The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics by Kakalios James

Author:Kakalios, James [Kakalios, James]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-09-06T15:00:00+00:00

SECTION 5

MODERN MECHANICS AND INVENTIONS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Quantum Invisible “Ink”

Light is an electromagnetic wave that is actually

comprised of discrete packets of energy.

New York City in 1933 boasted many skyscrapers, but only one had an eighty-sixth floor. In our world the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building is dedicated to the Observatory deck, but in the world of the pulps, this entire floor was rented to one man, who made it his residential home, complete with an extensive library and advanced chemical, medical, and electronic laboratories. This man, who excelled in all pursuits intellectual and physical, was frequently joined by his five close associates, each an expert in a different field of the practical and mechanical arts, such as chemistry, law, electronics, engineering, and archeology, on adventures that spanned the globe. The leader of this team, not content to rely solely on his amazing mental capabilities and his imposing physical prowess, would also employ a host of seemingly miraculous inventions and gadgets. Many of these exotic devices would not be realized in our world until years later, when nonfictional scientists and engineers had mastered the principles of quantum mechanics I’ve described, and managed to catch up to the achievements of one of pulp fiction’s greatest heroes, Clark Savage, Jr. Though he had the equivalent of several Ph.D.s, owing to his M.D. from Johns Hopkins and several years studying brain surgery and neurology in Vienna, his friends and the public knew him as “Doc.”

Doc Savage’s adventures were described in the pulp magazine title that bore his name, and his first story, The Man of Bronze, was published in March 1933, written by Lester Dent. Before the year was out, Doc Savage would be one of the top-selling pulps on the newsstand. Dent would go on to write 160 more full-length Doc Savage novels over the next sixteen years, at a pace of nearly one a month.56 Even at the pay rate of a penny a word, his writing income enabled Dent and his wife to live a life of personal adventure and travel that would inform his fictional tales. Doc Savage and his team would often travel the high seas in one of Doc’s yachts or his personal submarine, battling modern-day pirates or exploring an island where dinosaurs still walked the Earth. Meanwhile, Dent and his wife lived for several years on a forty-foot schooner, traveling along the eastern seaboard, fishing and diving for buried treasure in the Caribbean by day and writing pulp adventures by night. Dent was a licensed pilot and radio operator, climbed mountains, prospected for gold in Death Valley, was a vast storehouse of obscure information, and was elected a member of the Explorers Club.

Dent’s most famous literary creation would serve as the inspiration for Superman and Batman (Doc would retreat to an arctic sanctuary to develop new inventions that he called his Fortress of Solitude, and he carried many of his crime-fighting gadgets in a utility vest), James Bond and the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Doc’s tie and jacket

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