| Man has been storing up useful
knowledge about himself and the universe at the rate which has been spiraling
upward for 10,000 years. The{{U}} (21) {{/U}}took a sharp upward leap with the invention of writing, but even{{U}} (22) {{/U}}it remained painfully slow for several centuries. The next great leap forward{{U}} (23) {{/U}}knowledge acquisition did not occur{{U}} (24) {{/U}}the invention of movable type in the 15th century by Gutenberg and others.{{U}} (25) {{/U}}to 1500, by the most optimistic{{U}} (26) {{/U}}Europe was producing books at a rate of 1000 titles per year. This means that it{{U}} (27) {{/U}}a full century to produce a library of 100,000 titles. By 1950, four and a half{{U}} (28) {{/U}}later, the rate had accelerated so sharply that Europe was producing 120,000 titles a year.{{U}} (29) {{/U}}once took a century now took only ten months. By 1960, a {{U}}(30) {{/U}}decade later, the rate had made another significant jump,{{U}} (31) {{/U}}a century's work could be finished in seven and a half months.{{U}} (32) {{/U}}, by the mid-sixties, the output of books on a world {{U}}(33) {{/U}}, Europe included, approached the prodigious figure of 900 titles per day. One can{{U}} (34) {{/U}}argue that every book is a net gain for the advancement of knowledge. Nevertheless we find that the accelerative{{U}} (35) {{/U}}in book publication does, in fact, crudely{{U}} (36) {{/U}}the rate at which man discovered new knowledge. For example, prior to Gutenberg{{U}} (37) {{/U}}11 chemical elements were known. Antimony, the 12th, was discovered{{U}} (38) {{/U}}about the time he was working on his invention. It was fully 200 years since the 11th, arsenic, had been discovered. {{U}}(39) {{/U}}the same rate of discovery continued, we would by now have added only two or three additional elements to the periodic table since Gutenberg.{{U}} (40) {{/U}}, in the 450 years after his time, certain people discovered some seventy additional elements. And since 1900 we have been isolating the remaining elements not at a rate of one every two centuries, but of one every three years. |