History of Science & Technology Q&A (March 23, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: What happened with the computer during WWII? ​​- The ​Imitation Game is a great movie about computers in World War 2. - ​​How important are Nobel Prizes? Are there any scandalous omissions? ​​- It is taxable income. - ​​Some of the physics prizes have been a bit random. - Penzias and Wilson more or less accidentally discovered the CMB, but Gamov predicted it and got nothing (I think). -​​ Thank you for encouraging our curiosity. My question is: When and why did apprenticeships end? It seems all the greats, such as Benjamin Franklin, were sent to be apprentices. ​​- What happened to the interdisciplinary science of the Renaissance? - Do the efficiency gains of specialization outweigh the harms of institutional departmentalization? - ​​Are crazy ideas useful to talk about, or are they only good for guiding intuition in research?