In the two black leather sofas on the stage are seated Louise Skyggebjerg, George Dyson and Colin Bulthaup. Together they have just lectured on inventors and creative environments over the last one hundred years. Skyggebjerg on the Danish inventor Ellehammer. Dyson on his father Freeman Dyson and the team of scientists who invented the nuclear bomb and the computer in the 1950s. And Bulthaup – a young American inventor of the new millennium.
Essential to all inventors is funding.
- The tragic side of the story about Ellehammer is how difficult it was for him to get his work funded, as Dyson noticed.
Skyggebjerg replies: - It was actually easy to get finance in the beginning of a project. Ellehammer’s charismatic person convinced many investors. But the investors were disappointed when Ellehammer could not show results right away. And then they took away their funding.
Host Henrik Føhns turns the conversation.
- What about morality? How can you work day in and day out on building a bomb and in night time concentrate on e.g. working on the computer – as the team around Freeman and van Neuman did.
George Dyson: - It was a moral issue that the scientists at Princeton struggled with. But the military financed the project. They said: - “Well, if you design our bomb, then we will finance all your other crazy ideas!” And many essential inventions were made. The government doesn’t think that way any more. Today we just get the weapons. Not all the other crazy and innovative ideas.




Recent Comments