Timeline - Michael Crichton [2]
These quantum curiosities, defying logic and common sense, have received little attention from the public, but they will. According to some estimates, by the first decades of the new century, the majority of physicists around the world will work in some aspect of quantum technology.*
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It is therefore not surprising that during the mid-1990s, several corporations undertook quantum research. Fujitsu Quantum Devices was established in 1991. IBM formed a quantum research team in 1993, under pioneer Charles Bennett.† ATT and other companies soon followed, as did universities such as Cal Tech, and government facilities like Los Alamos. And so did a New Mexico research company called ITC. Located only an hour’s drive from Los Alamos, ITC made remarkable strides very early in the decade. Indeed, it is now clear that ITC was the first company to have a practical, working application employing advanced quantum technology, in 1998.
In retrospect, it was a combination of peculiar circumstances—and considerable luck—that gave ITC the lead in a dramatic new technology. Although the company took the position that their discoveries were entirely benign, their so-called recovery expedition showed the dangers only too clearly. Two people died, one vanished, and another suffered serious injuries. Certainly, for the young graduate students who undertook the expedition, this new quantum technology, harbinger of the twenty-first century, proved anything but benign.
* Alastair I. M. Rae, Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality? (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965). Also Rae, Quantum Mechanics (Bristol, Eng.: Hilger, 1986).
* John Horgan, The End of Science (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1996). See also Gunther Stent, Paradoxes of Progress (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1978).
* Dik Bouwmeester et al., “Experimental Quantum Teleportation, Nature 390 (11 Dec. 1997): 575–9.
† Maggie Fox, “Spooky Teleportation Study Brings Future Closer,” Reuters, 22 Oct. 1998. For Jeffrey R. Kimble, see A. Furusawa et al., “Unconditional Quantum Teleportation,” Science 282 (23 Oct. 1998): 706–9.
* Colin P. Williams and Scott H. Clearwater, Explorations in Quantum Computing (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998). See also Gerard J. Milburn, Schrödinger’s Machines (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1997) and The Feynman Processor (Reading, Mass.: Perseus, 1998).
† C. H. Bennett et al., “Teleporting an Unknown Quantum State via Dual Classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Channels,” Physical Review Letters 70 (1993): 1895.
A typical episode of private warfare occurred in 1357. Sir Oliver de Vannes, an English knight of nobility and character, had taken over the towns of Castelgard and La Roque, along the Dordogne River. By all accounts, this “borrowed lord” ruled with honest dignity, and was beloved by the people. In April, Sir Oliver’s lands were invaded by a rampaging company of two thousand brigandes, renegade knights under the command of Arnaut de Cervole, a defrocked monk known as “the Archpriest.” After burning Castelgard to the ground, Cervole razed the nearby Monastery of Sainte-Mère, murdering monks and destroying the famed water mill on the Dordogne. Cervole then pursued Sir Oliver to the fortress of La Roque, where a terrible battle followed.
Oliver defended his castle with skill and daring. Contemporary accounts credit Oliver’s efforts to his military adviser, Edwardus de Johnes. Little is known of this man, around whom a Merlin-like mythology grew up: it was said he could vanish in a flash of light. The chronicler Audreim says Johnes came from Oxford, but other accounts say he was Milanese. Since he