Discovered two decades ago, these complex materials are poised to enter the commercial marketplace in a number of unanticipated applications.
The cover story in the 11 May 1987 issue of Time magazine featured the discovery of high-temperature superconductors (HTSs) announced the previous year by the 1987 Nobel laureates Georg Bednorz and Alex Müller. 1 The 1987 article described HTSs as a “startling breakthrough that could change our world,” and made euphoric predictions of a handful of superconducting cables funneling electricity to an entire metropolis, of powerful lightweight HTS motors, and of superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) that could detect minute magnetic fields and contribute to medical research and other fields. It also noted an alternate view, expressed by theorist Robert Schrieffer, cowinner of the 1972 Nobel Prize with John Bardeen and Leon Cooper for the development of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory of superconductivity. Schrieffer argued that the most important...
