Antibiotics

"What medicines do you have?"
"Three of the neosulfas and verdomycin"
"Give him all three and pray."
"He might be allergic to one of them!"
"He'll be more allergic to dying."

Like other Heinlein Juveniles, Tunnel in the Sky appears to be in a postwar period of exploration and discovery. The "tunnel" refers to a technological advance ("Gates") that allow you to walk literally from Earth to another planet. It has opened up possibilities for colonization across the galaxy. The characters here are high school seniors taking their final exam in Advanced Survival:  Gated onto an uninhabited planet with minimal supplies, they pass if they can get to safety.

(Anyone who wants to become a colonist is required to take the normally college-level class. Earth is becoming crowded enough that leading a colony on uncharted worlds is what the cool kids want to do.)

This quote from the 1955 novel shows some fascination in the availability of cheap and effective antibiotics. The students, who are trying to save a fellow student with a high fever, mention evidently new and improved versions of sulfa drugs and a bacterially derived aminoglycoside. This fascination could be because the first antibiotics were only about 20 years old at the time.

Some of the initial important discoveries were:

1928: Alexander Fleming notices that one of his bacterial cultures has been contaminated by a penicillium mold that inhibits further growth. He conjectures that an antibacterial substance is being produced by the mold.

1931: Bayer chemists begin trials on Prontosil, the first of the sulfa drugs. It is found to be very effective at combatting bacterial infections.

1935: Scientists at the Pasteur Institute determine the active ingredient in Prontosil, sulfanilamide. The compound had been discovered almost 30 years before, making any patents worthless, and removing any hope of massive profits away from Bayer. Soon after, generic sulfas are mass-produced.

1942: The Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston kills 492 people. Survivors are among the first people treated with penicillin, in order to avoid infection in skin grafts.

1943: Streptomycin is first isolated at Rutgers university. Also, a new strain of the penicillium mold - one that yields superior results to Fleming's - is found....on a moldy cantaloupe.

1944: Mass production of penicillin means millions of units are available for the Allied invasion of Normandy.

1946-47: Tuberculosis is shown to be curable using streptomycin, although some side effects are noted.

If you are using The Grid for any of this ... well, you probably aren't, because it hasn't been updated to this point yet....you will see that that the starting point (1928) is between 1927 (Unraveling: Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis) and 1933 (Crisis: The Securities Act of 1933). The Cocoanut Grove fire was not quite a year after Pearl Harbor,  so much of this is happening before World War II. Still, a lot of advancement occurs during this short period.  One could also note that Alexander Fleming is about the only well-known person here, and he shows up during the Third Turning - once the Fourth takes hold, it's all corporations and governments taking a hand.

Robots

People used to be concerned about computers taking their jobs. Whipple had Robby. Kirk had M5.  For a while now, it’s been more about immigrants of various sorts, as robots were consigned to eating old people’s medicine. So it’s a bit of a surprise for an article about losing jobs to robots to be coming around. It's like these cycles repeat, or something. 

One way to look at it is a reaction to stress in general, that if the world is going downhill then the jobs must be going with them. Or perhaps improvements in automation are happening at this same time, one small part of overall technological improvements. Another option is that the strong institutions of the Fourth and First are returning, and people subconsciously externalize the loss of freedom as the inevitable control of cold, logical, unhearing machines. 

As always, if a generational explanation is given, something similar should be evident in previous Saeculums as well. And it appears that we can find something very similar in the lead-up to the American Civil War, where folks can be found who opposed slavery because they thought slaves were going to take their jobs.  As well as in the aftermath, when folks could be found who thought former slaves were going to take their jobs. 

Bias

Been a while since a proper anti-positive-bias post, so here’s one on previous speculation concerning Total Factor Productivity. I conjectured that it was higher in the 3rd and 4th turning - going along with personal freedom, which peaks in the former and begins decreasing in the latter. 

According to this tome, however, TFP increased massively from the Roaring 20s to World War II. It was still inordinately high until roughly 1973. After that, it was stagnant until 1990. Since then, it has moved higher again, but nothing like the early part of the last century. If anything, in fact, it’s LOWEST during the Third Turning - both 1900-1920 and 1973-1990 are low, and low TFP hangs over onto the Second as well. 

Worth keeping in mind, also, that "1973" can be an indicator of an unusual year when speaking of economics: The year that the oil, uh, crisis happened.  Productivity dropped as people had to figure where they would get gas for their cars....

TFP

This article isn’t shockingly perceptive or anything but it is always worth noting when people compare the current era with the Great Depression. It also suggests that we are in a period of technological advancement much like the 1930s - at least as described,  in The Great Leap Forward, wherein an increase in Total Factor Productivity (== technological advancement) set up later successes in World War II and the post-war period. Not saying that’s true, the difference in what was available before the war and after the war has always seemed like a quantum leap. 

The obvious followup is: Were there similar technological innovations happening in the 1840s, ahead of the American Civil War? To which the answer appears to be: Maybe? Googling 1840s TFP increases gets a number of results that mostly are trying to show to what extent transportation was the source. It appears that it does happen, though, indicating that: TFP increases from later Third to early (at least) Fourth Turnings. Probably worth checking in on at some point.