by Robert Bryce
As Corkum and I discussed what practical technologies might come of the work being done in attosecond science, he reminded me that James Watson and Francis Crick were able to describe the double-helix structure of DNA thanks to scientists’ ability to manipulate different parts of the light spectrum. Watson and Crick built on the work done by the British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, who was using X-ray diffraction to probe the structure of DNA.4 As you may recall from your high-school physics class, X-rays have shorter wavelengths than visible light.5 In 1962, Watson, Crick, and another man, Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work.6 Franklin, who died in 1958, was not recognized for her work.
Thanks to our ability to manipulate the very fast (light waves), scientists like Watson, Crick, Wilkins, Franklin, and Corkum have been able to unlock the secrets of the very small. We have a hunger for both Smaller and Faster. And the desire for Faster has been turbocharging innovation for centuries.
* The laser—short for light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation, an idea that stemmed from a paper that Albert Einstein published in 1905 on the idea of the photon—has undergone rapid improvement since the first working laser was developed in 1960. For more, see: University of Chicago Press, “The First Laser,” undated, http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/284158_townes.html.
6
HOW OUR QUEST FOR FASTER DRIVES INNOVATION
We have a need for speed.
Whether it’s the time needed to run a marathon, drive to Las Vegas, do the laundry, download a copy of “Heartbreak Hotel” from the iTunes store, or cross the Atlantic Ocean, we are obsessed with Faster.
Guinness World Records has a big section on speed, including “fastest 100 meters with a can balanced on head (dog),” and “fastest 100 meter hurdles wearing swim fins (individual, male).”1 For the latter, the record is 14.82 seconds, which was set in 2008 by a German sprinter—or was he a swimmer?—named Christopher Irmscher.2 Oh, and there’s the “fastest time to hula hoop 10 kilometers (male),” a title held by an American, Ashrita Furman, who swiveled and shimmied the required distance in 1:25:09 in 2006.3
The quest for speed pervades everything we do, and it has been ongoing for millennia. The oldest known wheel was discovered in Mesopotamia and dates back to about 3500 B.C. Another 1,500 years or so would pass before the Egyptians managed to develop a modern wheel, that is, one with spokes.4 How fast would those ancient Egyptian wheels rotate? If they were attached to a chariot traveling at about 50 kilometers (31 miles) per hour, they were likely turning at about 400 revolutions per minute.5 Today, the impeller inside engine turbochargers rotate at speeds of up to 250,000 revolutions per minute, or about 6,000 times as fast as those Ben-Hur-era chariot wheels.
Our desire for Faster sea travel led to improvements in sails, hull design, and navigation techniques. The quest for Faster cars and airplanes spurred improvements in metallurgy, engine design, and aerodynamics. The need for Faster Internet connectivity has led to breathtaking advances in wired and wireless communications systems. Since 2000 or so, the speed of the average US home Internet connection has increased by some 900,000 percent.7
Race car driver Bob Burman, about 1910. Burman set a number of records, including a land-speed record of 141.7 miles per hour on April 23, 1911. In 1916, he was killed in a crash while competing in a road race in California. He was thirty-one.6 Source: Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-09237.
Roman cargo ships plying the Mediterranean moved at about 7 kilometers per hour or 4.5 miles per hour.8 Today, a Boeing 737, the most popular jetliner ever built, travels at about 0.785 Mach, which is 518 miles per hour (833 kilometers per hour).9 Thus, the Romans of today can easily travel more than 100 times as fast as their ancient cousins, and by jumping on an airliner, they can travel to nearly any place on the planet and be there within a day or two.
Columbus’s first voyage across the Atlantic to the New World in 1492 took more than two months.10 That famous trip launched a centuries-long effort to decrease the amount of time needed to get from Europe to America and vice versa. By the 1700s, sailing ships still needed six weeks or more to make the crossing. The never-ending push for Faster led to the steam engine. By 1845, the SS Great Britain, a steam-powered ship designed by the engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was crossing the Atlantic in just fourteen days.11 A bit more than a century later, in 1952, the ocean liner SS United States, designed by William Francis Gibbs, was making the same voyage in just three and a half days, a record that stands to this day.12 But the United States, like other luxury ocean liners, were destined to go the way of the buggy whip. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, jetliners began traversing the Atlantic in a matter of hours.
Not only do we want machines that go Faster, we want to go Faster. We dream of sprinting like Usain Bolt, hurdling like Edwin Moses, and high-jumping (or in his case, high-flopping) like Dick Fosbury.13 For as long as humans have been walking on two legs, they have been lining up and drawing lines in the dirt to see who can cover a given distance—wearing swim fins or nothing at all—in the shortest amount of time. Among the most popular events of the ancient Olympic Games, which date back to about the sixth century B.C., were foot races in which the runners competed in the buff. The races were of varying lengths and were measured in stade, which was 192 meters, or the length of the stadium.14
The obsession with Faster—and all the glory and cash that comes with it—can be seen in the motto for the modern Olympic Games: “faster, higher, stronger.” Of course, Faster is first on the list. In 1896, in the marathon held at the Athens Olympics, a Greek runner, Spiridon Louis, won the race in 2:58:50. He might have finished sooner, but he stopped mid-race for a glass of wine.15 While there are debates as to whether Louis ran the now-standard marathon distance of 42.195 kilometers (26 miles, 385 yards) or something shorter, the Olympic marathon has seen a steady increase in runners’ speed. In 2008, Sammy Wanjiru, a Kenyan, set an Olympic record by running the prescribed distance in 2:06:32. Thus, in a span of slightly more than a century, the winning male marathoner at the Olympics has cut his time by about a third.
Faster: Winning Times in Men’s Olympic 100-meter Sprint, 1896–2012
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/05/sports/olympics/the-100-meter-dash-one-race-every-medalist-ever.html?smid=fb-share.
The sprinters have also been getting Faster. At the Athens Olympics in 1896, American sprinter Tom Burke won the 100 meters in 12 seconds. At the London 2012 Olympics, Usain Bolt covered the same distance in 9.63. Put another way, Bolt ran the distance about 20 percent Faster than Burke did 116 years earlier.16
What accounts for Bolt’s runaway success? There’s no question that the Jamaican athlete was built for speed. His height (6 feet 5 inches, or 1.95 meters) and long legs give him an advantage over other sprinters.17 Nor does Bolt lack confidence: “You can stop talking now, because I am a legend.” But it’s also apparent that all of his equipment, from his shoes to his singlet, are far Lighter, and far more precisely engineered, than the togs Tom Burke wore in Athens. Bolt also benefited from a running surface that was designed to make runners Faster. The track in London had an 8-millimeter-thick layer of diamond-shaped ridges beneath the top layer of the rubberized surface. As the Wall Street Journal explained, “By angling pieces of the subsurface, the track provided shock deflection both laterally and backward and forwards, propelling and stabilizing runners all at once.”18
Faster, please: Driver Andy Green poses next to the Thrust SSC. This vehicle holds the world record for the fastest car. It was also the first to break the sound barrier. In 1997, it reached a top speed of 763 miles per hour (1,228 km/h) in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The machine was powered by twin Rolls-Royce Spey 202 turbofan jet engines producing 50,000 pounds of thrust (roughly 110,000 horsepower).19 The designers of this car are building a new vehicle, the Bloodhound SSC, which will use both jet engines and rockets. Their goal is to build a car that can travel at speeds in excess
of 1,000 miles per hour.20 Source: Thrustssc.com.
Innovation allows us to go Faster. And the more we push the boundaries of Faster, the more innovation we seek. While that push for innovation and speed often allows great human achievement, it can also result in grotesquerie. Few events offer a better example of human achievement, and human frailty, than the Tour de France.
7
FASTER LIGHTER DOPER
Modern athletes are in fact techno-human hybrids.
—Roger Pielke Jr.1
In his maniacal push for Faster, Tyler Hamilton lost so much weight and his skin got so thin, that his wife could see the outline of his internal organs.2
As an ambitious young cyclist eager to win the Tour de France, the world’s most prestigious bike race, Hamilton starved himself for weeks at a time because he knew that the most effective way to go Faster was to get Lighter. Of course, Hamilton was also more than willing to cheat. At the Tour de France, innovation can be seen in the aerodynamic jerseys, bicycles, and training regimens of the riders. It can also, sadly, be seen in the extreme efforts that the cyclists have used to game the system, to use prohibited substances, and in doing so, gain an edge on their rivals.
Professional cycling has long been the world’s dirtiest sport. No other athletic endeavor has such an ignominious history. In their never-ending effort to go Faster, cyclists like Hamilton, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, and dozens of others have been caught (or have admitted) using performance-enhancing drugs in order to gain an advantage over their competitors in the peloton. Doping was simply part of the program for those trying to win a spot on the podium. And to help them get there, the most sophisticated cycling teams focused on density.
Denser meant Lighter. Lighter meant Faster.
The metric for Faster Lighter Denser that Hamilton and other cyclists (and doping experts) have focused on is gravimetric power density, which is measured in watts per kilogram.
In his 2012 book, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs, Hamilton wrote about his rise to the top echelon of professional cycling during the 1990s and early 2000s, including his stint as Armstrong’s teammate on the US Postal Service cycling team. The book explains that Armstrong’s most-trusted adviser regarding when and how to cheat was an Italian physician named Michele Ferrari. Hamilton sought Ferrari’s advice, too. The Italian doctor taught Hamilton that he should aim to spin his pedals Faster, or in cycling parlance, have a Faster cadence. But his most important advice was about density. Ferrari told Hamilton that “the best measure of ability was in watts per kilogram—the amount of power you produce, divided by your weight. He said that 6.7 watts per kilogram was the magic number, because that was what it took to win the Tour.”3
Hamilton explained that Ferrari (who was paid more than $1 million by Armstrong between 1996 and 2006) “was obsessed about weight” because less weight for the same amount of watts resulted in a higher power-to-weight ratio.4 And in cycling—just as it is with automobiles, airplanes, motorcycles, boats, and other machines—more power combined with less weight means more speed. Once Hamilton fully understood that to go Faster, he had to get Lighter, the starvation began. After long rides, he’d drink sparkling water to try to fool his stomach “into thinking it was full.” He gorged on water and celery for days at time because “losing weight was the hardest but most efficient way to increase the crucial watts per kilogram number and thus do well in the Tour.”5
Consider for a moment what that 6.7 watts per kilogram means. Some sports-medicine professionals believe that anything above 6.5 watts per kilogram is extraordinary and maybe not even possible for humans.6 An amateur adult male cyclist in decent, but not top, physical condition can sustain an output of about 250 watts of power for an hour or so.7 If you assume that an average male weighs 170 pounds (77 kilograms), that works out to about 3.2 watts per kilogram. My son Michael, now 18, is a competitive rower. He can produce about 300 watts over a 2-kilometer distance. He weighs about 150 pounds, or 68 kilos. Therefore, his power density is about 4.4 watts per kilogram. Thus, in theory, if Michael wanted to switch sports and aim his efforts at winning the Tour de France (an option I’m not encouraging), he would have to increase his power density by about 50 percent.
We can also understand the power output of elite cyclists another way. To win the Tour de France, a cyclist will need to have a gravimetric power density—recall Ferrari says it is about 6.7 watts per kilogram—that is about four times as much as a horse, which produces about 1.7 watts per kilo.
Faster Lighter at the Tour de France, 1903–2012
Between 1903 and 2012, the weight of the winning bicycle declined by 50 percent, and the average speed of the winning rider increased by 55 percent. The names in boxes at the top of the graphic are of notable winners and the year of their final win in the Tour. Sources: Tour de France, Bicycle History: A Chronological Cycling History of People, Races and Technology.
Hamilton’s obsession with weight loss and power density is part of the century-long pursuit of Faster Lighter at the Tour de France. And that pursuit can easily be understood by looking at the weights of the bicycles used in the race.
In 1903, during the first Tour, just twenty-one riders finished the grueling race, which covered some 2,400 kilometers. The winner, Maurice Garin, had an average speed of nearly 25.7 kilometers per hour. Garin rode to victory on a steel-framed bicycle that weighed about 13.6 kilos (30 pounds).8 The machine had a fixed gear, meaning that regardless of whether he was climbing or descending a steep hill, he could not stop moving his legs, nor could he gain any mechanical advantage by shifting gears. Instead, he had to simply grind his way through the entire race, all 2,428 kilometers (1,508 miles) of it.
Since the days of Garin, bicycles have steadily gotten Lighter. That light-weighting, along with other technologies, are allowing cyclists to convert more and more of their leg power into forward motion. In 1934, the Tour’s winner, Antonin Magne, utilized a pair of lightweight aluminum-alloy rims, a technology that quickly became widespread.9 Three years later, Tour officials allowed professional riders to use derailleurs, a now-ubiquitous technology that lets cyclists choose the gear ratios that are the best fit for the terrain.10 Derailleurs allow riders to use different-size chain rings so that they can get maximum mechanical advantage regardless of whether the terrain is uphill, downhill, or flat.
By 1962, new metal alloys and better components (like brakes, shifters, wheels) allowed Jacques Anquetil to ride to victory on a bike that weighed 10.2 kilos (22.4 pounds). Ten years later, Eddy Merckx, perhaps the greatest cyclist in history, won the Tour on a bike that weighed 9.6 kilos (21.1 pounds).11 In 1973, the Spanish rider Luis Ocaña became the first cyclist on the Tour to utilize components made from titanium, a metal that is as strong as steel but weighs about half as much.12 Ocaña’s bike weighed in at 8.5 kilograms (18.7 pounds).13 The push to reduce the weight of bicycles flattened out for the next couple of decades. In 1993, the Spanish rider Miguel Indurain won the Tour on a bike that weighed 9 kilos (19.8 pounds).
A bicycle racer from the early 1900s. The basic design of the machine he’s riding is much the same as modern bicycles. Note that his bike has no brakes. It also has a fixed gear, meaning the rider cannot stop pedaling while the machine is moving. Source: Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-04379.
In 2003, Lance Armstrong won the Tour on a carbon-fiber-framed bike that weighed just 6.6 kilos (14.5 pounds). That bike would turn out to be the benchmark as far as weight is concerned. In 2004, the International Cycling Union, apparently concerned about safety, decreed that bikes used in key competitions, including the Tour, could weigh no less than 6.8 kilos.14
Ever since the cycling union established a minimum weight for racing bikes, manufacturers and racers have been focusing on aerodynamic advantage. In 2004, the slippery shape of Armstrong’s bike was estimated to reduce the needed power input by about 10 watts.15 That’s a significant savings for a Tour rid
er who must sustain outputs of 300 to 400 watts over a stage race covering more than 200 kilometers and lasting four hours or more. (During all-out sprints, the power output of elite cyclists can hit 1,000 watts or more.)16
In 2011, Cadel Evans, an Australian, became one of the oldest riders (34) to win the Tour de France. He rode to victory on a bike that utilized an aerodynamically tuned carbon-fiber frame equipped with electronic derailleurs.17 Unlike their mechanical predecessors, which depended on the movement of a thin steel cable, the electronic version relies on a switch that activates a small solenoid, which then precisely moves the chain from one chain ring to another. That bike (which cost about $14,000) was also equipped with carbon-fiber wheels (eighteen spokes on the front wheel and twenty-four spokes on the rear) as well as a digital power meter that let Evans know exactly how many watts he was expending at any given time.18 That same digital meter gave Evans a continuous readout of his speed, distance, heart rate, altitude, and pedaling cadence.
Compared to the primitive, heavy, fixed-gear machine that Garin used back in 1903, the bikes now used by the top racers in the Tour might as well be spaceships. The carbon-fiber frames, ultra-light wheels, and precision-machined components, combined with ever-more-aerodynamic shapes in helmets, clothing, and the bikes themselves, are allowing riders to go Faster. And Lighter Faster trumps heavier slower particularly in the Tour de France. But the human engines of the Tour—the cyclists like Hamilton, Armstrong, Evans, and the rest—impressive as they are, have never been able to match the output of the engines designed by people like Watt, Corliss, and Diesel.