Technological and Economic Development and Change

Abstract

Scientific progress has a direct effect on technological advance and economic change. This is an accelerating process. Garaudy (24) has pointed out that the time-lag between scientific discovery and industrial production was 102 years in the case of photography (1727–1829), but only 5 years for the transistor (1948–1953) or the laser (1956–1961). Filippi-Codaccioni (19) or Lavallee (42) have come to similar conclusions. For LAVALLEE, the average time elapsing between initial research and the appearance of a resultant new product on the market was 92 months in 1957, 73 months in 1958, and 42 months in 1959. Richta (65) emphasizes the main consequence of this for education: whilst at the start of the century a man could pass his whole working life without experiencing any fundamental change in techniques, a man working today may have to adapt to three or four radical changes in his trade or profession.