fire. This includes revolver rifles, which (being rifles) appear to be long-ranged enough to be comparable to muskets and breech-loading rifles.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1370&quot; title=&#039;For an example of a revolver rifle in use at roughly the same time as the Dreyse needle gun, the first breech-loading rifle to get widespread uptake, see the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt%27s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle &quot;&amp;gt;Colt New Model Revolving Rifle&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. Quote: &amp;amp;#8220;Revolving rifles were an attempt to increase the rate of fire of rifles by combining them with the revolving firing mechanism that had been developed earlier for revolving pistols. Colt began experimenting with revolving rifles in the early 19th century, making them in a variety of calibers and barrel lengths.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Colt&amp;amp;#8217;s New Model Revolving Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 16, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt&amp;amp;#8217;s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The best candidate we found for a breech loading rifle constituting a discontinuity in firing rate is the Ferguson Rifle, first used in 1777 in the American Revolutionary War.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Ferguson rifle&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;was one of the first&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&amp;gt;breech-loading rifles&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;to be put into service by the British military. It fired a standard British carbine ball of .615&amp;amp;#8243; calibre and was used by the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army&quot;&amp;gt;British Army&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_War_of_Independence&quot;&amp;gt;American War of Independence&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;at the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saratoga&quot;&amp;gt;Battle of Saratoga&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in 1777, and possibly at the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Charleston&quot;&amp;gt;Siege of Charleston&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;in 1780.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle#cite_note-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Ferguson Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It was expensive and fragile, so it did not see widespread use;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1370&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The two main reasons that Ferguson rifles were not used by the rest of the army: The gun was difficult and expensive to produce using the small, decentralized gunsmith and subcontractor system in use to supply the Ordnance in early Industrial Revolution Britain. The guns broke down easily in combat, especially in the wood of the stock around the lock mortise. The lock mechanism and breech were larger than the stock could withstand with rough use. All surviving military Fergusons feature a horseshoe-shaped iron repair under the lock to hold the stock together where it repeatedly broke around the weak, over-drilled out mortise.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Ferguson Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; breech-loading rifles did not become standard in any army until the Prussian “Needle gun” in 1841 and the Norwegian “Kammerlader” in 1842.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Kammerlader&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, or &amp;amp;#8220;chamber loader&amp;amp;#8221;, was the first Norwegian&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&amp;gt;breech-loading&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle&quot;&amp;gt;rifle&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and among the very first breech loaders adopted for use by an armed force anywhere in the world.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Kammerlader.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. January 07, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammerlader. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Dreyse Needle Gun.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Both the Ferguson and the Dreyse needle gun could fire about six rounds a minute (sources vary),&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1370&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;In the British trials, the Dreyse was shown to be capable of six rounds per minute&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Dreyse Needle Gun.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. &amp;amp;#8220;Since the weapon was loaded from the breech, rather than from the muzzle, it had an amazingly high rate of fire for its day, and in capable hands, it fired six to ten rounds per minute.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Ferguson Rifle.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; but by the time of the Ferguson well-trained British soldiers could fire muskets at about four rounds a minute.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The main advantage of the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_coat_(British_army)&quot;&amp;gt;British Army&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; was that the infantry soldier trained at this procedure almost every day. A properly trained group of regular infantry soldiers was able to load and fire four rounds per minute. A crack infantry company could load and fire five rounds in a minute. &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Muskets.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 08, 2017. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskets. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Moreover, apparently there are some expensive and fragile revolvers that predate the Ferguson, again suggesting that breech-loading rifles did not lead to a discontinuity in rate of fire.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1370&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;During the late 16th century in China, Zhao Shi-zhen invented the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_Lei_Chong&quot;&amp;gt;Xun Lei Chong&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, a five-barreled musket revolver spear. Around the same time, the earliest examples of what today is called a revolver were made in Germany. These weapons featured a single barrel with a revolving cylinder holding the powder and ball. They would soon be made by many European gun-makers, in numerous designs and configurations.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-4&quot;&amp;gt;[4]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; However, these weapons were difficult to use, complicated and prohibitively expensive to make, and as such they were not widely distributed. In 1836, an American, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Colt&quot;&amp;gt;Samuel Colt&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, patented the mechanism which led to the widespread use of the revolver,&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-5&quot;&amp;gt;[5]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; the mechanically indexing cylinder.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Revolver.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 07, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#History.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; All in all, while we don’t have enough data to plot a trend, everything we’ve seen is consistent with continuous growth in firing rate.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/uq8v6G7KQD-dRRrfE32UeUYqbP9IdH3YOsjFdphqTQbRgKQEc6ZjdqYkFGVCI9Wf6ckcKn4rHzKDepV2mrxE02a28_zgO4U81swtKQxqniW29Y9BJ8uSKSv5Pa6cAvIJjjQjAXDL&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Diagram of how to load the Ferguson rifle&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1370&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferguson_rifle.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;: See page for author [Public domain]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Other metrics === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;It is still possible that a combination of factors including fire rate contributed to a discontinuity in a military strength metric, or that a narrower metric including fire rate saw some discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Jesko Zimmerman for suggesting breech-loading rifles as a potential area of discontinuity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Breechloader.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, May 14, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;oldid=897060135&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Breechloader&amp;amp;oldid=897060135&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For an example of a revolver rifle in use at roughly the same time as the Dreyse needle gun, the first breech-loading rifle to get widespread uptake, see the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt%27s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle&quot;&gt;Colt New Model Revolving Rifle&lt;/a&gt;. Quote: “Revolving rifles were an attempt to increase the rate of fire of rifles by combining them with the revolving firing mechanism that had been developed earlier for revolving pistols. Colt began experimenting with revolving rifles in the early 19th century, making them in a variety of calibers and barrel lengths.” “Colt’s New Model Revolving Rifle.” Wikipedia. April 16, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt’s_New_Model_Revolving_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The &lt;strong&gt;Ferguson rifle&lt;/strong&gt; was one of the first &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&gt;breech-loading rifles&lt;/a&gt; to be put into service by the British military. It fired a standard British carbine ball of .615″ calibre and was used by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army&quot;&gt;British Army&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_War_of_Independence&quot;&gt;American War of Independence&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saratoga&quot;&gt;Battle of Saratoga&lt;/a&gt; in 1777, and possibly at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Charleston&quot;&gt;Siege of Charleston&lt;/a&gt; in 1780.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle#cite_note-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;” – “Ferguson Rifle.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The two main reasons that Ferguson rifles were not used by the rest of the army: The gun was difficult and expensive to produce using the small, decentralized gunsmith and subcontractor system in use to supply the Ordnance in early Industrial Revolution Britain. The guns broke down easily in combat, especially in the wood of the stock around the lock mortise. The lock mechanism and breech were larger than the stock could withstand with rough use. All surviving military Fergusons feature a horseshoe-shaped iron repair under the lock to hold the stock together where it repeatedly broke around the weak, over-drilled out mortise.” – “Ferguson Rifle.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kammerlader&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, or “chamber loader”, was the first Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon&quot;&gt;breech-loading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle&quot;&gt;rifle&lt;/a&gt;, and among the very first breech loaders adopted for use by an armed force anywhere in the world.” “Kammerlader.” Wikipedia. January 07, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammerlader.&lt;br/&gt; + “Dreyse Needle Gun.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the British trials, the Dreyse was shown to be capable of six rounds per minute” “Dreyse Needle Gun.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed May 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun. “Since the weapon was loaded from the breech, rather than from the muzzle, it had an amazingly high rate of fire for its day, and in capable hands, it fired six to ten rounds per minute.” – “Ferguson Rifle.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The main advantage of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_coat_(British_army)&quot;&gt;British Army&lt;/a&gt; was that the infantry soldier trained at this procedure almost every day. A properly trained group of regular infantry soldiers was able to load and fire four rounds per minute. A crack infantry company could load and fire five rounds in a minute. ” – “Muskets.” Wikipedia. June 08, 2017. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskets. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “During the late 16th century in China, Zhao Shi-zhen invented the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_Lei_Chong&quot;&gt;Xun Lei Chong&lt;/a&gt;, a five-barreled musket revolver spear. Around the same time, the earliest examples of what today is called a revolver were made in Germany. These weapons featured a single barrel with a revolving cylinder holding the powder and ball. They would soon be made by many European gun-makers, in numerous designs and configurations.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-4&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; However, these weapons were difficult to use, complicated and prohibitively expensive to make, and as such they were not widely distributed. In 1836, an American, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Colt&quot;&gt;Samuel Colt&lt;/a&gt;, patented the mechanism which led to the widespread use of the revolver,&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#cite_note-5&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; the mechanically indexing cylinder.” – “Revolver.” Wikipedia. April 07, 2019. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver#History.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferguson_rifle.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;: See page for author [Public domain]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1370&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-11-03T20:34:31+00:00 2022-11-03T20:34:31+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_altitude?rev=1667507671&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1,247 +1,127 @@ - ====== Historic trends in altitude ====== + ======= Historic trends in altitude ======= // Published 09 February, 2018; last updated 08 March, 2021 // - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Altitude of objects attained by man-made means has seen six discontinuities of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1783, shown below.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Altitude of objects attained by man-made means has seen six discontinuities of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1783, shown below. + ^ Year ^ Height (m) ^ Discontinuity (years) ^ Entity ^ + | 1784 | 4000 | 1032 | Balloon | + | 1803 | 7280 | 1693 | Balloon | + | 1918 | 42,300 | 227 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun|Paris gun]] | + | 1942 | 85,000 | 120 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1944 | 174,600 | 11 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1957 | 864,000,000 | 35 | Pellets (after one day) | - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; - &lt;table&gt; - &lt;tbody&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Height (m)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity (years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Entity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1784&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;4000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1032&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1803&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;7280&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1693&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1918&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;42,300&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;227&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&gt;Paris gun&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1942&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;85,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;120&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1944&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;174,600&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;11&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;864,000,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;35&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Pellets (after one day)&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;/tbody&gt; - &lt;/table&gt; - &lt;/figure&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ====== Details ====== - ===== Details ===== + This case study is part of AI Impacts’ [[ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation|discontinuous progress investigation]]. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ===== Trends ===== - ==== Trends ==== + ==== Altitude of objects attained by manmade means ==== - === Altitude of objects attained by manmade means === + We looked for records in height from the ground reached by any object via man-made technology. + ‘Man-made technology’ is ambiguous, but we exclude for instance objects tied to birds and debris carried up by hurricanes. We include debris launched unintentionally via gunpowder explosion, and rocks launched via human arms. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We looked for records in height from the ground reached by any object via man-made technology.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We measure ‘altitude’ from the ground at the launch site. This excludes mountain climbing, but also early flight attempts that involve jumping from towers and traveling downward slowly.((For instance [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi|Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi]] was reported to travel over 3km while losing 77m of altitude between a tower and a square in 1632. \\ + \\ + See &#039;site details&#039;, “Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi.” In //Wikipedia//, September 25, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi]])) It also excludes early parachutes, which were mentioned in fiction thousands of years ago.((&quot;The earliest fictional account of a parachute type of device was made some 4,000 years ago when the Chinese noticed that air resistance would slow a person&#039;s fall from a height.&quot; \\ + \\ + “Parachute.” In //Wikipedia//, November 21, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute]].)) + Measured finely enough, there are never discontinuities in altitude, since objects travel continuously.((As an object passes a previous record, first it is equal to it, then it moves continually past and onwards.)) This prohibits finding discontinuities in continuously measured altitude, but doesn’t interfere with the dataset being relevant evidence to us. We are interested in discontinuities because they tell us about how much surprising progress can happen in a short time, and how much progress can come from a single innovation. So to make use of this data, we need to find alternate ways of measuring it that fulfill these purposes. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;‘Man-made technology’ is ambiguous, but we exclude for instance objects tied to birds and debris carried up by hurricanes. We include debris launched unintentionally via gunpowder explosion, and rocks launched via human arms.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + For the purpose of knowing about progress in short periods, we can choose a short period of interest, and measure jumps in progress made at that scale. For the purpose of knowing about progress made by single innovations, we can assign the maximum altitude reached to the time that the relevant innovation was made, for instance.((In many trends, if the full benefits of an innovation are not manifest until later, it is hard to connect it to that innovation, since further innovations are made, and contribute to ongoing progress. However with altitude, once an object is flying away from the Earth, further innovation in rocket design on Earth will not affect it, so we can measure this.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We measure ‘altitude’ from the ground at the launch site. This excludes mountain climbing, but also early flight attempts that involve jumping from towers and traveling downward slowly.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1087&quot; title=&#039;For instance &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&quot;&amp;gt;Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; was reported to travel over 3km while losing 77m of altitude between a tower and a square in 1632.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;See &amp;amp;#8216;site details&amp;amp;#8217;, “Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, September 25, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;amp;oldid=917757610&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;amp;oldid=917757610&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It also excludes early parachutes, which were mentioned in fiction thousands of years ago.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The earliest fictional account of a parachute type of device was made some 4,000 years ago when the Chinese noticed that air resistance would slow a person&amp;amp;#8217;s fall from a height.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Parachute.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 21, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927299715&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927299715&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We could measure both of these trends, but currently only measure a version of the former. For short periods of travel, we assign the maximum altitude reached to the date given (our understanding is that most of the entries took place over less than one day). For travel that appears to have taken more than a day, we record any altitudes we have particular information about, and otherwise estimate records on roughly an annual basis, including a record for the peak altitude (and possibly more than a year apart to allow for the final record to have the maximum altitude). This is ad hoc, but for the current purpose, converting what we have to a more consistent standard does not seem worth it. Instead, we consider these the effects of these choices when measuring discontinuities. They do not appear to matter, except to make modest differences to the size of the pellet discontinuity, discussed below (section, ‘[[takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_altitude#Discontinuity_measurement|Discontinuity measurement]]’). - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Measured finely enough, there are never discontinuities in altitude, since objects travel continuously.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1087&quot; title=&quot;As an object passes a previous record, first it is equal to it, then it moves continually past and onwards.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This prohibits finding discontinuities in continuously measured altitude, but doesn’t interfere with the dataset being relevant evidence to us. We are interested in discontinuities because they tell us about how much surprising progress can happen in a short time, and how much progress can come from a single innovation. So to make use of this data, we need to find alternate ways of measuring it that fulfill these purposes.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + === Data === + We collected data from various sources, and added them to [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing|this spreadsheet]], tab ‘Manned and unmanned’. This data is shown in Figures 1-3 below. We have not thoroughly verified this data. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;For the purpose of knowing about progress in short periods, we can choose a short period of interest, and measure jumps in progress made at that scale. For the purpose of knowing about progress made by single innovations, we can assign the maximum altitude reached to the time that the relevant innovation was made, for instance.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1087&quot; title=&quot;In many trends, if the full benefits of an innovation are not manifest until later, it is hard to connect it to that innovation, since further innovations are made, and contribute to ongoing progress. However with altitude, once an object is flying away from the Earth, further innovation in rocket design on Earth will not affect it, so we can measure this.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Record altitudes might plausibly be reached by a diversity of objects for a diversity of purposes, so collecting such data is especially dependent on imagination for the landscape of these.((For instance, the earliest objects we found that probably traveled as far away as the sun were small pellets fired into the sky for this purpose, which we did not immediately think to search for, and might easily have missed if we had only considered space probes.)) For this reason, this data is especially likely to be incomplete. + We also intentionally left the data less complete than usual in places where completeness seemed costly and unlikely to affect conclusions about discontinuities. The following section discusses our collection of data for different periods in history and details of our reasoning about it. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We could measure both of these trends, but currently only measure a version of the former. For short periods of travel, we assign the maximum altitude reached to the date given (our understanding is that most of the entries took place over less than one day). For travel that appears to have taken more than a day, we record any altitudes we have particular information about, and otherwise estimate records on roughly an annual basis, including a record for the peak altitude (and possibly more than a year apart to allow for the final record to have the maximum altitude). This is ad hoc, but for the current purpose, converting what we have to a more consistent standard does not seem worth it. Instead, we consider these the effects of these choices when measuring discontinuities. They do not appear to matter, except to make modest differences to the size of the pellet discontinuity, discussed below (section, ‘Discontinuity measurement’).&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + == Detailed overview of data == - == Data == + Here we describe the history of progress in altitude reached and the nature of the data we collected during different times. See [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=0|the spreadsheet]] for all uncited sources. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We collected data from various sources, and added them to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Manned and unmanned’. This data is shown in Figures 1-3 below. We have not thoroughly verified this data.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Chimps throw rocks, so we infer that humans have probably also done this from the beginning.((&quot;Recent research demonstrates that the bonds of kinship will not keep a chimp from [[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/05/stone-throwing-chimp-back-and-time-its-personal|piling up stones and hurling them at zoo visitors]] if they get too close. A new study of wild chimps at four sites in West Africa now shows that [[http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22219|they also like to throw stones at trees]].&quot; \\ + \\ + BalterFeb. 29, Michael, 2016, and 5:00 Am. “Why Do Some Chimps Throw Rocks at Trees?” Science | AAAS, February 26, 2016. [[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees|https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees]])) A good rock throw can apparently reach around 25m. Between then and the late 1700s, humanity developed archery, sky lanterns, kites, gunpowder, other projectile weapons, rockets, and primitive wings,((See examples of early flying attempts [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Primitive_beginnings|here]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation#First_person_to_fly&quot;|here]].)) among probably other things. However records before the late 1700s are hard or impossible to find, so we do not begin the search for discontinuities until a slew of hot air balloon records beginning in 1783s. We collected some earlier records in order to have a rough trend to compare later advances to, but we are likely missing many entries, and the entries we have are quite uncertain. (It is more important to have relatively complete data for measuring discontinuities than it is for estimating a trend.) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Record altitudes might plausibly be reached by a diversity of objects for a diversity of purposes, so collecting such data is especially dependent on imagination for the landscape of these.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1087&quot; title=&quot;For instance, the earliest objects we found that probably traveled as far away as the sun were small pellets fired into the sky for this purpose, which we did not immediately think to search for, and might easily have missed if we had only considered space probes&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; For this reason, this data is especially likely to be incomplete.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The highest altitude probably attained before the late 1700s that we know of was reached by debris in a large gunpowder building explosion in 1280, which we estimate traveled around 2.5km into the air. Whether to treat this as a &#039;man-made technology&#039; is ambiguous, given that it was not intentional, but we choose to ignore intention.((If we did not want to include unintentional object launches, this explosion does still suggest that intentionally launching debris that far using gunpowder was possible at the time, though it is unclear to us whether it was possible to do in a more controlled fashion, such that it might have been useful to anyone, and therefore for this possibility to imply much about what happened.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We also intentionally left the data less complete than usual in places where completeness seemed costly and unlikely to affect conclusions about discontinuities. The following section discusses our collection of data for different periods in history and details of our reasoning about it.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Kites may also have traveled quite high, quite early. It appears that they have been around for at least two thousand years.((Stephanie Hall discusses some evidence that they were around by 1200 BC, [[https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/03/kites-rise-on-the-wind/|here]].)) and were used [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite#Military_applications|in ancient warfare]] and even occasionally for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite|lifting people]]. We find it hard to rule out the possibility that early kites could travel one or two thousand meters into the air: modern kites frequently fly at 2km altitudes, silk has been available for thousands of years, and modern silk at least appears to be about as strong as nylon.((See [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=0|the spreadsheet]] for more detailed reasoning as well as citations.)) Thus if we are wrong about the gunpowder factory explosion, it is still plausible that two thousand meter altitudes were achieved by kites. - = Detailed overview of data = + Over a period of three and a half months from August 1783, manned hot air balloons were invented,((Though unmanned hot air propelled vessels are older: sky lanterns appear to have existed for thousands of years, and we saw one claim that hot-air [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat|aerostats]] existed in the 9th Century (which may just mean more sky lanterns, except that that wouldn&#039;t make sense in context because sky lanterns are older.) &#039;...the Middle Ages from the ninth century at least were familiar with hot-air aerostats used as military signals&#039; \\ + \\ + White, Lynn. &quot;Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.&quot; //Technology and Culture// 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. [[https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411|https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411]]. p98)) and taken from an initial maximum altitude of 24m up to a maximum altitude of 2700m. While this was important progress in manned travel,((Though perhaps in the convenience, reliability and safety of it before the height of it -- Marco Polo describes observing a man-carrying kite that &#039;might go up until it may no longer be seen&#039; by 1295.\\ + \\ + Translation from Latin, found in only two manuscripts of Marco Polo&#039;s work, but considered likely to be genuine: &quot;The men of the ship will have wicker framework, that is a grate of switches, and to each corner and side of that framework will be tied a cord, so that there are eight cords and all of these are tied at the other end to a long rope. Next they will find some fool or drunkard and lash him to the frame, since no one in his right mind or with his wits about him would expose himself to that peril. This is done when the wind is high, then they raise the framework into the teeth of the wind and the wind lifts up the framework and carries it aloft, and the men hold it by the long rope. If the kite tips the men on the ground haul on the rope to straighten it, then pay the rope out again so by this means it might go up until it could no longer be seen, if only the rope were long enough.&quot;\\ + \\ + Taken from the first of these, but a very similar translation available at the second:\\ + \\ + Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog. &quot;Manned Kite Flight in Medieval China,&quot; May 12, 2011. [[http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/|http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/]].\\ + \\ + White, Lynn. &quot;Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.&quot; //Technology and Culture// 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. [[https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411|https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411]].)) most of these hot air balloons were still lower than the gunpowder explosion and perhaps kites. Nonetheless, there are enough records from around this time, that we begin our search for discontinuities here. + The first time that humanity sent any object clearly higher than ancient kites or explosion debris was December 1783, when the first hydrogen balloon flight ascended to 2,700m. This was not much more than we (very roughly) estimate that those earlier objects traveled. However the hot air balloon trend continued its steep incline, and in 1784 a balloon reached 4000m, which is over a thousand years of discontinuity given our estimates (if we estimated the rate of progress as an order of magnitude higher or lower, the discontinuity would remain large, so the uncertainties involved are not critical.) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Here we describe the history of progress in altitude reached and the nature of the data we collected during different times. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=0&quot;&gt;the spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for all uncited sources.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The next hot air balloon that we have records for ascended nearly twice as high—7280m—in 1803, representing another over a thousand years of discontinuity. We did not thoroughly search for records between these times. However if that progress actually accrued incrementally over the twenty years between these records, then still every year would have seen an extra 85 years of progress at the previous rate, so there must have been at least one year that saw at least that much progress, and it seems likely that in fact at least one year saw over a hundred years of progress. Thus there was very likely a large discontinuity at that time, regardless of the trend between 1784 and 1803. + We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record|Flight altitude record]] page, which claims to cover &#039;highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning&#039;.((Such records were previously found to contain numerous discrepancies with different sources, so it seems likely that there are still some errors, however the known past errors were within ten percent, so this seems unlikely to be an important issue. See examples of discrepancies at &quot;Talk:Flight Altitude Record.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, February 28, 2018. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record]].)) It is not entirely clear to us what &#039;aeronautical flights&#039; covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. The list includes some unmanned balloons, but it isn’t clear whether they are claiming to cover all of them. They also include two cannon projectiles, but not [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22|38 cm SK L/45 &quot;Max&quot;]], which appears to be a record relative to anything they have, and cannon projectiles are probably not &#039;flights&#039;, so we think they are not claiming to have exhaustively covered those. Thus between the late 1700s, and the first flights beyond the atmosphere, the main things this data seems likely to be missing is military projectiles, and any other non-flight atmospheric-level objects. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Chimps throw rocks, so we infer that humans have probably also done this from the beginning.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Recent research demonstrates that the bonds of kinship will not keep a chimp from&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/05/stone-throwing-chimp-back-and-time-its-personal&quot;&amp;gt;piling up stones and hurling them at zoo visitors&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;if they get too close. A new study of wild chimps at four sites in West Africa now shows that&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22219&quot;&amp;gt;they also like to throw stones at trees&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; BalterFeb. 29, Michael, 2016, and 5:00 Am. “Why Do Some Chimps Throw Rocks at Trees?” Science | AAAS, February 26, 2016. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; A good rock throw can apparently reach around 25m. Between then and the late 1700s, humanity developed archery, sky lanterns, kites, gunpowder, other projectile weapons, rockets, and primitive wings&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1087&quot; title=&#039;See examples of early flying attempts &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Primitive_beginnings&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation#First_person_to_fly&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, among probably other things. However records before the late 1700s are hard or impossible to find, so we do not begin the search for discontinuities until a slew of hot air balloon records beginning in 1783s. We collected some earlier records in order to have a rough trend to compare later advances to, but we are likely missing many entries, and the entries we have are quite uncertain. (It is more important to have relatively complete data for measuring discontinuities than it is for estimating a trend.)&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We searched separately for military projectiles during this period. Wikipedia claims, without citation, that the 1918 Paris gun represented the greatest height reached by a human-made projectile until the first successful V-2 flight test in October 1942,((&quot;The gun was capable of firing a 106-kilogram (234 lb) &lt;sup&gt; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1|[1] ]]:120 &lt;/sup&gt; shell to a range of 130 kilometers (81mi) and a maximum altitude of 42.3 kilometers (26.3mi) &lt;sup&gt; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1|[1] ]]:120 &lt;/sup&gt; -- the greatest height reached by a human-made [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile|projectile]] until the first successful [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket|V-2]] flight test in October 1942.&quot; &quot;Paris Gun.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, August 19, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun]].)) which matches what we could find. We searched for military records prior to the Paris gun, and found only one other, &quot;Max&quot; mentioned above, a 38cm German naval gun from 1914. + We expect there are no much higher military records we are missing during this time but that we could easily have missed some similar ones. As shown in Figure 1, the trend of military records we are aware of is fairly linear, and that line is substantially below the balloon record trend until around 1900. So it would be surprising if there were earlier military records that beat balloon records, and less surprising if we were missing something between 1900 and 1918. It seems unlikely however that we could have missed enough data that the Paris Gun did not represent at least a moderate discontinuity.((The Paris Gun was a 227 year discontinuity according to our calculations below, so had there been incremental progress over the four years since the previous record (assuming that was the same), each year would still have seen over fifty years of surprising progress (at least ignoring readjustment of expectations after seeing this twice in a row). Nonetheless, it is possible that there was enough incremental progress between 1893 and 1918 that we did not find that the Paris Gun is not a substantial discontinuity. It seems fairly unlikely to us that we would not have found any of it.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The highest altitude probably attained before the late 1700s that we know of was reached by debris in a large gunpowder building explosion in 1280, which we estimate traveled around 2.5km into the air. Whether to treat this as a ‘man-made technology’ is ambiguous, given that it was not intentional, but we choose to ignore intention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1087&quot; title=&quot;If we did not want to include unintentional object launches, this explosion does still suggest that intentionally launching debris that far using gunpowder was possible at the time, though it is unclear to us whether it was possible to do in a more controlled fashion, such that it might have been useful to anyone, and therefore for this possibility to imply much about what happened.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We could not think of other types of objects that might have gone higher than aeronautical flights and military projectiles between the record 1803 balloon and V-2 rockets reaching &#039;the edge of space&#039; from 1942. Thus the data in this period seems likely to be relatively complete, or primarily missing less important military projectiles. + The German V-2 rockets are considered the first man-made objects to travel to space (though the modern definition of space is higher)((&quot;The V-2 rocket also became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line|Kármán line]] with the vertical launch of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014|MW 18014]] on 20 June 1944. &lt;sup&gt; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#cite_note-5|[5] ]] &lt;/sup&gt; “V-2 Rocket.” In //Wikipedia//, November 15, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;oldid=926267063|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;oldid=926267063]].)) so they are presumably the highest thing at that time (1942). They are also considered the first projectile record since the Paris gun, supporting this. Wikipedia has an extensive [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches||list of V-2 test launches]] and their outcomes, from which we infer than three of them represent altitude records.((A fairly early one was fired undesirably steeply, and so became the first rocket to reach space, as defined at the time. Thus it is less surprising that so few were records.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Kites may also have traveled quite high, quite early. It appears that they have been around for at least two thousand years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1087&quot; title=&#039;Stephanie Hall discusses some evidence that they were around by 1200 BC, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/03/kites-rise-on-the-wind/&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and were used &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite#Military_applications&quot;&gt;in ancient warfare&lt;/a&gt; and even occasionally for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite&quot;&gt;lifting people&lt;/a&gt;. We find it hard to rule out the possibility that early kites could travel one or two thousand meters into the air: modern kites frequently fly at 2km altitudes, silk has been available for thousands of years, and modern silk at least appears to be about as strong as nylon.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1087&quot; title=&quot;See spreadsheet for more detailed reasoning as well as citations.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Thus if we are wrong about the gunpowder factory explosion, it is still plausible that two thousand meter altitudes were achieved by kites.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The two gun records we know of were both German WWI guns, and the V2 rockets that followed were German WWII weapons, apparently developed in an attempt to replace the Paris Gun when it was banned under the Versailles Treaty.((In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as a replacement for the Paris Gun -- which was specifically banned under the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_Treaty|Versailles Treaty]]. This work would eventually led to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket|V-2 rocket]] that was used in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II|World War II]]&quot; -- &quot;[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun|Paris Gun]].&quot; In //Wikipedia//, August 19, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun||https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun]].)) So all altitude records between the balloons of the 1800s and the space rockets of the 50s appear to be German military efforts. + Between the last record V-2 rocket in 1946 and 1957, we found a series of rockets that traveled to increasing altitudes. We are not confident that there were no other record rocket altitudes in this time. However the rockets we know of appear to have been important ones, so it seems unlikely that other rockets at the time were radically more powerful, and there does not appear to have been surprising progress over that entire period considered together, so there could not have been much surprising progress in any particular year of it, unless the final record should be substantially higher than we think. We are quite unsure about the final record (the R-7 Semyorka), however it doesn’t seem as though it could have gone higher than 3000km, which would only add a further four years of surprising progress to be distributed in the period. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Over a period of three and a half months from August 1783, manned hot air balloons were invented,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1087&quot; title=&#039;Though unmanned hot air propelled vessels are older: sky lanterns appear to have existed for thousands of years, and we saw one claim that hot-air &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat&quot;&amp;gt;aerostats&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; existed in the 9th Century (which may just mean more sky lanterns, except that that wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t make sense in context because sky lanterns are older.) &amp;amp;#8216;&amp;amp;#8230;the Middle Ages from the ninth century at least were familiar with hot-air aerostats used as military signals&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Technology and Culture&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. p98&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and taken from an initial maximum altitude of 24m up to a maximum altitude of 2700m. While this was important progress in manned travel&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1087&quot; title=&#039;Though perhaps in the convenience, reliability and safety of it before the height of it—Marco Polo describes observing a man-carrying kite that &amp;amp;#8216;might go up until it may no longer be seen&amp;amp;#8217; by 1295. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Translation from Latin, found in only two manuscripts of Marco Polo&amp;amp;#8217;s work, but considered likely to be genuine: &amp;amp;#8220;The men of the ship will have wicker framework, that is a grate of switches, and to each corner and side of that framework will be tied a cord, so that there are eight cords and all of these are tied at the other end to a long rope. Next they will find some fool or drunkard and lash him to the frame, since no one in his right mind or with his wits about him would expose himself to that peril. This is done when the wind is high, then they raise the framework into the teeth of the wind and the wind lifts up the framework and carries it aloft, and the men hold it by the long rope. If the kite tips the men on the ground haul on the rope to straighten it, then pay the rope out again so by this means it might go up until it could no longer be seen, if only the rope were long enough.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Taken from the first of these, but a very similar translation available at the second:&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog. “Manned Kite Flight in Medieval China,” May 12, 2011. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&quot;&amp;gt;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Technology and Culture&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, most of these hot air balloons were still lower than the gunpowder explosion and perhaps kites. Nonetheless, there are enough records from around this time, that we begin our search for discontinuities here.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + In October 1957, at least one centimeter-sized pellet was apparently launched into solar orbit, using shaped charges and a rocket. As far as we know, this was the first time an object escaped Earth’s gravity to orbit the sun.((For instance, Fritz Zwicky, the scientist responsible, writes in an article called, &quot;The first shots into interplanetary space&quot;, that &quot;Small man-made projectiles were launched away from the earth for the first time, never to return.&quot; We think he means that this was the first time anything was launched away from the Earth, never to return, rather than just the record for &#039;shots&#039; or &#039;small man-made projectiles&#039;.\\ + \\ + Zwicky, Fritz. &quot;The First Shots Into Interplanetary Space.&quot; //Engineering and Science// 21 (January 1, 1958): 20–23.)) This episode does not appear to be mentioned often, but we haven’t found anyone disputing its being the first time a man-made object entered solar orbit, or offering an alternate object + Because the pellets launched were just pellets, with no sophisticated monitoring equipment, it is harder to know what orbit they ended up in, and therefore exactly how long it took to reach their furthest distance from Earth, or what it was. Based on their speed and direction, we estimate they should still have been moving at around 10km/s as they escaped Earth’s gravity. Within a day we estimate that they should have traveled more than six hundred times further away than anything earlier that we know of. Then conservatively they should have reached the other side of the sun, at a distance from it comparable to that of Earth, in around 1.5 years. However this is all quite uncertain. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The first time that humanity sent any object clearly higher than ancient kites or explosion debris was December 1783, when the first hydrogen balloon flight ascended to 2,700m. This was not much more than we (very roughly) estimate that those earlier objects traveled. However the hot air balloon trend continued its steep incline, and in 1784 a balloon reached 4000m, which is over a thousand years of discontinuity given our estimates (if we estimated the rate of progress as an order of magnitude higher or lower, the discontinuity would remain large, so the uncertainties involved are not critical.)&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + At around this time, reaching maximum altitudes goes from taking on the order of days to on the order of years. As discussed at the start of section &#039;Altitude of objects attained by manmade means&#039; above, from here on we record new altitudes every year or so for objects traveling at increasing altitudes over more than a year. + In the years between 1959 and 1973, various objects entered heliocentric orbit.((Wikipedia [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;oldid=927304642|lists them]]. \\ + \\ + &quot;List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, November 21, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit]].)) It is possible that some of them reached greater altitudes than the pellets, via being in different orbits around the sun. Calculating records here is difficult, because reaching maximal distance from Earth takes years,((For instance, we roughly estimate that Luna 1 took five years to reach its maximum distance from Earth.)) and how far an object is from Earth at any time depends on how their (eccentric) orbits relate to Earth’s, in 3D space. Often, the relevant information isn’t available. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The next hot air balloon that we have records for ascended nearly twice as high—7280m—in 1803, representing another over a thousand years of discontinuity. We did not thoroughly search for records between these times. However if that progress actually accrued incrementally over the twenty years between these records, then still every year would have seen an extra 85 years of progress at the previous rate, so there must have been at least one year that saw at least that much progress, and it seems likely that in fact at least one year saw over a hundred years of progress. Thus there was very likely a large discontinuity at that time, regardless of the trend between 1784 and 1803.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Among artificial objects in heliocentric orbit listed by Wikipedia((Though known to not be complete: &quot;This list does not include objects that are escaping from the Solar System, upper stages from robotic missions (only the S-IVB upper stages from Apollo missions with astronauts are listed), or objects in the Sun–Earth Lagrange points.&quot;\\ + \\ + &quot;List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, November 21, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;oldid=927304642|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;oldid=927304642]].)) none are listed as having orbits where they travel more than 1.6 times further from the Sun than Earth does,(([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_3|Zond 3]] was the furthest we found.)) though many are missing such data. This is probably less far than the pellets, though further away than our conservative estimate for the pellets. For an object to reach this maximal distance from the Earth, it would need to be at this furthest part of its orbit, while being on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, on the same plane as Earth. + Given all of this, it seems implausible that anything went ten times as far from the Sun as Earth by 1960, but even this would not have represented a discontinuity of even ten years. Given this and the difficulty of calculating records, we haven’t investigated this period of solar orbiters thoroughly. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record&quot;&gt;Flight altitude record&lt;/a&gt; page, which claims to cover ‘highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning’.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1087&quot; title=&#039;Such records were previously found to contain numerous discrepancies with different sources, so it seems likely that there are still some errors, however the known past errors were within ten percent, so this seems unlikely to be an important issue. See examples of discrepancies at “Talk:Flight Altitude Record.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, February 28, 2018. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;amp;oldid=828133827&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;amp;oldid=828133827&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It is not entirely clear to us what ‘aeronautical flights’ covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. The list includes some unmanned balloons, but it isn’t clear whether they are claiming to cover all of them. They also include two cannon projectiles, but not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22&quot;&gt;38 cm SK L/45 “Max”&lt;/a&gt;, which appears to be a record relative to anything they have, and cannon projectiles are probably not ‘flights’, so we think they are not claiming to have exhaustively covered those. Thus between the late 1700s, and the first flights beyond the atmosphere, the main things this data seems likely to be missing is military projectiles, and any other non-flight atmospheric-level objects.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + In 1973 Pioneer 10 became the first of five space probes to begin a journey outside the solar system. In 1998 it was overtaken by Voyager 1. We know that no other probes were the furthest object during that time, however have not checked whether various other objects exiting the solar system (largely [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System#Propulsion_stages|stages of multi-stage rockets that launched the aforementioned probes]]) might have gone further. - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We searched separately for military projectiles during this period. Wikipedia claims, without citation, that the 1918 Paris gun represented the greatest height reached by a human-made projectile until the first successful V-2 flight test in October 1942&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The gun was capable of firing a 106-kilogram (234&amp;amp;nbsp;lb)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;:120&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;shell to a range of 130 kilometers (81&amp;amp;nbsp;mi) and a maximum altitude of 42.3 kilometers (26.3&amp;amp;nbsp;mi)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;:120&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—the greatest height reached by a human-made&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile&quot;&amp;gt;projectile&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;until the first successful&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&amp;gt;V-2&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;flight test in October 1942.&amp;amp;#8221;“Paris Gun.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, August 19, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, which matches what we could find. We searched for military records prior to the Paris gun, and found only one other, “Max” mentioned above, a 38cm German naval gun from 1914.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We expect there are no much higher military records we are missing during this time but that we could easily have missed some similar ones. As shown in Figure 1, the trend of military records we are aware of is fairly linear, and that line is substantially below the balloon record trend until around 1900. So it would be surprising if there were earlier military records that beat balloon records, and less surprising if we were missing something between 1900 and 1918. It seems unlikely however that we could have missed enough data that the Paris Gun did not represent at least a moderate discontinuity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1087&quot; title=&quot;The Paris Gun was a 227 year discontinuity according to our calculations below, so had there been incremental progress over the four years since the previous record (assuming that was the same), each year would still have seen over fifty years of surprising progress (at least ignoring readjustment of expectations after seeing this twice in a row). Nonetheless, it is possible that there was enough incremental progress between 1893 and 1918 that we did not find that the Paris Gun is not a substantial discontinuity. It seems fairly unlikely to us that we would not have found any of it.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We could not think of other types of objects that might have gone higher than aeronautical flights and military projectiles between the record 1803 balloon and V-2 rockets reaching ‘the edge of space’ from 1942. Thus the data in this period seems likely to be relatively complete, or primarily missing less important military projectiles.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The German V-2 rockets are considered the first man-made objects to travel to space (though the modern definition of space is higher)&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The V-2 rocket also became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line&quot;&amp;gt;Kármán line&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;with the vertical launch of&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014&quot;&amp;gt;MW 18014&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;on 20 June 1944.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#cite_note-5&quot;&amp;gt;[5]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; “V-2 Rocket.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 15, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;amp;oldid=926267063&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;amp;oldid=926267063&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; so they are presumably the highest thing at that time (1942). They are also considered the first projectile record since the Paris gun, supporting this. Wikipedia has an extensive &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;list of V-2 test launches&lt;/a&gt; and their outcomes, from which we infer than three of them represent altitude records.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1087&quot; title=&quot;A fairly early one was fired undesirably steeply, and so became the first rocket to reach space, as defined at the time. Thus it is less surprising that so few were records.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The two gun records we know of were both German WWI guns, and the V2 rockets that followed were German WWII weapons, apparently developed in an attempt to replace the Paris Gun when it was banned under the Versailles Treaty.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as a replacement for the Paris Gun—which was specifically banned under the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_Treaty&quot;&amp;gt;Versailles Treaty&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. This work would eventually led to the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&amp;gt;V-2 rocket&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that was used in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&amp;gt;World War II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; “Paris Gun.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, August 19, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; So all altitude records between the balloons of the 1800s and the space rockets of the 50s appear to be German military efforts.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Between the last record V-2 rocket in 1946 and 1957, we found a series of rockets that traveled to increasing altitudes. We are not confident that there were no other record rocket altitudes in this time. However the rockets we know of appear to have been important ones, so it seems unlikely that other rockets at the time were radically more powerful, and there does not appear to have been surprising progress over that entire period considered together, so there could not have been much surprising progress in any particular year of it, unless the final record should be substantially higher than we think. We are quite unsure about the final record (the R-7 Semyorka), however it doesn’t seem as though it could have gone higher than 3000km, which would only add a further four years of surprising progress to be distributed in the period.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In October 1957, at least one centimeter-sized pellet was apparently launched into solar orbit, using shaped charges and a rocket. As far as we know, this was the first time an object escaped Earth’s gravity to orbit the sun.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1087&quot; title=&quot;For instance, Fritz Zwicky, the scientist responsible, writes in an article called, &amp;amp;#8220;The first shots into interplanetary space&amp;amp;#8221;, that &amp;amp;#8220;Small man-made projectiles were launched away from the earth for the first time, never to return.&amp;amp;#8221; We think he means that this was the first time anything was launched away from the Earth, never to return, rather than just the record for &amp;amp;#8216;shots&amp;amp;#8217; or &amp;amp;#8216;small man-made projectiles&amp;amp;#8217;.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; Zwicky, Fritz. “The First Shots Into Interplanetary Space.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Engineering and Science&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 21 (January 1, 1958): 20–23. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This episode does not appear to be mentioned often, but we haven’t found anyone disputing its being the first time a man-made object entered solar orbit, or offering an alternate object.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Because the pellets launched were just pellets, with no sophisticated monitoring equipment, it is harder to know what orbit they ended up in, and therefore exactly how long it took to reach their furthest distance from Earth, or what it was. Based on their speed and direction, we estimate they should still have been moving at around 10km/s as they escaped Earth’s gravity. Within a day we estimate that they should have traveled more than six hundred times further away than anything earlier that we know of. Then conservatively they should have reached the other side of the sun, at a distance from it comparable to that of Earth, in around 1.5 years. However this is all quite uncertain.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;At around this time, reaching maximum altitudes goes from taking on the order of days to on the order of years. As discussed at the start of section ‘Altitude of objects attained by manmade means’ above, from here on we record new altitudes every year or so for objects traveling at increasing altitudes over more than a year.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In the years between 1959 and 1973, various objects entered heliocentric orbit.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1087&quot; title=&#039;Wikipedia &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&amp;gt;lists them&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; “List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 21, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It is possible that some of them reached greater altitudes than the pellets, via being in different orbits around the sun. Calculating records here is difficult, because reaching maximal distance from Earth takes years,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1087&quot; title=&quot;For instance, we roughly estimate that Luna 1 took five years to reach its maximum distance from Earth.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and how far an object is from Earth at any time depends on how their (eccentric) orbits relate to Earth’s, in 3D space. Often, the relevant information isn’t available.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Among artificial objects in heliocentric orbit listed by Wikipedia&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1087&quot; title=&#039;Though known to not be complete: &amp;amp;#8220;This list does not include objects that are escaping from the Solar System, upper stages from robotic missions (only the S-IVB upper stages from Apollo missions with astronauts are listed), or objects in the Sun–Earth Lagrange points.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 21, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; none are listed as having orbits where they travel more than 1.6 times further from the Sun than Earth does&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_3&quot;&amp;gt;Zond 3&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; was the furthest we found.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, though many are missing such data. This is probably less far than the pellets, though further away than our conservative estimate for the pellets. For an object to reach this maximal distance from the Earth, it would need to be at this furthest part of its orbit, while being on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, on the same plane as Earth.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Given all of this, it seems implausible that anything went ten times as far from the Sun as Earth by 1960, but even this would not have represented a discontinuity of even ten years. Given this and the difficulty of calculating records, we haven’t investigated this period of solar orbiters thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In 1973 Pioneer 10 became the first of five space probes to begin a journey outside the solar system. In 1998 it was overtaken by Voyager 1. We know that no other probes were the furthest object during that time, however have not checked whether various other objects exiting the solar system (largely &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System#Propulsion_stages&quot;&gt;stages of multi-stage rockets that launched the aforementioned probes&lt;/a&gt;) might have gone further.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 shows all of the altitude data we collected, including entries that turned out not to be records. Figures 2 and 3 show the best current altitude record over time.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Figure 1 shows all of the altitude data we collected, including entries that turned out not to be records. Figures 2 and 3 show the best current altitude record over time. &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; @@ -279,192 +159,35 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity measurement == + === Discontinuity measurement === - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;For measuring discontinuities, we treat the past trend at a given point as linear or exponential and as starting from earlier or later dates depending on what fits well at that time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1087&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details. The trends are colored differently in column D of &amp;amp;#8216;calculations&amp;amp;#8217; tab in the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=1042011506&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Relative to these previous rates, this altitude trend contains six discontinuities of greater than ten years, with four of them being greater than 100 years:&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1087&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Calculations&amp;amp;#8217; for the calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + For measuring discontinuities, we treat the past trend at a given point as linear or exponential and as starting from earlier or later dates depending on what fits well at that time.((See [[https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting|our methodology page]] for more details. The trends are colored differently in column D of &#039;Calculations&#039; tab in the [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=1042011506|spreadsheet]].)) Relative to these previous rates, this altitude trend contains six discontinuities of greater than ten years, with four of them being greater than 100 years:((See [[https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement|our methodology page]] for more details, and [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing|our spreadsheet]], tab &#039;Calculations&#039; for the calculation.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; - &lt;table&gt; - &lt;tbody&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Height (m)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity (years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Entity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1784&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;4000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1032&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1803&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;7280&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1693&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1918&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;42,300&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;227&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&gt;Paris gun&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1942&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;85,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;120&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1944&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;174,600&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;11&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;864,000,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;35&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Pellets (after one day)&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;/tbody&gt; - &lt;/table&gt; - &lt;/figure&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ^ Year ^ Height (m) ^ Discontinuity (years) ^ Entity ^ + | 1784 | 4000 | 1032 | Balloon | + | 1803 | 7280 | 1693 | Balloon | + | 1918 | 42,300 | 227 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun|Paris gun]] | + | 1942 | 85,000 | 120 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1944 | 174,600 | 11 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1957 | 864,000,000 | 35 | Pellets (after one day) | - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The 1957 pellets would be a 66 year discontinuity if we counted all of their ultimate estimated altitude as one jump on the day after their launch, so exactly how one decides to treat altitudes that grow over years is unlikely to prevent these pellets representing a discontinuity of between ten and a hundred years.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The 1957 pellets would be a 66 year discontinuity if we counted all of their ultimate estimated altitude as one jump on the day after their launch, so exactly how one decides to treat altitudes that grow over years is unlikely to prevent these pellets representing a discontinuity of between ten and a hundred years. + In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing|here]].((See [[https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data|our methodology page]] for more details.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1087&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + //Primary authors: Katja Grace, Rick Korzekwa// - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Primary authors: Katja Grace, Rick Korzekwa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + //Thanks to Stephen Jordan and others for suggesting a potential discontinuity in altitude records.// - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Stephen Jordan and others for suggesting a potential discontinuity in altitude records.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ====== Notes ====== - ===== Notes ===== - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&quot;&gt;Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi&lt;/a&gt; was reported to travel over 3km while losing 77m of altitude between a tower and a square in 1632. - &lt;p&gt;See ‘site details’, “Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, September 25, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;oldid=917757610&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;oldid=917757610&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The earliest fictional account of a parachute type of device was made some 4,000 years ago when the Chinese noticed that air resistance would slow a person’s fall from a height.”&lt;br/&gt; - &lt;br/&gt; - “Parachute.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 21, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;oldid=927299715&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;oldid=927299715&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;As an object passes a previous record, first it is equal to it, then it moves continually past and onwards.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;In many trends, if the full benefits of an innovation are not manifest until later, it is hard to connect it to that innovation, since further innovations are made, and contribute to ongoing progress. However with altitude, once an object is flying away from the Earth, further innovation in rocket design on Earth will not affect it, so we can measure this.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, the earliest objects we found that probably traveled as far away as the sun were small pellets fired into the sky for this purpose, which we did not immediately think to search for, and might easily have missed if we had only considered space probes&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Recent research demonstrates that the bonds of kinship will not keep a chimp from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/05/stone-throwing-chimp-back-and-time-its-personal&quot;&gt;piling up stones and hurling them at zoo visitors&lt;/a&gt; if they get too close. A new study of wild chimps at four sites in West Africa now shows that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22219&quot;&gt;they also like to throw stones at trees&lt;/a&gt;.” - &lt;p&gt;BalterFeb. 29, Michael, 2016, and 5:00 Am. “Why Do Some Chimps Throw Rocks at Trees?” Science | AAAS, February 26, 2016. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&quot;&gt;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See examples of early flying attempts &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Primitive_beginnings&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation#First_person_to_fly&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;If we did not want to include unintentional object launches, this explosion does still suggest that intentionally launching debris that far using gunpowder was possible at the time, though it is unclear to us whether it was possible to do in a more controlled fashion, such that it might have been useful to anyone, and therefore for this possibility to imply much about what happened.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Stephanie Hall discusses some evidence that they were around by 1200 BC, &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/03/kites-rise-on-the-wind/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See spreadsheet for more detailed reasoning as well as citations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Though unmanned hot air propelled vessels are older: sky lanterns appear to have existed for thousands of years, and we saw one claim that hot-air &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat&quot;&gt;aerostats&lt;/a&gt; existed in the 9th Century (which may just mean more sky lanterns, except that that wouldn’t make sense in context because sky lanterns are older.) ‘…the Middle Ages from the ninth century at least were familiar with hot-air aerostats used as military signals’ - &lt;p&gt;White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &lt;em&gt;Technology and Culture&lt;/em&gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&lt;/a&gt;. p98&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Though perhaps in the convenience, reliability and safety of it before the height of it—Marco Polo describes observing a man-carrying kite that ‘might go up until it may no longer be seen’ by 1295. - &lt;p&gt;Translation from Latin, found in only two manuscripts of Marco Polo’s work, but considered likely to be genuine: “The men of the ship will have wicker framework, that is a grate of switches, and to each corner and side of that framework will be tied a cord, so that there are eight cords and all of these are tied at the other end to a long rope. Next they will find some fool or drunkard and lash him to the frame, since no one in his right mind or with his wits about him would expose himself to that peril. This is done when the wind is high, then they raise the framework into the teeth of the wind and the wind lifts up the framework and carries it aloft, and the men hold it by the long rope. If the kite tips the men on the ground haul on the rope to straighten it, then pay the rope out again so by this means it might go up until it could no longer be seen, if only the rope were long enough.”&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Taken from the first of these, but a very similar translation available at the second:&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog. “Manned Kite Flight in Medieval China,” May 12, 2011. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&quot;&gt;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;p&gt;White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &lt;em&gt;Technology and Culture&lt;/em&gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Such records were previously found to contain numerous discrepancies with different sources, so it seems likely that there are still some errors, however the known past errors were within ten percent, so this seems unlikely to be an important issue. See examples of discrepancies at “Talk:Flight Altitude Record.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, February 28, 2018. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;oldid=828133827&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;oldid=828133827&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The gun was capable of firing a 106-kilogram (234 lb)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;:120&lt;/sup&gt; shell to a range of 130 kilometers (81 mi) and a maximum altitude of 42.3 kilometers (26.3 mi)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;:120&lt;/sup&gt;—the greatest height reached by a human-made &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile&quot;&gt;projectile&lt;/a&gt; until the first successful &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&gt;V-2&lt;/a&gt; flight test in October 1942.”“Paris Gun.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, August 19, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The Paris Gun was a 227 year discontinuity according to our calculations below, so had there been incremental progress over the four years since the previous record (assuming that was the same), each year would still have seen over fifty years of surprising progress (at least ignoring readjustment of expectations after seeing this twice in a row). Nonetheless, it is possible that there was enough incremental progress between 1893 and 1918 that we did not find that the Paris Gun is not a substantial discontinuity. It seems fairly unlikely to us that we would not have found any of it.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The V-2 rocket also became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line&quot;&gt;Kármán line&lt;/a&gt; with the vertical launch of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014&quot;&gt;MW 18014&lt;/a&gt; on 20 June 1944.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#cite_note-5&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;“ - &lt;p&gt;“V-2 Rocket.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 15, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;oldid=926267063&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;oldid=926267063&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;A fairly early one was fired undesirably steeply, and so became the first rocket to reach space, as defined at the time. Thus it is less surprising that so few were records.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as a replacement for the Paris Gun—which was specifically banned under the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_Treaty&quot;&gt;Versailles Treaty&lt;/a&gt;. This work would eventually led to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&gt;V-2 rocket&lt;/a&gt; that was used in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&gt;World War II&lt;/a&gt;.” – &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; “Paris Gun.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, August 19, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, Fritz Zwicky, the scientist responsible, writes in an article called, “The first shots into interplanetary space”, that “Small man-made projectiles were launched away from the earth for the first time, never to return.” We think he means that this was the first time anything was launched away from the Earth, never to return, rather than just the record for ‘shots’ or ‘small man-made projectiles’. - &lt;p&gt;Zwicky, Fritz. “The First Shots Into Interplanetary Space.” &lt;em&gt;Engineering and Science&lt;/em&gt; 21 (January 1, 1958): 20–23. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&gt;lists them&lt;/a&gt;. - &lt;p&gt;“List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 21, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, we roughly estimate that Luna 1 took five years to reach its maximum distance from Earth.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Though known to not be complete: “This list does not include objects that are escaping from the Solar System, upper stages from robotic missions (only the S-IVB upper stages from Apollo missions with astronauts are listed), or objects in the Sun–Earth Lagrange points.”&lt;br/&gt; - &lt;br/&gt; - “List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 21, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_3&quot;&gt;Zond 3&lt;/a&gt; was the furthest we found.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details. The trends are colored differently in column D of ‘calculations’ tab in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=1042011506&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, tab ‘Calculations’ for the calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;/ol&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; </pre>

<pre> @@ -1,247 +1,127 @@ - ====== Historic trends in altitude ====== + ======= Historic trends in altitude ======= // Published 09 February, 2018; last updated 08 March, 2021 // - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Altitude of objects attained by man-made means has seen six discontinuities of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1783, shown below.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Altitude of objects attained by man-made means has seen six discontinuities of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1783, shown below. + ^ Year ^ Height (m) ^ Discontinuity (years) ^ Entity ^ + | 1784 | 4000 | 1032 | Balloon | + | 1803 | 7280 | 1693 | Balloon | + | 1918 | 42,300 | 227 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun|Paris gun]] | + | 1942 | 85,000 | 120 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1944 | 174,600 | 11 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1957 | 864,000,000 | 35 | Pellets (after one day) | - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; - &lt;table&gt; - &lt;tbody&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Height (m)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity (years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Entity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1784&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;4000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1032&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1803&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;7280&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1693&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1918&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;42,300&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;227&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&gt;Paris gun&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1942&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;85,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;120&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1944&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;174,600&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;11&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;864,000,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;35&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Pellets (after one day)&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;/tbody&gt; - &lt;/table&gt; - &lt;/figure&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ====== Details ====== - ===== Details ===== + This case study is part of AI Impacts’ [[ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation|discontinuous progress investigation]]. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ===== Trends ===== - ==== Trends ==== + ==== Altitude of objects attained by manmade means ==== - === Altitude of objects attained by manmade means === + We looked for records in height from the ground reached by any object via man-made technology. + ‘Man-made technology’ is ambiguous, but we exclude for instance objects tied to birds and debris carried up by hurricanes. We include debris launched unintentionally via gunpowder explosion, and rocks launched via human arms. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We looked for records in height from the ground reached by any object via man-made technology.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We measure ‘altitude’ from the ground at the launch site. This excludes mountain climbing, but also early flight attempts that involve jumping from towers and traveling downward slowly.((For instance [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi|Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi]] was reported to travel over 3km while losing 77m of altitude between a tower and a square in 1632. \\ + \\ + See &#039;site details&#039;, “Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi.” In //Wikipedia//, September 25, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi]])) It also excludes early parachutes, which were mentioned in fiction thousands of years ago.((&quot;The earliest fictional account of a parachute type of device was made some 4,000 years ago when the Chinese noticed that air resistance would slow a person&#039;s fall from a height.&quot; \\ + \\ + “Parachute.” In //Wikipedia//, November 21, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute]].)) + Measured finely enough, there are never discontinuities in altitude, since objects travel continuously.((As an object passes a previous record, first it is equal to it, then it moves continually past and onwards.)) This prohibits finding discontinuities in continuously measured altitude, but doesn’t interfere with the dataset being relevant evidence to us. We are interested in discontinuities because they tell us about how much surprising progress can happen in a short time, and how much progress can come from a single innovation. So to make use of this data, we need to find alternate ways of measuring it that fulfill these purposes. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;‘Man-made technology’ is ambiguous, but we exclude for instance objects tied to birds and debris carried up by hurricanes. We include debris launched unintentionally via gunpowder explosion, and rocks launched via human arms.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + For the purpose of knowing about progress in short periods, we can choose a short period of interest, and measure jumps in progress made at that scale. For the purpose of knowing about progress made by single innovations, we can assign the maximum altitude reached to the time that the relevant innovation was made, for instance.((In many trends, if the full benefits of an innovation are not manifest until later, it is hard to connect it to that innovation, since further innovations are made, and contribute to ongoing progress. However with altitude, once an object is flying away from the Earth, further innovation in rocket design on Earth will not affect it, so we can measure this.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We measure ‘altitude’ from the ground at the launch site. This excludes mountain climbing, but also early flight attempts that involve jumping from towers and traveling downward slowly.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1087&quot; title=&#039;For instance &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&quot;&amp;gt;Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; was reported to travel over 3km while losing 77m of altitude between a tower and a square in 1632.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;See &amp;amp;#8216;site details&amp;amp;#8217;, “Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, September 25, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;amp;oldid=917757610&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;amp;oldid=917757610&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It also excludes early parachutes, which were mentioned in fiction thousands of years ago.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The earliest fictional account of a parachute type of device was made some 4,000 years ago when the Chinese noticed that air resistance would slow a person&amp;amp;#8217;s fall from a height.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Parachute.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 21, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927299715&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927299715&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We could measure both of these trends, but currently only measure a version of the former. For short periods of travel, we assign the maximum altitude reached to the date given (our understanding is that most of the entries took place over less than one day). For travel that appears to have taken more than a day, we record any altitudes we have particular information about, and otherwise estimate records on roughly an annual basis, including a record for the peak altitude (and possibly more than a year apart to allow for the final record to have the maximum altitude). This is ad hoc, but for the current purpose, converting what we have to a more consistent standard does not seem worth it. Instead, we consider these the effects of these choices when measuring discontinuities. They do not appear to matter, except to make modest differences to the size of the pellet discontinuity, discussed below (section, ‘[[takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_altitude#Discontinuity_measurement|Discontinuity measurement]]’). - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Measured finely enough, there are never discontinuities in altitude, since objects travel continuously.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1087&quot; title=&quot;As an object passes a previous record, first it is equal to it, then it moves continually past and onwards.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This prohibits finding discontinuities in continuously measured altitude, but doesn’t interfere with the dataset being relevant evidence to us. We are interested in discontinuities because they tell us about how much surprising progress can happen in a short time, and how much progress can come from a single innovation. So to make use of this data, we need to find alternate ways of measuring it that fulfill these purposes.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + === Data === + We collected data from various sources, and added them to [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing|this spreadsheet]], tab ‘Manned and unmanned’. This data is shown in Figures 1-3 below. We have not thoroughly verified this data. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;For the purpose of knowing about progress in short periods, we can choose a short period of interest, and measure jumps in progress made at that scale. For the purpose of knowing about progress made by single innovations, we can assign the maximum altitude reached to the time that the relevant innovation was made, for instance.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1087&quot; title=&quot;In many trends, if the full benefits of an innovation are not manifest until later, it is hard to connect it to that innovation, since further innovations are made, and contribute to ongoing progress. However with altitude, once an object is flying away from the Earth, further innovation in rocket design on Earth will not affect it, so we can measure this.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Record altitudes might plausibly be reached by a diversity of objects for a diversity of purposes, so collecting such data is especially dependent on imagination for the landscape of these.((For instance, the earliest objects we found that probably traveled as far away as the sun were small pellets fired into the sky for this purpose, which we did not immediately think to search for, and might easily have missed if we had only considered space probes.)) For this reason, this data is especially likely to be incomplete. + We also intentionally left the data less complete than usual in places where completeness seemed costly and unlikely to affect conclusions about discontinuities. The following section discusses our collection of data for different periods in history and details of our reasoning about it. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We could measure both of these trends, but currently only measure a version of the former. For short periods of travel, we assign the maximum altitude reached to the date given (our understanding is that most of the entries took place over less than one day). For travel that appears to have taken more than a day, we record any altitudes we have particular information about, and otherwise estimate records on roughly an annual basis, including a record for the peak altitude (and possibly more than a year apart to allow for the final record to have the maximum altitude). This is ad hoc, but for the current purpose, converting what we have to a more consistent standard does not seem worth it. Instead, we consider these the effects of these choices when measuring discontinuities. They do not appear to matter, except to make modest differences to the size of the pellet discontinuity, discussed below (section, ‘Discontinuity measurement’).&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + == Detailed overview of data == - == Data == + Here we describe the history of progress in altitude reached and the nature of the data we collected during different times. See [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=0|the spreadsheet]] for all uncited sources. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We collected data from various sources, and added them to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Manned and unmanned’. This data is shown in Figures 1-3 below. We have not thoroughly verified this data.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Chimps throw rocks, so we infer that humans have probably also done this from the beginning.((&quot;Recent research demonstrates that the bonds of kinship will not keep a chimp from [[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/05/stone-throwing-chimp-back-and-time-its-personal|piling up stones and hurling them at zoo visitors]] if they get too close. A new study of wild chimps at four sites in West Africa now shows that [[http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22219|they also like to throw stones at trees]].&quot; \\ + \\ + BalterFeb. 29, Michael, 2016, and 5:00 Am. “Why Do Some Chimps Throw Rocks at Trees?” Science | AAAS, February 26, 2016. [[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees|https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees]])) A good rock throw can apparently reach around 25m. Between then and the late 1700s, humanity developed archery, sky lanterns, kites, gunpowder, other projectile weapons, rockets, and primitive wings,((See examples of early flying attempts [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Primitive_beginnings|here]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation#First_person_to_fly&quot;|here]].)) among probably other things. However records before the late 1700s are hard or impossible to find, so we do not begin the search for discontinuities until a slew of hot air balloon records beginning in 1783s. We collected some earlier records in order to have a rough trend to compare later advances to, but we are likely missing many entries, and the entries we have are quite uncertain. (It is more important to have relatively complete data for measuring discontinuities than it is for estimating a trend.) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Record altitudes might plausibly be reached by a diversity of objects for a diversity of purposes, so collecting such data is especially dependent on imagination for the landscape of these.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1087&quot; title=&quot;For instance, the earliest objects we found that probably traveled as far away as the sun were small pellets fired into the sky for this purpose, which we did not immediately think to search for, and might easily have missed if we had only considered space probes&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; For this reason, this data is especially likely to be incomplete.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The highest altitude probably attained before the late 1700s that we know of was reached by debris in a large gunpowder building explosion in 1280, which we estimate traveled around 2.5km into the air. Whether to treat this as a &#039;man-made technology&#039; is ambiguous, given that it was not intentional, but we choose to ignore intention.((If we did not want to include unintentional object launches, this explosion does still suggest that intentionally launching debris that far using gunpowder was possible at the time, though it is unclear to us whether it was possible to do in a more controlled fashion, such that it might have been useful to anyone, and therefore for this possibility to imply much about what happened.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We also intentionally left the data less complete than usual in places where completeness seemed costly and unlikely to affect conclusions about discontinuities. The following section discusses our collection of data for different periods in history and details of our reasoning about it.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Kites may also have traveled quite high, quite early. It appears that they have been around for at least two thousand years.((Stephanie Hall discusses some evidence that they were around by 1200 BC, [[https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/03/kites-rise-on-the-wind/|here]].)) and were used [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite#Military_applications|in ancient warfare]] and even occasionally for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite|lifting people]]. We find it hard to rule out the possibility that early kites could travel one or two thousand meters into the air: modern kites frequently fly at 2km altitudes, silk has been available for thousands of years, and modern silk at least appears to be about as strong as nylon.((See [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=0|the spreadsheet]] for more detailed reasoning as well as citations.)) Thus if we are wrong about the gunpowder factory explosion, it is still plausible that two thousand meter altitudes were achieved by kites. - = Detailed overview of data = + Over a period of three and a half months from August 1783, manned hot air balloons were invented,((Though unmanned hot air propelled vessels are older: sky lanterns appear to have existed for thousands of years, and we saw one claim that hot-air [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat|aerostats]] existed in the 9th Century (which may just mean more sky lanterns, except that that wouldn&#039;t make sense in context because sky lanterns are older.) &#039;...the Middle Ages from the ninth century at least were familiar with hot-air aerostats used as military signals&#039; \\ + \\ + White, Lynn. &quot;Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.&quot; //Technology and Culture// 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. [[https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411|https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411]]. p98)) and taken from an initial maximum altitude of 24m up to a maximum altitude of 2700m. While this was important progress in manned travel,((Though perhaps in the convenience, reliability and safety of it before the height of it -- Marco Polo describes observing a man-carrying kite that &#039;might go up until it may no longer be seen&#039; by 1295.\\ + \\ + Translation from Latin, found in only two manuscripts of Marco Polo&#039;s work, but considered likely to be genuine: &quot;The men of the ship will have wicker framework, that is a grate of switches, and to each corner and side of that framework will be tied a cord, so that there are eight cords and all of these are tied at the other end to a long rope. Next they will find some fool or drunkard and lash him to the frame, since no one in his right mind or with his wits about him would expose himself to that peril. This is done when the wind is high, then they raise the framework into the teeth of the wind and the wind lifts up the framework and carries it aloft, and the men hold it by the long rope. If the kite tips the men on the ground haul on the rope to straighten it, then pay the rope out again so by this means it might go up until it could no longer be seen, if only the rope were long enough.&quot;\\ + \\ + Taken from the first of these, but a very similar translation available at the second:\\ + \\ + Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog. &quot;Manned Kite Flight in Medieval China,&quot; May 12, 2011. [[http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/|http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/]].\\ + \\ + White, Lynn. &quot;Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.&quot; //Technology and Culture// 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. [[https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411|https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411]].)) most of these hot air balloons were still lower than the gunpowder explosion and perhaps kites. Nonetheless, there are enough records from around this time, that we begin our search for discontinuities here. + The first time that humanity sent any object clearly higher than ancient kites or explosion debris was December 1783, when the first hydrogen balloon flight ascended to 2,700m. This was not much more than we (very roughly) estimate that those earlier objects traveled. However the hot air balloon trend continued its steep incline, and in 1784 a balloon reached 4000m, which is over a thousand years of discontinuity given our estimates (if we estimated the rate of progress as an order of magnitude higher or lower, the discontinuity would remain large, so the uncertainties involved are not critical.) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Here we describe the history of progress in altitude reached and the nature of the data we collected during different times. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=0&quot;&gt;the spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for all uncited sources.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The next hot air balloon that we have records for ascended nearly twice as high—7280m—in 1803, representing another over a thousand years of discontinuity. We did not thoroughly search for records between these times. However if that progress actually accrued incrementally over the twenty years between these records, then still every year would have seen an extra 85 years of progress at the previous rate, so there must have been at least one year that saw at least that much progress, and it seems likely that in fact at least one year saw over a hundred years of progress. Thus there was very likely a large discontinuity at that time, regardless of the trend between 1784 and 1803. + We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record|Flight altitude record]] page, which claims to cover &#039;highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning&#039;.((Such records were previously found to contain numerous discrepancies with different sources, so it seems likely that there are still some errors, however the known past errors were within ten percent, so this seems unlikely to be an important issue. See examples of discrepancies at &quot;Talk:Flight Altitude Record.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, February 28, 2018. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record]].)) It is not entirely clear to us what &#039;aeronautical flights&#039; covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. The list includes some unmanned balloons, but it isn’t clear whether they are claiming to cover all of them. They also include two cannon projectiles, but not [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22|38 cm SK L/45 &quot;Max&quot;]], which appears to be a record relative to anything they have, and cannon projectiles are probably not &#039;flights&#039;, so we think they are not claiming to have exhaustively covered those. Thus between the late 1700s, and the first flights beyond the atmosphere, the main things this data seems likely to be missing is military projectiles, and any other non-flight atmospheric-level objects. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Chimps throw rocks, so we infer that humans have probably also done this from the beginning.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Recent research demonstrates that the bonds of kinship will not keep a chimp from&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/05/stone-throwing-chimp-back-and-time-its-personal&quot;&amp;gt;piling up stones and hurling them at zoo visitors&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;if they get too close. A new study of wild chimps at four sites in West Africa now shows that&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22219&quot;&amp;gt;they also like to throw stones at trees&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; BalterFeb. 29, Michael, 2016, and 5:00 Am. “Why Do Some Chimps Throw Rocks at Trees?” Science | AAAS, February 26, 2016. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; A good rock throw can apparently reach around 25m. Between then and the late 1700s, humanity developed archery, sky lanterns, kites, gunpowder, other projectile weapons, rockets, and primitive wings&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1087&quot; title=&#039;See examples of early flying attempts &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Primitive_beginnings&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation#First_person_to_fly&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, among probably other things. However records before the late 1700s are hard or impossible to find, so we do not begin the search for discontinuities until a slew of hot air balloon records beginning in 1783s. We collected some earlier records in order to have a rough trend to compare later advances to, but we are likely missing many entries, and the entries we have are quite uncertain. (It is more important to have relatively complete data for measuring discontinuities than it is for estimating a trend.)&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We searched separately for military projectiles during this period. Wikipedia claims, without citation, that the 1918 Paris gun represented the greatest height reached by a human-made projectile until the first successful V-2 flight test in October 1942,((&quot;The gun was capable of firing a 106-kilogram (234 lb) &lt;sup&gt; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1|[1] ]]:120 &lt;/sup&gt; shell to a range of 130 kilometers (81mi) and a maximum altitude of 42.3 kilometers (26.3mi) &lt;sup&gt; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1|[1] ]]:120 &lt;/sup&gt; -- the greatest height reached by a human-made [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile|projectile]] until the first successful [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket|V-2]] flight test in October 1942.&quot; &quot;Paris Gun.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, August 19, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun]].)) which matches what we could find. We searched for military records prior to the Paris gun, and found only one other, &quot;Max&quot; mentioned above, a 38cm German naval gun from 1914. + We expect there are no much higher military records we are missing during this time but that we could easily have missed some similar ones. As shown in Figure 1, the trend of military records we are aware of is fairly linear, and that line is substantially below the balloon record trend until around 1900. So it would be surprising if there were earlier military records that beat balloon records, and less surprising if we were missing something between 1900 and 1918. It seems unlikely however that we could have missed enough data that the Paris Gun did not represent at least a moderate discontinuity.((The Paris Gun was a 227 year discontinuity according to our calculations below, so had there been incremental progress over the four years since the previous record (assuming that was the same), each year would still have seen over fifty years of surprising progress (at least ignoring readjustment of expectations after seeing this twice in a row). Nonetheless, it is possible that there was enough incremental progress between 1893 and 1918 that we did not find that the Paris Gun is not a substantial discontinuity. It seems fairly unlikely to us that we would not have found any of it.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The highest altitude probably attained before the late 1700s that we know of was reached by debris in a large gunpowder building explosion in 1280, which we estimate traveled around 2.5km into the air. Whether to treat this as a ‘man-made technology’ is ambiguous, given that it was not intentional, but we choose to ignore intention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1087&quot; title=&quot;If we did not want to include unintentional object launches, this explosion does still suggest that intentionally launching debris that far using gunpowder was possible at the time, though it is unclear to us whether it was possible to do in a more controlled fashion, such that it might have been useful to anyone, and therefore for this possibility to imply much about what happened.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + We could not think of other types of objects that might have gone higher than aeronautical flights and military projectiles between the record 1803 balloon and V-2 rockets reaching &#039;the edge of space&#039; from 1942. Thus the data in this period seems likely to be relatively complete, or primarily missing less important military projectiles. + The German V-2 rockets are considered the first man-made objects to travel to space (though the modern definition of space is higher)((&quot;The V-2 rocket also became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line|Kármán line]] with the vertical launch of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014|MW 18014]] on 20 June 1944. &lt;sup&gt; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#cite_note-5|[5] ]] &lt;/sup&gt; “V-2 Rocket.” In //Wikipedia//, November 15, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;oldid=926267063|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;oldid=926267063]].)) so they are presumably the highest thing at that time (1942). They are also considered the first projectile record since the Paris gun, supporting this. Wikipedia has an extensive [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches||list of V-2 test launches]] and their outcomes, from which we infer than three of them represent altitude records.((A fairly early one was fired undesirably steeply, and so became the first rocket to reach space, as defined at the time. Thus it is less surprising that so few were records.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Kites may also have traveled quite high, quite early. It appears that they have been around for at least two thousand years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1087&quot; title=&#039;Stephanie Hall discusses some evidence that they were around by 1200 BC, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/03/kites-rise-on-the-wind/&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and were used &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite#Military_applications&quot;&gt;in ancient warfare&lt;/a&gt; and even occasionally for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite&quot;&gt;lifting people&lt;/a&gt;. We find it hard to rule out the possibility that early kites could travel one or two thousand meters into the air: modern kites frequently fly at 2km altitudes, silk has been available for thousands of years, and modern silk at least appears to be about as strong as nylon.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1087&quot; title=&quot;See spreadsheet for more detailed reasoning as well as citations.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Thus if we are wrong about the gunpowder factory explosion, it is still plausible that two thousand meter altitudes were achieved by kites.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The two gun records we know of were both German WWI guns, and the V2 rockets that followed were German WWII weapons, apparently developed in an attempt to replace the Paris Gun when it was banned under the Versailles Treaty.((In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as a replacement for the Paris Gun -- which was specifically banned under the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_Treaty|Versailles Treaty]]. This work would eventually led to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket|V-2 rocket]] that was used in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II|World War II]]&quot; -- &quot;[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun|Paris Gun]].&quot; In //Wikipedia//, August 19, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun||https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun]].)) So all altitude records between the balloons of the 1800s and the space rockets of the 50s appear to be German military efforts. + Between the last record V-2 rocket in 1946 and 1957, we found a series of rockets that traveled to increasing altitudes. We are not confident that there were no other record rocket altitudes in this time. However the rockets we know of appear to have been important ones, so it seems unlikely that other rockets at the time were radically more powerful, and there does not appear to have been surprising progress over that entire period considered together, so there could not have been much surprising progress in any particular year of it, unless the final record should be substantially higher than we think. We are quite unsure about the final record (the R-7 Semyorka), however it doesn’t seem as though it could have gone higher than 3000km, which would only add a further four years of surprising progress to be distributed in the period. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Over a period of three and a half months from August 1783, manned hot air balloons were invented,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1087&quot; title=&#039;Though unmanned hot air propelled vessels are older: sky lanterns appear to have existed for thousands of years, and we saw one claim that hot-air &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat&quot;&amp;gt;aerostats&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; existed in the 9th Century (which may just mean more sky lanterns, except that that wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t make sense in context because sky lanterns are older.) &amp;amp;#8216;&amp;amp;#8230;the Middle Ages from the ninth century at least were familiar with hot-air aerostats used as military signals&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Technology and Culture&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. p98&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and taken from an initial maximum altitude of 24m up to a maximum altitude of 2700m. While this was important progress in manned travel&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1087&quot; title=&#039;Though perhaps in the convenience, reliability and safety of it before the height of it—Marco Polo describes observing a man-carrying kite that &amp;amp;#8216;might go up until it may no longer be seen&amp;amp;#8217; by 1295. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Translation from Latin, found in only two manuscripts of Marco Polo&amp;amp;#8217;s work, but considered likely to be genuine: &amp;amp;#8220;The men of the ship will have wicker framework, that is a grate of switches, and to each corner and side of that framework will be tied a cord, so that there are eight cords and all of these are tied at the other end to a long rope. Next they will find some fool or drunkard and lash him to the frame, since no one in his right mind or with his wits about him would expose himself to that peril. This is done when the wind is high, then they raise the framework into the teeth of the wind and the wind lifts up the framework and carries it aloft, and the men hold it by the long rope. If the kite tips the men on the ground haul on the rope to straighten it, then pay the rope out again so by this means it might go up until it could no longer be seen, if only the rope were long enough.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Taken from the first of these, but a very similar translation available at the second:&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog. “Manned Kite Flight in Medieval China,” May 12, 2011. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&quot;&amp;gt;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Technology and Culture&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, most of these hot air balloons were still lower than the gunpowder explosion and perhaps kites. Nonetheless, there are enough records from around this time, that we begin our search for discontinuities here.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + In October 1957, at least one centimeter-sized pellet was apparently launched into solar orbit, using shaped charges and a rocket. As far as we know, this was the first time an object escaped Earth’s gravity to orbit the sun.((For instance, Fritz Zwicky, the scientist responsible, writes in an article called, &quot;The first shots into interplanetary space&quot;, that &quot;Small man-made projectiles were launched away from the earth for the first time, never to return.&quot; We think he means that this was the first time anything was launched away from the Earth, never to return, rather than just the record for &#039;shots&#039; or &#039;small man-made projectiles&#039;.\\ + \\ + Zwicky, Fritz. &quot;The First Shots Into Interplanetary Space.&quot; //Engineering and Science// 21 (January 1, 1958): 20–23.)) This episode does not appear to be mentioned often, but we haven’t found anyone disputing its being the first time a man-made object entered solar orbit, or offering an alternate object + Because the pellets launched were just pellets, with no sophisticated monitoring equipment, it is harder to know what orbit they ended up in, and therefore exactly how long it took to reach their furthest distance from Earth, or what it was. Based on their speed and direction, we estimate they should still have been moving at around 10km/s as they escaped Earth’s gravity. Within a day we estimate that they should have traveled more than six hundred times further away than anything earlier that we know of. Then conservatively they should have reached the other side of the sun, at a distance from it comparable to that of Earth, in around 1.5 years. However this is all quite uncertain. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The first time that humanity sent any object clearly higher than ancient kites or explosion debris was December 1783, when the first hydrogen balloon flight ascended to 2,700m. This was not much more than we (very roughly) estimate that those earlier objects traveled. However the hot air balloon trend continued its steep incline, and in 1784 a balloon reached 4000m, which is over a thousand years of discontinuity given our estimates (if we estimated the rate of progress as an order of magnitude higher or lower, the discontinuity would remain large, so the uncertainties involved are not critical.)&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + At around this time, reaching maximum altitudes goes from taking on the order of days to on the order of years. As discussed at the start of section &#039;Altitude of objects attained by manmade means&#039; above, from here on we record new altitudes every year or so for objects traveling at increasing altitudes over more than a year. + In the years between 1959 and 1973, various objects entered heliocentric orbit.((Wikipedia [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;oldid=927304642|lists them]]. \\ + \\ + &quot;List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, November 21, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit]].)) It is possible that some of them reached greater altitudes than the pellets, via being in different orbits around the sun. Calculating records here is difficult, because reaching maximal distance from Earth takes years,((For instance, we roughly estimate that Luna 1 took five years to reach its maximum distance from Earth.)) and how far an object is from Earth at any time depends on how their (eccentric) orbits relate to Earth’s, in 3D space. Often, the relevant information isn’t available. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The next hot air balloon that we have records for ascended nearly twice as high—7280m—in 1803, representing another over a thousand years of discontinuity. We did not thoroughly search for records between these times. However if that progress actually accrued incrementally over the twenty years between these records, then still every year would have seen an extra 85 years of progress at the previous rate, so there must have been at least one year that saw at least that much progress, and it seems likely that in fact at least one year saw over a hundred years of progress. Thus there was very likely a large discontinuity at that time, regardless of the trend between 1784 and 1803.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Among artificial objects in heliocentric orbit listed by Wikipedia((Though known to not be complete: &quot;This list does not include objects that are escaping from the Solar System, upper stages from robotic missions (only the S-IVB upper stages from Apollo missions with astronauts are listed), or objects in the Sun–Earth Lagrange points.&quot;\\ + \\ + &quot;List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.&quot; In //Wikipedia//, November 21, 2019. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;oldid=927304642|https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;oldid=927304642]].)) none are listed as having orbits where they travel more than 1.6 times further from the Sun than Earth does,(([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_3|Zond 3]] was the furthest we found.)) though many are missing such data. This is probably less far than the pellets, though further away than our conservative estimate for the pellets. For an object to reach this maximal distance from the Earth, it would need to be at this furthest part of its orbit, while being on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, on the same plane as Earth. + Given all of this, it seems implausible that anything went ten times as far from the Sun as Earth by 1960, but even this would not have represented a discontinuity of even ten years. Given this and the difficulty of calculating records, we haven’t investigated this period of solar orbiters thoroughly. - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record&quot;&gt;Flight altitude record&lt;/a&gt; page, which claims to cover ‘highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning’.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1087&quot; title=&#039;Such records were previously found to contain numerous discrepancies with different sources, so it seems likely that there are still some errors, however the known past errors were within ten percent, so this seems unlikely to be an important issue. See examples of discrepancies at “Talk:Flight Altitude Record.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, February 28, 2018. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;amp;oldid=828133827&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;amp;oldid=828133827&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It is not entirely clear to us what ‘aeronautical flights’ covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. The list includes some unmanned balloons, but it isn’t clear whether they are claiming to cover all of them. They also include two cannon projectiles, but not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22&quot;&gt;38 cm SK L/45 “Max”&lt;/a&gt;, which appears to be a record relative to anything they have, and cannon projectiles are probably not ‘flights’, so we think they are not claiming to have exhaustively covered those. Thus between the late 1700s, and the first flights beyond the atmosphere, the main things this data seems likely to be missing is military projectiles, and any other non-flight atmospheric-level objects.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + In 1973 Pioneer 10 became the first of five space probes to begin a journey outside the solar system. In 1998 it was overtaken by Voyager 1. We know that no other probes were the furthest object during that time, however have not checked whether various other objects exiting the solar system (largely [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System#Propulsion_stages|stages of multi-stage rockets that launched the aforementioned probes]]) might have gone further. - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We searched separately for military projectiles during this period. Wikipedia claims, without citation, that the 1918 Paris gun represented the greatest height reached by a human-made projectile until the first successful V-2 flight test in October 1942&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The gun was capable of firing a 106-kilogram (234&amp;amp;nbsp;lb)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;:120&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;shell to a range of 130 kilometers (81&amp;amp;nbsp;mi) and a maximum altitude of 42.3 kilometers (26.3&amp;amp;nbsp;mi)&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;:120&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;—the greatest height reached by a human-made&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile&quot;&amp;gt;projectile&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;until the first successful&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&amp;gt;V-2&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;flight test in October 1942.&amp;amp;#8221;“Paris Gun.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, August 19, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, which matches what we could find. We searched for military records prior to the Paris gun, and found only one other, “Max” mentioned above, a 38cm German naval gun from 1914.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We expect there are no much higher military records we are missing during this time but that we could easily have missed some similar ones. As shown in Figure 1, the trend of military records we are aware of is fairly linear, and that line is substantially below the balloon record trend until around 1900. So it would be surprising if there were earlier military records that beat balloon records, and less surprising if we were missing something between 1900 and 1918. It seems unlikely however that we could have missed enough data that the Paris Gun did not represent at least a moderate discontinuity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1087&quot; title=&quot;The Paris Gun was a 227 year discontinuity according to our calculations below, so had there been incremental progress over the four years since the previous record (assuming that was the same), each year would still have seen over fifty years of surprising progress (at least ignoring readjustment of expectations after seeing this twice in a row). Nonetheless, it is possible that there was enough incremental progress between 1893 and 1918 that we did not find that the Paris Gun is not a substantial discontinuity. It seems fairly unlikely to us that we would not have found any of it.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We could not think of other types of objects that might have gone higher than aeronautical flights and military projectiles between the record 1803 balloon and V-2 rockets reaching ‘the edge of space’ from 1942. Thus the data in this period seems likely to be relatively complete, or primarily missing less important military projectiles.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The German V-2 rockets are considered the first man-made objects to travel to space (though the modern definition of space is higher)&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The V-2 rocket also became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line&quot;&amp;gt;Kármán line&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;with the vertical launch of&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014&quot;&amp;gt;MW 18014&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;on 20 June 1944.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#cite_note-5&quot;&amp;gt;[5]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; “V-2 Rocket.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 15, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;amp;oldid=926267063&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;amp;oldid=926267063&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; so they are presumably the highest thing at that time (1942). They are also considered the first projectile record since the Paris gun, supporting this. Wikipedia has an extensive &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;list of V-2 test launches&lt;/a&gt; and their outcomes, from which we infer than three of them represent altitude records.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1087&quot; title=&quot;A fairly early one was fired undesirably steeply, and so became the first rocket to reach space, as defined at the time. Thus it is less surprising that so few were records.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The two gun records we know of were both German WWI guns, and the V2 rockets that followed were German WWII weapons, apparently developed in an attempt to replace the Paris Gun when it was banned under the Versailles Treaty.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as a replacement for the Paris Gun—which was specifically banned under the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_Treaty&quot;&amp;gt;Versailles Treaty&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. This work would eventually led to the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&amp;gt;V-2 rocket&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that was used in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&amp;gt;World War II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; “Paris Gun.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, August 19, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;amp;oldid=911481367&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; So all altitude records between the balloons of the 1800s and the space rockets of the 50s appear to be German military efforts.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Between the last record V-2 rocket in 1946 and 1957, we found a series of rockets that traveled to increasing altitudes. We are not confident that there were no other record rocket altitudes in this time. However the rockets we know of appear to have been important ones, so it seems unlikely that other rockets at the time were radically more powerful, and there does not appear to have been surprising progress over that entire period considered together, so there could not have been much surprising progress in any particular year of it, unless the final record should be substantially higher than we think. We are quite unsure about the final record (the R-7 Semyorka), however it doesn’t seem as though it could have gone higher than 3000km, which would only add a further four years of surprising progress to be distributed in the period.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In October 1957, at least one centimeter-sized pellet was apparently launched into solar orbit, using shaped charges and a rocket. As far as we know, this was the first time an object escaped Earth’s gravity to orbit the sun.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1087&quot; title=&quot;For instance, Fritz Zwicky, the scientist responsible, writes in an article called, &amp;amp;#8220;The first shots into interplanetary space&amp;amp;#8221;, that &amp;amp;#8220;Small man-made projectiles were launched away from the earth for the first time, never to return.&amp;amp;#8221; We think he means that this was the first time anything was launched away from the Earth, never to return, rather than just the record for &amp;amp;#8216;shots&amp;amp;#8217; or &amp;amp;#8216;small man-made projectiles&amp;amp;#8217;.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; Zwicky, Fritz. “The First Shots Into Interplanetary Space.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Engineering and Science&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 21 (January 1, 1958): 20–23. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This episode does not appear to be mentioned often, but we haven’t found anyone disputing its being the first time a man-made object entered solar orbit, or offering an alternate object.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Because the pellets launched were just pellets, with no sophisticated monitoring equipment, it is harder to know what orbit they ended up in, and therefore exactly how long it took to reach their furthest distance from Earth, or what it was. Based on their speed and direction, we estimate they should still have been moving at around 10km/s as they escaped Earth’s gravity. Within a day we estimate that they should have traveled more than six hundred times further away than anything earlier that we know of. Then conservatively they should have reached the other side of the sun, at a distance from it comparable to that of Earth, in around 1.5 years. However this is all quite uncertain.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;At around this time, reaching maximum altitudes goes from taking on the order of days to on the order of years. As discussed at the start of section ‘Altitude of objects attained by manmade means’ above, from here on we record new altitudes every year or so for objects traveling at increasing altitudes over more than a year.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In the years between 1959 and 1973, various objects entered heliocentric orbit.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1087&quot; title=&#039;Wikipedia &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&amp;gt;lists them&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; “List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 21, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It is possible that some of them reached greater altitudes than the pellets, via being in different orbits around the sun. Calculating records here is difficult, because reaching maximal distance from Earth takes years,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1087&quot; title=&quot;For instance, we roughly estimate that Luna 1 took five years to reach its maximum distance from Earth.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and how far an object is from Earth at any time depends on how their (eccentric) orbits relate to Earth’s, in 3D space. Often, the relevant information isn’t available.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Among artificial objects in heliocentric orbit listed by Wikipedia&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1087&quot; title=&#039;Though known to not be complete: &amp;amp;#8220;This list does not include objects that are escaping from the Solar System, upper stages from robotic missions (only the S-IVB upper stages from Apollo missions with astronauts are listed), or objects in the Sun–Earth Lagrange points.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 21, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;amp;oldid=927304642&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; none are listed as having orbits where they travel more than 1.6 times further from the Sun than Earth does&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1087&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_3&quot;&amp;gt;Zond 3&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; was the furthest we found.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, though many are missing such data. This is probably less far than the pellets, though further away than our conservative estimate for the pellets. For an object to reach this maximal distance from the Earth, it would need to be at this furthest part of its orbit, while being on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, on the same plane as Earth.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Given all of this, it seems implausible that anything went ten times as far from the Sun as Earth by 1960, but even this would not have represented a discontinuity of even ten years. Given this and the difficulty of calculating records, we haven’t investigated this period of solar orbiters thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In 1973 Pioneer 10 became the first of five space probes to begin a journey outside the solar system. In 1998 it was overtaken by Voyager 1. We know that no other probes were the furthest object during that time, however have not checked whether various other objects exiting the solar system (largely &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System#Propulsion_stages&quot;&gt;stages of multi-stage rockets that launched the aforementioned probes&lt;/a&gt;) might have gone further.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 shows all of the altitude data we collected, including entries that turned out not to be records. Figures 2 and 3 show the best current altitude record over time.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + Figure 1 shows all of the altitude data we collected, including entries that turned out not to be records. Figures 2 and 3 show the best current altitude record over time. &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; @@ -279,192 +159,35 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity measurement == + === Discontinuity measurement === - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;For measuring discontinuities, we treat the past trend at a given point as linear or exponential and as starting from earlier or later dates depending on what fits well at that time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1087&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details. The trends are colored differently in column D of &amp;amp;#8216;calculations&amp;amp;#8217; tab in the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=1042011506&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Relative to these previous rates, this altitude trend contains six discontinuities of greater than ten years, with four of them being greater than 100 years:&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1087&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Calculations&amp;amp;#8217; for the calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + For measuring discontinuities, we treat the past trend at a given point as linear or exponential and as starting from earlier or later dates depending on what fits well at that time.((See [[https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting|our methodology page]] for more details. The trends are colored differently in column D of &#039;Calculations&#039; tab in the [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=1042011506|spreadsheet]].)) Relative to these previous rates, this altitude trend contains six discontinuities of greater than ten years, with four of them being greater than 100 years:((See [[https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement|our methodology page]] for more details, and [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing|our spreadsheet]], tab &#039;Calculations&#039; for the calculation.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; - &lt;table&gt; - &lt;tbody&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Height (m)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity (years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Entity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1784&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;4000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1032&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1803&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;7280&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1693&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Balloon&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1918&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;42,300&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;227&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&gt;Paris gun&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1942&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;85,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;120&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1944&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;174,600&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;11&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches&quot;&gt;V-2 Rocket&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;tr&gt; - &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;864,000,000&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;35&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;Pellets (after one day)&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;/tr&gt; - &lt;/tbody&gt; - &lt;/table&gt; - &lt;/figure&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ^ Year ^ Height (m) ^ Discontinuity (years) ^ Entity ^ + | 1784 | 4000 | 1032 | Balloon | + | 1803 | 7280 | 1693 | Balloon | + | 1918 | 42,300 | 227 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun|Paris gun]] | + | 1942 | 85,000 | 120 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1944 | 174,600 | 11 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_V-2_test_launches|V-2 Rocket]] | + | 1957 | 864,000,000 | 35 | Pellets (after one day) | - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;The 1957 pellets would be a 66 year discontinuity if we counted all of their ultimate estimated altitude as one jump on the day after their launch, so exactly how one decides to treat altitudes that grow over years is unlikely to prevent these pellets representing a discontinuity of between ten and a hundred years.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + The 1957 pellets would be a 66 year discontinuity if we counted all of their ultimate estimated altitude as one jump on the day after their launch, so exactly how one decides to treat altitudes that grow over years is unlikely to prevent these pellets representing a discontinuity of between ten and a hundred years. + In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing|here]].((See [[https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data|our methodology page]] for more details.)) - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1087&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + //Primary authors: Katja Grace, Rick Korzekwa// - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Primary authors: Katja Grace, Rick Korzekwa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + //Thanks to Stephen Jordan and others for suggesting a potential discontinuity in altitude records.// - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Stephen Jordan and others for suggesting a potential discontinuity in altitude records.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; + ====== Notes ====== - ===== Notes ===== - - - &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&quot;&gt;Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi&lt;/a&gt; was reported to travel over 3km while losing 77m of altitude between a tower and a square in 1632. - &lt;p&gt;See ‘site details’, “Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, September 25, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;oldid=917757610&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi&amp;amp;oldid=917757610&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The earliest fictional account of a parachute type of device was made some 4,000 years ago when the Chinese noticed that air resistance would slow a person’s fall from a height.”&lt;br/&gt; - &lt;br/&gt; - “Parachute.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 21, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;oldid=927299715&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parachute&amp;amp;oldid=927299715&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;As an object passes a previous record, first it is equal to it, then it moves continually past and onwards.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;In many trends, if the full benefits of an innovation are not manifest until later, it is hard to connect it to that innovation, since further innovations are made, and contribute to ongoing progress. However with altitude, once an object is flying away from the Earth, further innovation in rocket design on Earth will not affect it, so we can measure this.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, the earliest objects we found that probably traveled as far away as the sun were small pellets fired into the sky for this purpose, which we did not immediately think to search for, and might easily have missed if we had only considered space probes&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Recent research demonstrates that the bonds of kinship will not keep a chimp from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/05/stone-throwing-chimp-back-and-time-its-personal&quot;&gt;piling up stones and hurling them at zoo visitors&lt;/a&gt; if they get too close. A new study of wild chimps at four sites in West Africa now shows that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22219&quot;&gt;they also like to throw stones at trees&lt;/a&gt;.” - &lt;p&gt;BalterFeb. 29, Michael, 2016, and 5:00 Am. “Why Do Some Chimps Throw Rocks at Trees?” Science | AAAS, February 26, 2016. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&quot;&gt;https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-do-some-chimps-throw-rocks-trees&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See examples of early flying attempts &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Primitive_beginnings&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation#First_person_to_fly&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;If we did not want to include unintentional object launches, this explosion does still suggest that intentionally launching debris that far using gunpowder was possible at the time, though it is unclear to us whether it was possible to do in a more controlled fashion, such that it might have been useful to anyone, and therefore for this possibility to imply much about what happened.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Stephanie Hall discusses some evidence that they were around by 1200 BC, &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/03/kites-rise-on-the-wind/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See spreadsheet for more detailed reasoning as well as citations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Though unmanned hot air propelled vessels are older: sky lanterns appear to have existed for thousands of years, and we saw one claim that hot-air &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat&quot;&gt;aerostats&lt;/a&gt; existed in the 9th Century (which may just mean more sky lanterns, except that that wouldn’t make sense in context because sky lanterns are older.) ‘…the Middle Ages from the ninth century at least were familiar with hot-air aerostats used as military signals’ - &lt;p&gt;White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &lt;em&gt;Technology and Culture&lt;/em&gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&lt;/a&gt;. p98&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Though perhaps in the convenience, reliability and safety of it before the height of it—Marco Polo describes observing a man-carrying kite that ‘might go up until it may no longer be seen’ by 1295. - &lt;p&gt;Translation from Latin, found in only two manuscripts of Marco Polo’s work, but considered likely to be genuine: “The men of the ship will have wicker framework, that is a grate of switches, and to each corner and side of that framework will be tied a cord, so that there are eight cords and all of these are tied at the other end to a long rope. Next they will find some fool or drunkard and lash him to the frame, since no one in his right mind or with his wits about him would expose himself to that peril. This is done when the wind is high, then they raise the framework into the teeth of the wind and the wind lifts up the framework and carries it aloft, and the men hold it by the long rope. If the kite tips the men on the ground haul on the rope to straighten it, then pay the rope out again so by this means it might go up until it could no longer be seen, if only the rope were long enough.”&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Taken from the first of these, but a very similar translation available at the second:&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog. “Manned Kite Flight in Medieval China,” May 12, 2011. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&quot;&gt;http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/05/13/manned-kite-flight-in-medieval-china/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;p&gt;White, Lynn. “Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition.” &lt;em&gt;Technology and Culture&lt;/em&gt; 2, no. 2 (1961): 97–111. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.2307/3101411&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Such records were previously found to contain numerous discrepancies with different sources, so it seems likely that there are still some errors, however the known past errors were within ten percent, so this seems unlikely to be an important issue. See examples of discrepancies at “Talk:Flight Altitude Record.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, February 28, 2018. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;oldid=828133827&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Flight_altitude_record&amp;amp;oldid=828133827&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The gun was capable of firing a 106-kilogram (234 lb)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;:120&lt;/sup&gt; shell to a range of 130 kilometers (81 mi) and a maximum altitude of 42.3 kilometers (26.3 mi)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun#cite_note-bull-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;:120&lt;/sup&gt;—the greatest height reached by a human-made &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile&quot;&gt;projectile&lt;/a&gt; until the first successful &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&gt;V-2&lt;/a&gt; flight test in October 1942.”“Paris Gun.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, August 19, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The Paris Gun was a 227 year discontinuity according to our calculations below, so had there been incremental progress over the four years since the previous record (assuming that was the same), each year would still have seen over fifty years of surprising progress (at least ignoring readjustment of expectations after seeing this twice in a row). Nonetheless, it is possible that there was enough incremental progress between 1893 and 1918 that we did not find that the Paris Gun is not a substantial discontinuity. It seems fairly unlikely to us that we would not have found any of it.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The V-2 rocket also became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line&quot;&gt;Kármán line&lt;/a&gt; with the vertical launch of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014&quot;&gt;MW 18014&lt;/a&gt; on 20 June 1944.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket#cite_note-5&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;“ - &lt;p&gt;“V-2 Rocket.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 15, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;oldid=926267063&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=V-2_rocket&amp;amp;oldid=926267063&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;A fairly early one was fired undesirably steeply, and so became the first rocket to reach space, as defined at the time. Thus it is less surprising that so few were records.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as a replacement for the Paris Gun—which was specifically banned under the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_Treaty&quot;&gt;Versailles Treaty&lt;/a&gt;. This work would eventually led to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket&quot;&gt;V-2 rocket&lt;/a&gt; that was used in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II&quot;&gt;World War II&lt;/a&gt;.” – &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; “Paris Gun.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, August 19, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris_Gun&amp;amp;oldid=911481367&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, Fritz Zwicky, the scientist responsible, writes in an article called, “The first shots into interplanetary space”, that “Small man-made projectiles were launched away from the earth for the first time, never to return.” We think he means that this was the first time anything was launched away from the Earth, never to return, rather than just the record for ‘shots’ or ‘small man-made projectiles’. - &lt;p&gt;Zwicky, Fritz. “The First Shots Into Interplanetary Space.” &lt;em&gt;Engineering and Science&lt;/em&gt; 21 (January 1, 1958): 20–23. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&gt;lists them&lt;/a&gt;. - &lt;p&gt;“List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 21, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, we roughly estimate that Luna 1 took five years to reach its maximum distance from Earth.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Though known to not be complete: “This list does not include objects that are escaping from the Solar System, upper stages from robotic missions (only the S-IVB upper stages from Apollo missions with astronauts are listed), or objects in the Sun–Earth Lagrange points.”&lt;br/&gt; - &lt;br/&gt; - “List of Artificial Objects in Heliocentric Orbit.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 21, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_artificial_objects_in_heliocentric_orbit&amp;amp;oldid=927304642&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_3&quot;&gt;Zond 3&lt;/a&gt; was the furthest we found.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details. The trends are colored differently in column D of ‘calculations’ tab in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit#gid=1042011506&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YDhaYQNNEGyBqpQGTd1D8vG1W8WCc6DXZtb8jYn2Gho/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, tab ‘Calculations’ for the calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1087&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; - &lt;/ol&gt; - &lt;/HTML&gt; </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_book_production?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,422 @@ + ====== Historic trends in book production ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 28 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The number of books produced in the previous hundred years, sampled every hundred or fifty years between 600AD to 1800AD contains five greater than 10-year discontinuities, four of them greater than 100 years. The last two follow the invention of the printing press in 1492.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The real price of books dropped precipitously following the invention of the printing press, but the longer term trend is sufficiently ambiguous that this may not represent a substantial discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The rate of progress of book production changed shortly after the invention of the printing press, from a doubling time of 104 years to 43 years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Around 1439, Johannes Gutenburg invented a machine for making books commonly referred to as “the printing press”. The printing press was used to quickly copy pre-created sheets of letters of ink onto a print medium.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1414&quot; title=&quot;“Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (/ˈɡuːtənbɜːrɡ/;[1] c. 1400 &amp;amp;nbsp;– February 3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with the printing press. [&amp;amp;#8230;] Gutenberg in 1439 was the first European to use movable type. Among his many contributions to printing are: the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system that allowed the mass production of printed books and was economically viable for printers and readers alike.” &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Johannes Gutenberg&amp;amp;#8221;. 2018.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 28 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johannes_Gutenberg&amp;amp;amp;oldid=895246592&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Presses that stamped paper with carved blocks of wood covered in ink were already being used in Europe,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1414&quot; title=&quot;“Printing in East Asia had been prevalent since the Tang dynasty, and in Europe, woodblock printing based on existing screw presses was common by the 14th century.” &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Printing Press&amp;amp;#8221;. 2015.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;amp;oldid=899397867&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; but Gutenburg made several major improvements on existing methods, notably creating the hand mould, a device which allowed for quickly creating sheets of inked letters rather than carving them out of wood. The printing press allowed for the quick and cheap production of printed books like never before.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1414&quot; title=&quot;“Gutenberg&amp;amp;#8217;s most important innovation was the development of hand-molded metal printing matrices, thus producing a movable type-based printing press system. His newly devised hand mould made possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. Movable type had been hitherto unknown in Europe. In Europe, the two inventions, the hand mould and the printing press, together drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents, particularly in short print runs.” &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Printing Press&amp;amp;#8221;. 2015. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;amp;oldid=899397867&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;751&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/c1B3ujkl1rRTkCdJ67--g36Ud37RJVLZQKzJ96Ldj6w1B-dz3XxwxcQmaqiSaNbH7xHllvNeRc4uSQfLEiJAk8RZrT49DkOwiOT_njErP_YdkuzgWj7PpGfbEWN0WjMsohsbZzWP&quot; width=&quot;597&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Replica of the Gutenberg Printing Press&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PrintMus_038.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;vlasta2 [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We looked primarily at two different metrics– the rate of book production in Western Europe and the real price of books in England. We chose these two because they were some of the only printing-related data sources which had data that went back several centuries before the invention of the printing press.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Had the data been available, we would like to have looked at some metric correlated clearly with innovations in the writing / printing process — e.g. the number of pages produced per worker per hour. Then we could check whether the printing press represented a discontinuity relative to earlier innovations (e.g., the pecia system for hand-copying manuscripts).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1414&quot; title=&#039;“Moreover, thanks to other innovations in the high Middle Ages (in particular, the substitution of paper for parchment, but also the spread of more efficient ways of hand copying manuscripts, such as the pecia system) and the fifteenth century (the printing press), the price of books was greatly reduced, providing additional impulse to the growth process.” &amp;amp;#8211; Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 425.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, neither the rate of book production nor the price of book data we have correlate well with innovations in the writing / printing process. The authors of our rate of book production data claim that most of the variation in the pre-printing press numbers is explained by factors which are not innovation or close proxies to innovation.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1414&quot; title=&#039;“If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for&amp;amp;#8211; universities, monasteries, and urbanization&amp;amp;#8211; together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 431.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our data on the price of books is similarly unhelpful, as the early price data is too sparse to be meaningful.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the two metrics described above, we looked cursorily at a few metrics with no early data which changed drastically as a result of the printing press– the number of unique titles printed per year, the variation of genres in books, the price of books in the Netherlands, and the total consumption of books.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Rate of book production in Western Europe === + + + == Data collection == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our data for the rate of book production come from estimates of Europe-only production generated in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800.pdf&quot;&gt;2009 paper by historians Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten Van Zanden&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1414&quot; title=&#039;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Rate data is represented as the number of books produced in the previous 100 years at various points in time.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;When we use the term &lt;em&gt;book&lt;/em&gt;, we mean it to refer to any copy of a written work, whether hand-copied manually or produced via some kind of printing technique. The paper separates book production into estimates of &lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;printed book&lt;/em&gt; production, where the production of &lt;em&gt;printed books&lt;/em&gt; starts only after the printing press is invented. We will also use the terms &lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;printed book&lt;/em&gt; to talk about the data, but it’s unclear to us if the paper means &lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt; to mean “any book not made using a Gutenburg-era printing press” or “any book transcribed by hand”. At one point the authors sum these two estimates into a single graph of production per capita,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1414&quot; title=&#039;See Figure 2 in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this paper&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; which sources data from manuscript and printed book estimates in Tables 3 and 4. &amp;amp;#8211; Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; suggesting that the combination of manuscript and printed book data should cover all books.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The paper’s estimates for manuscript production are constructed by taking an existing sample of manuscripts and then attempting to correct for its geographical and temporal biases.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;As a result of these four inclusion criteria we may expect temporal and spatial skewness to arise in the global database as a consequence of unavoidable publication and selection biases. Nevertheless, numerically such skewness can be overcome by specific correction and standardization steps, as we will demonstrate later.” Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Estimates for book production are constructed by counting new titles in library catalogues and multiplying by estimates for average prints per title at a given time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1414&quot; title=&#039;“We estimate the number of titles or editions that appeared in Western Europe between 1454 and 1800, multiplied by rather crude (and probably relatively low) estimates of the average size of print runs … The most important sources for counting new titles are library catalogues and national and international datasets which are based on these catalogues and present inventories of editions published in different countries and/or languages (the ‘short title catalogues’), most of which are available on-line.”&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The estimates of manuscript production seem extremely non-robust given that large number of correction factors applied.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1414&quot; title=&#039;See tables I-3 through I-6 of Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The estimates of book production seem somewhat more robust, but should be taken as a lower bound as the authors did not correct for lost books and have estimated the average number of prints per title conservatively.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1414&quot; title=&#039;“For a number of reasons our figures should be interpreted as lower-bound estimates: we do not correct for the (many?) books of which all traces have been lost, nor for the fact that at the book fairs only part of the production was presented. Series publications are not included either. The estimates of print runs are also conservative: we follow the literature that average sizes of editions between the 1450s and 1500 probably increased from 100 to 500 (the print run of the Gutenberg bible was 200); there is ample evidence that this increase continued after 500, but at a slower pace. We tentatively estimate that it went up to 1,000 in 1800, again a quite conservative estimate (print runs of mass produced books, such as bibles, prayer books and primary school books increased to more than hundred thousand in some cases).”&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1a displays the raw data for rate of book production on a log scale, taken from the data in the paper described above and compiled in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Each data point represents the total number of books produced in the previous 100 years.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2065&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BookProduction-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1a: Book production in Western Europe + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1b displays the same data as Figure 1a along with our interpretation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Looking at the data, we assume an exponential trend up until 1500, and another one after that.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The blue line is the average log rate of the rate of book production before the invention of the printing press (just manuscripts); the red line is the average log rate of the rate of book production after the invention of the printing press (manuscripts + printed books).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;348&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ps7yXfrxNK4WpzwFgLGkOK3B9pwhP231Y5XqEJ0BSKkezfzee_o0cmt0iAe0bxENlQLYhfDb9cyyr8kHW8Lg1X6rTvCuHlsuC3KBSZZL5jdA6bbJkf2unEU-u-XWSe26511Qos4R&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1b: Rate of book production in Western Europe. Blue and red lines are the average log rates of the rate of book production before and after the printing press. Grey points are projections of the average log rate before the printing press. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Grey points shown after 1500 reflect projected manuscript and therefore book production had the printing press not been invented. In practice, the actual number of manuscripts produced after 1500 were very small and not presented in the data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we just look at the trend of book production per past 100 years, measured once every 100 years before 1500, and then once every 50 years afterwards, we can calculate discontinuities of sizes 161 years in 900, 134 years in 1200, 23 years in 1300, 180 years in 1500, and 138 years in 1550.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit#gid=1417825149&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;In addition to the sizes of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;. See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This is obviously a strange kind of trend–a discontinuity of one hundred years in a metric with datapoints every hundred years might mean nothing perceptible at the one-year scale. So in particular, these discontinuities do not tell us much about whether there would be discontinuities in a more natural metric, such as annual book production.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the speed of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There was a marked change in progress in the rate of book production with the invention of the printing press, corresponding to a change in the doubling time of the rate of book production from 104 years to 43 years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and the relevant cells in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for the calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Interpreting this rate of change on the graph, before the invention of the printing press, the total rate of book production, which consists entirely of manuscripts, follows the exponential line shown in blue. The invention of the printing press in 1439 allows for mass production of printed books, causing the rate of book production to veer sharply off the existing exponential line, shown as the first point in red. Note that our underlying data sources are non-robust, particularly for manuscript data pre-printing press, so the magnitude of this change in rate of progress may be under or overstated.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The change in the doubling time of the rate of book production caused by the printing press may reflect a large change in the factors that drove book production.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In their paper, Buringh and Van Zanden note that in the Middle Ages, 60% of the variation in book production is explained by the number of universities, the number of monasteries, and urbanization.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1414&quot; title=&#039; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 “If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for&amp;amp;#8211; universities, monasteries, and urbanization&amp;amp;#8211; together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).”&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; They produce the following graph, correlating monastery numbers and early book production:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1471&quot; height=&quot;413&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screenshot-from-2019-04-19-15-39-47.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Buringh and Van Zanden’s figure of the relationship between book production and monestaries + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;By contrast, after the printing press was invented, Buringh and Van Zanden attribute a much more important role to individual book consumption and the forces of the market:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;How to explain the significant increase in book production and consumption in the centuries following the invention of moveable type printing in the 1450s? The effect of the new technology (and import technological changes in the production of paper) was that from the 1470s on, book prices declined very rapidly. This had number of effects: consumption per literate individual increased, but it also became more desirable and less costly to become literate. Moreover, economies of scale in the printing industry led to further price reductions stimulating even more growth in book consumption.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;It seems plausible that the move between exponential curves caused by the printing press was a shift from an exponential curve that reflected the growth of monasteries, universities, and cities to an exponential curve that reflected the growth of a complicated set of market forces.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Real price of books in England === + + + == Data collection == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf&quot;&gt;a 2004 paper written by economic historian Gregory Clark&lt;/a&gt;, who took data from historic records of price quotes,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1414&quot; title=&#039;“The price history of pre-industrial England is uniquely well documented. England achieved substantial political stability by 1066. There was little of the internal strife that proved so destructive of documentary history in other countries. Also England’s island position and relative military success protected it from foreign invasion, except for the depredations of the Scots in the border counties. England further witnessed the early development of markets and monetary exchange. In particular when reports of private purchases begin in 1208-9 the markets for goods were clearly well established. A large number of documents with such prices survive in the records of churches, monasteries, colleges, charities, and government.” From&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Clark, Gregory. &amp;amp;#8220;Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.&amp;amp;#8221; 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&amp;gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; though data before 1450 is based on just 32 total price quotes, and Clark notes that “the prices vary a lot by decade since it is hard to control for the quality and size of the manuscript.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Unfortunately observations on book prices before 1450 are limited: I found only 32 price quotes for these years. And the prices vary a lot by decade since it is hard to control for the quality and size of the manuscript. Even though the scale goes up to 4000%, many of the decadal averages of prices before 1450 cannot be shown.&amp;amp;#8221; From &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Clark, Gregory. &amp;amp;#8220;Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.&amp;amp;#8221; 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&amp;gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; As such, we should not take much meaning out of the individual data points before 1450 or interpret the period between 1360 and 1500 as a rising trend.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Clark’s paper reports an index of the nominal price of books in Table 9 of his paper. To instead get an index of the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; price of books,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1414&quot; title=&#039;We prefer real prices rather than nominal ones because we want to exclude the effects of inflation in our data. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_(economics)&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;See here&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for a fuller explanation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; we divided each nominal price by Clark’s reported “cost of living” for each year (x 100), which was the amount of money paid by a relatively prosperous consumer for the same bundle of goods every year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ur7KC971u2hUhV-FEYFVhnKvFtyT72Ow5XLjA5ermr4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;for the adjustment calculation. This data with this adjustment was originally made and charted by Timothy C. Irwin: Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&amp;gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 3 is a graph of (an index of) the real price of books in England, generated from the data described above and compiled in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ur7KC971u2hUhV-FEYFVhnKvFtyT72Ow5XLjA5ermr4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Each point represents the amount of money in each year needed to buy some bundle of books assuming you would pay 100 for that same bundle of books in 1860.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Economist Timothy Irwin, looking at this same dataset, claims that the drop in price around 1350 was due to knowledge about paper-making finally making its way to England: “As time passed, improvements in technology and the gradual spread of literacy reduced these obstacles to effective transparency. In particular, the diffusion of knowledge about paper-making (from around 1150) and then printing (from around 1450) dramatically reduced the price of books. (See Figure 1 for an estimate of the decline in England).”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1414&quot; title=&#039;Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&amp;gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;‘Figure 1’ in the quote above refers to a graph of the real price of books that uses the same data source and is identical to the one we generated. His claim seems plausible, but we are not confident about it given how sparse and noisy the early data is and given our lack of precise date information on how paper-making spread in England.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The graph contains two major drops– one as a result of the printing press, and one claimed to be the result of paper replacing parchment in England. Looking at just the set of blue data points between these two drops, we can see that they are clustered around some range of values. The data in this range is too noisy and sparse&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;#data-collection&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Data collection&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;above.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; to generate a meaningful rate of progress, but it seems clear that for a wide variety of plausible rates, the printing press represented a discontinuity in the real price of books when compared to the trend in book prices after the spread of paper-making.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However, if you take the past trend to include the price of books before paper-making, then there is no clear discontinuity– the price of printed books could be part of an existing trend of dropping prices that started with paper-making. We also believe the data here is too poor to draw firm conclusions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2066&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/RealPrice-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Real price of books in England. All prices are relative to a book in 1860 costing 100, so a real price of 1800 would be 18x as expensive as a book in 1860. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Whether or not it counts as a substantial discontinuity relative to the longer term trend, the printing press produced a sharp drop in the real price of books. This was because their price was largely driven by labor costs, which went down sharply (one author estimates by a factor of 341) when a laborer could use a machine to print massive numbers of books rather than manually transcribing each copy.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The increased demand of books was driven by a huge decrease in the price of books. The smaller price was possible by the increased efficiency in the production of books since the invention of the printing press around 1440. Clark (2008) measures the subsequent productivity increase as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book and finds a 20-fold increase in productivity in the first 200 years after the invention, [&amp;amp;#8230;] Productivity is measured as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book of standard characteristics. Clark notes that &amp;amp;#8216;with both hand production and the printing press the main cost in book production was labor (paper and parchment production costs were mainly labor costs).&amp;amp;#8217; Clark (2008) notes that copyists before the time of the printing press were able to copy 3,000 words of plain text per day. This implies that the production of one copy of the Bible meant 136 days of work. Eisenstein&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#note-5&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;5&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato&amp;amp;#8217;s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Other noteworthy metrics === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Many historians associate the invention of the printing press with other unsurprising book-related changes in the world, including:&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1414&quot; title=&#039;The following points and summary all come from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;Our World in Data &amp;amp;#8212; Books&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, but they reference a variety of outside data sources. Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;An increase in the productivity of book production, i.e. the ratio between the wage of a copy producer and the price of a standard book. In particular, one estimate measures a 20-fold increase in the productivity in the first 200 years after the invention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1414&quot; title=&#039;See this graph, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/1_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___roduction_in_england__1470s___1860s_-_clark-png.png&quot;&amp;gt;Productivity in book production in England, 1470s-1960s &amp;amp;#8211; Clark (2008)&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; originally found in Clark, Gregory.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&amp;gt;A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Vancouver: Crane Library at the University of British Columbia, 2010. , republished in Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Another estimate guesses that there was a 340-fold decrease in the cost per book as a direct result of the printing press.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1414&quot; title=&#039;“In 1483, the Ripoli Press charged three florins per quinterno for setting up and printing Ficino’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues. A scribe might have charged one florin per quinterno for duplicating the same work. The Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies; the scribe would have turned out one.” Eisenstein, Elizabeth L.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&amp;gt;The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-modern Europe ; Volumes I and II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. As Max Roser writes&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;,&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;“Eisenstein is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato&amp;amp;#8217;s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.” As Max Roser’s summary suggests, 1025 copies / 3 florins per quinterno vs. 1 copy / 1 copy per quinterno is a 341-fold reduction in the cost. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;A sharp decrease in the real price of books. One estimate of the real price of books in the Netherlands suggests a ~5-fold decrease between 1460 and 1550.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-27-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-27-1414&quot; title=&#039;See this graph, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/2_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___f_dutch_books__1460___1800___1460_74__100_-png.png&quot;&amp;gt;Estimates of the real price of Dutch books, 1460-1800 (1460/74 = 100) – van Zanden (2009)&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; with data originally found in Van Zanden, J. L. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000-1800&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Leiden: Brill, 2012. and republished in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&amp;gt;Our World in Data &amp;amp;#8212; Books&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The graph shows an average price of ~between &amp;amp;nbsp;100 and 120 in the 1460s and 70s moving down to an average price of around 20 by 1485, an approximately ~5-fold decrease in price. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;An increase in genre-variety of books, and in particular a shift away from theological texts and an increase in the amount of fiction.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-28-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-28-1414&quot; title=&#039;“Another fundamental change in the book market after the invention of the book press was a very strong increase in the variety of printed books available to the readers. Dittmar (2012) measures the subject content by employing techniques from machine learning to identify the topics of books in his sample of English books between the late 1400s and 1700. He can thereby identify a specified number of topics in his sample and track the changes in variety over time. He depicts the increased consumer choice by calculating the Herfindahl index of topic concentration – this is reprinted in Panel A of the figure below. Panel B shows how the number of effective variety of consumer choices grew sharply after 1500. The increasing variety represents the end of the dominating role of theological texts – Dittmar (2012) notes that &amp;amp;#8216;almost all books were on religious topics in the late 1400s […] The following pie chart gives an overview of the variety of book topics in London&amp;amp;#8217;s book market in 1700. Looking at the variety of books at that time – the end of Dittmar&amp;amp;#8217;s sample – makes one realize how dominant theological texts were before. The data source for this figure is the English Short Title Catalog or ESTC which is also one of the two sources of Dittmar. […] A subsequent change in the variety of topics was the rise of fiction literature. This marked change between the 17th and the 18th century is depicted below. From the table above we know that the total number of books published during this time did not change – in the 50 years before 1700 89,306,000 books were published in Great Britain; in the 50 years after 1700 it was 89,259,000.” From the &amp;amp;#8220;Increasing variation of genres and the rise of fiction literature&amp;amp;#8221; section in Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run,&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; referencing Dittmar, Jeremiah. &amp;amp;#8220;The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book.&amp;amp;#8221; Unpublished draft. May 27, 2011. Accessed June 28, 2019.&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Welfare-Impact-of-a-New-Good-%3A-The-Printed-Book-Dittmar/939bb19e943dfc478359f74b5c7bc87c2034230a&quot;&amp;gt;Dittmar (2012) &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book&amp;amp;#8221; (2012).&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;An increase in the total consumption of books, likely as a result of their declining price and increased literacy levels.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-29-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-29-1414&quot; title=&#039;See graph from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#consumption-of-books&quot;&amp;gt;Our World in Data &amp;amp;#8212; Books, &amp;amp;#8220;Consumption of Books&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the sudden increase. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Roser notes that “The declining price of books and the increasing literacy led to an increase in the consumption of books, as can be seen in the following table.” The data used to produce this graph comes from estimates from Buringh and Van Zanden, who also produced the original estimates for manuscript and book production per century. We would guess that they are not particularly robust, but are likely robust enough to support the marked increase in book consumption. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Most of these changes are gradual over at least a century, rather than involving a sharp change that might be a large discontinuity. Such gradual changes might suggest a sharper change in some underlying technology though, for instance. The fall in the price of Dutch books was relatively abrupt, but the data lacks a trend leading up to the printing press.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The increases in the number of genres and unique titles published suggest that there was a larger amount of information available in printed form. Decreased prices and increased consumption of books suggests that this information was easier to access than before. These things suggest there might have been an interesting change in availability of information in general, however we do not know enough about the past trend to say whether this was likely to be discontinuous.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (/ˈɡuːtənbɜːrɡ/;[1] c. 1400  – February 3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with the printing press. […] Gutenberg in 1439 was the first European to use movable type. Among his many contributions to printing are: the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system that allowed the mass production of printed books and was economically viable for printers and readers alike.” – “Johannes Gutenberg”. 2018. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 28 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johannes_Gutenberg&amp;amp;oldid=895246592&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Printing in East Asia had been prevalent since the Tang dynasty, and in Europe, woodblock printing based on existing screw presses was common by the 14th century.” – “Printing Press”. 2015. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;oldid=899397867&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Gutenberg’s most important innovation was the development of hand-molded metal printing matrices, thus producing a movable type-based printing press system. His newly devised hand mould made possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. Movable type had been hitherto unknown in Europe. In Europe, the two inventions, the hand mould and the printing press, together drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents, particularly in short print runs.” – “Printing Press”. 2015. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;oldid=899397867&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PrintMus_038.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;vlasta2 [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Moreover, thanks to other innovations in the high Middle Ages (in particular, the substitution of paper for parchment, but also the spread of more efficient ways of hand copying manuscripts, such as the pecia system) and the fifteenth century (the printing press), the price of books was greatly reduced, providing additional impulse to the growth process.” – Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 425.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for– universities, monasteries, and urbanization– together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).” – Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 431.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See Figure 2 in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which sources data from manuscript and printed book estimates in Tables 3 and 4. – Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“As a result of these four inclusion criteria we may expect temporal and spatial skewness to arise in the global database as a consequence of unavoidable publication and selection biases. Nevertheless, numerically such skewness can be overcome by specific correction and standardization steps, as we will demonstrate later.” Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“We estimate the number of titles or editions that appeared in Western Europe between 1454 and 1800, multiplied by rather crude (and probably relatively low) estimates of the average size of print runs … The most important sources for counting new titles are library catalogues and national and international datasets which are based on these catalogues and present inventories of editions published in different countries and/or languages (the ‘short title catalogues’), most of which are available on-line.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See tables I-3 through I-6 of Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“For a number of reasons our figures should be interpreted as lower-bound estimates: we do not correct for the (many?) books of which all traces have been lost, nor for the fact that at the book fairs only part of the production was presented. Series publications are not included either. The estimates of print runs are also conservative: we follow the literature that average sizes of editions between the 1450s and 1500 probably increased from 100 to 500 (the print run of the Gutenberg bible was 200); there is ample evidence that this increase continued after 500, but at a slower pace. We tentatively estimate that it went up to 1,000 in 1800, again a quite conservative estimate (print runs of mass produced books, such as bibles, prayer books and primary school books increased to more than hundred thousand in some cases).”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit#gid=1417825149&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + In addition to the sizes of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and the relevant cells in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for the calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 “If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for– universities, monasteries, and urbanization– together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).”&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The price history of pre-industrial England is uniquely well documented. England achieved substantial political stability by 1066. There was little of the internal strife that proved so destructive of documentary history in other countries. Also England’s island position and relative military success protected it from foreign invasion, except for the depredations of the Scots in the border counties. England further witnessed the early development of markets and monetary exchange. In particular when reports of private purchases begin in 1208-9 the markets for goods were clearly well established. A large number of documents with such prices survive in the records of churches, monasteries, colleges, charities, and government.” From&lt;br/&gt; + Clark, Gregory. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.” 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Unfortunately observations on book prices before 1450 are limited: I found only 32 price quotes for these years. And the prices vary a lot by decade since it is hard to control for the quality and size of the manuscript. Even though the scale goes up to 4000%, many of the decadal averages of prices before 1450 cannot be shown.” From&lt;br/&gt; + Clark, Gregory. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.” 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We prefer real prices rather than nominal ones because we want to exclude the effects of inflation in our data. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_(economics)&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;See here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for a fuller explanation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ur7KC971u2hUhV-FEYFVhnKvFtyT72Ow5XLjA5ermr4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for the adjustment calculation. This data with this adjustment was originally made and charted by Timothy C. Irwin: Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&lt;/a&gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&lt;/a&gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;#data-collection&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data collection&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; above.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The increased demand of books was driven by a huge decrease in the price of books. The smaller price was possible by the increased efficiency in the production of books since the invention of the printing press around 1440. Clark (2008) measures the subsequent productivity increase as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book and finds a 20-fold increase in productivity in the first 200 years after the invention, […] Productivity is measured as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book of standard characteristics. Clark notes that ‘with both hand production and the printing press the main cost in book production was labor (paper and parchment production costs were mainly labor costs).’ Clark (2008) notes that copyists before the time of the printing press were able to copy 3,000 words of plain text per day. This implies that the production of one copy of the Bible meant 136 days of work. Eisenstein&lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#note-5&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato’s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.”&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The following points and summary all come from &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;Our World in Data — Books&lt;/a&gt;, but they reference a variety of outside data sources. Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See this graph, &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/1_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___roduction_in_england__1470s___1860s_-_clark-png.png&quot;&gt;Productivity in book production in England, 1470s-1960s – Clark (2008)&lt;/a&gt; originally found in Clark, Gregory. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&gt;A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&gt;.&lt;/a&gt; Vancouver: Crane Library at the University of British Columbia, 2010. , republished in Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1483, the Ripoli Press charged three florins per quinterno for setting up and printing Ficino’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues. A scribe might have charged one florin per quinterno for duplicating the same work. The Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies; the scribe would have turned out one.” Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&gt;The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-modern Europe ; Volumes I and II&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&gt;.&lt;/a&gt; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. As Max Roser writes&lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;,&lt;/a&gt;“Eisenstein is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato’s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.” As Max Roser’s summary suggests, 1025 copies / 3 florins per quinterno vs. 1 copy / 1 copy per quinterno is a 341-fold reduction in the cost.&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-27-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See this graph, &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/2_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___f_dutch_books__1460___1800___1460_74__100_-png.png&quot;&gt;Estimates of the real price of Dutch books, 1460-1800 (1460/74 = 100) – van Zanden (2009)&lt;/a&gt; with data originally found in Van Zanden, J. L. &lt;em&gt;The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000-1800&lt;/em&gt;. Leiden: Brill, 2012. and republished in &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&gt;Our World in Data — Books&lt;/a&gt;. The graph shows an average price of ~between  100 and 120 in the 1460s and 70s moving down to an average price of around 20 by 1485, an approximately ~5-fold decrease in price.&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-27-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-28-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Another fundamental change in the book market after the invention of the book press was a very strong increase in the variety of printed books available to the readers. Dittmar (2012) measures the subject content by employing techniques from machine learning to identify the topics of books in his sample of English books between the late 1400s and 1700. He can thereby identify a specified number of topics in his sample and track the changes in variety over time. He depicts the increased consumer choice by calculating the Herfindahl index of topic concentration – this is reprinted in Panel A of the figure below. Panel B shows how the number of effective variety of consumer choices grew sharply after 1500. The increasing variety represents the end of the dominating role of theological texts – Dittmar (2012) notes that ‘almost all books were on religious topics in the late 1400s […] The following pie chart gives an overview of the variety of book topics in London’s book market in 1700. Looking at the variety of books at that time – the end of Dittmar’s sample – makes one realize how dominant theological texts were before. The data source for this figure is the English Short Title Catalog or ESTC which is also one of the two sources of Dittmar. […] A subsequent change in the variety of topics was the rise of fiction literature. This marked change between the 17th and the 18th century is depicted below. From the table above we know that the total number of books published during this time did not change – in the 50 years before 1700 89,306,000 books were published in Great Britain; in the 50 years after 1700 it was 89,259,000.” From the “Increasing variation of genres and the rise of fiction literature” section in Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run,&lt;/a&gt; referencing Dittmar, Jeremiah. “The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book.” Unpublished draft. May 27, 2011. Accessed June 28, 2019.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Welfare-Impact-of-a-New-Good-%3A-The-Printed-Book-Dittmar/939bb19e943dfc478359f74b5c7bc87c2034230a&quot;&gt;Dittmar (2012) – “The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book” (2012).&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-28-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-29-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See graph from &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#consumption-of-books&quot;&gt;Our World in Data — Books, “Consumption of Books”&lt;/a&gt; to see the sudden increase.&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt; Roser notes that “The declining price of books and the increasing literacy led to an increase in the consumption of books, as can be seen in the following table.” The data used to produce this graph comes from estimates from Buringh and Van Zanden, who also produced the original estimates for manuscript and book production per century. We would guess that they are not particularly robust, but are likely robust enough to support the marked increase in book consumption.&lt;br/&gt; + Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-29-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,422 @@ + ====== Historic trends in book production ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 28 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The number of books produced in the previous hundred years, sampled every hundred or fifty years between 600AD to 1800AD contains five greater than 10-year discontinuities, four of them greater than 100 years. The last two follow the invention of the printing press in 1492.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The real price of books dropped precipitously following the invention of the printing press, but the longer term trend is sufficiently ambiguous that this may not represent a substantial discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The rate of progress of book production changed shortly after the invention of the printing press, from a doubling time of 104 years to 43 years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Around 1439, Johannes Gutenburg invented a machine for making books commonly referred to as “the printing press”. The printing press was used to quickly copy pre-created sheets of letters of ink onto a print medium.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1414&quot; title=&quot;“Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (/ˈɡuːtənbɜːrɡ/;[1] c. 1400 &amp;amp;nbsp;– February 3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with the printing press. [&amp;amp;#8230;] Gutenberg in 1439 was the first European to use movable type. Among his many contributions to printing are: the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system that allowed the mass production of printed books and was economically viable for printers and readers alike.” &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Johannes Gutenberg&amp;amp;#8221;. 2018.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 28 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johannes_Gutenberg&amp;amp;amp;oldid=895246592&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Presses that stamped paper with carved blocks of wood covered in ink were already being used in Europe,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1414&quot; title=&quot;“Printing in East Asia had been prevalent since the Tang dynasty, and in Europe, woodblock printing based on existing screw presses was common by the 14th century.” &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Printing Press&amp;amp;#8221;. 2015.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;amp;oldid=899397867&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; but Gutenburg made several major improvements on existing methods, notably creating the hand mould, a device which allowed for quickly creating sheets of inked letters rather than carving them out of wood. The printing press allowed for the quick and cheap production of printed books like never before.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1414&quot; title=&quot;“Gutenberg&amp;amp;#8217;s most important innovation was the development of hand-molded metal printing matrices, thus producing a movable type-based printing press system. His newly devised hand mould made possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. Movable type had been hitherto unknown in Europe. In Europe, the two inventions, the hand mould and the printing press, together drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents, particularly in short print runs.” &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Printing Press&amp;amp;#8221;. 2015. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;amp;oldid=899397867&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;751&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/c1B3ujkl1rRTkCdJ67--g36Ud37RJVLZQKzJ96Ldj6w1B-dz3XxwxcQmaqiSaNbH7xHllvNeRc4uSQfLEiJAk8RZrT49DkOwiOT_njErP_YdkuzgWj7PpGfbEWN0WjMsohsbZzWP&quot; width=&quot;597&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Replica of the Gutenberg Printing Press&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PrintMus_038.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;vlasta2 [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We looked primarily at two different metrics– the rate of book production in Western Europe and the real price of books in England. We chose these two because they were some of the only printing-related data sources which had data that went back several centuries before the invention of the printing press.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Had the data been available, we would like to have looked at some metric correlated clearly with innovations in the writing / printing process — e.g. the number of pages produced per worker per hour. Then we could check whether the printing press represented a discontinuity relative to earlier innovations (e.g., the pecia system for hand-copying manuscripts).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1414&quot; title=&#039;“Moreover, thanks to other innovations in the high Middle Ages (in particular, the substitution of paper for parchment, but also the spread of more efficient ways of hand copying manuscripts, such as the pecia system) and the fifteenth century (the printing press), the price of books was greatly reduced, providing additional impulse to the growth process.” &amp;amp;#8211; Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 425.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, neither the rate of book production nor the price of book data we have correlate well with innovations in the writing / printing process. The authors of our rate of book production data claim that most of the variation in the pre-printing press numbers is explained by factors which are not innovation or close proxies to innovation.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1414&quot; title=&#039;“If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for&amp;amp;#8211; universities, monasteries, and urbanization&amp;amp;#8211; together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 431.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our data on the price of books is similarly unhelpful, as the early price data is too sparse to be meaningful.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the two metrics described above, we looked cursorily at a few metrics with no early data which changed drastically as a result of the printing press– the number of unique titles printed per year, the variation of genres in books, the price of books in the Netherlands, and the total consumption of books.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Rate of book production in Western Europe === + + + == Data collection == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our data for the rate of book production come from estimates of Europe-only production generated in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800.pdf&quot;&gt;2009 paper by historians Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten Van Zanden&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1414&quot; title=&#039;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Rate data is represented as the number of books produced in the previous 100 years at various points in time.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;When we use the term &lt;em&gt;book&lt;/em&gt;, we mean it to refer to any copy of a written work, whether hand-copied manually or produced via some kind of printing technique. The paper separates book production into estimates of &lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;printed book&lt;/em&gt; production, where the production of &lt;em&gt;printed books&lt;/em&gt; starts only after the printing press is invented. We will also use the terms &lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;printed book&lt;/em&gt; to talk about the data, but it’s unclear to us if the paper means &lt;em&gt;manuscript&lt;/em&gt; to mean “any book not made using a Gutenburg-era printing press” or “any book transcribed by hand”. At one point the authors sum these two estimates into a single graph of production per capita,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1414&quot; title=&#039;See Figure 2 in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this paper&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; which sources data from manuscript and printed book estimates in Tables 3 and 4. &amp;amp;#8211; Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; suggesting that the combination of manuscript and printed book data should cover all books.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The paper’s estimates for manuscript production are constructed by taking an existing sample of manuscripts and then attempting to correct for its geographical and temporal biases.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;As a result of these four inclusion criteria we may expect temporal and spatial skewness to arise in the global database as a consequence of unavoidable publication and selection biases. Nevertheless, numerically such skewness can be overcome by specific correction and standardization steps, as we will demonstrate later.” Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Estimates for book production are constructed by counting new titles in library catalogues and multiplying by estimates for average prints per title at a given time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1414&quot; title=&#039;“We estimate the number of titles or editions that appeared in Western Europe between 1454 and 1800, multiplied by rather crude (and probably relatively low) estimates of the average size of print runs … The most important sources for counting new titles are library catalogues and national and international datasets which are based on these catalogues and present inventories of editions published in different countries and/or languages (the ‘short title catalogues’), most of which are available on-line.”&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The estimates of manuscript production seem extremely non-robust given that large number of correction factors applied.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1414&quot; title=&#039;See tables I-3 through I-6 of Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The estimates of book production seem somewhat more robust, but should be taken as a lower bound as the authors did not correct for lost books and have estimated the average number of prints per title conservatively.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1414&quot; title=&#039;“For a number of reasons our figures should be interpreted as lower-bound estimates: we do not correct for the (many?) books of which all traces have been lost, nor for the fact that at the book fairs only part of the production was presented. Series publications are not included either. The estimates of print runs are also conservative: we follow the literature that average sizes of editions between the 1450s and 1500 probably increased from 100 to 500 (the print run of the Gutenberg bible was 200); there is ample evidence that this increase continued after 500, but at a slower pace. We tentatively estimate that it went up to 1,000 in 1800, again a quite conservative estimate (print runs of mass produced books, such as bibles, prayer books and primary school books increased to more than hundred thousand in some cases).”&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1a displays the raw data for rate of book production on a log scale, taken from the data in the paper described above and compiled in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Each data point represents the total number of books produced in the previous 100 years.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2065&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BookProduction-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1a: Book production in Western Europe + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1b displays the same data as Figure 1a along with our interpretation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Looking at the data, we assume an exponential trend up until 1500, and another one after that.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The blue line is the average log rate of the rate of book production before the invention of the printing press (just manuscripts); the red line is the average log rate of the rate of book production after the invention of the printing press (manuscripts + printed books).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;348&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ps7yXfrxNK4WpzwFgLGkOK3B9pwhP231Y5XqEJ0BSKkezfzee_o0cmt0iAe0bxENlQLYhfDb9cyyr8kHW8Lg1X6rTvCuHlsuC3KBSZZL5jdA6bbJkf2unEU-u-XWSe26511Qos4R&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1b: Rate of book production in Western Europe. Blue and red lines are the average log rates of the rate of book production before and after the printing press. Grey points are projections of the average log rate before the printing press. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Grey points shown after 1500 reflect projected manuscript and therefore book production had the printing press not been invented. In practice, the actual number of manuscripts produced after 1500 were very small and not presented in the data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we just look at the trend of book production per past 100 years, measured once every 100 years before 1500, and then once every 50 years afterwards, we can calculate discontinuities of sizes 161 years in 900, 134 years in 1200, 23 years in 1300, 180 years in 1500, and 138 years in 1550.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit#gid=1417825149&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;In addition to the sizes of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;. See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This is obviously a strange kind of trend–a discontinuity of one hundred years in a metric with datapoints every hundred years might mean nothing perceptible at the one-year scale. So in particular, these discontinuities do not tell us much about whether there would be discontinuities in a more natural metric, such as annual book production.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the speed of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There was a marked change in progress in the rate of book production with the invention of the printing press, corresponding to a change in the doubling time of the rate of book production from 104 years to 43 years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and the relevant cells in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for the calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Interpreting this rate of change on the graph, before the invention of the printing press, the total rate of book production, which consists entirely of manuscripts, follows the exponential line shown in blue. The invention of the printing press in 1439 allows for mass production of printed books, causing the rate of book production to veer sharply off the existing exponential line, shown as the first point in red. Note that our underlying data sources are non-robust, particularly for manuscript data pre-printing press, so the magnitude of this change in rate of progress may be under or overstated.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The change in the doubling time of the rate of book production caused by the printing press may reflect a large change in the factors that drove book production.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In their paper, Buringh and Van Zanden note that in the Middle Ages, 60% of the variation in book production is explained by the number of universities, the number of monasteries, and urbanization.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1414&quot; title=&#039; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 “If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for&amp;amp;#8211; universities, monasteries, and urbanization&amp;amp;#8211; together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).”&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; They produce the following graph, correlating monastery numbers and early book production:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1471&quot; height=&quot;413&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screenshot-from-2019-04-19-15-39-47.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Buringh and Van Zanden’s figure of the relationship between book production and monestaries + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;By contrast, after the printing press was invented, Buringh and Van Zanden attribute a much more important role to individual book consumption and the forces of the market:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;How to explain the significant increase in book production and consumption in the centuries following the invention of moveable type printing in the 1450s? The effect of the new technology (and import technological changes in the production of paper) was that from the 1470s on, book prices declined very rapidly. This had number of effects: consumption per literate individual increased, but it also became more desirable and less costly to become literate. Moreover, economies of scale in the printing industry led to further price reductions stimulating even more growth in book consumption.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;It seems plausible that the move between exponential curves caused by the printing press was a shift from an exponential curve that reflected the growth of monasteries, universities, and cities to an exponential curve that reflected the growth of a complicated set of market forces.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Real price of books in England === + + + == Data collection == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf&quot;&gt;a 2004 paper written by economic historian Gregory Clark&lt;/a&gt;, who took data from historic records of price quotes,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1414&quot; title=&#039;“The price history of pre-industrial England is uniquely well documented. England achieved substantial political stability by 1066. There was little of the internal strife that proved so destructive of documentary history in other countries. Also England’s island position and relative military success protected it from foreign invasion, except for the depredations of the Scots in the border counties. England further witnessed the early development of markets and monetary exchange. In particular when reports of private purchases begin in 1208-9 the markets for goods were clearly well established. A large number of documents with such prices survive in the records of churches, monasteries, colleges, charities, and government.” From&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Clark, Gregory. &amp;amp;#8220;Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.&amp;amp;#8221; 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&amp;gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; though data before 1450 is based on just 32 total price quotes, and Clark notes that “the prices vary a lot by decade since it is hard to control for the quality and size of the manuscript.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Unfortunately observations on book prices before 1450 are limited: I found only 32 price quotes for these years. And the prices vary a lot by decade since it is hard to control for the quality and size of the manuscript. Even though the scale goes up to 4000%, many of the decadal averages of prices before 1450 cannot be shown.&amp;amp;#8221; From &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Clark, Gregory. &amp;amp;#8220;Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.&amp;amp;#8221; 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&amp;gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; As such, we should not take much meaning out of the individual data points before 1450 or interpret the period between 1360 and 1500 as a rising trend.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Clark’s paper reports an index of the nominal price of books in Table 9 of his paper. To instead get an index of the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; price of books,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1414&quot; title=&#039;We prefer real prices rather than nominal ones because we want to exclude the effects of inflation in our data. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_(economics)&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;See here&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for a fuller explanation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; we divided each nominal price by Clark’s reported “cost of living” for each year (x 100), which was the amount of money paid by a relatively prosperous consumer for the same bundle of goods every year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ur7KC971u2hUhV-FEYFVhnKvFtyT72Ow5XLjA5ermr4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;for the adjustment calculation. This data with this adjustment was originally made and charted by Timothy C. Irwin: Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&amp;gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 3 is a graph of (an index of) the real price of books in England, generated from the data described above and compiled in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ur7KC971u2hUhV-FEYFVhnKvFtyT72Ow5XLjA5ermr4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Each point represents the amount of money in each year needed to buy some bundle of books assuming you would pay 100 for that same bundle of books in 1860.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Economist Timothy Irwin, looking at this same dataset, claims that the drop in price around 1350 was due to knowledge about paper-making finally making its way to England: “As time passed, improvements in technology and the gradual spread of literacy reduced these obstacles to effective transparency. In particular, the diffusion of knowledge about paper-making (from around 1150) and then printing (from around 1450) dramatically reduced the price of books. (See Figure 1 for an estimate of the decline in England).”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1414&quot; title=&#039;Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&amp;gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;‘Figure 1’ in the quote above refers to a graph of the real price of books that uses the same data source and is identical to the one we generated. His claim seems plausible, but we are not confident about it given how sparse and noisy the early data is and given our lack of precise date information on how paper-making spread in England.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The graph contains two major drops– one as a result of the printing press, and one claimed to be the result of paper replacing parchment in England. Looking at just the set of blue data points between these two drops, we can see that they are clustered around some range of values. The data in this range is too noisy and sparse&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1414&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;#data-collection&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Data collection&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;above.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; to generate a meaningful rate of progress, but it seems clear that for a wide variety of plausible rates, the printing press represented a discontinuity in the real price of books when compared to the trend in book prices after the spread of paper-making.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However, if you take the past trend to include the price of books before paper-making, then there is no clear discontinuity– the price of printed books could be part of an existing trend of dropping prices that started with paper-making. We also believe the data here is too poor to draw firm conclusions.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2066&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/RealPrice-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Real price of books in England. All prices are relative to a book in 1860 costing 100, so a real price of 1800 would be 18x as expensive as a book in 1860. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Whether or not it counts as a substantial discontinuity relative to the longer term trend, the printing press produced a sharp drop in the real price of books. This was because their price was largely driven by labor costs, which went down sharply (one author estimates by a factor of 341) when a laborer could use a machine to print massive numbers of books rather than manually transcribing each copy.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1414&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The increased demand of books was driven by a huge decrease in the price of books. The smaller price was possible by the increased efficiency in the production of books since the invention of the printing press around 1440. Clark (2008) measures the subsequent productivity increase as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book and finds a 20-fold increase in productivity in the first 200 years after the invention, [&amp;amp;#8230;] Productivity is measured as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book of standard characteristics. Clark notes that &amp;amp;#8216;with both hand production and the printing press the main cost in book production was labor (paper and parchment production costs were mainly labor costs).&amp;amp;#8217; Clark (2008) notes that copyists before the time of the printing press were able to copy 3,000 words of plain text per day. This implies that the production of one copy of the Bible meant 136 days of work. Eisenstein&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#note-5&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;5&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato&amp;amp;#8217;s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Other noteworthy metrics === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Many historians associate the invention of the printing press with other unsurprising book-related changes in the world, including:&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1414&quot; title=&#039;The following points and summary all come from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;Our World in Data &amp;amp;#8212; Books&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, but they reference a variety of outside data sources. Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;An increase in the productivity of book production, i.e. the ratio between the wage of a copy producer and the price of a standard book. In particular, one estimate measures a 20-fold increase in the productivity in the first 200 years after the invention.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1414&quot; title=&#039;See this graph, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/1_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___roduction_in_england__1470s___1860s_-_clark-png.png&quot;&amp;gt;Productivity in book production in England, 1470s-1960s &amp;amp;#8211; Clark (2008)&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; originally found in Clark, Gregory.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&amp;gt;A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Vancouver: Crane Library at the University of British Columbia, 2010. , republished in Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Another estimate guesses that there was a 340-fold decrease in the cost per book as a direct result of the printing press.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1414&quot; title=&#039;“In 1483, the Ripoli Press charged three florins per quinterno for setting up and printing Ficino’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues. A scribe might have charged one florin per quinterno for duplicating the same work. The Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies; the scribe would have turned out one.” Eisenstein, Elizabeth L.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&amp;gt;The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-modern Europe ; Volumes I and II&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. As Max Roser writes&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;,&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;“Eisenstein is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato&amp;amp;#8217;s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.” As Max Roser’s summary suggests, 1025 copies / 3 florins per quinterno vs. 1 copy / 1 copy per quinterno is a 341-fold reduction in the cost. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;A sharp decrease in the real price of books. One estimate of the real price of books in the Netherlands suggests a ~5-fold decrease between 1460 and 1550.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-27-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-27-1414&quot; title=&#039;See this graph, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/2_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___f_dutch_books__1460___1800___1460_74__100_-png.png&quot;&amp;gt;Estimates of the real price of Dutch books, 1460-1800 (1460/74 = 100) – van Zanden (2009)&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; with data originally found in Van Zanden, J. L. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000-1800&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Leiden: Brill, 2012. and republished in &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&amp;gt;Our World in Data &amp;amp;#8212; Books&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The graph shows an average price of ~between &amp;amp;nbsp;100 and 120 in the 1460s and 70s moving down to an average price of around 20 by 1485, an approximately ~5-fold decrease in price. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;An increase in genre-variety of books, and in particular a shift away from theological texts and an increase in the amount of fiction.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-28-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-28-1414&quot; title=&#039;“Another fundamental change in the book market after the invention of the book press was a very strong increase in the variety of printed books available to the readers. Dittmar (2012) measures the subject content by employing techniques from machine learning to identify the topics of books in his sample of English books between the late 1400s and 1700. He can thereby identify a specified number of topics in his sample and track the changes in variety over time. He depicts the increased consumer choice by calculating the Herfindahl index of topic concentration – this is reprinted in Panel A of the figure below. Panel B shows how the number of effective variety of consumer choices grew sharply after 1500. The increasing variety represents the end of the dominating role of theological texts – Dittmar (2012) notes that &amp;amp;#8216;almost all books were on religious topics in the late 1400s […] The following pie chart gives an overview of the variety of book topics in London&amp;amp;#8217;s book market in 1700. Looking at the variety of books at that time – the end of Dittmar&amp;amp;#8217;s sample – makes one realize how dominant theological texts were before. The data source for this figure is the English Short Title Catalog or ESTC which is also one of the two sources of Dittmar. […] A subsequent change in the variety of topics was the rise of fiction literature. This marked change between the 17th and the 18th century is depicted below. From the table above we know that the total number of books published during this time did not change – in the 50 years before 1700 89,306,000 books were published in Great Britain; in the 50 years after 1700 it was 89,259,000.” From the &amp;amp;#8220;Increasing variation of genres and the rise of fiction literature&amp;amp;#8221; section in Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run,&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; referencing Dittmar, Jeremiah. &amp;amp;#8220;The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book.&amp;amp;#8221; Unpublished draft. May 27, 2011. Accessed June 28, 2019.&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Welfare-Impact-of-a-New-Good-%3A-The-Printed-Book-Dittmar/939bb19e943dfc478359f74b5c7bc87c2034230a&quot;&amp;gt;Dittmar (2012) &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book&amp;amp;#8221; (2012).&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;An increase in the total consumption of books, likely as a result of their declining price and increased literacy levels.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-29-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-29-1414&quot; title=&#039;See graph from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#consumption-of-books&quot;&amp;gt;Our World in Data &amp;amp;#8212; Books, &amp;amp;#8220;Consumption of Books&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the sudden increase. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Roser, Max. &amp;amp;#8220;Books.&amp;amp;#8221; Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&amp;gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Roser notes that “The declining price of books and the increasing literacy led to an increase in the consumption of books, as can be seen in the following table.” The data used to produce this graph comes from estimates from Buringh and Van Zanden, who also produced the original estimates for manuscript and book production per century. We would guess that they are not particularly robust, but are likely robust enough to support the marked increase in book consumption. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;The Journal of Economic History &amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Most of these changes are gradual over at least a century, rather than involving a sharp change that might be a large discontinuity. Such gradual changes might suggest a sharper change in some underlying technology though, for instance. The fall in the price of Dutch books was relatively abrupt, but the data lacks a trend leading up to the printing press.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The increases in the number of genres and unique titles published suggest that there was a larger amount of information available in printed form. Decreased prices and increased consumption of books suggests that this information was easier to access than before. These things suggest there might have been an interesting change in availability of information in general, however we do not know enough about the past trend to say whether this was likely to be discontinuous.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (/ˈɡuːtənbɜːrɡ/;[1] c. 1400  – February 3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with the printing press. […] Gutenberg in 1439 was the first European to use movable type. Among his many contributions to printing are: the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type; the use of oil-based ink for printing books; adjustable molds; mechanical movable type; and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw presses of the period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system that allowed the mass production of printed books and was economically viable for printers and readers alike.” – “Johannes Gutenberg”. 2018. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 28 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johannes_Gutenberg&amp;amp;oldid=895246592&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Printing in East Asia had been prevalent since the Tang dynasty, and in Europe, woodblock printing based on existing screw presses was common by the 14th century.” – “Printing Press”. 2015. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;oldid=899397867&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Gutenberg’s most important innovation was the development of hand-molded metal printing matrices, thus producing a movable type-based printing press system. His newly devised hand mould made possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. Movable type had been hitherto unknown in Europe. In Europe, the two inventions, the hand mould and the printing press, together drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents, particularly in short print runs.” – “Printing Press”. 2015. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 3 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing_press&amp;amp;oldid=899397867&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PrintMus_038.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;vlasta2 [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Moreover, thanks to other innovations in the high Middle Ages (in particular, the substitution of paper for parchment, but also the spread of more efficient ways of hand copying manuscripts, such as the pecia system) and the fifteenth century (the printing press), the price of books was greatly reduced, providing additional impulse to the growth process.” – Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 425.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for– universities, monasteries, and urbanization– together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).” – Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837, 431.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See Figure 2 in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which sources data from manuscript and printed book estimates in Tables 3 and 4. – Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“As a result of these four inclusion criteria we may expect temporal and spatial skewness to arise in the global database as a consequence of unavoidable publication and selection biases. Nevertheless, numerically such skewness can be overcome by specific correction and standardization steps, as we will demonstrate later.” Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“We estimate the number of titles or editions that appeared in Western Europe between 1454 and 1800, multiplied by rather crude (and probably relatively low) estimates of the average size of print runs … The most important sources for counting new titles are library catalogues and national and international datasets which are based on these catalogues and present inventories of editions published in different countries and/or languages (the ‘short title catalogues’), most of which are available on-line.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See tables I-3 through I-6 of Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix I&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“For a number of reasons our figures should be interpreted as lower-bound estimates: we do not correct for the (many?) books of which all traces have been lost, nor for the fact that at the book fairs only part of the production was presented. Series publications are not included either. The estimates of print runs are also conservative: we follow the literature that average sizes of editions between the 1450s and 1500 probably increased from 100 to 500 (the print run of the Gutenberg bible was 200); there is ample evidence that this increase continued after 500, but at a slower pace. We tentatively estimate that it went up to 1,000 in 1800, again a quite conservative estimate (print runs of mass produced books, such as bibles, prayer books and primary school books increased to more than hundred thousand in some cases).”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + From Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/books500-1800app.pdf&quot;&gt;Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries, Appendix II&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt;69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit#gid=1417825149&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + In addition to the sizes of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and the relevant cells in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pgo0QizEMonIo11RvE2ErbyocKHXhV08EyXBYrmWVgk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for the calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 “If we take the Middle Ages as a whole, the three factors we have data for– universities, monasteries, and urbanization– together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first two columns).”&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The price history of pre-industrial England is uniquely well documented. England achieved substantial political stability by 1066. There was little of the internal strife that proved so destructive of documentary history in other countries. Also England’s island position and relative military success protected it from foreign invasion, except for the depredations of the Scots in the border counties. England further witnessed the early development of markets and monetary exchange. In particular when reports of private purchases begin in 1208-9 the markets for goods were clearly well established. A large number of documents with such prices survive in the records of churches, monasteries, colleges, charities, and government.” From&lt;br/&gt; + Clark, Gregory. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.” 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Unfortunately observations on book prices before 1450 are limited: I found only 32 price quotes for these years. And the prices vary a lot by decade since it is hard to control for the quality and size of the manuscript. Even though the scale goes up to 4000%, many of the decadal averages of prices before 1450 cannot be shown.” From&lt;br/&gt; + Clark, Gregory. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England, 1209-1869.” 2004. MS, UC Davis, Davis. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&quot;&gt;http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/papers/clark.pdf.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We prefer real prices rather than nominal ones because we want to exclude the effects of inflation in our data. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_(economics)&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;See here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for a fuller explanation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ur7KC971u2hUhV-FEYFVhnKvFtyT72Ow5XLjA5ermr4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for the adjustment calculation. This data with this adjustment was originally made and charted by Timothy C. Irwin: Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&lt;/a&gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Irwin, Timothy. (2013). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269787827_Shining_a_Light_on_the_Mysteries_of_State_The_Origins_of_Fiscal_Transparency_in_Western_Europe&quot;&gt;Shining a Light on the Mysteries of State: The Origins of Fiscal Transparency in Western Europe&lt;/a&gt;. IMF Working Papers. 13. 1. 10.5089/9781475570946.001.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;#data-collection&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data collection&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; above.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The increased demand of books was driven by a huge decrease in the price of books. The smaller price was possible by the increased efficiency in the production of books since the invention of the printing press around 1440. Clark (2008) measures the subsequent productivity increase as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book and finds a 20-fold increase in productivity in the first 200 years after the invention, […] Productivity is measured as the ratio between the wage of building craftsmen and the price of a book of standard characteristics. Clark notes that ‘with both hand production and the printing press the main cost in book production was labor (paper and parchment production costs were mainly labor costs).’ Clark (2008) notes that copyists before the time of the printing press were able to copy 3,000 words of plain text per day. This implies that the production of one copy of the Bible meant 136 days of work. Eisenstein&lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#note-5&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato’s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.”&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The following points and summary all come from &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;Our World in Data — Books&lt;/a&gt;, but they reference a variety of outside data sources. Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See this graph, &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/1_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___roduction_in_england__1470s___1860s_-_clark-png.png&quot;&gt;Productivity in book production in England, 1470s-1960s – Clark (2008)&lt;/a&gt; originally found in Clark, Gregory. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&gt;A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8461.html&quot;&gt;.&lt;/a&gt; Vancouver: Crane Library at the University of British Columbia, 2010. , republished in Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1483, the Ripoli Press charged three florins per quinterno for setting up and printing Ficino’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues. A scribe might have charged one florin per quinterno for duplicating the same work. The Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies; the scribe would have turned out one.” Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&gt;The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-modern Europe ; Volumes I and II&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;pg=GBS.PA45.w.0.0.0.0.1&quot;&gt;.&lt;/a&gt; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. As Max Roser writes&lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;,&lt;/a&gt;“Eisenstein is able to compare the price of paying a scribe to duplicating a translation of Plato’s Dialogues with the price for duplicating the same work by the Ripoli printing press in Florence in 1483. For three florins the Ripoli Press produced 1,025 copies whereas the scribe would produce one copy for one florin. This implies that the cost per book decreased 341 times with the introduction of the printing press.” As Max Roser’s summary suggests, 1025 copies / 3 florins per quinterno vs. 1 copy / 1 copy per quinterno is a 341-fold reduction in the cost.&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-27-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See this graph, &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/01/2_users_maxroser_documents_progress_lyx_books_p___f_dutch_books__1460___1800___1460_74__100_-png.png&quot;&gt;Estimates of the real price of Dutch books, 1460-1800 (1460/74 = 100) – van Zanden (2009)&lt;/a&gt; with data originally found in Van Zanden, J. L. &lt;em&gt;The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000-1800&lt;/em&gt;. Leiden: Brill, 2012. and republished in &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&gt;Our World in Data — Books&lt;/a&gt;. The graph shows an average price of ~between  100 and 120 in the 1460s and 70s moving down to an average price of around 20 by 1485, an approximately ~5-fold decrease in price.&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#prices-of-books-productivity-in-book-production&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-27-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-28-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Another fundamental change in the book market after the invention of the book press was a very strong increase in the variety of printed books available to the readers. Dittmar (2012) measures the subject content by employing techniques from machine learning to identify the topics of books in his sample of English books between the late 1400s and 1700. He can thereby identify a specified number of topics in his sample and track the changes in variety over time. He depicts the increased consumer choice by calculating the Herfindahl index of topic concentration – this is reprinted in Panel A of the figure below. Panel B shows how the number of effective variety of consumer choices grew sharply after 1500. The increasing variety represents the end of the dominating role of theological texts – Dittmar (2012) notes that ‘almost all books were on religious topics in the late 1400s […] The following pie chart gives an overview of the variety of book topics in London’s book market in 1700. Looking at the variety of books at that time – the end of Dittmar’s sample – makes one realize how dominant theological texts were before. The data source for this figure is the English Short Title Catalog or ESTC which is also one of the two sources of Dittmar. […] A subsequent change in the variety of topics was the rise of fiction literature. This marked change between the 17th and the 18th century is depicted below. From the table above we know that the total number of books published during this time did not change – in the 50 years before 1700 89,306,000 books were published in Great Britain; in the 50 years after 1700 it was 89,259,000.” From the “Increasing variation of genres and the rise of fiction literature” section in Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run,&lt;/a&gt; referencing Dittmar, Jeremiah. “The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book.” Unpublished draft. May 27, 2011. Accessed June 28, 2019.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Welfare-Impact-of-a-New-Good-%3A-The-Printed-Book-Dittmar/939bb19e943dfc478359f74b5c7bc87c2034230a&quot;&gt;Dittmar (2012) – “The Welfare Impact of a New Good: The Printed Book” (2012).&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-28-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-29-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See graph from &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#consumption-of-books&quot;&gt;Our World in Data — Books, “Consumption of Books”&lt;/a&gt; to see the sudden increase.&lt;br/&gt; + Roser, Max. “Books.” Our World in Data. March 05, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&quot;&gt;https://ourworldindata.org/books#the-publication-of-unique-booktitles-over-the-long-run&lt;/a&gt; Roser notes that “The declining price of books and the increasing literacy led to an increase in the consumption of books, as can be seen in the following table.” The data used to produce this graph comes from estimates from Buringh and Van Zanden, who also produced the original estimates for manuscript and book production per century. We would guess that they are not particularly robust, but are likely robust enough to support the marked increase in book consumption.&lt;br/&gt; + Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/40263962?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;“Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.”&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Economic History&lt;/em&gt; 69, no. 02 (2009): 409. doi:10.1017/s0022050709000837 &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-29-1414&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_bridge_span_length?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,240 @@ + ====== Historic trends in bridge span length ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We measure eight discontinuities of over ten years in the history of longest bridge spans, four of them of over one hundred years, five of them robust as to slight changes in trend extrapolation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The annual average increase in bridge span length increased by over a factor of one hundred between the period before 1826 and the period after (0.25 feet/year to 35 feet/year), though there was not a clear turning point in it.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;A bridge &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_(engineering)&quot;&gt;span&lt;/a&gt; is a section of bridge between supports.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1393&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Span&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;is the distance between two intermediate supports for a structure, e.g. a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_(structure)&quot;&amp;gt;beam&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;or a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge&quot;&amp;gt;bridge&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Span (Engineering).” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 7, 2017. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=809190532&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=809190532&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Bridges can have multiple spans, e.g. one for each arch.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1393&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-calculate-the-length-of-a-clear-span-of-bridge&quot;&amp;gt;this quora explanation&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Bridges are often measured by their ‘main span’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We investigated bridge span (rather than bridge length, mass, or carrying capacity) because it was suggested to us as discontinuous. We also expect it to be a good metric for seeing technological progress, rather than economic progress, because additional spending can probably add more spans to a structure more easily than it can make each span longer. Span length is also a less ambiguous metric than total length, since it is not always clear where a road ends and a bridge begins.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/iAi6Od8yGeUuMj8Ff-3V4OL_AfiUBX5PXFEvK_WY0ma1FDoUoJacN7ygUAGpyE6D-dAavBtneCXitpR-hWBg8n86N-nVhUEnepJ3jCAwFhJ8nK5Zyxxn4KP3j4gfxu2gb8JJA4M_&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, current record-holder for longest bridge span&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1393&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Akashi-kaikyo_bridge3.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The original uploader was Sam at English Wikipedia. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Longest bridge span length === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We gathered data for bridge span lengths from several Wikipedia lists of longest bridge spans over history for particular types of bridge, plus a few additional datapoints from elsewhere. Our data and citations are in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPB8sDbWCXzmJwFbcOX6Al2ADip2P-h5ADC-X9MAoNU/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; in the tab ‘five bridge types’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Problems, ambiguities, and limitations of the data and our collection process:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Some span lengths are given as different lengths on different Wikipedia pages. We did not investigate this, and the one we used was arbitrary.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We did not find a list of historic longest bridge spans for all bridge types, so used several pages about longest bridges for particular bridge types, for instance &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_suspension_bridge_spans&quot;&gt;List of Longest Suspension Bridge Spans&lt;/a&gt;. It is quite possible we failed to find all such lists. In the data we have though, suspension bridges are usually longer than anything else, and the Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_suspension_bridge_spans#History_of_longest_suspension_spans&quot;&gt;History of Longest Suspension Bridge Spans&lt;/a&gt; mentions in its list a few times when non-suspension bridges are the longest bridge span in the world, suggesting that the authors of that page at least believe that at all other times the suspension bridges are the longest. We had already found the other bridges they mention (all arch or cantilever bridges). + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We have not investigated the accuracy of the Wikipedia data.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We are unsure what exact definition of ‘bridge’ is used in any of these pages. Our impression is that they need to allow foot vehicle traffic to cross independently (e.g. it looks like foot bridges are included, but not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vall%C3%A9e_Blanche_Cable_Car&quot;&gt;this cable car&lt;/a&gt; with a 2831m span, which it seems would hold the current record were it a bridge). We have not investigated more. + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We treated dates of N BC dates -N&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1-3 show the length of the longest bridge span for five types of bridge over time. If we understand correctly, these include the longest bridges of any kind at least since around 500AD.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2085&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-3.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-3.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-3-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Entire history of longest bridge spans of five types, measured in feet. See text for further details. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2086&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-below-600-feet.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-below-600-feet.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-below-600-feet-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Figure 1 only visible to 600 feet. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2087&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-after-1800.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-after-1800.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-after-1800-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Figure 1 since 1800 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;To measure discontinuities relative to past progress, we treat past progress as linear, and belonging to five different periods (i.e. three times we consider the recent trend to be sufficiently different from the older trend that we base our extrapolation on a new period).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1393&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Using this method, the length of the longest bridge span has seen a large number of discontinuities (see table below).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Name&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Year opened/became longest of type&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Main span (feet)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Discontinuity&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Chakzam Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1430&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;449&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;2230&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Menai Suspension Bridge&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1826&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;577&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;146&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Great Suspension Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1834&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;889&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;403&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Wheeling Suspension Bridge&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1849&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1010&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;70&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Niagara Clifton Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1869&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1260&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;14&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;George Washington Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1931&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;3501&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;132&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Golden Gate Bridge&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1937&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;4200&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1998&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;6532&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;56&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;*Entry was more robust to informal experimentation with different linear extrapolations&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Deciding what to treat as the previous trend at any point is hard in this dataset, because the shape of the trend isn’t close to being exponential or linear. The sizes of the discontinuities and even the particular bridges that count as notably discontinuous are not very robust to different choices. In a small amount of experimentation with different linear trends, five bridges were always discontinuities, marked with * in the above table. That the overall trend is marked by many discontinuities seems robust.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1393&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Change in rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The annual average increase in bridge span length increased by over a factor of one hundred between the period before 1826 and the period after (0.25 feet/year to 35 feet/year), though there was not a clear turning point in it. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPB8sDbWCXzmJwFbcOX6Al2ADip2P-h5ADC-X9MAoNU/edit#gid=1397997396&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for calculation (tab: ‘Five bridge types (longest)’)&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Span&lt;/strong&gt; is the distance between two intermediate supports for a structure, e.g. a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_(structure)&quot;&gt;beam&lt;/a&gt; or a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge&quot;&gt;bridge&lt;/a&gt;.  + &lt;p&gt;“Span (Engineering).” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 7, 2017. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;oldid=809190532&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;oldid=809190532&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-calculate-the-length-of-a-clear-span-of-bridge&quot;&gt;this quora explanation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Akashi-kaikyo_bridge3.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;. The original uploader was Sam at English Wikipedia. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,240 @@ + ====== Historic trends in bridge span length ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We measure eight discontinuities of over ten years in the history of longest bridge spans, four of them of over one hundred years, five of them robust as to slight changes in trend extrapolation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The annual average increase in bridge span length increased by over a factor of one hundred between the period before 1826 and the period after (0.25 feet/year to 35 feet/year), though there was not a clear turning point in it.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;A bridge &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_(engineering)&quot;&gt;span&lt;/a&gt; is a section of bridge between supports.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1393&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Span&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;is the distance between two intermediate supports for a structure, e.g. a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_(structure)&quot;&amp;gt;beam&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;or a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge&quot;&amp;gt;bridge&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Span (Engineering).” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 7, 2017. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=809190532&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=809190532&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Bridges can have multiple spans, e.g. one for each arch.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1393&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-calculate-the-length-of-a-clear-span-of-bridge&quot;&amp;gt;this quora explanation&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Bridges are often measured by their ‘main span’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We investigated bridge span (rather than bridge length, mass, or carrying capacity) because it was suggested to us as discontinuous. We also expect it to be a good metric for seeing technological progress, rather than economic progress, because additional spending can probably add more spans to a structure more easily than it can make each span longer. Span length is also a less ambiguous metric than total length, since it is not always clear where a road ends and a bridge begins.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/iAi6Od8yGeUuMj8Ff-3V4OL_AfiUBX5PXFEvK_WY0ma1FDoUoJacN7ygUAGpyE6D-dAavBtneCXitpR-hWBg8n86N-nVhUEnepJ3jCAwFhJ8nK5Zyxxn4KP3j4gfxu2gb8JJA4M_&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, current record-holder for longest bridge span&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1393&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Akashi-kaikyo_bridge3.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The original uploader was Sam at English Wikipedia. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Longest bridge span length === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We gathered data for bridge span lengths from several Wikipedia lists of longest bridge spans over history for particular types of bridge, plus a few additional datapoints from elsewhere. Our data and citations are in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPB8sDbWCXzmJwFbcOX6Al2ADip2P-h5ADC-X9MAoNU/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; in the tab ‘five bridge types’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Problems, ambiguities, and limitations of the data and our collection process:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Some span lengths are given as different lengths on different Wikipedia pages. We did not investigate this, and the one we used was arbitrary.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We did not find a list of historic longest bridge spans for all bridge types, so used several pages about longest bridges for particular bridge types, for instance &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_suspension_bridge_spans&quot;&gt;List of Longest Suspension Bridge Spans&lt;/a&gt;. It is quite possible we failed to find all such lists. In the data we have though, suspension bridges are usually longer than anything else, and the Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_suspension_bridge_spans#History_of_longest_suspension_spans&quot;&gt;History of Longest Suspension Bridge Spans&lt;/a&gt; mentions in its list a few times when non-suspension bridges are the longest bridge span in the world, suggesting that the authors of that page at least believe that at all other times the suspension bridges are the longest. We had already found the other bridges they mention (all arch or cantilever bridges). + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We have not investigated the accuracy of the Wikipedia data.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We are unsure what exact definition of ‘bridge’ is used in any of these pages. Our impression is that they need to allow foot vehicle traffic to cross independently (e.g. it looks like foot bridges are included, but not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vall%C3%A9e_Blanche_Cable_Car&quot;&gt;this cable car&lt;/a&gt; with a 2831m span, which it seems would hold the current record were it a bridge). We have not investigated more. + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;We treated dates of N BC dates -N&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1-3 show the length of the longest bridge span for five types of bridge over time. If we understand correctly, these include the longest bridges of any kind at least since around 500AD.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2085&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-3.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-3.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-3-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Entire history of longest bridge spans of five types, measured in feet. See text for further details. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2086&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-below-600-feet.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-below-600-feet.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-below-600-feet-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Figure 1 only visible to 600 feet. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2087&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-after-1800.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-after-1800.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Historic-longest-bridge-spans-5-bridge-types-after-1800-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Figure 1 since 1800 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;To measure discontinuities relative to past progress, we treat past progress as linear, and belonging to five different periods (i.e. three times we consider the recent trend to be sufficiently different from the older trend that we base our extrapolation on a new period).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1393&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Using this method, the length of the longest bridge span has seen a large number of discontinuities (see table below).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Name&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Year opened/became longest of type&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Main span (feet)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Discontinuity&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Chakzam Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1430&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;449&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;2230&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Menai Suspension Bridge&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1826&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;577&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;146&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Great Suspension Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1834&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;889&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;403&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Wheeling Suspension Bridge&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1849&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1010&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;70&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Niagara Clifton Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1869&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1260&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;14&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;George Washington Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1931&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;3501&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;132&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Golden Gate Bridge&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1937&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;4200&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge*&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1998&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;6532&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;56&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;*Entry was more robust to informal experimentation with different linear extrapolations&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Deciding what to treat as the previous trend at any point is hard in this dataset, because the shape of the trend isn’t close to being exponential or linear. The sizes of the discontinuities and even the particular bridges that count as notably discontinuous are not very robust to different choices. In a small amount of experimentation with different linear trends, five bridges were always discontinuities, marked with * in the above table. That the overall trend is marked by many discontinuities seems robust.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1393&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Change in rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The annual average increase in bridge span length increased by over a factor of one hundred between the period before 1826 and the period after (0.25 feet/year to 35 feet/year), though there was not a clear turning point in it. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPB8sDbWCXzmJwFbcOX6Al2ADip2P-h5ADC-X9MAoNU/edit#gid=1397997396&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for calculation (tab: ‘Five bridge types (longest)’)&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Span&lt;/strong&gt; is the distance between two intermediate supports for a structure, e.g. a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_(structure)&quot;&gt;beam&lt;/a&gt; or a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge&quot;&gt;bridge&lt;/a&gt;.  + &lt;p&gt;“Span (Engineering).” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 7, 2017. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;oldid=809190532&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Span_(engineering)&amp;amp;oldid=809190532&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-calculate-the-length-of-a-clear-span-of-bridge&quot;&gt;this quora explanation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Akashi-kaikyo_bridge3.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;. The original uploader was Sam at English Wikipedia. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1393&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_chess_ai?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,168 @@ + ====== Historic trends in chess AI ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 27 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The Elo rating of the best chess program measured by the Swedish Chess Computer Association did not contain any greater than 10-year discontinuities between 1984 and 2018. A four year discontinuity in 2008 was notable in the context of otherwise regular progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The history of chess-playing computers is long and rich, partly because chess-playing ability has long been thought (by some) to be a sign of general intelligence.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1638&quot; title=&#039;For a good history of chess-playing computers, see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/&quot;&amp;gt;this article.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; It says: &amp;amp;#8220;It was in this context that Turing, Von Neumann, and Shannon posed an ancient question in a now modern guise, in what came to be called “Artificial Intelligence” in the coming decade: can a machine be made to think like a person? And the answer to the question&amp;amp;#8212;the question of machine intelligence&amp;amp;#8212;was from the start tied to the question of whether a machine could be made to play chess. Turing began the investigation of chess playing computers with a system written out with paper and pencil, where he played the role of the machine. Later Shannon extended Turing&amp;amp;#8217;s work in a 1949 paper, explaining about his interest in chess that: “Although of no practical importance, the question is of theoretical interest, and it is hoped that…this problem will act as a wedge in attacking other problems&amp;amp;#8212;of greater significance.” As became clear in later writing by the two computer pioneers, “greater significance” was no less than the quest to “build a brain,” as Turing had put it. The quest for Artificial Intelligence, then, began with the question of whether a computer could play chess. Could it?&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Best_Schools. &amp;amp;#8220;A Brief History of Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Another example: The tenth Turing Lecture, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/text/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry.newell_simon.1975.ACM.062303007.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;available here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, mentions chess 20 times and uses it as a central example of how the field of artificial intelligence has progressed over the years. Newell, Allen, and Herbert A. Simon. &amp;amp;#8220;Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;ACM Turing Award Lectures&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;: 1975. doi:10.1145/1283920.1283930. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The first two ‘chess-playing machines’ were in fact fakes, with small human chess-players crouching inside.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1638&quot; title=&quot;1769 – Wolfgang von Kempelen builds the Automaton Chess-Player, containing a human chess player hidden inside, in what becomes one of the greatest hoaxes of its period.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;1868 – Charles Hooper presented the Ajeeb automaton — which also had a human chess player hidden inside.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It was not until 1951 that a program was published (by Alan Turing) that could actually play the full game.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1638&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;1951 – &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing&quot;&amp;gt;Alan Turing&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;is first to publish a program, developed on paper, that was capable of playing a full game of chess (dubbed&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turochamp&quot;&amp;gt;Turochamp&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;).&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-2&quot;&amp;gt;[2]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There has been fairly regular progress since then.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1638&quot; title=&quot;See Wikipedia&amp;amp;#8217;s page on the history of computer chess. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In 1997 IBM’s chess machine Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, world chess champion at the time, under standard tournament time controls.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded, and played Kasparov again in May 1997.[1] Deep Blue won game six, therefore winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½ and becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.[2]&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Deep Blue (Chess Computer).” In Wikipedia, June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903491291.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This was seen as particularly significant in light of the continued popular association between chess AI and general AI.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1638&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;Computer scientists believed that playing chess was a good measurement for the effectiveness of artificial intelligence, and by beating a world champion chess player, IBM showed that they had made significant progress. After the loss, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine&amp;amp;#8217;s moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players had intervened on behalf of the machine&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The event marked the point at which chess AI became superhuman, and received substantial press coverage.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The studio seated about five hundred people, and was sold-out for each of the six games. It seemed that the entire world was watching &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Best_Schools. &amp;amp;#8220;A Brief History of Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The Swedish Chess Computer Association (SSDF) measures computer chess software performance by playing chess programs against one another on standard hardware.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The Swedish Chess Computer Association (Swedish: Svenska schackdatorföreningen, SSDF) is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list. […] The SSDF list is one of the only statistically significant measures of chess engine strength, especially compared to tournaments, because it incorporates the results of thousands of games played on standard hardware at tournament time controls. The list reports not only absolute rating, but also error bars, winning percentages, and recorded moves of played games.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Swedish Chess Computer Association&amp;amp;#8221;. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;413&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/m7bZT3RHdGEPDsZz_d5b-1ln3Q_kcR2lgI_xOAAUmFzZANCZaf8ub_-YbzvdUFbxK8Xetrc6Duseoxvyvwrdq7bdW6ds95V3C8RjB2BRZSyZp6-UfXU-3mmpH10wRWNo-vlwa-a7&quot; width=&quot;275&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Deep Blue&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1638&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_Blue.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons: &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;James the photographer [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === SSDF Elo Ratings === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1638&quot; title=&#039;“Swedish Chess Computer Association.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, April 9, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Swedish Chess Computer Association&lt;/strong&gt; (Swedish: &lt;em&gt;Svenska schackdatorföreningen&lt;/em&gt;, SSDF) is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list…&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt;The SSDF list is one of the only &lt;/span&gt;statistically significant&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt; measures of &lt;/span&gt;chess engine&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt; strength, especially compared to tournaments, because it incorporates the results of thousands of games played on standard hardware at tournament time controls. The list reports not only absolute rating, but also &lt;/span&gt;error bars&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt;, winning percentages, and recorded moves of played games.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from Wikipedia’s list of SSDF Ratings&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1638&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Swedish Chess Computer Association&amp;amp;#8221;. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; (which we have not verified) and added it to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJU4lfAiQXLPp15xYHu1umZewc2HIHFsJzHTefS147o/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. See Figure 2 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2299&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ChessRating-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Elo ratings of the best program on SSDF at the end of each year. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Looking at the data, we assume a linear trend in Elo.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1638&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There are no discontinuities of 10 or more years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + = Minor discontinuity = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There is a four year discontinuity in 2008. While this is below the scale of interest for our &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;, it strikes us as notable in the context of otherwise very regular progress.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1638&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJU4lfAiQXLPp15xYHu1umZewc2HIHFsJzHTefS147o/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We’ve tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics for this discontinuity in the ‘Notable discontinuities less than 10 years’ tab &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1638&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This jump appears to have been partially caused by the introduction of new hardware in the contest, as well as software progress.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8216;The jump perfectly corresponds to moving from all programs running on an Arena 256 MB Athlon 1200 MHz to some programs running on a 2 GB Q6600 2.4 GHz computer, suggesting the change in hardware accounts for the observed improvement. However, it also corresponds perfectly to Deep Rybka 3 overtaking Rybka 2.3.1. This latter event corresponds to huge jumps in the CCRL and CEGT records at around that time, and they did not change hardware then. The average program in the SSDF list gained 120 points at that time (Karlsson 2008), which is roughly the difference between the size of the jump in the SSDF records and the jump in records from other rating systems. So it appears that the SSDF introduced Rybka and new hardware at the same time, and both produced large jumps.&amp;amp;#8217; &amp;amp;#8211; Grace, Katja. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains.&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; Report. December 9, 2013. Accessed June 19, 2019. https://intelligence.org/files/AlgorithmicProgress.pdf, p19&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For a good history of chess-playing computers, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/&quot;&gt;this article.&lt;/a&gt; It says: “It was in this context that Turing, Von Neumann, and Shannon posed an ancient question in a now modern guise, in what came to be called “Artificial Intelligence” in the coming decade: can a machine be made to think like a person? And the answer to the question—the question of machine intelligence—was from the start tied to the question of whether a machine could be made to play chess. Turing began the investigation of chess playing computers with a system written out with paper and pencil, where he played the role of the machine. Later Shannon extended Turing’s work in a 1949 paper, explaining about his interest in chess that: “Although of no practical importance, the question is of theoretical interest, and it is hoped that…this problem will act as a wedge in attacking other problems—of greater significance.” As became clear in later writing by the two computer pioneers, “greater significance” was no less than the quest to “build a brain,” as Turing had put it. The quest for Artificial Intelligence, then, began with the question of whether a computer could play chess. Could it?”&lt;br/&gt; + Best_Schools. “A Brief History of Computer Chess.” TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. + &lt;p&gt;Another example: The tenth Turing Lecture, &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/text/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry.newell_simon.1975.ACM.062303007.pdf&quot;&gt;available here&lt;/a&gt;, mentions chess 20 times and uses it as a central example of how the field of artificial intelligence has progressed over the years. Newell, Allen, and Herbert A. Simon. “Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search.” &lt;em&gt;ACM Turing Award Lectures&lt;/em&gt;: 1975. doi:10.1145/1283920.1283930. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;1769 – Wolfgang von Kempelen builds the Automaton Chess-Player, containing a human chess player hidden inside, in what becomes one of the greatest hoaxes of its period.&lt;br/&gt; + 1868 – Charles Hooper presented the Ajeeb automaton — which also had a human chess player hidden inside. + &lt;p&gt;“Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “1951 – &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing&quot;&gt;Alan Turing&lt;/a&gt; is first to publish a program, developed on paper, that was capable of playing a full game of chess (dubbed &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turochamp&quot;&gt;Turochamp&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;”&lt;br/&gt; + “Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See Wikipedia’s page on the history of computer chess.&lt;br/&gt; + “Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded, and played Kasparov again in May 1997.[1] Deep Blue won game six, therefore winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½ and becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.[2]”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Deep Blue (Chess Computer).” In Wikipedia, June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)&amp;amp;oldid=903491291.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Computer scientists believed that playing chess was a good measurement for the effectiveness of artificial intelligence, and by beating a world champion chess player, IBM showed that they had made significant progress. After the loss, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine’s moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players had intervened on behalf of the machine…” “Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The studio seated about five hundred people, and was sold-out for each of the six games. It seemed that the entire world was watching ”&lt;br/&gt; + Best_Schools. “A Brief History of Computer Chess.” TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The Swedish Chess Computer Association (Swedish: Svenska schackdatorföreningen, SSDF) is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list. […] The SSDF list is one of the only statistically significant measures of chess engine strength, especially compared to tournaments, because it incorporates the results of thousands of games played on standard hardware at tournament time controls. The list reports not only absolute rating, but also error bars, winning percentages, and recorded moves of played games.” + &lt;p&gt;“Swedish Chess Computer Association”. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_Blue.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; James the photographer [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Swedish Chess Computer Association.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, April 9, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Swedish Chess Computer Association”. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJU4lfAiQXLPp15xYHu1umZewc2HIHFsJzHTefS147o/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;‘The jump perfectly corresponds to moving from all programs running on an Arena 256 MB Athlon 1200 MHz to some programs running on a 2 GB Q6600 2.4 GHz computer, suggesting the change in hardware accounts for the observed improvement. However, it also corresponds perfectly to Deep Rybka 3 overtaking Rybka 2.3.1. This latter event corresponds to huge jumps in the CCRL and CEGT records at around that time, and they did not change hardware then. The average program in the SSDF list gained 120 points at that time (Karlsson 2008), which is roughly the difference between the size of the jump in the SSDF records and the jump in records from other rating systems. So it appears that the SSDF introduced Rybka and new hardware at the same time, and both produced large jumps.’ – Grace, Katja. &lt;em&gt;Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains.&lt;/em&gt; Report. December 9, 2013. Accessed June 19, 2019. https://intelligence.org/files/AlgorithmicProgress.pdf, p19&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,168 @@ + ====== Historic trends in chess AI ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 27 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The Elo rating of the best chess program measured by the Swedish Chess Computer Association did not contain any greater than 10-year discontinuities between 1984 and 2018. A four year discontinuity in 2008 was notable in the context of otherwise regular progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The history of chess-playing computers is long and rich, partly because chess-playing ability has long been thought (by some) to be a sign of general intelligence.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1638&quot; title=&#039;For a good history of chess-playing computers, see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/&quot;&amp;gt;this article.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; It says: &amp;amp;#8220;It was in this context that Turing, Von Neumann, and Shannon posed an ancient question in a now modern guise, in what came to be called “Artificial Intelligence” in the coming decade: can a machine be made to think like a person? And the answer to the question&amp;amp;#8212;the question of machine intelligence&amp;amp;#8212;was from the start tied to the question of whether a machine could be made to play chess. Turing began the investigation of chess playing computers with a system written out with paper and pencil, where he played the role of the machine. Later Shannon extended Turing&amp;amp;#8217;s work in a 1949 paper, explaining about his interest in chess that: “Although of no practical importance, the question is of theoretical interest, and it is hoped that…this problem will act as a wedge in attacking other problems&amp;amp;#8212;of greater significance.” As became clear in later writing by the two computer pioneers, “greater significance” was no less than the quest to “build a brain,” as Turing had put it. The quest for Artificial Intelligence, then, began with the question of whether a computer could play chess. Could it?&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Best_Schools. &amp;amp;#8220;A Brief History of Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Another example: The tenth Turing Lecture, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/text/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry.newell_simon.1975.ACM.062303007.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;available here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, mentions chess 20 times and uses it as a central example of how the field of artificial intelligence has progressed over the years. Newell, Allen, and Herbert A. Simon. &amp;amp;#8220;Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;ACM Turing Award Lectures&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;: 1975. doi:10.1145/1283920.1283930. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The first two ‘chess-playing machines’ were in fact fakes, with small human chess-players crouching inside.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1638&quot; title=&quot;1769 – Wolfgang von Kempelen builds the Automaton Chess-Player, containing a human chess player hidden inside, in what becomes one of the greatest hoaxes of its period.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;1868 – Charles Hooper presented the Ajeeb automaton — which also had a human chess player hidden inside.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It was not until 1951 that a program was published (by Alan Turing) that could actually play the full game.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1638&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;1951 – &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing&quot;&amp;gt;Alan Turing&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;is first to publish a program, developed on paper, that was capable of playing a full game of chess (dubbed&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turochamp&quot;&amp;gt;Turochamp&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;).&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-2&quot;&amp;gt;[2]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There has been fairly regular progress since then.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1638&quot; title=&quot;See Wikipedia&amp;amp;#8217;s page on the history of computer chess. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In 1997 IBM’s chess machine Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, world chess champion at the time, under standard tournament time controls.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded, and played Kasparov again in May 1997.[1] Deep Blue won game six, therefore winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½ and becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.[2]&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Deep Blue (Chess Computer).” In Wikipedia, June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903491291.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This was seen as particularly significant in light of the continued popular association between chess AI and general AI.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1638&quot; title=&quot; &amp;amp;#8220;Computer scientists believed that playing chess was a good measurement for the effectiveness of artificial intelligence, and by beating a world champion chess player, IBM showed that they had made significant progress. After the loss, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine&amp;amp;#8217;s moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players had intervened on behalf of the machine&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The event marked the point at which chess AI became superhuman, and received substantial press coverage.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The studio seated about five hundred people, and was sold-out for each of the six games. It seemed that the entire world was watching &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Best_Schools. &amp;amp;#8220;A Brief History of Computer Chess.&amp;amp;#8221; TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The Swedish Chess Computer Association (SSDF) measures computer chess software performance by playing chess programs against one another on standard hardware.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The Swedish Chess Computer Association (Swedish: Svenska schackdatorföreningen, SSDF) is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list. […] The SSDF list is one of the only statistically significant measures of chess engine strength, especially compared to tournaments, because it incorporates the results of thousands of games played on standard hardware at tournament time controls. The list reports not only absolute rating, but also error bars, winning percentages, and recorded moves of played games.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Swedish Chess Computer Association&amp;amp;#8221;. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;413&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/m7bZT3RHdGEPDsZz_d5b-1ln3Q_kcR2lgI_xOAAUmFzZANCZaf8ub_-YbzvdUFbxK8Xetrc6Duseoxvyvwrdq7bdW6ds95V3C8RjB2BRZSyZp6-UfXU-3mmpH10wRWNo-vlwa-a7&quot; width=&quot;275&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Deep Blue&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1638&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_Blue.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons: &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;James the photographer [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === SSDF Elo Ratings === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1638&quot; title=&#039;“Swedish Chess Computer Association.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, April 9, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Swedish Chess Computer Association&lt;/strong&gt; (Swedish: &lt;em&gt;Svenska schackdatorföreningen&lt;/em&gt;, SSDF) is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list…&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt;The SSDF list is one of the only &lt;/span&gt;statistically significant&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt; measures of &lt;/span&gt;chess engine&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt; strength, especially compared to tournaments, because it incorporates the results of thousands of games played on standard hardware at tournament time controls. The list reports not only absolute rating, but also &lt;/span&gt;error bars&lt;span style=&quot;font-size: inherit;&quot;&gt;, winning percentages, and recorded moves of played games.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from Wikipedia’s list of SSDF Ratings&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1638&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Swedish Chess Computer Association&amp;amp;#8221;. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;amp;oldid=891692663&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; (which we have not verified) and added it to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJU4lfAiQXLPp15xYHu1umZewc2HIHFsJzHTefS147o/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. See Figure 2 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2299&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ChessRating-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Elo ratings of the best program on SSDF at the end of each year. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Looking at the data, we assume a linear trend in Elo.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1638&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There are no discontinuities of 10 or more years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + = Minor discontinuity = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There is a four year discontinuity in 2008. While this is below the scale of interest for our &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;, it strikes us as notable in the context of otherwise very regular progress.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1638&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJU4lfAiQXLPp15xYHu1umZewc2HIHFsJzHTefS147o/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We’ve tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics for this discontinuity in the ‘Notable discontinuities less than 10 years’ tab &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1638&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This jump appears to have been partially caused by the introduction of new hardware in the contest, as well as software progress.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1638&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8216;The jump perfectly corresponds to moving from all programs running on an Arena 256 MB Athlon 1200 MHz to some programs running on a 2 GB Q6600 2.4 GHz computer, suggesting the change in hardware accounts for the observed improvement. However, it also corresponds perfectly to Deep Rybka 3 overtaking Rybka 2.3.1. This latter event corresponds to huge jumps in the CCRL and CEGT records at around that time, and they did not change hardware then. The average program in the SSDF list gained 120 points at that time (Karlsson 2008), which is roughly the difference between the size of the jump in the SSDF records and the jump in records from other rating systems. So it appears that the SSDF introduced Rybka and new hardware at the same time, and both produced large jumps.&amp;amp;#8217; &amp;amp;#8211; Grace, Katja. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains.&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; Report. December 9, 2013. Accessed June 19, 2019. https://intelligence.org/files/AlgorithmicProgress.pdf, p19&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For a good history of chess-playing computers, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/&quot;&gt;this article.&lt;/a&gt; It says: “It was in this context that Turing, Von Neumann, and Shannon posed an ancient question in a now modern guise, in what came to be called “Artificial Intelligence” in the coming decade: can a machine be made to think like a person? And the answer to the question—the question of machine intelligence—was from the start tied to the question of whether a machine could be made to play chess. Turing began the investigation of chess playing computers with a system written out with paper and pencil, where he played the role of the machine. Later Shannon extended Turing’s work in a 1949 paper, explaining about his interest in chess that: “Although of no practical importance, the question is of theoretical interest, and it is hoped that…this problem will act as a wedge in attacking other problems—of greater significance.” As became clear in later writing by the two computer pioneers, “greater significance” was no less than the quest to “build a brain,” as Turing had put it. The quest for Artificial Intelligence, then, began with the question of whether a computer could play chess. Could it?”&lt;br/&gt; + Best_Schools. “A Brief History of Computer Chess.” TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. + &lt;p&gt;Another example: The tenth Turing Lecture, &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/text/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry/2-3.Computer_science_as_empirical_inquiry.newell_simon.1975.ACM.062303007.pdf&quot;&gt;available here&lt;/a&gt;, mentions chess 20 times and uses it as a central example of how the field of artificial intelligence has progressed over the years. Newell, Allen, and Herbert A. Simon. “Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search.” &lt;em&gt;ACM Turing Award Lectures&lt;/em&gt;: 1975. doi:10.1145/1283920.1283930. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;1769 – Wolfgang von Kempelen builds the Automaton Chess-Player, containing a human chess player hidden inside, in what becomes one of the greatest hoaxes of its period.&lt;br/&gt; + 1868 – Charles Hooper presented the Ajeeb automaton — which also had a human chess player hidden inside. + &lt;p&gt;“Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “1951 – &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing&quot;&gt;Alan Turing&lt;/a&gt; is first to publish a program, developed on paper, that was capable of playing a full game of chess (dubbed &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turochamp&quot;&gt;Turochamp&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#cite_note-2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;”&lt;br/&gt; + “Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See Wikipedia’s page on the history of computer chess.&lt;br/&gt; + “Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded, and played Kasparov again in May 1997.[1] Deep Blue won game six, therefore winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½ and becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.[2]”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Deep Blue (Chess Computer).” In Wikipedia, June 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)&amp;amp;oldid=903491291.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Computer scientists believed that playing chess was a good measurement for the effectiveness of artificial intelligence, and by beating a world champion chess player, IBM showed that they had made significant progress. After the loss, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine’s moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players had intervened on behalf of the machine…” “Computer Chess.” Wikipedia. July 10, 2019. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The studio seated about five hundred people, and was sold-out for each of the six games. It seemed that the entire world was watching ”&lt;br/&gt; + Best_Schools. “A Brief History of Computer Chess.” TheBestSchools.org. September 18, 2018. Accessed July 18, 2019. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brief-history-of-computer-chess/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The Swedish Chess Computer Association (Swedish: Svenska schackdatorföreningen, SSDF) is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list. […] The SSDF list is one of the only statistically significant measures of chess engine strength, especially compared to tournaments, because it incorporates the results of thousands of games played on standard hardware at tournament time controls. The list reports not only absolute rating, but also error bars, winning percentages, and recorded moves of played games.” + &lt;p&gt;“Swedish Chess Computer Association”. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deep_Blue.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; James the photographer [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Swedish Chess Computer Association.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, April 9, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Swedish Chess Computer Association”. 2009. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 19 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association&amp;amp;oldid=891692663&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJU4lfAiQXLPp15xYHu1umZewc2HIHFsJzHTefS147o/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;‘The jump perfectly corresponds to moving from all programs running on an Arena 256 MB Athlon 1200 MHz to some programs running on a 2 GB Q6600 2.4 GHz computer, suggesting the change in hardware accounts for the observed improvement. However, it also corresponds perfectly to Deep Rybka 3 overtaking Rybka 2.3.1. This latter event corresponds to huge jumps in the CCRL and CEGT records at around that time, and they did not change hardware then. The average program in the SSDF list gained 120 points at that time (Karlsson 2008), which is roughly the difference between the size of the jump in the SSDF records and the jump in records from other rating systems. So it appears that the SSDF introduced Rybka and new hardware at the same time, and both produced large jumps.’ – Grace, Katja. &lt;em&gt;Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains.&lt;/em&gt; Report. December 9, 2013. Accessed June 19, 2019. https://intelligence.org/files/AlgorithmicProgress.pdf, p19&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1638&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_flight_airspeed_records?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,117 @@ + ====== Historic trends in flight airspeed records ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Flight airspeed records between 1903 and 1976 contained one greater than 10-year discontinuity: a 19-year discontinuity corresponding to the Fairey Delta 2 flight in 1956.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The average annual growth in flight airspeed markedly increased with the Fairey Delta 2, from 16mph/year to 129mph/year.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Flight airspeed records are measured relative to particular classes of aircraft, with official rules defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). is “the highest airspeed attained by any aircraft of a particular class”.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1624&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;An air speed record is the highest airspeed attained by an aircraft of a particular class. The rules for all official aviation records are defined by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI),[1] which also ratifies any claims. Speed records are divided into multiple classes with sub-divisions. There are three classes of aircraft: landplanes, seaplanes, and amphibians; then within these classes, there are records for aircraft in a number of weight categories. There are still further subdivisions for piston-engined, turbojet, turboprop, and rocket-engined aircraft. Within each of these groups, records are defined for speed over a straight course and for closed circuits of various sizes carrying various payloads.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Flight Airspeed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Flight airspeed records === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from Wikipedia’s list of flight airspeed records&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1624&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Flight Airspeed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; (which we have not verified) and added it to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. We understand it to be fastest records across all classes of manned aircraft that are able to take off under their own power, but it is not well explained on the page. We included only official airspeed records. See Figure 1 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;358&quot; src=&quot;https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/8t3ONdcpzCrC_6h34Pb5XSS4h1MkCt8HAZ-FbzJYJpHykEOCPV4KDAk-3Bt0LGhTvY_iCXAzJotvOABhAq4QflopZdvbvvED4Y4-K4qiWAH1WjLO03YR143gayqc-L_RJpRy1KXS&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Flight airspeed records over time + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treat the data as linear, and once deem it to have begun a new trend, for the purpose of determining the past rate of progress. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We calculate the size of discontinuities in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In 1956, there was a 19-year discontinuity in flight airspeed records with the Fairey Delta 2 flight.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We tabulated a number of other related metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;435&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/of_EyYHBuISjX0q4Yz5NzGxSlm93AsaQBzcCmrgJvIzl1zctzuhaXA_mB6-UaINmQoa1-L0T-2fx717elAoiq5VvpiOX4VPJSW070ebpOy0cZO3vF2mzwkWXtsUhhPsTRcn60OND&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Fairey Delta 2&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1624&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairey_Delta_2_(4842903791).jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons: &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;Roland Turner from Birmingham, Great Britain [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, whose 1956 record represented a 19 year discontinuity. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Change in the growth rate == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The average annual growth in flight airspeed markedly increased at around the time of the Fairey Delta 2. Airspeed records grew by an average of 16mph/year up until the one before Fairey Delta 2, whereas from that point until 1965 they grew by an average of 129mph/year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“An air speed record is the highest airspeed attained by an aircraft of a particular class. The rules for all official aviation records are defined by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI),[1] which also ratifies any claims. Speed records are divided into multiple classes with sub-divisions. There are three classes of aircraft: landplanes, seaplanes, and amphibians; then within these classes, there are records for aircraft in a number of weight categories. There are still further subdivisions for piston-engined, turbojet, turboprop, and rocket-engined aircraft. Within each of these groups, records are defined for speed over a straight course and for closed circuits of various sizes carrying various payloads.” “Flight Airspeed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Flight Airspeed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairey_Delta_2_(4842903791).jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; Roland Turner from Birmingham, Great Britain [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,117 @@ + ====== Historic trends in flight airspeed records ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Flight airspeed records between 1903 and 1976 contained one greater than 10-year discontinuity: a 19-year discontinuity corresponding to the Fairey Delta 2 flight in 1956.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The average annual growth in flight airspeed markedly increased with the Fairey Delta 2, from 16mph/year to 129mph/year.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Flight airspeed records are measured relative to particular classes of aircraft, with official rules defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). is “the highest airspeed attained by any aircraft of a particular class”.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1624&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;An air speed record is the highest airspeed attained by an aircraft of a particular class. The rules for all official aviation records are defined by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI),[1] which also ratifies any claims. Speed records are divided into multiple classes with sub-divisions. There are three classes of aircraft: landplanes, seaplanes, and amphibians; then within these classes, there are records for aircraft in a number of weight categories. There are still further subdivisions for piston-engined, turbojet, turboprop, and rocket-engined aircraft. Within each of these groups, records are defined for speed over a straight course and for closed circuits of various sizes carrying various payloads.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Flight Airspeed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Flight airspeed records === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from Wikipedia’s list of flight airspeed records&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1624&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Flight Airspeed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; (which we have not verified) and added it to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. We understand it to be fastest records across all classes of manned aircraft that are able to take off under their own power, but it is not well explained on the page. We included only official airspeed records. See Figure 1 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;358&quot; src=&quot;https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/8t3ONdcpzCrC_6h34Pb5XSS4h1MkCt8HAZ-FbzJYJpHykEOCPV4KDAk-3Bt0LGhTvY_iCXAzJotvOABhAq4QflopZdvbvvED4Y4-K4qiWAH1WjLO03YR143gayqc-L_RJpRy1KXS&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Flight airspeed records over time + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treat the data as linear, and once deem it to have begun a new trend, for the purpose of determining the past rate of progress. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We calculate the size of discontinuities in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In 1956, there was a 19-year discontinuity in flight airspeed records with the Fairey Delta 2 flight.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We tabulated a number of other related metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;435&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/of_EyYHBuISjX0q4Yz5NzGxSlm93AsaQBzcCmrgJvIzl1zctzuhaXA_mB6-UaINmQoa1-L0T-2fx717elAoiq5VvpiOX4VPJSW070ebpOy0cZO3vF2mzwkWXtsUhhPsTRcn60OND&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Fairey Delta 2&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1624&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairey_Delta_2_(4842903791).jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons: &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;Roland Turner from Birmingham, Great Britain [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, whose 1956 record represented a 19 year discontinuity. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Change in the growth rate == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The average annual growth in flight airspeed markedly increased at around the time of the Fairey Delta 2. Airspeed records grew by an average of 16mph/year up until the one before Fairey Delta 2, whereas from that point until 1965 they grew by an average of 129mph/year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1624&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“An air speed record is the highest airspeed attained by an aircraft of a particular class. The rules for all official aviation records are defined by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI),[1] which also ratifies any claims. Speed records are divided into multiple classes with sub-divisions. There are three classes of aircraft: landplanes, seaplanes, and amphibians; then within these classes, there are records for aircraft in a number of weight categories. There are still further subdivisions for piston-engined, turbojet, turboprop, and rocket-engined aircraft. Within each of these groups, records are defined for speed over a straight course and for closed circuits of various sizes carrying various payloads.” “Flight Airspeed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Flight Airspeed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairey_Delta_2_(4842903791).jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; Roland Turner from Birmingham, Great Britain [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m7xLC684oPjwnjLGOskV0LyO_JOeQh7G23f55ihPva4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1624&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_land_speed_records?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,128 @@ + ====== Historic trends in land speed records ====== + + // Published 17 July, 2019; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Land speed records did not see any greater-than-10-year discontinuities relative to linear progress across all records. Considered as several distinct linear trends it saw discontinuities of 12, 13, 25, and 13 years, the first two corresponding to early (but not first) jet-propelled vehicles.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The first jet-propelled vehicle just predated a marked change in the rate of progress of land speed records, from a recent 1.8 mph / year to 164 mph / year.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, the land speed record is “the highest speed achieved by a person using a vehicle on land.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1621&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Land Speed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Wheel-driven cars, which supply power to their axles, held the records for land speed record through 1963, when the first turbojet powered vehicles arrived on the scene. No wheel-driven car has held the record since 1964.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1621&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Craig Breedlove&amp;amp;#8217;s mark of 407.447 miles per hour (655.722 km/h), set in Spirit of America in September 1963, was initially considered unofficial. The vehicle breached the FIA regulations on two grounds: it had only three wheels, and it was not wheel-driven, since its jet engine did not supply power to its axles. […] The confusion of having three different LSRs lasted until December 11, 1964, when the FIA and FIM met in Paris and agreed to recognize as an absolute LSR the higher speed recorded by either body, by any vehicles running on wheels, whether wheel-driven or not. […] No wheel-driven car has since held the absolute record.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Land Speed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;376&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/nJlqOk9tZJI4inBz01-Hcq9mwCDWUXOBGzDGwrPRY4hOa9TLQNIMXtP7CAChmU0fVcub5HPR7yKa4Puljh0bON4M85aHZKsXXe7tP7ctQccRX5H7qg-GoJYieih7w9RdIeJ0cvDo&quot; width=&quot;564&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Three record-setting vehicles: Sunbeam, Sunbeam Blue Bird, and Blue Bird&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1621&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Bird_land_speed_record_car_(5962811187).jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; sv1ambo [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Land speed records === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from Wikipedia’s list of land speed records,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1621&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Land Speed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; which we have not verified, and added it to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. See Figure 2 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;359&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/eCOr_JdyKmcr8otgQ7ts2YzG5ZaY0iashNCOlPDbIEh5BsKevQvJQfqAlKuvi-rcTlw8uhCielPs80qxKpwWz5l6If8mVpuQnSfWh83sFnlw_XFwYIlmzAFjBNvk4eAIvMKcVzH3&quot; width=&quot;581&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Historic land speed records in mph over time. Speeds on the left are an average of the record set in mph over 1 km and over 1 mile. The red dot represents the first record in a cluster that was from a jet propelled vehicle. The discontinuities of more than ten years are the third and fourth turbojet points, and the last two points. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we treat the data as a linear trend across all time,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1621&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; then the land speed record did not contain any greater than 10-year discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However we divide the data into several linear trends.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to view the trends, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#time-period-selection&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for details on how to interpet our sheets and when and how we divide data into trends.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Extrapolating based on these trends, there were four discontinuities of sizes 12, 13, 25, and 13 years, produced by different turbojet-powered vehicles.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There are several marked changes in the rate of progress in this history. The first two discontinuities are near the start of a sharp change, that seemed to come from the introduction of jet-propulsion (though note that the first jet-propelled vehicle in the trend is neither discontinuous with the previous trend, nor seemingly within the period of faster growth).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we look at the rates of progress in the stretches directly before the second jet propelled vehicle in 1964, and the stretch directly after that through 1965, the rate of progress increases from 1.8 mph / year to 164 mph / year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Land Speed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Craig Breedlove’s mark of 407.447 miles per hour (655.722 km/h), set in Spirit of America in September 1963, was initially considered unofficial. The vehicle breached the FIA regulations on two grounds: it had only three wheels, and it was not wheel-driven, since its jet engine did not supply power to its axles. […] The confusion of having three different LSRs lasted until December 11, 1964, when the FIA and FIM met in Paris and agreed to recognize as an absolute LSR the higher speed recorded by either body, by any vehicles running on wheels, whether wheel-driven or not. […] No wheel-driven car has since held the absolute record.” – “Land Speed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Bird_land_speed_record_car_(5962811187).jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; sv1ambo [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Land Speed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; to view the trends, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#time-period-selection&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for details on how to interpet our sheets and when and how we divide data into trends.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,128 @@ + ====== Historic trends in land speed records ====== + + // Published 17 July, 2019; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Land speed records did not see any greater-than-10-year discontinuities relative to linear progress across all records. Considered as several distinct linear trends it saw discontinuities of 12, 13, 25, and 13 years, the first two corresponding to early (but not first) jet-propelled vehicles.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The first jet-propelled vehicle just predated a marked change in the rate of progress of land speed records, from a recent 1.8 mph / year to 164 mph / year.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, the land speed record is “the highest speed achieved by a person using a vehicle on land.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1621&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Land Speed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Wheel-driven cars, which supply power to their axles, held the records for land speed record through 1963, when the first turbojet powered vehicles arrived on the scene. No wheel-driven car has held the record since 1964.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1621&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Craig Breedlove&amp;amp;#8217;s mark of 407.447 miles per hour (655.722 km/h), set in Spirit of America in September 1963, was initially considered unofficial. The vehicle breached the FIA regulations on two grounds: it had only three wheels, and it was not wheel-driven, since its jet engine did not supply power to its axles. […] The confusion of having three different LSRs lasted until December 11, 1964, when the FIA and FIM met in Paris and agreed to recognize as an absolute LSR the higher speed recorded by either body, by any vehicles running on wheels, whether wheel-driven or not. […] No wheel-driven car has since held the absolute record.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Land Speed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;376&quot; src=&quot;https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/nJlqOk9tZJI4inBz01-Hcq9mwCDWUXOBGzDGwrPRY4hOa9TLQNIMXtP7CAChmU0fVcub5HPR7yKa4Puljh0bON4M85aHZKsXXe7tP7ctQccRX5H7qg-GoJYieih7w9RdIeJ0cvDo&quot; width=&quot;564&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Three record-setting vehicles: Sunbeam, Sunbeam Blue Bird, and Blue Bird&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1621&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Bird_land_speed_record_car_(5962811187).jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; sv1ambo [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Land speed records === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We took data from Wikipedia’s list of land speed records,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1621&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Land Speed Record&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; which we have not verified, and added it to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. See Figure 2 below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;359&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/eCOr_JdyKmcr8otgQ7ts2YzG5ZaY0iashNCOlPDbIEh5BsKevQvJQfqAlKuvi-rcTlw8uhCielPs80qxKpwWz5l6If8mVpuQnSfWh83sFnlw_XFwYIlmzAFjBNvk4eAIvMKcVzH3&quot; width=&quot;581&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Historic land speed records in mph over time. Speeds on the left are an average of the record set in mph over 1 km and over 1 mile. The red dot represents the first record in a cluster that was from a jet propelled vehicle. The discontinuities of more than ten years are the third and fourth turbojet points, and the last two points. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we treat the data as a linear trend across all time,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1621&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; then the land speed record did not contain any greater than 10-year discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However we divide the data into several linear trends.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to view the trends, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#time-period-selection&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for details on how to interpet our sheets and when and how we divide data into trends.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Extrapolating based on these trends, there were four discontinuities of sizes 12, 13, 25, and 13 years, produced by different turbojet-powered vehicles.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There are several marked changes in the rate of progress in this history. The first two discontinuities are near the start of a sharp change, that seemed to come from the introduction of jet-propulsion (though note that the first jet-propelled vehicle in the trend is neither discontinuous with the previous trend, nor seemingly within the period of faster growth).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we look at the rates of progress in the stretches directly before the second jet propelled vehicle in 1964, and the stretch directly after that through 1965, the rate of progress increases from 1.8 mph / year to 164 mph / year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1621&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Land Speed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Craig Breedlove’s mark of 407.447 miles per hour (655.722 km/h), set in Spirit of America in September 1963, was initially considered unofficial. The vehicle breached the FIA regulations on two grounds: it had only three wheels, and it was not wheel-driven, since its jet engine did not supply power to its axles. […] The confusion of having three different LSRs lasted until December 11, 1964, when the FIA and FIM met in Paris and agreed to recognize as an absolute LSR the higher speed recorded by either body, by any vehicles running on wheels, whether wheel-driven or not. […] No wheel-driven car has since held the absolute record.” – “Land Speed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Bird_land_speed_record_car_(5962811187).jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; sv1ambo [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Land Speed Record”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed May 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; to view the trends, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#time-period-selection&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for details on how to interpet our sheets and when and how we divide data into trends.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sezw2CCJ3WxcrAcqsw7ZWK1rJoxJkVYxW9HljWVe-vg/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1621&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2023-08-01T22:07:04+00:00 2023-08-01T22:07:04+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_light_intensity?rev=1690927624&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ - ====== Historic trends in light intensity ====== + ======= Historic trends in light intensity ======= // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // &lt;HTML&gt; @@ -12,17 +12,17 @@ &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Details ===== + ====== Details ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Background ==== + ===== Background ===== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;That which is uncited on this page is our understanding, given familiarity with the topic.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1330&quot; title=&quot;Our primary researcher for this page, Rick Korzekwa, has a PhD in physics, with experience in experimental optical physics.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -48,12 +48,12 @@ &lt;p&gt;Light intensity is relevant to applications such as starting fires with lenses, cutting with lasers, plasma physics, spectroscopy, and high-speed photography.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - === History of progress === + ==== History of progress ==== - == Focused sunlight and magnesium == + === Focused sunlight and magnesium === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;For much of history, our only practical sources of light have been the sun and burning various materials. In both cases, the light is incandescent (produced by a substance being hot), so light intensity depends on the temperature of the hot substance. It is difficult to make something as hot as the sun, so difficult to make something as bright as sunlight, even if it is very well focused. We do not know how close the best focused sunlight historically was to the practical limit, but focused sunlight was our most intense source of light for most of human history.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -69,25 +69,25 @@ &lt;p&gt;Magnesium is the first combustible material that we found that we are confident burns substantially brighter than crudely focused sunlight, and for which we have an estimated date of first availability. It was first isolated in 1808&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1330&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The metal itself was first isolated by &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphry_Davy&quot;&amp;gt;Sir Humphry Davy&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in England in 1808.&amp;amp;#8221; “Magnesium.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, October 17, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magnesium&amp;amp;amp;oldid=921795645&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magnesium&amp;amp;amp;oldid=921795645&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, and burns with a temperature of 3370K&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1330&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The maximum measured combustion temperature is about 3100°C, which is very close to the magnesium adiabatic flame temperature in air, ca. 3200°C&amp;amp;#8221; Dreizin, Edward L., Charles H. Berman, and Edward P. Vicenzi. “Condensed-Phase Modifications in Magnesium Particle Combustion in Air.” Scripta Materialia, n.d., 10–1016. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. Magnesium was bright enough and had a broad enough spectrum to be useful for early photography.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Mercury Arc Lamp == + === Mercury Arc Lamp === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The first arc lamp was invented as part of the same series of experiments that isolated magnesium. Arc lamps generate light by using an electrical current to generate a plasma&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1330&quot; title=&quot;A plasma is a gas of charged particles, which are typically electrons and ions.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, which emits light due to a combination of luminescence and incandescence. Although they seem to have been the first intense artificial light sources that do not rely on high combustion temperature&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1330&quot; title=&#039;An example of a low-intensity artificial light source that does not rely on combustion might be a luminescent chemical reaction, such as when &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus&quot;&amp;gt;phosphorous&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; is exposed to air.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, they do not seem to have been brighter than a magnesium flame&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1330&quot; title=&quot;Creating a very bright electrical arc requires a specialized atmosphere, and our understanding is that the first arc lamps were operated in open air.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; in the early stages of their development. Nonetheless, by the mid 1930s, mercury arc lamps, operated in glass tubes filled with particular gases, were the brightest sources available that we found. Our impression is that progress was incremental between their first demonstration around 1800 and their implementation as high intensity sources in the the 1930s, but we have not investigated this thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Argon Flashes == + === Argon Flashes === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon_flash&quot;&gt;Argon flashes&lt;/a&gt; were invented during the Manhattan project&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1330&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;To study the implosion design at Los Alamos’ Anchor Ranch site and later the Trinity Site, Optics group members and scientists developed new and improved&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lahdra.org/pubs/reports/Entire%20report/LAHDRA%20Draft%20Final%20Report_vJy23p.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;photographic techniques&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. These techniques included rotating prism and rotating mirror photography,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=bZ_MBQAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA139&amp;amp;amp;lpg=PA139&amp;amp;amp;dq=slit+smear+camera&amp;amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;amp;ots=b8gyOiPQTt&amp;amp;amp;sig=mByWmUwvqp_lmghy64cYuCC6gXk&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwik1I255cLUAhUK3IMKHSz2CQoQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=argon%20flash&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;high-explosive flash (“argon bomb”) photography&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=h6zMCgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA69&amp;amp;amp;dq=scientific+photography+and+digital+imaging&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwiAn8no58LUAhWJ24MKHc7qBx0Q6AEILTAB#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=flash%20x-ray%20photography%20&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;flash x-ray photography&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Atomic Heritage Foundation. “High-Speed Photography.” Accessed November 8, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/high-speed-photography&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/high-speed-photography&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; to enable the high speed photography that was needed for understanding plutonium implosions. They are created by surrounding a high explosive with argon gas. The shock from the explosive ionizes the argon, which then gives off a lot of UV light as it recombines. The UV light is absorbed by the argon, and because argon has a low heat capacity (that is, takes very little energy to become hot), it becomes extremely hot, emitting ~25000 Kelvin blackbody radiation. This was a large improvement in intensity of light from blackbody radiation. There does not seem to have been much improvement in blackbody sources in the 60 years since.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Lasers == + === Lasers === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lasers work by storing energy in a material by promoting electrons into higher energy states, so that the energy can then be used to amplify light that passes through the material. Because lasers can amplify light in a very controlled way, they can be used to make extremely short, high energy pulses of light, which can be focused onto a very small area. Because lasers are not subject to the same thermodynamic limits as blackbody sources, it is possible to achieve much higher intensities, with the current state of the art lasers creating light 16 orders of magnitude more intense than the light from an argon flash.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -103,28 +103,28 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Trends ==== + ===== Trends ===== - === Light intensity === + ==== Light intensity ==== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We investigated the highest publicly recorded light intensities we could find, over time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1330&quot; title=&quot;It is plausible that the most intense light to exist (rather than to be be recorded) increased gradually but extremely fast at times, rather than discontinuously in a strict sense. This is because the intensity of a source is sometimes ramped up gradually in the lab (though for our purposes these are similar).&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our estimates are for all light, not just the visible spectrum.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Data == + === Data === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;One of our researchers, Rick Korzekwa, collected estimated light intensities produced by new technologies over time into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19716LOwJPgr9oJjxV9f7pAh7GOb2Lkw0KkQtXK60XxE/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Many sources lacked records of the intensity of light produced specifically, so the numbers are often inferred or estimated from available information. These inferences rely heavily on subject matter knowledge, so have not been checked by another researcher. Figures 2-3 illustrate this data.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Pre-1808 trend = + == Pre-1808 trend == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We do not start looking for discontinuities until 1943, though we have data from beforehand, because our data is not sufficiently complete to distinguish discontinuous progress from continuous, only to suggest the rough shape of the longer term trend.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -160,9 +160,9 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity measurement == + === Discontinuity measurement === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We treat the rate of previous progress as an exponential between the burning glass in 424BC and the first argon candle in 1943. At that point progress has been far above that long term trend for two points in a row, so we assume a new faster trend and measure from the 1936 arc lamp. In 1961, after the trend again has been far surpassed for two points, we start again measuring from the first laser in 1960. See this project’s &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more detail on what we treat as past progress.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -178,25 +178,25 @@ &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1330&quot; title=&#039;See&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt; our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Note on mercury arc lamp = + == Note on mercury arc lamp == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The 1936 mercury arc lamp would be a large discontinuity if there were no progress since 1808. Our impression from various sources is that progress in arc lamp technology was incremental between their first invention at the beginning of the 19th century and the bright mercury lamps that were available in 1936. We did not thoroughly investigate the history and development of arc lamps however, so do not address the question of the first year that such lamps were available or whether such lamps represented a discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Note on argon flash = + == Note on argon flash == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The argon flash seems to have been the first light source available that is brighter than focused sunlight, after centuries of very slow progress, and represents a large discontinuity. As discussed above, because we are less certain about the earlier data, our methods imply a relatively high estimate on the prior rate of advancement, and thus a low estimate of the size of the discontinuity. So the real discontinuity is likely to be at least 996 years (unless for instance there was accelerating progress during that time that we did not find records of).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Change in rate of progress = + == Change in rate of progress == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Light intensity saw a large increase in the rate of progress, seemingly beginning somewhere between the arc lamps of the 30s and the lasers of the 60s. Between 424BC and 1943, light intensity improved by around 0.4% per year on average, optimistically. Between 1943 and 2008, light intensity grew by an average of around 190% per year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1330&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19716LOwJPgr9oJjxV9f7pAh7GOb2Lkw0KkQtXK60XxE/edit#gid=0&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -207,12 +207,12 @@ &lt;p&gt;The first demonstrations of working lasers seems to have prompted a flurry of work. For the first fifteen years, maximum light intensity had an average doubling time of four months, and over roughly five decades following lasers, the average doubling time was a year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1330&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19716LOwJPgr9oJjxV9f7pAh7GOb2Lkw0KkQtXK60XxE/edit#gid=0&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discussion == + === Discussion === - = Factors of potential relevance to causes of abrupt progress = + == Factors of potential relevance to causes of abrupt progress == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Technological novelty&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -283,9 +283,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;In sum, it seems the argon flash and the laser both caused large jumps in a metric that is relevant today but that was not a goal at the time of their development. Both could probably have been invented sooner, had there been interest.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Predictability = + == Predictability == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;One reason to care about discontinuities is because they might be surprising, and so cause instability or problems that we are not prepared for. So we are interested in whether discontinuities were in fact surprising.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -301,9 +301,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;However as discussed above, it seems plausible that the technology allowing argon flashes was relatively mature earlier on, and therefore that they might have been predictable to someone familiar with the area.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Notes ===== + ====== Notes ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; </pre>

<pre> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ - ====== Historic trends in light intensity ====== + ======= Historic trends in light intensity ======= // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // &lt;HTML&gt; @@ -12,17 +12,17 @@ &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Details ===== + ====== Details ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Background ==== + ===== Background ===== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;That which is uncited on this page is our understanding, given familiarity with the topic.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1330&quot; title=&quot;Our primary researcher for this page, Rick Korzekwa, has a PhD in physics, with experience in experimental optical physics.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -48,12 +48,12 @@ &lt;p&gt;Light intensity is relevant to applications such as starting fires with lenses, cutting with lasers, plasma physics, spectroscopy, and high-speed photography.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - === History of progress === + ==== History of progress ==== - == Focused sunlight and magnesium == + === Focused sunlight and magnesium === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;For much of history, our only practical sources of light have been the sun and burning various materials. In both cases, the light is incandescent (produced by a substance being hot), so light intensity depends on the temperature of the hot substance. It is difficult to make something as hot as the sun, so difficult to make something as bright as sunlight, even if it is very well focused. We do not know how close the best focused sunlight historically was to the practical limit, but focused sunlight was our most intense source of light for most of human history.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -69,25 +69,25 @@ &lt;p&gt;Magnesium is the first combustible material that we found that we are confident burns substantially brighter than crudely focused sunlight, and for which we have an estimated date of first availability. It was first isolated in 1808&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1330&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The metal itself was first isolated by &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphry_Davy&quot;&amp;gt;Sir Humphry Davy&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in England in 1808.&amp;amp;#8221; “Magnesium.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, October 17, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magnesium&amp;amp;amp;oldid=921795645&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magnesium&amp;amp;amp;oldid=921795645&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, and burns with a temperature of 3370K&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1330&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The maximum measured combustion temperature is about 3100°C, which is very close to the magnesium adiabatic flame temperature in air, ca. 3200°C&amp;amp;#8221; Dreizin, Edward L., Charles H. Berman, and Edward P. Vicenzi. “Condensed-Phase Modifications in Magnesium Particle Combustion in Air.” Scripta Materialia, n.d., 10–1016. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. Magnesium was bright enough and had a broad enough spectrum to be useful for early photography.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Mercury Arc Lamp == + === Mercury Arc Lamp === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The first arc lamp was invented as part of the same series of experiments that isolated magnesium. Arc lamps generate light by using an electrical current to generate a plasma&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1330&quot; title=&quot;A plasma is a gas of charged particles, which are typically electrons and ions.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, which emits light due to a combination of luminescence and incandescence. Although they seem to have been the first intense artificial light sources that do not rely on high combustion temperature&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1330&quot; title=&#039;An example of a low-intensity artificial light source that does not rely on combustion might be a luminescent chemical reaction, such as when &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus&quot;&amp;gt;phosphorous&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; is exposed to air.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, they do not seem to have been brighter than a magnesium flame&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1330&quot; title=&quot;Creating a very bright electrical arc requires a specialized atmosphere, and our understanding is that the first arc lamps were operated in open air.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; in the early stages of their development. Nonetheless, by the mid 1930s, mercury arc lamps, operated in glass tubes filled with particular gases, were the brightest sources available that we found. Our impression is that progress was incremental between their first demonstration around 1800 and their implementation as high intensity sources in the the 1930s, but we have not investigated this thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Argon Flashes == + === Argon Flashes === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon_flash&quot;&gt;Argon flashes&lt;/a&gt; were invented during the Manhattan project&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1330&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;To study the implosion design at Los Alamos’ Anchor Ranch site and later the Trinity Site, Optics group members and scientists developed new and improved&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lahdra.org/pubs/reports/Entire%20report/LAHDRA%20Draft%20Final%20Report_vJy23p.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;photographic techniques&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. These techniques included rotating prism and rotating mirror photography,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=bZ_MBQAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA139&amp;amp;amp;lpg=PA139&amp;amp;amp;dq=slit+smear+camera&amp;amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;amp;ots=b8gyOiPQTt&amp;amp;amp;sig=mByWmUwvqp_lmghy64cYuCC6gXk&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwik1I255cLUAhUK3IMKHSz2CQoQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=argon%20flash&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;high-explosive flash (“argon bomb”) photography&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=h6zMCgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;pg=PA69&amp;amp;amp;dq=scientific+photography+and+digital+imaging&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwiAn8no58LUAhWJ24MKHc7qBx0Q6AEILTAB#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;q=flash%20x-ray%20photography%20&amp;amp;amp;f=false&quot;&amp;gt;flash x-ray photography&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Atomic Heritage Foundation. “High-Speed Photography.” Accessed November 8, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/high-speed-photography&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/high-speed-photography&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; to enable the high speed photography that was needed for understanding plutonium implosions. They are created by surrounding a high explosive with argon gas. The shock from the explosive ionizes the argon, which then gives off a lot of UV light as it recombines. The UV light is absorbed by the argon, and because argon has a low heat capacity (that is, takes very little energy to become hot), it becomes extremely hot, emitting ~25000 Kelvin blackbody radiation. This was a large improvement in intensity of light from blackbody radiation. There does not seem to have been much improvement in blackbody sources in the 60 years since.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Lasers == + === Lasers === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lasers work by storing energy in a material by promoting electrons into higher energy states, so that the energy can then be used to amplify light that passes through the material. Because lasers can amplify light in a very controlled way, they can be used to make extremely short, high energy pulses of light, which can be focused onto a very small area. Because lasers are not subject to the same thermodynamic limits as blackbody sources, it is possible to achieve much higher intensities, with the current state of the art lasers creating light 16 orders of magnitude more intense than the light from an argon flash.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -103,28 +103,28 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Trends ==== + ===== Trends ===== - === Light intensity === + ==== Light intensity ==== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We investigated the highest publicly recorded light intensities we could find, over time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1330&quot; title=&quot;It is plausible that the most intense light to exist (rather than to be be recorded) increased gradually but extremely fast at times, rather than discontinuously in a strict sense. This is because the intensity of a source is sometimes ramped up gradually in the lab (though for our purposes these are similar).&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our estimates are for all light, not just the visible spectrum.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Data == + === Data === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;One of our researchers, Rick Korzekwa, collected estimated light intensities produced by new technologies over time into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19716LOwJPgr9oJjxV9f7pAh7GOb2Lkw0KkQtXK60XxE/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Many sources lacked records of the intensity of light produced specifically, so the numbers are often inferred or estimated from available information. These inferences rely heavily on subject matter knowledge, so have not been checked by another researcher. Figures 2-3 illustrate this data.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Pre-1808 trend = + == Pre-1808 trend == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We do not start looking for discontinuities until 1943, though we have data from beforehand, because our data is not sufficiently complete to distinguish discontinuous progress from continuous, only to suggest the rough shape of the longer term trend.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -160,9 +160,9 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity measurement == + === Discontinuity measurement === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We treat the rate of previous progress as an exponential between the burning glass in 424BC and the first argon candle in 1943. At that point progress has been far above that long term trend for two points in a row, so we assume a new faster trend and measure from the 1936 arc lamp. In 1961, after the trend again has been far surpassed for two points, we start again measuring from the first laser in 1960. See this project’s &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more detail on what we treat as past progress.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -178,25 +178,25 @@ &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1330&quot; title=&#039;See&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt; our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Note on mercury arc lamp = + == Note on mercury arc lamp == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The 1936 mercury arc lamp would be a large discontinuity if there were no progress since 1808. Our impression from various sources is that progress in arc lamp technology was incremental between their first invention at the beginning of the 19th century and the bright mercury lamps that were available in 1936. We did not thoroughly investigate the history and development of arc lamps however, so do not address the question of the first year that such lamps were available or whether such lamps represented a discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Note on argon flash = + == Note on argon flash == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The argon flash seems to have been the first light source available that is brighter than focused sunlight, after centuries of very slow progress, and represents a large discontinuity. As discussed above, because we are less certain about the earlier data, our methods imply a relatively high estimate on the prior rate of advancement, and thus a low estimate of the size of the discontinuity. So the real discontinuity is likely to be at least 996 years (unless for instance there was accelerating progress during that time that we did not find records of).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Change in rate of progress = + == Change in rate of progress == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Light intensity saw a large increase in the rate of progress, seemingly beginning somewhere between the arc lamps of the 30s and the lasers of the 60s. Between 424BC and 1943, light intensity improved by around 0.4% per year on average, optimistically. Between 1943 and 2008, light intensity grew by an average of around 190% per year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1330&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19716LOwJPgr9oJjxV9f7pAh7GOb2Lkw0KkQtXK60XxE/edit#gid=0&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -207,12 +207,12 @@ &lt;p&gt;The first demonstrations of working lasers seems to have prompted a flurry of work. For the first fifteen years, maximum light intensity had an average doubling time of four months, and over roughly five decades following lasers, the average doubling time was a year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1330&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1330&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19716LOwJPgr9oJjxV9f7pAh7GOb2Lkw0KkQtXK60XxE/edit#gid=0&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discussion == + === Discussion === - = Factors of potential relevance to causes of abrupt progress = + == Factors of potential relevance to causes of abrupt progress == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Technological novelty&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -283,9 +283,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;In sum, it seems the argon flash and the laser both caused large jumps in a metric that is relevant today but that was not a goal at the time of their development. Both could probably have been invented sooner, had there been interest.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Predictability = + == Predictability == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;One reason to care about discontinuities is because they might be surprising, and so cause instability or problems that we are not prepared for. So we are interested in whether discontinuities were in fact surprising.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -301,9 +301,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;However as discussed above, it seems plausible that the technology allowing argon flashes was relatively mature earlier on, and therefore that they might have been predictable to someone familiar with the area.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Notes ===== + ====== Notes ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_long-range_military_payload_delivery?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,267 @@ + ====== Historic trends in long-range military payload delivery ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed at which a military payload could cross the Atlantic ocean contained six greater than 10-year discontinuities in 1493 and between 1841 and 1957:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Date&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mode of transport&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knots&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity size&lt;br/&gt; + (years of progress&lt;br/&gt; + at past rate)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1493&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Columbus’ second voyage&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;5.8&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1465&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1884&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Oregon&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;18.6&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1919&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;WWI Bomber (first non-stop transatlantic flight)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;106&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;351&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1938&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;174&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1945&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Lockheed Constellation&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;288&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;25&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;R-7 (ICBM)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~10,000&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~500&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed at which a weapons payload could be delivered to a target on the opposite side of the ocean appears to have been limited to the speed of a piloted vehicle (and so coincided with speed of passenger delivery) until the first long-range missiles became available in the late 1950s.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1870&quot; title=&quot;If there was a pilotless way to quickly cross the Atlantic prior to ICBMs we have not been able to find it.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Transatlantic military payload delivery speed === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We look at fastest speeds of real historic systems that could have delivered military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean. We do not require that any military payload was actually sent by the method in question.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We generally use whatever route was actually taken (or supposed in an estimate), and do not attempt to infer faster speeds possible had an optimal route been taken (though note that because we are measuring speed rather than time to cross the Ocean, route length is adjusted for to a first approximation).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We only investigated this metric from 1492-1493 and 1841-1957. We do not investigate 1493-1841 because our data is insufficiently complete to determine how continuous it was.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1870&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/historic-trends-in-transatlantic-passenger-travel/&quot;&amp;gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for discussion of this.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collated records of historic potential times to cross the Atlantic Ocean for military payloads. These are available at the ‘Payload’ tab of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, and are displayed in Figure 1 and 2 below. We have not thoroughly verified this data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Because military payload delivery coincided with passenger travel until the late 1950s, most of our data coincides with that used in our investigation into &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The advent of ICBMs in 1957 probably increased the crossing speed to thousands of knots. We are fairly uncertain about how fast the first ICBMs were, but our impression is that they traveled at an average of least 5,000 knots and likely more like 10,000 knots.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1870&quot; title=&quot;Some evidence: &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;ul&amp;gt;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;The first ICBM to successfully travel an intercontinental distance, R-7, was initially planned to travel at 13,000 knots. &amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;Our impression is that a typical ICBM flight trajectory is mostly free-fall and that most missiles were launched on trajectories that are optimally fuel efficient, which means ballistic missiles should have similar average flight times over similar distances. Later ICBMs seem to generally travel at speeds of at least 10,000 knots (though we are unsure whether this is horizontal motion or also includes vertical motion).&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/ul&amp;gt; &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Uncertainty here makes little difference to measurement of discontinuities. To not be a discontinuity of more than a hundred years, the first ICBM would need to have traveled horizontally at less than 2314 knots, which seems unlikely, because that is insufficient speed to cross the ocean, assuming optimal angle of fire.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1870&quot; title=&quot; Under projectile motion ignoring the curvature of the Earth, optimal angle of fire is 45 degrees, so 2314 knots of horizontal motion means 3269 knots of angular motion. At that speed, the projectile travels less than 300km. Over 300km, the curvature of the Earth is not enough to substantially change this trajectory, or in particular make it twenty times as long.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We haven’t recorded the later trend, since our understanding is that modern ICBMs do not travel much faster than we think early ones may easily have done.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1870&quot; title=&#039;For instance, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&amp;gt;this 2013 list&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; of longest range ICBMs mentions a missile that cruises at 15,000mph:&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The solid-fuelled propulsion system ensures the missile to cruise at a speed of 15,000mph (24,140km/h).&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; Army Technology. “Longest Range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM): The Top 10 Ranked,” November 3, 2013. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; so will not yield clear discontinuities, and we do not know of faster missiles than ICBMs.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1870&quot; title=&#039;Cruise missiles are much slower. For instance, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos&quot;&amp;gt;BrahMos&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; is purportedly the fastest supersonic cruise missile, and can travel at mach 2.8 or 1867 knots. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;It can gain a speed of Mach 2.8&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“BrahMos.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 27, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;amp;oldid=928133032&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;amp;oldid=928133032&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;Figure 1: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2289&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Payload-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;Figure 2: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean since 1700 (close up of Figure 1)&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2290&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/PayloadZoom-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean since 1700 (close up of Figure 1) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Until 1957, discontinuities are the same as those for &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;speed of transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt;, since the data coincides. This gives us five discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We calculate the final development, the ICBM, to probably represent a discontinuity of around 500 years, but at least 100&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1870&quot; title=&quot;See above for why it must be at least 100 years&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Payload’ for our calculation.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1870&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;methodology for discontinuity investigation&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details. For instance, for the purpose of evaluating each point relative to past progress, we treat the data as several different linear or exponential trends. The methodology page describes how we decide what to treat as the trend of &amp;amp;#8216;past progress&amp;amp;#8217; for each point.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This gives us six greater than 10-year discontinuities in total, including five shared with transatlantic passenger travel speed. Three of them represent more than one hundred years of past progress:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Date&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mode of transport&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knots&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity size&lt;br/&gt; + (years of progress&lt;br/&gt; + at past rate)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1493&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Columbus’ second voyage&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;5.8&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1465&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1884&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Oregon&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;18.6&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1919&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;WWI Bomber (first non-stop transatlantic flight)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;106&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;351&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1938&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;174&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1945&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Lockheed Constellation&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;288&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;25&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;R-7 (ICBM)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~10,000&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~500&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the sizes of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1870&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;If there was a pilotless way to quickly cross the Atlantic prior to ICBMs we have not been able to find it.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt; for discussion of this.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Some evidence: + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;The first ICBM to successfully travel an intercontinental distance, R-7, was initially planned to travel at 13,000 knots.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Our impression is that a typical ICBM flight trajectory is mostly free-fall and that most missiles were launched on trajectories that are optimally fuel efficient, which means ballistic missiles should have similar average flight times over similar distances. Later ICBMs seem to generally travel at speeds of at least 10,000 knots (though we are unsure whether this is horizontal motion or also includes vertical motion).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Under projectile motion ignoring the curvature of the Earth, optimal angle of fire is 45 degrees, so 2314 knots of horizontal motion means 3269 knots of angular motion. At that speed, the projectile travels less than 300km. Over 300km, the curvature of the Earth is not enough to substantially change this trajectory, or in particular make it twenty times as long.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&gt;this 2013 list&lt;/a&gt; of longest range ICBMs mentions a missile that cruises at 15,000mph: + &lt;p&gt;“The solid-fuelled propulsion system ensures the missile to cruise at a speed of 15,000mph (24,140km/h).”&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Army Technology. “Longest Range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM): The Top 10 Ranked,” November 3, 2013. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&gt;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Cruise missiles are much slower. For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos&quot;&gt;BrahMos&lt;/a&gt; is purportedly the fastest supersonic cruise missile, and can travel at mach 2.8 or 1867 knots.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “It can gain a speed of Mach 2.8…” + &lt;p&gt;“BrahMos.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 27, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;oldid=928133032&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;oldid=928133032&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See above for why it must be at least 100 years&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;methodology for discontinuity investigation&lt;/a&gt; for more details. For instance, for the purpose of evaluating each point relative to past progress, we treat the data as several different linear or exponential trends. The methodology page describes how we decide what to treat as the trend of ‘past progress’ for each point.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,267 @@ + ====== Historic trends in long-range military payload delivery ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed at which a military payload could cross the Atlantic ocean contained six greater than 10-year discontinuities in 1493 and between 1841 and 1957:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Date&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mode of transport&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knots&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity size&lt;br/&gt; + (years of progress&lt;br/&gt; + at past rate)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1493&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Columbus’ second voyage&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;5.8&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1465&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1884&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Oregon&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;18.6&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1919&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;WWI Bomber (first non-stop transatlantic flight)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;106&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;351&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1938&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;174&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1945&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Lockheed Constellation&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;288&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;25&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;R-7 (ICBM)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~10,000&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~500&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed at which a weapons payload could be delivered to a target on the opposite side of the ocean appears to have been limited to the speed of a piloted vehicle (and so coincided with speed of passenger delivery) until the first long-range missiles became available in the late 1950s.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1870&quot; title=&quot;If there was a pilotless way to quickly cross the Atlantic prior to ICBMs we have not been able to find it.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Transatlantic military payload delivery speed === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We look at fastest speeds of real historic systems that could have delivered military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean. We do not require that any military payload was actually sent by the method in question.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We generally use whatever route was actually taken (or supposed in an estimate), and do not attempt to infer faster speeds possible had an optimal route been taken (though note that because we are measuring speed rather than time to cross the Ocean, route length is adjusted for to a first approximation).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We only investigated this metric from 1492-1493 and 1841-1957. We do not investigate 1493-1841 because our data is insufficiently complete to determine how continuous it was.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1870&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/historic-trends-in-transatlantic-passenger-travel/&quot;&amp;gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for discussion of this.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collated records of historic potential times to cross the Atlantic Ocean for military payloads. These are available at the ‘Payload’ tab of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, and are displayed in Figure 1 and 2 below. We have not thoroughly verified this data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Because military payload delivery coincided with passenger travel until the late 1950s, most of our data coincides with that used in our investigation into &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The advent of ICBMs in 1957 probably increased the crossing speed to thousands of knots. We are fairly uncertain about how fast the first ICBMs were, but our impression is that they traveled at an average of least 5,000 knots and likely more like 10,000 knots.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1870&quot; title=&quot;Some evidence: &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;ul&amp;gt;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;The first ICBM to successfully travel an intercontinental distance, R-7, was initially planned to travel at 13,000 knots. &amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;li&amp;gt;Our impression is that a typical ICBM flight trajectory is mostly free-fall and that most missiles were launched on trajectories that are optimally fuel efficient, which means ballistic missiles should have similar average flight times over similar distances. Later ICBMs seem to generally travel at speeds of at least 10,000 knots (though we are unsure whether this is horizontal motion or also includes vertical motion).&amp;lt;/li&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/ul&amp;gt; &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Uncertainty here makes little difference to measurement of discontinuities. To not be a discontinuity of more than a hundred years, the first ICBM would need to have traveled horizontally at less than 2314 knots, which seems unlikely, because that is insufficient speed to cross the ocean, assuming optimal angle of fire.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1870&quot; title=&quot; Under projectile motion ignoring the curvature of the Earth, optimal angle of fire is 45 degrees, so 2314 knots of horizontal motion means 3269 knots of angular motion. At that speed, the projectile travels less than 300km. Over 300km, the curvature of the Earth is not enough to substantially change this trajectory, or in particular make it twenty times as long.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We haven’t recorded the later trend, since our understanding is that modern ICBMs do not travel much faster than we think early ones may easily have done.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1870&quot; title=&#039;For instance, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&amp;gt;this 2013 list&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; of longest range ICBMs mentions a missile that cruises at 15,000mph:&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The solid-fuelled propulsion system ensures the missile to cruise at a speed of 15,000mph (24,140km/h).&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; Army Technology. “Longest Range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM): The Top 10 Ranked,” November 3, 2013. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; so will not yield clear discontinuities, and we do not know of faster missiles than ICBMs.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1870&quot; title=&#039;Cruise missiles are much slower. For instance, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos&quot;&amp;gt;BrahMos&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; is purportedly the fastest supersonic cruise missile, and can travel at mach 2.8 or 1867 knots. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;It can gain a speed of Mach 2.8&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“BrahMos.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, November 27, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;amp;oldid=928133032&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;amp;oldid=928133032&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;Figure 1: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2289&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Payload-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;Figure 2: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean since 1700 (close up of Figure 1)&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2290&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/PayloadZoom-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Historic speeds of sending hypothetical military payloads across the Atlantic Ocean since 1700 (close up of Figure 1) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Until 1957, discontinuities are the same as those for &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;speed of transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt;, since the data coincides. This gives us five discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We calculate the final development, the ICBM, to probably represent a discontinuity of around 500 years, but at least 100&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1870&quot; title=&quot;See above for why it must be at least 100 years&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Payload’ for our calculation.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1870&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;methodology for discontinuity investigation&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details. For instance, for the purpose of evaluating each point relative to past progress, we treat the data as several different linear or exponential trends. The methodology page describes how we decide what to treat as the trend of &amp;amp;#8216;past progress&amp;amp;#8217; for each point.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This gives us six greater than 10-year discontinuities in total, including five shared with transatlantic passenger travel speed. Three of them represent more than one hundred years of past progress:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Date&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mode of transport&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knots&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity size&lt;br/&gt; + (years of progress&lt;br/&gt; + at past rate)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1493&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Columbus’ second voyage&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;5.8&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1465&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1884&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Oregon&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;18.6&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1919&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;WWI Bomber (first non-stop transatlantic flight)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;106&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;351&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1938&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;174&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1945&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Lockheed Constellation&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;288&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;25&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1957&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;R-7 (ICBM)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~10,000&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;~500&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the sizes of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1870&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;If there was a pilotless way to quickly cross the Atlantic prior to ICBMs we have not been able to find it.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt; for discussion of this.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Some evidence: + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;The first ICBM to successfully travel an intercontinental distance, R-7, was initially planned to travel at 13,000 knots.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;Our impression is that a typical ICBM flight trajectory is mostly free-fall and that most missiles were launched on trajectories that are optimally fuel efficient, which means ballistic missiles should have similar average flight times over similar distances. Later ICBMs seem to generally travel at speeds of at least 10,000 knots (though we are unsure whether this is horizontal motion or also includes vertical motion).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Under projectile motion ignoring the curvature of the Earth, optimal angle of fire is 45 degrees, so 2314 knots of horizontal motion means 3269 knots of angular motion. At that speed, the projectile travels less than 300km. Over 300km, the curvature of the Earth is not enough to substantially change this trajectory, or in particular make it twenty times as long.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&gt;this 2013 list&lt;/a&gt; of longest range ICBMs mentions a missile that cruises at 15,000mph: + &lt;p&gt;“The solid-fuelled propulsion system ensures the missile to cruise at a speed of 15,000mph (24,140km/h).”&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Army Technology. “Longest Range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM): The Top 10 Ranked,” November 3, 2013. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&quot;&gt;https://www.army-technology.com/features/feature-the-10-longest-range-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbm/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Cruise missiles are much slower. For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos&quot;&gt;BrahMos&lt;/a&gt; is purportedly the fastest supersonic cruise missile, and can travel at mach 2.8 or 1867 knots.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “It can gain a speed of Mach 2.8…” + &lt;p&gt;“BrahMos.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, November 27, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;oldid=928133032&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BrahMos&amp;amp;oldid=928133032&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See above for why it must be at least 100 years&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;methodology for discontinuity investigation&lt;/a&gt; for more details. For instance, for the purpose of evaluating each point relative to past progress, we treat the data as several different linear or exponential trends. The methodology page describes how we decide what to treat as the trend of ‘past progress’ for each point.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1870&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-10-20T22:25:16+00:00 2022-10-20T22:25:16+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_manned_altitude?rev=1666304716&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1,12 +1,12 @@ ======= Historic trends in manned altitude ======= - // Published 18 October, 2022; last updated 18 October, 2022 // + // Published 18 October, 2022; last updated 20 October, 2022 // &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Altitude of objects attained by a person has seen one discontinuity of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1800, and one non-robust discontinuity of five years, shown below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The highest altitude attained by a person has seen one discontinuity of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1800, and one non-robust discontinuity of five years, shown below.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; @@ -103,9 +103,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;The first time a person exceeded this record was the hot air balloon flight of 1803, which reached an altitude of 7280m. This appeared as a large discontinuity in the &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_altitude&quot;&gt;historic trends in altitude&lt;/a&gt; page. Due to the uncertainty of estimating a trendline from the unrecorded Incan mountaineering tradition, we will not look at this record here.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record&quot;&gt;flight altitude record&lt;/a&gt; page, which claims to cover ‘highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning’. It is not entirely clear to us what ‘aeronautical flights’ covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. This list is likely to be more complete for manned flights than for all man-made objects.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record&quot;&gt;flight altitude record&lt;/a&gt; page, which claims to cover ‘highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning’. It is not entirely clear to us what ‘aeronautical flights’ covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. This list is likely to be more complete for manned flights than for all man-made objects. Manned flights are more interesting to more people, so they are more likely to be recorded, and they are typically more difficult, so fewer actors are capable of doing them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The manned altitude record was held by balloons for most of the time prior to World War II, except for 1923-1927, when the record was held by propeller aircraft. While the record for propeller aircraft does not appear as a discontinuity, it does herald the start of a period of more rapid improvements in both aircraft and balloon altitude records from 11km in 1923 to 22km in 1935.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -115,13 +115,13 @@ &lt;p&gt;No new manned altitude records occurred between 1935 and 1951. Even if we ignore balloons and look only at aircraft, no new altitude records occurred between 1938 and 1948. My guess is that World War II diverted scientific and technological research effort into areas which were considered more important to the war effort. Setting altitude records was not considered important, so progress here stagnated.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Starting in 1951, rocket aircraft claimed the manned altitude record for the first time and progress resumed. They set six altitude records between 1951-1961, increasing the manned altitude record from 24km to 51km. This is the time period where I am most worried about missing records. Rocket planes are not nearly as well documented as rockets. As long as none of the missing records exceed 50km in altitude, they would not change the estimate of the following discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Starting in 1951, rocket aircraft claimed the manned altitude record for the first time and progress resumed. They set six altitude records between 1951-1961, increasing the manned altitude record from 24km to 51km. This was the time period I was most worried about missing records in, because they could affect the following discontinuity. The US seems to have been the only country to have developed air launch rocket aircraft after WWII. Their engines burn for only 1-2 minutes, so they are too vulnerable before launch and while gliding to find much use militarily. Aircraft with both a rocket and a jet engine are more useful militarily, but do not seem to have set any altitude records. The air launched rocket aircraft designed by the US were research aircraft, not meant for combat. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-035-DFRC.html&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-082-DFRC.html&quot;&gt;Fact&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-079-DFRC.html&quot;&gt;Sheets&lt;/a&gt; describe these flights as records, and state that one of the Bell X-2 flights (1956) held the record until the X-15 program (1960). NASA should know what the manned altitude records were in the 1950s.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space, reaching an altitude of 327km on Vostok 1. This represented a discontinuity of 23 years, based on the exponential trend from rocket aircraft.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to cross the K&amp;aacuterm&amp;aacuten line and enter space, reaching an altitude of 327km on Vostok 1. This represented a discontinuity of 23 years, based on the exponential trend from rocket aircraft.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The two most recent rocket aircraft records before Vostok 1 were made by the North American X-15. The X-15 showed more rapid progress than previous rocket planes and reached an altitude of 107km by 1963. If someone in early 1961 had updated strongly on the recent progress of the X-15, then they would have expected a faster growth rate, and Yuri Gagarin would only look like a 5 year discontinuity. Since the X-15 had only set two altitude records before Vostok 1, and one of them was only two weeks before the discontinuity, we think that it is more reasonable to use the broader rocket plane trend.&lt;/p&gt; </pre>

<pre> @@ -1,12 +1,12 @@ ======= Historic trends in manned altitude ======= - // Published 18 October, 2022; last updated 18 October, 2022 // + // Published 18 October, 2022; last updated 20 October, 2022 // &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Altitude of objects attained by a person has seen one discontinuity of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1800, and one non-robust discontinuity of five years, shown below.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The highest altitude attained by a person has seen one discontinuity of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1800, and one non-robust discontinuity of five years, shown below.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; @@ -103,9 +103,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;The first time a person exceeded this record was the hot air balloon flight of 1803, which reached an altitude of 7280m. This appeared as a large discontinuity in the &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_altitude&quot;&gt;historic trends in altitude&lt;/a&gt; page. Due to the uncertainty of estimating a trendline from the unrecorded Incan mountaineering tradition, we will not look at this record here.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record&quot;&gt;flight altitude record&lt;/a&gt; page, which claims to cover ‘highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning’. It is not entirely clear to us what ‘aeronautical flights’ covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. This list is likely to be more complete for manned flights than for all man-made objects.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected all entries from Wikipedia’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record&quot;&gt;flight altitude record&lt;/a&gt; page, which claims to cover ‘highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning’. It is not entirely clear to us what ‘aeronautical flights’ covers, but seemingly at least hot air balloons and planes. This list is likely to be more complete for manned flights than for all man-made objects. Manned flights are more interesting to more people, so they are more likely to be recorded, and they are typically more difficult, so fewer actors are capable of doing them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The manned altitude record was held by balloons for most of the time prior to World War II, except for 1923-1927, when the record was held by propeller aircraft. While the record for propeller aircraft does not appear as a discontinuity, it does herald the start of a period of more rapid improvements in both aircraft and balloon altitude records from 11km in 1923 to 22km in 1935.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -115,13 +115,13 @@ &lt;p&gt;No new manned altitude records occurred between 1935 and 1951. Even if we ignore balloons and look only at aircraft, no new altitude records occurred between 1938 and 1948. My guess is that World War II diverted scientific and technological research effort into areas which were considered more important to the war effort. Setting altitude records was not considered important, so progress here stagnated.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Starting in 1951, rocket aircraft claimed the manned altitude record for the first time and progress resumed. They set six altitude records between 1951-1961, increasing the manned altitude record from 24km to 51km. This is the time period where I am most worried about missing records. Rocket planes are not nearly as well documented as rockets. As long as none of the missing records exceed 50km in altitude, they would not change the estimate of the following discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Starting in 1951, rocket aircraft claimed the manned altitude record for the first time and progress resumed. They set six altitude records between 1951-1961, increasing the manned altitude record from 24km to 51km. This was the time period I was most worried about missing records in, because they could affect the following discontinuity. The US seems to have been the only country to have developed air launch rocket aircraft after WWII. Their engines burn for only 1-2 minutes, so they are too vulnerable before launch and while gliding to find much use militarily. Aircraft with both a rocket and a jet engine are more useful militarily, but do not seem to have set any altitude records. The air launched rocket aircraft designed by the US were research aircraft, not meant for combat. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-035-DFRC.html&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-082-DFRC.html&quot;&gt;Fact&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-079-DFRC.html&quot;&gt;Sheets&lt;/a&gt; describe these flights as records, and state that one of the Bell X-2 flights (1956) held the record until the X-15 program (1960). NASA should know what the manned altitude records were in the 1950s.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space, reaching an altitude of 327km on Vostok 1. This represented a discontinuity of 23 years, based on the exponential trend from rocket aircraft.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to cross the K&amp;aacuterm&amp;aacuten line and enter space, reaching an altitude of 327km on Vostok 1. This represented a discontinuity of 23 years, based on the exponential trend from rocket aircraft.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The two most recent rocket aircraft records before Vostok 1 were made by the North American X-15. The X-15 showed more rapid progress than previous rocket planes and reached an altitude of 107km by 1963. If someone in early 1961 had updated strongly on the recent progress of the X-15, then they would have expected a faster growth rate, and Yuri Gagarin would only look like a 5 year discontinuity. Since the X-15 had only set two altitude records before Vostok 1, and one of them was only two weeks before the discontinuity, we think that it is more reasonable to use the broader rocket plane trend.&lt;/p&gt; </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_particle_accelerator_performance?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,195 @@ + ====== Historic trends in particle accelerator performance ====== + + // Published 26 March, 2019; last updated 08 March, 2021 // + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;None of particle energy, center-of-mass energy nor Lorentz factor achievable by particle accelerators appears to have undergone a discontinuity of more than ten years of progress at previous rates.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_accelerator&quot;&gt;Particle accelerators&lt;/a&gt; propel charged particles at high speeds, typically so that experiments can be conducted on them.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1350&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for basic research in particle physics.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Particle Accelerator&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Particle_accelerator&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903597299.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;377&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/QUDe8-AID5ih4W5Sry27HEP7i9QRiMtxwqVyieEIiDKQPjDARIwL3Ud6XNGRCioHfQXDkqtXpQg3_Xun8BQGwfaZVTlKMGRh9sjhWcyV1nv-oG3a76n0jx_pQ1ZJYLb9aoDIvGv7&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Fermi National Laboratory particle accelerator&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1350&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fermilab.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Fermilab, Reidar Hahn [Public domain]&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our understanding is that key performance metrics for particle accelerators include how much kinetic energy they can generate in particles, how much center-of-mass energy they can create in collisions between particles, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor&quot;&gt;Lorentz factor&lt;/a&gt; they can achieve.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;‘Livingston charts’ show progress in particle accelerator efficacy over time, and seem to be common. We took data from a relatively recent and populated one in a slide deck from a Cornell accelerator physics course (see slide 45),&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1350&quot; title=&quot;Hoffstaetter 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Classe.Cornell.Edu&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://www.classe.cornell.edu/~hoff/LECTURES/10USPAS/notes01.pdf., Slide 45&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and extracted data from it, shown in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; (see columns ‘year’ and ‘eV’ in tabs ‘Hoffstaetter Hadrons’ and ‘Hoffstaetter Leptons’ for original data).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The standard performance metric in a Livingston chart is ‘energy needed for a particle to hit a stationary proton with the same center of mass energy as the actual collisions in the accelerator’. We are uncertain why this metric is used, though it does allow for comparisons to earlier technology in a way that CM energy does not. We used a Lorentz transform to obtain particle energy, center-of-mass energy, and Lorentz factors from the Livingston chart data.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1350&quot; title=&#039;A &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation&quot;&amp;gt;Lorentz transform&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; allows us to recalculate velocities with a changed frame of reference, taking into account special relativity, which is a material consideration for such fast-moving objects. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;See Rick Korzekwa&amp;amp;#8217;s explanation of his calculation of this here: &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Particle energy === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 shows our data on particle energy over time, also available in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Particle energy’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2101&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ParticleEnergy-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Particle energy in eV over time + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We chose to model the data as a single exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There are no greater than 10-year discontinuities in particle energy at previous rates within this trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Particle energy&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation of discontinuities.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Center-of-mass energy === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 2 shows our data on center-of-mass energy over time, also available in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘CM energy’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2102&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/CMEnergy-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Center-of-mass energy in eV over time + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treated the data as exponential.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There are no greater than 10-year discontinuities in center-of-mass energy at previous rates within this trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;CM energy&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation of discontinuities.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Lorentz factor === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, ‘&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor&quot;&gt;The Lorentz factor&lt;/a&gt; or Lorentz term is the factor by which time, length, and relativistic mass change for an object while that object is moving.’&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit#gid=654930714&quot;&gt;This spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Lorentz factor’, shows our calculated data for progress on Lorentz factors attained over time.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2295&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/LorentzFactor-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Lorentz factor (gamma) over time. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treated the data as one exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There were no greater than 10-year discontinuities at previous rates within this trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Lorentz factor&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation of discontinuities.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Primary author: Rick Korzekwa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for basic research in particle physics.” – “Particle Accelerator”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Particle_accelerator&amp;amp;oldid=903597299.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fermilab.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Fermilab, Reidar Hahn [Public domain]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Hoffstaetter 2019. &lt;em&gt;Classe.Cornell.Edu&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://www.classe.cornell.edu/~hoff/LECTURES/10USPAS/notes01.pdf., Slide 45&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation&quot;&gt;Lorentz transform&lt;/a&gt; allows us to recalculate velocities with a changed frame of reference, taking into account special relativity, which is a material consideration for such fast-moving objects. + &lt;p&gt;See Rick Korzekwa’s explanation of his calculation of this here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Particle energy’ for our calculation of discontinuities.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘CM energy’ for our calculation of discontinuities.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Lorentz factor’ for our calculation of discontinuities.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,195 @@ + ====== Historic trends in particle accelerator performance ====== + + // Published 26 March, 2019; last updated 08 March, 2021 // + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;None of particle energy, center-of-mass energy nor Lorentz factor achievable by particle accelerators appears to have undergone a discontinuity of more than ten years of progress at previous rates.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_accelerator&quot;&gt;Particle accelerators&lt;/a&gt; propel charged particles at high speeds, typically so that experiments can be conducted on them.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1350&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for basic research in particle physics.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Particle Accelerator&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Particle_accelerator&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903597299.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;377&quot; src=&quot;https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/QUDe8-AID5ih4W5Sry27HEP7i9QRiMtxwqVyieEIiDKQPjDARIwL3Ud6XNGRCioHfQXDkqtXpQg3_Xun8BQGwfaZVTlKMGRh9sjhWcyV1nv-oG3a76n0jx_pQ1ZJYLb9aoDIvGv7&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Fermi National Laboratory particle accelerator&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1350&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fermilab.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Fermilab, Reidar Hahn [Public domain]&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our understanding is that key performance metrics for particle accelerators include how much kinetic energy they can generate in particles, how much center-of-mass energy they can create in collisions between particles, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor&quot;&gt;Lorentz factor&lt;/a&gt; they can achieve.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;‘Livingston charts’ show progress in particle accelerator efficacy over time, and seem to be common. We took data from a relatively recent and populated one in a slide deck from a Cornell accelerator physics course (see slide 45),&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1350&quot; title=&quot;Hoffstaetter 2019. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Classe.Cornell.Edu&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://www.classe.cornell.edu/~hoff/LECTURES/10USPAS/notes01.pdf., Slide 45&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and extracted data from it, shown in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; (see columns ‘year’ and ‘eV’ in tabs ‘Hoffstaetter Hadrons’ and ‘Hoffstaetter Leptons’ for original data).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The standard performance metric in a Livingston chart is ‘energy needed for a particle to hit a stationary proton with the same center of mass energy as the actual collisions in the accelerator’. We are uncertain why this metric is used, though it does allow for comparisons to earlier technology in a way that CM energy does not. We used a Lorentz transform to obtain particle energy, center-of-mass energy, and Lorentz factors from the Livingston chart data.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1350&quot; title=&#039;A &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation&quot;&amp;gt;Lorentz transform&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; allows us to recalculate velocities with a changed frame of reference, taking into account special relativity, which is a material consideration for such fast-moving objects. &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;See Rick Korzekwa&amp;amp;#8217;s explanation of his calculation of this here: &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Particle energy === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 shows our data on particle energy over time, also available in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Particle energy’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2101&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ParticleEnergy-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Particle energy in eV over time + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We chose to model the data as a single exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There are no greater than 10-year discontinuities in particle energy at previous rates within this trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Particle energy&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation of discontinuities.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Center-of-mass energy === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 2 shows our data on center-of-mass energy over time, also available in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘CM energy’.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2102&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/CMEnergy-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Center-of-mass energy in eV over time + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treated the data as exponential.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There are no greater than 10-year discontinuities in center-of-mass energy at previous rates within this trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;CM energy&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation of discontinuities.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Lorentz factor === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, ‘&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor&quot;&gt;The Lorentz factor&lt;/a&gt; or Lorentz term is the factor by which time, length, and relativistic mass change for an object while that object is moving.’&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit#gid=654930714&quot;&gt;This spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Lorentz factor’, shows our calculated data for progress on Lorentz factors attained over time.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2295&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/LorentzFactor-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Lorentz factor (gamma) over time. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treated the data as one exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; There were no greater than 10-year discontinuities at previous rates within this trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1350&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Lorentz factor&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation of discontinuities.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Primary author: Rick Korzekwa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for basic research in particle physics.” – “Particle Accelerator”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Particle_accelerator&amp;amp;oldid=903597299.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fermilab.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Fermilab, Reidar Hahn [Public domain]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Hoffstaetter 2019. &lt;em&gt;Classe.Cornell.Edu&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 30 2019. https://www.classe.cornell.edu/~hoff/LECTURES/10USPAS/notes01.pdf., Slide 45&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation&quot;&gt;Lorentz transform&lt;/a&gt; allows us to recalculate velocities with a changed frame of reference, taking into account special relativity, which is a material consideration for such fast-moving objects. + &lt;p&gt;See Rick Korzekwa’s explanation of his calculation of this here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv-0Jg6lMNobcDbfuruLwA8hYCXiPvq32f3NHz0BCLs/edit?usp=sharing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Particle energy’ for our calculation of discontinuities.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘CM energy’ for our calculation of discontinuities.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsEV5vtdArk6Q0RqAacmrErDif3x7O1JcPOn3BqIBY0/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Lorentz factor’ for our calculation of discontinuities.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1350&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2023-08-21T21:50:46+00:00 2023-08-21T21:50:46+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_ship_size?rev=1692654646&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ - ====== Historic trends in ship size ====== + ======= Historic trends in ship size ======= // Published 22 December, 2019; last updated 3 October, 2022 // &lt;HTML&gt; @@ -12,17 +12,17 @@ &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Details ===== + ====== Details ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Background ==== + ===== Background ===== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, naval tactics in the age of sail rewarded larger ships, because larger ships were harder to sink and could carry more guns, and battles were usually lengthy affairs in which two lines of ships fired at each other until one side surrendered.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;One consequence of the line of battle was that a ship had to be strong enough to stand in it. In the old type of mêlée battle a small ship could seek out an opponent of her own size, or combine with others to attack a larger one. As the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_battle&quot;&amp;gt;line of battle&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;was adopted, navies began to distinguish between vessels that were fit to form parts of the line in action, and the smaller ships that were not. By the time the line of battle was firmly established as the standard tactical formation during the 1660s,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_ship&quot;&amp;gt;merchant ships&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and lightly armed warships became less able to sustain their place in a pitched battle. In the line of battle, each ship had to stand and fight the opposing ship in the enemy line, however powerful she might be. The purpose-built ships powerful enough to stand in the line of battle came to be known as a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_the_line&quot;&amp;gt;ship of the line&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Sailing Ship Tactics.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. February 08, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ship_tactics.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1385&quot; title=&#039;See&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_the_line&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;these&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_battle&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;three&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ship_tactics&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;pages&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more on battle tactics during this period.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our understanding is that when steamships and iron-clad ships appeared, financial constraints sometimes prevented navies from building as large as technically possible, but the incentives towards bigger ships remained, since the best way to punch through heavy armor was to carry heavy guns, which required a big ship.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;the only effective weapons against a big ship were big guns, which required a big ship to carry them.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Naval Gazing Main/A Brief History of the Destroyer.” Accessed October 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.navalgazing.net/A-Brief-History-of-the-Destroyer&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.navalgazing.net/A-Brief-History-of-the-Destroyer&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -38,12 +38,12 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Trends ==== + ===== Trends ===== - === Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships ‘tonnage’ (BOM) === + ==== Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships ‘tonnage’ (BOM) ==== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&quot;&gt;‘Tonnage’ (BOM)&lt;/a&gt; is a pre-20th century measure of ship cargo capacity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s Old Measurement (BOM, bm, OM, and o.m.) is the method used in England from approximately 1650 to 1849 for calculating the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo&quot;&amp;gt;cargo&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;capacity of a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship&quot;&amp;gt;ship&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s Old Measurement.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. December 27, 2018. Accessed April 22, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s_Old_Measurement. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It is calculated as:&lt;/p&gt; @@ -56,9 +56,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;We use it because that’s what we have data on; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_(ship)&quot;&gt;displacement&lt;/a&gt;, the modern way of calculating ship weight, was not widely recorded until towards the end of our dataset. Unfortunately, BOM seems to be less accurate for estimating the cargo capacity of ships after 1860, which could affect our findings in this report. However, our Spot check section offers some evidence that this choice of metric isn&#039;t responsible for producing the largest discontinuity as an uninteresting artifact.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Data == + === Data === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Figure 2 shows ship &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&quot;&gt;‘tonnage’ (BOM)&lt;/a&gt; over time for UK Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships, according to Wikipedia contributors Toddy1 and Morn The Gorn.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1385&quot; title=&#039;“File: Weight Growth of RN First Rate Line-of-Battle Ships 1630-1875.Svg.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed October 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&quot;&amp;gt;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;This spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; contains their data. We have not vetted it thoroughly, but have spot-checked it (see &lt;a href=&quot;#spot-check&quot;&gt;Spot check&lt;/a&gt; section below). We extract the record-breaking subset of ships (see Figure 3).&lt;/p&gt; @@ -84,12 +84,12 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity measurement == + === Discontinuity measurement === - = Exponential prior = + == Exponential prior == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;If we have a strong prior on technological trends being linear or exponential, we might treat this data as a linear trend through 1804 followed by an exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Tonnage calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the trends, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Extrapolated in this way, tonnage saw ten greater than ten year discontinuities in this data, shown in the table below.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for explanation of how we calculated these numbers. Also see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Tonnage calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for these calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -167,9 +167,9 @@ &lt;td&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a aria-label=&quot;Minotaur (opens in a new tab)&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Minotaur_(1863)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer noopener&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Minotaur&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;1867&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;8946&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;8,946&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;33 years&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;Inflexible&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/tbody&gt; @@ -182,9 +182,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Other curves = + == Other curves == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;With a weaker prior on linear or exponential trends in technology progress, one might prefer to extrapolate this data as a more exotic curve, such as a hyperbola. For instance, &lt;em&gt;Tonnage = (1/(c*year + d))^(1/3)&lt;/em&gt; for some constants &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt; appears to be a good model, since &lt;em&gt;1/(tonnage^3)&lt;/em&gt; looks fairly linear (see Figure 4).&lt;/p&gt; @@ -205,9 +205,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;Using this to extrapolate past progress, we get no discontinuities (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet, sheet ‘Tonnage calculations’&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for this calculation). However this is unsurprising toward the end, since hyperbolas have asymptotes (potentially going to infinity in finite time), and this particular one reaches such a singularity in about 1869. So on that model, any size ship is expected by 1869, and discontinuities cannot be larger than the time remaining until that date. (The largest discontinuity is nine years, from &lt;em&gt;Warrior&lt;/em&gt;, which is within a year of the implied ship-tonnage singularity.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discussion of causes == + === Discussion of causes === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Given that modeling the data as hyperbolic means there are no discontinuities, a plausible cause for apparent discontinuities when modeling it as exponential is that the process of ship size increase is fundamentally closer to being hyperbolic (though it must have departed from this trend before long, since it would have implied arbitrarily large ships from 1869). We do not know why this trend in particular would be hyperbolic, given that we understand exponential curves to be much more common in technological progress.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -228,9 +228,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;The largest discontinuity was from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860)&quot;&gt;Warrior&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which was one of the two first armor-plated, iron-hulled warships.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Warrior&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and her&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_ship&quot;&amp;gt;sister ship &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Black_Prince_(1861)&quot;&amp;gt;HMS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Black Prince&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;were the first armour-plated, iron-&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_(watercraft)&quot;&amp;gt;hulled &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warship&quot;&amp;gt;warships&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and were built in response to France&amp;amp;#8217;s launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship&quot;&amp;gt;ironclad warship&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, the wooden-hulled&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Gloire&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Gloire&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;HMS Warrior (1860).&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. December 18, 2018. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860). &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It seems likely that iron hulls allowed larger ships. For example, the wooden steamship &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858)&quot;&gt;Mersey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, unusually large for a wooden ship yet smaller than the &lt;em&gt;Warrior,&lt;/em&gt; is considered to have been beyond the limits of wood as a structural material.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1385&quot; title=&#039; &amp;lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;She and her sister ship the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Orlando_(1858)&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Orlando&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;were the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_wooden_ships&quot;&amp;gt;longest wooden warships&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;built for the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Navy&quot;&amp;gt;Royal Navy&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;amp;#8230; The length, the unique aspect of the ship, was actually an Achilles&amp;amp;#8217; heel of the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Mersey&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Orlando&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. The extreme length of the ship put enormous strains on her hull due to the unusual merging of heavy machinery, and a lengthy wooden hull, resulting in her seams opening up. They were pushing the limits of what was possible in wooden ship construction: &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Even the biggest of the 5,000-6,000-ton wooden battleships of the mid-to-late 19th century and the 5,000-ton wooden motorships constructed in the United States during World War I did not exceed 340 feet in length or 60 feet in width. The longest of these ships, the Mersey-class frigates, were unsuccessful, and one, HMS Orlando, showed signs of structural failure after an 1863 voyage to the United States. The Orlando was scrapped in 1871 and the Mersey soon after. Both the Mersey-class frigates and the largest of the wooden battleships, the 121-gun Victoria class, required internal iron strapping to support the hull, as did many other ships of this kind. In short, the construction and use histories of these ships indicated that they were already pushing or had exceeded the practical limits for the size of wooden ships.&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858)#cite_note-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Britain had built two long frigates in 1858 &amp;amp;#8211; HMS Mersey and HMS Orlando &amp;amp;#8211; the longest, largest and most powerful single-decked wooden fighting ships. Although only 335 feet long, they suffered from the strain of their length, proving too weak to face a ship of the line in close quarters.&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858)#cite_note-2&quot;&amp;gt;[2]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;cite&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/cite&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/blockquote&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; &amp;amp;#8220;HMS Mersey (1858).&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. August 29, 2017. Accessed April 24, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858). &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Moreover, the very large civilian ship &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, made extensive use of iron for structure and appears to have been regarded as innovative for its structure.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Brunel&amp;amp;#8217;s &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Great Eastern&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;represented the next great development in shipbuilding. Built in association with&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scott_Russell&quot;&amp;gt;John Scott Russell&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, it used longitudinal&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stringer&quot;&amp;gt;stringers&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;for strength, inner and outer hulls, and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulkhead_(partition)&quot;&amp;gt;bulkheads&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to form multiple watertight compartments.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Shipbuilding.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 18, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding#Industrial_Revolution. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The hull was an all-iron construction, a double hull of 19 mm (0.75 in) wrought iron in 0.86 metres (2 feet 10 inches) plates with ribs every 1.8 m (5.9 ft). Internally, the hull was divided by two 107 m (351 ft) long, 18 m (59 ft) high, longitudinal bulkheads and further transverse bulkheads dividing the ship into nineteen compartments.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;SS Great Eastern.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 22, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; So plausibly this was an important enough innovation to produce an immediate jump in ship size.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Spot check == + === Spot check === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Our metric, BOM, doesn’t measure volume or weight directly; it is derived from a ship’s width and length. Thus it might often be a reasonable proxy for a more normal notion of size, but change arbitrarily between different ship designs. There is particular reason to suspect this here, since according to Wikipedia, “[s]teamships required a different method of estimating tonnage, because the ratio of length to beam was larger and a significant volume of internal space was used for boilers and machinery.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, s.v. &amp;amp;#8220;Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s Old Measurement,&amp;amp;#8221; (accessed April 5, 2019) &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -241,17 +241,17 @@ &lt;p&gt;To check whether the &lt;em&gt;Warrior&lt;/em&gt; discontinuity was an artifact of this measurement scheme, we also searched for displacement figures for some of these ships. (We also made a brief attempt to find ships from other navies, like the French, that might destroy the discontinuity. We didn’t find any.) We did not collect many, but they cover the period of the largest discontinuity, 1850-1860, and confirm that it is probably robust to different ship size metrics, and thus not an artifact. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fkJ5pkLBt5dvciFkOb4S1ala7ZPmOhGLW8lI_CkpO9Y/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - === Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships displacement (tons) === + ==== Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships displacement (tons) ==== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_(ship)&quot;&gt;displacement&lt;/a&gt; of a ship is its weight, measured by looking at the amount of water that a ship displaces when it’s floating.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1385&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The displacement or displacement tonnage of a ship is its weight based on the amount of water its hull displaces at varying loads.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Displacement (Ship)&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed July 8 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Displacement_(ship)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=899439176.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Data == + === Data === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We took displacement and ‘estimated displacement’ data from the same Wikipedia table&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1385&quot; title=&#039;“File: Weight Growth of RN First Rate Line-of-Battle Ships 1630-1875.Svg.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed October 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&quot;&amp;gt;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; for Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships and put it in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet, sheet ‘Displacement calculations’&lt;/a&gt;. Figure 5 below shows this data.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -267,9 +267,9 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity Measurement == + === Discontinuity Measurement === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;If we model this data as a linear trend through 1795 followed by an exponential trend,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Displacement calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the trends, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; then compared to previous rates in these trends, tonnage contained six greater than ten year discontinuities, shown in the table below.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for explanation of how we calculated these numbers. Also see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Displacement calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for these calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -337,9 +337,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;Once again, if we model the data as hyperbolic, it contains no discontinuities of more than ten years, however this is unsurprising after about 1859 end given the proximity of the asymptote (see further explanation in previous section, and calculations in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;spreadsheet, sheet ‘Displacement calculations’&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== The SS Great Eastern ==== + ===== The SS Great Eastern ===== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;In the process of another investigation, we noted that a civilian ship, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern&quot;&gt;SS &lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, launched in 1858, was about six times larger by volume than any other ship at the time. It apparently took more than forty years for its length, gross tonnage, and passenger capacity to be surpassed.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England&quot;&amp;gt;England&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;to&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia&quot;&amp;gt;Australia&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; without refueling. Her length of 692 feet (211 m) was only surpassed in 1899 by the 705-foot (215 m) 17,274-gross-ton &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Oceanic_(1899)&quot;&amp;gt;RMS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Oceanic&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, her&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_tonnage&quot;&amp;gt;gross tonnage&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;of 18,915 was only surpassed in 1901 by the 701-foot (214&amp;amp;nbsp;m) 21,035-gross-ton&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Celtic&quot;&amp;gt;RMS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Celtic&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and her 4,000-passenger capacity was surpassed in 1913 by the 4,935-passenger&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Imperator&quot;&amp;gt;SS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Imperator&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The ship&amp;amp;#8217;s five&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnel_(ship)&quot;&amp;gt;funnels&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; were rare. These were later reduced to four.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;These measurements were six times larger by volume than any ship afloat&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;SS Great Eastern.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 22, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We calculate its tonnage (BOM) to be 22,990 tons (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit#gid=2046407726&quot;&gt;spreadsheet, tab Tonnage calculations&lt;/a&gt;). Supposing our Royal Navy dataset is a good proxy for overall ship size records during this time, and treating past progress as exponential, the SS &lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt; represents a 416-year discontinuity in tonnage (BOM) over previous Royal Navy ships. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit#gid=2046407726&quot;&gt;spreadsheet, tab Tonnage calculations&lt;/a&gt;) If the trend is modeled as a hyperbola instead, the SS &lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt; still represents an 11 year discontinuity, which is as big as a discontinuity can be in the context of the theoretical expectation of arbitrarily large ships when the hyperbola reaches its asymptote in 11 years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1385&quot; title=&quot;See discussion above, and spreadsheet for calculation.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -427,14 +427,14 @@ &lt;/figcaption&gt; &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Acknowledgement ===== + ====== Acknowledgement ====== Thanks to bean for his help with this. He blogs about naval history at navalgazing.net. - ===== Notes ===== + ====== Notes ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; </pre>

<pre> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ - ====== Historic trends in ship size ====== + ======= Historic trends in ship size ======= // Published 22 December, 2019; last updated 3 October, 2022 // &lt;HTML&gt; @@ -12,17 +12,17 @@ &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Details ===== + ====== Details ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Background ==== + ===== Background ===== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, naval tactics in the age of sail rewarded larger ships, because larger ships were harder to sink and could carry more guns, and battles were usually lengthy affairs in which two lines of ships fired at each other until one side surrendered.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;One consequence of the line of battle was that a ship had to be strong enough to stand in it. In the old type of mêlée battle a small ship could seek out an opponent of her own size, or combine with others to attack a larger one. As the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_battle&quot;&amp;gt;line of battle&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;was adopted, navies began to distinguish between vessels that were fit to form parts of the line in action, and the smaller ships that were not. By the time the line of battle was firmly established as the standard tactical formation during the 1660s,&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_ship&quot;&amp;gt;merchant ships&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and lightly armed warships became less able to sustain their place in a pitched battle. In the line of battle, each ship had to stand and fight the opposing ship in the enemy line, however powerful she might be. The purpose-built ships powerful enough to stand in the line of battle came to be known as a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_the_line&quot;&amp;gt;ship of the line&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Sailing Ship Tactics.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. February 08, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ship_tactics.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1385&quot; title=&#039;See&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_the_line&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;these&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_battle&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;three&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ship_tactics&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;pages&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more on battle tactics during this period.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our understanding is that when steamships and iron-clad ships appeared, financial constraints sometimes prevented navies from building as large as technically possible, but the incentives towards bigger ships remained, since the best way to punch through heavy armor was to carry heavy guns, which required a big ship.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;the only effective weapons against a big ship were big guns, which required a big ship to carry them.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“Naval Gazing Main/A Brief History of the Destroyer.” Accessed October 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.navalgazing.net/A-Brief-History-of-the-Destroyer&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.navalgazing.net/A-Brief-History-of-the-Destroyer&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -38,12 +38,12 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== Trends ==== + ===== Trends ===== - === Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships ‘tonnage’ (BOM) === + ==== Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships ‘tonnage’ (BOM) ==== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&quot;&gt;‘Tonnage’ (BOM)&lt;/a&gt; is a pre-20th century measure of ship cargo capacity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s Old Measurement (BOM, bm, OM, and o.m.) is the method used in England from approximately 1650 to 1849 for calculating the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo&quot;&amp;gt;cargo&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;capacity of a&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship&quot;&amp;gt;ship&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s Old Measurement.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. December 27, 2018. Accessed April 22, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s_Old_Measurement. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It is calculated as:&lt;/p&gt; @@ -56,9 +56,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;We use it because that’s what we have data on; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_(ship)&quot;&gt;displacement&lt;/a&gt;, the modern way of calculating ship weight, was not widely recorded until towards the end of our dataset. Unfortunately, BOM seems to be less accurate for estimating the cargo capacity of ships after 1860, which could affect our findings in this report. However, our Spot check section offers some evidence that this choice of metric isn&#039;t responsible for producing the largest discontinuity as an uninteresting artifact.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Data == + === Data === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Figure 2 shows ship &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&quot;&gt;‘tonnage’ (BOM)&lt;/a&gt; over time for UK Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships, according to Wikipedia contributors Toddy1 and Morn The Gorn.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1385&quot; title=&#039;“File: Weight Growth of RN First Rate Line-of-Battle Ships 1630-1875.Svg.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed October 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&quot;&amp;gt;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;This spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; contains their data. We have not vetted it thoroughly, but have spot-checked it (see &lt;a href=&quot;#spot-check&quot;&gt;Spot check&lt;/a&gt; section below). We extract the record-breaking subset of ships (see Figure 3).&lt;/p&gt; @@ -84,12 +84,12 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity measurement == + === Discontinuity measurement === - = Exponential prior = + == Exponential prior == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;If we have a strong prior on technological trends being linear or exponential, we might treat this data as a linear trend through 1804 followed by an exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Tonnage calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the trends, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Extrapolated in this way, tonnage saw ten greater than ten year discontinuities in this data, shown in the table below.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for explanation of how we calculated these numbers. Also see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Tonnage calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for these calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -167,9 +167,9 @@ &lt;td&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a aria-label=&quot;Minotaur (opens in a new tab)&quot; href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Minotaur_(1863)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer noopener&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Minotaur&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr&gt; &lt;td&gt;1867&lt;/td&gt; - &lt;td&gt;8946&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;8,946&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;33 years&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;Inflexible&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt; &lt;/tbody&gt; @@ -182,9 +182,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - = Other curves = + == Other curves == &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;With a weaker prior on linear or exponential trends in technology progress, one might prefer to extrapolate this data as a more exotic curve, such as a hyperbola. For instance, &lt;em&gt;Tonnage = (1/(c*year + d))^(1/3)&lt;/em&gt; for some constants &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt; appears to be a good model, since &lt;em&gt;1/(tonnage^3)&lt;/em&gt; looks fairly linear (see Figure 4).&lt;/p&gt; @@ -205,9 +205,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;Using this to extrapolate past progress, we get no discontinuities (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet, sheet ‘Tonnage calculations’&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for this calculation). However this is unsurprising toward the end, since hyperbolas have asymptotes (potentially going to infinity in finite time), and this particular one reaches such a singularity in about 1869. So on that model, any size ship is expected by 1869, and discontinuities cannot be larger than the time remaining until that date. (The largest discontinuity is nine years, from &lt;em&gt;Warrior&lt;/em&gt;, which is within a year of the implied ship-tonnage singularity.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discussion of causes == + === Discussion of causes === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Given that modeling the data as hyperbolic means there are no discontinuities, a plausible cause for apparent discontinuities when modeling it as exponential is that the process of ship size increase is fundamentally closer to being hyperbolic (though it must have departed from this trend before long, since it would have implied arbitrarily large ships from 1869). We do not know why this trend in particular would be hyperbolic, given that we understand exponential curves to be much more common in technological progress.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -228,9 +228,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;The largest discontinuity was from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860)&quot;&gt;Warrior&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which was one of the two first armor-plated, iron-hulled warships.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Warrior&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and her&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_ship&quot;&amp;gt;sister ship &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Black_Prince_(1861)&quot;&amp;gt;HMS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Black Prince&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;were the first armour-plated, iron-&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_(watercraft)&quot;&amp;gt;hulled &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warship&quot;&amp;gt;warships&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and were built in response to France&amp;amp;#8217;s launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship&quot;&amp;gt;ironclad warship&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, the wooden-hulled&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Gloire&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Gloire&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;HMS Warrior (1860).&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. December 18, 2018. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860). &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It seems likely that iron hulls allowed larger ships. For example, the wooden steamship &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858)&quot;&gt;Mersey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, unusually large for a wooden ship yet smaller than the &lt;em&gt;Warrior,&lt;/em&gt; is considered to have been beyond the limits of wood as a structural material.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1385&quot; title=&#039; &amp;lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;She and her sister ship the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Orlando_(1858)&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Orlando&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;were the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_wooden_ships&quot;&amp;gt;longest wooden warships&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;built for the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Navy&quot;&amp;gt;Royal Navy&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;amp;#8230; The length, the unique aspect of the ship, was actually an Achilles&amp;amp;#8217; heel of the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Mersey&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Orlando&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. The extreme length of the ship put enormous strains on her hull due to the unusual merging of heavy machinery, and a lengthy wooden hull, resulting in her seams opening up. They were pushing the limits of what was possible in wooden ship construction: &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Even the biggest of the 5,000-6,000-ton wooden battleships of the mid-to-late 19th century and the 5,000-ton wooden motorships constructed in the United States during World War I did not exceed 340 feet in length or 60 feet in width. The longest of these ships, the Mersey-class frigates, were unsuccessful, and one, HMS Orlando, showed signs of structural failure after an 1863 voyage to the United States. The Orlando was scrapped in 1871 and the Mersey soon after. Both the Mersey-class frigates and the largest of the wooden battleships, the 121-gun Victoria class, required internal iron strapping to support the hull, as did many other ships of this kind. In short, the construction and use histories of these ships indicated that they were already pushing or had exceeded the practical limits for the size of wooden ships.&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858)#cite_note-1&quot;&amp;gt;[1]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Britain had built two long frigates in 1858 &amp;amp;#8211; HMS Mersey and HMS Orlando &amp;amp;#8211; the longest, largest and most powerful single-decked wooden fighting ships. Although only 335 feet long, they suffered from the strain of their length, proving too weak to face a ship of the line in close quarters.&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858)#cite_note-2&quot;&amp;gt;[2]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;cite&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/cite&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/blockquote&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; &amp;amp;#8220;HMS Mersey (1858).&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. August 29, 2017. Accessed April 24, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mersey_(1858). &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Moreover, the very large civilian ship &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, made extensive use of iron for structure and appears to have been regarded as innovative for its structure.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Brunel&amp;amp;#8217;s &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Great Eastern&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;represented the next great development in shipbuilding. Built in association with&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scott_Russell&quot;&amp;gt;John Scott Russell&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, it used longitudinal&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stringer&quot;&amp;gt;stringers&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;for strength, inner and outer hulls, and&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulkhead_(partition)&quot;&amp;gt;bulkheads&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to form multiple watertight compartments.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Shipbuilding.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 18, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding#Industrial_Revolution. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;The hull was an all-iron construction, a double hull of 19 mm (0.75 in) wrought iron in 0.86 metres (2 feet 10 inches) plates with ribs every 1.8 m (5.9 ft). Internally, the hull was divided by two 107 m (351 ft) long, 18 m (59 ft) high, longitudinal bulkheads and further transverse bulkheads dividing the ship into nineteen compartments.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;SS Great Eastern.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 22, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; So plausibly this was an important enough innovation to produce an immediate jump in ship size.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Spot check == + === Spot check === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;Our metric, BOM, doesn’t measure volume or weight directly; it is derived from a ship’s width and length. Thus it might often be a reasonable proxy for a more normal notion of size, but change arbitrarily between different ship designs. There is particular reason to suspect this here, since according to Wikipedia, “[s]teamships required a different method of estimating tonnage, because the ratio of length to beam was larger and a significant volume of internal space was used for boilers and machinery.”&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, s.v. &amp;amp;#8220;Builder&amp;amp;#8217;s Old Measurement,&amp;amp;#8221; (accessed April 5, 2019) &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -241,17 +241,17 @@ &lt;p&gt;To check whether the &lt;em&gt;Warrior&lt;/em&gt; discontinuity was an artifact of this measurement scheme, we also searched for displacement figures for some of these ships. (We also made a brief attempt to find ships from other navies, like the French, that might destroy the discontinuity. We didn’t find any.) We did not collect many, but they cover the period of the largest discontinuity, 1850-1860, and confirm that it is probably robust to different ship size metrics, and thus not an artifact. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fkJ5pkLBt5dvciFkOb4S1ala7ZPmOhGLW8lI_CkpO9Y/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - === Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships displacement (tons) === + ==== Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships displacement (tons) ==== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_(ship)&quot;&gt;displacement&lt;/a&gt; of a ship is its weight, measured by looking at the amount of water that a ship displaces when it’s floating.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1385&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The displacement or displacement tonnage of a ship is its weight based on the amount of water its hull displaces at varying loads.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Displacement (Ship)&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed July 8 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Displacement_(ship)&amp;amp;amp;oldid=899439176.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Data == + === Data === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;We took displacement and ‘estimated displacement’ data from the same Wikipedia table&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1385&quot; title=&#039;“File: Weight Growth of RN First Rate Line-of-Battle Ships 1630-1875.Svg.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed October 26, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&quot;&amp;gt;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Weight_Growth_of_RN_First_Rate_Line-of-Battle_Ships_1630-1875.svg&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; for Royal Navy first-rate line-of-battle ships and put it in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet, sheet ‘Displacement calculations’&lt;/a&gt;. Figure 5 below shows this data.&lt;/p&gt; @@ -267,9 +267,9 @@ &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - == Discontinuity Measurement == + === Discontinuity Measurement === &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;If we model this data as a linear trend through 1795 followed by an exponential trend,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Displacement calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the trends, and &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; then compared to previous rates in these trends, tonnage contained six greater than ten year discontinuities, shown in the table below.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1385&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for explanation of how we calculated these numbers. Also see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet, sheet &amp;amp;#8216;Displacement calculations&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for these calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -337,9 +337,9 @@ &lt;p&gt;Once again, if we model the data as hyperbolic, it contains no discontinuities of more than ten years, however this is unsurprising after about 1859 end given the proximity of the asymptote (see further explanation in previous section, and calculations in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;spreadsheet, sheet ‘Displacement calculations’&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ==== The SS Great Eastern ==== + ===== The SS Great Eastern ===== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;p&gt;In the process of another investigation, we noted that a civilian ship, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern&quot;&gt;SS &lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, launched in 1858, was about six times larger by volume than any other ship at the time. It apparently took more than forty years for its length, gross tonnage, and passenger capacity to be surpassed.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1385&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers from &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England&quot;&amp;gt;England&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;to&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia&quot;&amp;gt;Australia&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; without refueling. Her length of 692 feet (211 m) was only surpassed in 1899 by the 705-foot (215 m) 17,274-gross-ton &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Oceanic_(1899)&quot;&amp;gt;RMS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Oceanic&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, her&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_tonnage&quot;&amp;gt;gross tonnage&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;of 18,915 was only surpassed in 1901 by the 701-foot (214&amp;amp;nbsp;m) 21,035-gross-ton&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Celtic&quot;&amp;gt;RMS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Celtic&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, and her 4,000-passenger capacity was surpassed in 1913 by the 4,935-passenger&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Imperator&quot;&amp;gt;SS&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Imperator&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. The ship&amp;amp;#8217;s five&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnel_(ship)&quot;&amp;gt;funnels&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; were rare. These were later reduced to four.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;These measurements were six times larger by volume than any ship afloat&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;SS Great Eastern.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. April 22, 2019. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We calculate its tonnage (BOM) to be 22,990 tons (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit#gid=2046407726&quot;&gt;spreadsheet, tab Tonnage calculations&lt;/a&gt;). Supposing our Royal Navy dataset is a good proxy for overall ship size records during this time, and treating past progress as exponential, the SS &lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt; represents a 416-year discontinuity in tonnage (BOM) over previous Royal Navy ships. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUTwqlafTPd74MEG8w9rHyTYFKLwg2MsBI4-I8bC5Us/edit#gid=2046407726&quot;&gt;spreadsheet, tab Tonnage calculations&lt;/a&gt;) If the trend is modeled as a hyperbola instead, the SS &lt;em&gt;Great Eastern&lt;/em&gt; still represents an 11 year discontinuity, which is as big as a discontinuity can be in the context of the theoretical expectation of arbitrarily large ships when the hyperbola reaches its asymptote in 11 years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1385&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1385&quot; title=&quot;See discussion above, and spreadsheet for calculation.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; @@ -427,14 +427,14 @@ &lt;/figcaption&gt; &lt;/figure&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; - ===== Acknowledgement ===== + ====== Acknowledgement ====== Thanks to bean for his help with this. He blogs about naval history at navalgazing.net. - ===== Notes ===== + ====== Notes ====== &lt;HTML&gt; &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_slow_light_technology?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,200 @@ + ====== Historic trends in slow light technology ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 08 March, 2021 // + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Group index of light appears to have seen discontinuities of 22 years in 1995 from Coherent Population Trapping (CPT) and 37 years in 1999 from EIT (condensate). Pulse delay of light over a short distance may have had a large discontinuity in 1994 but our data is not good enough to judge. After 1994, pulse delay does not appear to have seen discontinuities of more than ten years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;That which is uncited on this page is our understanding, given familiarity with the topic.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1315&quot; title=&#039;Our primary researcher for this page, Rick Korzekwa, has a PhD in physics, with experience in experimental optical physics. In addition, Rick discussed the main ideas in this page with &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.stanford.edu/~seharris/index.shtml&quot;&amp;gt;Professor Steve Harris&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, a researcher responsible for substantial progress on slow light. Prof. Harris has not looked over our conclusions, and any mistakes are Rick&amp;amp;#8217;s.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light&quot;&gt;Slow Light&lt;/a&gt;” is a phenomenon where the speed at which a pulse of light propagates through a medium is greatly reduced. This has potential applications for lasers, communication, and cameras.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1315&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;In the future, slowing light could have a number of practical consequences, including the potential to send data, sound, and pictures in less space and with less power. Also, the results obtained by Hau’s experiment might be used to create new types of laser projection systems and night vision cameras with power requirements a million times less than what is presently possible.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Cromie, William J., and William J. Cromie. &amp;amp;#8220;Physicists Slow Speed of Light.&amp;amp;#8221; Harvard Gazette. February 23, 2018. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/1999/02/physicists-slow-speed-of-light/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed of propagation of the light through the medium referred to as the ‘&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_velocity&quot;&gt;group velocity&lt;/a&gt;‘ of the light, and it is a function of the medium’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index&quot;&gt;refractive index&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(optics)&quot;&gt;dispersion&lt;/a&gt; (the rate at which the refractive index changes with the frequency of the light).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In most materials—for instance glass, air, or water—the dispersion is low enough that the group velocity is simply the speed of light divided by the index of refraction. In order to slow down light by more than roughly a factor of 3, physicists needed to create optical media with a greater dispersion in the frequency range of interest. The challenge in this was doing so without the medium absorbing most of the light, since most materials exhibit maximum dispersion under conditions of high absorption. This was resolved using exotic phases of matter and sophisticated methods for inducing transparency in them.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Summary of historic developments === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Diamonds have a very high index of refraction, and the ability to cut and polish them to achieve good optical quality has existed for hundreds of years&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1315&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The first &amp;amp;#8220;improvements&amp;amp;#8221; on nature&amp;amp;#8217;s design involved a simple polishing of the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octahedral&quot;&amp;gt;octahedral&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; crystal faces to create even and unblemished facets, or to fashion the desired octahedral shape out of an otherwise unappealing piece of rough. This was called the &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;point cut&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; and dates from the mid 14th century; by 1375 there was a &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild&quot;&amp;gt;guild&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; of diamond polishers at &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrnberg&quot;&amp;gt;Nürnberg&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; “Diamond Cut &amp;amp;#8211; Wikipedia.” Accessed October 25, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. However there were no light sources available for studying low group velocities until the 1960s, so recorded progress begins then. The first pulsed sources of light that could reasonably be used for the investigation of slow light came about in 1962 with the invention of Q-switching, which is a method for generating series of short light pulses from a laser. We do not know whether early Q-switched lasers could be used for this work, but doubt that any earlier light sources were suitable.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Following Q-switching, progress for slowing light proceeded roughly in four stages:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High index materials:&lt;/strong&gt; For instance, diamonds. There may have been marginally better materials, but we did not investigate because our understanding is that they should at most represent a few tens of a percent of difference, and later gains represent factors of millions to trillions.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High absorption media:&lt;/strong&gt; Materials with very low group velocity at a particular wavelength range, at the cost of very high absorption (losing &amp;gt;99% of the light over &amp;lt;100 microns).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Induced transparency:&lt;/strong&gt; Materials with a narrow window of transparency in spectral regions of low group velocity. This led to rapid increases in total delay of a pulse, both through longer propagation distance and lower speeds.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stopped light:&lt;/strong&gt; Eventually, group velocity had been lowered to the point that it was possible to destroy the pulse, but store enough information in the medium about it to reconstruct it after some delay. There is room for debate about whether this is really the same pulse of light, however there are applications in which treating is as such is reasonable. We view this as progress in pulse delay, but not group index. After the invention of stopped light, slow light was no longer a major target for progress.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There are several metrics that one might plausibly be interested in in this area. Group velocity is a natural choice because it is simple, but it trades off against absorption. So &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;it is relatively easy to make a medium that has a very low group velocity, but it will absorb too much light to be useful. Because of this, research was more plausibly aimed at some combination of low  group velocity and low absorption.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;One simple way to combine absorption and group velocity into a single metric is group velocity with an absorption criterion (say, lowest group velocity in a medium that transmits at least 1% of the light). Another is total time delay of the pulse by the medium, since longer delays can be achieved either by slowing down the pulse more, or slowing it down over a longer distance (requiring lower absorption). Pulse delay seems to have been a goal for researchers, suggesting it tracks something important, making it more interesting from our perspective.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We chose to investigate pulse delay and group index (the speed of light divided by the group velocity).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1315&quot; title=&#039;For more on our methodology, see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Pulse delay and group index === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data from a variety of online sources into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rtAbkBsR5Jo-f7zvloi4fepxErZKpMOVoVe495F1TfM/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. The sheet shows progress in pulse delay and group index over time as well as our source for each data point, and calculates unexpected progress at each step. Figures 1-3 illustrates these trends.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2114&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/PulseDelay-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Progress in delay of a pulse of light over a short distance + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2117&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/GroupN-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Progress in group index of a material (speed of light divided by speed of light in that material) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image alignnone&quot;&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;http://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DelayngData4.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1358&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DelayngData4.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Progress in pulse delay and group index. “Human speed” shows the rough scale of motion familiar to humans. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;For comparing points to ‘past rates of progress’ we treat past progress for both pulse delay and group index as exponential, changing to a new exponential regime near 1995 in both cases.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1315&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for further explanation of how we measure discontinuities. See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rtAbkBsR5Jo-f7zvloi4fepxErZKpMOVoVe495F1TfM/edit#gid=0&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Compared to these rates of past progress, the 1994 point—EIT (hot gas)—could be a very large discontinuity in pulse delay, if there was a small amount of progress prior to it. There probably was, however our estimates of the points leading up to it are so uncertain that it isn’t clear that there was any well-defined progress, and if there was we have not measured it. So we do not attempt to judge whether there is a discontinuity there. Aside from that, pulse delay saw no discontinuities of more than ten years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Group index has discontinuities of 22 years in 1995 from CPT and 37 years in 1999 from EIT (condensate).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1315&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These trends are short and not characterized by a clearly established rate prior to any potential change of rate, making changes in apparent rate relatively unsurprising. This means they are both less in need of explanation, and less informative about what to expect in cases where a technology does have a better-established progress trend.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;Increasing group index of light does not appear to have been a major research goal prior to the discovery of induced transparency in the mid 1990s. Most of the work up to that point (and, to a lesser, extent after) was directed toward controlling the properties of optical media in general, with group index as one particularly salient parameter that could be controlled, but perhaps at the expense of others.&lt;/span&gt; Thus the moderate discontinuities in group index might relate to the hypothesized pattern of metrics that receive ongoing concerted effort tending to be more continuous than those receiving weak or sporadic attention.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Primary author: Rick Korzekwa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Stephen Jordan for suggesting slow light as a potential area of discontinuity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Our primary researcher for this page, Rick Korzekwa, has a PhD in physics, with experience in experimental optical physics. In addition, Rick discussed the main ideas in this page with &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.stanford.edu/~seharris/index.shtml&quot;&gt;Professor Steve Harris&lt;/a&gt;, a researcher responsible for substantial progress on slow light. Prof. Harris has not looked over our conclusions, and any mistakes are Rick’s.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the future, slowing light could have a number of practical consequences, including the potential to send data, sound, and pictures in less space and with less power. Also, the results obtained by Hau’s experiment might be used to create new types of laser projection systems and night vision cameras with power requirements a million times less than what is presently possible.”&lt;br/&gt; + Cromie, William J., and William J. Cromie. “Physicists Slow Speed of Light.” Harvard Gazette. February 23, 2018. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/1999/02/physicists-slow-speed-of-light/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The first “improvements” on nature’s design involved a simple polishing of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octahedral&quot;&gt;octahedral&lt;/a&gt; crystal faces to create even and unblemished facets, or to fashion the desired octahedral shape out of an otherwise unappealing piece of rough. This was called the &lt;em&gt;point cut&lt;/em&gt; and dates from the mid 14th century; by 1375 there was a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild&quot;&gt;guild&lt;/a&gt; of diamond polishers at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrnberg&quot;&gt;Nürnberg&lt;/a&gt;.” “Diamond Cut – Wikipedia.” Accessed October 25, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For more on our methodology, see &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for further explanation of how we measure discontinuities. See our &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rtAbkBsR5Jo-f7zvloi4fepxErZKpMOVoVe495F1TfM/edit#gid=0&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,200 @@ + ====== Historic trends in slow light technology ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 08 March, 2021 // + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Group index of light appears to have seen discontinuities of 22 years in 1995 from Coherent Population Trapping (CPT) and 37 years in 1999 from EIT (condensate). Pulse delay of light over a short distance may have had a large discontinuity in 1994 but our data is not good enough to judge. After 1994, pulse delay does not appear to have seen discontinuities of more than ten years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;That which is uncited on this page is our understanding, given familiarity with the topic.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1315&quot; title=&#039;Our primary researcher for this page, Rick Korzekwa, has a PhD in physics, with experience in experimental optical physics. In addition, Rick discussed the main ideas in this page with &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.stanford.edu/~seharris/index.shtml&quot;&amp;gt;Professor Steve Harris&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, a researcher responsible for substantial progress on slow light. Prof. Harris has not looked over our conclusions, and any mistakes are Rick&amp;amp;#8217;s.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light&quot;&gt;Slow Light&lt;/a&gt;” is a phenomenon where the speed at which a pulse of light propagates through a medium is greatly reduced. This has potential applications for lasers, communication, and cameras.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1315&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;In the future, slowing light could have a number of practical consequences, including the potential to send data, sound, and pictures in less space and with less power. Also, the results obtained by Hau’s experiment might be used to create new types of laser projection systems and night vision cameras with power requirements a million times less than what is presently possible.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Cromie, William J., and William J. Cromie. &amp;amp;#8220;Physicists Slow Speed of Light.&amp;amp;#8221; Harvard Gazette. February 23, 2018. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/1999/02/physicists-slow-speed-of-light/. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed of propagation of the light through the medium referred to as the ‘&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_velocity&quot;&gt;group velocity&lt;/a&gt;‘ of the light, and it is a function of the medium’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index&quot;&gt;refractive index&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(optics)&quot;&gt;dispersion&lt;/a&gt; (the rate at which the refractive index changes with the frequency of the light).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In most materials—for instance glass, air, or water—the dispersion is low enough that the group velocity is simply the speed of light divided by the index of refraction. In order to slow down light by more than roughly a factor of 3, physicists needed to create optical media with a greater dispersion in the frequency range of interest. The challenge in this was doing so without the medium absorbing most of the light, since most materials exhibit maximum dispersion under conditions of high absorption. This was resolved using exotic phases of matter and sophisticated methods for inducing transparency in them.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Summary of historic developments === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Diamonds have a very high index of refraction, and the ability to cut and polish them to achieve good optical quality has existed for hundreds of years&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1315&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The first &amp;amp;#8220;improvements&amp;amp;#8221; on nature&amp;amp;#8217;s design involved a simple polishing of the &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octahedral&quot;&amp;gt;octahedral&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; crystal faces to create even and unblemished facets, or to fashion the desired octahedral shape out of an otherwise unappealing piece of rough. This was called the &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;point cut&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; and dates from the mid 14th century; by 1375 there was a &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild&quot;&amp;gt;guild&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; of diamond polishers at &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrnberg&quot;&amp;gt;Nürnberg&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&amp;amp;#8221; “Diamond Cut &amp;amp;#8211; Wikipedia.” Accessed October 25, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. However there were no light sources available for studying low group velocities until the 1960s, so recorded progress begins then. The first pulsed sources of light that could reasonably be used for the investigation of slow light came about in 1962 with the invention of Q-switching, which is a method for generating series of short light pulses from a laser. We do not know whether early Q-switched lasers could be used for this work, but doubt that any earlier light sources were suitable.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Following Q-switching, progress for slowing light proceeded roughly in four stages:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High index materials:&lt;/strong&gt; For instance, diamonds. There may have been marginally better materials, but we did not investigate because our understanding is that they should at most represent a few tens of a percent of difference, and later gains represent factors of millions to trillions.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High absorption media:&lt;/strong&gt; Materials with very low group velocity at a particular wavelength range, at the cost of very high absorption (losing &amp;gt;99% of the light over &amp;lt;100 microns).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Induced transparency:&lt;/strong&gt; Materials with a narrow window of transparency in spectral regions of low group velocity. This led to rapid increases in total delay of a pulse, both through longer propagation distance and lower speeds.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stopped light:&lt;/strong&gt; Eventually, group velocity had been lowered to the point that it was possible to destroy the pulse, but store enough information in the medium about it to reconstruct it after some delay. There is room for debate about whether this is really the same pulse of light, however there are applications in which treating is as such is reasonable. We view this as progress in pulse delay, but not group index. After the invention of stopped light, slow light was no longer a major target for progress.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There are several metrics that one might plausibly be interested in in this area. Group velocity is a natural choice because it is simple, but it trades off against absorption. So &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;it is relatively easy to make a medium that has a very low group velocity, but it will absorb too much light to be useful. Because of this, research was more plausibly aimed at some combination of low  group velocity and low absorption.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;One simple way to combine absorption and group velocity into a single metric is group velocity with an absorption criterion (say, lowest group velocity in a medium that transmits at least 1% of the light). Another is total time delay of the pulse by the medium, since longer delays can be achieved either by slowing down the pulse more, or slowing it down over a longer distance (requiring lower absorption). Pulse delay seems to have been a goal for researchers, suggesting it tracks something important, making it more interesting from our perspective.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We chose to investigate pulse delay and group index (the speed of light divided by the group velocity).&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1315&quot; title=&#039;For more on our methodology, see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Pulse delay and group index === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data from a variety of online sources into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rtAbkBsR5Jo-f7zvloi4fepxErZKpMOVoVe495F1TfM/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. The sheet shows progress in pulse delay and group index over time as well as our source for each data point, and calculates unexpected progress at each step. Figures 1-3 illustrates these trends.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2114&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/PulseDelay-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Progress in delay of a pulse of light over a short distance + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2117&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/GroupN-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Progress in group index of a material (speed of light divided by speed of light in that material) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image alignnone&quot;&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;http://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DelayngData4.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-1358&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DelayngData4.png&quot;/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Progress in pulse delay and group index. “Human speed” shows the rough scale of motion familiar to humans. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;For comparing points to ‘past rates of progress’ we treat past progress for both pulse delay and group index as exponential, changing to a new exponential regime near 1995 in both cases.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1315&quot; title=&#039;See our &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for further explanation of how we measure discontinuities. See our &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rtAbkBsR5Jo-f7zvloi4fepxErZKpMOVoVe495F1TfM/edit#gid=0&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for calculations.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Compared to these rates of past progress, the 1994 point—EIT (hot gas)—could be a very large discontinuity in pulse delay, if there was a small amount of progress prior to it. There probably was, however our estimates of the points leading up to it are so uncertain that it isn’t clear that there was any well-defined progress, and if there was we have not measured it. So we do not attempt to judge whether there is a discontinuity there. Aside from that, pulse delay saw no discontinuities of more than ten years.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Group index has discontinuities of 22 years in 1995 from CPT and 37 years in 1999 from EIT (condensate).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of these discontinuities in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1315&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;These trends are short and not characterized by a clearly established rate prior to any potential change of rate, making changes in apparent rate relatively unsurprising. This means they are both less in need of explanation, and less informative about what to expect in cases where a technology does have a better-established progress trend.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: 400;&quot;&gt;Increasing group index of light does not appear to have been a major research goal prior to the discovery of induced transparency in the mid 1990s. Most of the work up to that point (and, to a lesser, extent after) was directed toward controlling the properties of optical media in general, with group index as one particularly salient parameter that could be controlled, but perhaps at the expense of others.&lt;/span&gt; Thus the moderate discontinuities in group index might relate to the hypothesized pattern of metrics that receive ongoing concerted effort tending to be more continuous than those receiving weak or sporadic attention.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Primary author: Rick Korzekwa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Stephen Jordan for suggesting slow light as a potential area of discontinuity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Our primary researcher for this page, Rick Korzekwa, has a PhD in physics, with experience in experimental optical physics. In addition, Rick discussed the main ideas in this page with &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.stanford.edu/~seharris/index.shtml&quot;&gt;Professor Steve Harris&lt;/a&gt;, a researcher responsible for substantial progress on slow light. Prof. Harris has not looked over our conclusions, and any mistakes are Rick’s.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In the future, slowing light could have a number of practical consequences, including the potential to send data, sound, and pictures in less space and with less power. Also, the results obtained by Hau’s experiment might be used to create new types of laser projection systems and night vision cameras with power requirements a million times less than what is presently possible.”&lt;br/&gt; + Cromie, William J., and William J. Cromie. “Physicists Slow Speed of Light.” Harvard Gazette. February 23, 2018. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/1999/02/physicists-slow-speed-of-light/. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The first “improvements” on nature’s design involved a simple polishing of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octahedral&quot;&gt;octahedral&lt;/a&gt; crystal faces to create even and unblemished facets, or to fashion the desired octahedral shape out of an otherwise unappealing piece of rough. This was called the &lt;em&gt;point cut&lt;/em&gt; and dates from the mid 14th century; by 1375 there was a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild&quot;&gt;guild&lt;/a&gt; of diamond polishers at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrnberg&quot;&gt;Nürnberg&lt;/a&gt;.” “Diamond Cut – Wikipedia.” Accessed October 25, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For more on our methodology, see &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See our &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for further explanation of how we measure discontinuities. See our &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rtAbkBsR5Jo-f7zvloi4fepxErZKpMOVoVe495F1TfM/edit#gid=0&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for calculations.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_telecommunications_performance?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,257 @@ + ====== Historic trends in telecommunications performance ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 10 December, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There do not appear to have been any greater than 10-year discontinuities in telecommunications performance, measured as:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;bandwidth-distance product for all technologies 1840-2015&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;bandwidth-distance product for optical fiber 1975-2000&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;total bandwidth across the Atlantic 1956-2018&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Radio does not seem likely to have represented a discontinuity in message speed.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Fiber optic cables were first used for telecommunications in the 1970s and 80s.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1368&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;If the attenuation could be lowered sufficiently, they theorized fiber optics could be used as a practical means of communication. The attenuation barrier was broken in 1970 &amp;amp;#8230; Within two decades, innovative research pushed the attenuation rate low enough for fiber optics to become the dominant carrier of electronic information.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;History.&amp;amp;#8221; Fiber Optic Cable History &amp;amp;#8211; Fiber Optic Cables for the Telecommunications, Defense and Broadcast TV Industries &amp;amp;#8211; Tevelec Limited. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://www.tevelec.com/history. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; While previous telecommunications technology sent information via electricity, fiber optic cables instead sent information via light. Though electric signals travel at around 80% of the speed of light, while optical signals within a fiber only travel at roughly 70% of the speed of light, fiber optics have other benefits which add up to a considerable advantage.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1368&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;Good cables achieve 80% of the speed of light; excellent cables achieve 90%.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Speed of Light vs Speed of Electricity.&amp;amp;#8221; Physics Stack Exchange. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/358894/speed-of-light-vs-speed-of-electricity. For a summary of the many advantages fiber optics have over electric cables for communication, see &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;279&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Wdmz9rBhL5T5E44LN_H1CYAXIsTzgSyK-7fiG2jf1UjwtNYNydJCgxz9mhnxPGcrneWVUw-4isv0ovCK5TOwHLIG2SHPisUDQ1ou27xIEeBA0znK_6EIZMqZWRUPlbNKSHjdXqx&quot; width=&quot;446&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Fiber optic cable: laser light shining on one end comes out of the other.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1368&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fiber_optic_illuminated.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons: &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Hustvedt [CC BY-SA 3.0 (&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&quot;&amp;gt;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;)]&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Bandwidth-distance product, usually given in bits*kilometers/seconds, is both the most apparently relevant metric of progress in telecommunications&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1368&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Because the effect of dispersion increases with the length of the fiber, a fiber transmission system is often characterized by its &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;bandwidth–distance product&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, usually expressed in units of&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz&quot;&amp;gt;MHz&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;·km. This value is a product of bandwidth and distance because there is a trade-off between the bandwidth of the signal and the distance over which it can be carried. &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Fiber-optic Communication.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth–distance_product.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1368&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The term &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;bandwidth–distance product&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;(or&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;bandwidth–length product&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;) is often used in the context of&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rp-photonics.com/optical_fiber_communications.html&quot;&amp;gt;optical fiber communications&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;amp;#8230; The concept of the bandwidth–distance product is helpful e.g. for comparing the performance of different types of fiber-optic links.&amp;amp;#8221; Paschotta, Rüdiger. &amp;amp;#8220;Bandwidth–distance Product.&amp;amp;#8221; RP Photonics Encyclopedia &amp;amp;#8211; Bandwidth-distance Product, Bandwidth-length Product. May 29, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://www.rp-photonics.com/bandwidth_distance_product.html. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, and the one that was suggested to us as discontinuous. We also considered data transfer rate (measured in Mbps) for transatlantic cables, as a metric which more closely tracks the performance of cables that were actually in use, with the Atlantic serving as a distance constraint. We found separate data for bandwidth-distance product across all technologies, in fiber optics alone, and crossing the Atlantic, so we consider each of these metrics.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Bandwidth-distance product across all technologies 1840-2015 === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We used a tool for extracting data from figures&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1368&quot; title=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; to extract data from Figure 8.2 from Agrawal, 2016,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1368&quot; title=&#039;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. &amp;amp;#8220;Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress&amp;amp;#8221;. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8., &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&amp;gt;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; shown in Figure 1. We put the data into &lt;span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit?usp=sharing&quot; style=&quot;&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. Figures 2 and 3 show this data without a trendline, and the log of the data on a log axis with a straight trendline.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 below shows progress in bandwidth-distance product across all technologies on a log scale.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/image/chp%3A10.1007%2F978-3-319-31903-2_8/MediaObjects/370011_1_En_8_Fig2_HTML.gif&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Growth in bandwidth-distance product across all telecommunications during 1840-2015 from Agrawal, 2016 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2078&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BWDistance-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Agrawal’s data, manually extracted, without trendline. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2038&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Log-BW-distance-vs.-Year.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Log-BW-distance-vs.-Year.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Log-BW-distance-vs.-Year-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Log of Agrawal’s data, shown on a log axis. The linear fit says that the data is well modeled as double exponential. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we treat the previous rate of progress at each point to be exponential (as Agrawal does, with two different regimes) then optical fibers appear to represent a 27 year discontinuity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for all calculations&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The following 2-3 developments are also substantial discontinuities, depending on whether one breaks the data into multiple trends. As shown in Figure 3 however, the log of the data fits an exponential trend well. If we extrapolate progress expecting the log to be exponential, there are no discontinuities of more than ten years in this data. This seems like the better fit, so we take it there are not discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Argawal’s data also does not include minor improvements on the broad types of systems mentioned, which presumably occurred. In particular, our impression is that there were better coaxial cables as well as worse optical fibers, such that the difference when fiber optics appeared was probably not more than a factor of two,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1368&quot; title=&quot;From Wikipedia: &amp;amp;#8220;After a period of research starting from 1975, the first commercial fiber-optic communications system was developed which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 µm and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This first-generation system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbit/s with repeater spacing of up to 10 km.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Fiber-optic Communication.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#History. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1368&quot; title=&quot;We think the most advanced coaxial system in place at the time operated at around 2.7&amp;amp;#215;10&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;8&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; bits*km/s. From Optics In Our Time: &amp;amp;#8220;The most advanced coaxial system was put into service in 1975 and operated at a bit rate of 274 Mbit/s. A severe drawback of high-speed coaxial systems was their small repeater spacing (∼∼&amp;amp;nbsp;1 km)&amp;amp;#8221; Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. &amp;amp;#8220;Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress&amp;amp;#8221;. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; or about six years of exponential progress at the rate seemingly prevailing around the time of coaxial cables.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1368&quot; title=&#039;According to Argawal&amp;amp;#8217;s figure, the metric improved by around a factor of 1.11 each year (see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;)&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Bandwidth-distance product in fiber optics alone 1975-2000 === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We used a &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;tool for extracting data from figures&lt;/a&gt; to extract data from Figure 8.8 from &lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&gt;Agrawal, 2016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1368&quot; title=&quot;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. &amp;amp;#8220;Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress&amp;amp;#8221;. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and put it into &lt;span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1llyg2RhmwDzn4jgkgWNDE2XSxOLq_17iF5dZj_H0ZIA/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 4 below shows bandwidth-distance product on a log scale in fiber optics alone, from Agrawal, 2016.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;Fig. 8.8&quot; src=&quot;https://media.springernature.com/lw785/springer-static/image/chp%3A10.1007%2F978-3-319-31903-2_8/MediaObjects/370011_1_En_8_Fig8_HTML.gif&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 4:&lt;br/&gt; + Progress in bandwidth-distance product in fiber optics alone, from Agrawal, 2016 (Note: 1 Gb = 10^9 bits) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We chose to model this data as a single exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Compared to previous rates in this trend, there are no greater than ten year discontinuities in bandwidth-distance product in fiber optics alone.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; page for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1llyg2RhmwDzn4jgkgWNDE2XSxOLq_17iF5dZj_H0ZIA/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Bandwidth for Transatlantic Cables 1956-2018 === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 5 shows bandwidth of transatlantic cables according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5ozE_8Y58ezZMGNzKZa81iwSvDkLXDs4vsA3wH-bR4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our own calculations&lt;/a&gt;, based on data we collected mainly from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_communications_cable&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1368&quot; title=&quot;Note that this is comparable to bandwidth-distance product, since the lengths of various cables across the Atlantic span a relatively small range.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2076&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CableBandwidth-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 5: Transatlantic cable bandwidth of all types. Pre-1980 cables were copper, post-1980 cables were optical fiber. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treat this data as a single exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The data did not contain any discontinuities of more than ten years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1368&quot; title=&quot;&amp;lt;span id=&#039;easy-footnote-17-1368&#039; class=&#039;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&#039;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span class=&#039;easy-footnote&#039;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&#039;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1368&#039; title=&#039;&#039;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;17&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;See &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5ozE_8Y58ezZMGNzKZa81iwSvDkLXDs4vsA3wH-bR4/edit?usp=sharing&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There was a notable temporary increase in the growth rate between 1996 and 2001. We speculate that this and the following 15 years of stagnation may be a result of heavy telecommunications investment during the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble&quot;&gt;dot com bubble.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1368&quot; title=&#039;e.g. &amp;amp;#8220;During the late 1990s there was tremendous investment and entry of new firms in the North American long-haul telecommunications industry. These expansions were driven by very fast demand growth for Internet and other data-oriented telecom services and by exponential decreases in the cost per bit transmitted using fiber optic communications equipment. But by 2001, competition and slowing demand growth were squeezing the profits of these carriers, and an equally unprecedented slowdown in spending occurred. The problems in the telecommunications sector were blamed for slowing growth in the entire U.S. economy. As the expansion turned to bust, discussion of ‘‘excessive entry’’ and a ‘‘fiber glut’’ became increasingly common.&amp;amp;#8221; Hogendorn, Christiaan. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://neconomides.stern.nyu.edu/networks/03-07_Hogendorn_Excessive_Entry.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Excessive(?) Entry of National Telecom Networks&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, 1990-2001.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;SSRN Electronic Journal&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, 2004. doi:10.2139/ssrn.584821. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“If the attenuation could be lowered sufficiently, they theorized fiber optics could be used as a practical means of communication. The attenuation barrier was broken in 1970 … Within two decades, innovative research pushed the attenuation rate low enough for fiber optics to become the dominant carrier of electronic information.”&lt;br/&gt; + “History.” Fiber Optic Cable History – Fiber Optic Cables for the Telecommunications, Defense and Broadcast TV Industries – Tevelec Limited. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://www.tevelec.com/history. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Good cables achieve 80% of the speed of light; excellent cables achieve 90%.” “Speed of Light vs Speed of Electricity.” Physics Stack Exchange. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/358894/speed-of-light-vs-speed-of-electricity. For a summary of the many advantages fiber optics have over electric cables for communication, see&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fiber_optic_illuminated.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Hustvedt [CC BY-SA 3.0 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&quot;&gt;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&lt;/a&gt;)]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Because the effect of dispersion increases with the length of the fiber, a fiber transmission system is often characterized by its &lt;em&gt;bandwidth–distance product&lt;/em&gt;, usually expressed in units of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz&quot;&gt;MHz&lt;/a&gt;·km. This value is a product of bandwidth and distance because there is a trade-off between the bandwidth of the signal and the distance over which it can be carried. ”&lt;br/&gt; + “Fiber-optic Communication.” Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth–distance_product.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The term &lt;em&gt;bandwidth–distance product&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;bandwidth–length product&lt;/em&gt;) is often used in the context of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rp-photonics.com/optical_fiber_communications.html&quot;&gt;optical fiber communications&lt;/a&gt;. … The concept of the bandwidth–distance product is helpful e.g. for comparing the performance of different types of fiber-optic links.” Paschotta, Rüdiger. “Bandwidth–distance Product.” RP Photonics Encyclopedia – Bandwidth-distance Product, Bandwidth-length Product. May 29, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://www.rp-photonics.com/bandwidth_distance_product.html. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. “Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress”. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8., &lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&gt;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for all calculations&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;From Wikipedia: “After a period of research starting from 1975, the first commercial fiber-optic communications system was developed which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 µm and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This first-generation system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbit/s with repeater spacing of up to 10 km.” “Fiber-optic Communication.” Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#History. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We think the most advanced coaxial system in place at the time operated at around 2.7×10&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; bits*km/s. From Optics In Our Time: “The most advanced coaxial system was put into service in 1975 and operated at a bit rate of 274 Mbit/s. A severe drawback of high-speed coaxial systems was their small repeater spacing (∼∼ 1 km)” Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. “Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress”. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;According to Argawal’s figure, the metric improved by around a factor of 1.11 each year (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. “Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress”. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; page for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1llyg2RhmwDzn4jgkgWNDE2XSxOLq_17iF5dZj_H0ZIA/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Note that this is comparable to bandwidth-distance product, since the lengths of various cables across the Atlantic span a relatively small range.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1368&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5ozE_8Y58ezZMGNzKZa81iwSvDkLXDs4vsA3wH-bR4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;e.g. “During the late 1990s there was tremendous investment and entry of new firms in the North American long-haul telecommunications industry. These expansions were driven by very fast demand growth for Internet and other data-oriented telecom services and by exponential decreases in the cost per bit transmitted using fiber optic communications equipment. But by 2001, competition and slowing demand growth were squeezing the profits of these carriers, and an equally unprecedented slowdown in spending occurred. The problems in the telecommunications sector were blamed for slowing growth in the entire U.S. economy. As the expansion turned to bust, discussion of ‘‘excessive entry’’ and a ‘‘fiber glut’’ became increasingly common.” Hogendorn, Christiaan. “&lt;a href=&quot;http://neconomides.stern.nyu.edu/networks/03-07_Hogendorn_Excessive_Entry.pdf&quot;&gt;Excessive(?) Entry of National Telecom Networks&lt;/a&gt;, 1990-2001.” &lt;em&gt;SSRN Electronic Journal&lt;/em&gt;, 2004. doi:10.2139/ssrn.584821. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,257 @@ + ====== Historic trends in telecommunications performance ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 10 December, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There do not appear to have been any greater than 10-year discontinuities in telecommunications performance, measured as:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ul&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;bandwidth-distance product for all technologies 1840-2015&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;bandwidth-distance product for optical fiber 1975-2000&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt;total bandwidth across the Atlantic 1956-2018&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ul&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Radio does not seem likely to have represented a discontinuity in message speed.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Fiber optic cables were first used for telecommunications in the 1970s and 80s.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1368&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;If the attenuation could be lowered sufficiently, they theorized fiber optics could be used as a practical means of communication. The attenuation barrier was broken in 1970 &amp;amp;#8230; Within two decades, innovative research pushed the attenuation rate low enough for fiber optics to become the dominant carrier of electronic information.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;History.&amp;amp;#8221; Fiber Optic Cable History &amp;amp;#8211; Fiber Optic Cables for the Telecommunications, Defense and Broadcast TV Industries &amp;amp;#8211; Tevelec Limited. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://www.tevelec.com/history. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; While previous telecommunications technology sent information via electricity, fiber optic cables instead sent information via light. Though electric signals travel at around 80% of the speed of light, while optical signals within a fiber only travel at roughly 70% of the speed of light, fiber optics have other benefits which add up to a considerable advantage.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1368&quot; title=&#039; &amp;amp;#8220;Good cables achieve 80% of the speed of light; excellent cables achieve 90%.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Speed of Light vs Speed of Electricity.&amp;amp;#8221; Physics Stack Exchange. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/358894/speed-of-light-vs-speed-of-electricity. For a summary of the many advantages fiber optics have over electric cables for communication, see &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;279&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Wdmz9rBhL5T5E44LN_H1CYAXIsTzgSyK-7fiG2jf1UjwtNYNydJCgxz9mhnxPGcrneWVUw-4isv0ovCK5TOwHLIG2SHPisUDQ1ou27xIEeBA0znK_6EIZMqZWRUPlbNKSHjdXqx&quot; width=&quot;446&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Fiber optic cable: laser light shining on one end comes out of the other.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1368&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fiber_optic_illuminated.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons: &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Hustvedt [CC BY-SA 3.0 (&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&quot;&amp;gt;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;)]&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Bandwidth-distance product, usually given in bits*kilometers/seconds, is both the most apparently relevant metric of progress in telecommunications&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1368&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Because the effect of dispersion increases with the length of the fiber, a fiber transmission system is often characterized by its &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;bandwidth–distance product&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, usually expressed in units of&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz&quot;&amp;gt;MHz&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;·km. This value is a product of bandwidth and distance because there is a trade-off between the bandwidth of the signal and the distance over which it can be carried. &amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Fiber-optic Communication.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth–distance_product.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1368&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The term &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;bandwidth–distance product&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;(or&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;bandwidth–length product&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;) is often used in the context of&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rp-photonics.com/optical_fiber_communications.html&quot;&amp;gt;optical fiber communications&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &amp;amp;#8230; The concept of the bandwidth–distance product is helpful e.g. for comparing the performance of different types of fiber-optic links.&amp;amp;#8221; Paschotta, Rüdiger. &amp;amp;#8220;Bandwidth–distance Product.&amp;amp;#8221; RP Photonics Encyclopedia &amp;amp;#8211; Bandwidth-distance Product, Bandwidth-length Product. May 29, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://www.rp-photonics.com/bandwidth_distance_product.html. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, and the one that was suggested to us as discontinuous. We also considered data transfer rate (measured in Mbps) for transatlantic cables, as a metric which more closely tracks the performance of cables that were actually in use, with the Atlantic serving as a distance constraint. We found separate data for bandwidth-distance product across all technologies, in fiber optics alone, and crossing the Atlantic, so we consider each of these metrics.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Bandwidth-distance product across all technologies 1840-2015 === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We used a tool for extracting data from figures&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1368&quot; title=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; to extract data from Figure 8.2 from Agrawal, 2016,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1368&quot; title=&#039;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. &amp;amp;#8220;Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress&amp;amp;#8221;. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8., &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&amp;gt;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; shown in Figure 1. We put the data into &lt;span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit?usp=sharing&quot; style=&quot;&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;. Figures 2 and 3 show this data without a trendline, and the log of the data on a log axis with a straight trendline.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 below shows progress in bandwidth-distance product across all technologies on a log scale.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/image/chp%3A10.1007%2F978-3-319-31903-2_8/MediaObjects/370011_1_En_8_Fig2_HTML.gif&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Growth in bandwidth-distance product across all telecommunications during 1840-2015 from Agrawal, 2016 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2078&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BWDistance-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Agrawal’s data, manually extracted, without trendline. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2038&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Log-BW-distance-vs.-Year.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Log-BW-distance-vs.-Year.png 600w, https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Log-BW-distance-vs.-Year-300x186.png 300w&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Log of Agrawal’s data, shown on a log axis. The linear fit says that the data is well modeled as double exponential. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;If we treat the previous rate of progress at each point to be exponential (as Agrawal does, with two different regimes) then optical fibers appear to represent a 27 year discontinuity.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&amp;gt;this spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for all calculations&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The following 2-3 developments are also substantial discontinuities, depending on whether one breaks the data into multiple trends. As shown in Figure 3 however, the log of the data fits an exponential trend well. If we extrapolate progress expecting the log to be exponential, there are no discontinuities of more than ten years in this data. This seems like the better fit, so we take it there are not discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Argawal’s data also does not include minor improvements on the broad types of systems mentioned, which presumably occurred. In particular, our impression is that there were better coaxial cables as well as worse optical fibers, such that the difference when fiber optics appeared was probably not more than a factor of two,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1368&quot; title=&quot;From Wikipedia: &amp;amp;#8220;After a period of research starting from 1975, the first commercial fiber-optic communications system was developed which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 µm and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This first-generation system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbit/s with repeater spacing of up to 10 km.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Fiber-optic Communication.&amp;amp;#8221; Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#History. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1368&quot; title=&quot;We think the most advanced coaxial system in place at the time operated at around 2.7&amp;amp;#215;10&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;8&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt; bits*km/s. From Optics In Our Time: &amp;amp;#8220;The most advanced coaxial system was put into service in 1975 and operated at a bit rate of 274 Mbit/s. A severe drawback of high-speed coaxial systems was their small repeater spacing (∼∼&amp;amp;nbsp;1 km)&amp;amp;#8221; Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. &amp;amp;#8220;Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress&amp;amp;#8221;. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; or about six years of exponential progress at the rate seemingly prevailing around the time of coaxial cables.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1368&quot; title=&#039;According to Argawal&amp;amp;#8217;s figure, the metric improved by around a factor of 1.11 each year (see &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&amp;gt;spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;)&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Bandwidth-distance product in fiber optics alone 1975-2000 === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We used a &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;tool for extracting data from figures&lt;/a&gt; to extract data from Figure 8.8 from &lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&gt;Agrawal, 2016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1368&quot; title=&quot;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. &amp;amp;#8220;Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress&amp;amp;#8221;. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and put it into &lt;span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1llyg2RhmwDzn4jgkgWNDE2XSxOLq_17iF5dZj_H0ZIA/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 4 below shows bandwidth-distance product on a log scale in fiber optics alone, from Agrawal, 2016.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;Fig. 8.8&quot; src=&quot;https://media.springernature.com/lw785/springer-static/image/chp%3A10.1007%2F978-3-319-31903-2_8/MediaObjects/370011_1_En_8_Fig8_HTML.gif&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 4:&lt;br/&gt; + Progress in bandwidth-distance product in fiber optics alone, from Agrawal, 2016 (Note: 1 Gb = 10^9 bits) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We chose to model this data as a single exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Compared to previous rates in this trend, there are no greater than ten year discontinuities in bandwidth-distance product in fiber optics alone.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; page for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1llyg2RhmwDzn4jgkgWNDE2XSxOLq_17iF5dZj_H0ZIA/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Bandwidth for Transatlantic Cables 1956-2018 === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 5 shows bandwidth of transatlantic cables according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5ozE_8Y58ezZMGNzKZa81iwSvDkLXDs4vsA3wH-bR4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our own calculations&lt;/a&gt;, based on data we collected mainly from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_communications_cable&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1368&quot; title=&quot;Note that this is comparable to bandwidth-distance product, since the lengths of various cables across the Atlantic span a relatively small range.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2076&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CableBandwidth-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 5: Transatlantic cable bandwidth of all types. Pre-1980 cables were copper, post-1980 cables were optical fiber. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We treat this data as a single exponential trend.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1368&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The data did not contain any discontinuities of more than ten years.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1368&quot; title=&quot;&amp;lt;span id=&#039;easy-footnote-17-1368&#039; class=&#039;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&#039;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span class=&#039;easy-footnote&#039;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&#039;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1368&#039; title=&#039;&#039;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;17&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;See &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5ozE_8Y58ezZMGNzKZa81iwSvDkLXDs4vsA3wH-bR4/edit?usp=sharing&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;There was a notable temporary increase in the growth rate between 1996 and 2001. We speculate that this and the following 15 years of stagnation may be a result of heavy telecommunications investment during the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble&quot;&gt;dot com bubble.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1368&quot; title=&#039;e.g. &amp;amp;#8220;During the late 1990s there was tremendous investment and entry of new firms in the North American long-haul telecommunications industry. These expansions were driven by very fast demand growth for Internet and other data-oriented telecom services and by exponential decreases in the cost per bit transmitted using fiber optic communications equipment. But by 2001, competition and slowing demand growth were squeezing the profits of these carriers, and an equally unprecedented slowdown in spending occurred. The problems in the telecommunications sector were blamed for slowing growth in the entire U.S. economy. As the expansion turned to bust, discussion of ‘‘excessive entry’’ and a ‘‘fiber glut’’ became increasingly common.&amp;amp;#8221; Hogendorn, Christiaan. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://neconomides.stern.nyu.edu/networks/03-07_Hogendorn_Excessive_Entry.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Excessive(?) Entry of National Telecom Networks&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, 1990-2001.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;SSRN Electronic Journal&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, 2004. doi:10.2139/ssrn.584821. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“If the attenuation could be lowered sufficiently, they theorized fiber optics could be used as a practical means of communication. The attenuation barrier was broken in 1970 … Within two decades, innovative research pushed the attenuation rate low enough for fiber optics to become the dominant carrier of electronic information.”&lt;br/&gt; + “History.” Fiber Optic Cable History – Fiber Optic Cables for the Telecommunications, Defense and Broadcast TV Industries – Tevelec Limited. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://www.tevelec.com/history. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; “Good cables achieve 80% of the speed of light; excellent cables achieve 90%.” “Speed of Light vs Speed of Electricity.” Physics Stack Exchange. Accessed April 19, 2019. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/358894/speed-of-light-vs-speed-of-electricity. For a summary of the many advantages fiber optics have over electric cables for communication, see&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Uses&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fiber_optic_illuminated.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Hustvedt [CC BY-SA 3.0 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&quot;&gt;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&lt;/a&gt;)]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Because the effect of dispersion increases with the length of the fiber, a fiber transmission system is often characterized by its &lt;em&gt;bandwidth–distance product&lt;/em&gt;, usually expressed in units of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz&quot;&gt;MHz&lt;/a&gt;·km. This value is a product of bandwidth and distance because there is a trade-off between the bandwidth of the signal and the distance over which it can be carried. ”&lt;br/&gt; + “Fiber-optic Communication.” Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth–distance_product.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The term &lt;em&gt;bandwidth–distance product&lt;/em&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;bandwidth–length product&lt;/em&gt;) is often used in the context of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rp-photonics.com/optical_fiber_communications.html&quot;&gt;optical fiber communications&lt;/a&gt;. … The concept of the bandwidth–distance product is helpful e.g. for comparing the performance of different types of fiber-optic links.” Paschotta, Rüdiger. “Bandwidth–distance Product.” RP Photonics Encyclopedia – Bandwidth-distance Product, Bandwidth-length Product. May 29, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://www.rp-photonics.com/bandwidth_distance_product.html. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. “Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress”. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8., &lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&quot;&gt;https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for all calculations&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;From Wikipedia: “After a period of research starting from 1975, the first commercial fiber-optic communications system was developed which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 µm and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This first-generation system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbit/s with repeater spacing of up to 10 km.” “Fiber-optic Communication.” Wikipedia. June 23, 2019. Accessed July 03, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#History. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We think the most advanced coaxial system in place at the time operated at around 2.7×10&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; bits*km/s. From Optics In Our Time: “The most advanced coaxial system was put into service in 1975 and operated at a bit rate of 274 Mbit/s. A severe drawback of high-speed coaxial systems was their small repeater spacing (∼∼ 1 km)” Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. “Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress”. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;According to Argawal’s figure, the metric improved by around a factor of 1.11 each year (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15GZ8ElZnOqrl5dSO1L4mS924GwV3r4g8oe0SAoP8F1c/edit#gid=560889624&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Agrawal, Govind P. 2016. “Optical Communication: Its History And Recent Progress”. Optics In Our Time, 177-199. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31903-2_8.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; page for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1llyg2RhmwDzn4jgkgWNDE2XSxOLq_17iF5dZj_H0ZIA/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Note that this is comparable to bandwidth-distance product, since the lengths of various cables across the Atlantic span a relatively small range.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1368&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5ozE_8Y58ezZMGNzKZa81iwSvDkLXDs4vsA3wH-bR4/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;e.g. “During the late 1990s there was tremendous investment and entry of new firms in the North American long-haul telecommunications industry. These expansions were driven by very fast demand growth for Internet and other data-oriented telecom services and by exponential decreases in the cost per bit transmitted using fiber optic communications equipment. But by 2001, competition and slowing demand growth were squeezing the profits of these carriers, and an equally unprecedented slowdown in spending occurred. The problems in the telecommunications sector were blamed for slowing growth in the entire U.S. economy. As the expansion turned to bust, discussion of ‘‘excessive entry’’ and a ‘‘fiber glut’’ became increasingly common.” Hogendorn, Christiaan. “&lt;a href=&quot;http://neconomides.stern.nyu.edu/networks/03-07_Hogendorn_Excessive_Entry.pdf&quot;&gt;Excessive(?) Entry of National Telecom Networks&lt;/a&gt;, 1990-2001.” &lt;em&gt;SSRN Electronic Journal&lt;/em&gt;, 2004. doi:10.2139/ssrn.584821. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1368&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_the_maximum_superconducting_temperature?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,200 @@ + ====== Historic trends in the maximum superconducting temperature ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 28 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The maximum superconducting temperature of any material up to 1993 contained four greater than 10-year discontinuities: A 14-year discontinuity with NbN in 1941, a 26-year discontinuity with LaBaCuO4 in 1986, a 140-year discontinuity with YBa2Cu3O7 in 1987, and a 10-year discontinuity with BiCaSrCu2O9 in 1987.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;YBa2Cu3O7 superconductors seem to correspond to a marked change in the rate of progress of maximum superconducting temperature, from a rate of progress of .41 Kelvin per year to a rate of 5.7 Kelvin per year.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Superconductors were discovered in 1911.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic flux fields occurring in certain materials, called superconductors, when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature. It was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911, in Leiden.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Superconductivity&amp;amp;#8221;. 2018.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Superconductivity&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903681858.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Until 1986 the maximum temperature for superconducting behavior had gradually risen from around 4K to less than 30K (see figure 2 below). Theory at the time apparently predicted that 30K was an upper limit.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1618&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Until 1986 it was thought that superconducting behaviour was confined to certain materials at temperatures below ~30 K. A theory called “BCS theory” after its creators John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer had been formulated to describe superconductivity. This theory, for which its creators received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972, appeared to back this up but put a limit on the critical temperature of around 30 K.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&amp;gt;I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Doitpoms &amp;amp;#8211; TLP Library Superconductivity &amp;amp;#8211; Discovery And Properties&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In 1986 a new class of ceramics known as YBCO superconductors was discovered to allow superconducting behavior at higher temperatures: above 80K,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) is a family of crystalline chemical compounds, famous for displaying high-temperature superconductivity. It includes the first material ever discovered to become superconducting above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K) at about 92 K.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903757351.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and within seven years, above 130K.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Here we provide support for this conjecture, with the discovery of superconductivity above 130 K in a material containing HgBa&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;Ca&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;Cu&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;3&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;O&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;1+x&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;(with three CuO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;layers per unit cell), HgBa&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;CaCu&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;O&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;6+x&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;(with two CuO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;layers) and an ordered superstructure comprising a defined sequence of the unit cells of these phases&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Schilling, A., M. Cantoni, J. D. Guo, and H. R. Ott. 1993. &amp;amp;#8220;Superconductivity Above 130 K In The Hg–Ba–Ca–Cu–O System&amp;amp;#8221;. Nature 363 (6424): 56-58. Springer Nature. doi:10.1038/363056a0.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;427&quot; src=&quot;https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/c-L-VX9JFoquympXdjnzKGACEui-kcIgZ7Z_nxcdpP4K0YhMHk2fNDkU4fQv5xLXLYCLfxLmVif03Wd8lLMF3KH5cX6zbwuBsQKtbB5cPw-dHwAq0wQ4ajmp31_cPeaxBijRJI3y&quot; width=&quot;598&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Levitation of a magnet above a superconductor&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1618&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meissner_effect_p1390048.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Mai-Linh Doan [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Maximum temperature for superconducting behavior === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We looked at data for the maximum temperature at which any material is known to have superconducting behavior.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We found the following data in a figure from the University of Cambridge’s online learning materials course, DoITPoMS,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Doitpoms &amp;amp;#8211; TLP Library Superconductivity &amp;amp;#8211; Discovery And Properties&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and have verified most of it against other data sources (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, where we also collected ‘Extended data’ to verify that these were indeed the record temperatures).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We display the original figure from DoITPoMS in Figure 2 below, followed by our figure, Figure 3, which includes the a more recent superconducting material, H2S.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;superconduction-timeline.jpg (600×395)&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/superconduction-timeline.jpg&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Maximum superconducting temperature by material over time through 2000, from the University of Cambridge’s online learning materials course, DoITPoMS,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Doitpoms &amp;amp;#8211; TLP Library Superconductivity &amp;amp;#8211; Discovery And Properties&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2251&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Temperature-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Maximum superconducting temperate by material over time through 2015&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We modeled this data as linear within two different regimes, one up to LaBaCu04 in 1986, and another starting with 1986 until our last data point.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1618&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the trends, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Using previous rates from those trends, we calculated four greater than 10-year discontinuities (rounded), shown in the table below:&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1618&quot; title=&#039;See&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Temperature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Material&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1941&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;16 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;14 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niobium_nitride&quot;&gt;NbN&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1986&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;35 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;26 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&gt;LaBaCuO4&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1987&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;93 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;140 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&gt;YBa2Cu3O7&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1987&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;105 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1143/JJAP.27.L209/meta&quot;&gt;BiCaSrCu2O9&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of this discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1618&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We note that there was a marked change in the rate of progress of maximum superconducting temperature with YBa2Cu3O7. The maximum superconducting temperature changed from a rate of progress of .41 Kelvin per year to a rate of 5.7 Kelvin per year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1618&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic flux fields occurring in certain materials, called superconductors, when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature. It was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911, in Leiden.” – “Superconductivity”. 2018. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Superconductivity&amp;amp;oldid=903681858.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Until 1986 it was thought that superconducting behaviour was confined to certain materials at temperatures below ~30 K. A theory called “BCS theory” after its creators John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer had been formulated to describe superconductivity. This theory, for which its creators received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972, appeared to back this up but put a limit on the critical temperature of around 30 K.” –&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&gt;I&lt;/a&gt;“Doitpoms – TLP Library Superconductivity – Discovery And Properties”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) is a family of crystalline chemical compounds, famous for displaying high-temperature superconductivity. It includes the first material ever discovered to become superconducting above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K) at about 92 K.” – “Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&amp;amp;oldid=903757351.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Here we provide support for this conjecture, with the discovery of superconductivity above 130 K in a material containing HgBa&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;Ca&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;Cu&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;1+x&lt;/sub&gt; (with three CuO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; layers per unit cell), HgBa&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;CaCu&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;6+x&lt;/sub&gt; (with two CuO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; layers) and an ordered superstructure comprising a defined sequence of the unit cells of these phases”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Schilling, A., M. Cantoni, J. D. Guo, and H. R. Ott. 1993. “Superconductivity Above 130 K In The Hg–Ba–Ca–Cu–O System”. Nature 363 (6424): 56-58. Springer Nature. doi:10.1038/363056a0.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meissner_effect_p1390048.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; Mai-Linh Doan [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Doitpoms – TLP Library Superconductivity – Discovery And Properties”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Doitpoms – TLP Library Superconductivity – Discovery And Properties”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to see the trends, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,200 @@ + ====== Historic trends in the maximum superconducting temperature ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 28 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The maximum superconducting temperature of any material up to 1993 contained four greater than 10-year discontinuities: A 14-year discontinuity with NbN in 1941, a 26-year discontinuity with LaBaCuO4 in 1986, a 140-year discontinuity with YBa2Cu3O7 in 1987, and a 10-year discontinuity with BiCaSrCu2O9 in 1987.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;YBa2Cu3O7 superconductors seem to correspond to a marked change in the rate of progress of maximum superconducting temperature, from a rate of progress of .41 Kelvin per year to a rate of 5.7 Kelvin per year.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Superconductors were discovered in 1911.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic flux fields occurring in certain materials, called superconductors, when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature. It was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911, in Leiden.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Superconductivity&amp;amp;#8221;. 2018.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Superconductivity&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903681858.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Until 1986 the maximum temperature for superconducting behavior had gradually risen from around 4K to less than 30K (see figure 2 below). Theory at the time apparently predicted that 30K was an upper limit.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1618&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Until 1986 it was thought that superconducting behaviour was confined to certain materials at temperatures below ~30 K. A theory called “BCS theory” after its creators John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer had been formulated to describe superconductivity. This theory, for which its creators received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972, appeared to back this up but put a limit on the critical temperature of around 30 K.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&amp;gt;I&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;Doitpoms &amp;amp;#8211; TLP Library Superconductivity &amp;amp;#8211; Discovery And Properties&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In 1986 a new class of ceramics known as YBCO superconductors was discovered to allow superconducting behavior at higher temperatures: above 80K,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) is a family of crystalline chemical compounds, famous for displaying high-temperature superconductivity. It includes the first material ever discovered to become superconducting above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K) at about 92 K.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&amp;amp;amp;oldid=903757351.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and within seven years, above 130K.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Here we provide support for this conjecture, with the discovery of superconductivity above 130 K in a material containing HgBa&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;Ca&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;Cu&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;3&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;O&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;1+x&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;(with three CuO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;layers per unit cell), HgBa&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;CaCu&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;O&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;6+x&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;(with two CuO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;layers) and an ordered superstructure comprising a defined sequence of the unit cells of these phases&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Schilling, A., M. Cantoni, J. D. Guo, and H. R. Ott. 1993. &amp;amp;#8220;Superconductivity Above 130 K In The Hg–Ba–Ca–Cu–O System&amp;amp;#8221;. Nature 363 (6424): 56-58. Springer Nature. doi:10.1038/363056a0.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;427&quot; src=&quot;https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/c-L-VX9JFoquympXdjnzKGACEui-kcIgZ7Z_nxcdpP4K0YhMHk2fNDkU4fQv5xLXLYCLfxLmVif03Wd8lLMF3KH5cX6zbwuBsQKtbB5cPw-dHwAq0wQ4ajmp31_cPeaxBijRJI3y&quot; width=&quot;598&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Levitation of a magnet above a superconductor&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1618&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meissner_effect_p1390048.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Mai-Linh Doan [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Maximum temperature for superconducting behavior === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We looked at data for the maximum temperature at which any material is known to have superconducting behavior.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We found the following data in a figure from the University of Cambridge’s online learning materials course, DoITPoMS,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Doitpoms &amp;amp;#8211; TLP Library Superconductivity &amp;amp;#8211; Discovery And Properties&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and have verified most of it against other data sources (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, where we also collected ‘Extended data’ to verify that these were indeed the record temperatures).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We display the original figure from DoITPoMS in Figure 2 below, followed by our figure, Figure 3, which includes the a more recent superconducting material, H2S.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;superconduction-timeline.jpg (600×395)&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/superconduction-timeline.jpg&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Maximum superconducting temperature by material over time through 2000, from the University of Cambridge’s online learning materials course, DoITPoMS,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1618&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Doitpoms &amp;amp;#8211; TLP Library Superconductivity &amp;amp;#8211; Discovery And Properties&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019.&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2251&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Temperature-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + &lt;strong&gt;Figure 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Maximum superconducting temperate by material over time through 2015&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We modeled this data as linear within two different regimes, one up to LaBaCu04 in 1986, and another starting with 1986 until our last data point.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1618&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to see the trends, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#trend-fitting&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Using previous rates from those trends, we calculated four greater than 10-year discontinuities (rounded), shown in the table below:&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1618&quot; title=&#039;See&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt; &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Temperature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Material&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1941&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;16 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;14 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niobium_nitride&quot;&gt;NbN&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1986&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;35 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;26 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&gt;LaBaCuO4&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1987&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;93 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;140 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&gt;YBa2Cu3O7&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1987&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;105 K&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10 years&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1143/JJAP.27.L209/meta&quot;&gt;BiCaSrCu2O9&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of this discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1618&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Changes in the rate of progress == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We note that there was a marked change in the rate of progress of maximum superconducting temperature with YBa2Cu3O7. The maximum superconducting temperature changed from a rate of progress of .41 Kelvin per year to a rate of 5.7 Kelvin per year.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1618&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic flux fields occurring in certain materials, called superconductors, when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature. It was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911, in Leiden.” – “Superconductivity”. 2018. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Superconductivity&amp;amp;oldid=903681858.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Until 1986 it was thought that superconducting behaviour was confined to certain materials at temperatures below ~30 K. A theory called “BCS theory” after its creators John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer had been formulated to describe superconductivity. This theory, for which its creators received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972, appeared to back this up but put a limit on the critical temperature of around 30 K.” –&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&quot;&gt;I&lt;/a&gt;“Doitpoms – TLP Library Superconductivity – Discovery And Properties”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) is a family of crystalline chemical compounds, famous for displaying high-temperature superconductivity. It includes the first material ever discovered to become superconducting above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K) at about 92 K.” – “Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;En.Wikipedia.Org&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide&amp;amp;oldid=903757351.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Here we provide support for this conjecture, with the discovery of superconductivity above 130 K in a material containing HgBa&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;Ca&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;Cu&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;1+x&lt;/sub&gt; (with three CuO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; layers per unit cell), HgBa&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;CaCu&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;6+x&lt;/sub&gt; (with two CuO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; layers) and an ordered superstructure comprising a defined sequence of the unit cells of these phases”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Schilling, A., M. Cantoni, J. D. Guo, and H. R. Ott. 1993. “Superconductivity Above 130 K In The Hg–Ba–Ca–Cu–O System”. Nature 363 (6424): 56-58. Springer Nature. doi:10.1038/363056a0.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meissner_effect_p1390048.jpg&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; Mai-Linh Doan [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Doitpoms – TLP Library Superconductivity – Discovery And Properties”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Doitpoms – TLP Library Superconductivity – Discovery And Properties”. 2019. &lt;em&gt;Doitpoms.Ac.Uk&lt;/em&gt;. Accessed June 29 2019. https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/discovery.php.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to see the trends, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#trend-fitting&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our methodology page&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for details on how we divide the data into trends and how to interpret the spreadsheet.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JZh0wfCW-DrJjYLNgGW_TML-gmq1xZ44PfsfSCP5nlo/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1618&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_transatlantic_message_speed?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,167 @@ + ====== Historic trends in transatlantic message speed ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed of delivering a short message across the Atlantic Ocean saw at least three discontinuities of more than ten years before 1929, all of which also were more than one thousand years: a 1465-year discontinuity from Columbus’ second voyage in 1493, a 2085-year discontinuity from the first telegraph cable in 1858, and then a 1335-year discontinuity from the second telegraph cable in 1866.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + === Summary of historic developments === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;All communications between Europe and North America were carried on ships until 1858, when the first telegraph messages were transmitted over cable between the UK and US.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1869&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; Exactly 150 years ago, August 1858, the world witnessed a historic event in the history of telecommunications: the successful transmission of telegraph messages across the Atlantic Ocean. Although the transatlantic cable carrying these messages failed after a few weeks of operation, and it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible, the 1858 transmissions were heralded worldwide as a major achievement, introducing a new Age of Information. &amp;amp;#8221; Schwartz, Mischa. “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&amp;gt;History of Communications&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.”&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; That first cable only lasted six weeks, and took more than sixteen hours to send a message from the Queen.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1869&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The celebrations hit a sour note as the fireworks set fire to City Hall. Far worse news was to come, as the cable itself failed completely after six weeks. The cable never really worked well; the Queen’s message had taken 16-1/2 hours to transmit.&amp;amp;#8221; Schwartz, Mischa. “History of Communications.”&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;A permanent cable wasn’t laid until eight years later.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1869&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;amp;#8230;and it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; Schwartz, Mischa. “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&amp;gt;History of Communications&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.”&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Better telegraph cables were laid a further thirty and sixty years later. We do not investigate developments after 1929.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6SFwnXQLdGXDZhhsykqyd4lU_glcTRVhNvr93xsUmFuBek77Id4tFd2qaFD1hSVDFB_-HMlkR045N7OhuQuiPwQGBJ9H-0bqw8stn8Q6g4tf-3QYebeBuRt8CGYQtACzLpVtLfYp&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Undersea communications cables became common in the long run: map of undersea communications cables in 2007.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1869&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_submarine_cables.png&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Rarelibra [Public domain] &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Transatlantic message speed, 140 character message === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We looked at historic times to send messages across the Atlantic Ocean.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Message speed can depend on the length of the message. Where this was relevant, we somewhat arbitrarily chose to investigate for a 140 character message. We measure fastest speeds of real historic systems that could send 140 character messages across the Atlantic Ocean. We do not require that a 140 character message was actually sent by the method in question.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We generally use whatever route was actually taken (or supposed in an estimate), and do not attempt to infer faster speeds possible had an optimal route been taken (though note that because we are measuring speed rather than time to cross the Ocean, route length is adjusted for to a first approximation).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We only investigated this metric from 1492-1493 and 1841-1928. We do not investigate 1493-1841 because our data is insufficiently complete to determine how continuous it was.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1869&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/historic-trends-in-transatlantic-passenger-travel/&quot;&amp;gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for discussion of this.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our data for message speed came from a variety of online sources, and has not been thoroughly vetted. The full dataset with sources can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit#gid=1115870502&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1869&quot; title=&quot;The &amp;amp;#8216;Message&amp;amp;#8217; tab contains data for the speed in knots of different modes of transport for carrying messages, along with the source for each data point.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Because message delivery coincided with passenger travel until the first telegraph, data until then coincides with that used in our investigation into &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The resulting trend is shown in Figures 2-3.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2286&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/MessageZoom-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Average speed for message transmission across the Atlantic in recent centuries (see Figure 3 for longer term trend) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot; Figure 3: Average speed for message transmission across the Atlantic. &quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2284&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Message-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Average speed for message transmission across the Atlantic. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We measure discontinuities by comparing progress made at a particular time to the past trend. For this purpose, we treat the past trend at any given point as exponential or linear depending on apparent fit, and judge a new trend to have begun when the recent trend has diverged sufficiently from the longer term trend. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Message’ to view the trends, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#time-period-selection&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for details on how to interpret our sheets and how we divide data into trends.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Given these judgments about past progress, there were three discontinuities of more than ten years, all of which were more than one thousand years: a 1465-year discontinuity from Columbus’ second voyage in 1493, then a 2085-year discontinuity from the first telegraph cable in 1858, and then a 1335-year discontinuity from the improved telegraph cable in 1866.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1869&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Message&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1869&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Transatlantic message speed is a narrower metric than overall message speed, precluding some technologies that can only deliver messages short distances or on land (e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy#Early_signalling&quot;&gt;semaphore telegraph&lt;/a&gt;, which relied on a series of towers within line of sight). We expected this would make discontinuity more likely.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;” Exactly 150 years ago, August 1858, the world witnessed a historic event in the history of telecommunications: the successful transmission of telegraph messages across the Atlantic Ocean. Although the transatlantic cable carrying these messages failed after a few weeks of operation, and it wasn’t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible, the 1858 transmissions were heralded worldwide as a major achievement, introducing a new Age of Information. ” Schwartz, Mischa. “&lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&gt;History of Communications&lt;/a&gt;.” &lt;em&gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The celebrations hit a sour note as the fireworks set fire to City Hall. Far worse news was to come, as the cable itself failed completely after six weeks. The cable never really worked well; the Queen’s message had taken 16-1/2 hours to transmit.” Schwartz, Mischa. “History of Communications.” &lt;em&gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“…and it wasn’t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible” + &lt;p&gt;Schwartz, Mischa. “&lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&gt;History of Communications&lt;/a&gt;.” &lt;em&gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_submarine_cables.png&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Rarelibra [Public domain] &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt; for discussion of this.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The ‘Message’ tab contains data for the speed in knots of different modes of transport for carrying messages, along with the source for each data point.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Message’ for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,167 @@ + ====== Historic trends in transatlantic message speed ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed of delivering a short message across the Atlantic Ocean saw at least three discontinuities of more than ten years before 1929, all of which also were more than one thousand years: a 1465-year discontinuity from Columbus’ second voyage in 1493, a 2085-year discontinuity from the first telegraph cable in 1858, and then a 1335-year discontinuity from the second telegraph cable in 1866.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + === Summary of historic developments === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;All communications between Europe and North America were carried on ships until 1858, when the first telegraph messages were transmitted over cable between the UK and US.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1869&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8221; Exactly 150 years ago, August 1858, the world witnessed a historic event in the history of telecommunications: the successful transmission of telegraph messages across the Atlantic Ocean. Although the transatlantic cable carrying these messages failed after a few weeks of operation, and it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible, the 1858 transmissions were heralded worldwide as a major achievement, introducing a new Age of Information. &amp;amp;#8221; Schwartz, Mischa. “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&amp;gt;History of Communications&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.”&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; That first cable only lasted six weeks, and took more than sixteen hours to send a message from the Queen.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1869&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The celebrations hit a sour note as the fireworks set fire to City Hall. Far worse news was to come, as the cable itself failed completely after six weeks. The cable never really worked well; the Queen’s message had taken 16-1/2 hours to transmit.&amp;amp;#8221; Schwartz, Mischa. “History of Communications.”&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;A permanent cable wasn’t laid until eight years later.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1869&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;amp;#8230;and it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt; Schwartz, Mischa. “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&amp;gt;History of Communications&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.”&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;em&amp;gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Better telegraph cables were laid a further thirty and sixty years later. We do not investigate developments after 1929.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;371&quot; src=&quot;https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6SFwnXQLdGXDZhhsykqyd4lU_glcTRVhNvr93xsUmFuBek77Id4tFd2qaFD1hSVDFB_-HMlkR045N7OhuQuiPwQGBJ9H-0bqw8stn8Q6g4tf-3QYebeBuRt8CGYQtACzLpVtLfYp&quot; width=&quot;580&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Undersea communications cables became common in the long run: map of undersea communications cables in 2007.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1869&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_submarine_cables.png&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Rarelibra [Public domain] &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Transatlantic message speed, 140 character message === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We looked at historic times to send messages across the Atlantic Ocean.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Message speed can depend on the length of the message. Where this was relevant, we somewhat arbitrarily chose to investigate for a 140 character message. We measure fastest speeds of real historic systems that could send 140 character messages across the Atlantic Ocean. We do not require that a 140 character message was actually sent by the method in question.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We generally use whatever route was actually taken (or supposed in an estimate), and do not attempt to infer faster speeds possible had an optimal route been taken (though note that because we are measuring speed rather than time to cross the Ocean, route length is adjusted for to a first approximation).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We only investigated this metric from 1492-1493 and 1841-1928. We do not investigate 1493-1841 because our data is insufficiently complete to determine how continuous it was.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1869&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/historic-trends-in-transatlantic-passenger-travel/&quot;&amp;gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for discussion of this.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Our data for message speed came from a variety of online sources, and has not been thoroughly vetted. The full dataset with sources can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit#gid=1115870502&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1869&quot; title=&quot;The &amp;amp;#8216;Message&amp;amp;#8217; tab contains data for the speed in knots of different modes of transport for carrying messages, along with the source for each data point.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Because message delivery coincided with passenger travel until the first telegraph, data until then coincides with that used in our investigation into &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The resulting trend is shown in Figures 2-3.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2286&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/MessageZoom-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Average speed for message transmission across the Atlantic in recent centuries (see Figure 3 for longer term trend) + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot; Figure 3: Average speed for message transmission across the Atlantic. &quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2284&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Message-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Average speed for message transmission across the Atlantic. + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We measure discontinuities by comparing progress made at a particular time to the past trend. For this purpose, we treat the past trend at any given point as exponential or linear depending on apparent fit, and judge a new trend to have begun when the recent trend has diverged sufficiently from the longer term trend. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Message’ to view the trends, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#time-period-selection&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for details on how to interpret our sheets and how we divide data into trends.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Given these judgments about past progress, there were three discontinuities of more than ten years, all of which were more than one thousand years: a 1465-year discontinuity from Columbus’ second voyage in 1493, then a 2085-year discontinuity from the first telegraph cable in 1858, and then a 1335-year discontinuity from the improved telegraph cable in 1866.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1869&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Message&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; In addition to the size of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1869&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Transatlantic message speed is a narrower metric than overall message speed, precluding some technologies that can only deliver messages short distances or on land (e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphy#Early_signalling&quot;&gt;semaphore telegraph&lt;/a&gt;, which relied on a series of towers within line of sight). We expected this would make discontinuity more likely.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;” Exactly 150 years ago, August 1858, the world witnessed a historic event in the history of telecommunications: the successful transmission of telegraph messages across the Atlantic Ocean. Although the transatlantic cable carrying these messages failed after a few weeks of operation, and it wasn’t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible, the 1858 transmissions were heralded worldwide as a major achievement, introducing a new Age of Information. ” Schwartz, Mischa. “&lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&gt;History of Communications&lt;/a&gt;.” &lt;em&gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The celebrations hit a sour note as the fireworks set fire to City Hall. Far worse news was to come, as the cable itself failed completely after six weeks. The cable never really worked well; the Queen’s message had taken 16-1/2 hours to transmit.” Schwartz, Mischa. “History of Communications.” &lt;em&gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“…and it wasn’t until 1866 that permanent transatlantic telegraph cable transmission became possible” + &lt;p&gt;Schwartz, Mischa. “&lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4623705&quot;&gt;History of Communications&lt;/a&gt;.” &lt;em&gt;IEEE Communications Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 46, no. 8, 2008, pp. 26–29., doi:10.1109/mcom.2008.4597099. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_submarine_cables.png&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt; + Rarelibra [Public domain] &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=takeoff_speed:continuity_of_progress:historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel&quot;&gt;historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel&lt;/a&gt; for discussion of this.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The ‘Message’ tab contains data for the speed in knots of different modes of transport for carrying messages, along with the source for each data point.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Message’ for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1869&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/historic_trends_in_transatlantic_passenger_travel?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,223 @@ + ====== Historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel ====== + + // Published 04 December, 2019; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed of human travel across the Atlantic Ocean has seen at least seven discontinuities of more than ten years’ progress at past rates, two of which represented more than one hundred years’ progress at past rates: Columbus’ second journey, and the first non-stop transatlantic flight.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Transatlantic passenger crossing speed === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We investigated fastest recorded passenger trips across the Atlantic Ocean over time. By ‘passenger’ we mean that any human made the crossing, or could have done.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We look for fastest speeds of real historic systems that could have with high probability delivered a live person across the Atlantic Ocean. We do not require that a person was actually sent by the method in question, though in fact all of our records did involve a passenger traveling.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We generally use whatever route was actually taken (or supposed in an estimate), and do not attempt to infer faster speeds possible had an optimal route been taken (though note that because we are measuring speed rather than time to cross the Ocean, route length is adjusted for to a first approximation).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collated records of historic speeds to cross the Atlantic Ocean from online sources.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1860&quot; title=&#039;See the &amp;amp;#8216;Passenger&amp;amp;#8217; tab of &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;this spreadsheet &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;for our sources.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; These are available at the ‘Passenger’ tab of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, and are shown in Figure 1 below. We have not verified this data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + = Detailed overview of data = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected some data on speeds of drifting across the Atlantic Ocean and Viking ship speeds as evidence about the previous trend, but do not look for discontinuities until Columbus’ trips, for which relatively detailed descriptions are available.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Between then and 1841 the fastest records of transatlantic crossings we know of come from &lt;a href=&quot;http://Slavevoyages.org&quot;&gt;Slavevoyages.org&lt;/a&gt;‘s &lt;a href=&quot;https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/database#results&quot;&gt;database&lt;/a&gt; of over thirty six thousand voyages made by slave ships. We combined this data with distances between recorded ports for trips that might plausibly be fastest, to find speed records. This produced only three record trips. These were substantial outliers in speed, which suggests to us that those records may have been driven by error, or may have involved different types of ship or circumstances to the others. The latter explanation would suggest that faster trips were likely made for purposes other than slave transport, meaning that these slave trips were unlikely to represent discontinuities in crossing speed across all types of ship. Given this, and that we do not have data for other types of ship at that time, we do not measure discontinuities during this period. We do include these ships to estimate the longer term trend, for measuring later discontinuities. The existence of later discontinuities does not appear to be sensitive to whether we include outlier slave ships in the historic trend, or replace them with more credible slower slave ships.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From 1841 to 1909 all of our records are from Wikipedia’s page, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Riband&quot;&gt;Blue Riband&lt;/a&gt;. That page describes the Blue Riband was ‘an unofficial accolade given to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_ship&quot;&gt;passenger liner&lt;/a&gt; crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the record highest speed’. It appears that this title was sought after, and the records during that time are dense, so this part of the dataset is probably relatively accurate and complete for passenger steam ships. The main potential gap in this data is that we cannot be sure there are not other types of boat at the time that traveled faster than passenger steam ships.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From the first flight in 1919, speed records were held by planes. We found these in a variety of places, and we judged the data to be relatively complete when we ceased to find new records with moderate searching.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We are particularly interested in avoiding missing data just before apparent discontinuities, since continuous progress may look discontinuous if data is missing. There is a fifteen year gap before the Concorde discontinuity in 1973 where we didn’t find any records. However we note that a record for fastest subsonic Atlantic crossing set in 1979 was substantially slower than the Concorde. This means that if there were no other supersonic transatlantic crossings prior to the Concorde, the Concorde must have been substantially faster than the previous record even if we were missing some data. For instance if we were missing a 1965 record as fast as the 1979 record (which might make sense, since the 1979 record was set by a 1965 aircraft), then the Concorde would still be a discontinuity of around twenty years. We could not find other supersonic transatlantic crossings, but cannot rule them out.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2170&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Passenger-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Historical progress in passenger travel across the Atlantic + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2171&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/PassengerZoom-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Historical progress in passenger travel across the Atlantic, since 1730 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We measure discontinuities by comparing progress made at a particular time to the past trend. For this purpose, we treat the past trend at any given point as exponential or linear depending on apparent fit, and judge a new trend to have begun when the recent trend has diverged sufficiently from the longer term trend. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Passenger’ to view the trends we break this data into, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#time-period-selection&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for details on how to interpret our sheets and how we divide data into trends.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Given these judgments about past progress, there were seven greater than 10-year discontinuities during the periods that we looked at, summarized in the following table.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1860&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Passenger&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Two of them were large (more than one hundred years of progress at previous rate).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Date&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mode of transport&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knots&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity size&lt;br/&gt; + (years progress at past rate)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1493&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Columbus’ second voyage&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;5.8&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1465&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1884&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Oregon (steamship)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;18.6&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1919&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;WWI Bomber&lt;br/&gt; + (first non-stop&lt;br/&gt; + transatlantic flight)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;106&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;351&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1938&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Focke-Wulf Fw&lt;br/&gt; + 200 Condor&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;174&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1945&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Lockheed Constellation&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;288&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;25&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1973&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Concorde&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1035&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1974&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;SR-71&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1569&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;21&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the sizes of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1860&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The first measured discontinuity comes from Columbus’ second voyage being much quicker than his first. We expect this is for non-technological reasons, such as noise in crossing times (such that if there had been a longer history of crossing, Columbus’ first voyage would not have been record-setting), Columbus’ crew benefiting from experience, and the second voyage being intended to reach its destination rather than doing so accidentally.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The largest discontinuity we noted (352 years at previous rates) came from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown&quot;&gt;the first non-stop transatlantic flight&lt;/a&gt;, in 1919.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1860&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919. They flew a modified First World War Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John&amp;amp;#8217;s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Transatlantic Flight Of Alcock And Brown&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown&amp;amp;amp;oldid=902818541.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This represented a relatively fundamental change in the means of crossing the Atlantic, supporting the hypothesis that discontinuities tend to be associated with more fundamental technological progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have not investigated the significance of the developments underlying the other smaller discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;During the Blue Riband period, attention appears to have been given to Atlantic crossing speed in particular, suggesting that more effort may have been directed to this metric then. During the later era of flight, record Atlantic crossing time appears to have been less of a goal.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1860&quot; title=&quot;For instance, the fastest crossing for a subsonic airliner achieved in 1979 was done in a 1965 plane, suggesting that such a record could plausibly have been set earlier (and before 1973 it would have been the record for any kind of flight, not just subsonic). The captain&amp;amp;#8217;s description also makes the attempt sound like it was unplanned and motivated by thinking it sounded feasible not long before, rather than a major effort. (See sheet for sources.) &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This, in combination with the much more incremental progress in the earlier era, weakly supports the hypothesis that discontinuities are associated with metrics that receive less attention.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See the ‘Passenger’ tab of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for our sources.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Passenger’ for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919. They flew a modified First World War Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland.” – “Transatlantic Flight Of Alcock And Brown”. 2019. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown&amp;amp;oldid=902818541.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, the fastest crossing for a subsonic airliner achieved in 1979 was done in a 1965 plane, suggesting that such a record could plausibly have been set earlier (and before 1973 it would have been the record for any kind of flight, not just subsonic). The captain’s description also makes the attempt sound like it was unplanned and motivated by thinking it sounded feasible not long before, rather than a major effort. (See sheet for sources.) &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,223 @@ + ====== Historic trends in transatlantic passenger travel ====== + + // Published 04 December, 2019; last updated 23 April, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The speed of human travel across the Atlantic Ocean has seen at least seven discontinuities of more than ten years’ progress at past rates, two of which represented more than one hundred years’ progress at past rates: Columbus’ second journey, and the first non-stop transatlantic flight.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + === Transatlantic passenger crossing speed === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We investigated fastest recorded passenger trips across the Atlantic Ocean over time. By ‘passenger’ we mean that any human made the crossing, or could have done.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We look for fastest speeds of real historic systems that could have with high probability delivered a live person across the Atlantic Ocean. We do not require that a person was actually sent by the method in question, though in fact all of our records did involve a passenger traveling.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We generally use whatever route was actually taken (or supposed in an estimate), and do not attempt to infer faster speeds possible had an optimal route been taken (though note that because we are measuring speed rather than time to cross the Ocean, route length is adjusted for to a first approximation).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collated records of historic speeds to cross the Atlantic Ocean from online sources.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1860&quot; title=&#039;See the &amp;amp;#8216;Passenger&amp;amp;#8217; tab of &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;this spreadsheet &amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;for our sources.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; These are available at the ‘Passenger’ tab of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, and are shown in Figure 1 below. We have not verified this data.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + = Detailed overview of data = + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected some data on speeds of drifting across the Atlantic Ocean and Viking ship speeds as evidence about the previous trend, but do not look for discontinuities until Columbus’ trips, for which relatively detailed descriptions are available.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Between then and 1841 the fastest records of transatlantic crossings we know of come from &lt;a href=&quot;http://Slavevoyages.org&quot;&gt;Slavevoyages.org&lt;/a&gt;‘s &lt;a href=&quot;https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/database#results&quot;&gt;database&lt;/a&gt; of over thirty six thousand voyages made by slave ships. We combined this data with distances between recorded ports for trips that might plausibly be fastest, to find speed records. This produced only three record trips. These were substantial outliers in speed, which suggests to us that those records may have been driven by error, or may have involved different types of ship or circumstances to the others. The latter explanation would suggest that faster trips were likely made for purposes other than slave transport, meaning that these slave trips were unlikely to represent discontinuities in crossing speed across all types of ship. Given this, and that we do not have data for other types of ship at that time, we do not measure discontinuities during this period. We do include these ships to estimate the longer term trend, for measuring later discontinuities. The existence of later discontinuities does not appear to be sensitive to whether we include outlier slave ships in the historic trend, or replace them with more credible slower slave ships.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From 1841 to 1909 all of our records are from Wikipedia’s page, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Riband&quot;&gt;Blue Riband&lt;/a&gt;. That page describes the Blue Riband was ‘an unofficial accolade given to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_ship&quot;&gt;passenger liner&lt;/a&gt; crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the record highest speed’. It appears that this title was sought after, and the records during that time are dense, so this part of the dataset is probably relatively accurate and complete for passenger steam ships. The main potential gap in this data is that we cannot be sure there are not other types of boat at the time that traveled faster than passenger steam ships.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From the first flight in 1919, speed records were held by planes. We found these in a variety of places, and we judged the data to be relatively complete when we ceased to find new records with moderate searching.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We are particularly interested in avoiding missing data just before apparent discontinuities, since continuous progress may look discontinuous if data is missing. There is a fifteen year gap before the Concorde discontinuity in 1973 where we didn’t find any records. However we note that a record for fastest subsonic Atlantic crossing set in 1979 was substantially slower than the Concorde. This means that if there were no other supersonic transatlantic crossings prior to the Concorde, the Concorde must have been substantially faster than the previous record even if we were missing some data. For instance if we were missing a 1965 record as fast as the 1979 record (which might make sense, since the 1979 record was set by a 1965 aircraft), then the Concorde would still be a discontinuity of around twenty years. We could not find other supersonic transatlantic crossings, but cannot rule them out.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2170&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Passenger-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: Historical progress in passenger travel across the Atlantic + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2171&quot; height=&quot;464&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/PassengerZoom-1024x791.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 2: Historical progress in passenger travel across the Atlantic, since 1730 + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We measure discontinuities by comparing progress made at a particular time to the past trend. For this purpose, we treat the past trend at any given point as exponential or linear depending on apparent fit, and judge a new trend to have begun when the recent trend has diverged sufficiently from the longer term trend. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Passenger’ to view the trends we break this data into, and &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#time-period-selection&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt; for details on how to interpret our sheets and how we divide data into trends.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Given these judgments about past progress, there were seven greater than 10-year discontinuities during the periods that we looked at, summarized in the following table.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1860&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details, and &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;our spreadsheet&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;, tab &amp;amp;#8216;Passenger&amp;amp;#8217; for our calculation.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Two of them were large (more than one hundred years of progress at previous rate).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-table&quot;&gt; + &lt;table class=&quot;&quot;&gt; + &lt;tbody&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Date&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mode of transport&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knots&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discontinuity size&lt;br/&gt; + (years progress at past rate)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1493&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Columbus’ second voyage&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;5.8&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1465&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1884&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Oregon (steamship)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;18.6&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;10&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1919&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;WWI Bomber&lt;br/&gt; + (first non-stop&lt;br/&gt; + transatlantic flight)&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;106&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;351&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1938&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Focke-Wulf Fw&lt;br/&gt; + 200 Condor&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;174&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1945&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Lockheed Constellation&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;288&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;25&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1973&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;Concorde&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1035&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;19&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;tr&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1974&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;SR-71&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;1569&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;td&gt;21&lt;/td&gt; + &lt;/tr&gt; + &lt;/tbody&gt; + &lt;/table&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the sizes of these discontinuity in years, we have tabulated a number of other potentially relevant metrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1860&quot; title=&#039;See &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/methodology-for-discontinuity-investigation/#discontinuity-data&quot;&amp;gt;our methodology page&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt; for more details.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The first measured discontinuity comes from Columbus’ second voyage being much quicker than his first. We expect this is for non-technological reasons, such as noise in crossing times (such that if there had been a longer history of crossing, Columbus’ first voyage would not have been record-setting), Columbus’ crew benefiting from experience, and the second voyage being intended to reach its destination rather than doing so accidentally.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The largest discontinuity we noted (352 years at previous rates) came from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown&quot;&gt;the first non-stop transatlantic flight&lt;/a&gt;, in 1919.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1860&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919. They flew a modified First World War Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John&amp;amp;#8217;s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; &amp;amp;#8220;Transatlantic Flight Of Alcock And Brown&amp;amp;#8221;. 2019. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown&amp;amp;amp;oldid=902818541.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This represented a relatively fundamental change in the means of crossing the Atlantic, supporting the hypothesis that discontinuities tend to be associated with more fundamental technological progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We have not investigated the significance of the developments underlying the other smaller discontinuities.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;During the Blue Riband period, attention appears to have been given to Atlantic crossing speed in particular, suggesting that more effort may have been directed to this metric then. During the later era of flight, record Atlantic crossing time appears to have been less of a goal.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1860&quot; title=&quot;For instance, the fastest crossing for a subsonic airliner achieved in 1979 was done in a 1965 plane, suggesting that such a record could plausibly have been set earlier (and before 1973 it would have been the record for any kind of flight, not just subsonic). The captain&amp;amp;#8217;s description also makes the attempt sound like it was unplanned and motivated by thinking it sounded feasible not long before, rather than a major effort. (See sheet for sources.) &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; This, in combination with the much more incremental progress in the earlier era, weakly supports the hypothesis that discontinuities are associated with metrics that receive less attention.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See the ‘Passenger’ tab of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for our sources.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-measurement&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11WV8JUIZeVNWKfggCmHaCEJrtG_YMiOdq18zjfwFUVk/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, tab ‘Passenger’ for our calculation.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#discontinuity-data&quot;&gt;our methodology page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more details.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919. They flew a modified First World War Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland.” – “Transatlantic Flight Of Alcock And Brown”. 2019. En.Wikipedia.Org. Accessed June 25 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown&amp;amp;oldid=902818541.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;For instance, the fastest crossing for a subsonic airliner achieved in 1979 was done in a 1965 plane, suggesting that such a record could plausibly have been set earlier (and before 1973 it would have been the record for any kind of flight, not just subsonic). The captain’s description also makes the attempt sound like it was unplanned and motivated by thinking it sounded feasible not long before, rather than a major effort. (See sheet for sources.) &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1860&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

2023-05-03T18:48:37+00:00 2023-05-03T18:48:37+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/incomplete_case_studies_of_discontinuous_progress?rev=1683139717&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -64,9 +64,9 @@ &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Plunkert &lt;a href=&quot;http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/050798.pdf&quot;&gt;provides a table of historic aluminium prices&lt;/a&gt;, according to which the nominal price fell from $8 per pound to $0.58 per pound sometime between 1887 and 1895 (during most of which time no records are available). This period probably captures the innovation of interest, as the Hall–Héroult process was patented in 1886 according to Plunkert, and the price only dropped by $1 per pound during the preceding fifteen years according to her table. Plunkert also says that the price was held artificially low to encourage consumers in the early 1900s, suggesting the same may have been true earlier, however this seems likely to be a small correction.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Plunkert &lt;a href=&quot;http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/050798.pdf&quot;&gt;provides a table of historic aluminium prices&lt;/a&gt;, according to which the nominal price fell from \$8 per pound to \$0.58 per pound sometime between 1887 and 1895 (during most of which time no records are available). This period probably captures the innovation of interest, as the Hall–Héroult process was patented in 1886 according to Plunkert, and the price only dropped by \$1 per pound during the preceding fifteen years according to her table. Plunkert also says that the price was held artificially low to encourage consumers in the early 1900s, suggesting the same may have been true earlier, however this seems likely to be a small correction.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; ==== The sewing machine ==== </pre>

<pre> @@ -64,9 +64,9 @@ &lt;/HTML&gt; &lt;HTML&gt; - &lt;p&gt;Plunkert &lt;a href=&quot;http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/050798.pdf&quot;&gt;provides a table of historic aluminium prices&lt;/a&gt;, according to which the nominal price fell from $8 per pound to $0.58 per pound sometime between 1887 and 1895 (during most of which time no records are available). This period probably captures the innovation of interest, as the Hall–Héroult process was patented in 1886 according to Plunkert, and the price only dropped by $1 per pound during the preceding fifteen years according to her table. Plunkert also says that the price was held artificially low to encourage consumers in the early 1900s, suggesting the same may have been true earlier, however this seems likely to be a small correction.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Plunkert &lt;a href=&quot;http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/aluminum/050798.pdf&quot;&gt;provides a table of historic aluminium prices&lt;/a&gt;, according to which the nominal price fell from \$8 per pound to \$0.58 per pound sometime between 1887 and 1895 (during most of which time no records are available). This period probably captures the innovation of interest, as the Hall–Héroult process was patented in 1886 according to Plunkert, and the price only dropped by \$1 per pound during the preceding fifteen years according to her table. Plunkert also says that the price was held artificially low to encourage consumers in the early 1900s, suggesting the same may have been true earlier, however this seems likely to be a small correction.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/HTML&gt; ==== The sewing machine ==== </pre>

2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 2022-09-21T07:37:41+00:00 https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/takeoff_speed/continuity_of_progress/penicillin_and_historic_syphilis_trends?rev=1663745861&do=diff Anonymous anonymous@undisclosed.example.com <pre> @@ -1 +1,336 @@ + ====== Penicillin and historic syphilis trends ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 28 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin did not precipitate a discontinuity of more than ten years in deaths from syphilis in the US. Nor were there other discontinuities in that trend between 1916 and 2015.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The number of syphilis cases in the US also saw steep decline but no substantial discontinuity between 1941 and 2008.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On brief investigation, the effectiveness of syphilis treatment and inclusive costs of syphilis treatment do not appear to have seen large discontinuities with penicillin, but we have not investigated either thoroughly enough to be confident.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin was first used to treat a patient in 1941&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1940, Florey carried out vital experiments, showing that penicillin could protect mice against infection from deadly Streptococci. Then, on February 12, 1941, a 43-year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;American Chemical Society. “Alexander Fleming Discovery and Development of Penicillin &amp;amp;#8211; Landmark.” Accessed January 15, 2020. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and became mass-produced in the US between 1942 and 1944.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&amp;gt;Merck &amp;amp;amp; Co.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&amp;gt;[38]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&amp;gt;[39]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&amp;gt;[40]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;In July 1943, the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board&quot;&amp;gt;War Production Board&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;drew up a plan for the mass distribution of penicillin stocks to Allied troops fighting in Europe.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-JParas-41&quot;&amp;gt;[41]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;The results of fermentation research on&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_steep_liquor&quot;&amp;gt;corn steep liquor&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;at the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Agricultural_Utilization_Research&quot;&amp;gt;Northern Regional Research Laboratory&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;at Peoria, Illinois, allowed the United States to produce 2.3 million doses in time for the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy&quot;&amp;gt;invasion of Normandy&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in the spring of 1944&amp;amp;#8230;As a direct result of the war and the War Production Board, by June 1945, over 646 billion units per year were being produced.&amp;amp;#8221; “Penicillin,” in &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, May 23, 2019, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It quickly became the preferred treatment for syphilis, and appears to be generally credited with producing a steep decline in the prevalence of syphilis which was seen at around that time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1603&quot; title=&#039;e.g. &amp;amp;#8220;Within years, widespread use of penicillin for treatment of all stages of syphilis (primary, secondary, tertiary, latent) resulted in dramatic decreases in the incidence of syphilis and associated mortality.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;John M. Douglas, “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Today, with the dawn of the space-age, there are few who would disagree with the remark of Professor Smelov (1956) at the First International Symposium on Venereal Diseases and Treponematoses in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., that &amp;amp;#8220;hardly any one doubts the curative power of penicillin against&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;syphilis&amp;amp;#8221;, or the opinion of Kinaqigil (1956) of Turkey expressed at the same meeting that penicillin is preferable to all other drugs in this condition. Since Mahoney and his colleagues first used this new antibiotic in the treatment of syphilis (Mahoney, Arnold, and Harris, 1943a, b, 1949), 18 years have passed and little has occurred to shake the faith of&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;many thousands of doctors and of millions of patients in the potency of penicillin in this serious disease (see Doliken, 1954; Danbolt, 1954; Perdrup, Heilesen, and Sylvest, 1954; Shafer, Usilton, and Price, 1954) (Table I). Indeed, no other testimonial is required than the striking fall in the incidence of early syphilis which has occurred throughout the world.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;R. R. Willcox, “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1047489/pdf/brjvendis00121-0001.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;*,” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;502&quot; src=&quot;https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/KXWDvDgDAIV-s-b7lYP7uNBQVztRhaAskYRHLCYYPsbHIoNjw7Aivr8PVUPwtNC7Rtc7FBm6caUee_a7l1eGTJ_eAdmZhlQsUe4eY8j6MqMajjm5QuHStAP6z1aPA50q62T2IFzt&quot; width=&quot;376&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: US World War II Poster&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penicillin_poster_5.40.tif&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Science History Institute [Public domain]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We consider four metrics of success in treating syphilis: the number of syphilis cases, the number of syphilis deaths, effectiveness of syphilis treatment, and the inclusive cost of treatment.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of any discontinuities in years, we tabulated a number of other potentially relevant statistics for each metric &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === US Syphilis cases === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 shows historic reported syphilis cases after 1941, according to the CDC.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1603&quot; title=&#039;Figure 1 is Figure 33 from Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We converted the data in the figure into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kw068YXCXAajeuoOpPq81YR_jLVYAf9jM5---ubl48Y/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1603&quot; title=&#039;We used an &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;automatic figure data extraction tool&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to extract the data from the figure. Here is a link to a &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KzTujoFVFhwH7o_HNDQMS2IDfom1X4f6/view?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;.tar file&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that can be loaded into &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;this tool&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to reproduce our extraction.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1: Syphilis—Reported Cases by Stage of Infection, United States, 1941–2009, according to the CDC&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1603&quot; title=&#039;From Figure 33 in Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to this data, total cases of syphilis declined by around 80% over fifteen years (see Figure 1). We do not see any substantial discontinuities, with 1944 seeing the largest change, equal to only 4 years of progress at the previous rate. Unfortunately, we were unable to find quantitative data prior to 1941, so we were only able to track progress for the three years leading up to the mass production of penicillin.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From our perspective, progress by 1943 may already have been affected by availability of penicillin that we do not know about, in which case we have no earlier trend to go by. However we note that the scale of annual reductions following penicillin is not larger than the increase seen in 1943, and not vastly larger than later annual variations, so the largest abrupt decrease from penicillin seems unlikely to have been large compared to the usual scale of variation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === US Deaths from syphilis === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data from two graphs of historical US syphilis deaths and put it in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ASOiR65QzaOnaX44CB-i8bGfEn5EiRkD5NLP2IjvGQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. The first is shown in Figure 2, and comes from Armstrong et al.’s 1999 report on infectious disease mortality in the United States.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1603&quot; title=&#039;Table 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The authors collected it from historical mortality and population data from the CDC and public use mortality data tapes.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Data were obtained from yearly tabulations of causes of death on file at the Division of Vital Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&amp;amp;#8217;s National Center for Health Statistics and from public use mortality data tapes from 1962 through 1996. &amp;amp;#8230; Population data used in the calculation of mortality rates were also obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics. The data for years prior to 1933 included only the population of the death-registration states or death-registration area, corresponding to the scope of the mortality data being used.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; Armstrong, Gregory L. 1999. &amp;amp;#8220;Trends In Infectious Disease Mortality In The United States During The 20Th Century&amp;amp;#8221;. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 281 (1): 61. American Medical Association (AMA). doi:10.1001/jama.281.1.61.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We used an automatic figure data extraction tool to extract data from the figure.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1603&quot; title=&#039;The tool was at &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. We also extracted data between 1917 and 1967 manually using the same tool. Here is a link to a &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-9nPsvz6brCjQR9ri43wWEoX2hyfkIP3/view?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;.tar file&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that can be loaded into the tool &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to reproduce our extraction.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Mortality rates after the mid-60s are indistinguishable from zero in this figure, so we do not include them. Instead we include records of total US deaths from Peterman &amp;amp; Kidd, 2019&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1603&quot; title=&#039;Peterman, Thomas A., and Sarah E. Kidd. “Trends in Deaths Due to Syphilis, United States, 1968-2015.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Sexually Transmitted Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 46, no. 1 (2019): 37–40. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, which we combine with US population data to get mortality rates between 1957 and 2015.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 2: Syphilis mortality rate in the US during the 20th century.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1603&quot; title=&#039;See Figure 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” JAMA 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2298&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/LogDeaths-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Syphilis mortality rate in the US during the 20th century, plotted on a log scale + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We calculate discontinuities in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ASOiR65QzaOnaX44CB-i8bGfEn5EiRkD5NLP2IjvGQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, according to &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;this methodology&lt;/a&gt;. There were no substantial discontinuities in progress for reducing syphilis deaths in the US during the time for which we have data. The largest positive deviation from a previous trend was a drop representing five years of progress in around 1940, two years before even enough ‘US penicillin’ was available to treat ten people.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&amp;gt;Merck &amp;amp;amp; Co.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&amp;gt;[38]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&amp;gt;[39]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&amp;gt;[40]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8221; “Penicillin,” in &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, May 23, 2019, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In sum, while deaths from syphilis rapidly declined around the 1940s, this progress was not discontinuous at the scale of years. And while penicillin seems likely to have helped in this decline, it did not yet exist to contribute to the most discontinuously fast progress in that trend (and that progress was still not rapid enough to count as a substantial discontinuity for this project).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The decline of syphilis mortality does not appear to be entirely from penicillin, since it is underway by 1940, just prior to the mass-production of penicillin. This is strange, so it is plausible that we misunderstand some aspect of the situation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The only other factor we know about is US Surgeon General Thomas Parran’s launch of a national syphilis control campaign in 1938.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The serious consequences of syphilis for the population led to its designation as the “shadow on the land” and prompted US Surgeon General Thomas Parran to launch a national syphilis control campaign in 1938 based on public education, serologic testing, treatment, and a national network of sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Douglas, John M. “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Wikipedia also attributes some of the syphilis decline over the 19th and 20th centuries to decreasing virulence of the spirochete, but we don’t know of any reason for that to especially coincide with the 1940s decline.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The symptoms of syphilis have become less severe over the 19th and 20th&amp;amp;nbsp;century in part due to widespread availability of effective treatment and partly due to&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_virulence&quot;&amp;gt;decreasing virulence&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;of the spirochete.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_syphilis#cite_note-Sec2010-7&quot;&amp;gt;[7]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Epidemiology of Syphilis.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, February 9, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;amp;oldid=882541706&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;amp;oldid=882541706&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Effectiveness at treating syphilis === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Even if penicillin’s effect on the US death rate from syphilis was gradual, we might expect this to be due to frictions like institutional inertia, rather than from gradual progress in the underlying technology. It might still be that penicillin was a radically better drug than its predecessors, when applied.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We briefly investigated whether penicillin might have represented discontinuous progress in effectiveness at curing syphilis, and conclude that it probably did not, because it does not appear to have been clearly better than its predecessor in terms of cure rates. In a 1962 review of treatment of ‘early’ syphilis&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8216;Early syphilis&amp;amp;#8217; is defined as follows in Willcox: &amp;amp;#8220;seri-negative primary syphilis, zero-positive primary syphilis, secondary syphilis, and early latent syphilis in the first year of infection (although in the U.S.A. the first four years are taken).&amp;amp;#8221;&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, Willcox writes that ‘a seronegativity-rate of 85 per cent. at 11 months had been achieved’ in 1944 after penicillin became the primary treatment for syphilis, but also says that the previously common treatment—arsenic and bismuth—was successful in more than 90% of cases in which it was carried out.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year. The reported results &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;for those patients who completed their treatment&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; (see, for example, Burckhardt, 1949; Degos, Vissian, and Basset, 1950; Thompson and Smith, 1950; Arutyunov and Gurvich, 1958) in large series of cases were good and cure rates exceeding 90 per cent. were reported&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;…As soon as it became available, penicillin was soon in use for the treatment of syphilis throughout the world…&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8230;As early as 1946 it became apparent in the U.S.A. that the results were deteriorating. Before May, 1944, a seronegativity-rate of 85 per cent. at 11 months had been achieved, but after that time the figure had fallen to only 60 per cent.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Willcox explains that the major downsides of the earlier treatment were very high defection rates (with perhaps as few as a quarter of patients completing the treatment), and ‘serious toxic effects’.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1603&quot; title=&quot;One of the two great disadvantages of metal-therapy was that, because of the relatively weak treponemicidal powers of the drugs employed, prolonged treatment involving many injections was required, and default from treatment, and therefore absence of cure in those who defaulted, was very common. Indeed, a minimum curative dose might be received by only one quarter of the patients (Chope and Malcolm, 1948). The other disadvantage was the risk of serious toxic effects, which not only curtailed treatment in affected patients but, by reputation, encouraged other patients to default.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We have not checked that exactly the same notion of success is being used in these figures, have not assessed the reliability of this source, and do not know how important treatment for ‘early’ syphilis is relative to treatment for all syphilis, so it could still be that penicillin was a more effective treatment overall. However we did not investigate this further.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Inclusive costs of treatment === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin apparently allowed most patients to receive a curative dose of medicine, whereas ‘arsenic and bismuth therapy’ achieved this for perhaps as few as a quarter of patients.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The out-patient therapy of early syphilis became feasible only with the introduction by Romansky and Rittman (1945) of penicillin in oil-beeswax…by such means, nearly all patients could now achieve a curative dose (Hayman, 1947, Aitken, 1947) instead of only about one-quarter as with arsenic and bismuth (Chope and Malcolm, 1948).&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; If penicillin made an abrupt difference to syphilis treatment then, it seems likely to have been in terms of inclusive costs (which were partly reflected in willingness to be treated).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Qualitatively, the costs of treatment do seem to have been much lower. The time for treatment dropped from a year to around eight days.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year…&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8230;The use of sixty or more injections of crystalline penicillin G in aqueous solution within a period of 7 1/2 days, if not more than the patients could reasonably tolerate, required their admission to hospital…Good results were reported with eight daily injections of 600,000 units…and success rates of 80 to 85 per cent. were achieved…&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;R. R. Willcox, “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1943 penicillin was introduced as a treatment for syphilis by John Mahoney, Richard Arnold and AD Harris. [22] Mahoney and his colleagues at the US Marine Hospital, Staten Island, treated four patients with primary syphilis chancres with intramuscular injections of penicillin four-hourly for eight days for a total of 1,200,000 units by which time the syphilis had been cured. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;John Frith, “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our impression is that the side effects qualitatively reduced from horrible and sometimes deadly to apparently bearable.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However even if penicillin was a large improvement over its predecessors in absolute terms (which seems likely), it would be hard to make a clear case that it was large relative to previous progress in syphilis treatments, because recent progress was also incredible.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The ‘arsenic and bismuth therapy’ mentioned above, that preceded penicillin, seems to have been a combination of the arsenic-based drug salvarsan (arsphenamine) and similar drugs developed subsequently, with bismuth. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Arsenicals, mainly arsphenamine, neoarsphenamine, acetarsone and mapharside, in combination with bismuth or mercury then became the mainstay of treatment for syphilis until the advent of penicillin in 1943.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Salvarsan (arsphenamine) was considered such radical improvement over its own predecessors that it was known as the ‘magic bullet’, and won its discoverer Paul Erhlich a Nobel prize.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1603&quot; title=&#039;This led in 1910 to the manufacture of arsphenamine, which subsequently became known as Salvarsan, or the “magic bullet”, and later in 1912, neoarsphenamine, Neo-salvarsan, or drug “914”. In 1908 Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery. [7, 11, 12]&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;John Frith, “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&amp;gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; A physician at the time describes&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1603&quot; title=&#039;John Frith, “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&amp;gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“Arsenobenzol, designated “606,” whatever the future may bring to justify the present enthusiasm, is now actually a more or less incredible advance in the treatment of syphilis and in many ways is superior to the old mercury – as valuable as this will continue to be – because of its eminently powerful and eminently rapid spirochaeticidal property.”&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;It is easy to see how salvarsan could be hugely costly to take, yet still represent large progress over earlier options, when we note that the common treatment prior to salvarsan was mercury,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Mercury stayed in favour as treatment for syphilis until 1910 when Ehrlich discovered the anti-syphilitic effects of arsenic and developed Salvarsan, popularly called the “magic bullet”.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; which had ‘terrible side effects’ including the death of many patients, characteristically took years, and was not obviously helpful.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Many physicians doubted the efficacy of mercury, especially as it had terrible side effects and many patients died of mercury poisoning. Beck (1997) describes a typical mercury treatment :&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“A patient undergoing the treatment was secluded in a hot, stuffy room, and rubbed vigorously with the mercury ointment several times a day. The massaging was done near a hot fire, which the sufferer was then left next to in order to sweat. This process went on for a week to a month or more, and would later be repeated if the disease persisted. Other toxic substances, such as vitriol and arsenic, were also employed, but their curative effects were equally in doubt.” [9] &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Mercury had terrible side effects causing neuropathies, kidney failure, and severe mouth ulcers and loss of teeth, and many patients died of mercurial poisoning rather than from the disease itself. Treatment would typically go on for years and gave rise to the saying,&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“A night with Venus, and a lifetime with mercury” [8]&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;So at a glance penicillin doesn’t look to have been clearly discontinuous relative to the impressive recent trend, and measuring inclusive costs is hard to do finely enough to see less clear discontinuities. Thus evaluating these costs quantitatively will remain beyond the scope of this investigation at present. We tentatively guess that penicillin did not represent a large discontinuity in inclusive costs of syphilis treatment, though it did represent huge progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Conclusions ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin probably made quick but not abrupt progress in reducing syphilis and syphilis mortality. Penicillin doesn’t appear to have been much more likely to cure a patient than earlier treatments, conditional on the treatment being carried out, but it penicillin treatment appears to have been around four times more likely to be carried out, due to lower costs. Qualitatively penicillin represented an important reduction in costs, but it is hard to evaluate this precisely or compare it with the longer term progress. It appears that as recently as 1910 another drug for syphilis also represented qualitatively huge progress in treatment, so it is unlikely that penicillin was a large discontinuity relative to past progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1940, Florey carried out vital experiments, showing that penicillin could protect mice against infection from deadly Streptococci. Then, on February 12, 1941, a 43-year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin.” + &lt;p&gt;American Chemical Society. “Alexander Fleming Discovery and Development of Penicillin – Landmark.” Accessed January 15, 2020. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&quot;&gt;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&gt;Merck &amp;amp; Co.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&gt;[38]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&gt;[39]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&gt;[40]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; In July 1943, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board&quot;&gt;War Production Board&lt;/a&gt; drew up a plan for the mass distribution of penicillin stocks to Allied troops fighting in Europe.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-JParas-41&quot;&gt;[41]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; The results of fermentation research on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_steep_liquor&quot;&gt;corn steep liquor&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Agricultural_Utilization_Research&quot;&gt;Northern Regional Research Laboratory&lt;/a&gt; at Peoria, Illinois, allowed the United States to produce 2.3 million doses in time for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy&quot;&gt;invasion of Normandy&lt;/a&gt; in the spring of 1944…As a direct result of the war and the War Production Board, by June 1945, over 646 billion units per year were being produced.” “Penicillin,” in &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, May 23, 2019, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;e.g. “Within years, widespread use of penicillin for treatment of all stages of syphilis (primary, secondary, tertiary, latent) resulted in dramatic decreases in the incidence of syphilis and associated mortality.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + John M. Douglas, “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis,” &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Today, with the dawn of the space-age, there are few who would disagree with the remark of Professor Smelov (1956) at the First International Symposium on Venereal Diseases and Treponematoses in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., that “hardly any one doubts the curative power of penicillin against&lt;br/&gt; + syphilis”, or the opinion of Kinaqigil (1956) of Turkey expressed at the same meeting that penicillin is preferable to all other drugs in this condition. Since Mahoney and his colleagues first used this new antibiotic in the treatment of syphilis (Mahoney, Arnold, and Harris, 1943a, b, 1949), 18 years have passed and little has occurred to shake the faith of&lt;br/&gt; + many thousands of doctors and of millions of patients in the potency of penicillin in this serious disease (see Doliken, 1954; Danbolt, 1954; Perdrup, Heilesen, and Sylvest, 1954; Shafer, Usilton, and Price, 1954) (Table I). Indeed, no other testimonial is required than the striking fall in the incidence of early syphilis which has occurred throughout the world.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + R. R. Willcox, “&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1047489/pdf/brjvendis00121-0001.pdf&quot;&gt;Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics&lt;/a&gt;*,” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penicillin_poster_5.40.tif&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; Science History Institute [Public domain]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Figure 1 is Figure 33 from Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We used an &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;automatic figure data extraction tool&lt;/a&gt; to extract the data from the figure. Here is a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KzTujoFVFhwH7o_HNDQMS2IDfom1X4f6/view?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;.tar file&lt;/a&gt; that can be loaded into &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;this tool&lt;/a&gt; to reproduce our extraction.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;From Figure 33 in Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Table 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Data were obtained from yearly tabulations of causes of death on file at the Division of Vital Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics and from public use mortality data tapes from 1962 through 1996. … Population data used in the calculation of mortality rates were also obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics. The data for years prior to 1933 included only the population of the death-registration states or death-registration area, corresponding to the scope of the mortality data being used.” – Armstrong, Gregory L. 1999. “Trends In Infectious Disease Mortality In The United States During The 20Th Century”. &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 281 (1): 61. American Medical Association (AMA). doi:10.1001/jama.281.1.61.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The tool was at &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&lt;/a&gt;. We also extracted data between 1917 and 1967 manually using the same tool. Here is a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-9nPsvz6brCjQR9ri43wWEoX2hyfkIP3/view?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;.tar file&lt;/a&gt; that can be loaded into the tool &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to reproduce our extraction.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Peterman, Thomas A., and Sarah E. Kidd. “Trends in Deaths Due to Syphilis, United States, 1968-2015.” &lt;em&gt;Sexually Transmitted Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 46, no. 1 (2019): 37–40. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See Figure 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” JAMA 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&gt;Merck &amp;amp; Co.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&gt;[38]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&gt;[39]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&gt;[40]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;” “Penicillin,” in &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, May 23, 2019, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The serious consequences of syphilis for the population led to its designation as the “shadow on the land” and prompted US Surgeon General Thomas Parran to launch a national syphilis control campaign in 1938 based on public education, serologic testing, treatment, and a national network of sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Douglas, John M. “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis.” &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The symptoms of syphilis have become less severe over the 19th and 20th century in part due to widespread availability of effective treatment and partly due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_virulence&quot;&gt;decreasing virulence&lt;/a&gt; of the spirochete.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_syphilis#cite_note-Sec2010-7&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;“&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Epidemiology of Syphilis.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, February 9, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;oldid=882541706&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;oldid=882541706&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;‘Early syphilis’ is defined as follows in Willcox: “seri-negative primary syphilis, zero-positive primary syphilis, secondary syphilis, and early latent syphilis in the first year of infection (although in the U.S.A. the first four years are taken).”&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year. The reported results &lt;em&gt;for those patients who completed their treatment&lt;/em&gt; (see, for example, Burckhardt, 1949; Degos, Vissian, and Basset, 1950; Thompson and Smith, 1950; Arutyunov and Gurvich, 1958) in large series of cases were good and cure rates exceeding 90 per cent. were reported…&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + …As soon as it became available, penicillin was soon in use for the treatment of syphilis throughout the world…&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + …As early as 1946 it became apparent in the U.S.A. that the results were deteriorating. Before May, 1944, a seronegativity-rate of 85 per cent. at 11 months had been achieved, but after that time the figure had fallen to only 60 per cent.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;One of the two great disadvantages of metal-therapy was that, because of the relatively weak treponemicidal powers of the drugs employed, prolonged treatment involving many injections was required, and default from treatment, and therefore absence of cure in those who defaulted, was very common. Indeed, a minimum curative dose might be received by only one quarter of the patients (Chope and Malcolm, 1948). The other disadvantage was the risk of serious toxic effects, which not only curtailed treatment in affected patients but, by reputation, encouraged other patients to default.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The out-patient therapy of early syphilis became feasible only with the introduction by Romansky and Rittman (1945) of penicillin in oil-beeswax…by such means, nearly all patients could now achieve a curative dose (Hayman, 1947, Aitken, 1947) instead of only about one-quarter as with arsenic and bismuth (Chope and Malcolm, 1948).”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year… + &lt;p&gt;…The use of sixty or more injections of crystalline penicillin G in aqueous solution within a period of 7 1/2 days, if not more than the patients could reasonably tolerate, required their admission to hospital…Good results were reported with eight daily injections of 600,000 units…and success rates of 80 to 85 per cent. were achieved…”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + R. R. Willcox, “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*,” &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “In 1943 penicillin was introduced as a treatment for syphilis by John Mahoney, Richard Arnold and AD Harris. [22] Mahoney and his colleagues at the US Marine Hospital, Staten Island, treated four patients with primary syphilis chancres with intramuscular injections of penicillin four-hourly for eight days for a total of 1,200,000 units by which time the syphilis had been cured. “&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;John Frith, “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins,” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Arsenicals, mainly arsphenamine, neoarsphenamine, acetarsone and mapharside, in combination with bismuth or mercury then became the mainstay of treatment for syphilis until the advent of penicillin in 1943.” + &lt;p&gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;This led in 1910 to the manufacture of arsphenamine, which subsequently became known as Salvarsan, or the “magic bullet”, and later in 1912, neoarsphenamine, Neo-salvarsan, or drug “914”. In 1908 Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery. [7, 11, 12]”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + John Frith, “&lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&lt;/a&gt;,” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;John Frith, “&lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&lt;/a&gt;,” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Mercury stayed in favour as treatment for syphilis until 1910 when Ehrlich discovered the anti-syphilitic effects of arsenic and developed Salvarsan, popularly called the “magic bullet”.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Many physicians doubted the efficacy of mercury, especially as it had terrible side effects and many patients died of mercury poisoning. Beck (1997) describes a typical mercury treatment : + &lt;p&gt;“A patient undergoing the treatment was secluded in a hot, stuffy room, and rubbed vigorously with the mercury ointment several times a day. The massaging was done near a hot fire, which the sufferer was then left next to in order to sweat. This process went on for a week to a month or more, and would later be repeated if the disease persisted. Other toxic substances, such as vitriol and arsenic, were also employed, but their curative effects were equally in doubt.” [9]&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Mercury had terrible side effects causing neuropathies, kidney failure, and severe mouth ulcers and loss of teeth, and many patients died of mercurial poisoning rather than from the disease itself. Treatment would typically go on for years and gave rise to the saying,&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“A night with Venus, and a lifetime with mercury” [8]”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>

<pre> @@ -1 +1,336 @@ + ====== Penicillin and historic syphilis trends ====== + + // Published 07 February, 2020; last updated 28 May, 2020 // + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin did not precipitate a discontinuity of more than ten years in deaths from syphilis in the US. Nor were there other discontinuities in that trend between 1916 and 2015.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The number of syphilis cases in the US also saw steep decline but no substantial discontinuity between 1941 and 2008.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;On brief investigation, the effectiveness of syphilis treatment and inclusive costs of syphilis treatment do not appear to have seen large discontinuities with penicillin, but we have not investigated either thoroughly enough to be confident.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + ===== Details ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;This case study is part of AI Impacts’ &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:discontinuous_progress_investigation&quot;&gt;discontinuous progress investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Background ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin was first used to treat a patient in 1941&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-1-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1940, Florey carried out vital experiments, showing that penicillin could protect mice against infection from deadly Streptococci. Then, on February 12, 1941, a 43-year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;American Chemical Society. “Alexander Fleming Discovery and Development of Penicillin &amp;amp;#8211; Landmark.” Accessed January 15, 2020. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&quot;&amp;gt;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; and became mass-produced in the US between 1942 and 1944.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-2-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&amp;gt;Merck &amp;amp;amp; Co.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&amp;gt;[38]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&amp;gt;[39]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&amp;gt;[40]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;In July 1943, the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board&quot;&amp;gt;War Production Board&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;drew up a plan for the mass distribution of penicillin stocks to Allied troops fighting in Europe.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-JParas-41&quot;&amp;gt;[41]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;The results of fermentation research on&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_steep_liquor&quot;&amp;gt;corn steep liquor&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;at the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Agricultural_Utilization_Research&quot;&amp;gt;Northern Regional Research Laboratory&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;at Peoria, Illinois, allowed the United States to produce 2.3 million doses in time for the&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy&quot;&amp;gt;invasion of Normandy&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in the spring of 1944&amp;amp;#8230;As a direct result of the war and the War Production Board, by June 1945, over 646 billion units per year were being produced.&amp;amp;#8221; “Penicillin,” in &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, May 23, 2019, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; It quickly became the preferred treatment for syphilis, and appears to be generally credited with producing a steep decline in the prevalence of syphilis which was seen at around that time.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-3-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1603&quot; title=&#039;e.g. &amp;amp;#8220;Within years, widespread use of penicillin for treatment of all stages of syphilis (primary, secondary, tertiary, latent) resulted in dramatic decreases in the incidence of syphilis and associated mortality.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;John M. Douglas, “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-4-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;Today, with the dawn of the space-age, there are few who would disagree with the remark of Professor Smelov (1956) at the First International Symposium on Venereal Diseases and Treponematoses in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., that &amp;amp;#8220;hardly any one doubts the curative power of penicillin against&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;syphilis&amp;amp;#8221;, or the opinion of Kinaqigil (1956) of Turkey expressed at the same meeting that penicillin is preferable to all other drugs in this condition. Since Mahoney and his colleagues first used this new antibiotic in the treatment of syphilis (Mahoney, Arnold, and Harris, 1943a, b, 1949), 18 years have passed and little has occurred to shake the faith of&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;many thousands of doctors and of millions of patients in the potency of penicillin in this serious disease (see Doliken, 1954; Danbolt, 1954; Perdrup, Heilesen, and Sylvest, 1954; Shafer, Usilton, and Price, 1954) (Table I). Indeed, no other testimonial is required than the striking fall in the incidence of early syphilis which has occurred throughout the world.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;R. R. Willcox, “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1047489/pdf/brjvendis00121-0001.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;*,” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; height=&quot;502&quot; src=&quot;https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/KXWDvDgDAIV-s-b7lYP7uNBQVztRhaAskYRHLCYYPsbHIoNjw7Aivr8PVUPwtNC7Rtc7FBm6caUee_a7l1eGTJ_eAdmZhlQsUe4eY8j6MqMajjm5QuHStAP6z1aPA50q62T2IFzt&quot; width=&quot;376&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 1: US World War II Poster&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-5-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penicillin_poster_5.40.tif&quot;&amp;gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; Science History Institute [Public domain]&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Trends ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We consider four metrics of success in treating syphilis: the number of syphilis cases, the number of syphilis deaths, effectiveness of syphilis treatment, and the inclusive cost of treatment.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In addition to the size of any discontinuities in years, we tabulated a number of other potentially relevant statistics for each metric &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iMIZ57Ka9-ZYednnGeonC-NqwGC7dKiHN9S-TAxfVdQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1315&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === US Syphilis cases === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1 shows historic reported syphilis cases after 1941, according to the CDC.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-6-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1603&quot; title=&#039;Figure 1 is Figure 33 from Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We converted the data in the figure into &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kw068YXCXAajeuoOpPq81YR_jLVYAf9jM5---ubl48Y/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-7-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1603&quot; title=&#039;We used an &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;automatic figure data extraction tool&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to extract the data from the figure. Here is a link to a &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KzTujoFVFhwH7o_HNDQMS2IDfom1X4f6/view?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;.tar file&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that can be loaded into &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;this tool&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to reproduce our extraction.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 1: Syphilis—Reported Cases by Stage of Infection, United States, 1941–2009, according to the CDC&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-8-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1603&quot; title=&#039;From Figure 33 in Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&amp;gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;According to this data, total cases of syphilis declined by around 80% over fifteen years (see Figure 1). We do not see any substantial discontinuities, with 1944 seeing the largest change, equal to only 4 years of progress at the previous rate. Unfortunately, we were unable to find quantitative data prior to 1941, so we were only able to track progress for the three years leading up to the mass production of penicillin.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;From our perspective, progress by 1943 may already have been affected by availability of penicillin that we do not know about, in which case we have no earlier trend to go by. However we note that the scale of annual reductions following penicillin is not larger than the increase seen in 1943, and not vastly larger than later annual variations, so the largest abrupt decrease from penicillin seems unlikely to have been large compared to the usual scale of variation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === US Deaths from syphilis === + + + == Data == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We collected data from two graphs of historical US syphilis deaths and put it in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ASOiR65QzaOnaX44CB-i8bGfEn5EiRkD5NLP2IjvGQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. The first is shown in Figure 2, and comes from Armstrong et al.’s 1999 report on infectious disease mortality in the United States.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-9-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1603&quot; title=&#039;Table 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; The authors collected it from historical mortality and population data from the CDC and public use mortality data tapes.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-10-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Data were obtained from yearly tabulations of causes of death on file at the Division of Vital Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&amp;amp;#8217;s National Center for Health Statistics and from public use mortality data tapes from 1962 through 1996. &amp;amp;#8230; Population data used in the calculation of mortality rates were also obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics. The data for years prior to 1933 included only the population of the death-registration states or death-registration area, corresponding to the scope of the mortality data being used.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8211; Armstrong, Gregory L. 1999. &amp;amp;#8220;Trends In Infectious Disease Mortality In The United States During The 20Th Century&amp;amp;#8221;. &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 281 (1): 61. American Medical Association (AMA). doi:10.1001/jama.281.1.61.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We used an automatic figure data extraction tool to extract data from the figure.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-11-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1603&quot; title=&#039;The tool was at &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. We also extracted data between 1917 and 1967 manually using the same tool. Here is a link to a &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-9nPsvz6brCjQR9ri43wWEoX2hyfkIP3/view?usp=sharing&quot;&amp;gt;.tar file&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; that can be loaded into the tool &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; to reproduce our extraction.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Mortality rates after the mid-60s are indistinguishable from zero in this figure, so we do not include them. Instead we include records of total US deaths from Peterman &amp;amp; Kidd, 2019&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-12-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1603&quot; title=&#039;Peterman, Thomas A., and Sarah E. Kidd. “Trends in Deaths Due to Syphilis, United States, 1968-2015.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Sexually Transmitted Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 46, no. 1 (2019): 37–40. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, which we combine with US population data to get mortality rates between 1957 and 2015.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Figure 2: Syphilis mortality rate in the US during the 20th century.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-13-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1603&quot; title=&#039;See Figure 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” JAMA 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;figure class=&quot;wp-block-image size-large is-resized&quot;&gt; + &lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-2298&quot; height=&quot;450&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; src=&quot;https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/LogDeaths-1024x768.png&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;/&gt; + &lt;figcaption&gt; + Figure 3: Syphilis mortality rate in the US during the 20th century, plotted on a log scale + &lt;/figcaption&gt; + &lt;/figure&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discontinuity Measurement == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We calculate discontinuities in &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ASOiR65QzaOnaX44CB-i8bGfEn5EiRkD5NLP2IjvGQ/edit?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;our spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;, according to &lt;a href=&quot;/doku.php?id=speed_of_ai_transition:pace_of_ai_progress_without_feedback:historical_continuity_of_progress:methodology_for_discontinuous_progress_investigation#changes-in-the-rate-of-progress&quot;&gt;this methodology&lt;/a&gt;. There were no substantial discontinuities in progress for reducing syphilis deaths in the US during the time for which we have data. The largest positive deviation from a previous trend was a drop representing five years of progress in around 1940, two years before even enough ‘US penicillin’ was available to treat ten people.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-14-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&amp;gt;Merck &amp;amp;amp; Co.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&amp;gt;[38]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&amp;gt;[39]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&amp;gt;[40]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8221; “Penicillin,” in &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, May 23, 2019, &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;amp;oldid=898359231&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;In sum, while deaths from syphilis rapidly declined around the 1940s, this progress was not discontinuous at the scale of years. And while penicillin seems likely to have helped in this decline, it did not yet exist to contribute to the most discontinuously fast progress in that trend (and that progress was still not rapid enough to count as a substantial discontinuity for this project).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + == Discussion of causes == + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The decline of syphilis mortality does not appear to be entirely from penicillin, since it is underway by 1940, just prior to the mass-production of penicillin. This is strange, so it is plausible that we misunderstand some aspect of the situation.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The only other factor we know about is US Surgeon General Thomas Parran’s launch of a national syphilis control campaign in 1938.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-15-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The serious consequences of syphilis for the population led to its designation as the “shadow on the land” and prompted US Surgeon General Thomas Parran to launch a national syphilis control campaign in 1938 based on public education, serologic testing, treatment, and a national network of sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Douglas, John M. “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;JAMA&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&amp;gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Wikipedia also attributes some of the syphilis decline over the 19th and 20th centuries to decreasing virulence of the spirochete, but we don’t know of any reason for that to especially coincide with the 1940s decline.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-16-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1603&quot; title=&#039;&amp;amp;#8220;The symptoms of syphilis have become less severe over the 19th and 20th&amp;amp;nbsp;century in part due to widespread availability of effective treatment and partly due to&amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_virulence&quot;&amp;gt;decreasing virulence&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;amp;nbsp;of the spirochete.&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_syphilis#cite_note-Sec2010-7&quot;&amp;gt;[7]&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;“Epidemiology of Syphilis.” In &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Wikipedia&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt;, February 9, 2019. &amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;amp;oldid=882541706&quot;&amp;gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;amp;oldid=882541706&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. &#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Effectiveness at treating syphilis === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Even if penicillin’s effect on the US death rate from syphilis was gradual, we might expect this to be due to frictions like institutional inertia, rather than from gradual progress in the underlying technology. It might still be that penicillin was a radically better drug than its predecessors, when applied.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;We briefly investigated whether penicillin might have represented discontinuous progress in effectiveness at curing syphilis, and conclude that it probably did not, because it does not appear to have been clearly better than its predecessor in terms of cure rates. In a 1962 review of treatment of ‘early’ syphilis&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-17-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8216;Early syphilis&amp;amp;#8217; is defined as follows in Willcox: &amp;amp;#8220;seri-negative primary syphilis, zero-positive primary syphilis, secondary syphilis, and early latent syphilis in the first year of infection (although in the U.S.A. the first four years are taken).&amp;amp;#8221;&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, Willcox writes that ‘a seronegativity-rate of 85 per cent. at 11 months had been achieved’ in 1944 after penicillin became the primary treatment for syphilis, but also says that the previously common treatment—arsenic and bismuth—was successful in more than 90% of cases in which it was carried out.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-18-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year. The reported results &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;for those patients who completed their treatment&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; (see, for example, Burckhardt, 1949; Degos, Vissian, and Basset, 1950; Thompson and Smith, 1950; Arutyunov and Gurvich, 1958) in large series of cases were good and cure rates exceeding 90 per cent. were reported&amp;amp;#8230;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;…As soon as it became available, penicillin was soon in use for the treatment of syphilis throughout the world…&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8230;As early as 1946 it became apparent in the U.S.A. that the results were deteriorating. Before May, 1944, a seronegativity-rate of 85 per cent. at 11 months had been achieved, but after that time the figure had fallen to only 60 per cent.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Willcox explains that the major downsides of the earlier treatment were very high defection rates (with perhaps as few as a quarter of patients completing the treatment), and ‘serious toxic effects’.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-19-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1603&quot; title=&quot;One of the two great disadvantages of metal-therapy was that, because of the relatively weak treponemicidal powers of the drugs employed, prolonged treatment involving many injections was required, and default from treatment, and therefore absence of cure in those who defaulted, was very common. Indeed, a minimum curative dose might be received by only one quarter of the patients (Chope and Malcolm, 1948). The other disadvantage was the risk of serious toxic effects, which not only curtailed treatment in affected patients but, by reputation, encouraged other patients to default.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; We have not checked that exactly the same notion of success is being used in these figures, have not assessed the reliability of this source, and do not know how important treatment for ‘early’ syphilis is relative to treatment for all syphilis, so it could still be that penicillin was a more effective treatment overall. However we did not investigate this further.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + === Inclusive costs of treatment === + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin apparently allowed most patients to receive a curative dose of medicine, whereas ‘arsenic and bismuth therapy’ achieved this for perhaps as few as a quarter of patients.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-20-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;The out-patient therapy of early syphilis became feasible only with the introduction by Romansky and Rittman (1945) of penicillin in oil-beeswax…by such means, nearly all patients could now achieve a curative dose (Hayman, 1947, Aitken, 1947) instead of only about one-quarter as with arsenic and bismuth (Chope and Malcolm, 1948).&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; If penicillin made an abrupt difference to syphilis treatment then, it seems likely to have been in terms of inclusive costs (which were partly reflected in willingness to be treated).&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Qualitatively, the costs of treatment do seem to have been much lower. The time for treatment dropped from a year to around eight days.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-21-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year…&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8230;The use of sixty or more injections of crystalline penicillin G in aqueous solution within a period of 7 1/2 days, if not more than the patients could reasonably tolerate, required their admission to hospital…Good results were reported with eight daily injections of 600,000 units…and success rates of 80 to 85 per cent. were achieved…&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;R. R. Willcox, “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;amp;#8220;In 1943 penicillin was introduced as a treatment for syphilis by John Mahoney, Richard Arnold and AD Harris. [22] Mahoney and his colleagues at the US Marine Hospital, Staten Island, treated four patients with primary syphilis chancres with intramuscular injections of penicillin four-hourly for eight days for a total of 1,200,000 units by which time the syphilis had been cured. &amp;amp;#8220;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;John Frith, “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Our impression is that the side effects qualitatively reduced from horrible and sometimes deadly to apparently bearable.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;However even if penicillin was a large improvement over its predecessors in absolute terms (which seems likely), it would be hard to make a clear case that it was large relative to previous progress in syphilis treatments, because recent progress was also incredible.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;The ‘arsenic and bismuth therapy’ mentioned above, that preceded penicillin, seems to have been a combination of the arsenic-based drug salvarsan (arsphenamine) and similar drugs developed subsequently, with bismuth. &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-22-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Arsenicals, mainly arsphenamine, neoarsphenamine, acetarsone and mapharside, in combination with bismuth or mercury then became the mainstay of treatment for syphilis until the advent of penicillin in 1943.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Salvarsan (arsphenamine) was considered such radical improvement over its own predecessors that it was known as the ‘magic bullet’, and won its discoverer Paul Erhlich a Nobel prize.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-23-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1603&quot; title=&#039;This led in 1910 to the manufacture of arsphenamine, which subsequently became known as Salvarsan, or the “magic bullet”, and later in 1912, neoarsphenamine, Neo-salvarsan, or drug “914”. In 1908 Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery. [7, 11, 12]&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;John Frith, “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&amp;gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; A physician at the time describes&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-24-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1603&quot; title=&#039;John Frith, “&amp;lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&amp;gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;,” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&#039;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;blockquote class=&quot;wp-block-quote&quot;&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“Arsenobenzol, designated “606,” whatever the future may bring to justify the present enthusiasm, is now actually a more or less incredible advance in the treatment of syphilis and in many ways is superior to the old mercury – as valuable as this will continue to be – because of its eminently powerful and eminently rapid spirochaeticidal property.”&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/blockquote&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;It is easy to see how salvarsan could be hugely costly to take, yet still represent large progress over earlier options, when we note that the common treatment prior to salvarsan was mercury,&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-25-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Mercury stayed in favour as treatment for syphilis until 1910 when Ehrlich discovered the anti-syphilitic effects of arsenic and developed Salvarsan, popularly called the “magic bullet”.&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &amp;lt;em&amp;gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&amp;lt;/em&amp;gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt; which had ‘terrible side effects’ including the death of many patients, characteristically took years, and was not obviously helpful.&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-26-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1603&quot; title=&quot;&amp;amp;#8220;Many physicians doubted the efficacy of mercury, especially as it had terrible side effects and many patients died of mercury poisoning. Beck (1997) describes a typical mercury treatment :&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“A patient undergoing the treatment was secluded in a hot, stuffy room, and rubbed vigorously with the mercury ointment several times a day. The massaging was done near a hot fire, which the sufferer was then left next to in order to sweat. This process went on for a week to a month or more, and would later be repeated if the disease persisted. Other toxic substances, such as vitriol and arsenic, were also employed, but their curative effects were equally in doubt.” [9] &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Mercury had terrible side effects causing neuropathies, kidney failure, and severe mouth ulcers and loss of teeth, and many patients died of mercurial poisoning rather than from the disease itself. Treatment would typically go on for years and gave rise to the saying,&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;“A night with Venus, and a lifetime with mercury” [8]&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;So at a glance penicillin doesn’t look to have been clearly discontinuous relative to the impressive recent trend, and measuring inclusive costs is hard to do finely enough to see less clear discontinuities. Thus evaluating these costs quantitatively will remain beyond the scope of this investigation at present. We tentatively guess that penicillin did not represent a large discontinuity in inclusive costs of syphilis treatment, though it did represent huge progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ==== Conclusions ==== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Penicillin probably made quick but not abrupt progress in reducing syphilis and syphilis mortality. Penicillin doesn’t appear to have been much more likely to cure a patient than earlier treatments, conditional on the treatment being carried out, but it penicillin treatment appears to have been around four times more likely to be carried out, due to lower costs. Qualitatively penicillin represented an important reduction in costs, but it is hard to evaluate this precisely or compare it with the longer term progress. It appears that as recently as 1910 another drug for syphilis also represented qualitatively huge progress in treatment, so it is unlikely that penicillin was a large discontinuity relative to past progress.&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + + ===== Notes ===== + + + &lt;HTML&gt; + &lt;ol class=&quot;easy-footnotes-wrapper&quot;&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-1-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“In 1940, Florey carried out vital experiments, showing that penicillin could protect mice against infection from deadly Streptococci. Then, on February 12, 1941, a 43-year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin.” + &lt;p&gt;American Chemical Society. “Alexander Fleming Discovery and Development of Penicillin – Landmark.” Accessed January 15, 2020. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&quot;&gt;https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-1-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-2-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&gt;Merck &amp;amp; Co.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&gt;[38]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&gt;[39]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&gt;[40]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; In July 1943, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Production_Board&quot;&gt;War Production Board&lt;/a&gt; drew up a plan for the mass distribution of penicillin stocks to Allied troops fighting in Europe.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-JParas-41&quot;&gt;[41]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; The results of fermentation research on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_steep_liquor&quot;&gt;corn steep liquor&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Agricultural_Utilization_Research&quot;&gt;Northern Regional Research Laboratory&lt;/a&gt; at Peoria, Illinois, allowed the United States to produce 2.3 million doses in time for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy&quot;&gt;invasion of Normandy&lt;/a&gt; in the spring of 1944…As a direct result of the war and the War Production Board, by June 1945, over 646 billion units per year were being produced.” “Penicillin,” in &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, May 23, 2019, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-2-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-3-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;e.g. “Within years, widespread use of penicillin for treatment of all stages of syphilis (primary, secondary, tertiary, latent) resulted in dramatic decreases in the incidence of syphilis and associated mortality.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + John M. Douglas, “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis,” &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-3-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-4-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Today, with the dawn of the space-age, there are few who would disagree with the remark of Professor Smelov (1956) at the First International Symposium on Venereal Diseases and Treponematoses in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., that “hardly any one doubts the curative power of penicillin against&lt;br/&gt; + syphilis”, or the opinion of Kinaqigil (1956) of Turkey expressed at the same meeting that penicillin is preferable to all other drugs in this condition. Since Mahoney and his colleagues first used this new antibiotic in the treatment of syphilis (Mahoney, Arnold, and Harris, 1943a, b, 1949), 18 years have passed and little has occurred to shake the faith of&lt;br/&gt; + many thousands of doctors and of millions of patients in the potency of penicillin in this serious disease (see Doliken, 1954; Danbolt, 1954; Perdrup, Heilesen, and Sylvest, 1954; Shafer, Usilton, and Price, 1954) (Table I). Indeed, no other testimonial is required than the striking fall in the incidence of early syphilis which has occurred throughout the world.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + R. R. Willcox, “&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1047489/pdf/brjvendis00121-0001.pdf&quot;&gt;Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics&lt;/a&gt;*,” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-4-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-5-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penicillin_poster_5.40.tif&quot;&gt;From Wikimedia Commons:&lt;/a&gt; Science History Institute [Public domain]&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-5-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-6-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Figure 1 is Figure 33 from Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-6-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-7-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;We used an &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;automatic figure data extraction tool&lt;/a&gt; to extract the data from the figure. Here is a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KzTujoFVFhwH7o_HNDQMS2IDfom1X4f6/view?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;.tar file&lt;/a&gt; that can be loaded into &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;this tool&lt;/a&gt; to reproduce our extraction.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-7-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-8-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;From Figure 33 in Division of STD Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2009,” November 2010, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170120091355/https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats09/surv2009-Complete.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-8-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-9-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Table 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-9-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-10-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Data were obtained from yearly tabulations of causes of death on file at the Division of Vital Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics and from public use mortality data tapes from 1962 through 1996. … Population data used in the calculation of mortality rates were also obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics. The data for years prior to 1933 included only the population of the death-registration states or death-registration area, corresponding to the scope of the mortality data being used.” – Armstrong, Gregory L. 1999. “Trends In Infectious Disease Mortality In The United States During The 20Th Century”. &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 281 (1): 61. American Medical Association (AMA). doi:10.1001/jama.281.1.61.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-10-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-11-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The tool was at &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&lt;/a&gt;. We also extracted data between 1917 and 1967 manually using the same tool. Here is a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-9nPsvz6brCjQR9ri43wWEoX2hyfkIP3/view?usp=sharing&quot;&gt;.tar file&lt;/a&gt; that can be loaded into the tool &lt;a href=&quot;https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to reproduce our extraction.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-11-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-12-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Peterman, Thomas A., and Sarah E. Kidd. “Trends in Deaths Due to Syphilis, United States, 1968-2015.” &lt;em&gt;Sexually Transmitted Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 46, no. 1 (2019): 37–40. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000000899&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-12-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-13-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;See Figure 4D in Gregory L. Armstrong, Laura A. Conn, and Robert W. Pinner, “Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century,” JAMA 281, no. 1 (January 6, 1999): 61–66, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.1.61&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-13-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-14-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.&quot;&gt;Merck &amp;amp; Co.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-pmid18626052-38&quot;&gt;[38]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-39&quot;&gt;[39]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#cite_note-40&quot;&gt;[40]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;” “Penicillin,” in &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, May 23, 2019, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penicillin&amp;amp;oldid=898359231&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-14-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-15-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The serious consequences of syphilis for the population led to its designation as the “shadow on the land” and prompted US Surgeon General Thomas Parran to launch a national syphilis control campaign in 1938 based on public education, serologic testing, treatment, and a national network of sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Douglas, John M. “Penicillin Treatment of Syphilis.” &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; 301, no. 7 (February 18, 2009): 769–71. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.143&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-15-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-16-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The symptoms of syphilis have become less severe over the 19th and 20th century in part due to widespread availability of effective treatment and partly due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_virulence&quot;&gt;decreasing virulence&lt;/a&gt; of the spirochete.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_syphilis#cite_note-Sec2010-7&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;“&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “Epidemiology of Syphilis.” In &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;, February 9, 2019. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;oldid=882541706&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epidemiology_of_syphilis&amp;amp;oldid=882541706&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-16-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-17-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;‘Early syphilis’ is defined as follows in Willcox: “seri-negative primary syphilis, zero-positive primary syphilis, secondary syphilis, and early latent syphilis in the first year of infection (although in the U.S.A. the first four years are taken).”&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-17-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-18-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year. The reported results &lt;em&gt;for those patients who completed their treatment&lt;/em&gt; (see, for example, Burckhardt, 1949; Degos, Vissian, and Basset, 1950; Thompson and Smith, 1950; Arutyunov and Gurvich, 1958) in large series of cases were good and cure rates exceeding 90 per cent. were reported…&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + …As soon as it became available, penicillin was soon in use for the treatment of syphilis throughout the world…&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + …As early as 1946 it became apparent in the U.S.A. that the results were deteriorating. Before May, 1944, a seronegativity-rate of 85 per cent. at 11 months had been achieved, but after that time the figure had fallen to only 60 per cent.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-18-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-19-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;One of the two great disadvantages of metal-therapy was that, because of the relatively weak treponemicidal powers of the drugs employed, prolonged treatment involving many injections was required, and default from treatment, and therefore absence of cure in those who defaulted, was very common. Indeed, a minimum curative dose might be received by only one quarter of the patients (Chope and Malcolm, 1948). The other disadvantage was the risk of serious toxic effects, which not only curtailed treatment in affected patients but, by reputation, encouraged other patients to default.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” British Journal of Venereal Diseases 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25. &lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-19-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-20-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“The out-patient therapy of early syphilis became feasible only with the introduction by Romansky and Rittman (1945) of penicillin in oil-beeswax…by such means, nearly all patients could now achieve a curative dose (Hayman, 1947, Aitken, 1947) instead of only about one-quarter as with arsenic and bismuth (Chope and Malcolm, 1948).”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Willcox, R. R. “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*.” &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-20-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-21-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Before the discovery of penicillin, reliance had had to be placed on arsenic and bismuth therapy given over periods of approximately one year… + &lt;p&gt;…The use of sixty or more injections of crystalline penicillin G in aqueous solution within a period of 7 1/2 days, if not more than the patients could reasonably tolerate, required their admission to hospital…Good results were reported with eight daily injections of 600,000 units…and success rates of 80 to 85 per cent. were achieved…”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + R. R. Willcox, “Treatment of Early Venereal Syphilis with Antibiotics*,” &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Venereal Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 38, no. 3 (September 1962): 109–25.&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + “In 1943 penicillin was introduced as a treatment for syphilis by John Mahoney, Richard Arnold and AD Harris. [22] Mahoney and his colleagues at the US Marine Hospital, Staten Island, treated four patients with primary syphilis chancres with intramuscular injections of penicillin four-hourly for eight days for a total of 1,200,000 units by which time the syphilis had been cured. “&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;John Frith, “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins,” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-21-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-22-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Arsenicals, mainly arsphenamine, neoarsphenamine, acetarsone and mapharside, in combination with bismuth or mercury then became the mainstay of treatment for syphilis until the advent of penicillin in 1943.” + &lt;p&gt;Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-22-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-23-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;This led in 1910 to the manufacture of arsphenamine, which subsequently became known as Salvarsan, or the “magic bullet”, and later in 1912, neoarsphenamine, Neo-salvarsan, or drug “914”. In 1908 Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery. [7, 11, 12]”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + John Frith, “&lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&lt;/a&gt;,” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-23-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-24-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;John Frith, “&lt;a href=&quot;https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-treatment-until-penicillin-and-the-debate-on-its-origins/&quot;&gt;Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins&lt;/a&gt;,” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-24-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-25-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Mercury stayed in favour as treatment for syphilis until 1910 when Ehrlich discovered the anti-syphilitic effects of arsenic and developed Salvarsan, popularly called the “magic bullet”.”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” &lt;em&gt;Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health&lt;/em&gt; 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-25-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;li&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;li&quot;&gt; + &lt;span class=&quot;easy-footnote-margin-adjust&quot; id=&quot;easy-footnote-bottom-26-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;“Many physicians doubted the efficacy of mercury, especially as it had terrible side effects and many patients died of mercury poisoning. Beck (1997) describes a typical mercury treatment : + &lt;p&gt;“A patient undergoing the treatment was secluded in a hot, stuffy room, and rubbed vigorously with the mercury ointment several times a day. The massaging was done near a hot fire, which the sufferer was then left next to in order to sweat. This process went on for a week to a month or more, and would later be repeated if the disease persisted. Other toxic substances, such as vitriol and arsenic, were also employed, but their curative effects were equally in doubt.” [9]&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;Mercury had terrible side effects causing neuropathies, kidney failure, and severe mouth ulcers and loss of teeth, and many patients died of mercurial poisoning rather than from the disease itself. Treatment would typically go on for years and gave rise to the saying,&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;p&gt;“A night with Venus, and a lifetime with mercury” [8]”&lt;br/&gt; + &lt;br/&gt; + Frith, John. “Syphilis – Its Early History and Treatment until Penicillin and the Debate on Its Origins.” Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health 20 (November 1, 2012): 49–58.&lt;a class=&quot;easy-footnote-to-top&quot; href=&quot;#easy-footnote-26-1603&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; + &lt;/div&gt;&lt;/li&gt; + &lt;/ol&gt; + &lt;/HTML&gt; + + </pre>