Electrical engineering in the postwar world: IV — Expanding horizons

WE electrical engineers have too many developments in progress to subscribe to the sentiment that we live in a mature economy, even though we have been told we do. We feel confident that the future is going to flow on from the past. We have our natural laws through which we work. Most of us do not expect to break the laws of conservation of energy, at least not right away. We think that 100 per cent efficiency is a safe limit for the time being. But we can see that lots of these laws can be interpreted in another way. Laws are not necessarily limiting. Man-made laws are limiting, but nature´s laws are partly for the purpose of directing us to the things that we can do instead of limiting us to the things that we cannot do. So, we take these laws, and we see what we might conceivably do in the way of using them as guides for the future.