Ages ago I spent a fair amount of time considering what would happen if someone invented a new power source. I was planning to try to write a short story based on the idea. In my imagination I invented a device the size of a fridge freezer capable of powering a small town for 100 years. The workings and science were irrelevant, but the politics of it was what interested me.
I cant find the notes I made now, but essentially I ended up deciding that something so revolutionary, if proved and accepted as doing what it said on the tin, would take a life of its own. I came to the conclusion that once people know of its existence, the inventor will lose all control and become an instant target. Such inventions are the "babies" of such inventors, so loss of control is an issue. Becoming a target, more so. I'm not sure what the people who did the science that lead to nuclear stuff intended or thought, but if it were me, the idea that my science was used to make such evil devices as nuclear bombs would at the very least cause me trouble.
Interestingly there is some relevance to what is happening now with the NSA internet spying issue. People may well look at this sort of behavior and conclude that there are no limits for certain nation states. So, if a Belgian, for a random small country example, were to invent such technology, and say this person decided that only small poor countries could have access to it in order to equalize small poor countries with rich ones, how might the likes of China, UK, USA, India, etc, react to that? What would be their limit to acquire such technology? The second you deploy such a unit, spies would be all over it. Perhaps, war. So in the end, unless you do as told, your good might end up slaughtering millions.
Now, I'm not saying that starlite was or is for real, or that the inventor thought this way, but I can certainly see why such an inventor might be so paranoid as to get in to a position where the secret dies with him.
Of course I am very open to the idea that this says more about my personal psychology that any general point...
In the sci-fi novel 'Friday', Robert Heinlein writes about a physicist named Daniel Shipstone who realised that 'the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhere—in sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension.'
In the story, Shipstone quits his job, retreats to his basement and invents a technology that packs 'more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."'
Like Ward and Musk [1], Shipstone eschews patenting his new technology in order to deny others the opportunity to steal it (or tie him up in court cases) and instead begins manufacturing the devices (eponymously named "Shipstones") which end up becoming ubiquitous, powering everything from flashlights and automobiles, to households and ocean-going ships. The company he founds becomes the largest and most powerful industrial conglomerate in the galaxy and the method of manufacturing Shipstones remains a closely-held secret.
Elon Musk is by no means the first person to get that realization.
As a theme only things that can be easily reproduced by looking at the very physical nature are patented. If something is easy to reproduce by just looking at the idea or invention itself, that is the kind of thing that is commonly patented. Why else do you think the patent ecosystem if full of crappiest and most obvious patents possible.
It hardly makes any sense to patent some thing that is genuinely difficult to figure out otherwise.
You don't even need a scientific breakthrough or difficult bit of engineering to successfully use that strategy. Coca-Cola is one of the more famous cases of a company that chose to keep its "invention" secret rather than disclose it with patent filings. It was common at the time to patent the formulations of "patent medicines", and the 1890s version of Coke was indeed patented, but later formulations were deliberately not patented, in order to keep them secret.
Look at nuclear technology. Weapons or other wise, super powers and their allies are always paranoid that developing countries may develop nuclear power and all the edge they have in negotiating anything will just go away.
Inventions like things that control vast advances in science and technology are always going to be much about politics and less about altruistic nature of humans to share the inventions with each other.
Fighting bigger wars to prevent small insignificant wars is the common theme these days.
Nuclear technology barriers are more technological than informational. Finding information on how simple nuclear device works wouldn't be that hard I think. Actually creating a device that would work is another matter.
But here nobody actually knows even the ideas behind this - how exactly this thing works. Which sometimes happens too - e.g. see history here about lithium batteries, which was just recently discovered how they work even though they were in use for years. But there nobody knew that, there wasn't some inventor that hides it.
Once one has lost control what is the value in being a 'target'? You can't really be both.
The steam engine, refrigeration, etc, are all examples of this kind of invention which make their inventors quite well off even if eventually eclipsed by successors.
War is inevitable... don't fret over some invention, if it's useful in war it will be used in war regardless of its other merits. Often the tech transfer is backwards, from war to civilian life.
This reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode called Valley of the Shadow (1963) [1]. A small town possesses a device that rearranges atoms to create or fix anything. The scientist who gave it to them told them to keep it a secret until mankind is totally peaceful. One day, a reporter's car breaks down near the town and he ends up proving that the world isn't ready for the technology.
Of course, you could argue that he reacts so badly because they try to trap him there forever...
I cant find the notes I made now, but essentially I ended up deciding that something so revolutionary, if proved and accepted as doing what it said on the tin, would take a life of its own. I came to the conclusion that once people know of its existence, the inventor will lose all control and become an instant target. Such inventions are the "babies" of such inventors, so loss of control is an issue. Becoming a target, more so. I'm not sure what the people who did the science that lead to nuclear stuff intended or thought, but if it were me, the idea that my science was used to make such evil devices as nuclear bombs would at the very least cause me trouble.
Interestingly there is some relevance to what is happening now with the NSA internet spying issue. People may well look at this sort of behavior and conclude that there are no limits for certain nation states. So, if a Belgian, for a random small country example, were to invent such technology, and say this person decided that only small poor countries could have access to it in order to equalize small poor countries with rich ones, how might the likes of China, UK, USA, India, etc, react to that? What would be their limit to acquire such technology? The second you deploy such a unit, spies would be all over it. Perhaps, war. So in the end, unless you do as told, your good might end up slaughtering millions.
Now, I'm not saying that starlite was or is for real, or that the inventor thought this way, but I can certainly see why such an inventor might be so paranoid as to get in to a position where the secret dies with him.
Of course I am very open to the idea that this says more about my personal psychology that any general point...