And really, the field grew out of a marriage of physics and engineering, the marriage of quantum mechanics and electrical engineering, you might say. It was so new they hadn't thought about what it could do. Both of those are very important. I couldn't possibly see all of them. You can't ever.
Science keeps evolving.
It was your curiosity, your quest for understanding, and not your sense of what finally would come out of all of these discoveries. The reason I was trying to get short waves was to do science, find out more about molecules. I wasn't looking for an application. I wasn't thinking of a laser beam that would be a bright light or something. Just basic work, not applied at all.