24 May
2024
24 May
'24
2:54 p.m.
On May 24, 2024, at 10:40 AM, Sellam Abraham via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
But it doesn't meet the other criteria Dave laid out. Most people these
days have never heard of the Micral, but even normies might've heard of the
Altair 8800 because of the very notoriety it has today because of it's
significance back then.
This is a familiar pattern in discovery and invention. In many cases, X was first
invented by A and then some time later by B. Or "discovered" instead of
"invented". And often the reason A is not generally identified as the first to
do X is that the way A did it didn't lead to something that was widely used.
For example:
Vikings were the first Europeans to discover America, but their voyages didn't start a
major movement so Columbus usually gets the credit.
FM radio was invented by Hanso Idzerda, but his approach was a bit odd and the economic
reasons for it disappeared some years later, so Edwin Armstrong gets the credit and
Idzerda is pretty much forgotten. In this case, the bias is so strong that attempts to
revise Wikipedia to correct the history get rejected. :-(
paul