Which scientific discoveries do we owe to fiction writers?

[kentonio]

Ok simply question, how much do you think tecnological inventions have been driven by fiction writers, and can anyone think of any inventions that only exist because the inventor/scientist read the fiction and thought 'wow, I wonder if we could actually make that?'.

Actual examples much appreciated!

[Aeson]

Giant Death Robots in Civ

[Ming]

Many "claim" the Motorola Flip Phone came from Star Trek

[BeBMan]

Quite a stretch to credit Jules Verne for specific stuff like the Apollo program or nuclear submarines, but he was certainly a visionary writer when it came to future developments....

[The Mad Monk]

Time machines -- just ask John Titor!

[giblets]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-inventions-inspired-by-science-fiction-128080674/?no-ist

[Thoth]

Robert A. Heinlein also invented the water bed.

[pchang]

We owe the communications satellite to Arthur C. Clarke.

[kentonio]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc...080674/?no-ist

You could have drip fed those over 10 posts and looked really smart.

[kentonio]

We owe the communications satellite to Arthur C. Clarke.

Yeah that's the one I was thinking of, but I wasn't sure whether it was true or an urban legend.

[Lorizael]

...inventions that only exist because the inventor/scientist read the fiction and thought 'wow, I wonder if we could actually make that?'.

(emphasis mine)

This is a difficult claim to make, I think, because, you know, counterfactuals. I think it's relatively easy to claim that some scientists have been inspired (either to become scientists or to work in a particular field) by the fiction they read, but I don't know if there are direct causal links between a piece of technology in fiction and that piece of technology actually being produced. Furthermore, even if there are, that doesn't prove said invention only exists because of the fiction. It's easy to imagine a scenario in which inventor Alice reads fiction by author Bob and creates tech from it, but Alice's own thoughts would have led her there anyway a few years later or something.

I think the best way to home in on good candidates for this claim is to think about highly novel or unlikely pieces of technology from fiction that then became reality. So yes, Star Trek communicators predated and seem to have inspired some cell phone tech, but phones had already been around for a century before Star Trek showed us tiny, wireless ones. So it's not a particularly novel or unlikely extrapolation of tech, and thus not terribly surprising that you see said tech paralleled in fiction and reality.

But if some SF author postulated a foldable, heptapodal transport fueled by the secretions of a rare fish found only in the South China Sea, and then that was invented...

[kentonio]

I don't think you can always rely on 'well they'd probably have invented it anyway'. Phones into mobile phones sure, but that's a development of an existing technology. Satellites on the other hand was a pretty out there idea.

[pchang]

Arthur C. Clarke literally wrote a paper on it that was published in 1945.

[Lorizael]

I don't think you can always rely on 'well they'd probably have invented it anyway'. Phones into mobile phones sure, but that's a development of an existing technology. Satellites on the other hand was a pretty out there idea.

Clarke did not come up with satellites. The consensus seems to be that he helped popularize a specific way (through science writing, not his fiction) of using satellites for global communication. Geostationary orbits and satellite relays were known ideas before him, which is significant because it's eminently possible that the engineers and scientists who actually worked on this problem were simply aware of those ideas rather than Clarke's paper.

[Proteus_MST]

Well, 2 other examples from the Smithsonians list:

Submarine:
Considering that the idea of the submarine already was there and that in 1863 the first combat sub, the CSS Hunley, sank its first warship, the "modern sub" is just a refinement of known principles. Likewise the periscope wasn't something new and, considering the practical test runs of the CSS Hunley, it was only logical to incorporate such a seeing device (instead of having the whole tower exposed to the enemy)

Helicopter:
Well ... Leonardo da Vinci with his aerial screw (although it was just a concept) ... and there also were some actually flying early helicopter versions since the beginning of the 20th century ... so, also Sikorskys Helicopter just was a refinement of already existing principles and no totally new invention

Nevertheless it is nice, of course, that SciFi novels have been a driving factor for Sikorsky and Lake, to increase the technological level of helicopters and submarines