Einstein

I am a bit techie today. HD-DVD(High Definition DVD; by Toshiba) lost the battle with Blue Ray Disk(by Sony) yesterday. Don't worry if you don't understand those jargons. You can enjoy high resolution movies anyway. As a matter of fact, it has very little to do with us ordinary consumers whichever method may survive in the end.
People may wonder why people in a technology field so much care about technical superiority when the consequences are about the same. All I can say is "that's what science is all about." To begin with, physical phenomena do not always happen in the way we want them to happen. If a scientist or an engineer carried out his research or development preoccupied with pragmatic ideas, he would be likely to overlook the truth and scientific progress would become a very much limited one. A good scientist must forget about practical purposes and be strictly faithful to the pure fact or phenomenon. Whether its outcome is useful for us or not is quite a different story. If he is lucky he or other people may contrive something practical out of his findings or development. Most probably what he finds out throughout his research is just a neutral, cold fact, which we tend to call "a failure". Don't be disappointed. Someone in the future may use his result and invent a great gizmo of the century after he died. It is like great, unknown artists whose works are appreciated only after their deaths. Engineering development is more or less the same thing. It's in the hands of Lady Luck.
HD-DVD has lost this time. But throughout the process of its competitive development, I believe some technology, if partially, will survive and be succeeded to next technology. As an ex-research scientist with Toshiba, I would like to send cheers to the development team.
The picture was taken in Einstein Museum, Bern. These things used to be his belongings. The museum is housed in an old apartment where he lived right after his marriage. The theory of relativity would never have been born if he was obsessed with practical purposes.