Stuart K. Hayashi
The following is a section of the longer essay, “How Billionaires and Capitalism Save Billions of Lives — Including Yours.” That essay includes an index listing various case studies of a for-profit initiative saving lives. The blog post below is of at least one such case study. You can return to that index here.
Yet another invention that saves lives in a manner far from obvious is the laser. Had this invention remained under the control of the military, it probably would have not have been applied as anything other than a weapon. Thankfully, businesses have been able to adapt it for peaceful civilian purposes.
Lasers are essential to biometric scanners that take in biological data as their inputs. A laser scans an object and enters its reading into a computer that processes the data. This is what happens with bar codes at the grocery store checkout counter. It was by the same principle that Craig Venter relied upon such lasers when mapping the human genome — a development that, as we have learned, saves 5 million lives each year.
Lasers can also be employed in rescue efforts. When firefighters rush into a burning building, they do not know what obstacles inside will hinder them. Worse, the smoke obscures their vision. There would be some relief in having an updated-to-the-minute map of the structure’s interior prior to entry. Modern technology is making this possible.
Sonar (
SOund
Navigation
And
Ranging) works on the principle that the machine can measure the distance a sound wave travels before bouncing off an object. Through sonar, sound waves provide a three-dimensional map of an environment. Radar (
RAdio
Detection
And
Ranging) applies that same principle but uses radio waves instead of sound waves. Likewise, lidar (
LIght
Detecting
And
Ranging) does the same with laser light. As I type this, firms are
working on arranging for lidar to provide 3D models of rooms for firefighters.
Lidar is also being utilized in self-driving cars. If this automation can reduce the rate of fatalities and injury on the road, still more lives will be preserved. Aperion Care
anticipates that this application will eventually save 1.5 million lives annually.
Early patents on lasers came from the academicians Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow. By 1957, engineer Gordon Gould developed his own plans that he would go on to patent. Then in 1960, Theodore Maiman built the first working model of a laser while employed at Hughes Research Laboratories, which did R-and-D for Howard Hughes’s defense contracting firms. Soon after this breakthrough, Maiman bristled at news media describing his creation as a “death ray.” The very following year, Hughes Aircraft already began studying the possible applications for lidar. Maiman would leave Hughes to found several other companies, such as Korad. At the time that Union Carbide purchased all of Maiman’s shares in Korad, the corporation
had a personnel force exceeding a hundred people and annual sales greater than $5 million.
Gordon Gould won
$46 million in his lawsuits over his patents, and made millions of dollars from other enterprises prior to that judgment being rendered.
That was how Gould, once a member of the Communist Party of the USA, became an arch-capitalist whose invention in subsequent decades would reduce the mortality rate.
In 1988, Gould provided
his thoughts on his start as an independent inventor:
It’s certainly true that the amount of knowledge in almost any field of science is getting enormous, and that tends to support the idea of teams. But there are still a few areas where I can imagine big breakthroughs coming about through the work of one or two individuals.
He also
worried about the “dead weight created by all that red tape” that the State imposes on technology. “Government regulations are even worse than industrial lab regulations at deadening invention, and they certainly deaden entrepreneurship.”
Gould’s $46 million is an appropriate reward for making possible the mechanism that would enable human genome mapping that would save five million lives per annum.
It is ironic, then, that this invention that is most commonly imagined and depicted in media as a lethal weapon has done much to extend human life.
Return to index of case studies of lifesaving for-profit ventures.
