The A320 was a “breakthrough” as the first large-scale commercial application of fly-by-wire technology. FBW is the only way to fly in the most fuel-efficient configuration due to neutral stability.
“There is really no breaking technology in the A380. Do the French have good engineers? sure they do but what are the breakthroughs in technology that the French have done in the last 60 years? I do not think that they have done any. Many nations have “good engineers” although only very few nation are doing breakthroughs in engieering and technology, the US is by far the leader on this issue.”
- The French have made a lot of technological and scientific breakthroughs during the last 60 years. It’s difficult to say what the most significent breakthroughs are, but just look at the products of leading French companies like Alstom, Renault or Sanofi-Aventis.
I think many advanced products of today, like cars, trains and aeroplanes all contain examples of a lot of minor breakthroughs. A lot of what is going on in the world of technology of today is a matter of constant improvement. Even if single revolutionizing inventions sometimes speed up progress in major fields of technology, the competence of today’s engineers is probably best illustrated by comparing modern products and technological systems to solutions of the past.
The US has a lot of competent engineers, reserchers and scientists, but in relation to population the US doesn’t look as impressive as many smaller nations. A comparision between the US and for instance Sweden, my country, in this area would end up about as disastrous from an American point of view as most ice hockey games between our two nations do.
Luckily enough for both nations, Sweden and USA have a lot of fruitful cooperation in many areas of engineering.
Five nice examples of Swedish-American cooperation:
Stealth Submarine technology:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Khaa3y0i87s
http://www.kockums.se/News/oldnews/041105lease.html
The alliance between Ericsson and Microsoft (remember that Ericsson develops much of the ‘infrastructure’ of mobile communications, the phones themselves are not their core business):
http://www.ericsson.com/solutions/operators/news/2007/q4/20071017_microsoft.shtml
GM-SAAB (GM bought the car division of SAAB):
Ford-Volvo (Ford took over the car division of Volvo):
The Bofors-Raytheon superweapon of the XM982 Excalibur (a ‘smart’ missile)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM982_Excalibur