Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved to read about the T of STEM, I mean Technologies, you know, STEM, which stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics". Her name was Alicia and she was leaning against the shade of a tree, sheltering from the scorching summer sun in Asturias (sorry, it's fiction, anything goes, understand?) when she saw a white rabbit running in front of her. As a good scientist, observation is the key and she couldn't help but pursue it. But they say that curiosity killed the cat... Alice in the Land of Technology (realised using AI tools)   ...And following the white rabbit Alice falls through a hole in a tree trunk And there, after falling into the void, he reaches the bottom where a little voice coming out of a small door speaks as follows: "Legend has it that Pygmalion vowed to marry only the perfect woman and no matter how hard he searched, he found none who met his high standards. So, in desperation, and since he was not only a king but also a good sculptor, he set about sculpting his ideal woman. Many were the attempts, and many were the failures, but then one day, he succeeded. He made this sculpture of a perfect woman, with whom he fell in love and whom he called Galatea. He knew she was not real but he began to treat her as if she were, to talk to her, to tell her his sorrows, his joys... until one day, Aphrodite, moved by the king's wish, turned the statue into a human. And so Pygmalion had his perfect woman, the very woman he had created and in whom he had believed". Just as it had appeared, the voice faded away, but suddenly before Alicia's eyes, a key appeared that said "use me". The little girl opens one of the doors she sees in front of her with her... ...In the distance he catches a glimpse of the jumping hare and tries to reach it But on her way to the snow-coloured rabbit, Alice meets a most colourful character. A character with a top hat who kept repeating that they were celebrating their No Birthday party. At that moment he thought how optimistic this Mad Hatter, as he called himself, was. What's more, he found it most interesting was a phrase he said to Alice when she told him "That's impossible", to which the Mad Hatter replied "Only if you believe it". Suddenly a voiceover begins to speak "from the legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, psychology and pedagogy echoes to describe the so-called Pygmalion effect (also known as the Rosenthal effect). This is a phenomenon that indicates the potential influence of one person's belief on another person's performance, in any domain. In particular, when a positive effect is produced (the Pygmalion effect itself), causing an increase in the self-esteem of the person believed in".   Pygmalion and Galatea in the Land of Technologies (realised using AI tools) And she appeared, the Queen of Hearts Alice thought about it, as she said goodbye to the Mad Hatter and his friends and walked down the road to nowhere. But before they reached their non-destination, there appeared before them a queen who called herself the "Queen of Hearts", a woman with a temper who, at the slightest opportunity, threatened to cut off the heads of her card-playing assistants or anyone else. And for the record, Alicia herself was threatened with having her head cut off, but she thought how ingenious this woman was who had decided to invent a cricket where the balls were hedgehogs and the wickets were flamingos. It may seem strange, but these things made Alicia think how revolutionary this peculiar woman was. How it had turned a traditional and classic game into a kind of madness where the cards of the French deck also became unexpected protagonists. And one thing led to another, and he ended up thinking about all that all these crazy STEM people have in common. These scientists, technologists, engineers ... who work in research, development and innovation (R&D&I) ... or not ... and what is the driving force that pushes us. The Hall of Fame And so it was that Alice, on returning from such a peculiar country, decided to write a book about the greatest brains, who along with the Queen of Hearts had that adventurous and creative spirit essential to devote themselves to new technologies. As a result, he created a book which he called "The Hall of Fame" and gave it to me so that I could share it with all of you (fibre has not yet arrived in his country, and with that Queen, anyone would risk investing in infrastructure, lest they don't like it and "cut their head off" or the fibre optic cable, which is almost the same thing). Here is a summary of the text to whet your appetite. Snow White It is said that Disney was inspired by Hedy Lamarr to create the face of this princess who lived with the seven dwarfs ("Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), but who is Hedy Lamarr? Let us say that this is the name she acquired in the United States so that she would not be associated with her past on her arrival in the New World, but she was born in Vienna (Austria) under the name of Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914. Hedy is known as an actress but few know that she was also an engineer. At the time, she was living in the United States and wanted to help the allied armies with her knowledge, so she researched the major weaknesses in the technologies used. He realised that communications was one of the most critical elements and, at the time, radio was one of the most widely used methods. At the time, research was also being carried out into remote control for the guidance of various systems using radio.   Snow White in the Land of Technology (realised using AI tools) It was clear that radio was a relevant technology with a future, and so he studied the advantages and disadvantages of this communication technology, proposing a series of improvements that culminated in a patent-protected invention (US2292387A) in the middle of the war period (1941). This patent was titled by Hedy as "Secret Communication System" and she is listed as the inventor with her married name of the time "Markey Hedy Kiesler". Today this system is known as "Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum" transmission, or FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum"). But, of course, you may ask, what is this innovative technology of the time? To understand this better, it should be noted that radio is after all a wave that needs a medium to be transmitted (air) and there may be natural obstacles (e.g. mountains) that impede its propagation. Similarly, the radio sends the whole message in the same "packet" and on the same frequency. This means that the duration of the message is relatively long and during this time, the origin of the signal can be identified and therefore, artificially, interference can occur, preventing the message from reaching its destination. So it was that Hedy, in his invention, proposed a system that would send the messages in small packets and each of these parts would be sent at different frequencies sequentially, where each frequency was different each time and was selected in a random pattern. This would make the information sent in radio messages more difficult to intercept. However, as a patent does not guarantee its applicability, Hedy did not see a single euro, dollar or current currency of the time from this technology, which expired after 20 years without having been profitable. However, apart from other applications, it can be said that this inspiring woman was not just a pretty face and her wonderful brain made this technology the forerunner of a number of other technologies that employ this spread spectrum concept, such as today's wireless technologies, from WiFi to Bluetooth.   Alan Turing This English mathematician, Alan Turing, was brought to the big screen, where his life was narrated in the film "Enigma" (2014). Enigma is the machine used by the Nazi army to send communications in World War II. Thanks to the "counter-machine" developed by Turing and other collaborators, called "Bombe" (from "cryptographic bomb") in honour of the previous design used for its development, and without pretending to make spoiler of the film, Bombe's mission was to discover some of the daily settings of the Enigma machines such as the setting of the alphabet rings or the set of rotors in use and their position. Such was its significance that Turing's machine is said to have helped shorten the Second World War by two years and save millions of lives. But Turing has contributed much more than this and in the house where he was born, there is now a plaque that reads "Alan Turing - Code Breaker and Pioneer of Computer Science". Such have been his exploits that he was the one who introduced the concept of Artificial Intelligence and collaboration between technology and people. One of them is the so-called Turing Test , which is nothing more than a method to determine whether a machine is capable of thinking. This test is based on an imitation game in which there is an interrogator, a person and a machine. The aim of the game is to get the interrogator to recognise the machine, as stated in his essay "Computing machinery and intelligence" (1950). In Turing's own words "A computer can be called intelligent if it manages to fool a person into thinking it is a human". Instead, it was not until 2014 that chatbot Eugene Goostman, performing the Turing test against 30 judges, managed to convince all of them that they were chatting with a thirteen-year-old Ukrainian boy. Turing, in addition to having collaborated with Norbert Wiener in the study and development of cybernetics, also created the first computer chess programme. Although he tried to implement the code on a computer of the time, its lack of power prevented him from running the program. Instead, Turing played a game in which he manually reproduced the calculations that the computer would have made using his programme. Each of the moves took Turing an hour and a half, and in one of the games that was recorded, the programme lost to one of Turing's colleagues. This test was considered a provocation at the time, as well as an important milestone in starting a debate on Artificial Intelligence, which more than half a century later, still continues.   Ramon Verea But let's not forget our national Hall of Fame stars. Yes gentlemen, let us apply the Pygmalion Effect in a positive way and trust in our "national product" and our R&D&I capabilities. And if we do, we would have enough to fill a multi-volume collection. The great invention of this Spaniard born in Curantes (Galicia) and patented under the name of "Verea Direct Multiplier" (patent US207918) in the United States can be found at the IBM headquarters in New York. This writer and journalist, and not at all a technologist, is considered to be one of the fathers of the calculating machine. And it was he himself who said "Too many writers, too many lawyers, what a society that wants to be independent needs are engineers and inventors", for his main objective was to demonstrate that the discoveries made by Spaniards were just as valid as those made by anyone else. It should be remembered that he emigrated to Cuba and later ended up working in the United States.   This calculator was a device weighing about 26 kilograms, 20 centimetres long, 13 centimetres wide and 17.5 centimetres high and, although more came later, it was the first calculator in history capable of performing four arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, division and multiplication) with figures of up to nine digits.   “Verea Direct Multiplier” (US207918) – patent by Ramón Verea (Source: Patent images - Google) Hall of Fame or lounge?   Our select club One of the most impressive things I discovered when reading this book written by Alicia, is that there is an important pool of national researchers, inventors and scientists. You probably think they would only be worthy of a Hall of Fame and not a Hall of Fame, but contrary to what you might think, they could actually fill a Palace. In fact, although I still have this volume saved for future occasions, I will give you a preview of some of the protagonists who would occupy those pages. I could start by introducing you to the Granada aerospace engineer Emilio Herrera Linares (1879-1967), inventor of the astronaut suit in 1935, and continue with the Cantabrian Leonardo Torres Quevedo (1852-1936), inventor of the cable car. Continuing with means of transport, we cannot forget the autogyro invented by the Murcian Juan de la Cierva (1895-1936) or the Cartagena-born Isaac Peral (1851-1895) for his electric submarine. In medicine, the engineer from La Mancha Mónico Sánchez (1880-1961) stands out for his portable X-ray machine, the doctor from Huesca Fidel Pagés and inventor of epidural anaesthesia or more recently the engineer from Logroño Manuel Jalón (1925-2011) for his disposable syringe. But if we talk about Medicine, we cannot forget the Nobel Prize winner, doctor and scientist Severo Ochoa de Albornoz (1905-1993), born in our land (Luarca) and whose feats deserve an encyclopaedia in itself. No less important is his disciple Margarita Salas (1938-2019), also from Asturias, with a degree in Chemistry from the Complutense University of Madrid and a PhD in Biochemistry from the same university, who discovered and patented the DNA polymerase of the bacteriophage phi29 virus. To put it this way may not do justice to the great discovery it is, but in the words of its discoverer "This polymerase is used all over the world and is applied in genetic, forensic and palaeontological analysis, among others [...] When you have small amounts of DNA, like a hair found in a crime or archaeological remains, this DNA polymerase amplifies the DNA millions of times so that it can be analysed, sequenced and studied". All of them are from our land and all of them are part of our select club in expansion, do you want to join? Rules of participation The rules of participation are simple. As many of the greats we have talked about here, and many of those we haven't had time to mention yet, have shown us, there is nothing that defines you as an inventor, or as a scientist, or even as a technological expert. In fact, there are many cases of researchers who, having dedicated themselves to one speciality, have solved or invented solutions in another field or have won prizes in others. See the case of Ramón Verea, Spanish journalist and inventor of the first calculator that the IBM museum itself keeps in its entrails like gold. Or José de Echegaray y Eizaguirrehimself, born in Madrid in 1832, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904, but a civil engineer at the age of 20, as well as professor of calculus and mathematical physics at the Central University, Minister of Public Works and Finance, founder of the Bank of Spain, member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and of the Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, among other honours.   Chat with the Mad Hatter and Alice in the Land of Technology (realised using AI tools If I had to choose one rule of participation to join this select club, and having discussed it intensely with Alice and the Mad Hat at several of their No Birthday parties, the conclusion we have come to is that it is essential not to give up. And if I hurry, to be Pygmalion for someone else, as someone else probably was or is for you. They say that as we get older we become better mentors, so choose to be a mentor or a mentee or both. But be that as it may, in R+D+i don't stop believing that it is possible...and if not, tell that to Copernicus, who having had to renounce his heliocentric theory before the tribunal of the inquisition, legend has it that whispering while they were taking him away, he added: "And yet it (the Earth) moves".