First Internet message and ...

Patents are generally used to document who invented what first. Commercial success building on old research and patents tends to be what is remembered. So what if some guy in 1761 heated up a wire until it glowed releasing light, it took many people over a long time to come up with a usable cheap light bulb design and the inventions that brought electricity into cities and peoples houses to power those bulbs that people will remember. The only reason Apple sold so many Apple II's was because some software designer came out with Visicalc. So many machines were sold that they ended up cheap enough and useful enough to end up in schools and homes where before they were only sold to corporations. IBM's release of the PC with open architecture and all the people who cloned it and made software and hardware for it that IBM never envisioned is the reason X86/X64 is so dominant not that is was the first or the best. The people who invented something epic tend to not have commercial success because pretty much most ground breaking patents tend to expire before they truly become useful and because of the need for other inventions to make them commercially usable. -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2019 8:18 PM To: Bill Gunshannon via cctalk Subject: Re: First Internet message and ... On 11/26/19 12:48 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: And Edison invented the incandescent lamp. --Chuck